The Foundation for Scaling a Luxury DTC Brand (While Raising 3 Kids) With Lindsey Johnson

Lindsey Johnson is the Co-founder and CEO of Weezie Towels, a modern luxury bath brand. As CEO, she leads the company’s product development, customer experience, and brand vision. Lindsey began her career in finance, working for firms including Morgan Stanley and BlackRock before co-founding Weezie to address a gap in the towel market.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[2:11] How New York City’s DTC boom inspired Lindsey Johnson’s shift from finance to consumer products
[5:57] How Lindsey and her Co-founder validated demand and developed a luxury towel through extensive research and testing
[11:12] Why Lindsey chose disciplined, profitable growth over venture capital funding
[23:45] How implementing EOS helped Lindsey restore clarity, accountability, and direction in her business
[31:44] Weezie Towels’ three unique offerings: luxury quality, elevated design, and joyful, hospitable branding
[38:52] Weezie’s marketing strategy, including Meta performance and employee-generated content
[55:00] How Weezie decides which new products to launch while staying aligned with its brand mission
[1:05:43] Lindsey talks about integrating motherhood with leadership and shaping a supportive culture for her team

In this episode…

Building a consumer brand today takes more than a clever idea; it demands clarity, discipline, and the willingness to swim against the current. Many founders chase rapid scale, but intentional growth often wins in the long run. How can you build an enduring business while staying true to your values?

According to entrepreneur Lindsey Johnson, the answer lies in obsessing over product quality and listening closely to customers. She emphasizes validating a legitimate market gap before building your business, developing deep operational expertise, and growing sustainably rather than chasing flashy milestones. Lindsey highlights practices like rigorous customer surveys, disciplined spending, and systems that keep teams aligned on vision and accountability.

In this episode of the Up Arrow Podcast, William Harris chats with Lindsey Johnson, Co-founder and CEO of Weezie Towels, about intentional brand-building. Lindsey discusses shifting from finance to consumer goods, how she navigated early operational chaos, and tips for developing a disciplined growth philosophy.

Resources mentioned in this episode

Quotable Moments

“I am definitely a pessimist by nature, so I'm very much a no person, not a yes person.”
“I think that breeds resilience, it breeds flexibility, adaptability, independence, and just kind of, like, mental toughness.”
“Every touchpoint means something, and so I think all of those little touchpoints add up.”
“I want it to be the #1 household name in luxury home goods and beyond.”
“Now everything in my life is integrated, so I don't come to work and just focus on work.”

Action Steps

Validate your market gap before building: Pressure testing ideas early helps you avoid pursuing products without real demand. This ensures your resources go toward opportunities with genuine traction.
Invest in a brand even when it feels unscalable: Small, consistent touchpoints like events, storytelling, and thoughtful design create emotional loyalty over time. This loyalty becomes a durable moat when acquisition costs rise.
Establish clear systems for alignment: Using frameworks like EOS gives your team shared language, priorities, and long-term direction. This clarity reduces bottlenecks and empowers faster, more informed decision-making.
Use customer survey data to guide strategy: Direct feedback reveals what channels matter most and how your audience truly discovers you. This allows you to allocate marketing spend more effectively and double down on what resonates.
Expand only within well-defined product lanes: Evaluating every new idea against your core criteria prevents distraction and dilution. This disciplined approach keeps your offerings coherent, high quality, and on-brand as you grow.

Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is a performance-driven e-commerce marketing agency focused on finding the best opportunities for you to grow and scale your business.

Our paid search, social, and programmatic services have proven to increase traffic and ROAS, allowing you to make more money efficiently.

To learn more, visit www.elumynt.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:03

Welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, featuring top business leaders sharing strategies and resources to get to the next level. Now let's get started with the show. Hey everyone. I'm

William Harris 0:14

William Harris. I'm the founder and CEO of Elumynt and the host of the Up Arrow Podcast, where I feature the best minds in e-commerce to help you scale from 10 million to one 10 million to 100 million and beyond. As you up arrow your business and your personal life, some founders Chase funding. Others Chase Freedom. Lindsey Johnson, the CEO of Weezie, chases excellence. After years in finance, you know BlackRock, Morgan Stanley, she traded spreadsheets for spa towels and turned a simple idea into a nationally recognized luxury brand in just seven years, Weezie has redefined what everyday essentials can feel like, selling over a million products, building a 50 person team and proving that slower profitable growth can outlast the hype. This is a story about thoughtful leadership brand as philosophy and how to scale something beautiful without losing your soul. Lindsey, welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast.

Lindsey Johnson 1:03

Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. Yeah,

William Harris 1:07

I got to give a shout out to the guy who introduced us as well, Matt Bahr. Matt, I don't know if you even know this. Matt was literally my very first guest on the podcast, episode number one. So Matt, thank you for the intro to Lindsey,

Lindsey Johnson 1:21

and Matt was my very first developer at Weezie. In common,

William Harris 1:27

Matt, you are you are just the the playmaker here, I appreciate it. One more interruption, and we'll jump right into the good stuff here. This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is an award winning advertising agency optimizing e-commerce campaigns around profit. In fact, we've helped 13 of our customers get acquired, with the largest one selling for nearly 800,000,001 that IPO Ed. You can learn more on our website at elumynt.com, which is spelled elumynt.com, Okay, on to the good stuff. As I mentioned, you started in finance, BlackRock, Morgan Stanley, hedge funds. Then you got an MBA from Columbia. Most people in that lane tend to double down. You zigged instead. What pulled you towards starting something in consumer

Lindsey Johnson 2:11

Yeah, I was working in New York City at the time in finance, and that was always sort of the path I had in my head. It was a very, as you mentioned, sort of linear path, and could have been. And when I was living in New York City at the time, there was very much what I would call, like, sort of this direct to consumer boom. So all these different brands were popping up around me. So this was like the away glossier Casper, Warby Parker, etc. And I just became really fascinated by that concept and those brands, and started talking to a lot of folks in New York City who had started those brands, and kind of met people who had friends of friends who worked at those brands, and got really interested in sort of the operational side of how those retail businesses actually worked. And I went to Columbia Business School with the idea that I would sort of marry this interest in retail, with my background in finance, and so it was thinking I would go into venture capital. So my hope at the time was I can go invest in these early stage businesses, and that morphed into me actually going to start a brand of my own.

William Harris 3:15

You told me that you are a self proclaimed pessimist of sorts, not necessarily, but there's you turned down a lot of ideas, yeah, and that, no, that won't work. No, I don't like that idea. What made you ultimately say, Yes, Taos, that's the one. Yeah.

Lindsey Johnson 3:29

So I co-founded the business with one of my very best friends, and she is more of the kind of traditional entrepreneur, I would say. So she's a creative and she's constantly has new ideas. Even today, she sent me an idea of, like, a new company she wants to start while we're still running Weezie towels. And I am definitely a pessimist by nature, so I'm very much a no person, not a yes person. So every idea, I'm like no, like, the market's too small, or the world doesn't need another x, or we have no expertise in that. I don't want to do that. And one day, she sent a text to a bunch of girlfriends, of which I was one saying I was shopping for towels, I had this horrible experience. I was at a department store, myriad of brands, bunch of different price points, bunch of different options, and just had a really kind of confusing purchase experience. And then once she finally settled on a brand that was super expensive, was really disappointed in the quality, and so her text to friends was, what towel brand Do y'all use? And would you recommend it? And this text sort of popped off with everybody saying no or I have no idea who makes my towels. And, oh, I do know who makes them, but I'm too scared to use them because they're so nice. I keep them in my guest bedroom. You know, all these different stories. And I was in the camp of, I have no idea who makes my towels. I think my towels were hand me down from like my older brother from college. And so at first, I was definitely a hard no on this idea. But what got me interested is I just started casually asking people like, hey, who makes your towels? How much did you spend on them? Do you like them? Do you recommend them? And she was absolutely right in that there was a hole and there was an opportunity, because there was no brand loyalty in this. Ace, and most people didn't know who made their towels, how much they cost, and nobody, more importantly, was recommending them. So I think once I realized there was a hole and there was an opportunity, and I kind of saw eye to eye there, we set out to decide, like, are we the two people that can actually provide the solution, and what is that solution? So it took us a very long time to get me to the Yes. Liz often jokes that she's like, every day I'd wake up and like, wait for the text from you, being like, I'm out. I don't want to do this. So it was definitely a long journey to get to the yes. But it started with the simple belief that there was a hole in the market.

William Harris 5:34

Finding the hole in the market certainly is the hard part. Actually, think the harder part is the part that you called out there. It's like, are we the right people to take this? There's so many ways that you can just, I don't know, talk yourself out of it. I'm probably not. There's somebody else out there that is passionate about textiles. They're passionate about they're passionate about whatever this might be. How did you get over that hump to say, Yeah, we are the right yeah.

