Podcast appearances and mentions of Nicole Gibbons

I've got news for you: if you're digging an ambitious goal of building a hugely successful business and brand, it won't always be possible to achieve the perfect balance between work and life, hustle and rest. Most founders would agree that running a business is like a series of sprints and cool downs… you're constantly exhausted, running at peak intensity, putting out fires… and then there are the rare quiet periods or ‘lulls' where you can finally catch a breath.  In fact, some may even say that ‘balance' can't possibly exist during the first few years of entrepreneurship! Nicole Gibbons, the founder of next generation paint brand Clare, has experienced them all… from peak productivity to burnout; from constantly having to make difficult tradeoffs to leaning into what this season of life is bringing her.  In our conversation, Nicole is sharing her perspective on why she believes balance is a myth (and why that's okay), plus her tactic of “rebalancing” on a regular basis in order to thrive during those intense times and the reality of what it's really like to be funded by venture capital. It's such a treat to get to chat with her about the ebbs and flows of business, different seasons of life, different styles of entrepreneurship and how it all affects our lives. GOAL DIGGER FB COMMUNITY: https://www.facebook.com/groups/goaldiggerpodcast/ GOAL DIGGER INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/goaldiggerpodcast/ GOAL DIGGER SHOW NOTES: https://www.jennakutcherblog.com/nicolegibbons  LISTEN TO THE THIS IS SMALL BUSINESS PODCAST: https://www.smallbusiness.amazon/podcasts 

If you've ever thought of a brand extension, this is your episode. From building a social media following to raising venture capital, Nicole Gibbons shares first-hand knowledge of her own path to business success. In this episode we learn: - decide what kind of business you're want to build and test the desirability of prototypes - decide how much capital you need, if you plan to scale the business - identify your business' unique competitive advantage - how licensing works Success is not an accident. It's a strategy. Business of Design® is that strategy. Become a member, today. https://businessofdesign.com/?ref=2&campaign=podcast

Nicole Gibbons is an interior designer and entrepreneur best known for her fresh use of color and fashion-forward point of view on decorating. Her work and expertise has been sought by top media outlets like HGTV, OWN - Oprah Winfrey Network, TLC, Good Morning America, The Rachael Ray Show, Elle Decor, House Beautiful, Better Homes & Gardens and more. Before pursuing interior design, Nicole spent nearly a decade managing PR for one of the world's largest retail brands. Not only has her experience given her first-hand knowledge of what it takes to build a world-class brand, but also deep and unique insights into what customers really want when it comes to designing their homes. Nicole's work in the design world enabled her to identify that the paint industry was one ripe for disruption. With a broken shopping experience and no legacy paint brand focusing on convenience and simplicity, or marketing to a creative, digitally-driven generation, she saw an opportunity to improve the process from start to finish. Nicole founded Clare to help people create spaces they love — and actually enjoy the process along the way.  https://www.instagram.com/clarepaint/ https://www.clare.com/

When it comes to color curation, Nicole Gibbons, founder and CEO of millennial-favorite paint brand Clare Paint, is the hue guru we all need in our lives. This week Kathleen Martin and Kathleen Heaney got the chance to chat with Nicole about the secret to picking a good paint color name, exactly which Clare colors she has on her walls, and why DIY paint color matching can backfire! Bring on the moody jewel tones, we're ready y'all! Check out all the colors we talked about at clare.com. Social Shout-Out: @NicoleGibbonsStyle @ClarePaint Download Our Canva E-Book: Get our BRAND NEW e-book about expert-level mood boards: 'Designing Your Home On Canva': KathleenCanDoIt.com Swap Tips With Fellow DIYers: Join our Facebook Group Follow Kathleen Martin: @CreateAColorfulLife Follow Kathleen Heaney: @KathleenLovesColor Email us: Hello@KathleenCanDoIt.com Leave us a voicemail: 201-378-3378 Follow the pod: @KathleenCanDoIt

