Ep. 114 Stop Trying To Rush Your Life: Why It’s Not Better To Achieve Everything Younger With Saie Founder Laney Crowell

What is up and welcome to Working Hard, Hard Be Working. Today I am back in New York. So forgive the background noise if there is any. We have tried our very, very first to get rid of it, but we may still have some of it. Today I have Lainie Crowell on the podcast. I have been a big fan of, say, for so long. And so I knew that while I was in New York, I really had to pin her down and get her on the podcast.

She found a beauty brand, say, in 2019, after a five-year stint at Estee Lauder, which made her feel like she very much needed to disrupt the beauty industry. Say has very much done what Lainey set out for it to do. It's disrupted the industry. And the whole idea of the brand has been very focused on creating kind of non-toxic, clean beauty products with that at the very, very core.

To say that the TikTok girlies love say is probably the understatement of the century. And they're very much one of those brands that is continuing to go from strength to strength, really, really seeing success across the whole market, truly, truly disrupting the industry, both in what you see online and an industry that used to be run very much by only the kind of enormous billion dollar brands and also in their sales. They have been doing so incredibly well.

In this episode, I really wanted to get into Laney's background, how she even ended up in beauty. She actually originally started her career loving the world of magazines and really wanting to climb the rungs of a magazine based career. When she decided to disrupt the beauty industry, it was right before she was about to have her first child. And what I really wanted from this episode was to talk about not just her whole career path from this kind of idea of success that she had working in magazines.

to deciding to start a beauty brand, but also really talking about the realities of motherhood and entrepreneurship, diving into I guess probably what people don't talk enough about when it comes to what that actually looks like day to day, and also how to find your superpowers as a founder, how to understand what you truly excel at, what your brand really cuts through with.

And ultimately I just wanted this to be a real heart to heart between two founders who are busy scaling their businesses, really wanting to realize all the dreams that they have for their brands whilst also talking about the reality of what that means from topics like funding rounds to burn out and to really making a routine work for you.

Before we get into the podcast, if you could just go and rate this on whichever podcast app you are listening to this on, it makes a huge difference to the podcast and the types of incredible conversations we're able to have, the types of guests we're able to get on. So no, it's probably something you don't think about. But if you could just go rate it now or follow it, it makes a huge difference. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for joining me. Things were having me on this beautiful New York day. I know with the no doubt sirens blaring in the background. I don't come, but that's part of the magic. I know I do really like I've always lived in a city. So I live in London, have all my life. I feel like New York is the one place in the world that just like takes it up a notch.

It's just like you're always in. It's game on the second you get here. I was walking from No Ho to So Ho yesterday afternoon, and there was skateboarders rolling a joint, a guy sitting on top of a stereo, another guy in a top hat. And then everyone was just walking by like it was just business as usual. And I was like, I love this place. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, no, I think it really takes it like a step up from London, which is already pretty, like it's already pretty there. But I always start by asking everyone whether at the moment you feel like you are more working hard or hardly working. Oh, I'm working hard. And is that your only setting?

I can sometimes be hardly working. I think this summer, I really wanted to enjoy the summer with my kids. And so I don't know if I was hardly working because I was definitely working hard, but it was more, I was balancing more than I usually do. What ended up happening was I just ended up pushing everything a little too far. If you know what I mean. Like I was doing everything, bunting the handle at both ends. Yeah, I feel like that's,

often a mistake I make because I try and be, I'm like, if I'm working this hard and prioritizing my work, like I've also got to be like a really great friend and I don't want to miss out on all of these things and everything. And then I end up like after like a month of doing like hardcore burning the candle at both ends. I'm like, wow, like there was really a middle ground there on both sides. Well, a friend of mine, her name's Sabrina and we went to dinner about a year ago and she said, my new thing is like, yellow.

Like, let's just go for it. And I was like, yeah, let's go for it. Like, whatever it is. Like, let's go to Vegas and go to the sphere. Let's do the girls trip to Jamaica. Let's take all the trips with our kids. Like, let's just do it. And I bought this big calendar. Have you ever seen this on TikTok? It's called the Bigass Calendar. No. Okay, so it's the husband of the woman that started Spanx. Uh-huh. His name is Jessie.

And I think I was in a vulnerable place when I saw the TikTok. I'm always in a vulnerable place when I see a TikTok. And because I was only working hard at the time that I saw this little video and he was like, if you don't map out your year in advance, your whole life is going to pass you by. And it hit hard.

And I immediately bought the calendar from TikTok shop and it's huge. It takes up a lot of space. I bought a phone board. I tacked it on so it sits up straight in my office. And it has little squares with every single day of the year on the calendar. And it comes with little post-its and you color code it to whatever.