Lindsey Johnson 5:57

I think that the passion is there from Liz, because she purposely, she actually had the experience. So she was there. Number one, like, I am passionate about this. I see the problem. It took me going, like, online to say, Okay, well, I'm gonna go try to buy towels. And so I went online to try to buy towels. I went in-person to try to buy towels. I started mimicking her experience, and realized that she was absolutely correct that the problem was there. The thing that got me excited about the solution, I would say, was, first of all, I was at business school. She was not, and so I signed up for a class called Launch your startup. We split all of the homework, so I basically made her take this class with me to test our working relationship. Like, yeah, hey, we're best friends, but do we work well together, and do we actually provide complementary skill sets? And so what do you bring to the table? What do I bring to the table? Is this going to work from a skill set match as well as, you know, personality match, all the things, it's really like finding it's like a marriage when you have a co-founder. So we went through that process together and had a great experience, and found that we were quite complimentary, and then started working on the solution. Like, what is the solution here? And the solution that we found was through tons of customer surveys. So we had to, like, get that problem honed right. It wasn't just that the purchase experience was terrible. It wasn't that the towel quality wasn't great. It wasn't just that the price point was off or the brand was off. It was all of those things combined into one. So we set out to make the number one luxury quality towel on the market, like, hands down, objectively, the best towel that is made and sold in the US and delivering it through a seamless customer experience and a brand that people could like, really fall in love with and relate to. And the two you know, did I at the time, have any knowledge about textile manufacturing? No. Did I learn a ton through sampling and vendor relationships? Yes. And so once we found our factory that defined luxury quality the same way that our potential consumers did, which was, number one, softness. You have to have the softest towel. It has to feel good to the hand. Two, absorbency, so it has to actually work and absorb water. And three, durability, that is quality. And it took us, we had to kiss a lot of frogs to find the right factory. And so I was actually, you know, went overseas. It was like, business school, spring break or something. And I took two huge towels with me to go meet with vendors overseas. And said, like, Excuse me, two huge suitcases of towels. And I would say, this is what we want, not this, and I like this, but not that. And every factory was like, Oh, we have that. Here it is. It's off the shelf. This is what we sell to insert other retailer. And I was like, no, no, I've used that towel, and that's not It's not absorbent enough, or it's not soft enough, etc. And it took us finding the right factory who said, I know exactly what you're talking about. We are working on this exact problem right now, and we've identified a technology that will really unlock this kind of maximum softness and absorbency at the same time, whereas most towels sort of favor one or the other. So it took meeting the right partner who was sort of on the same page with the problem we were solving, and willing to sort of invest in that solution. And it was not an easy product development process. So it wasn't like we found them and it was like, Okay, great. Now we have the towel. I mean, it took iterations and iterations to get it right. And once we got that final product, it was like, All right, it's go time. We did it. I

William Harris 9:06

appreciate that you called out that you're like, No, no, I've used that tow before. And so it's like, I'm thinking product research. And it's like, you're just going over to your friend's house and your neighbor's house, and they're like, they just walk in and they're like, oh, sorry to know you're in here. Like, I'm just testing out your towels here real quick, just making sure I don't like that one.

Lindsey Johnson 9:21

You would be creeped out at the amount of photos I have on my iPhone from that stage of my life where I would go into people's bathrooms and just take pictures so you weren't doing that. That's so good. Oh, 100% I mean Hi, and I still do it to this day, like my friends know when I'm coming, they're like, Oh crap, she's gonna judge my towels

William Harris 9:41

good, but it matters. And so, you know, having good towels makes sense. I like the idea of, like this, attention to detail and having it absolutely be perfect. We had on the show Clayton Christopher. He was the founder of Waterloo, sparkling water and deeper I vodka and Sweet Leaf, three businesses. He's took the 100 million. And he said, like, when. In beverage, taste is the most important thing. Like none of the other stuff matters. All the other differentiators. If it does not taste good, people aren't gonna buy it. And to your point, too, it's like the feel of this towel, the quality actually has to be there. If it's not there, none of the other stuff matters. The monogram doesn't matter. None of these other things, the ridging, whatever. I don't even know the terms, but it's like none of that stuff matters if the quality isn't there totally.

Lindsey Johnson 10:22

And I think for us, that was like the number one thing we had to get right before anything else came and the towel that we wanted did not exist. And I felt very strongly. I think a lot of the ideas that had come early on from Liz, frankly, were like, take a commodity, but like, make it a pretty brand. And, you know, we felt really strongly that it's not just take a commodity make it a pretty brand. It's take a commodity or a product and vastly improve the quality of the product and then deliver that through the customer experience and brand. That was something that was, you know, head and shoulders above what was out there.

William Harris 10:55

One of the things that I found fascinating is knowing that you came from a finance background. You didn't start building this with funding. You decided to take more of like the the intentional, slower growth, profitable, first type approach, pros and cons. Why did you go that direction instead?

Lindsey Johnson 11:12

I think that precisely because I came from finance, which is why I felt strongly that we not pursue venture capital, just because I've seen it go south before. And what I mean by that is I had a fundamental belief at this time, which was back in 2017 when we conceded the idea and we launched the business in 2018 that consumer product businesses should not be expected to have a 10x revenue exit the way that, like SaaS businesses do, and at the time, venture capitalists, you know, there was, like the billion dollar, dollar shave club exit that sort of set the tone. And everybody started raising this, like, massive amounts of venture capital. And I just was like, This doesn't make sense. This is a working capital heavy business. It's not SaaS. And so I definitely put together a pitch deck, and we definitely had conversations, just because I was kind of curious how the market would react to this idea. Would react to this idea, and it was a really interesting exercise. We got a lot of interest, but when the rubber met the road, it was like, do we want to sign ourselves up for somebody else's vision of what this business needs to look like to be successful, or do we want to kind of be on our own path and kind of be in charge of our own destiny, so to speak. So the pros of that is being in control and having, you know, the being able to kind of set the dials how you want, in terms of pace of growth and scale and profitability and all those things. But on the flip side, it's, it is hard to start a business with limited capital. I think I looked around at the time, and my peers and so many of our friends, frankly, were starting businesses and hitting, you know, the Forbes 30 under 30 list because they had raised some huge amount of money, like, it was, like, this badge of honor, and that was definitely hard to watch happen, because I'm like, Oh, I wish we could do this flashy marketing campaign. I wish we could take over the subway. I wish we could do all these things people were doing at the time that we just didn't have the dollars for. So it definitely takes patience. It still does. I still have feelings out there like we're falling behind because we aren't moving as fast, but I think I'm very proud of our ability to sort of do this on our own two feet. So we did eventually raise like a small friends and family round after almost a year of running the business, because we really needed to support inventory. And no one will give you debt when you have only one year of sales behind you. So there really was no other way to kind of grow our profit, excuse me, grow our product line the way we wanted to, without taking on a small amount of equity investment. But since then, that was, I guess, at the end of 2019, we've not raised any money since.

William Harris 13:45

You were a visionary of sorts. Then in that because, I think, to your point, we did see a lot of brands in the DTC space. Go the funding route, go the VC route, the PE route. They end up IPO ing, Allbirds is another one where it's like we've seen so many of these, where they're worth, you know, a 10th of what they were when the IPO and so, to your point, I think that there was overvaluation, over excitement about some of these brands, and we've seen it bite them, whereas I've always been a fan of intentional growth. And one of the things that my team talk about is non cancerous growth, right? It's like you can have a cancer cell that grows rapidly. It's very, very effective at growth, just not very effective at doing the other thing that it's supposed to be, which is being a very functional sell. And so I appreciate that you saw that ahead of time and went the the more profitable path. I think it definitely

Lindsey Johnson 14:36

forced a discipline that the whole company has now adopted in terms of, like, being very we always say, crawl, walk around approach. I mean, I felt like there was a lot of people out there who were sprinting while we were crawling, and that was hard. But I think what it allowed us to do is to make mistakes on a smaller scale and, like, really learn who our customer is and what products resonate, and all the things before we kind of double down and make. And these bigger bets. And I think seven years in now, we feel like we're in a position where we can do some of those things, and that have kind of always been on the wish list, so to speak.

William Harris 15:09

One thing I always appreciate talking to founders about is that first year, because there's usually some kind of chaos. There's things as much as you can put it down on a spreadsheet, and you've got your business plan, your Google Docs. It's all ready. There are things that you just like, I wasn't ready for that. Were there any moments like that, your first year that you're like this? Okay, you know, here we go.