In this week's episode we're re-airing one of our top episodes with Nicole Gibbons, the founder of Clare, the only Black-owned paint brand in the US, and is a favorite of Jessica Alba, Maria Sharapova, and Nate Berkus to name a few. Before pursuing interior design, Nicole spent nearly a decade managing PR for one of the world's largest retail brands, Victoria's Secret. Although she was excelling in her career, Nicole felt uninspired and was looking for a new outlet for her creativity. She started working on a decorating blog on the side that ultimately gained serious traction and led her into the path of interior design. After working as a designer and establishing herself as a voice in the industry, Nicole decided to do another career pivot and had a yearning to build something that would be a household name. When working with clients, she always noticed the hassle around picking paints and saw an opportunity to disrupt the outdated paint industry and create a direct-to-consumer business that makes the entire process a way better experience. Nicole has been featured in top media outlets such as HGTV, The Rachael Ray Show, Good Morning America, and Oprah Winfrey's OWN. She's also raised venture capital from the backers of Warby Parker, Casper, Peloton, and more.We talk to Nicole today about the power of patience when it comes to building your business, how to think about your finance before you take the leap, how she raised money and built a tech business with zero connections to start, and so much more!In this episode, we'll talk to Nicole about:* Nicole's thoughts on confidence and the nature of risk and reward in entrepreneurship. [3:09]* The familial links that Nicole has to entrepreneurship and her early corporate career. [4:30]* Nicole's side hustle journey: pursuing passion while employed. [6:06]* How the blog organically evolved from a passion project into a business. [8:12]* Patience and consistency fueled Nicole's transition to full-time interior design. [10:01]* Foregoing the safety of paychecks and betting on yourself. [13:16]* Nicole's second pivot; executing on her research and ideas. [20:48]* How networking has played into Nicole's strategy throughout. [24:45]* Entering the world of venture capital; Nicole's philosophy towards funding. [27:13]* Advice for approaching investors; asking questions and due diligence. [34:57]* Sharing the story of your brand and creating a common thread through everything you do. [37:31)* Nicole's key resources: community, questions, and more. [41:29]* Nicole's thoughts on the idea of work-life balance and welcoming different seasons. [46:18]* Lessons from the early days of hiring for a new company. [49:28]This episode is brought to you by beeya: * Learn more about beeya's seed cycling bundle at https://beeyawellness.com/free to find out how to tackle hormonal imbalances. * Get $10 off your order by using promo code BEHINDHEREMPIRE10Follow Yasmin:* Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yasminknouri/* Website: https://www.behindherempire.com/Follow Nicole: * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nicolegibbonsstyle* Clare's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clarepaint* Clare Website: https://www.clare.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"Building a business requires blind optimism and a lot of blind faith. You have to believe in yourself and your idea, even when no one else does." says Nicole Gibbons, Founder and CEO of Clare.Today we're joined by the incredible Nicole Gibbons, founder and CEO of Clare. Nicole's journey is nothing short of inspiring. From working in PR at Victoria's Secret, to becoming a renowned interior designer, she saw a need for a better way to buy paint and turned the industry upside down. With her expertise and passion for design, Nicole built a brand that challenges the status quo and offers a transparent and modern paint shopping experience. Her story is a testament to the power of following your passion and never giving up. Get ready to be inspired by Nicole's journey and learn how she built a groundbreaking business from the ground up.Top takeaways:Building a community around your passion project can lead to valuable connections and opportunities.Timing is crucial in entrepreneurship, and success often depends on being in the right place at the right time.Starting a business to solve pain points in an industry can be a powerful motivator and a unique selling point.Building a business from the ground up requires a willingness to learn, network, and take risks, even in areas where you have little expertise.Quotes:"I pretty much taught myself a masterclass in how to break into the VC world, how to figure out who the right investors are, how to target them, how to pitch them, how to create a pitch deck, and how to build a financial model." (23:45 | Nicole Gibbons)"No one talks about how hard it is to start a business. No one talks about all the sacrifices that you end up making." (35:01 | Nicole Gibbons) “Really think about your long term plan. I think a lot of startups fly by the seat of their pants, and they're taking things one day at a time. But think about the outcome that you want to achieve. And make sure that all the steps that you have in your journey are optimizing toward that outcome.” (45:31 | Nicole Gibbons)Connect with Nicole Gibbons:Instagram for Nicole: @nicolegibbonsstyleInstagram for Clare: http://www.instagram.com/clarepaintIf you like what you're hearing, please leave a rating or review at https://ratethispodcast.com/dearfoundher.You can now work with Lindsay 1:1 to build and monetize your community through the same method she used to grow and scale her business. Fill out the form here and set up a FREE 30-minute consultation.Make sure you sign up for Lindsay's newsletter and have all of the takeaways from every podcast episode sent straight to your inbox. PLUS, you'll get a tip every week to help you grow and scale your own business.Don't forget to follow Lindsay on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lindsaypinchukPodcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In This Episode You'll Hear About:What it was like growing up in a small suburban town in Detroit with entrepreneurial parents, creating friendship bracelets and earrings and selling them to friends and familyHow the fascination with babies at a young age gave her the desire to be a pediatrician, but once she got to college and began taking advanced science classes, it led her to explore other passions and interestsHow after college, her main goal was to just find something fun that she loved doing, and knew that one day she would end up creating something of her ownHow couch surfing in college while doing two internships and making connections led to dinner with Tyra Banks, and landing a dream job at Victoria's SecretHow she finally decided to take the leap into entrepreneurship after five years of building a customer base with her blogHow being inspired form women like Martha Stewart gave her the determination and mindset to build a brand that was mass enough to go into Kmart or TargetHow helping a friend pick paint samples online led to a terrible experience and sparked the idea of selling paint onlineThe challenges and experiences she faced in raising a Series A of $8 million dollars, from supply chain challenges, to team changes, and moreThe lessons learned in hiring the right person and fit for the teamWhat she's learned in keeping the conviction of her business and how that keeps her focused on the main goalExclusive Deals from our Sponsors:Get a 30 day free trial with Rewind HEREUse the promo code STAIRWAY200 for $200 off Outer furniture by shopping HEREGet 2 months FREE with Gorgias by clicking HERE and mentioning the podcastTo Find Out More:https://www.clare.com/ Quotes:“My father always told me ‘whatever you do, don't ever work for someone else your whole life, you need to have your own business' and that was just ingrained in my mind.”“You don't need to have it all figured out in college, you just need to be pursuing a path that'll give you options. Choose a path that can help build skills that are applicable no matter what you end up doing in the long run.”“I pretty much spent all of my free time watching HGTV, buying coffee table design books, and consuming and reading everything design.”“It was less about starting a business and more about following this passion than anything else.” “I started making friends with all the home editors and getting to know people in the design community and little by little I built credibility, and I built a name and I became really respected. It just sort of grew from there.”“It's the squeaky wheel who gets the grease.”“I always had a plan, but I didn't have the steps in between. I didn't have the granularity of the plan, but I knew I was gonna start my own business. Once I became an interior designer full-time and started my design firm, I knew that I wanted to build a brand and have physical products.”“Paint really felt like a broken buyer journey”“Part of the blind optimism as a founder is just believing you can do it.”“The further along you get, the harder fundraising becomes, even if you are the next hot startup idea in the beginning, you have to demonstrate that you have a business that has potential or else you will lose people very quickly.”“Fundraising is like a game of FOMO. You're hot or not, and there's not a lot in-between.”“Just being able to show up in a room and be your true self and not feel doubted, you know or feel like people are questioning your ability to build the business that you're building, and be able to focus on the stuff that really matters.”“Maintain your conviction in what you're building. You are going to be met with so much rejection, so much skepticism. So many people who don't believe in what you know to be true, remain unwavering in your belief around your business, what you're building and just never lose sight of your mission because that's what will keep you grounded and keep going even when things get really hard”

Nicole Gibbons is the Founder of Clare, the only Black-owned paint brand in the US, and is a favorite of Jessica Alba, Maria Sharapova, and Nate Berkus to name a few. Before pursuing interior design, Nicole spent nearly a decade managing PR for one of the world's largest retail brands, Victoria's Secret. Although she was excelling in her career, Nicole felt uninspired and was looking for a new outlet for her creativity. She started working on a decorating blog on the side that ultimately gained serious traction and led her into the path of interior design. After working as a designer and establishing herself as a voice in the industry, Nicole decided to do another career pivot and had a yearning to build something that would be a household name. When working with clients, she always noticed the hassle around picking paints and saw an opportunity to disrupt the outdated paint industry and create a direct-to-consumer business that makes the entire process a way better experience. Nicole has been featured in top media outlets such as HGTV, The Rachael Ray Show, Good Morning America, and Oprah Winfrey's OWN. She's also raised venture capital from the backers of Warby Parker, Casper, Peloton, and more.We talk to Nicole today about the power of patience when it comes to building your business, how to think about your finance before you take the leap, how she raised money and built a tech business with zero connections to start, and so much more!In this episode, we'll talk to Nicole about:This episode is brought to you by beeya: * Learn more about beeya's seed cycling bundle at https://beeyawellness.com/free to find out how to tackle hormonal imbalances. * Get $10 off your order by using promo code BEHINDHEREMPIREFollow Nicole: * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nicolegibbonsstyle* Clare's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clarepaint* Clare Website: https://www.clare.com/Follow Yasmin: * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yasminknouri/* Stay updated & subscribe to our newsletter: https://www.behindherempire.com/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

