Ep. 54/ She Got Vogue to Feature Her ‘Hair Down There’ Product | Betty Beauty Founder Nancy Jarecki

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You're going to be hearing from Nancy Jarecki who founded Betty Beauty, a specialty beauty company that dyes ‘hair down there. She founded it in 2006 and is going to talk about how she did it, how to innovate in the beauty industry and how she wouldn’t take no for an answer. Plus–imagine pitching Vogue magazine for your taboo product! You’ll hear how she successfully pitched Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour and got her hair down there Betty Beauty into Vogue.

Nancy also miraculously survived a massive brain aneurysm and shares how that experience changed her perspective on work and life.

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In this episode you will learn:

How to scale and sell your startup despite massive personal challenges
The story behind Bettybeauty
Tips for spotting startup ideas that sell

Show Takeaways:

Want to turn your idea into a successful business? Even for a product that seems taboo?

Nancy also miraculously survived a massive brain aneurysm and how that experience changed her perspective on work and life.

“One of the biggest hurdles was how do I get this out there and it be completely easy and not awkward to talk about.”
“This is the first time that Vogue has ever done anything about anything below the chin. So it's moments like that that make all the stress and all the hard work to have a story like that.”
“I really act on the first try, meaning those moments where you're like, oh, I really should need to go write that note. I just write the note. Oh, you know what? I should call. I'll call.”

Follow host Kim Rittberg on Instagram!

FREE DOWNLOAD: Improve Your Video Quality to Increase Your Revenue - 10 Tips to Take Your Videos from Mediocre to Magnetic Click here!

How To Be A Happier, Less Stressed & More Successful Parent: Click here!

EPISODE LINKS:

bettybeauty.com

nfjprojects.com

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Kim (00:02):

She invented a dye for hair down there. Today you're going to hear from Nancy Jarecki with the story of her product, how to come up with fresh ideas that work and how she got vogue to feature her hair down there. Beauty product, Betty Beauty, founder Nancy is here.

(00:19):

This is Mom's exit interview, the show for moms who want to craft the career and life they want. Each episode, you'll meet inspirational moms across various industries and levels who are working and living life on their own terms, and they'll bring you actionable tips from finance to business development to happiness, to crushing that imposter syndrome. I'm Kim RIT Bird. I was a burnt out media executive at Netflix, US Weekly and in TV news. I wanted a career where I was fulfilled at work but present at home with my kids. So I started working for myself and I love it, but not every day was easy or is easy. I wanted to explore with all of you how other moms were creating careers on their own terms. They're carving out flex jobs, starting their own businesses. They're taking back control. Join me and make work, work for you instead of the other way around.

(01:23):

So I love to share a little story from my week or a win, and it was really interesting last week my sitter was off and I was like, oh my God, how am I going to fit all of my work into just the time the kids are at school? And some days they do have after school, but really thinking like, how do I contract my schedule and fit everything in? I don't want to work at night like I want to chill, maybe watch some TV. I'm watching actually love and death with my mom. Send me a message if you're also watching that true story. I produced a true crime show about that sea, not that same candy. Montgomery story was the pilot episode of a true crime show that I produced and wrote called The Secret Lives of Stuffed Wives. Anyway, that was a total digression.

(02:05):

My point was that my sitter was off and I was like a little nervous about how it fit all my work in. And actually what I ended up doing was all of my work fit in the day. And then I weirdly had a little bit more energy to at night attack some things on my to-do list that had been sitting there for months. And I finally got a virtual assistant that I delegate to and he's incredibly helpful. And I gave him a bunch of stuff that had been sitting on my to-do list for ages. I felt so amazing and I think I, I didn't scroll endlessly on social like I did post content, but I was really thoughtful about what I posted. I did not climb into the vortex of social media. I did not waste time. And I don't know, it was just one of those weird things they say, the less time you have, the more efficient you are with it.