Lindsey Johnson 15:31

I Yeah. I mean, I honestly just had like, 10 things pop through my mind when you asked that question. I think our first, like, year plus year and a half in business was especially crazy because it was leading into covid. So we launched the business at the end of 2018 and obviously covid happened the beginning of 2020 so in that time period, I think you know one, when you start a business with your own money, we're like stroking checks. I never thought we would stroke before. I remember when we first played, placed our order, our first po with our factory, who's still our factory today, they thought it was fake, because they're like, We just met this girl, this trade show, like, what? They flew to New York City under the guise of meeting with other clients, and they showed up in my apartment, which was my my business, to snuff out if this was a real, a real company or not. And so I was like, What are you doing here? Once we, like, he told me, finally, he was like, yeah, actually, the company owner just asked me to come, like, get eyes on, like, what this operation was like, how? Like, why did you buy so many towels? And I just remember that being like, a Whoa, okay, like we're in the big leagues, like we're doing this moment. We also had to hire an embroiderer. I mean, so it was just Liz and I, when we started the brand, and, you know, we're picking and packing and shipping all the orders, that was the plan. And, you know, probably, like, four or five months before we launched, Liz was like, you know, one of the core problems I had was that I wanted to get my towels embroidered and I wanted to get them done. I wanted to see a preview of what it was going to look like, and pick from, like, really beautiful options. And, you know, we did not plan to launch with embroidery. We sort of thought like, let's launch like MVP, minimum viable product. Let's put the towel right. We'll add embroidery later. And I'm so glad we sort of hit the pause button and said, you know, we really need to deliver customization. That was a part of the problem. What's been the time to get it right? Well, you know, we need to find someone who understands customization and can actually help us with the embroidery bit. So it took us probably six months to stand that up. It was just the two of us in an embroiderer that we like, legitimately stalked at the savannah georgia mall, really. And he was, yeah, he was embroidering uniforms a company called uniform source. And we were just trying to find anybody in Savannah, Georgia, which is where my co founder was based at the time, that knew how to embroider, because that's where we're going to store up our towels, and we needed someone to embroider them. So we, after a long time, opinion, he had, like, three children. He's like, Who are these girls that are trying to take me away from my livelihood into this, you know, empty self storage unit, full of towels with zero customers. And after a lot of convincing, we we got him over, and we, you know, he trained us up on embroidery. And when we launched the website, it was like, sort of off the races. But I just know there's so many moments like that in those early days when you kind of, like, look around. We we were in like a self storage unit. I mean, it was where SCAD Savannah, College Art and Design students stored their stuff over the summer. There was like a college rock band that would practice their after hours. So, like, while we were packing boxes through the night, there was like, this God, awful music. I mean, just so many memories like

William Harris 18:36

that. I love it. I love that you were literally stalking your embroiderer at the mall.

Lindsey Johnson 18:41

He was, like, definitely creeped out.

William Harris 18:45

Well, sounds like it turned out all right for him, too. You also told me that 2020 was an interesting year for you guys too. You're fresh in the business and about to make some big decisions. What happened in 2020 Yeah, 2020

Lindsey Johnson 19:00

was interesting. I got pregnant with my first child in 2019 so I was due March of 2020 was living in New York City. You know, March of 2020 is when covid hit, and it was the first time in the brand's history where we were trying to, like, figure out, Where is this brand going to be based? My co founders in Savannah. I'm in New York. Both didn't, like, really make sense for the brand. We had identified Atlanta as an opportunity for the brand to move to, but we kind of were kind of putting wheels in motion for that. So we were looking to hire folks in Atlanta, and we really needed a space. So we were out of this, like, self storage facility in Savannah. So we were finally going to sign this, like, multi year lease on, like a 50,000 square foot warehouse, which was, you know, huge, and we had never signed a long term lease on anything at that point. And I just remember I went into labor, and I was reviewing this lease in the hospital on my computer, and I was like, supposed to sign it before the baby was there. And. And I was reviewing it this, you know, doctor came in and she's like, You got to put your computer down. Like, this is it's go time you're having this baby. I'm like, Okay, fine, so I put my computer down. Well, in the 24 hours after I had my first child, the world turned upside down. And had we had signed that lease, I mean, I don't know what would have happened, because financially, we could not have afforded it without being able to operate in it. We couldn't. There's no physical we could have moved to this space in the world totally shut down, as you know, and I had a newborn in at the time the very beginning of covid. It was quite scary for our brand, because our sales went to zero. I mean, I was Shopify was like, the scariest place in the world for me to open. I'm like, How are we going to make payroll? Like, we had just bought all this inventory. We bought all this, like, beach inventory, and all the, like, Robe inventory, all this stuff. And I was like, how are we going to pay for this? Nobody's going to buy from us that first probably four weeks. Was like, okay, was this just, like, a fun year and a half and we're done? And then, you know, probably the end of April is when we started to things totally shift in the other direction. I mean, we caught every tailwind we could. One, we were in the home business, right? So we're in the home industry, which everybody stuck at home. Two, we had absolutely no retail relationships and wholesale relationships. Everything was online. We had no long term leases, no office leases, no warehouse leases. I mean, it was truly like luck that we were in the position we were in. I think that year was just like a step function and growth for us. And we went from being like scared we were going to have to furlough everybody and kind of pause the company, to not being able to keep up with demand, and kind of chasing inventory, trying to hire people as fast as we could, and kind of keep up with demand. And it's, you know, that caused its own set of issues, which was like, supply chain, what was happened and then inflation happened. And I think since that moment in time, I have learned so much about, you know, kind of rolling with the punches and being prepared for the things you can't prepare for. And I think I didn't really realize how tied, you know, our success or not would be to external factors that are beyond your control. Like this year is the whole theme has been tariffs. And I just think that, you know, the world has sort of every year since covid, yes, the retail world has been rocked by something, and I think it has been like a master class in in retail for someone like me, who came from a totally different world and having to kind of keep up and stay nimble and all those things.

William Harris 22:36

Yeah, I appreciate you. Called it luck a little bit. You know, I've got young daughters, uh, 1512, and 10 now. And obviously they're thinking about what they didn't want to do and where they want to be. And it's like, Why do I become successful with this or this? And it's like, the best thing that I can say that I've heard from others is it's like, do the right things consistently, right like, consistently over and over and over and over and over again, and then when the right opportunity hits, you'll be in the right place at the right time. But if you're not doing those things, you won't be there. But it's so you

Lindsey Johnson 23:07

got to be doing, yeah, I totally agree. And I like hard work breeds Good luck, you know? And I think you got to give yourself, like, the chance to be a bat. And if you if you don't do that, then it's like, the luck's not going to be there. Great. I

William Harris 23:18

want to talk a little bit about, like, your overall philosophy of growth. You mentioned the crawl, walk, run, but you also mentioned EOS, and that's something that I'm also passionate about. We've implemented that as well. For people who haven't implemented it, and maybe are thinking about or maybe even haven't heard of it, what was going on in the business that made you say we need to implement something, and EOS is the thing.

Lindsey Johnson 23:45

Yeah, it's a great question. I had read the book Traction by Gino Wickman in Weezie earliest days. I think we had like five employees or something, and it's it felt sort of out of touch, like I read it, and I was like, this makes sense. But, like, our business is not at a point where we are in a position to roll this out. It was like, gather your leadership team. I'm, like, a leadership team, you know, we have, we

William Harris 24:08

don't have any of these things. You your co founder in the embroidery, yeah, exactly.

Lindsey Johnson 24:13

I was like, this is a great idea in theory. And then fast forward, kind of, you know, back to what I was saying. You know, covid was incredible. And then we had supply chain issues, and then we but we had these like two years of like incredible growth, and frankly, we got over our skis. We sort of over invested in things. And I think I made the like, naive assumption that like, growth was just going to happen every year, and it was just going to be kind of like, oh, we grew this year, this much last year, and let's grow a little bit more next year, and that's just going to happen every year. Going to happen every year. And so then invest in the business accordingly. So I'm hiring a team accordingly. You know, we got an office space, we opened a retail store. I mean, all the things that we'd sort of hold, held off on doing, and it became one of the it was the first time in company history that we didn't make money. And it was like, okay, whoa. You know, we aren't in a position financially where we can just grow without profits. I think, again, like a lot of other brands can do that, or, you know, sometimes or even that's sort of what they're meant to do. But for us, we needed the profits to sustain, and so that year was like a real, you know, hard look in the mirror, like, Okay, how did we get here? How are we getting ourselves back on track? And the answer was, we are going to grow 0% so we are going to, instead of trying to chase growth and profitability at the same time, I'm only going to chase profitability because that is all that matters. And we just experienced what it felt like not to be profitable, which is not in my DNA, and so we decided we're going to grow 0% and we're going to chase profitability. So we did exactly what we said we were going to do. But then I looked back in the last two years, I'm like, Hey, this isn't that fun. You know, two years ago, we weren't profitable. This year, we didn't grow. Like, let's get back to where we know we can be, which is growth and profitability. And that was when I had, like, the light bulb moment of like, Okay, remember that book I read traction. It's called Eos, Entrepreneurial Operating System. I think that our team is of the size and scale. Well, this would give us some really good guard rails and processes to help take us to the next level and kind of get us back on the right path. And I rewrite the book, and just like, it just totally resonated with me. I think, you know, kind of describes, like, the six most important things you need to scale your business. It just kind of breaks everything down in like, a very digestible way. And so I gathered this was, I think, at the end of 2023 I gathered our which leadership team, which we finally had one at the time, and said, like, read this book, like, and we're going to, like, lock ourselves in this room and we're going to do this. And so it makes you go through the extra exercise of setting your core values, setting your your niche, your purpose, your passion. What is your 10 year goal, your three year goal, your one year goal, just kind of like, really is a roadmap for where you're trying to go as a business, and how you are going to get there. And we have followed it for now. It'll be almost, I guess, two years. We launched it in January of 2024 it takes, it takes a long time to roll out, especially when you're DIY. So we did not hire an implementer to do it, so we still have a little bit to go. But I'm really proud of our ability to implement Eos, because I think I very much credit the system and the tools with, like I said, providing the vision, helping us kind of shape our vision, and then really creating the roadmap of how we're going to get there.

