Like honestly,

we had like top of March.

Like stop it.

You were ready to go.

Top of March.

Yes.

Yes.

shouldn't you know? Yeah,

And having a betrayal from a woman before and creating this huge network for women, how did you go through this, like, emotionally? What helped you?

That's a great question.

Um, I've never been asked that, but I, I like that question.

So yeah, so basically my first company I started with another co-founder, another female co-founder, and we had a great business partnership by all means.

Um, and I...

You know, she's extremely talented, but we essentially didn't align on the vision for the company and the way that the company's financials should be spent early on, and we grew very quickly.

So much so that, you know, things started to get kind of complicated, and we ended up having a pretty bad business breakup that was coupled with a friendship breakup, right? So we had a, a close friend group, and it was just, it was not a great situation, but it was the right decision to make, and it was extremely hard.

How is the way we do business evolving? Are we on the brink of shift in the way money flows?

What did that journey look like?

It's so crazy.

It's first of all, that event in Miami was one of my favorite events that we ever did.

It was so fun.

And I loved our partnership with Weebly.

It was so fun.

So, yeah, it's interesting.

what?

How does that feel for you now in terms of your personal brand with Create and Cultivate, let's call it 1.0 and now season 2.0?

Yeah, it's super interesting.

We literally just had this conversation too, but so my personal brand was very tied to Create and Cultivate, which makes sense.

And I think That's how I build it consistently.

And so when I sold the company, I stepped away and really was like posting me gardening and like doing random stuff.

People did not love it.

I'll say that.

So are you girls monetizing your personal brands right now? And if so, any tips and tricks, word of advice for these

Cool.

It was like very cool, um, conversations, crafting, dinners.

Like, it was very fun.

Um, and then, but like it wasn't like I was making money off it.

It wasn't like a business.

It was like this is just a fun thing to do.

My other business did events, so I was like this is a great like portfolio builder for future clients.

Right

And to just kind of take that step is a big deal.

Yeah, it was interesting.

We had like an interesting kind of up and down with selling the business.

We had really early interest in 2018.

So at that point, we're like three years in, we're eight to 10 people, I think we're doing probably like 8 million to 10 million in revenue, but like, growing really fast had a lot of inbound interest.

So we actually went through a process in 2018. which really was a great thing for the business to do because it got us very organized.

We were able to tell our story in a really compelling way.

So tell us about that.

Mm-hmm.

Like, we've already started to see it.

Like, I would say, like, the first one was Ouai, Jen Atkin's brand, which was acquired, and acquired, I think, at $50 million in revenue, which isn't super high.

So people are starting to sweep up different brands.

The way I look at the portfolio mix is Crown Affair is luxury in a way, or prestige.

Like, it is a category that none of those other players play in.

Like, they're going after the Kerastases.

Yeah.

[laughs]

But I would say no, angel investing was definitely something that I was the first in my family and friend group to really do.

I think, like, what, what was interesting is, like, so I had been building Create and Cultivate and my other company for a while at that point, and basically what I started to have was unprecedented access to female founders at the earliest stages of building their businesses.

And venture was foreign to me at that time.

I think, like, this is 2011, 2012, and like, those conversations, one, women were rarely having them.

Women were rarely getting investment.

But especially angel investors did not look like me.

[laughs]

I wanna hear a little bit more about your time operating Create & Cultivate, and how operating Create & Cultivate influenced your investing.

So I actually had a company before Create & Cultivate, so I've had, like, multiple companies.

I've been an entrepreneur for what feels like forever.

I started my first company when I was 23, and that experience is important because it really was where I made all of my big [laughs] mistakes, like starting a business, learning as you go, breaking up with a business partner.

All the things that you kind of go through and that are actually quite common when building a business.

And from that, I wanted to get women together who were having similar struggles to come together to have these conversations, which is how Create & Cultivate was, like, initially started, as, like, this side project meetup.

Never was intended to make money.

How has the second act of Create & Cultivate been for you as a founder?