For decades, buying paint for the home was a chore. Learn how Nicole Gibbons, who had already made her name in interior design, built the success of Clare, which offers designer-curated colors and an easy, enjoyable online experience. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

REVIEW OUR PODCAST FOR A CHANCE TO WIN $1,000 IN PRIZES! Listen to our new podcast, Being Home With Hunker, then rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts for a chance to win $1,000 in home decor gift cards. After you rate and review, visit our podcast giveaway page to complete your entry and to learn more. It's quick and easy!TODAY ON THE SHOWToday on the show we have Nicole Gibbons, founder of Clare Paint, a direct-to-consumer paint company that delivers designer-curated colors to their customers' doorsteps. They believe that “your home should reflect you,” not what other companies or people dictate to you.Nicole talks about why she shifted from a career in interior design into creating a company focused on paint; how home painting projects shifted due to the pandemic; how her childhood aesthetic influences her current style; and the favorite DIY projects and hacks she's tried her hand at in the past.Website: NicoleGibbons.comInstagram: @nicolegibbonsstyleClare Paint: Clare.comClare Paint on Instagram: @clarepaintABOUT THIS PODCAST For more information about this episode, or other podcast episodes, visit Hunker.com/podcast.This podcast is produced by Laurie Gunning Grossman.Being Home With Hunker is recorded and mixed at Night Shift Audio.Theme music by Jonathan Grossman.Show art designed by Mory Men. ABOUT HUNKERHunker inspires and empowers you to create a space that expresses who you are, shows off your unique style, and makes your life happier and more productive.Visit us, follow us, learn more.Hunker: Hunker.comInstagram: @hunkerhomeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How do you turn your genius idea into a real business or project? We got a valuable lesson in long-range planning from Nicole Gibbons, founder of Clare, which sells beautiful household paint online and offers customers a hassle-free experience. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

For decades, buying paint for the home was a chore. Learn how Nicole Gibbons, who had already made her name in interior design, made a success of Clare, which offers designer-curated colors and an easy, enjoyable online experience. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

Are you going through the paint wheel of literally thousands of colors, trying to get to the right one you’re looking for? Maybe your painter needs this information by tomorrow, and you don’t want to make a mistake that could cost you thousands of dollars? Choosing a paint color can be so overwhelming and crowdsourcing a color on Facebook isn’t always the best strategy. That’s why today I’m talking with the amazing Nicole Gibbons, the founder of Clare Paints, who is on a mission to make paint shopping easy and inspiring (so that you can create a home you love)! In addition to being the founder of Clare, Nicole is an interior designer who saw that no paint brands were offering an easy or convenient way to shop for paint - so she decided to fix that! A true expert in her field, her design know-how has been featured by top media outlets like HGTV, The Oprah Winfrey Network, Good Morning America, Elle Decor and more. Nicole is passionate about helping people create beautiful spaces they love. And with Clare, she's continuing to do just that...one perfect paint color at a time! You are not going to want to miss this conversation, because what Nicole has created is ingenius! If you’re struggling with what colors to use in your house, this is the answer you’ve been looking for, because this can be a challenge even for experienced designers as well. It is such an honor to not only speak with an incredible female entrepreneur like Nicole here, but to also bring this episode to you on International Women’s Day! I’m excited to announce that I have the perfect service for you called R.O.O.M (which stands for “Remove the Overwhelm and Overcome the Move One Room at a Time”). With this service you can tackle one room, or you can tackle 9. This result-driven digital service is available in bundles, and I want to meet you where you are in your purchasing path to buy things are get your home furnished beautifully. If you think you’re overwhelmed and need some customized guidance from a pro, R.O.O.M is for you! For more details and to get started, reach out to me on my website at https://jillkalmaninteriors.com/ or DM me on Instagram, http://instagram.com/jillkalmaninteriors! As mentioned at the end of this episode, you can go to https://jillkalmaninteriors.com/ to get some great freebies I have for you, including my Mini Moving Guide and Welcome Home Planner! As well, My Welcome Home Moving Organizer available for just $29, and it’s designed with EVERYTHING you need to move (which is why I say that it’s “the moving organizer that you can’t live without)! I have an exciting announcement that I want to share with listeners of the podcast. Soon I will be launching my digital course, Style & Accessorize Your Home in a NY Minute! In this course I’ll be revealing my secrets, tips and tricks in a simple video course that’s broken up into modules. This will give you the resources, solutions and really quick wins at an affordable price – all with direction from me. To get on the waitlist and to be the first to know (as well as quality for the special introductory price offer), go to http://jillkalmaninteriors.com/course-waitlist, or you can find details on my Instagram Profile as well. Finally, if you’d like to save space, stay organized and transform your home working space with no more tangled, messy wires, visit https://coilycables.com/ and use the code “WelcomeHome20” to receive a special discount! Get full show notes and more information at: https://jillkalmaninteriors.com/podcast