William Harris 27:28

Yeah, like I said, I'm a big fan of it. It's probably come up on 1/3 of the podcast that I've done with founders here is, you know, EOS traction, specifically, you know, some type of a system. But it makes a difference when all of a sudden there's more people in the business, and you have to get everybody on the same page, moving in the same direction, and I feel like that's one of the biggest things for me, was I felt like some of those things were just really wishy washy, feel good stuff, your mission and your values, and you're like, I don't know, like our value is just like, do great work. That's our value, like, just do it right? But I realized that it's like, once I define those a little bit better, and we got together as a team, and we, like, ask everybody, it's like, what are the values that we currently espouse as a team, right? And now, what are the ones we want to make sure that we highlight, that everybody else that we bring on the company has these things. What is our mission? Where are we going? What is our plan? Right? This 10 year, three year, one year. Now, all of a sudden, I'm not the bottleneck in making decisions anymore, and it just allowed the team to accelerate significantly better. They could make a decision and say, Does this fit within our plan? Does this fit within our mission? Does this fit within our values? Great. Make the call. If you make the call and that was it, and it ended up being the wrong call, you're not going to get any you know fault for me, because that's the call. I would have made that fit within what we were

Lindsey Johnson 28:45

doing totally it just gives people, like, a framework to to follow until, like, it makes your day to day easier, your month to month easier. And I think for me, like, one of the biggest unlocks I had reading it was just around the people component. Like we talked a little bit about this, but I feel like I was in business school and I was going to all these, like, entrepreneur talks, and everyone's like, What's the hardest thing? And everyone's like, people. And I just remember, like, so naively, sitting in my seat being like, I'm good with people. Like, people won't ever be a problem for me. And then you have a company with, like, our company is like 70 people now, and I'm like, I get it, you know? Like, there's having the right people and the right seats and, like, accountable for their work, and, you know, kind of on the right path and prioritizing correctly is everything. And like, we wouldn't be where we are today without this incredible team we've built. And I wouldn't say it's like, quote, unquote, the hardest thing, but I would say it's like, the most important thing to get right. And I think EOS does a really good job of kind of simplifying that and like, who are the right people for your organization? What are the right seats? It just forces you to kind of think about things in a way that previously I had not the

William Harris 29:52

reason why I think founders often say that it's the hardest thing, and this is just me, just guessing, is because we typically tend to maybe be the people. Who aren't as people centric in that way, right? We're thinking about we're thinking about the numbers. We're very, very good about thinking about numbers. We're very, very good about thinking about where we want the product to go. And so then it's like, sometimes our mind is so distracted with those things that we are naturally inclined to be very good at and maybe, and I'm not speaking for you, I'm speaking for myself. It's like, Maybe I'm just a little bit socially awkward. So it's easy for me to dive into the numbers and dive into the product than it is for me to dive into, like, relationships and emotion, things that I maybe struggled with at first.

Lindsey Johnson 30:28

Yeah, I think I went through a very in depth 360 leadership review earlier this year. So I have, like, an external party, interview a ton of people on our team and survey a bunch of people and I, and I know this about myself, but I'm extremely direct, I'm extremely blunt, I'm decisive, like I can cut people off halfway through the sentence, because I already

William Harris 30:50

have decided what I think we should do. That works so well in the south, doesn't?

Lindsey Johnson 30:54

It could not be more off putting I am sure it allows, it allows us to move very quickly, and I'm very efficient with my time because of that decisiveness. But when it comes across as direct or blunt, which is a nice way to put it, I think it's really off putting, and it's not a it's not an effective way to lead, and it's not an effective way to kind of get people on board and motivate and kind of, you know, rally the troops, so to speak. And I think that was a very eye opening process for me, and I think it's it's sort of changed the way I view the team, and the way I kind of view the people at the organization, and kind of how we all like work together to accomplish what we're trying to accomplish.

William Harris 31:36

Something else you told me that I appreciate is you've guys have really spent a lot of time defining what your three uniques are. What are your three unique

Lindsey Johnson 31:44

so number one is quality, luxury quality every step of the way from the product to the customer experience, like every touch point with Weezie, should exude ultimate luxury. So luxury quality through everything we do in and out. The second is this, I'd say unbelievable esthetic and design. So, you know, I've mentioned you having curated beautiful customization options where you can really create a towel that is unique to your own esthetic, but it's really about style and beauty and just curated options. And then the third thing is our brand. So our brand is really all about being hospitable, you mentioned southern roots, and really bringing joy and delight into every moment, whether that be a mundane moment like taking a shower or or, you know, a big moment in your life, like giving your baby the first bath, or, you know, a help moving into your first home with your your newly your newly married, and you have your new monogram on the towels. Like there are big moments we can show up for, and small moments we show up for. But no matter what it is with, like joy and delight and just really kind of breathing a new life into something that is previously thought of as sort of mundane, like a commodity, like a towel.

William Harris 33:09

I love that. I will admit that as a performance marketer, in my early days, I was much more about the numbers and what was performing and what was ROAs, etc, right? And brand was this thing that was like, this wishy washy feel good, thing that didn't matter. As I developed in my career, the more I started realizing light brand is the secret sauce. Brand is the thing that most brands maybe are struggling to do. And it's like, it's very easy to initially, when you first into DTC, for some reason to just go after ROAs and sales and direct transactional type stuff. You pay money to Facebook and it does it like, this is this formula that kind of works. But then when you get to a certain point, you start hitting 1 million in sales. It's like, okay, you've got some product market fit. You get to 10 million if you haven't developed brand, cracking past 10 million on really developing brand, I have found for most companies, is very, very difficult, but it's hard for them to grasp. If they've got that mindset of we are looking at direct attribution and exactly what's here. How do you decide what's brand building versus wasted spend?

Lindsey Johnson 34:16

Yeah, I think it's a great question. I'm very grateful that my co founder has always preached from day one the importance of brand. So it's really kind of in our ethos, and it's been a part of who Weezie it is and who Weezie has sought to be since day one. It was really hard for me, like the numbers person, to get comfortable with the idea of brand, because it feels like a little bit squishy and immeasurable. And I think at the beginning it was, you know, doing things like customer coffee chats, you know, that feel very unscalable, or like pop ups that, like, you know, places that we want to be associated with, where I'm, like, manning a pop up booth, but like, it's, it feels so unscalable. But it was like the associate the brand we wanted to be associated so. Seated with and holding that coffee chat at a location that was on brand, quote, unquote, and so all these, like little decisions about, you know, the way we show up in the world, both from, like a visual identity standpoint, as well as, you know, in real life events and things of that nature, that cohesiveness matters. And I think it was very difficult for me to, like, Get behind the importance of these things the beginning, because I'm, like, we have so few resources, and it's just untrackable. It is, I it is hard for me to track, you know, a billboard, or in some cases, direct mail, can be hard to track depending on how you're sending it so things like that that felt very immeasurable. But every touch point means something. And so I think, you know, we went to Portugal, which is where our, one of our primary factories is, and, you know, filmed what I would call, like a brand video. And like that is a big investment to go fly out there. And, you know, everything that goes into building that video. And it's like, you know, what's, you know, the old me was like, what's, what's content, what is the purpose of this content? What is this going to get used for? And I think the purpose of it is to storytell, and it is to kind of show people behind the scenes and kind of bring them into the Weezie world, so to speak, in a way that a quick little Facebook ad or Instagram ad cannot and so this idea of kind of like long form editorial content, either like the written word or video, are things that are hard to measure, but I think all of those little touch points add up and create the brand that Weezie is and kind of engenders that loyalty and the credibility that comes with our brand name. Now,

William Harris 36:44

yeah, I, I've had the chance of interviewing some other people that have talked a lot about this as well, Preston Rutherford of Chubbies, yeah, Preston, man, like, he's, he's got some of the best content on LinkedIn about this that I really appreciate. I'm like, I I look at I share with my team. I'm like, Yeah, this is what I'm trying to say, right? He does a good job totally. And then, you know, there was will leach, was ex Pepsi, and there was just so many little intricacies of things that he would talk about, what he called his marketing mind states. And like, the way that he's going about to understand, like, the mind state that that person is in. And I think until you realize that there's something more subtle going on in, like, our brains. If you can't admit that, then it's hard for you to see that, but it's like when you do realize that, you realize all those little stories add up to somebody basically feeling like, I align with this brand. And they might not even be able to articulate why, but they're just like, I don't know. I just feel connected to this brand in that way. And so even if your towels are more expensive than those other towels, that I can get 50% off coupon at Bed Bath and Beyond, I want to get these towels right, or there's something that they're saying about themselves with this. And so there's all these little nuances. And when you start to realize that, then you start to say, How can we not invest in brand, right?

Lindsey Johnson 37:59

And I think there's like the emotional connection is so important that you mentioned the feeling you get when you you are buying into a brand and you're joining that community of loyal, you know, customers. It just is a it is it's priceless. And so I think that it gives you the ability to, you know when, like, the tariffs happened, and, like, all these things, we're facing price increases everywhere. Like, I do think we have some ability to raise prices because we're delivering something outside of just the product itself. I mean, we're delivering the whole Weezie experience. And I think if without brand, you can't really weather something like that the same way that you can when you have that loyalty.

William Harris 38:37

Completely agree. I want to talk about some of the nuanced tactics then that you're seeing that have worked for you, or that are currently working for you right now, in growth, what is the channel that you would say happens to be the best channel for growth for you

Lindsey Johnson 38:52

right now? It's still meta. I think that is, by far and away our biggest channel. I think for us, it's been, it's been interesting how much meta has changed over the course of seven years. Like, in many ways, I wish we had started this company, you know, much earlier, when it was, like, the heyday. So easy acquisition exactly like, I that's the thing is, like, I look at how naive I was at the beginning of this brand. I was like, I don't want to spend any money on Facebook. Like, we, like, held off. It's like, well, we held off just long enough for Facebook to become insanely expensive. So, you know, the hindsight is always 2020, there. But I think what we found in meta, it's has been interesting the past year or so, is really just become the fact the amount of volume that the platform requires in terms of creative Not, not necessarily dollars, but creative variety and creative diversity has become very important. So like, I think back to years ago, it would be like, Oh, look, we had these ads. We called them our anatomy ads. And it'd be like a picture of the product. Then we'd call it all the different features. Like, hey, we every towel we make has a hanging hook. It has rounded corners. For more sophisticated luxury, like it has. You know, the fluffy GSM, all the different things and this anatomy ad, we used to just rinse and repeat that ad. I mean, I think we made that about, like every product we had. It's like, the same thing for a toiletry bag or a beach towel or a robe, you know. Well then, like, one day the music sort of stops there, and it's okay, well, what now? Okay, now it's video. And so then you kind of go invest in video, and it's produced video, okay, well, now it's actually UGC esque video, and what we found is that it's not in today's world. It's really not one thing, right? It's kind of all the things, and you're actually getting docked by we used to just like, have an ad take off, and we would just rinse and repeat. And now that is no longer something that is going to work for you. Like, you really have to invest in that diversity of creative

William Harris 40:41

there's a lot of people that have been talking on the d to c x community about Andromeda as if it's this new thing. I mean, you know, meta announced it more than a year ago. But I think what's been interesting is meta has started to come out and be a lot more I don't know information about, like, what they're actually looking for, what creative diversity means to them, and they have a score now that literally will show you that even if your ad is similar to another one of your ads, not exactly the same, I forget the exact amount, like 70% of the same pixel, something to that effect, right? Like similar enough, they consider that to be the same ad, even if you have different copy associated with it, different headline, different whatever. As far as meta is concerned, it's the same ad, and that's how it's bucketing things. It's when people say creative diversity. It doesn't mean, you know, 15 versions, where it's like, Hey, I just made the same ad, but now it's red, and it's like, Okay, fine. You actually have to be, like, uniquely different, creative

Lindsey Johnson 41:37

totally. And that's I think, that has required an immense amount of investment in like, our team, frankly, to be able to crank content at the speed and velocity of which we need to, to kind of keep

William Harris 41:54

It's so hard. So how are you doing it? Are you using this in house? You're doing this with a bunch of agencies. What does that look like? We

Lindsey Johnson 42:00

do everything in house, really, I think, like the the only exception, there is a media buyer, but sure, all of the creative is in house. And so that, I think, is also a product of Liz being our creative director. So she has that expertise. And for, I mean, honestly, for the first five years, I think she's the only person making ads at this company. Now we have, like, a small army. I feel like I'm every day I walk out of my office and someone is like, asking me to film a video or something, and I'm like, say something smart. Yeah, exactly. So I think that it is, it requires a lot of manpower, and I think, but the good news is that I think a lot of at least our employees are like, willing to do it, even if their social media is not in their job description. I think this the generation that is like just now, kind of coming out of school and coming into the workforce, social is in their DNA. I mean, they grew up with it, and so it's very easy and kind of innate for them to jump on a platform. So we've definitely seen a lot of success with what we're calling like EGC, employee generated content as well. That's

William Harris 43:05

a bit I I've talked to somebody else about that. I don't remember who it was. I wish it was if it was you, I apologize like I would give you the credit, but I don't remember. But employee generated content is a very interesting thing, because, to your point, you get so many different unique perspectives from each employee, whether or not they're the social media person or not, they're in customer service, they're in product, they're in finance, whatever, but it's like they've got their own things, especially in a product like yours, where it's like they all use towels, right? So they all have a perspective to be able to share about this,

Lindsey Johnson 43:32

yeah, and they all gravitate towards different products that we make and for different reasons. And I think, to your point, about like, depending on their function, it's such a different story like we have. So our flagship retail store is in Atlanta, and we have all of our corporate employees work through our flagship retail store, and listening to each employee sell is so fascinating to me. Like our product development girl is, like, you wouldn't believe how many factories we had to get this one little detail right. And like, this is the best quality because of X, Y and Z that you know a story or an anecdote that a marketer might not know, right? And so I think it's just this confluence of what each employee knows about the product and how it got there, and what kind of sticks out to them as like, the most important selling feature. But it's funny what people gravitate towards. Like, if you asked the whole company what's your favorite Weezie product, I would be shocked if not every single person had a different answer, because everyone gravitates towards something

William Harris 44:28

different. How do you encourage employees to make employee generated content? EGC, are you incentivizing them in some way? Are you mandating I need everybody to make one ad a month? Or how do you go about that?

Lindsey Johnson 44:39

We're actually working on formalizing it right now, so it's very live topic. But I think the model that we're going to try is going to be some sort of Weezie credit to instead of kind of, necessarily compensation, but a Weezie credit, and then I think a lot of people are incentivized to grow their follow. Things. And so if we actually run like a white listed ad or a partnership ad with their Instagram account, that's also appealing to them, sure,

William Harris 45:07

when you're evaluating the effectiveness of which ad is working, which channel is working, when you said meta is still the best one, and I would say just for anybody listening, meta is the best channel for almost all of our clients, if not all of them. And that is true for every other agency owner that I talk to, for everybody else in DC, it is still the one that performs the best. The ones that I'd say like are, you know, can sometimes do better depending on the brand Tiktok and YouTube like, those are the other two that I'd say are like, the bigger ones, but meta tends to be the one that performs the best for most people. But when you're deciding why it's performing better, my guess is you're not looking at saying it's got the best row as your branded search on Google has a better row as in platform. So how are you deciding which channel is your best channel? What metrics are using outside of that?

Lindsey Johnson 45:52

I mean, I'm looking at row as by new customer as well as existing customer. And I think that's like, a really good litmus. It's like, and it's just the the conversion on the ads, and just like that, overall kind of aim or marketing efficiency ratio is something that we look at. And I think for us, like top of funnel, if we're talking top of funnel exclusively, Facebook is the number one driver. Sure, there's other tactics kind of for bottom of funnel. We honestly didn't really spend money on retention at all on Facebook up until, you know, like a time of year, like right now, we will, of course, because it's q4 but we typically try to focus it mostly on new customer acquisition. And I think we have a good presence on YouTube as well and Pinterest as well. But I think in terms of like, scale, no other channel has been able to scale with us the way that meta has

William Harris 46:45

completely agree. How about customer surveys? Do those play a role in how you evaluate the effectiveness of a channel outside of what the channel itself is saying?