(02:50):

Moms have no extra time, so we never have extra time. But it was a weird test of time management. One of my downfalls, I'm not that great with estimating times. I try to use time trackers. I try to really use a calendar to make sure I'm sticking to the time. Cause of course, if you're not that good at estimating your time, you might be charging the wrong amount. You might be estimating you're doing too much work and you think you're doing less work and you're charging wrong or just like having a bad grip of what you can fit into a day or a week or a month. Anyway, it was a very weird thing. I felt very proud of myself. I did stay up later than I thought. I felt like, oh, I'll chill at night, but I really crushed my to-do list. So anyway.

(03:27):

Have you had times like that where you had less time but you were more efficient? Drop me a note. As you know, you can find me on Instagram at Kim Ripper. You just dropped me a little little contact through my website. I'm very findable. We have such a treat today. You're going to be hearing from Nancy Drei who founded Betty Beauty, a specialty beauty company, founded in 2006 to develop and manufacture innovative beauty products for a hair down there. She's going to talk about how she did it, how she became innovative and wouldn't take no for an answer. How she pitched Vogue and got her hair down there. Betty Beauty into Vogue, I'm so excited to have here with me. Nancy Jarecki. She is the Betty Beauty Inc founder. She's the body hair boundary breaker and mother of three. In 1999, she and her husband sold their company movie phone, who everyone knows movie phone.

(04:15):

That's so cool. We sold movie phone to AOL for 600 million and then she pivoted to launch Betty Beauty, which is known for its award-winning Betty Color for the hair down there. Color kits, it's featured by Vogue. Oh, the Oprah magazine, Forbes and New York Times. And the doctors for pioneering hair down there die that's safe to use. Nancy also miraculously survived a massive burst sprain aneurysm, which she wrote about in Vogue. And fast forward to today, Fisk Industries just announces acquisition of Betty Beauty and the launch of a men's line cover your grip Betty for Men. Wow.

Nancy (04:46):

When you go to the movies at that time, as you know, it was always a busy signal or you'd have to listen to the loop of the movies. And so there had to have been a better way to get to the movies. Again, it was an idea and how can you break through all those barriers of trying to get that idea into the hands of the people. And that too became a reality of convincing people to use movie phone to go to the movies. Then after that, I really loved, again, just these ideas and making them kind of go somewhere. When we sold the company, then we moved to Italy. Rome is where I got the idea to do Betty, and that was because I went to a hair salon and at the hair salon I noticed all these beautiful Italian women getting a little something from their colorist when they were leaving the salon.

(05:39):

And they seemed so overjoyed when they got the little baggy, I thought it was free biscotti or something. I didn't know what it was. And so I was asked the clerk and she just kind of looks at me and she goes, basically, it's extra color for down there. And I thought, I'm looking at her, and she goes to match, and I thought, if they're doing it here, they must be wanting to do it everywhere. So that's where the idea for Betty Beauty came about was really in Italy. And then when I came back, I did a little bit of research, hired a couple college kids and we flagged about 300 hair salons and did a questionnaire asking them different cryptic questions. Do you do eyebrows? Do you dye eyebrows? Do you wax bikinis? Has anyone ever asked you about coloring their bikini area? And almost all of the responses we got back, almost every colorist had been asked about dying their hair down there.

(06:38):

So I knew I had a demand. How do you then take it? I call them widgets. I take these ideas or these things or they're widget. How do I now create a widget to get to the people out there? And so I'm not going to reinvent the wheel. There's already hair coloring out there, so how can you take hair color, kind of make it something that is safe to use? And by doing that, I hired the consultant, a hair coloring consultant that helped change all the hair color dyes for safety reasons back in the seventies and eighties. So I brought him on as a consultant and we came up with a perfectly safe formula and then we got it out there. So that was Betty Beauty.

Kim (07:18):

What year did you launch Betty Beauty?

Nancy (07:20):

2006.

Kim (07:21):

Oh, okay. Great. And what's been the biggest challenge in launching and growing Betty Beauty?

Nancy (07:27):

The biggest was the taboo aspect of it because it's not how it is now where everyone's, for you, it was really about that private area and the taboo about anything that had to do with down there. Let's say when we started the company, we had decided, or I had decided, we're never going to say the word pubic. We're never going to say vagina because I want it to be a beauty product. So everyone thought that that would be a big hurdle, not calling it what it is. And the taboo with pubic hair basically was taboo. And so we knew we were never going to get anywhere except in the special care areas of a store. The personal care, instead of being a beauty product, people would be considering it that it's a problem like with tampons and just personal care in general. So that was one of the biggest hurdles was how do I get this out there and it be completely easy and not awkward to talk about.

