Every week, we talk with founders from all over the country and ask them to share their stories with our audience on the Hello Chaos podcast. While founders and entrepreneurs have many things in common, each person has a unique story and experience to share.
One question we typically ask is – “If you could choose one word to describe your founder and entrepreneurial journey, what would that word be, and why?“ It always amazes us that each person identifies with a different word. Here, we’ve chosen a handful of founders and included excerpts from their interviews to share their words with you. We hope you enjoy them as much as we have.
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Judi Henderson Townsend - Mannequin Madness (“ACCIDENTAL”)
I like to tell people that I'm an accidental entrepreneur. I did not plan to be an entrepreneur and when I started 20 years ago, no one was talking about side hustles or girl bosses. And most of the time, where I live in the Bay Area, an entrepreneur is a white male in the technology field with venture capital money. So, there was really no representation of an entrepreneur or someone who looked like me, which is why I'm always happy to share my journey with people. Because I was an entrepreneur long before I called myself that.I was working at a dot com at the time and everybody there was a serial entrepreneur and they had so much confidence about it, but I had no previous exposure. So, I just started thinking about what I would do, and nothing came to mind. But one day I was looking for concert tickets on Craigslist and I saw a mannequin for sale.
Now you’re wondering how a mannequin leads into a business, right? I wanted a mannequin for an art project. When I met the seller, it turned out that he ran the only mannequin rental company in town, and he was leaving the state. Now I had never touched a mannequin, I had never worked in a retail store, and I had never been an entrepreneur. But I thought the Bay Area is such a creative place there should be a place to rent a mannequin. Unfortunately, he was leaving within a week so I had to make a decision instantly or I would have talked myself out of it.
So, the idea was I was just going to buy the mannequins and do it as a side hustle. I never thought about it being a career. I did it for about nine months and then 9 /11 happened and I lost my job at the dot com.
It was a soul-searching time —lots of chaos and trying to figure out what meaning I wanted to have out of my life. So, even though the mannequin business was just kind of getting its sea legs, I decided I didn't want to go for another job, and I was going to do
the mannequin business full-time.
Watch and listen to Judi’s full podcast HERE.
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Skip Wilson – DRAFT Advertising (“EMPATHY” / “DISCIPLINE” / “IMPACT”)
Always be listening for those things both internally and externally – what should I change, what should I do differently? I think that's the key to business success, and that's also the key in life, too. Always be willing to listen to other perspectives and then be loving, kind, and respectful. So, radical empathy would be rule number one.
Also disciplined. The root word of that – disciple means to teach so discipline is teaching yourself. So being constantly disciplined to work on yourself and make yourself better. I literally keep a list of things that I want to change about myself
because I’m always looking for self-improvement.
I guess one sort of leads the other. You want to be empathetic so that you can learn what needs to change and then be disciplined to work on those things in order to continue with what's going well.
The entrepreneurs who I find most inspiring are Milton Hershey and Walt Disney. These are people who built not just companies, but literally changed lives for both employees and customers. That's the kind of impact or legacy that I think we should all be striving for—to make as large an impact in this world as you can. Making an impact for good is what genuinely motivates me.
Watch and listen to Skip’s full podcast episode HERE.
Kamber Parker Bowden – YoPro Know (“RISK” / “MENTORSHIP”)
I feel like risk is probably that word.
The first year was so chaotic was just a roller coaster because I hired a lot of people at once. People ask me all the time, why did you do that? I think it was maybe a little bit of naivety or me being young. I also think that because I don't have a family to support, there are some risks that you can take when you're a younger entrepreneur.
Obviously, I learned the hard way because onboarding five people at once for different positions was a nightmare at certain times. So, the good news is because of that hard work, we have been in a really great spot. As we have grown, our demand has gotten higher. So, we have an infrastructure in place now as these new companies are coming on board. But there's going to be a moment again when we don't have enough people and we will scale up again. But it was a wave of emotions for the first year.
If I can throw in a second word and cheat, mentorship would be another one because I did not get here alone. We talk to a
lot of founders and networking and mentorship play such a big role in the entrepreneurial journey.
I guess I just had this love of networking early on where one person from an internship introduced me to somebody who said, oh you need to meet so-and-so. And that just started my love for connecting with others and It's carried on since then. So, I feel like I've had a lot of informal and formal mentors over time.
I've been told that I'm very pleasantly persistent. I think I reached out to a lot of people that probably had no business meeting with me like CEOs of small to mid-sized companies in Greenville when I was in college or really early on in my career. Those are people that either have hired me in recent years or they have connected me to others. And they're reaching out now saying, hey, I'm super interested in what you're doing.
Watch and listen to Kamber’s full podcast episode HERE.
Will Stewart – 9/8 Central and Pronk Studios (“LOVE”)
I would say it's love. I mean that's been a big part of my life. I've shut a lot of people out and then and then kind of just changed and grew from there. I realized that there's just a lot of love that people need. You’ve got to see people for who they are. See past their warts and meet people where they are.
You’ve got to love yourself and you have to love your work. And work that's loved while it's created is so much better than work that's just made for monetary reasons or mercenary reasons.