And I did it. I mapped out my whole year. And he says, you have to have a Musogi, which is a life changing event. And I decided to do my first triathlon. Lafa. And it was on Sunday. Congratulations. It might be why I walked in a little stiff.

Yeah, I'm pretty sore. And then every eight weeks you take a mini adventure. So I planned all of our travel for the year, which meant that we actually took the trips. We went skiing, we went to the islands, we took a trip just the two of us, we took a trip with our friends, and then I put all my work on there as well.

And I felt like I lived, I lived my year. But so good. Yep. And I'm going to do it again next year. I love that because I'm big on planning. Like I literally own an entire company around like productivity and planning because I was actually a byproduct of just everything else I was doing purely because I was like, this is so important. I haven't looked at it, I guess in such a regimented way, but I usually find that like when I come out of a period of time and I feel like

completely rinsed, like I feel like it was too much and I, you know, went too hard or I didn't see my friends enough or it didn't take enough time for myself. It's always the same rules that were like violated that I essentially like I didn't stick to. It's usually like making sure, so I have some good ones in terms of like my week. So I know, for example, from Monday to Thursday, like when I'm obviously working the hardest Monday to Friday, so there's nights in between, if I'm doing something, whether work or friends,

late more than two of those nights, I will burn out like the next week or that weekend, like I will, whether it's how creative I'm feeling, whether it's how I am in my relationship, whether it is how I am in my business, like there will be something that like feels like it hits a wall. And that's the same whether it's working late or whether it's seeing friends because I just feel

Because you need to go home and you need to get in your bed and have a good dinner and watch a TV show and have that defragmenting of your brain.

being bored or not even being bored, but like not having something planned, I feel like is so sacred. I would love to learn a little bit about young lady. Okay. I guess, could you just give me some context on like for anyone who hasn't come across your story? Where did it all start? Okay. So I had a really

unusual childhood. So I was born in Colorado. And my parents lived in like a little cabin in Golden Gate Canyon, which was about an hour plus outside of Denver. And they were huge outdoors people. Like my mom is a professional rock climber.

My dad loved to kayak. They were hiking all the time. They were very adventurous and really prioritized being outside. My mom actually wrote a book on how to take kids hiking. It was called Take them Along. It's so cute. I think I've bought almost every copy that I can find off of eBay. There's pictures of my little sister and I on a hike when she was two weeks old. I know.

During that time, my mom applied to the Foreign Service. And it's a very difficult job to get. It was even more difficult for women to get it. My mom is super, super smart. She didn't get in the first time. She applied again and got in.

It's pretty unusual that your mom's job is the one that dictated my whole family and where we lived and everything, but it did. We ended up moving to Guangzhou, China.

which at the time was very different than it is now. There was a small handful of Americans. We lived in a hotel and I think it was us and like five families who worked at Nike. And I was the only kid in my grade. And then it was this very, very wild story, which I don't need to get into, but we ended up in Paris.

And that is crazy because Paris is like the creme de la creme of locations in the foreign service. But it was so influential for me because Paris is just this, there's an abundance of beauty and fashion and culture and

like things for your eyes to look at that are just so special. And I went to a French school. I took the bus every day. And I went down Avenue Montagnu with all of the beautiful Dior's and Chanel's. And I fell in love with fashion and beauty and

Even more than that, I fell in love with caring for myself, which is a very French thing. They're unabashedly vain. In the US, I think vain has this negative connotation. And then we moved, my mom was like, okay, time to focus on family, it's time for us to live in the US, and we moved to California.

So it was all these different kind of ingredients in my childhood that when I look at the company that I built, I can see little pieces in everything that we do. And then when it came to finding, I guess, what you wanted to do as an entire career, because that's a huge step for any of us. But I can imagine, especially having seen so many different environments, if you were that age and you were to think of yourself, I don't know,

in 20 years and to think, wow, I've made it. What would that have looked like for you? I mean, that's such a good question. I definitely think probably success to me was more like, you know, my dad was a lawyer. My mom was in the Foreign Service. It was more like having a traditional career that provided

And I knew that I wanted to do something creative, though, and I thought that those two things were very separate. Can you tell me about the journey to get your first, what you would consider, I guess, the first step of your career? Like, what was your first job?

Okay, so my first job, and I look back and I laugh because I always say that what I actually do is storytelling. And my first job was at a movie production company. And I think that that's actually the way in which I see a lot of things because

My job was to like read scripts and watch movies and think to myself whether or not a story was a compelling story. But it was, and I think his name was Seth, like I want to give him credit. I remember him like walking over and saying to me like, you realize that everyone here is reading scripts and you're reading magazines.