Visit Clare onlineSupport the show-------->Fabian Geyrhalter:        Welcome to the show, Nicole.Nicole Gibbons:            Thanks so much for having me.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Absolutely. No, it's so great having you here. You are the founder of Clare, where you saw a huge opportunity to paint the interior paint industry in new, specifically with designer-curated colors, mess-free peel and stick paint swatches, which are really cool, and premium zero VOC paint delivered to your customer stores. You set out to take the pain out of paint, which I read somewhere on your site. That's not me saying this. You're your modern brand that has pioneered an easier, faster, and more inspiring way to shop for paint. Your mission is to help people everywhere create a home they love.Clare is just a little over four years old and must've been born out of the interior design company you're also running, but your career started at Victoria Secret where you served as the global director of communications and events. Tell us a little bit about how did that idea of Clare, how was it born? How did it all begin?Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah. Well, I just want to correct one thing. We're actually only two and a half years old. Yeah. So we're a very young startup in our trajectory, but the idea was really born out of this desire to help people create beautiful spaces. I spent, like you've mentioned, a decade working in retail as a PR executive. While in that job, I started side hustling to explore my passion for interior design. So I did that sort of overlapping for about five years, more or less writing a blog every day and doing dabbling in small interior design projects on the side. Then finally at the beginning of 2013, took the leap to focus on building my design business and my personal brand full time. So after doing that for a few years, I started thinking about what would be the next extension of my personal brand.I never wanted to just be an interior designer. I loved the Martha Stewart approach in that she parlayed her career as a food and lifestyle expert into products that spanned multiple categories and just this massive career that enabled so many people to buy into the Martha Stewart aesthetic. So I started thinking about what I could do in the home space that was along those same lines and explored a number of business opportunities and kind of stumbled upon this white space that is paint.As a designer, I bought lots of paint. I shopped for lots of paint. I helped lots of people choose paint colors, whether it be my private clients, people that I would help doing television projects, or even just folks who would write in on my blog, or be a social media where I was just sort of offering unsolicited free advice when they had questions.I realized that shopping for paint is a really difficult process for the average person. If you're lucky enough or fortunate enough to be working with a designer, or an architect, or someone who can guide you, the process is quite easy. You have someone that you trust who makes the selections for you and you pretty much trust their judgment and sign off, versus the average person who's going at it alone, walks into a Big Box home improvement store, stares up at a wall of 3000 colors. If they want something as simple as white paint, they think it's going to be easy. And then they realize, Holy pal, there are 300 shades of white. How do I know which one is right? And then sort of thus begins this cycle of this painful experience, decision fatigue.Once I realized how the industry was structured, it's highly consolidated, there are really like two or three major players that dominate the whole entire paint market. It just felt like the perfect opportunity. The companies that dominate the paint industry are centuries old. So these are brands that are so giant. They really never felt the pressure to innovate or modernize.When I started Clare and really kind of came up with the idea, probably around four years ago or so, there were so many other industries where difficult shopping experience had been improved and modernized. Think about glasses with Warby Parker or mattresses or all these other categories where someone took a product that was really difficult to shop for and made it an easy, convenient experience. As someone who is incredibly passionate about home and about helping others create beautiful homes, this just seemed like the perfect opportunity and it was a massive market. I didn't want to just do a furniture line or something that would have been more expected and obvious for an interior designer to pursue. I really wanted to build something from the ground up, tackle a massive market, and create a sort of industry-changing business model and brand.Fabian Geyrhalter:        That's remarkable. Those peel and stick paint swatches, it sounds like nothing, but it's so huge, right? I mean, if anyone who went through that painstaking process that you just hinted at on how to come up with the perfect paint choice, you have to get all these tiny little cans, which by the way, is horrible for the environment, all these tiny little cans from paint stores. And then you have to paint on your house, most of the time on the exterior interior, depending on what you paint, and you keep going back and forth between the hardware store in your home. It's a mess, but those swatches, they seem kind of like post-its by nature. It's just so simple. You just put it on the ball.How did you guys around to matching the color on, because we're talking about print and "paper," versus paint, which is such a different medium. It must be so hard to match that identically. I think you guys pulled that off, right?Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah. I think we nailed it. I mean, the interesting thing about color that most people don't realize is that color is a science, and any color, really all forms of color has data associated with it and can be broken down into numerical data so that when you're in the color matching process, you can actually measure the accuracy of our paint swatches to the finished actual paint finish within the most minutiae of a Delta E.So it's actually quite a scientific process to ensure the color match. It's somewhat manual, somewhat scientific. You might have to go back and forth a few times until you get it right, but if we can kind of measure to make sure that you're within pretty much an exact match range and that's how you ensure color accuracy.So we have a pretty detailed process. I think a lot of like with traditional paint brands, when you have thousands and thousands of colors, and they're not offering peel and sticks watches in most cases. So there's the little tiny paint chips that you take off the wall at the hardware store. A lot of times people feel they don't match. I think when your pallet is to the point of being four or 5,000 colors deep, you sort of lose some of that quality control.It's very difficult to maintain 100% accuracy when you have that many colors and especially if you're not actually controlling your distribution channels, because a lot of people also don't realize when you buy paint from a Big Box store, they're carrying multiple brands. So they have to have a color it dispensers or sort of colorant in store that work across all the different brands that they carry. So with that, you almost lose a little bit of quality control as well, because you're working within a colorant system that maybe isn't proprietary and there's just more margin for error for the output in the store to look different than the swatch.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Clare is 100% D2C. It seems like having your paint salt at a hardware store would go against what you stand for as a brand, but would you toy with Clare experience stores or pop-up stores of any sorts?Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah. My belief and the whole reason I started Clare was that I felt that the paint shopping experience needed to be re-imagined. We started online because that's where our competitors were not, but I think that there's a huge opportunity to reimagine the future of what a paint store looks like, or what a paint aisle within a Big Box store might look like. So that prospect is super exciting and definitely something we think about, and it's really a matter of timing and opportunity, and those kinds of two things being aligned before we'll probably make it happen.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Which obviously is not during a pandemic. But other than that, it's an interesting opportunity. Absolutely. Let's talk about the evil side of paint, how to dispose of leftover paint. How do you navigate sustainability with Clare?Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah, I mean, I think for us, sustainability is a focus on kind of two major things. One is the product and how it impacts your home, and your health, and the air inside your home. And the other are just business practices. So things like our packaging and other efforts that we make to ensure that we're really minimizing our impact on the environment.So a lot of people don't realize that paint as an industry is one of the most dishonesty and misleading industries out there. It's a chemical product first and foremost. So no matter how you try to spin it, there is no such thing as a safe chemical paint. It's still a chemical product at the end of the day. Now you can certainly have a better formulation, but it's still a chemical product. It's not like the paint is made of grass and leaves or whatever.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Yeah, yeah.Nicole Gibbons:            So the paint industry has really been misleading with customers about what's in their paint. Even stemming back from like the 40s and 50s when paint was made with lead, which as we now know, is very toxic and harmful to humans and to the environment, but one of the biggest paint companies in the world knowingly continued to sell paint to their customers for decades, knowing that it was harmful to human health and didn't stop selling lead paint until it was banned by the federal government in the 1970s.So that's a very good example of how the paint industry has historically operated at profit over people, I think. Even in more recent times, every few years, in fact, one of the major paint companies is paying massive fines to the FTC for misleading marketing.Several years ago, when the government started regulating, or the EPA started regulating VOC contents and paint, and stands for Volatile Organic Compounds, it's essentially like carbon emissions and CO2 emissions that are emitted by a lot of paints, not Clare, but when the government started putting these thresholds, so they would say, canopy can't have more than X volume of VOC content, what brands ended up doing, and another important thing to understand is how paint is actually sold at the point of sale.So generally companies like a Big Box store or a hardware store will stock a base paint formula, which is essentially like a white paint. And then the colorant is dispensed at the point of sale. So brands would manufacture those base formulas to fit zero VOC thresholds, but then the colorants that were being used were not zero VOC.