(08:29):

That was in the marketing. So I decided that it was always going to be a beauty product. My PR people said, you'll never get any magazines, you'll never, I go, well, let me just try. What's the top of the magazine that you think I'm not going to get in? And if I get into one magazine, can I get into other ones? Well, the only one that other people will follow is Vogue Magazine. And I'm like, great, I'll pitch it to Vogue. They were like, there, there's no way they'll ever do it. And sure enough, I had a meeting with Anna Winter and I had a big surprise for her and I said, I am a Willie Lowman here and I've got some products to pedal and this is it. And she was very surprised what I came up with. And she ended up having me do an article. And so it's what launched Betty Beauty was in Vogue, and then all the other magazines sure enough, followed behind. So the biggest obstacle was how taboo the subject was. The product itself.

Kim (09:28):

Did you get pushback, your pitching the coloring down there to Anna Winter? Did you get pushback?

Nancy (09:33):

Nope. There was also another person there, some, the Sally Singer is a writer for, was the head writer for Vogue. And she's always encouraged me, you got to write a short story about that lunch because who it is never been done before. And so I went at the Condi Nast building for lunch, this fancy lunch in especially cafeteria with Anna Winter, the linens, the guys, the Picasso on the wall and stuff. And they had no idea what I was going to pull out in my bag. And so we're eating and I had told her, I go, I'm up to something, I'd love for you to see it. And so that's when she arranged the lunch. So we have lunch, the dishes go away. And she basically is like, all right, so what do you have to show me? And Sally Singer's sitting to my left and Anna is across from me.

(10:23):

And I said, well, you have to close your eyes. And Sally Singer's looking at me, what is she doing? I go, no, no, no, really, you have to close your eyes. So Anna closes her eyes and I go, you too, Sally. And so Sally closes her eyes and I put out on the table in front of Anna blonde, Betty Black, Betty Auburn, Betty Brown Betty, and Fun Betty. And they're lined up and I go, okay, you can open your eyes now. And so Sally is sitting to the side, she can't see really what it is, and Anna Winter looks, she looks at one, the next one, the next one, the next one. She picks up Auburn Betty. She looks at it, she looks at me, she goes, interesting. Very, very interesting. And so she puts it down, she looks at it, she looks at Sally, Sally's like, are you out of your mind? And she looks at Sally. She goes, well, I guess we have something to write about. And we did an article, the beauty editors, everybody was like, this is the first time that Vogue has ever done anything about anything below the chin. So it, it's moments like that that make all the stress and all the hard work to have a story like that. That

Kim (11:41):

Is so funny, by the way, that does deserve its own story.

Nancy (11:45):

Oh, the way that she looked. And seriously, Sally Singer thought I was out of my mind. It could have gone either way. She could have kicked me out. She could have done anything. That

Kim (11:54):

Is so funny. When you took them out, what does it look like?

Nancy (11:59):

Oh, like a little box. And it has the figure of a woman's body, and then the triangle. And the triangle was the color of what? The color of the hair, of the hair dye. So there was blonde, there was these triangles and it says Betty Color for the hair down there. It's pretty clear. There were prototypes that were boxes, but looked exactly like what the art product was going to look like.

Kim (12:23):

That's so funny. And at some point during your launch of Betty Beauty, you suffered this brain aneurysm.

Nancy (12:31):

Yeah, I mean, talk about things that happen in life. Like I said, I'm from a small town in Kansas. I've always been a game person. And you just go through life and one of the things that you just don't expect is something that is just so brutally fast. And I was at a screening of a good friend's show at the moment here in New York City, and of course my friend's show was called Head Case. Oh, and people who know me go are only, you could have a massive brain aneurysm,

Kim (13:09):

Had a show called

Nancy (13:09):

Head Case. Oh, head case. And so my friend Allie Wentworth, it was, it's her show, and I was talking to her husband and we were waiting for Allie to get off of the red carpet so we could go down and watch the premiere episode. And I got a little dizzy and I thought I was just going to faint. And I did faint. I thought I just fainted. And I woke up and people were around me and it was obvious to everybody that something was wrong. Cause I was paralyzed on one side and I was having a seizure and ambulance came and took me to Weill Cornell Presbyterian, and it began a whole new journey where I lived. It was touch and go, but I seemed to rally out of it. I had a bunch of brain surgeries and it was luck. Wow. Yeah.