And it was true. I had my catalog of magazines that I cherished and they were perfectly lined up. But by month, Lucky was my favorite. Vogue, obviously. Mary Claire, Glamour. I loved Glamour. And it was like a light bulb went off in my brain. And in that moment, I said, you're right. I think I'm going to move to New York, and I'm going to go work in magazines.

And he was like, uh, that's like really hard. And I was like, what's that movie in Langley Bond? I was like, what? Heck, it's hard. That was me. And I, within like six months, I got up and I moved to New York and I was like, I'm going to work at a magazine.

I ended up getting my first job because I got an internship at Gucci and a reminder to everyone out there, internships at this point in time were unpaid. So I worked full-time unpaid and they heard that Elle was looking for interns. And so then I went and worked unpaid full-time for Elle magazine.

I could not get a job. I couldn't get my foot in the door. Everyone else had been interning for years. They were from New York. They had lots of connections. I was on Fifth Avenue in an inter-republic, I think, and I saw the editor-in-chief of Lucky Magazine, Kim France.

And because I read every single page of every single magazine, I knew what she looked like. And I went up and I introduced myself and I said, do you have any advice for me? I can't get my foot in the door. And she gave me her card. And when I emailed her,

And she emailed back. She said, the number one skill in this industry is fearlessness and the fact that you introduced yourself to me come in for an interview. And that was how I got my first job. That's amazing. And do you think there were any traits that the second you were in that job and you were really actually, I mean, you got your foot in the door, you're essentially ready to like

I guess step up the runs on the ladder of the magazine world. Do you think there were any other traits that you had at that time that set you apart from other people who maybe weren't able to get their foot in the door? I don't think I was like super remarkable. I think there were other people that were working harder. I definitely think there were other people that had better style than me. I think that for me, success was about finding the right thing for me.

like I've actually thought about that like I wonder if other people like look at say and they're like didn't see that coming for her like I don't know you know I think it really is about finding the thing that just really fits you so I had already transitioned online I'd gone to like a startup and I had really fallen in love with how this like frictionless communication that you could have through social media and blogging and

You could, you know, this was unprecedented. You couldn't just have a chat with someone and have them say exactly what they were thinking in that moment. You know, print magazines were going to print for three to four months before they were even hitting newsstands. And there was no way for anyone to unless they wrote like a handwritten letter in

to respond. And so I was really into it. It was very early days. And so Estee Lauder was trying to make sure that they had those experts in the room. And so I went in and was offered this job as director of digital communications at Estee Lauder, the brand.

And I just thought that was really cool. Like this was a brand that I had been introduced to because my grandmother and my mom used it. And now I was getting to launch their Instagram, launch their Pinterest, which I look back on it now. And it was so ahead of its time that in the sense that I was choosing

people to profile that now are so big. It was like the girls that started Sakura, Taryn Tumi. It was all these fantastic people that were really like early days in the wellness beauty space.

And so I know in 2016 you started a blog called The Moment. Can you tell me a little bit about that decision and what the blog was? Yes. So it was actually really interesting. So I had decided to leave Estee Lauder because I had this just really big idea of beauty being better.

And what I meant by that was, you know, I love women and I feel like beauty is an industry that should be totally serving us from the ingredients that we put on our skin, to the images that we see and how that affects the way we think about ourselves, to our hearts and how things make us feel. But if I'm totally honest, I had, it did not cross my mind that I would start a brand when I left Estee Lauder.

I was friends with Emily Weiss from Glossier. And when she launched Glossier, she was definitely an expander for me in the sense that it opened up part of my mind to like, oh, here's a friend of mine who's just started a brand. Like, you can do that.

But I left Estee Lauder, and I was really way more focused on doing exactly what I did for Estee Lauder, but for other brands. So I was consulting. I had all these clients, and I was doing everything for them from running their social media accounts to helping strategy for them, helping them identify influencers to work with. Really digital storytelling, basically.

While I was doing that consulting, I just didn't feel fulfilled. I remember telling my husband, I think I'm going to start this blog to have this conversation around beauty being better. Here's what it's going to look like. Here's how I'm going to do it. It'll actually be a great advertising opportunity for my consulting. Brands can see what I do.

And he was like, I don't know. I think you should just focus on the company you just started. And I really felt like very, very strongly. And when I look back on it, it was like, I feel like it was the universe telling me something. Like I knew that I had to start that blog.

And how did that then evolve into what we see now in terms of your work? Was there like a big moment where you just thought, okay, that blog is done, now I'm going to found say, or was it kind of a much more gradual approach? It was a total like Oprah style aha moment.

I was going out to dinner one night and I was like, I'm gonna go grab some makeup out of the beauty closet that I had made in my apartment. And I went and it was like, I talk about this a lot because it was, it's wild to me that I still remember it so clearly. I remember like opening the doors and like seeing all the bins and the bin for makeup was like empty and every other bin was overflowing.