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Interesting.Nicole Gibbons:            So people thought that they were buying a product that was better for them, healthier for their homes, et cetera when in reality, as soon as you've chosen your color and they put the color in the can at the hardware store, you have a paint that's now back to being filled with chemicals. So even that type of misleading was happening in more recent times.So for us, transparency is super important as well. All our paint is zero VOC. It's GREENGUARD Gold certified. GREENGUARD is a green certification that applies to many products, but GREENGUARD Gold is the highest tier of GREENGUARD certification and for paint. What that means is, they actually put the paint in an environmental chamber that's meant to mimic the air inside a typical home environment, and it measures the off-gassing for two weeks to ensure that it stays below the zero VOC threshold during that entire time, because paint can continue to off-gas for years actually. So when you buy a paint that's not zero VOC, it will be emitting carbon compounds into your air potentially for years. A lot of people don't realize that. Especially nowadays, when we're spending all of our time inside in our homes, it's very important that we make better choices and there's just so much harmful stuff all around us. So we just wanted to minimize that as much as we possibly could.A lot of our packaging and products, like some of our paint supplies and things are made from recycled materials. So whenever possible, we really try to make the best possible choices and we are not doing everything perfectly admittedly. As a young company, there's still a lot of room for improvement. There are certain things that we want to make even more sustainable, but I think we're off to a really good start and we're as transparent as we can be with our customers. We hope that that gives them competence in our brand and in our product.Fabian Geyrhalter:        I love this. Just in my last episode, I talked about that same idea where even though you're trying really hard and you think like you're doing everything as well as possible, there are some things that you yourself know as a brand. You're not quite there yet. You talk about that too. I think that alone is such a huge difference when you think about the paint companies from the 40s and 50s, right. It is so nice as a consumer today to see brands talk about not only the things they do well but also the things that they know want to improve upon because that is just as important and that's how you feel like a brand is really transparent.Let's talk about transparency for a second here. Moving over to your brand language, which is really real. It's very down to earth, you had an instant post about wop remixed, which of course, stood for where there's paint. Your colors are named Headspace, Whipped, No Filter, and Dirty Martini. How did the brand language manifest itself? Did it start with a mantra that you set and then it organically built from there?Nicole Gibbons:            Honestly, so much of it is an extension of me and my personal brand voice, to be honest, but also like the customer that we're reaching and what I think resonates with them. Also just looking at the market and looking at traditional paint brands, I think paint brands are pretty boring. We wanted every element of our brand experience to feel memorable and to evoke emotion. So when it comes to things like the color names, we wanted to have fun with that and create names that made you feel something. Our brand voice on social media, we want to be relatable. We want to talk about what's happening in pop culture and relate our product back to that because that's what people can care about. That's what's top of mind.We don't want to just be this faceless corporate entity that no one actually cares about. We want to be a brand that people connect with and they follow us because we are approachable and, or entertaining, and inspiring. So that's super important. We try to have those core brand, voice pillars of being friendly and approachable, carry throughout every aspect of the brand from the website to our social and more. It's really just, I think, another way that we differentiate ourselves from the market.Fabian Geyrhalter:        I was just about to ask that, how do you set and keep those standards as it relates to the voice? You just answered that there are certain pillars around which you want to navigate as you talk to your customer. But talking about naming, how did the name come about? It's a very modern take on naming. We have many first-name brands floating around, but not Nicole, it's Clare.Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Once you try to actually get some help finding a perfect color, you agree that with a message on your website that says, "Hi, I'm Clare. Think of me as your personal interior designer. I'm here to help you find the perfect color for your space." What's the story behind the name? Who is Clare?Nicole Gibbons:            So it's so funny. I wish I had a more profound name, but originally, when I was thinking of names or when Clare was just in the idea phase, I wanted to be able to talk to some people about what I was working on. So initially, my only intent was just to come up with a working title, just like a good enough name for now and then come up with something perfect later. So I probably spent like 20 minutes. I was looking on a baby naming website where you can reverse look at, like name meaning. So if you wanted your kid's name to mean happiness or whatever, you type in happiness, and it tells you all the names that relate back to that.So I literally typed in things that tied back to color. So I looked up adjectives like bright, and colorful, and vibrant, and whatever, and saw what names came out. Clare just sort of stood out. Clare comes from a Latin root word, clarus that means bright and brilliant. There's a lot of fun wordplay there, both brilliant and bright in terms of color, but also brilliant in terms of being innovative and forward thinking as a brand. I Googled it. There was no other brand that really had the name Clare. There was like an insurance kind of, I don't remember exactly what they sold. There was something, but in a completely non-competitive space.So it was a name that was available and it was a good working title. And then as I really started kind of moving forward with the brand and doing some conceptual branding work and things like that, it sort of just stuck and it fit. There was no other name that made sense. But I think originally, I knew I wanted a name that was personified so we could really build a personality around the brand. That's why I went to a baby-naming website. And I wanted it to be friendly and approachable. And I intentionally wanted a feminine name, because in the paint world, all of the brands that dominate are these hyper-masculine names, Sherwin Williams and Benjamin Moore.Fabian Geyrhalter:        So true. Yeah.Nicole Gibbons:            I think they are not appealing to who's really making the household decisions, which is usually the woman of the house. I felt like paint brands are overly masculine in their appeal.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Yeah.Nicole Gibbons:            I think part of the reason is because a lot of them are catering to professionals and a lot of pro painters are men. But at the same time, when you think about the DIY market, the people making the hustle decisions are women.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Yeah.Nicole Gibbons:            I think the big brands are kind of failing to really resonate in an authentic way. So that was something that was super important as a brand founded by a woman in an industry that is dominated by men to take a complete 180 approach to every aspect of our brand, including the choice of name.Fabian Geyrhalter:        So interesting. I never thought about how those paint names are just absolutely not reflecting today's do it yourself customer. Super interesting. Your selection is still narrow and it's highly curated, and that is by design, less is more. A recent customer review on your website stated, "The limited, but lovely colors totally saved me from having an existential crisis over the thousands of options from other brands. How do you control the number of options to give your customers once you introduce a new color? I know you just introduced a couple of new colors, how do you play this game of keeping things fresh, but yet having it very curated so that people don't freak out about the 4,000 options of white?Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah. Well, I mean, we launched with 55 colors and originally, we believed that those covered most of the use cases you would ever have in a home, right? There are certainly opportunities to expand the palette and mix in a few new things, but it's not hard to keep things curated relative to the traditional paint brands that are in the thousands.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Yeah.Nicole Gibbons:            Building on from that original 55, our approach has always been well. If we're going to introduce new colors, let's make sure they're colors we know our customers will love. So, so far every new color we've introduced has been crowdsourced or with some sort of crowdsource feedback from our customers. So they'd either voted on the colors, or with our most recent set of colors, we did a march madness style paint playoffs bracket. The predictions from the customers ultimately dictated which colors ended up in our palette. The two newest colors that we launched were actually a part of the original, like our paint playoffs from last year where we ended up introducing a blue and a green, but there was also a pink and a yellow, but that were super popular. So we introduced those after the new year, this year in 2021. That's always core to us is making sure that we include our customers in the process. And then another core part of our color differentiation is that we're designer curated. So even the colors that our customers helped choose were sort of pre-vetted by me through my interior designer lens. Our original 55 colors were curated by me.I think in the future, there might be some collaboration opportunities with other designers to kind of maintain that voice of authority of being interior designer-curated colors. But I think that having that expertise behind the color palette, as well as input from customers to ensure they'll love the colors really helps to take the guesswork out of the process, and again, give people less choice, but the best choice, right? So really just simplifying those decisions for the customer to help them get to faster decisions, because that's another terrible thing about the paint industry is because there's so much choice. People get paralyzed and it actually takes them a really long time to make a decision, and the buying journey can be really, really long.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Yeah, absolutely. Looking back, because I thought your company was founded 2017, but that's I think when you just started laying the groundwork, and really it's a very young brand.Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah.Fabian Geyrhalter:        What was that one big breakthrough moment where you felt like, "Okay, we are moving from startup into brand right now." What was that one moment? It could have been a seed funding or Series A, could have been a moment that you had with a customer where you felt like they totally get it, it could be sales figures, whatever. What was that moment where you set back and you're like, "Wow, this was a special moment."Nicole Gibbons:            Honestly, I think it was the Daily Launch because I had spent probably almost two years at that point, a whole year just thinking about the idea and then another year actually putting that idea into making that idea a reality, and raising capital, and then building behind the scenes all before we launched to the public.So on the day that we launched, we had a tremendous amount of press coverage and the media really got it and described our brand relative to the competitors in the market. I think really captured well how we stood out. And then immediately the customer feedback was super validating. And kind of like the quote that you read from the customer, we heard that kind of thing since day one. "This has been the best easiest paint shopping experience I've ever had. I'm never going back to the Big Box store again." That kind of thing, we heard from the very beginning.Again, are we doing everything perfectly? Probably not. Still a ton of room for improvement, but the basic premise and the basic problem that we set out to solve, I think immediately was validated that we were solving a real problem and creating a much better experience than what these brands who have been around for 200 years have not been able to create. I think we're super proud of that.We're still at what feels like in the beginning of our journey. So there's a lot more room we have in the works to continue improving upon the paint shopping experience, but I think we're off to a great start.Fabian Geyrhalter:        You might be surprised, but I never heard that answer. And I asked that question pretty much on every show, because I think it's so interesting, but usually it's not right when you launch, and usually it's when you launched it, you get some good customer feedback, but that the press was immediately so interested because they themselves knew here is a category that hasn't been disrupted yet, and that hasn't been done in the right way. I remember fast company said the Warby Parker of paint is here, right? So it very, very quickly happened that the press led this conversation, which is, I mean, that's the biggest success you can have if that happens immediately upon launch, because then you know everyone will see a need for this. So that's really great.Well, on the flip side, was there any brand fail that you went through where you felt like, "My God, we just did a huge [inaudible]," and maybe something that listeners can learn from?Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah. I don't know if it's so much of a brand fail as more of a business fail or a general marketing fail. We so far, thankfully, have not had any major snafus with our brand voice or anything like that, but we're going through this really painful experience right now in that when we launched, I didn't have a technical background. I'm a very non-technical founder. So I hired a super talented team of people who were great designers to build our website. But at the time, without knowing then what I know now, we built an overly complex custom website. We're a small team. We don't have any in-house developers. So it requires a lot of resources to maintain our website.Then on top of that, I think the architecture wasn't as clean as it could be and it has just created so many problems for us. So two and a half years in we're actually re-platforming our website fully onto Shopify, which is such a great e-commerce platform. Especially when we had zero customers, in general, with MVP, you kind of start small and grow from there, but we came out the gate with this super custom website that looked beautiful, but behind the scenes is just kind of really messy and complicated and it just creates a lot of backend pain points. So we're going through that process right now to re-platform. It's a big undertaking. Actually, I feel like it's more work to re-platform the site than it is to build a brand new site from scratch, because there's more that can go wrong.When we originally built our site, we didn't have any customers yet. Now we have hundreds of thousands of people that visit our website and we don't want to disrupt that experience or lose functionality that was there before. So there's just way more room for errors with this kind of next go around. Yeah, it's taking up a lot of time that we didn't intend to be spending.So I would say launch your brand on Shopify, because you're going to learn everything you need to learn. Maybe when you get to a certain scale, you can go custom, but that was a big lesson learned in what I would consider somewhat of a failed, because I just didn't know better and we just spent way too much developing and building the site that we have that doesn't actually function the way we need it to.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Well, and you come from an interior design background. So of course, the design is most important in the beginning, right? And so one thinks. Think about tens of thousands of people starting shopping on Clare.com immediately, but since you're successful, that happens next. So I think it's extremely important that you talk about something which some people might not think is important. It can be extremely disruptive to a business. I work with an agency that does a lot of Shopify websites. For them, it's the exact same customer that keeps coming back to them. They created it in a different environment, then everything was really clunky. And then it becomes ... I mean, we're talking about a lot of money being spent when you have to redo a site in Shopify.Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah.Fabian Geyrhalter:        This is important.Nicole Gibbons:            It's a young startup, so cash is king, so to make a costly mistake is really painful. This is definitely a very costly learning experience.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Yeah. No, totally. Like you said, it's not necessarily a brand fail, and it's not necessarily fail period, because it's just kind of like, it's that whole fail forwards ideas. It was a logical thing to do, to do a site that just looks good.Since this is a branding podcast, I love having my guests always answer this one question, and it's not an easy one, what is one word that can describe your brand? If you literally think about your brand inside out, the culture, what you stand for, your customer, your offering, if you would put it all through a funnel, and outcomes one or two words of like, this is what we stand for, what would it be for you?Nicole Gibbons:            I would say inspiring. That's a word that I think permeates every aspect of our brand experience and how we hope that our customers perceive us from the shopping experience. That is a world of difference from that cluttered aisle and a hardware store in full of inspiration to how the brand engages with us on social media. We want to be there to guide them and there to inspire them, to create a beautiful home that they'll love coming home to every day, and in our color assortment in just our overall brand voice. We want people to walk away feeling inspired by Clare. So that would be the one word that I'd say sums up-Fabian Geyrhalter:        I love it.Nicole Gibbons:            ... everything we're about.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Now that we talk about branding, and I've warmed you up, what does branding mean to you? I mean, obviously you lived in the world of branding all your professional life in one shape way or the other. You were in Internet Kiehl's, then there was the Victoria Secret job, and then you're running your own service company really as interior design. So I think you've seen a lot of different facets. What does branding mean to you?Nicole Gibbons:            That's a good question. I think it can mean many things, but if I had to simplify it, it's creating an aesthetic that could be translated into a lifestyle. I think of Clare very much as a lifestyle brand, but also everything I did before in my career ultimately was around building a lifestyle. So I think in the world of e-comm consumer, you can't just be a nameless, faceless brand because right anyone can create a logo and a tagline, and come up with a name and call it branding. But I think it's truly branding when what you've set out to achieve is absorbed by your customers and that your customers actually relate to, and your customers can derive value from. So that's kind of a little bit of a long-winded answer, but that would be what I think of as branding and what I think creates a successful branding.Fabian Geyrhalter:        I absolutely agree with you. Yeah. It's like there's the foundation, which everyone needs a logo, and a name, and colors, and all of that good stuff, but that doesn't make a brand. That's important to have, but what makes a brand is really the soul of it. And that might start with the founder who injects it into the company, or it might be certain principles, or a greater purpose.Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah.Fabian Geyrhalter:        I'm glad that you said that. Absolutely.Nicole Gibbons:            It can't just be some abstract thing. It really has to resonate.Fabian Geyrhalter:        What's a piece of brand advice for founders? Maybe even commerce founders, as a takeaway from what you learned besides starting on Shopify, obviously, but from a brand perspective, is there anything that you can advise the next generation of founders on?Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah. I would say focus on experience, you know. I mean, even from the school of Jeff Bezos, but something that I can attest to within Clare is, if you can continuously deliver a delightful experience for your customer, that is what's going to propel your brand forward.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Absolutely. Absolutely. What's next for Clare besides potentially looking at the impersonal retail experience, which I kind of pulled out of you? I'm sorry if you didn't mean to talk about that, but what are you really excited about with Clare for the next, I don't know, six months, a year?Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah. I mean, six months, I think in the world of startups still is kind of forever, but just thinking about new products and how we can continue to deliver more for our customers. So we have some exciting things in the pipeline there. Obviously, I touched on this new website that we're in the process of building, which aesthetically will probably look quite similar to our current site, but hopefully, we'll deliver a better just overall experience. So I think that's like a top, top priority that's going to take us even through Q2 and have some cool partnerships in the works. So creating opportunities to reach more customers, but also without giving away too much. But yeah, just creating a cool opportunity for us to get in front of new audiences and things like that. So, yeah, I'd say in the short term, those are the key things that we're most excited about.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Very cool. Where can listeners learn about Clare and start painting the walls on you?Nicole Gibbons:            Yeah. Well, visit us at Clare.com, spelled CLARE. You can also follow us on social at Clare Paint, and we hope to see you soon.Fabian Geyrhalter:        Thank you so much for taking the time to be on hitting the marketing call. We really appreciate it.Nicole Gibbons:            Thanks so much. Thanks for having me.

