Jen A. Miller Consulting

Tag: toast of the town

How this Entrepreneur Built a Cookie DŌ Empire

An interview with Kristen Tomlan | Founder of DŌ Cookie Dough Confections

Kristen Tomlan is the founder of DŌ Cookie Dough Confections. Her NYC shop sells gourmet, edible, bakeable cookie dough.

YES, you totally heard that right.

Edible

Cookie

Dough!!!

And, just like you would find at an ice cream shop, you can get dō served in a cup, cone, milkshake, or ice cream sandwich. It’s basically every foodie’s dream. One look at the line pouring out of her shop (sometimes it’s up to 4 hours long!) and there’s no questioning that this lady is on to something.

I sat down with Kristen to get the story behind the building of her brand and learn how she rose to the top of New York’s food obsessed scene.

You can totally watch our interview above or read below. Because just like at Kristen’s shop, you’ve got plenty of good choices.

Cue the DŌlicous Interview

Kristen Tomlan: When I opened this business, I had no idea, I thought I was going to be making cookie dough and that’s far from the case now. I had always loved cookie dough. It was something I kept eating, making, sneaking for years. There was a moment when I thought, ok, why has this not been done? I was with a bunch of girlfriends at a cookie shop in Philadelphia. We wandered over to the freezer section where they were selling the cookie dough for you to go home and bake. I grabbed the tub and I turned to my friends and I said, “I can’t finish this cookie dough, does anybody want to share it with me?”. I mean I could eat it all but I thought better to share! They all decided that they were in. So, we went to the car and we were just passing around this tub of cookie dough. We thought this is going to get us sick. I didn’t want to worry about that. I wanted to create a product and a brand that was centered around safe to eat cookie dough. I wanted to have the option to bake it and put whatever you want on it.

Jen Hacker: Did the idea sit in the back of your head for awhile or did you immediately act on it?

Kristen Tomlan: For a while it did just sit there and I kind of vetted with a lot of friends and coworkers. I was working in brand interior design consulting, so everybody I talked to I was telling ‘oh, I want to make a different cookie dough place”. And, everybody kept saying “oh, that’s a great idea”. It finally got to a point where I was running into people who were asking what was going on with the cookie business. And, I’m thinking, oh my God, I put in 60 hours a week at work, traveling, you know, just living my normal life. Then I thought, I hate those people who talk but never do something. So, I thought, well, if this is a really good idea, I’d have to start a business. The first thing was sitting down with my fiancé at the time Saturday nights, weekends and coming up with a business plan and working out all those things that we didn’t even know I was supposed to do.

Jen Hacker: So, what did your business plan look like?

Kristen Tomlan: Yeah, so first, I didn’t know anything about starting a business but what I did know was about branding, designs and baking. So, that’s where I started. Luckily, I had Chris as a partner. He’s a project manager who knew about timelines and budgets and inspection schedules. He also through through the financials of all the varieties that I was making. So, I started in the kitchen and designing the logo and thinking about the visual system. Then it just kind of grew from there. The one thing we didn’t have was operations experience running a store. So, we talked to some partners about it, and then actually decided to pause and launch online before we opened the store.

Image credit: dō

Jen Hacker: OK. So, talk about that a little because the way you actually started was that you spent a couple of years doing e-commerce…

Kristen Tomlan: Yes, I did. So, the concept in the business plan was for the store. Then we realized we didn’t have all the experience and the investment was kind of threw the roof. I didn’t want to be one of these businesses in New York that opens up with a great idea and then execution is flawed and it fails. So, I thought let’s really just test the market see what the response is, see what flavors are popular, just like continue to learn until I launched online. At the time, I though I didn’t quit my job. I thought, I can do this on the weekends. I can do this online. So, that’s kind of what we did, we moved kind of away from that business plan for store and turned it into an e-commerce site.

Jen Hacker: So, in doing that what were some of the things that you had to do in order to get the brand online?

Kristen Tomlan: Yeah, so basically, we had to figure out packaging and shipping. We had to figure out our pricing structure. I mean, every little thing that has to go with the brand. Honestly, it was more like logistics at that point. When I opened this business, I had no idea, I thought I was going to be making cookie dough but that’s, far from the case now.

Jen Hacker: You really signed up for the branding and baking part of it?

Kristen Tomlan: Yeah, that’s what I love, that’s kind of what I knew and that’s what the business is about. My focus was on making sure that the product was really delicious. I thought ok, the product will speak for itself and I can concentrate on other parts of the business.

Jen Hacker: Talk a little bit about Instagram because it is one of the reasons the brand has grown exponentially these past few years. How did you start to grow on it?