And I think that was something that was like very unique to me in that moment was just that I had this very, very clear understanding of what the clean landscape looked like.

And so I go to dinner and I'm like, you know what, Instagram stories had just launched. I was like, I'm just going to ask people what the deal is, like, why is there no clean makeup? And I was walking down, like, right along Washington Square Park, and I start typing into my phone,

like on the blogs, Instagram account, why is there no clean makeup? Like what are your thoughts on that? And I probably said, I want to say I had like 16,000 followers, like it was very cute, very tiny. And I was like flooded with responses and I got home and I just laid in bed, like chatting with everybody.

of what would you make if you could make something? What do you like? What brand do you like? Oh, OK, what from that brand? What from that brand do you like? And that was the moment, say, was born. It's where the name of the brand comes from, is from that community saying what they wanted.

And in terms of like, so you've obviously had this like huge influx of now people being really vocal with you and saying what they'd like and what they don't like and all of this. I can imagine that was really helpful in terms of, you know, I'm going to go and start a brand out. I can also imagine that's really overwhelming because that is a lot to be disrupting the beauty industry with at once. You know, you weren't obviously going to go into that and be like, okay, I'll do all of these thousands of different things. So how did you approach that? There wasn't so many things that they were saying. It was like,

Actually, just a few things that they were all saying the same thing. There was no products that performed. They wanted high performance products like the ones that I had been working with in Big Beauty. Everything was too expensive.

and I hadn't realized that because I was getting everything for free. But at the time there was probably a small handful of brands and they were all expensive for the most part. So anything with cleaner ingredients and anything that you would consider clean beauty was generally just completely out of the price point.

It was expensive. And so when I went and looked at it, I was like, oh, yeah. I was like, I wouldn't be able to afford this if I wasn't getting it for free. And so how did you even go about starting the brand then? Because you've got an idea. There's obviously a big step between having an idea and having a physical product within your hands, for example. How did you even get to the point that you had your first product?

So I need to look back in my, in my diary, but I think that that aha moment happened, like about six months before I had my daughter as a Bella. So during those six months, I was still consulting. I was just kind of like turning the idea over and over and over again in my head. And then I had my daughter.

I know I wrote in my, because I remember I found it the other day, I wrote in my journal that it was her due date. I wound down all my clients and I was just sitting there waiting for her to come and I said, I'm so anxious for my daughter to come. I think I'm going to go work on my business plan.

And then I had my daughter and I was like, you know, I was not, I was a first time mom and it was almost three months to the day after I had Isabella that I then really started getting working on the brand.

And my approach was really simple. I was like, I come from beauty. I'm going to bring all of those experts over to help me build this brand. And so I just started talking to people that I had worked with at Estee who knew people. I just took a lot, a lot, a lot of coffees, drinks, you know, whatever I could distill people's time and chat with them about it.

Why did you choose the specific first product you chose? Because obviously you've got this big mission and I feel like big mission is incredibly important. But then sometimes the harder part of big mission is being like, okay, what's step one of this big mission? Well, I had my community. So they had said in that initial conversation, when I had said like, if you could make anything, what would you make? Everyone wrote back mascara.

So that was easy just because they told me what to do. I think the part that was harder for me was, you know, what are the first steps in length starting a company? Do you want it to be an LLC? Do you want it to be a C corp or an S corp or where do you do that? How do you get the money for a lawyer? Those were the things that I really just had to put like one foot after the next to try to like unravel it. And so talk to me about the decision to raise investment. I'd love to hear from you.

what you decided at this point to get the brand to the next level and why you decided on that.

Well, I knew when I started, say that I wanted it to be a big brand. I was very, very clear on that vision because I came from Big Beauty. That was what my whole career had been in. And it was what I knew. And I knew those budgets. I knew what it cost to have something done in the way that I wanted it done. And so my pre-seed round was about 1.2 million.

And that's I think like a really nice number to get a brand off the ground and have, I always think about it as like a rocket ship getting into the atmosphere. And you have to have that like fuel to prepare to push you out of the atmosphere. And once you are in space, you can propel yourself and but you have to get there.

And so I wanted enough funding to help me get there. And that was definitely, for me, the hardest part about starting the brand was fundraising to tell me what was hot about it. I had never done it before. It was like a whole new language of what's a safe note, what's a convertible note. Oh my gosh, it was so intense. I mean, it was really

learning a new language and while also trying to speak it. That was hard convincing people to give me money was hard. I'd never done a pitch deck before. I don't know what should go into that pitch deck. That was a very tedious process like creating that pitch deck. I also didn't realize that I really had to have my branding done before

I had before I could raise money, but I didn't have any money to pay for the branding agency. I was like, I'm in this catch 22 situation. And for me, in all of it, the way I got through it was just to continue to talk to people, which takes a lot of energy. That's hard. It's really hard. That should not be underestimated how much energy you have to have to keep having these conversations.