Lindsey Johnson 46:54

So another Matt Bahr shout out, so inquire or fairing. Now I guess it's called his tool. Fairing is the post purchase survey. So when you check you check out from Weezie, it says, you know, how did you hear about us, or how did you first hear about us? And I always find those results fascinating, because you can actually see the source data, where they're coming from, and where they came from is not what they believe as their first touchpoint, right? And I think it really just goes to show like consumers need multiple touch points before they're actually converting. So you're never gonna have this ideal, in my opinion, I think unless you invest in, like, a ton of really fancy tools, which we have not yet. But the kind of understanding of the ideal customer journey is so difficult. But I just love the customer's response as this, like North Star of what they actually think was their first touch point, whether it's true or not. So we absolutely look at that data, and we do, like, a biannual, more in depth customer survey data, and I'm always floored with the responses in those surveys as well. So that definitely informs where we're playing, where we're kind of leaning into, especially when we're learning, like, what content our customers are consuming and what you know, what are they doing? How are they discovering new brands? And most of them are not saying Instagram. I mean, they're saying word of mouth, friends, you know, things that are kind of hard to replicate, but Weezie, I've been I think one of the best things about our brand is that our customers are our best marketers. And so while Instagram is always going to be up there as one of the number one ways that people find out about us. It's always tied and lockstep with word of mouth. And so I think like that again, I think that's brand like, that's the power of brand. And people wanting to tell their friends and family or gift the product gifting is huge. Like we if you look at the number of people who have added gift notes or gift wrapping to our orders, I think the number of something like 25% which is high, right? For a lot of brands. The most recent survey data we did, 60% of customers said they were shopping for a gift. So, I mean, just because they're not clicking gift or gift note, they're still gifting it. So it's just we had that was a huge aha moment for us. That's like, Okay, if gifting is going to be, you know, it's word of mouth, it's brand all the things like, Let's lean into gifting. So I think the customer survey data is absolutely informative,

William Harris 49:09

yeah, how did you hear about us? Well, there's this random lady who takes pictures of her friends towels and shames them online. And so exactly, I didn't want to be one of them, no, but I'm a big fan of the customer surveys as well. Love faring. We did a study. I want to say it was like 80,000 purchases for this one client, and we found that Facebook's reported return was 80% less than what customers said they came from. Oh, wow. You know, that's an extreme example of it, but it's like, there's a lot of times where people are just under valuing. To your point, it's like, well, these other channels are getting the attribution from it, but when you think about, where do people remember their first time interacting with your brand? It might not have been Facebook, but that's what they remember. And so that's totally meaningful data point.

Lindsey Johnson 49:53

And we've been adding, we've been investing in out of home as of late, which is, you know, like billboards and. Um, mail, and I think we'll probably move into TV and some things like that. And the billboards, it's crazy. I mean, we only have them in one market, which is in Atlanta, where our flagship is, but the amount of people who say they heard about us from a billboard that is in one local market is mind boggling to me. And I'm like, There's no way that that was your first touch point, but it's the one that they remember.

William Harris 50:24

There's, I believe, the clip that I just put out on TikTok this morning was about, there's an interview with Matt, Matt bertulli over at lomi, if you're familiar with lomi, he talks about how TV is probably the biggest and best channel still, for most brands that are trying to target the the older demographics, let's say 55 and up. And I can say that we've got a couple of clients who are in that same boat, where it's, like, if we spend a lot on digital for them, we can't touch their TV budget. Like we are like, still, like a third maybe of their TV budget. It just dominates with that group. Yeah,

Lindsey Johnson 50:58

and that's that is one of our core customers, frankly, is 55 plus, and so that's something. That's why we're investing in the long form content, and that's why we are on YouTube now, is because we're building up to that TV moment, for

William Harris 51:10

sure. Yeah, it's a different type of content for the the official TV spots. You can get away with YouTube shorts being basically your Facebook ads, your Tiktok ads, but when you start getting into, you know, actual programmatic TV displays and stuff like that. You need a little something different. Um, you've been on the investor side as well, which I appreciate, right? So, what was it? No ventures, 37 angels, like you're an angel investor. How does that lens influence your decisions as a founder?

Lindsey Johnson 51:40

That's a great question. I think that was sort of in my era of, like, I want to be a venture capitalist, and so I think having that background in finance, I, you know, had all the confidence in the world, in myself, that I was going to be this, like, lights out VC investor, which couldn't have been further from the truth. So I look back and many of the investments I made at the time, and many of those companies no longer exist. So I think it was a very eye opening experience for me how easy it is to be on the finance side of the table and give advice and say, here's what you should do, here's how you should think about that, because I had grown up in this world of spreadsheets, right? We'll make the numbers work, and then X, Y and Z, and just pull the levers this way, and here you go. And until you've actually operated a business, you it's impossible to kind of put yourself in an entrepreneur's shoes. And I think I understand. I now have kind of been on both sides of that table, right? And so I think when I interact with investors, or interact with people who have raised VC, or are raising VC, I can totally understand where the investors are coming from. And I think it just gives me, like, a more fulsome picture of, like, the whole retail ecosystem and how it works. And I think for me, it's the way we've built the business is really to sort of preserve optionality in terms of where you want to take this company. Could we go sell it? Yes. Could we run it for a profit forever? Yes. Could we take a minority investment one day? Yes. And I think the background in finance that I had is kind of given me that lens of, here are all the options we could pursue, and here's what the implications of each of those could be. So I think it's just been really valuable perspective to come from the finance world and now be in the operating role. And I think I can say with, you know, 1,000% confidence, I'm in the right seat being on the operating side, and I still cringe thinking about all the conversations I had with entrepreneurs. So if anyone's listening, I'm sorry for whatever stupid comment I made to you about what you should or shouldn't do as you were running your business. Your business having never having done it myself at the time,

William Harris 53:45

there's something to be said about Yeah, that life experience. I can remember, there was a class in college where part of what we had to do is we had to go to the hospital and talk to new moms and give them parenting advice. It's like, I'm a scruffy 19 year old guy. They don't want anything from me. And I just remember just awkwardly walking into some of these rooms. Sometimes it's like so I

Lindsey Johnson 54:09

feel so bad for that receiving end of that. I mean, that's how I feel thinking about the audacity I had to say, Well, my finance class told me if you do X, Y and Z, this will just work whenever it's like, my husband, like, I love him dearly, but he's in private equity, so, like, I often joke with him. I'm like, you know, he's like, yeah, just move these levers, X, Y and Z. I'm like, Okay, let's talk. I'm gonna explain to what that actually would take to pull that off, and, like, the human capital and then the effort on this. And then, you know, it's just, it's not like a spreadsheet

William Harris 54:39

problem. Wow, that's simple. Let's just do it. Yeah, yeah. What about you mentioned for Weezie that it's not just about towels. It's about, you know, elevating the everyday. How do you decide what's next when you're thinking about which products to go to and you know, what's on the roadmap? Yep.

Lindsey Johnson 55:00

Product wise. I mean, we were really deliberate in being super focused at launch. So, like, our website is Weezietowels.com. And that was because, you know, one of the things we noticed is that nobody was really owning this space. The vast majority of my competitors, you know, 99% of my competitors are betting businesses first and a towel business second. And that was sort of like an add on product is sort of like an afterthought, and we really felt strongly that the towel should be our hero product. And you know, we have no intentions in launching bedding, because, number one, we don't see a hole in the opportunity, or excuse me, a hole in the market. Like, I don't really believe there's anything missing from bedding. I think most of the bedding out there is pretty good. And two, we have no expertise in it. So like, when we actually found this factory to make the towel. It was like, a huge unlock. It was like, Okay, this is actually a higher quality product. So for those reasons, we focused on the towel. Since then, we've expanded our product offering vastly. And the way that we've kind of thought about that is a few fold one is in the bathroom. So we're going to offer you products that kind of complete that bathroom for you. So that's bath mats, shower curtains, vanity trays, trash cans, you know, toothbrush cups, all those items. The second is within the world of Terry. So Terry products, like our beach towels and robes, kids cover ups, we even do like clothing out of Terry, like French Terry clothing, because it's in that Terry family. And the third, I would say, are items that you know, are, you know, giftable things that can be customized. So while, you know, an apron is not a bathroom product and it's not a terry product, it is a great gift, and you can actually customize it and add that custom, custom customization, excuse me, and I think we will never launch anything unless it kind of hits those three uniques I mentioned, like that luxury, quality, beautiful design, and like fits in our brand ethos. And so those are kind of those three things we always think about in terms of, should we, you know, launch that product or this product? And I credit Liz with this. I mean, our product parking lot, as we call it, is a mile long. So I have no, you know, I'm no worries about not having enough products to launch, even staying in those few swim

William Harris 57:05

lanes in the Eos framework. It sounds like she is a true visionary. You are likely the integrator, right where it's like, visionary, it's like, I've got this idea, and every day is another idea. Well, we have a thing here that we're gonna

Lindsey Johnson 57:18

focus a little bit. That book. I love their book, rocket fuel, that kind of breaks down. And I think she is our product visionary, and she is our brand visionary, there is no doubt about it. And we actually, literally have our VP of brand and our SVP of merchandising. I have on their accountability charts, you are Liz's integrator for brand, and you are Liz's integrator for product. And so they know that their role is to say yes or no to her ideas, and then to bring the yeses to life. And so actually resource them, and project plan and do all the things that you know require a good idea to be executed. And so we use that language a lot internally.

William Harris 57:54

I love it in this I'm, I'm the visionary, and I still even tell my team oftentimes, right, there's, like, my head of social I'm like, I realize this idea might sound really dumb to you, Humor me and just see what happens if we do this kind of thing, right? So because sometimes I've just got these ideas and I just, I want to see what happens, so I can appreciate that. I want to get to know who is Lindsey Johnson, a little bit more like the human being behind this company here. I understand that you went through, I think what was it seven schools before college, you ended up choosing boarding school, stay put. How did that shape who you are today, as a leader?