The three things that we say for our company are love your team, love your clients, and love your community. and you know I think that loving people is sometimes painful, and people are very messy. But if you come at anything, even if you have to say hard things, from a point of love, you never say it wrong.
Not everybody's going to like you. But that's just kind of the way that I've tried to live my life – just love people and take care of them and the rest will take care of itself.
Watch and listen to Will’s full episode HERE.
Katie Shields – Tipsy Spritzers (“PERSEVERANCE”)
Perseverance. A lot of people would have given up by now. It is really hard. It can be hard on a marriage and on the family. There have been a lot of challenges, and this is not a cakewalk by any means.
People think it's sexy, glamorous, and fun, and you're just traveling to cool places and going to see your product made. Yes, those are the fun things. But they don't see me on my computer for three hours after I put my kids to bed banging out emails or going through QuickBooks. So, there's a lot of perseverance that's required. If it were easy, everyone would do it. I always remind myself of that.
Watch and listen to Katie’s full podcast episode HERE.
Jeff Carver – Robojuice (“BLESSED”)
I would say blessed to have my life. I feel blessed because I get to do something that I love with people that I love and am able to make a really good living doing that. I think that sums it up because I know it's not because of me. I know it's because I've been blessed.
Trying to do the right thing whether it's how we do business, which is with the utmost integrity and ethicalness and morality and all that involved to the best of our abilities. Then it's just God's blessing on top of that and I can't take credit for it. I'm just doing my part by serving people to the best of my ability.
Watch and listen to Jeff’s full episode HERE.
Dallas Burnett – Think Move Thrive (“INTENTIONAL” / “PURPOSE”)
I'm debating between two words and they're close, but I would say one would be intentional - in the sense that my entrepreneurial journey has forced me to be more intentional—more intentional about my relationships, more intentional about my time, more intentional about what I'm doing during the day, and more intentional about my sleep. With all of these things, I was way less intentional early on in the journey.
The other word would be purpose. One of the things I've learned is that this is more about who I am in terms of not my identity in my work as much as I'm created for a purpose and that if I'm living in that purpose if I'm living in what I'm created to live in,
then it's kind of like the winning is going to take care of itself. As long as I'm living my purpose and living in the way that is meaningful to me then that takes a lot of pressure off you know because my identity is not found in the wind.
You don't start a company if you think you're going to fail, or you wouldn't start. You want to be successful. But I've experienced both highs and lows and at the end of the day the
highs are high but they're not that high and they don't last that long, and the lows feel really low, but they don't last forever. And so, at the end of the day, it's that purpose that you're living that gives meaning to what you're doing.
Watch and listen to Dallas’ full podcast episode HERE.
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Robert White – Dolphin Entertainment
(“LEGACY”)
The word would be legacy. And the reason why is because that's exactly what I want to leave behind. I want to change my entire family tree.
I want my children to hopefully live through some of the lessons that I've taught and things that I've done. They're going to learn about what their dad did through podcasts and posts that are on social media because that's where their attention is. And I just hope that that's the legacy of me - that I changed the trajectory of the family tree.
Watch and listen to Robert’s full episode HERE.
Amy Tucker – Salty Britches (“FAITH”)
I really give credit to the good Lord because there was no way we could have written up how these doors opened and how things fell into place. There was no other explanation as far as we're concerned.
Also, my husband, who is also a bit of an entrepreneur, really encouraged me. Because for a good bit of time, I was still working with my career and doing Salty Britches and all the things that came with that in the evenings. I felt like I was going to physically die - like there was no way I was going to survive it. So, I went to my husband and said something has to give. Either I have to give up Salty Britches now or I have to quit my job. I cannot do both and do them both well and it's not fair to my employer.
My employer kind of knew what was going on and my boss was a champion for me. He was fantastic and I can't say enough about him. But I had a lot of support from that company just to go after this which was kind of bizarre by itself.
But my husband Wayne said what are you going to do ― tell these people you can't make it anymore? Because at this point, we were hearing from people that we didn’t know that Salty Britches made the difference. That told us that we've proven ourselves in certain spaces. People were giving us reviews and cold calling me and showing up to my home to show me their hands and share their stories. What are you going to do, tell these people you can't make it anymore? And I said, I don't know. I may have to. And he said absolutely not.
Really the turning point was we had a mother who contacted us who had a baby who was allergic to disposable diapers. Whatever had contact with that baby's skin just set the baby on fire. They tried using cloth diapers and went through all kinds of stuff. So, someone gave her Salty Britches and this woman was in tears telling me how grateful she was for the product, and it made all the difference for her baby.
That message came the day after I had a big meltdown with my husband about quitting. And so I thought that's our sign. That's our sign that we have to go forward with this product. It sounds like it's been awesome and glorious, but this is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life— by far. But we knew we were helping people.
And it wasn't just that story. The stories just kept continuing. So, it's worth it to go through all of this heartache and effort and figure things out. I feel like I'm learning a really difficult foreign language every day of my life. But it's just faith and saying, “Okay Lord, I don't know what I'm doing so I need you to go before me and send me the right people. I need the doors to open, and I need you to connect some dots.” And He does.
There is such a drive inside of me. I'm so passionate about this brand and I absolutely love it with every cell in my body. I know I'm in the right place.
Watch and listen to Amy’s full podcast episode HERE.