But eventually I met my friend Capono at combo. It's a branding agency in New York. And he was like, I get it. He's like, let's just do like really minimal branding to show them the vibe. And then once you raise the money, we'll go back and we'll do like the full branding exercise.

And what would you say? Because obviously, pre-seed is hard. I think that pre-seed as a founder that's never right started a business before, you've done incredibly well to raise that money in the first place. What do you think and what feedback did you get from investors that said that kind of set you apart? And I can imagine there were lots of people trying to disrupt the beauty in the story, like an idea is an idea. And I think that lots of people were probably like, yeah, great, great one.

It was pretty early in the clean conversation, but beauty yes was hot and people were seeing exits at the time with great valuations. I think my experience and that's definitely something that when I talk to.

people that are like, oh, I want to start a beauty brand. I'm like, cool. Have you ever worked in beauty before? I was unique in the sense that I came from one of the biggest, best, most well-regarded companies in the world. I had incredible training. I had an amazing boss. Her name was Jerry, and she

She was very good at storytelling. Actually, that was interesting. My position at Estee Lauder was in the communications department. I am such a champion of communications in terms of just that organic conversation.

So I think that was really helpful, my experience, my background, and also the fact that I just kept going. And that was my mantra. I think that's so valuable. And I think that what you said there, especially around gaining experience, could not be more important. I think that obviously we all have different privileges and access to different experience. So I think that that can't be understated.

You know, I speak to a lot of people and I speak to a lot of people that want to be beauty founders. And I really try to do it without judgment in the sense of like, okay, if you were 16 and you want to start a brand, like go for it. You were going to learn so much. And I think that the

If that's your journey, that's your journey. Great. I don't think that it's better to necessarily be a young CEO. What's better about that? You really think about it. Maybe you'll look cuter on Instagram. I really don't know what that is. No, but I think that's such a valid point and I think that's such a good antidote as well to the pressure that so much of this, I don't know.

for 30 and 30 great fantastic like really I completely understand the reasoning behind it and I was on it and I feel like you know very happy about it and all of that. But at the same time I also think that what you've just said is such a good antidote to like this obsession with the fact that

what you can do and the heights you can reach is outdone only by how young you reach them at. And I just, like, I so reject that. Like, I think that I, I actually learned so much as a young founder that I wish I hadn't learned in a founder-based environment. Like, if I could go back and do it again, I'm not sure that I would, it's hard to say that you would change it because obviously when you are, when you are, you were like, great, that's, that's great. But I actually,

I don't know. I think I was really naive not getting more experience in the true working world in areas that I really wanted to be in. I think I could have learned so much from that. I think it's hard to say because at the time it was taking off, maybe it would have been stupid not to just do it.

But at the same time, I think there's so much of a rush. There's so much of a rush to do well and to do well quickly. And don't get me wrong, but you can't sit here and be like, no, that's terrible. You shouldn't go for that.

Sometimes, as you say, experience is more valuable than youth. I would actually say the large majority of the time it is more likely. Just by seeing someone being as young as possible doing something, it does not equate to all of the other good things that we extrapolate from that just by automatically seeing someone young and successful. There's so much sacrifice to that point. There's also so much not learnt or learnt the hard way or learnt on your own money rather than learning on someone else's money. That's what I was going to say.

Also, you can't go out and party when you're on your own. Go to your nine to five and do all the other things. And then you can work because you're going to be working every single day, 24 hours a day, even when you're sleeping. You're going to be thinking about your business. So make sure you get to experience all the things and go on all the trips and be able to close your computer and actually close your computer.

Yeah, and be able to take time off without thinking that you're sacrificing everything that you've worked for and all of those different things. Like, I kind of definitely, for a bit, I mourned the fact that I'd started too early and felt like that really, that was time that I'd never get back. And I think it's so easy on social media to look at that and be like, yeah, but that's time that you got there quicker. And it's like, cool. Brilliant. So what?

Yeah, and I do think we need to reframe that a lot and I think it's really helpful to reframe that a lot because I think that with all of the concentration on youth, especially in women, like the concentration and prioritization and like glamorization of doing things younger as women is so heavy and so constant and compounded by the fact that you add in

our expectations of working months and all of these different things. And I think that really reframing that and being able to concentrate on richness of experience and what is appropriate for each stage of your life. And I think that's really, really valuable.