Kim (13:59):

How does coming out the other side of that, how when you look at the larger picture of how do you feel like it's changed you despite, obviously

Nancy (14:09):

It's interesting and as a business person like yourself, I was about to sell my company. So I had been doing Betty for about three years and it was at a place where it was doing pretty well and I had some suitors and I had just finished the prospectus to go out. I had an investment bank, and that was the day where I signed off on everything and we were going to go shop it the following week and we had meetings set up and I was pretty excited because it was going to be a pretty good deal. I also realized I'd be going to work for those people. My deal was that I would go with that, go with the sale, and then I was going to set up a couple other lines that I wanted to launch and, and it was obvious I wasn't going to be able to work.

(14:54):

I came out of it. I mean, it's still what it happened in 2009. I'm still feeling healing from way back when, even though it's been years. But what changed was I realized that I didn't want to go back to work I had before. I loved the grunt part of it. I love this blood, sweat and tears. I love, is this really going to work? I love making the widget something. And I've already had a couple good widgets and I thought, you know what? I am not going to go work for the man, as they say. And so I had decided that I wasn't going to go with the company. And basically the company was doing fine, Betty was doing fine, and all deals were often. So I chose not to kind of go back to the hard grind again and not go really for the big paycheck.

Kim (15:53):

Would you say basically for the next 10, 15 years that sort of changed? Has that sort of changed your life mantra when you think about what each day?

Nancy (16:03):

Well, that was one of the biggest changes, I guess. And to answer your question about what changes that were kind of long term, pretty interesting. I really act on the first try, meaning those moments where you're like, oh, I really should need to go write that note. I just write the note. Oh, you know what? I should call. I, I'll call. I do things as though they're not going to be able to do them in 24 hours, if that makes sense. Yes, I act on things. I also have an opinion. I probably am more open about my opinion, good or bad. That has changed. And I always had a great life. I've always been an appreciative person. I've always, you've been very, very gracious and always been very blessed and acknowledged that. So I can't say that, oh, I love life even more. I've always loved it. I'm just glad I still have it. But I've noticed I really concentrate on small things. It could be when you're walking, I will take the moment to look at a building if it's being built, you just take these moments that you probably take for granted. Not you personally, but you in general, just take for granted. And I will stop and I will take the time to really look at things.

Kim (17:23):

And how old are your kids?

Nancy (17:24):

One boy is 30, one boy is 26, and I have an 18 year old daughter as well.

Kim (17:31):

And how do you think being a parent impacts how you run the business and how you see the business world in general?

Nancy (17:36):

Oh, well, I just recently was launching the men's line with Fisk. And when I did business, both when we were doing movie phone and movie time, and the beginning of Betty, it was so different than the work that was happening this past year where it's obvious. I feel so old. And so I really felt I needed my kids more to help me with anything from, I'm a great marketer, I'm good at concept, but I'm not very good with social media. The things that the influencers understanding those. So just from practicality is my kids were a big help. Can you help me do this? Can you help me do that? So they were a big help just in terms of being able to do things. As far as ideas, there's a couple things I'm working on now that I kind of picked my kids' brains about. So they're helpful in that way now that they're older.

Kim (18:39):

Talk to me about balancing, basically, how have you been balancing being a parent with working, and what advice would you have for someone else?