Kristen Tomlan: So, ok, cookie dough is delicious but it also goes really well with sprinkles and all the different flavor combinations. I wanted to make something that people will look at and want to share with their friends. And, that’s exactly what I did – you know, using the packaging and how we topped it with fun mixings. That was my goal from the beginning. I thought if I made it to Instagram then maybe people would do exactly that. And that’s what happened. So yeah it kind of happened organically. The store was also built around these Instagram moments because that was a lot of what the brand is built on. I wanted the experience to continue throughout the store so we have the polkadot wall, the neon signs and you know, parts here and there where people are constantly snapping photos. It just kind of helped, you know, drive the buzz.

Jen Hacker:What’s the process that you adopted from your previous work to actually sit down and figure out what the dō brand should be?

Kristen Tomlan: Yeah, so I had this idea for the name. I wanted it to be simple but I didn’t want it to be D-O-U-G-H. I wanted it to kind of be how the prefix in the dictionary looks – dō. And then with that, I thought ok I want some sort of like circular shape. I was playing with the fact that cookies are obviously circular and the containers that I was putting the dough in would be circular. The scoops are circular. So I started with a circular motif which then turned into polkadot. Then the line over the o turned into a sprinkled pattern. I was just thinking about what are ways to make it playful and colorful and really just fun. At the end of the day, I wanted people to just have this smile on their face. That’s what I wanted the brand to reflect, that’s all.

Jen Hacker: So, from someone who has done it and has built this what’s some of the best advice that you can offer to another concerned entrepreneur who want to start a brand?

Kristen Tomlan: Yeah. so, I would say a couple things; one, just do it, do something, make some sort of move in some direction towards what you want it. And also, just follow your path; for me I always thought this was gonna be great, this was gonna be great, I had always wanted to do this and this is how I feel it was going to be. Honestly a lot of people doubted when I said I wanted to open up retail shop but I just really felt like my gut was telling me that this was the next step. So I would say to all entrepreneurs everywhere, follow your gut and just ldo what you love and other people will love it too.

Jen Hacker: Well, let’s have a toast to you, cheers.

Ready to learn how to build your own brand? This post is for you.

November 9, 2017
How to Invest Like a Woman

An interview with Sallie Krawcheck | CEO and Co-Founder of Ellevest

Investing that’s just for women?

Yep, you heard that right.

Sallie Krawcheck is the co-founder and CEO of Ellevest, a digital investing platform that was designed by and for women. Ellevest’s mission is to close the gender investing gap by helping women take control of their finances.

Sounds incredible, right? It is.

When Sallie realized the investing industry was (to put it mildly) “by men, for men,” she made it her mission to unleash women’s financial power to help them achieve their goals.

Watch our interview above or read it below and see for yourself how Ellevest is changing the game for boss babes like you and me.

image credit: Ellevest

Become your most financially savvy self …

Sallie Krawcheck: You know, I worked in big investment firms for many years and when I was no longer in a big investing firm and I would walk around, meet with people and say “ I’m just too close to myself, what do you think I should do, what should I do? Give me some advice, what should I do?” And people would say “Sallie, you should start investing firm for women,” and I’d think “that is so stupid.”

Sallie Krawcheck: The “aha” came when I was in my bathroom, putting on mascara. The big insight I had was that the retirement savings crisis is actually a woman’s crisis. We don’t think of it that way but we women live longer than men do – five, six, eight years – and we retire with two-thirds less money. Once you begin to think of it that way, you say “OK, the solution is to actually get more money to women.” A lot of people are working on the gender pay gap and the gender work achievement gap but there is a gender investing gap! So that thing I said ‘no’ to for forever now I say ‘yes’ to, because clearly if women aren’t investing as much as men are, let’s figure out what women would need in order to invest.

Jen Hacker: So, you had that “mascara thought” and where did you take it from there?

Sallie Krawcheck: I was going to do a really stupid thing. I don’t come from the tech world. I come from the financial services world. I’ve worked at smaller companies but I’ve never started a company from scratch. The whole idea was just too overwhelming. So, I went to the CEO of a large financial institution and said “you need to do this.” I’d done all my homework. Women control 5 trillion dollars of investable assets, 90% of ys our money on our own at some point in our lives, etc. But we don’t invest as much as men do. There is a huge opportunity here. We were at breakfast and he said “that is so interesting, Sallie … but don’t their husbands manage their money for them?” I replied, “I just said 90% of us manage our money on our own.” I said no to a partnership with them. I met my co-founder in the nick of time to say, “that’s a bad idea, let’s actually build this thing from scratch.”

Jen Hacker: Content is a big part of the Ellevest brand. Can you talk about what role that plays and why felt that was important?

Sallie Krawcheck: Look I think it’s both. To back up a little, almost every investing firm or large bank has had a woman’s initiative. To my mind they’ve all tried to solve the wrong problem, which is “let’s market to women.” Content is a huge part of that. So maybe they wrote great articles, but they never actually went to the other part which is the product. What if the product doesn’t work for women? The product, historically, has been “hey, would you like a mutual fund or an ETF?” That’s not how our brains work. It’s been, “pick a winner, make more money.”

Jen Hacker: Which is a lot.

Sallie Krawcheck: It’s a lot. They didn’t go to the “let’s get both sides right” and that’s where we went. We started with the product.

Jen Hacker: What you’re really talking about is understanding who this woman is, and you’ve built a brand that she can identify with. I always say your brand can set you apart because it either allows people to connect with you or it turns them off. What was that process for you of actually understanding who she was and how to build a company that she would identify with?

Sallie Krawcheck: First of all, we are “her” to a good degree. I’m not “her” because of the career I’ve had on Wall Street, but we have a whole bunch of women who are “her.” But rather than saying, “we understand her,” we spent thousands of hours researching before we launched – in her wallet, going through her bank statements, going through 401K statements, putting cards in front of her, sorting out what mattered, with her on usertesting.com going through what we were prototyping, surveying her. So we spent a lot of time with her.

Jen Hacker: At what point did you realize, “I think this is it. I think we’ve got something in our hands?”

Sallie Krawcheck: There was a lot before that. I would sit with the team and we would draw out what we’re going to build, we would build a prototype, we’d go over the research. I just thought, “we might not be able to get this thing built and have it work.” I remember sitting with a pit in my stomach going, “I don’t know about this.” It was a year ago that we finally plugged it in and it worked! It worked! I remember sitting in my living room looking through financial plans. I’m sitting there going through them like “this does look right. You know, we may get there.”

Jen Hacker: And were there any other levers that you pulled that really helped things take off?

Sallie Krawcheck: So, I think you have to have a very good product. You have to really understand what your target is looking for and talk with them, not at them.

Jen Hacker: Was there any great business advice that you were able to gather from others along the way that you would like to pass along?

Sallie Krawcheck: I have been in business for a while so the one thing that really sticks with me is when we were raising our first round. I’m fortunate to have worked with a number of terrific businesspeople over the course of my career. I thought to myself, “I don’t know, I’m going to have to ask them to do me this favor. It makes me feel tense and nervous and what if this isn’t what we thought it would be, what if we lose their money, and so on.” My co-founder said “just wait a minute – do you believe in this business? Do you believe or you know where you’re putting your money in? Do you believe it can have an impact and be a great and successful…” I said “yes, more than anything.” Then he said, “we’re doing them a favor.” I never quite got to that ‘we’re doing you a favor’ but I really have gotten to that “we’re offering you an opportunity,” an opportunity that we’re not offering everybody to be part of this. I still have to practice it a little bit but that mind shift led to such confidence.

Jen Hacker: Well, thank you so much. I’m very excited that you made this available for women like me and for other women I know. Let’s toast to investing like a woman.

Sallie Krawcheck: Thank you.

Jen Hacker: Yes, cheers.

Sallie Krawcheck: Cheers.

Ready to build a brand that matters? Read this.

October 12, 2017
Toast of the Town | Jessy Fofana

An interview with Jessy Fofana |Founder |La Rue PR

Jessy Fofana has the kind of story that entrepreneur dreams are made of. Her first company, Femme Arsenal, (yes, she’s had more than one) was born almost by accident. What started off as a fun hobby whipping up beauty products in her kitchen turned into Jessy’s first enterprise which she built and sold all by age 27. Coming off that success Jessy went on to found her second company, La Rue PR.

The La Rue website describes the company as a project “born out of Jessy’s love for finding emerging designers and amazing indie retailers to help them realize their full potential and achieve success. Together with her LaRue PR team, Jessy’s strategy is to bring attention to each client by targeting media in regional, national and international markets to create the kind of take-notice, multi-faceted publicity campaign that delivers brand-changing buzz and media exposure. From brand development and marketing to traditional and new media relations services, LaRue PR provides the skill and experience of a large agency with the creativity, singular attention and affordability that can only be offered by a boutique firm.” – (c/o http://www.laruepr.com/about.html)

In our interview together Jessy talks about the entrepreneurial journey she’s traveled. Watch now to learn her story and catch her advice for landing your own PR success.

Want to catch more great advice from women like Jessy? Make sure you SUBSCRIBE to the The Jam weekly newsletter. Every week I’ll be delivering exclusive interviews, the best advice from around the web, tools and resources to help you build your business, listings of the must-attend the conferences and events, and much more!

A toast to you and Jessy too,

Jen

October 26, 2016