And I think also like another thing that I always remind myself of is there's always going to be a trade off, like the yin and the yang. Like I think about that all the time and how like each section is totally equal. The, you know, I got all that experience and I have this incredible training and I'm so grateful for that. But I also have two little kids right now.

And, you know, maybe I could have started my business younger and I'd have more time with them now. And I wouldn't be so incredibly burnt out for being both a mom and a founder and CEO. Like, you know, there's always the trade off.

Yeah, yeah. We can't win, basically. And do you feel burnt out a lot? I mean, as I said, like, I think I have it unusual, the high-paying tolerance. My parents were not, like, they did not coddle me. You know, they weren't, like, baby me. They weren't making sure I was okay all the time.

Um, I definitely have the ability to do hard things. And when I'm in a hard situation for better or for worse, like I don't quit. And so yeah, like right now is really intense. And it's really hard to have left my kids yesterday morning with them, like completely balling their eyes out that I was leaving.

and baking me not to go and then rush into the city and give back-to-back interviews and be so excited to see my team but also be on.

you know, that's, that's hard. Yeah. I mean, it, I, I know how hard it is to run a business and to be trying to scale it as much as possible and to be trying to, you know, make sure you're hitting every touch point and not cutting corners and the products where it needs to be in the, so is everything else. And you're deciding the strategy and all of that to combine with that, raising actual humans and being there for them and being there, you know, they're everything, like you are their world. I can't

imagine how tough that is and how no matter how many different mindset things you have and how many different amazing routines you have, that is so much to be doing at once. I always talk about how we expect mothers to work as if they don't have children and to be mothers as if they don't have a job.

I love that. I remember the first time I read that and I was just like, oh my God, that is really intense. And the balance with kids, I remember one time getting on a Zoom and it was a Monday morning, everyone was like, how was your weekend? What'd you do?

and someone asked me how my weekend was and I was like, guys, this is my weekend. I have two little kids. The weekends are so exhausting when I go to work on Monday. That's when I exhale. This is my play time.

And is there anything that you'd tell yourself before I guess you started the business about being a mother with a scaling business with investment that you have to hit certain things and you have to, you know, you have dreams that you want to reach for the brand? All of that was, is there anything that you'd tell yourself back then?

to have support. I mean, that's a big conversation in the US right now. And I don't know what it's like in the UK, but we don't have any help with childcare in the US. And you also have maternity leave. And I never took maternity leave. I went back to work in the hospital both times. That is the most crazy thing I've

I find it unbelievable how the US has no statutory maternity. The US doesn't have daycare, we don't have anything. I used my entire salary to pay for child care until they went to school, so the first three years.

So I think, you know, figuring out the childcare piece. I mean, there's, um, Rashima has an amazing organization that's really fighting super hard to have better help with childcare. And I, I'm sure you saw that the surgeon general just came out with a warning around how stressed out parents are. Um, and as an entrepreneur, it's like,

It's the really next level. So I think my advice would be to figure out how your child care, because it's not possible to do it on your own. I think that that difference between the support system that you have in that way is crazy than people's reality of actually raising children with that.

And it's just different for a woman. Like it just is. I remember listening to the interview with the founder of Jim Shark. I think he was on like diary of a CEO. And he was about to have his first kid. And he was saying how he hopes to be home for dinner. But he probably realistically won't be all the time. And I remember hearing that. It was just I would never have said anything like that.

Like for me, I will make other sacrifices to be with the girls as much as I can. I also think I don't think it's that bold of me to say that you never would have been allowed to say something like that because I think that you would have been absolutely

I want it. That's a good point. I think that, you know, the whole like, where are the kids or like the dads babysitting the kids or like all of that stuff is like, I don't know, I, I was actually weirdly thinking earlier, I was thinking, I wonder if I will continue the podcast when I'm on maternity leave and I'm like, well, I was in, as in when I just have a child. So like, will I batch record in advance or will I still do it? Or will I?

I'm thinking about these things, and I can't even find the space to be a good friend at the moment, as in nowhere near. And my whole life is so selfish around my business is, and what I need to do for work, and I have the most incredible, supportive fiance.

If I didn't have that like there is no he carries a lot of it and I think that when I'm just thinking about that I'm like there is no like I don't know how I would do that and then I see incredible women making it work, but I also I'm like It feels so impossible like I was thinking about that with the podcast and that's such a tiny point But I was like god I've actually because all podcasts are male like they're all pretty much male run I've never seen a podcast take time out because I

They've never had to. It's never been a real consideration. And that's crazy to me to even think that, like the fact that there's no big podcast out there. And I know that's such a tiny point and that's such a fraction of the like, you know, enormity of the, you know, issue around, you know, no, but it's so interesting. But it's just a random point. I was like, I've never even seen the podcast take a break because no, let's see what Alice Cooper does. Yeah. Sure.