Nancy (18:46):

That's so interesting. Well, I've had someone in my house, so my oldest one's 30, he'll be 31 this year. The 18 year old just turned 18 in. This is my first year. I've not had anyone in the house. She went to college for the first time or for her first year. And I have found that now emotionally, I have no boundaries. I, no, I don't have to be home on Sundays for school on Monday. And I didn't really understand how I did balance until they left. And I started to realize I lived around their schedule. Even though they're very independent, I still lived around their schedule. So I was very, very good at morphing myself into where, okay, well, they need to go to school. I can work after that. I was pretty good at doing that. Now I completely suck at it because I don't have that balance anymore where it's like, I don't need to balance it, so to speak. I just really believe that when you work really hard, your kids see that. Remember we always went to the office nowadays having kids at home, I can't really speak to that because it's so different now.

Kim (20:10):

They're not seeing, right, they're, my kids aren't seeing me get on the subway and do meetings where I, I'm in my office and they see that I'm doing stuff, but it's not that

Nancy (20:18):

Obvious. I always made it a point that to make it to all the kids', sports stuff, parent teacher conferences, I really did put that first as much as a business person as I am and loved it. I did put my kids first most of the time. How

Kim (20:33):

Big is Betty Beauty?

Nancy (20:34):

How big now? Well, I'm happy to say that I'm out of the day today and I'm their spokesperson, but at the time before I sold it, we probably had 30 people.

Kim (20:46):

Oh, okay. And what tips would you have for someone who's looking to launch their own business? What are some tips or advice you'd give them?

Nancy (20:54):

Oh, wow. For me, I just spoke with some young c e o groups and one of the biggest things, they asked the same thing, and the same thing comes out of my mouth. If you don't know how to get it started, go to a conference or a affair. What's that? A convention? I'm sorry. One thing that you can do is if you don't know how to get something started and you have an idea, there's always a convention for it. It's incredible. When I wanted to do a beauty product, how do I get the tubes? How do I get the formula, how do I get the boxes? And I helped somebody just recently, they wanted to come up with some shoes. They wanted to create some shoes. Well, how do I get a shoe company? Well, you're not going to go to a shoe company. I Googled it. There's a convention for leather and for shoes. So one of the biggest things is to understand your product, how you want it, how you think it will work. And then there's always a convention for anything out there and just go and see how people are presenting. If it's a shoe, the different leathers, there's going to be 30 shoe manufacturers and one of them is going to want to do your prototype. It's just really understanding your product and the resources out there and understanding that your resources are as important as your idea itself.

Kim (22:17):

I love that you were saying that. I was just talking to, someone asked me something about what I would do differently. Basically, I'm in year five of working for myself, and I feel like because of the podcast, I had this idea for the podcast and I was really passionate about it. And when I launched it, I've started networking and don't, it's not networking because I'm excited to talk to people for the podcast, but technically it's networking. It's meeting new people. And so many of the women have been so open with advice, with pricing. They're very transparent and very supportive in a way that feels different in year one or year two, I didn't sign up for networking groups. I didn't go to events. Mostly I was just using word of mouth to get business and it was working. But it's really been this thing about you were saying you go to the place where other people are who have a shared interest, who have a shared knowledge and just start meeting them and asking questions. And I feel like I've tapped into that much more successfully in the past 12 to 18 months. I've had a lot of really great wins this year. Great press. I'm doing speaking gigs, a lot more clients, incoming, inbound clients. And I think to your point, it's like when you don't know what to do, we'll ask people who are doing it. And some people won't help you, but some people will. And so I think that's really smart. Just go where they're doing that thing.

Nancy (23:31):

And some people are like, well, I have no money to do this, or How do I get money? And I go, once you have your widget and you think you know what you want with your widget and that people want your widget, how do you make that path? More times it's got to get manufactured. And that's why you go to one of these conventions because more times than any, they'll do you a prototype for free because they want the next big idea. And a lot of people don't know that. They're just kind of, well, I have this thing, it's a compartment opens and closes. It looks like it's made of plastic. How do I even get this made? Well, you go to the Javit Center, you go to Arizona, you and those people really will talk to you about it. And you learn so much from people.

Kim (24:18):

And you're right, I think a lot of people struggle with the very first steps of starting something. And so I think it's easier to say, well, I don't know how to do that thing. Well, no one knows how to do that thing before they do it. Literally nobody, I'm sure you didn't know how to make a hair colored product for down there before you did it, but I like your idea of be where other people are doing it because it helps make that first step, I think, because that's a first step to your mean first step.