Nicole Gibbons wants to change how we make our homes beautiful. “My aspiration was to be the next Martha Stewart,” she says, and she's on her way. The former PR rep has leveraged years of networking, blogging, media experience, and PR savvy to launch Clare, a direct-to-consumer business selling interior paint.In this week's episode, Gibbons gives us behind-the-scenes access to how she landed an on-air hosting gig soon after leaving her day job (hint: it involves a lot of networking!), and how she used that opportunity to get VC funding and launch Clare as a brand. We also talk about the unexpected visibility of being a Black entrepreneur in 2020, how the pandemic enabled online shopping for unexpected products, and why networking and creating relationships really is that important. Clare is now taking aim on an industry dominated by legacy brands with nine-digit valuations, and Gibbons feels prepared. “A lot of time was put in before it was actually successful,” and she's now ready to go global.Join the conversation on Facebook in our #imakealiving group, where you can chat about challenges, find resources for success, and stay connected with other entrepreneurs!

Listen in to learn how Nicole Gibbons went from medical school to marketing to entrepreneur, and what she wishes she knew before she started her business. "I saw this huge pain point around the homeowner when it comes to choosing color." - Nicole Gibbons. Learn more about this episode of The Mentor Files with Monica Royer at www.monicaandandy.blog/85

Nicole Gibbons is a pro at creating something so intuitive, you wonder how you ever lived without it. Starting out in fashion PR and working as an executive at Victoria Secret, she switched career paths at the peak of her game to follow her true passion in interior design. Nicole got the stamp of approval from Oprah, appearing as a design expert on the O Network. And all that before Nicole launched her direct-to-consumer paint brand, Clare, which reimagines the colorful journey of sampling paint to realizing your dream palette. Backed by some of the same investors as Glossier, Everlane, and Reformation, the buzzy brand is intuitive, offering services like a color-match quiz and peel-and-stick swatches. But Clare also taps into the emotional side of color with names like Current Mood, Chill and Dirty Martini, Summer Friday and Sriracha -- and cuts through the clutter with a super tight edit of shades. Nicole and I had so much to dig into for this episode--including how to curate color with confidence, why natural light is everything when choosing the right shade, and how some of the boldest color pairings can really change your space.

Nicole Gibbons is an interior designer and entrepreneur best known for her fresh use of color and fashion-forward point of view on decorating. Her work and expertise has been sought by top media outlets like HGTV, OWN, The Oprah Winfrey Network, TLC, Good Morning America, The Rachael Ray Show, Elle Decor, House Beautiful, Better Homes & Gardens and more. Before pursuing interior design, Nicole spent nearly a decade managing PR for one of the world’s largest retail brands. Not only has her experience given her first-hand knowledge of what it takes to build a world-class brand, but also deep and unique insights into what customers really want when it comes to designing their homes. Nicole’s work in the design world enabled her to identify that the paint industry was one ripe for disruption. With a broken shopping experience and no legacy paint brand focusing on convenience and simplicity, or marketing to a creative, digitally-driven generation, she saw an opportunity to improve the process from start to finish. Nicole founded Clare to help people create spaces they love — and actually enjoy the process along the way.

Nicole Gibbons, founder of first-ever direct-to-consumer paint brand, Clare, is completely disrupting the paint industry. On this episode of Second Life, find out how this former Global PR Director turned interior designer has built a company that has fulfilled its mission to uncomplicate the paint shopping experience.

Our business crush this week is, . This paint company is disrupting how we shop for paint. Tune into hear lessons for your own business.

Nicole Gibbons moved her way up from being the PR Assistant to become the Global Director within her ten years of tenure at Victoria’s Secret. What makes her story even more impressive is that she was managing a side hustle at the same time to pursue her passion for design. Gibbons is the founder of Clare, a company designed to make paint shopping easier, accessible, and more inspiring. She has been sought out by top media outlets and appears as a design expert on Home Made Simple, a home improvement reality show on the Oprah Winfrey Network. Gibbons sheds light on the reality of building your own start-up, transitioning into becoming an entrepreneur, and managing up at your company.