Lindsey Johnson 58:33

Yeah, I moved around a lot as a kid, and I think that breeds resilience. It breeds flexibility, adaptability, independence, and just kind of, like, mental toughness. I think it's hard as a kid to, like, kind of be uprooted, like, it's funny, like, people will say, like, did you hear so and so is moving? Can you believe it? Their kids are in like, such and such grades. And I'm like, I moved, like, every three years. It's like, kids are resilient if you give them the opportunity to be I think, and I think going to boarding school shaped a huge part of who I am. It made me super independent. I think I was always independent by nature. But I think, you know, if you didn't have, like, clean clothes, it was like, that's on you you know, if you didn't things that, like your mom might do at home, you're in charge of when you're at school. And so I think it just kind of gave me a leg up, you know, getting to college and having already lived on my own, so to speak, for four years, not a lot shakes me. Like, I think I I'm not like, super emotional, especially when it comes to work. I'm just like, I feel like things will get, like, flown our way, that are like, you know, these crazy things will happen. And it's like, I think I'm pretty steady Eddie, and I think that I credit that to having moved around so much and experienced so many different things as a child. That's

William Harris 59:49

so important as an entrepreneur. I mean, I'm sure you've seen, like, the image, right where it's like, this is the best day ever. Oh no, this is the worst day. This is the best day ever. No, you know, my life is going. To die like, it's like, it's so hard as an entrepreneur, there's so many ups and downs that can be all within the same day too, right? So being able to have that emotional stability, I think, is critical for being able to make good, wise, intelligent decisions.

Lindsey Johnson 1:00:13

And I think like managing through the unknown, or managing through stressful situations like, I think that is has been really important, I think, just to kind of be that steady Eddie. Because, like I said, I feel like every year since covid, like some sort of 100% happened in the economy or retail or whatever, and it's like, it doesn't really, like phase me anymore, just because it's like, this is just a new normal, like, buckle up and problem solve. Like, I just am very much, like, okay, that this happened. How are we going to solve it, versus like, kind of like, wallowing in the

William Harris 1:00:46

situation. Do you have siblings?

Lindsey Johnson 1:00:49

I do. I have two older brothers. Did

William Harris 1:00:52

they learn the same lessons as you, or did they go the opposite direction with that?

Lindsey Johnson 1:00:55

I mean, I feel like we all were raised the same way, and I feel like very much our resilient, independent, you know, kids for having moved around all over the place.

William Harris 1:01:07

That's cool. You sometimes hear of sometimes, you know, one sibling that's like, oh yeah, it was great. It worked out. And I'm emotionally resilient, because then they're like, No, I'm a basket cake because of it. Like there was no stability and so, so it's good to hear that you guys all found the right direction with that. Um, you talked about how you're known for your directness and bluntness and New York City vibe, and then you're in the south, which is a little bit different. Um, aside from a management style, say, like, just personally, how have you learned to navigate that change in culture?

Lindsey Johnson 1:01:45

Yeah, I think it's interesting. So I actually, I went to middle school in Atlanta, which is where we are now. So, like, I definitely had and my parents were both from the south, so I think I always grew up around and aware of this, like Southern hospitality, although I spent most of my childhood in California, I remember I was, I went to a North Carolina based summer camp when I was, like, five years old, from California. And I remember being like, Why does everyone here say y'all? Like, what is y'all? And I remember like, being like, very triggered by this word, and just so confused by it. And they know, fast forward to going to middle school in Atlanta. Now, I say y'all all the time, so I think it's very much like, it's interesting, like, I've, like, been exposed to it my whole life, just having kind of been around the South. But it's, I would say the New York to Atlanta transition was less about the like, hospitable, you know, kind of change, if you will. And more about like, New York, everything is just like, go, go, go. I mean, you are like, from sun up to sun down. You are scheduled and booked. And just, I mean, busy, for lack of a better word, and I think it's a very you're surrounded by busy, ambitious, you know, people. And not to say there's not to say there's not many of those people in Atlanta, because there are, of course, but it is like a it is slower, and I think it's also the phase of life I'm in. I'm like, now I have three children, and so it is kind of been a big shift, not only in adapting to the geography, but also this phase of life where I'm Go, go, go, but in a very different way. You can't be all in necessarily. You know, on your career when you have three small kids at the same time. So I think it's like, less necessarily about kind of the geography, and more so about this, like, phase of life has definitely been a transition for me to kind of figure out what's that right balance between personal and professional. I think the bluntness for better for worse permeates both areas of my life, of professional and personal. I think my husband, my family, my friends will all tell you I'm extremely blunt, if anything trying to get less blunt at work, but it is definitely been part of who I am since the very beginning.

William Harris 1:03:58

Well, I think that's important to find people who appreciate you for who you are. You know, there's the show friends. I actually never got into that show, but I know that there's, like, a lot of different characters there. It's like there was new girl, and it's like there's other shows that kind of show, this idea of, like, a lot of different personalities coming together. And my wife and I will joke about that. It's like we both have our own little idiosyncrasies that make us very unique. And it's like sometimes what's interesting is, when you first meet, you're like, Oh, that's so charming about them. Then you get busy of young kids, and you're like, That's so stressful about them. And then you get over and you realize you're just like, No, but it really is charming. It really is like, I like that about you. And so it's like, my wife and I, we laugh,

Lindsey Johnson 1:04:36

and it makes everybody, like, refreshing, right? Like, everybody's unique. And it's, I think it's refreshing. I think I've had to learn, you know, I would say some of my employees are direct and blunt, and some are not. And like you have to learn, I think, to be effective as a leader, you have to, you know, understand how to adapt your leadership style to different people and different people's personalities and motivations. And I think. That has also been a huge, like, aha moment for me over the past seven years of leading Weezie, just like, you know, my style is not going to be effective for certain type of people, and if you want that person to be effective at their job, like you kind of have to ebb and flow, right? And I'm not saying necessarily, like change who you are, but I think it's strategic to be able to, like, tap into different parts of your own personality and lean into different areas and different moments with different people.

William Harris 1:05:27

I love that. Speaking of different moments with different people, three kids and CEO, you're in superhero territory. Now, how do you how do you separate, like, Mom Brain from CEO brain? Or, you know, how does that work?

Lindsey Johnson 1:05:43

I used to answer this question by being like, I'm so good at compartmentalizing, like, when I go to work, I'm at work, and when I'm at home, I'm with kids. Like, I think for like, a minute I, like, was delusional, and thought that I was really good at that, but that is just not the case anymore. Now, like everything in my life is integrated. So I don't come to work and just focus on work and, like, put my personal life on the side, and I don't go home and just focus on the kids. I wish I could say that, but really, it's all integrated. So what I mean by that is, like, my work day or my day, might not look traditional to some people. So like, for example, today, like, I set my alarm at 5am because I and I'm an early riser, so that's like, that's early, early for me. It's for me, it's not super early. But I'm like, I woke up, I had a bunch of work to catch up on, but based because I was out of town on vacation last week, and so I hadn't seen my kids. And so the past few nights this week, I've been like, I'm gonna come home early. I'm gonna get home at 530 or five o'clock, and like, spend the whole night with my kids until they go to bed. Whereas, you know, maybe in a normal week, I might miss bedtime one night and pull a late night, or I might come home at six o'clock or 630 this week, I was like, I want to be home at five. I want to spend the whole night with them, which means I'm going to have to set my alarm at five and crank through work early mornings to catch up on my work. And like, I know that this week we I have a childcare situation where I have to go pick up my kids one day from school, and so I know that I need to, kind of, like, figure out what time I'm going to be able to fit that work in that needs to get done. And so it's definitely like a non traditional work day in many regards. I mean, I'm still in the office every day and all the things, but I think having the flexibility, because I am, you know, the leader here that I can sort of structure my days in different times allows me the ability to do it. I think if I had this job and didn't have that, I wasn't empowered to be flexible with when I'm working, it wouldn't work. But I think, you know, when I, like, miss my kids, or when I think that, like, I need to be there for muffins with mom or the Halloween party or whatever is going on at school. Like, I can prioritize that. And so I think it's just like the ultimate, I wouldn't say like balance. It's more like integration. Like every day is very integrated between work and personal. I

William Harris 1:07:55

love that word integration. I was going to call that out if you did, so I'm glad that you did, because that's how I view it as well. It's not work life balance, like you said, it's work life integration. And I think that's more natural. I think that's just kind of how we are. I think that work is a good thing. And I think that it's like, even sometimes, you know, with my daughters, I will say this, like, I don't have to work. I get to work. Like, this is, this is a blessing.

Lindsey Johnson 1:08:18

Yeah, that's, I say that all the time. I'm like, you get to go to school and I get to go to work, yeah, and I try to make them realize it's like, you know how you get to go to school and, like, see all your friends and do all that fun stuff you get to do, like, I get to go to work and do what I love and work with awesome people. And this is, like, an opportunity that I need to be, like, very grateful for.