Nancy (24:39):

Yeah. Yeah. And you learned the terminology, you learned a lot more. I knew nothing about aluminum lined tubes. I knew nothing. And there's just vast knowledge now that I know, and it really was just coining and talking to people.

Kim (24:57):

Yeah, I love that. I also would love tips from you on spotting a startup idea that will sell. A lot of people have ideas and then it's like, well, will this work? Will someone buy it? Will it scale? What tips do you have for either coming up with an innovative idea or scaling something or something that you think will sell?

Nancy (25:15):

Sure. Lots of times, just in our day-to-day, have you ever picked something up and thought, God, I wish this weighed less or I wish it had, it's the wishes, or this would be better if X, Y, or Z. And sometimes it's already something that's there that could be better, or something is a launch off of. So I call 'em launches where it's like, well, this little widget seems cool, but wouldn't it be great if it were this? And then maybe you start to talk about it a little bit and you see what reactions people have.

Kim (25:49):

I love your idea of it could be a launch off of, because Venmo is doing so well. And when it first came out, I was like, who needs Venmo? We have PayPal. So sometimes people think you need to create something, and I work in video, so when I have my clients and they're like, how do I make something so new? I was like, I just want to be clear. There's nothing new. There's just better versions, better

Nancy (26:07):

Version launch versions.

Kim (26:08):

And so I like how you're saying it doesn't have to be the first ever spaceship that puts lipstick on your face.

Nancy (26:15):

And one thing that I I've also noticed is really in the retail world or just watching people, I have a big beef with cell phones, and I think cell phones are starting to just, how do I say it? They keep you, they stifle you to creativity. So for instance, when you are in a retail setting and you have an employee and they're behind the counter, those are the people or just people, or it could be anything. It could be a service watching people. And right now you can start to how I've come up with four ideas, just watching people. And it was before cell phones because now everybody's on their cell phone and they're not watching people. People's behavior will give you ideas. Meaning if there's something that they bring to the counter and they're like, do you have this in red? And enough people ask, oh, there's a need for it to be in red one. You can tell your boss, Hey, listen, this little widget needs to be in red. I've had 22 people ask for it in red. Or you know what? I have the means, I have the idea. Maybe I'll do it in red. But watching people's behavior gives you really good insight on things that could be a demand that people are needing, coming up with ideas that are all around us. You just really have to watch people and their behavior.

Kim (27:45):

How do you make sure though? I think a lot of us have ideas, right? We jot down ideas. I mean, I basically have a book of ideas, some acted on, some I haven't. But what do you recommend for figuring out that thing with the component that I want to make that's a better version of something else, that enough people want it, that you can scale it that one day you can sell it. How do you know it's a big enough idea to do that?

Nancy (28:05):

Oh, well, you make a couple of them. You give 'em to some people, you see what their reaction is. You're doing your own beta testing, really, but you'll get an idea just talking about it. It's like, oh, I'm thinking about doing this thing. Oh, that's a good idea. I mean, it really is listening to people and watching people. But if you can create the prototype and give it to some people, the idea has to come from a lack of the world would be better. A person would be better if they had this, why that would answer your question, well, we need to have rubber on the bottoms of socks so people don't slip. Things like that. It started somewhere. And so it's just really kind of understanding your idea, but also understanding if there's a problem out there or there's a need for it or creating, I like to call awareness of the problem, awareness of fixing it.

(29:05):

And so right now, with men and with Betty, for men, you've noticed it. There's so many men out there that have more gray in their beard than in their head hair. And so all men really want to look youthful and anti-age almost as much as women do. But they're so aged with beard, with such gray in their beard. And when we were doing some of the market or the press for Betty for men, men were just like, it's so true. Why do I have so much gray? I wish I didn't have that gray there. Well, you don't have to have the Greg. So we created the problem to solve it. So we just created an awareness of the problem so we could fix it. So that's also a type of idea that you can fix something that's already out there. You make it aware that there's a problem for you to fix it.