I definitely feel some jealousy around my founder peers who don't have kids and can work until 12 o'clock at night and sleep in on the weekends and yeah.

Yeah, no, I can imagine because also, yeah, no, I feel like that's really important and I feel like it's all trade-offs and we know it's all trade-offs and I can imagine that there are some founders out there that would love to have kids who don't have kids in all of this, but I completely, I mean, so Tala CEO, for example, she has two kids.

And she often talks about, you know, how amazing it is to go back every, you know, she commutes, she commutes a long way, but to go back and just to have that whole world there and have like, you know, no matter how difficult the conversations are in the day to have those children who are like, you know, you are my world and all of this, but at the same time,

Every single night once they've gone to bed, it's like, okay, well now this is my opportunity to go back onto it because this is my role and this is what I have to do and like pretty much all of our head-offs have children and they're always talking about that as well and I look at it and I think that like I know how I feel when I get to the end of the day like I am a shell of a human and I am probably a terrible fiance some days when I come home and I'm literally like

just can't process anything and not like present. And that's what stunts me because I'm then like, okay, what happens is the bar just keeps moving and like you keep being able to work harder or and also more efficiently. I think someone said, if you want a job well done, give it to a mom because moms are able to get so much done because they know that they have to be done by six o'clock.

and they're not messing around during that time, like they are so efficient, you get really smart with your time. And is there anything that you would change about the reality of being a founder and also being a mother at the same time?

I don't think so. I mean, I think that it is really interesting. So I started say 2019. So four months before COVID hit. So I had two years of not traveling. And that was amazing. I really, I kind of missed that. I feel like we've now swung back so far the other way where there's so much travel. Everyone wants to do everything in person. Everyone wants to be all together because we all miss it.

But we don't have to do everything in person. And I do miss that a little bit. And I think I want to kind of put some more boundaries there around like, I have two little kids who really want me home. Is that trip necessary? Yeah. No, I think that's really important. I heard the so Nicola Kilmer, the founder of DeciM. She's amazing. She was actually one of the first episodes of the podcast. And she was also saying, though, that

that is so incredibly important and I completely agree and I think that you know flexibility is so incredibly important especially when you're having all of these conversations and that's why I feel like it's so important to have people who have understanding of this in leadership positions within companies because we all know that that means they're more likely to you know if you're a mom and you're in a leadership position you're more likely to understand that that person can absolutely do their job just they might need a little bit more flexibility around this than the other but what she also said is that what

because it's the primarily the women in the pet in the caregiving roles. It's primarily the women taking more flexibility because they need to be able to care for their children. What's also then happening in some workplaces, probably less so beauty, but a lot of other workplaces, a lot of corporate workspaces, is that only the

men are coming back into the workplace because they have basically the right and the ability to escape the children at home. And then the workplaces are becoming more of an old boys club again, just like they used to be, because we expect and because mothers are, I guess, statistically more likely to take that flexibility. And then it's kind of going in this cycle again. So it's again, one of those things that it's like, I don't think that's the right answer. I think it's really interesting. But I think it's just like, God, you just really

You really can't wait. Last last point on this and then we can, because I could talk about this all day, but I think that also just being really vocal about it. Like I teach my girls who are six and four, less so my four year old, but it's about like I talked to her about the patriarchy. Like she knows exactly what Taylor Swift song The Man is about.

And I'm really vocal about it with friends, with everyone. Let's all be really out in the open about what patriarchy means and what exactly it's doing. And I think there's something when you say it out loud that makes everyone think about it more and also be less able to be complicit in it.

I think that's so true and I think that's probably why I yap so much for fucking living on this podcast about it and especially I find it quite important to talk about with men because first of all I think it initially makes them quite uncomfortable but I think exactly what you said when you're speaking about these things we all have this first of all it breaks down a wall but it also lifts this kind of or creates this kind of understanding that actually

yeah we we all play a part in this and we all also suffer from it like you know there are so many ways that men suffer from the patriarchy from you know heightened suicide rates or you know that not being able to talk about anything or having all of this their pressure yes all of this and being able to kind of break that down from a like i can't imagine what it'd be like to have a partner where i didn't feel like i could come home and run about the patriarchy and for for him not to feel like that's a

run against him. That's a very clear and important understanding for someone to have in terms of like, actually, yes, this is what it stands for. And this is how we break it down. But I agree, we could talk about this all day. With say, you very much cut through in an industry that has been run by a billion dollar brands for a very, very long time. That's cool to hear you say that.

But it's really, really true. You guys are absolutely killing it and have been for a while and I really, really respect what you've done. What do you think's made this cut through happen? What's made you stand apart when essentially you're fighting for consumers' dime every day?

I, as a founder and as a leader of the brand, I put a huge emphasis on what I want as from a consumer. I think that's one thing that as in any industry, if you're a founder, like really think about like, how would I interpret that? What do what would I want? What would make me buy?

And that's something that really goes into like all of our decision making. We have this great call on Mondays. It's the creative marketing call. It's like probably like my favorite meeting of the week because there's no agenda. The purpose of that call is to just talk.

And it's like, oh, hey, I saw this. Did you see that? What if we did this? OK, we want to be talking more about this product. What if we just like crazy idea and that and how would I interpret that? It's the best call. And I actually think that call is a big part of our secret success, a secret sauce, because you don't have those meetings in big companies.

Yeah, and I think really making space for that and making space for like one of the things I really struggle with as a founder is like having space even in my head to think about anything that's not like the rigid near future or the problem solving or the kind of like actually trying to fight fires every single second and actually I really find the business suffers like I can feel it suffering I can feel my mindset around the business suffering. How do you I guess get back creativity like is there ever anything that you do that prompt that or

helps you to think about these bigger picture things rather than the immediate future. I do love to journal. I think the power of journaling is sometimes forgotten. But if I'm stressed or if I have a problem, I just write it all down. And the same thing of like, I think if I'm, you know, like feeling blocked, getting the excuse my language, that shit out.

then frees up all that space for the goodness, the good stuff. I think travel, for me, if I'm feeling stagnant, I need to change locations. I need to get out of my daily routine. They've shown that your brain then starts acting differently. I think walking is so powerful. If you go for a walk and you're talking through a problem, the stuff that you think of and that comes out is so much different than if you were to have just had that call from your desk.

I have definitely have people that I can call and say like, I'm stuck here. Like I'm feeling like this just isn't working or I'm feeling like we're not paying enough attention to that. And Erin on my team is one of my favorite people. She was.

employee one, I'd say. I can call her and just say, I'm just not feeling the littlest thing, and then we'll talk for an hour. Just so much good stuff will come out of that, even if the main thing that came out of it was just that my mind's in a different place.

No, I think that's really important and just recognizing what you need at any one time and understanding which part of your brain it is that's firing up, at least has been very important for me because I, yeah, just sometimes I need to immerse myself in it, sometimes I need to absolutely escape from it and I give myself the wrong one that I'm going to double the problem.

I'd love to ask as well what you feel like the biggest inflection points were for say, definitely like the biggest one was getting into Sephora. That was insane. I mean, remember, this was all during COVID.

The Sephora story, we had an article that went live in Women's Wear Daily and WWD before we launched, saying, Laney Crowell is starting this brand with the Unilever Ventures, led our seed round, they're behind it, and the next day I got an email from Sephora, and it was like one line. It was like, hey, I saw there, let's jump on the phone. And I was like, this is spam.

I think it was like April or May 2020, I got the call saying they were going to launch us in every single Sephora nationwide. And I like just remember like, my whole like, I just like fell to the ground, like sat down, like I couldn't even like be standing to have the conversation because it was so exciting. And it was really just like the dream. Like it wasn't like 200 doors. It wasn't, it was in every single door nationwide. And Sephora was

my dream partner. And I just felt like anything was possible in that moment. I love that. I feel like it's always those, it's always those ones that have meant a lot to you individually. And like when they come about and you saying that it didn't work out the first time, I feel like those are the most crushing moments. But usually those are the ones where like anytime that happens to a founder friend or anything, I'm like, I promise you, you'll look back on this moment. You'll be like, this is why it had to happen. And it's, it's so interesting seeing people's stories evolve that way.

But before we end, I'd love to ask you what the best piece of advice that you've ever been given. Yes. I think it's to listen to your instincts. And when I forget that, it shows. And then when I'm in that flow and I remember it, you know, kind of same vein, what you think you become.

No, I think that's a very good point and I think that it's something that especially as a founder that takes investment, it can be really easy to suddenly think that everyone knows better than you at different stages, especially when you're making big hires and all of this and don't get me wrong. People bring huge amounts of experience and they're aimed to hire everyone based on the fact that they're better than me at what they do. But at the same time, there is a lot to be said for a gut instinct and

the better you know your brand better than everyone. And just having that got it instinct. The times I've not acted on that, I've been like, oh shit, I really should have done that. And you have this on through, I knew. I knew I wasn't. It comes with time, really learning which ones to act on. But thank you so much for joining me. You've been incredible. Thank you for having me. This was so much fun. I always feel like I was just getting going. I feel like it's over. I feel like we have so much more to talk about.

I know live stream haul day podcast coming next.