William Harris 1:08:38

You also told me, though, that one of the things about being, let's just say, work life integration, is that you haven't been able to take a traditional maternity leave. How has that helped shape the way that you look at leading for your team?

Lindsey Johnson 1:08:53

It's hard, I think that is, it's a struggle to like you want to be able to set the example for your team and like what you expect for your team, and I expect my team to be able to fully unplug and take maternity leaves and paternity leaves and take time off for their family. And so it's hard when you make a different choice for yourself, because you don't want them to think that that's the example and that that's what they're supposed to do. And so I'm very clear with people like, just because I'm doing it this way is not what I want for you. And so we are very clear that we want people to take the time that they need for family matters, whether it be like a new baby or a sick relative or whatever it is, people should take the time that they need. And I feel very in tune with myself and knowing that I will take the time that I need when that time comes, but the times when I had children happened to be times where I couldn't fully unplug from work just because of whatever was going on in the world or the business at the time. It wasn't my intent to not take maternity leaves, but it just kind of happened that way. And kind of back to what I was saying about like integration, while my maternity leaves didn't look traditional like I did. Like, turn off my email for four months or whatever they definitely were for me, a break. Like, I wasn't coming into the office every day. I wasn't plugged in at the 5am hour. I wasn't working at the same pace. I was just kind of, like, checking in and kind of, you know, making some key decisions here and there. And for me, that really was a break. It's, you know, because it was just a different pace. And I was used to working, and I do worry about setting the example, because another benefit of working at Weezie, once you've worked here for five years, we give you a five week sabbatical, fully paid. And so we've had, I think, three employees take that now, and it'll be more obviously in the next as the business continues to mature me more. And my co founder, Liz, you know, she took one at our five year anniversary. And everyone keeps asking me, like, when are you taking yours? When are you taking yours? And I'm like, I will, I will know when it's time to take it. And like, I think that I will be, I will kind of prepare accordingly and get the time together to go take that five weeks off. And I think it's like the ultimate gift that I can like, choose that timing, and so I think I can, like, be prepared to do it, and the business will be in a good place, and the team will be in a good place. But I do worry about the example that I set. So I have said to the team, I'm like, when you hit your five years, I'm going to give you one year to take it like you got a ticket in that year, so that people like, are forced to step away, because otherwise I fear that people are like, well, Lindsey didn't take hers, and

William Harris 1:11:25

it's so hard I get it. I mean, again, I'm in the same boat as you. Or what I tell my team I want them to do and what I do myself are sometimes very different things. And I think there's just this weight that can rest on your shoulders as a CEO where you feel like, Yeah, but like all of you are depending on me making sure that I've still got everything running the way that it needs to. And so it's like, I feel that similarly, paternity leave, obviously very different. I wasn't pushing a baby out of my birth canal, so, like, you know, a little different, but I never took a paternity leave, right? Like, never had that opportunity, even at companies. Before I started my own company, it was just one of those things where it's like, I those things where it's like, I was a startup, and they're just that wasn't a thing or whatever it was, right? And so because of that, I've made sure that from very day one, employee one, and I didn't have health insurance at a lot of these other startups that I was at before. So I was like, day one, nope, we've got health insurance, the best health insurance that we can afford. Day one. We've got, you know, maternity coverage. We've got paternity coverage. It's like, I want those things that I didn't have. And I think that there's something beneficial to like you saying I want better for you. I want better for my team than even what I've maybe granted myself. And I think that's a really good, selfless thing,

Lindsey Johnson 1:12:33

yeah, and I have to remember that, like, I chose this, right? Like Liz and I chose this. We chose to start a business, and that comes with amazing and wonderful benefits, and it also comes with like challenges, right? And it's like, that's the choice you made. And so I think your employees did not choose that, right? They didn't choose the co founder, founder life.

William Harris 1:12:56

You told me that you like to travel, what has been your most enjoyable trip, or, let's just say, most perspective shifting trip, either one of those.

Lindsey Johnson 1:13:08

It's a great question. I think. I mean, my like, the place where I'm like, really able to unplug is like, when I'm on a different time zone, I feel like, otherwise I'm like, constantly checking in. So I feel like, for me, like going to Europe is like the best possible place to, like, unplug, reset and actually think, like, I think that's the danger. I think you get in when you're running a business and not taking time away, like not taking the maternity leaves, and not taking this about not taking the sabbatical, is that you don't actually have time to think. I mean, I look at my calendar and I'm in meetings all day long. Meanwhile, I'm supposed to be like, constantly thinking about what's next and kind of plotting and planning and being strategic. And I think the best way to do that, I think, is to step away and, like, be on a different time zone where I can't be, like, plugged in on Slack and responding right away to things that are kind of coming through in real time. And I feel like it's usually on a trip with, like, just my husband. I think, like, I love traveling with friends, like I love super social people, like, we just got back from a trip with 10 people, which was so fun, but like, I wasn't doing a lot of thinking on that trip. And so I think just like, going to a different time zone, like Europe is the place that I love to go and be alone with Stevens, because we can both, like, we also it's like, I think we have a very interesting relationship where we talk about work, like, a fair amount, and I don't know if that's healthy or not for, like, your marriage, but we're both pretty ambitious people, so it is, like a good sounding board to kind of step away from the business bounce ideas, and like, I'll bring like, three business books with me, and like, crush them. You know, it's like, I'm, like, still thinking about work, but it's like, in a very like, it's a much more fun task to do that when you're like, in a beautiful place away from all the chaos and kind of, like, really unplugged.

William Harris 1:14:59

I love that. I. Um, my wife and I like to take a trip at least once a year as well. And while we don't go quite too too business, my wife's also an entrepreneur, so we do talk about, like, her job and my job and like, what are we doing? And I would say that we kind of have, like, almost like a little EOS light that we've been kind of trying to do as well. It's like, what's our mission and vision and

Lindsey Johnson 1:15:18

values for our family? Is because we, we talk about doing that all the time. Stevens and my husband got served some like, Instagram ad from some couple who, like, goes away every year and they write down, what are their goals, what their goals for their kids? And, like, you know, they evaluate their marriage all these different lines. Stevens is, like, such a goals oriented person. So he's like, we gotta do this. We gotta do this. And I've been, I've been shaking him off, but I think it's probably time we endeavor in that.

William Harris 1:15:43

I think it's pretty good. All right, a couple of quick ones, just for fun, coffee or tea. Coffee, black or with something in it.

Lindsey Johnson 1:15:54

I drink a la Colom oat milk latte every single morning. Okay,

William Harris 1:15:58

nice. What's one thing that you splurge on that you're totally worth it, shoes. Oh, okay, what's one of the most underrated parts of your morning routine?

Lindsey Johnson 1:16:09

I mean, it's a hard question for my morning routine. It's like that coffee. I go straight. I grab my coffee before my children wake up and, like, whip out my laptop. I do my best thinking in the morning. So that's why I love the like early morning wake up. I wouldn't say it's underrated, because to me, it's like the best part of my morning is having that silent house before the chaos the chaos ensues.

William Harris 1:16:31

Yeah, I'm a big morning routine fan, and so I just always appreciate what other people enjoy about their morning routines. What is you said you like to read a lot of business books. What's your favorite business book or podcast?

Lindsey Johnson 1:16:46

Well, Traction is the first one that comes to mind that we already talked about. Right now, I'm reading Radical Candor, which is an interesting book for me to read, given my I told you my directness. Love it already.

William Harris 1:16:59

But, um, if Weezie had a theme song, what would the song be?

Lindsey Johnson 1:17:08

Oh, my gosh, the first one that comes to mind is walking on sunshine.

William Harris 1:17:12

Nice. That's a good song. I like that. I like that. You had that even ready to go? Go ahead. Oh, that's it. Okay, so let's fast forward 10 years. Weezie is thriving. Your kids are older, you have a little more space to breathe. What do you want people to say about the company you built in the way that you built it?

Lindsey Johnson 1:17:37

I want Weezie to be known for luxury, through and through. I want it to be the number one household name and luxury home goods and beyond. And I think that I want people to say that we built it with heart, and we built it like a real brand, not just like a company for, you know, kind of like one of those corporate machines, like, I think there's like, real soul behind our brand and what we do. And I just want people to remember that

William Harris 1:18:07

that's a beautiful goal. Lindsey, it's been so great getting to know you, learning from you. You've shared so much of your wisdom with us. If people wanted to work with you, follow you, learn from you. What's the best way for them to kind of read more about what you're thinking.

Lindsey Johnson 1:18:22

Yeah, my LinkedIn profile, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, which is Lindsey Dorman Johnson, which is my maiden name, and my Instagram is @lindsey_weezie, but our brand is Weezie Towels everywhere.

William Harris 1:18:39

I love it. Well, thank you again for sharing your time and your time and your wisdom with us today. It's been really, really fun.

Lindsey Johnson 1:18:44

Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I really enjoyed this. It was great chatting.

William Harris 1:18:49

Thank you everyone for listening. Hope you have a great rest of your day.

Outro 1:18:53

Thanks for listening to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.

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