Kim (29:57):

So Nancy, Betty Beauty is doing so well. It's been bought. It's really successful. You've expanded to men. And you mentioned earlier you love marketing. I'm a marketer. What have you seen has worked? What have you struggled with? What have been some of your marketing wins?

Nancy (30:10):

Well, one, we were able to overcome the taboo part of it. That was one of the biggest things. How can I get around something that was so taboo at the time? And that's by repositioning it and making it something that is accessible, and that would be a beauty product. Current marketing right now, I think a lot of people lose it with too much messaging. They're trying to do the Instagram, advertise on Instagram. Instagram. I'm a big believer in where the numbers are. So right now, if I were to advertise, I don't know who I'm advertising to on Instagram. So who's your product for? Where would be the best way to market to get it out there? An example would be when we first did Betty, we thought it was going to sell in hair salons, because that's where I thought people would buy it. We put it out there in salons.

(31:02):

We had a couple other places. I wanted to see where I put my money, where is this going to do well as far as advertising? So we put it a bunch of advertising in, and it did not sell at all in hair salons, not at all. We went in there, we tried to figure out why it didn't sell. Oh, the women are too embarrassed to buy it. We thought, well, what if we put it in this camouflaged secret bag? Still didn't sell. So I had to pull that out and switch and move the machine out of salons. And then we found out that it was selling very well in these little lingerie and beauty stores. And so we thought, well, let's find a whole bunch of them. And so in order, because really, you can come up with almost any idea and market it, but you have to know where it's going to sell. And so coming up with your marketing, put it in a few places and watch it. I really don't think you can just come up with something, have a message, and then hope it does well. You really have to watch the path that it goes and where it does well and see what the numbers are. So the messaging is always important, of course. And the clarity of it and who's going to be buying it, and is it being placed in the right areas for those people to see it and buy it?

Kim (32:24):

And I like how that connects with what you were saying earlier is about seeing if you have a great idea is ask people for their opinion. But what I think the word we didn't say, but we obviously meant was your ideal client. So you're going to those stores. All of your ideal clients are these women. They're in these places. You're putting them in the hair salons, you're putting them in the beauty beauty aisles. You're putting them in lingerie areas. So you're really testing out different spots, but always for your ideal client. Cause Yeah. Yeah. It's the same thing as you're not going to put in a place for teenagers and you're not going to put a place for men until you launch for men. So I love that idea of testing. If someone's looking to test a new business idea, identifying their ideal client, and I love what you were saying earlier about the market research, how you were doing that market research on to see what are people asking for? Are they asking for this? Has anyone ever asked for this? Because if no one's ever asked for this, that's a real struggle.

Nancy (33:14):

Yeah, no, that that's true. And I think you can do that with almost in a service or any widget. No, that's true.

Kim (33:21):

Nancy, I'm loving our conversation. I would love to know where can our listeners learn more about Betty Beauty, learn more about you.

Nancy (33:29):

Well, you can go to betty beauty.com and you can see everything there. We have all kinds of different products and stuff that are pretty cool. I've been putting together an area where I now have my nfj projects.com, so it's NF Nancy Fry Jarecki, but is my middle name. So you can go to nfj projects.com. Great. And so it has some of my other businesses and it has all of my story from my aneurysm, so there's a lot of that on there too. I

Kim (33:59):

Am going to open that right now on my browser. Well, I want to say thank you so much. This was such a fun conversation. I really appreciate you joining me.

Nancy (34:06):

Oh, well thank you. This has been great.

Kim (34:12):

Thank you so much for listening. Make sure to drop a review, and if you want to send in a real mom moment that we'll share on the air, check out moms exit interview.com. And if you're a professional or small business owner looking to grow your brand through amazing content with no silly dances and with no burnout, check out my website, kim whitford.com, and you can hit contact to chat with me. And thanks for listening. Like this is the most amazing community, and you guys send in the best feedback. So share it with your friends. Let anyone know who you think would appreciate it. And this is Mom's Exit interview. I'm your host and executive producer Kim Rit Bird. The show is produced by Henry Street Media. Jillian Grover edited this episode, and Eliza Friedlander is our editorial producer and publicist. I'll see you next time.

Kim RittbergJune 21, 2023Comment