Nicole Gibbons is a disruptor of the paint industry. In a field dominated by absurdly masculine branding, Nicole is the first person to create a direct-to-consumer paint company that is not only convenient but also disarmingly beautiful. After starting her career in PR, Nicole realized the parts of her job she was most excited about involved design. After planning and saving up for a number of years, she made the leap to start her own interior design firm. While her firm was wildly successful, after a while Nicole was hungry for something different. Taking note of other brands disrupting the supply chain and working with direct-to-consumer models, Nicole wondered how she could apply that to design. “I felt like I really wanted to do something innovative; I really wanted to solve a big problem that hadn’t been tackled before. So I kept thinking about what I could do in the home space that made sense, and paint was the perfect light bulb moment that I had.” Inspired by her parents, both entrepreneurs, Nicole always knew she wanted to be in business for herself. With a mix of talent, inspiration, hard work, and patience, Nicole proves that if you can dream it, you can build it. Thanks for listening! We love our listeners! Drop us a line or give us guest suggestions here , or visit https://anchor.fm/superwomen/messages on your desktop or phone to leave us a voice memo! Follow Superwomen on Instagram. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/superwomen/support

My guest this week is the sought after interior designer, Nicole Gibbons.  You might recognize her from the Oprah Winfrey TV show "Home Made Simple."  Or maybe you've seen her as a guest on The Rachel Ray show, or in the pages of any number of design magazines.  She's done it all!  But her newest venture, which has basically taken over her life, is a paint company she calls "Clare."   I wanted to know what made Nicole drop everything else and pursue a product based company when she's always been in the service sector.  And, to tell us the story behind the brand. 

In this episode of 'Making the Brand', Billy speaks with Nicole Gibbons, Founder and CEO of Clare Paint. Clare is a direct-to-consumer paint company that makes it incredibly simple to sample and select the proper color for your wall. Nicole talks about her past life as an interior designer, her dream spokesperson for Clare, and what the future holds for the burgeoning business. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This year for International Women's Day the Female Founder Collective hosted Wide Awake: A Day for Female Founders. This panel moderated by Ann Shoket (former EIC of Seventeen) talks to Michelle Cordeiro Grant (Lively), Mariah Chase (ELOQUII), and Nicole Gibbons (Clare) about how they were able to disrupt their own industries, and how you should be unapologetic when representing yourself and your brand. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/superwomen/support

Backed by the same investors as Warby Parker and Casper, interior designer Nicole Gibbons has created a new way to buy paint with her business, Clare. We talk about where the idea for Clare came from, the steps she took to get the business off the ground and some of the advantages Clare has a small start-up compared to the longstanding incumbents in the sector. Nicole shares how Clare's transforming the customer experience around buying paint. She walks through how she kick started conversations with venture capitals and the lessons she learned through the process so you don't have to. Join the Community · For more content, head to www.thelifestyleedit.com and click here to join thousands of female creatives in our newsletter community: http://bit.ly/2rVZVzo Work with Naomi: · Sign up for a complimentary coaching discovery call: http://bit.ly/2DjlR0X TLE Resources: · Visit the TLE Shop & Resource Centre: http://bit.ly/2Ds1Kx1 · Download our free blueprint on how to simply & effectively raise your rates and double your income: http://bit.ly/2W7hehh Learn more about Clare: · Visit the Clare website: http://bit.ly/2UH5398

Today in the guest chair is Nicole Gibbons, the CEO and Founder of Clare. Nicole is an entrepreneur, interior designer, blogger, and on-air personality best known for her fashion-forward take on personal style expressed through the home. Clare is essentially paint shopping simplified. Nicole has created an easier way to paint a space you love with premium paint, designer-curated colors, and the best painting supplies—all delivered to your door. Nicole has been featured in top media outlets such as HGTV, The Rachael Ray Show, Good Morning America and more. She appeared on the Emmy Award-winning Home Made Simple on OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network, for three seasons as a designer helping deserving families re-imagine their living spaces.  On today’s episode, we will get into what inspired her to pivot and how she got herself prepared to launch, secure funding, and now scale. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Stitcher and Google Play This episode is brought to you by: Mented Cosmetics. Side Hustle Pro listeners get 15% off of all their Mented purchases! Head over to www.mentedcosmetics.com/sidehustle or use code SideHustle at checkout. Skillshare is offering Side Hustle Pro listeners a limited time offer of 2 months of Skillshare for just 99 cents. To sign up, go to Skillshare.com/hustlepro Links mentioned on this episode Clare Click here to subscribe via RSS feed (non-iTunes feed): http://sidehustlepro.libsyn.com/rss Announcements If you’re looking for a community of supportive side hustlers who are all working to take our businesses to the next level, join us here: http://sidehustlepro.co/facebook Social Media Info Clare Paint - @Clarepaint Nicole Gibbons - @nicolegibbonsstyle Side Hustle Pro – @sidehustlepro #SideHustlePro

Designed to bring the expert to you, Clare simplifies the paint shopping process. The direct-to-consumer brand opts for a focused color selection, user-friendly sample swatches, and an intuitive color picking guide. By bringing together her personal and professional experiences, founder Nicole Gibbons is hoping to build a brand that’s primed for the long haul. On this episode, Nicole explains why she choose to launch with a solution for the entire paint shopping process (6:28). She talks about predicting the lifetime value of their customer (9:56) and shaping a brand that sells to the DIY and professional markets (11:17). She shares the through line in her career (12:57) and how she built an audience at the height of the recession (17:39). She talks about exploring the licensing model, and choosing, ultimately, to operate on her terms (27:30), no matter the challenges (42:01). Links and images from this post are on the Lumi Blog.

Designer Nicole Gibbons discusses launching her new paint startup, Clare, and the myth of overnight success.

On this episode we hear from Nicole Gibbons, Founder and CEO of Clare. She's an interior designer who went from working with top media outlets like HGTV and OWN to securing a reported $2 million in funding to launch Clare an easy online way to shop for paint. She shares what the very recent journey has been like from funding to hiring her first employees and learning along the way. https://www.clare.comA Milli is produced by www.MayzieMedia.com

Nicole Gibbons and Jenna discuss how she became a self-taught designer, founded a successful design studio, became a design expert on OWN and recently launched her new paint company, Clare. We focus on the importance of actively investing in yourself, cultivating a growth mindset, and how changing your words can change your life. We also chat about why time for yourself is the ultimate recharge and how taking a digital detox can help reveal the important things in your life.

Detroit-born interior designer Nicole Gibbons has been chasing her business goals—be it a PR exec, design studio, or television series—long before the paint dried on her new startup. After building the business model for Clare, an e-commerce paint company, she had to convince venture capitalists of the potential that exists in today’s “sleepy” home industry. Gibbons shares how she conceived of the idea for Clare, and what the design trade could learn from the startup community. This episode is sponsored by Fuigo.

Interior designer Nicole Gibbons joins the Appeal hosts to chat about her career trajectory, her Oprah Winfrey Network show, and what it's like to be a woman of color working in the racially-exclusive world of interior design. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices