Podcast appearances and mentions of trina spear

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Best podcasts about trina spear

Latest podcast episodes about trina spear

The Ortho Show
Trina Spear, CEO of FIGS – From Investment Banking to Internationally Awarded Entrepreneur

The Ortho Show

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 2, 2025 39:00


This week, Dr. Sigman is joined by Trina Spear, Co-Founder and CEO of FIGS. Here, they discuss her starting point in investment banking, how FIGS went from an idea to the success it is today, the missionary work of the company, and more.

PSFK's PurpleList
PSFK Earnings Call Podcast: FIGS - FIGS

PSFK's PurpleList

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 1, 2024 3:33


During their earnings call held on February 28th, 2024, FIGS, a healthcare apparel company, shared their financial accomplishments in the face of ongoing inflation and aftermath effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The CEO, Trina Spear, conveyed to investors that inflation and health professionals' post-pandemic fatigue are suspected to be currently influencing the healthcare attire industry. Despite appreciable macroeconomic challenges, FIGS reportedly continues to navigate successfully in its operations. The company illustrates a somewhat resistant financial persona, asserting an 8% net revenue growth for the fiscal year 2023, as shared by the executives during the earnings call. The reported performance appears significantly guided by effective financial management strategies. Noteworthy strategies include a reported reduction in inventory by 33% which apparently yielded a profit increase, and the prudent decision to maintain a debt-free financial standing amid economic uncertainties. Product innovation and brand-building efforts seem central to FIGS' success. Focusing on meeting the requirements of healthcare professionals, the company reported efforts to improve product specifics, ensure consistent sizing, and widen its product range. The launch of the specialized "Extremes" collection figures as an example of these endeavors. The company also recognized shifting consumer trends, influenced by current economic pressures, and potential post-COVID exhaustion among healthcare professionals. FIGS executives shared during the earnings call that conservative spending habits among consumers have notably affected their business engagement. Nonetheless, the company reportedly remains confident about the long-term prospects of the healthcare industry, indicating plans to adapt business strategies to correspond with these changing consumer preferences. FIGS outlined its future plans during the call—they aim for a well-rounded approach to growth focused on innovation, maintaining brand momentum, and enhancing customer connections. This involves tapping into available digital platforms and forging strategic partnerships, potentially leading to increased customer loyalty and business expansion. Regarding international growth, FIGS disclosed a plan to establish a distribution center in Canada, signaling a commitment to expand into foreign markets. This move is expected to attract international customers and reinforce FIGS as a global player in the healthcare apparel industry. In summary, despite lingering economic uncertainties and the aftermath of the global pandemic, the FIGS earnings call signified a resilient company, navigating these challenges while maintaining focus on customer requirements. Their strategic plans suggest they intend to continue their journey in the healthcare apparel industry, albeit the nature of their progress remains to be seen given current market conditions. The information shared, reportedly by the executives during the call, suggests a continued effort to understand, form connections with healthcare professionals, and maintain relevance in this segment of the clothing industry. FIGS Company info: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/FIGS/profile For more PSFK research : www.psfk.com  This email has been published and shared for the purpose of business research and is not intended as investment advice.

Unstoppable
480 Trina Spear: Co-Founder & CEO of FIGS

Unstoppable

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 3, 2024 38:37


Trina Spear, Co-Founder and CEO of FIGS, shares all about the company that she has built. This direct-to-consumer, healthcare apparel and lifestyle brand celebrates, empowers and serves current and future generations of healthcare professionals with technically advanced apparel and products that look and feel awesome. FIGS has redefined what scrubs is and you are going to love this amazing interview. On this episode of #TheKaraGoldinShow. To learn more about Trina Spear and FIGS: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trina-spear-a510a91b/ https://www.instagram.com/trina.spear/ https://www.instagram.com/wearfigs/ https://twitter.com/trinaspear https://www.linkedin.com/company/wearfigs/ https://twitter.com/wearfigs https://www.wearfigs.com/ Enjoying this episode of #TheKaraGoldinShow? Let me know by reaching out to me at karagoldin@gmail.com or @KaraGoldin on all networks. Check out our website to view this episode's show notes: https://karagoldin.com/podcast/480  

Creative Conversation
Ozempic and Wegovy: How 2 diabetes medications became the most popular weight-loss drugs

Creative Conversation

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 20, 2023 57:14


In the United States, nearly three-quarters of adults qualify as overweight or obese, 42% of whom are considered obese. The World Obesity Federation predicts that 51% of the global population will be overweight or obese by 2035. ‘Fast Company' contributing writer Adam Bluestein joined us to break down how Novo Nordisk, the company behind Ozempic and Wegovy, developed and marketed its weight-loss drugs. He also explained why the drugs have become so popular in the U.S., how drug pricing is extremely complicated and . . . how the medications actually work to help people lose weight. Also, we chatted with Trina Spear about how she founded Figs, a DTC healthcare apparel company.

Most Innovative Companies
Ozempic and Wegovy: How 2 diabetes medications became the most popular weight-loss drugs

Most Innovative Companies

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 20, 2023 57:14


In the United States, nearly three-quarters of adults qualify as overweight or obese, 42% of whom are considered obese. The World Obesity Federation predicts that 51% of the global population will be overweight or obese by 2035. ‘Fast Company' contributing writer Adam Bluestein joined us to break down how Novo Nordisk, the company behind Ozempic and Wegovy, developed and marketed its weight-loss drugs. He also explained why the drugs have become so popular in the U.S., how drug pricing is extremely complicated and . . . how the medications actually work to help people lose weight. Also, we chatted with Trina Spear about how she founded Figs, a DTC healthcare apparel company.

World Changing Ideas
Ozempic and Wegovy: How 2 diabetes medications became the most popular weight-loss drugs

World Changing Ideas

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 20, 2023 57:14


In the United States, nearly three-quarters of adults qualify as overweight or obese, 42% of whom are considered obese. The World Obesity Federation predicts that 51% of the global population will be overweight or obese by 2035. ‘Fast Company' contributing writer Adam Bluestein joined us to break down how Novo Nordisk, the company behind Ozempic and Wegovy, developed and marketed its weight-loss drugs. He also explained why the drugs have become so popular in the U.S., how drug pricing is extremely complicated and . . . how the medications actually work to help people lose weight. Also, we chatted with Trina Spear about how she founded Figs, a DTC healthcare apparel company.

Cowen
FIGS: Leading Disruptive Growth In The Healthcare Apparel Market

Cowen

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 16, 2023 13:45


Recorded on 06/07/23 In this episode, John Kernan, TD Cowen's Retail & Consumer Brands analyst is joined by FIGS CoFounder & CEO, Trina Spear at the 7th Annual Future of the Consumer Conference in New York. FIGS has grown rapidly from $55MM in sales in 2018 to $506MM in 2022 and Ms. Spear discusses how FIGS has disrupted the medical apparel market through materials innovation, a direct-to-consumer business model and community-based activation which has enabled superior margins and return on invested capital. For Disclosures, click here bit.ly/3cPHkNW

Inc. Founders Project with Alexa von Tobel
How to Engage Your User Community with Trina Spear of FIGS

Inc. Founders Project with Alexa von Tobel

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 19, 2023 30:39


Over lunch with a nurse friend, Heather Hasson realized that the whole experience of buying scrubs—from the shopping process to product quality—was subpar. So she and co-founder Trina Spear set out to create a direct-to-consumer brand dedicated to modern healthcare professionals: FIGS. They went from selling scrubs out of a car in 2013 to going public in 2021 at a valuation of over $5 billion. FIGS was the first company led by two female co-founders to ever be taken public. Trina shares how the company quickly pivoted during Covid to produce protective gear, how leading a public company forces improvements in areas that are not working, and what she learned from her first job as a waitress at Johnny Rockets.

Mend the Gap: Equity in Medicine
Women in Business: An Interview with FIGS' Heather Hasson and Trina Spear

Mend the Gap: Equity in Medicine

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 26, 2022 25:40


Dagny Zhu, MD, talks with Trina Spear and Heather Hasson, co-founders and co-CEOs of FIGS Scrubs, about how they help female physicians feel confident and perform their best, their initiatives to celebrate healthcare workers and address gender disparities in the medical workforce and more. Welcome to another episode of Mend the Gap :12 The topic :21 Welcome Trina Spear and Heather Hasson :31 About how Spear and Hasson got started, and the glass ceilings they have broken as women in this industry 1:00 Background on making clothes and fashion 4:58 Limits in scrubs fashion, fabric; why does everything have to be a V-Neck? 5:35 Did you always see yourself as a leader? Were you born with these leadership skills, or is it something you developed along the way? 7:03 Can you share a little bit about your background? Were you ever interested in healthcare and medicine yourself? 9:53 FIGS Mission Statement; What are some of the initiatives you've done to help address those gender disparities in the healthcare workforce? 12:07 Utilizing social media to tell stories of healthcare workers and inspire the next generation of female healthcare workers 15:16 As women on the business side and becoming the first female co-CEOs, what kind of obstacles did you encounter along the way? 16:44 FIGS' advocacy; What's coming up for this year? 19:30 What tips, pearls, or resources would you say to the young women today to make their place and their name in society and their own respective fields? 22:43 Thank you 25:00 We'd love to hear from you! Send your comments/questions to podcast@healio.com. Follow us on Twitter @Healio_OSN. Trina Spear and Heather Hasson are co-founders and co-CEOs of FIGS Scrubs. Spear can be reached at @trinaspear on Twitter. Hasson can be reached at @heatherhasson on Twitter. Dagny Zhu, MD, is a cornea, cataract, and refractive surgeon and medical director and partner at NVISION Eye Centers in Rowland Heights, CA. She can be reached on twitter @DZEyeMD.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Trina Spear - Billion Dollar Scrubs - [Invest Like the Best, EP.295]

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 20, 2022 49:13


My guest today is Trina Spear, a former investor at Blackstone and the co-founder and CEO of FIGS. FIGS is a multi-billion-dollar public company that built a category-leading brand selling scrubs to healthcare professionals. It was a problem hiding in plain sight and FIGS solved it through vertical integration and customer obsession. Trina shares so many interesting, simple lessons that are often ignored in business. Please enjoy my great conversation with Trina Spear.   For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here.   -----   This episode is brought to you by Canalyst. Canalyst is the leading destination for public company data and analysis. If you're a professional equity investor and haven't talked to Canalyst recently, you should give them a shout. Learn more and try Canalyst for yourself at canalyst.com/Patrick.    -----   Today's episode is brought to you by Brex. Brex is the integrated financial platform trusted by the world's most innovative entrepreneurs and fastest-growing companies. With Brex, you can move money fast for instant impact with high-limit corporate cards, payments, venture debt, and spend management software all in one place. Ready to accelerate your business? Learn more at brex.com/best.   -----   Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes.    Past guests include Tobi Lutke, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, John Collison, Kat Cole, Marc Andreessen, Matthew Ball, Bill Gurley, Anu Hariharan, Ben Thompson, and many more.   Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossus   Show Notes [00:02:28] - [First question] - The original insight that lead to founding FIGS [00:04:28] - Why obvious opportunities can go so long before being seized  [00:06:23] - Key dimensions needed to improve the product and the early days  [00:09:02] - Basic overview of a clothing retailer's financial profile [00:10:49] - Financing the business and the early stage cash flow cycle  [00:13:04] - Strategies to manage workflow and making sacrifices [00:14:43] - Advice for people trying to build their brands in a hands-on way  [00:17:14] - The biggest calculated risk she took in the first five years [00:19:00] - Building a foundation that allowed for such explosive growth [00:21:44] - The story that allowed FIGS to connect with their customers [00:24:43] - Painting a picture of the size and scope of healthcare apparel [00:26:22] - Things lazy companies do and thoughts on product variety [00:28:54] - Defining SKU productivity and what to do with low productivity products  [00:30:21] - Chip Wilson Book; Lessons learned from reading Chip's story [00:31:58] - Balancing a healthy relationship with your CFO [00:33:59] - Where she sees the most runway to tackle and continue to execute [00:35:46] - A women-lead industry and her time spent with Meg Whitman [00:38:13] - The most essential jobs she feels she has and shouldn't do as the CEO [00:40:03] - Thoughts about relationships with investors and messaging  [00:42:14] - What she'd be most focus on in founders if she was just an investor  [00:43:57] - The most stressful thing that has ever come across her desk  [00:44:41] - What types of things bring her the most joy in building FIGS [00:45:27] - Philosophy of hiring given their small team and when it's okay to hire [00:46:56] - Whether or not there's a role for non A players in businesses [00:47:48] - The kindest thing anyone has ever done for her

Inside the ICE House
Episode 311: FIGS Co-CEO Trina Spear Outfits Healthcare's “Awesome Humans”

Inside the ICE House

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 25, 2022 42:30


Trina Spear, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of FIGS (NYSE: FIGS), is on a mission to arm the world's 79 million healthcare workers with clothing worthy of their vital mission. Over the past decade, she and co-founder Heather Hasson have grown FIGS from selling their wares in hospital parking lots to a NYSE Listed company with new solutions for old scrubs. Trina talks about mining data, outworking her competition, and old-fashioned customer service with a modern twist to build a community of customers.   Inside the ICE House: https://www.theice.com/insights/conversations/inside-the-ice-house

In Search Of Excellence
#015 – How Outsiders Disrupt Industries | Trina Spear

In Search Of Excellence

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 15, 2022 78:54


Trina Spear is the Co-CEO and Co-Founder of FIGS, a healthcare apparel and lifestyle brand that has a current value of $4 billion.  What has grown into a spectacular success started with a simple idea and question – what if we put as much thought into healthcare apparel as we do with athletic apparel?  What if we invented apparel for healthcare professionals by selling fitted, fashionable, cool, and comfortable medical scrubs?Trina and her partner Heather Hasson began working on this idea in 2012, and a year later they were selling medical scrubs in parking lots of hospitals out of the trunk of Heather's car.  The rest is history.  In May 2021, FIGS became the first company ever to go public that was led by two female co-founders. In today's episode, Trina and Randall discuss Trina's early life and educational pursuits, how her background in investment banking and private equity prepared her to navigate life as an entrepreneur, the future of female entrepreneurship, why outsiders are better equipped to disrupt industries, and much more.Episode Topics: - Pros and cons of college- The importance of internships- Female entrepreneurship - Mentorship under Strauss Zelnick- Taking the leap to become an entrepreneur- The importance of cold calling and communication skills- FIGS' biggest mistakes- Taking FIGS public on the New York Stock Exchange- Finding funding- Direct to consumer products- The power of being underestimated- FIGS' charity initiative Threads for Threads- And other topics…Trina Spear is the Co-CEO and Co-founder of FIGS, a $4 billion healthcare apparel and lifestyle brand. Trina's many accolades include being named Goldman Sachs' 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs in 2018 and 2019 and Los Angeles Entrepreneur of the Year in 2018, and in 2021 Trina made the Forbes list as one of America's wealthiest self-made women with a net worth of $600 million.  Prior to FIGS, Trina was an associate with the Blackstone Group and spent several years in investment banking and private equity at Citigroup.  She received her BA from Tufts University and her MBA from Harvard Business School.Want to Connect? Reach out to us online!Podcast – https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/in-search-of-excellence/id1579184310Website – https://insearchofexcellencepodcast.comInstagram – https://www.instagram.com/randallkaplan/LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/randall-kaplan-05858340/

TD Ameritrade Network
Spotlight: Healthcare Apparel Retailer Figs Inc. (FIGS)

TD Ameritrade Network

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 9, 2022 6:38


Figs Inc. (FIGS) is an apparel and lifestyle brand serving millions of healthcare professionals around the world through its scrubs and digital platform with nearly two million active customers. The company's CFO Trina Spear joins Nicole to talk about the company's recent growth in a nearly $80 billion global healthcare industry market as well as the company's recent IPO in May 2021.

The World's First Podcast with Erin & Sara Foster
Patience Is Not a Virtue (with FIGS Co-Founders Heather Hasson & Trina Spear)

The World's First Podcast with Erin & Sara Foster

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 14, 2021 81:57


This week, Erin and Sara are joined by FIGS co-CEOs and co-founders Trina Spear and Heather Hasson. They discuss how their company came to be and what they've learned along the way. They also share why it's important to create the world in which you want to live and get back up after you fail.Executive Producers: Erin Foster, Sara Foster, and Allison BresnickAssociate Producer: Montana McBirneyAudio Engineer: Josh WindischThis episode is sponsored by: Onyx + Rose  (www.OnyxandRose.com/foster PROMO CODE: FOSTER)Kiwi Co (www.kiwico.com PROMO CODE: FOSTER)Article (www.article.com/foster)Squarespace (www.squarespace.com/foster PROMO CODE: FOSTER)Noom (www.noom.com/foster)ThirdLove (www.thirdlove.com/foster)

In Conversation with Shopify Plus
Heather Hasson and Trina Spear on Running a Pop-Up Store, and How to Price Your Goods

In Conversation with Shopify Plus

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 4, 2021 44:45


Heather Hasson and Trina Spear, the co-founders and co-CEOs of FIGS, discuss how to run a great pop-up store experience from start to finish, what to consider when pricing your goods and how that can dictate how the consumer perceives your brand, and why cornering niche markets can mean powerful, and repeating, revenue returns."In other industries, you're acquiring a new customer and then that's it, right? Or maybe they come back every few years," says Spear. "Our customers are coming back every month, sometimes even sooner than that. In 2020, over 60% of our net revenue was from repeat transactions."Brought to you by Shopify Plus, the enterprise platform powering brands from Allbirds and Gymshark to Staples and Heinz. Join the revolution at shopify.com/plus.

In Conversation with Shopify Plus
Introducing Season Two

In Conversation with Shopify Plus

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 31, 2021 1:45


A look at our discussions for season two of In Conversation with Shopify Plus, featuring:Philip Krim, co-founder and CEO, CasperWeb Smith, founder, 2PMPayal Kadakia, founder and executive chairman, ClassPassAriel Kaye, founder and CEO, ParachuteHeather Hasson and Trina Spear, co-founders and co-CEOs, FIGSChris Sacca, co-founder, Lowercarbon Capital

Made By Women
Trina Spear on the FIGS Revolution in Medical Scrubs

Made By Women

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 8, 2021 26:47


In 2013 Trina Spear and Heather Hasson set out to revolutionize the field of medical workwear when they founded FIGS, a line of fashionable, well-made scrubs and apparel. Spear tells how it all started, and the challenges of building the business.

Up Next In Commerce
How Any Brand, Large or Small, Can Effectively Partner With Influencers

Up Next In Commerce

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 24, 2020 40:51


Ask and you shall receive! We did a survey of our audience a few months back, and the number one requested topic was influencer marketing. And for good reason! Influencer marketing has infiltrated every industry and has the ability to drive large ROI if done correctly. But many new or smaller brands are wondering if they can take part in this marketing channel. And the answer is yes! Eric Lam, is the co-founder of AspireIQ, and he is here to explain how the industry has become democratized and any brand can take part in it, as long as they go about it the right way.On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, he gets into all of that and more, including why he bet big on the idea of influencers when it was still a radical idea used mostly by large companies with large celebrities. Today, Eric says that there are certain mistakes that many companies are making when it comes to working with influencers, and he details exactly how you should go about measuring the ROI from your influencer strategy. Plus, Eric explains why he thinks platforms like TikTok are undervalued and he predicts the future of how the world of influencer marketing will grow. Main Takeaways:The ROI of the Storm: Understanding the attribution funnel of influencer marketing is a key metric to determine the ROI of your efforts. But what if there are other aspects of the partnership that should be considered, that many brands are missing?Can I See Your Manager?: One of the biggest challenges of influencer marketing is managing the various influencers you work with and the logistics of tracking and shipping the products your influencers are promoting. Building a platform and communication structure that solves that problem is what sets influencer community management companies apart.Democracy Now: Part of what social media has done is democratize content creation. Previously, brands and those with money were in control of what content was created, when, and who could see it. Now, individuals have the same capabilities in the palms of their hands, which not only leads to better content, but opens the door to revenue streams and opportunities for regular people to become influencers.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce---Transcript:Stephanie:Welcome to the Up Next In Commerce Podcast, I'm your host, Stephanie Postles. Co-Founder at mission.org. Today, we're talking all things influencers, but the co-founder of AspireIQ, Eric Lam. Eric, nice to meet you.Eric:Great to meet you as well. Thanks for having me.Stephanie:Yeah, I'm excited to have you on so no pressure, but we did a survey of our audience, and the number one thing that everyone wanted to hear about was influencers. Early, like we got dozens of responses of [crosstalk 00:00:32].Eric:Love to hear it.Stephanie:Yeah. This is the perfect interview.Eric:Fantastic. Well, that's really helpful for me to hear, especially for my team work in sales.Stephanie:There you go. Tell me a little bit about what is AspireIQ.Eric:We're a platform for brands to build and engage communities of influential people from traditional social media influencers to top customers and brand fans to experts and more. We actually started back in 2013. Even though it's mainstream now, back then, influencer marketing was a pretty new concept. Frankly, the idea of businesses using Instagram back then in a meaningful way was pretty rare. Of course, now 93% of brands and kind of based on your survey, it sounds like that's increasing, are using influencer marketing as a core part of their digital and social media strategies, and we're lucky to be partnered with over 300 brands on the platform from some of the biggest names like Samsung to leading [inaudible] brands like Glossier and Purple Mattress.Stephanie:Amazing. Tell me a little bit, how is the platform design? If I'm a new customer, what would I experience when I enter a platform and what do I get out of it?Eric:Yeah. Even back in the day, I think pretty much from the beginning, some of the biggest problems we've tried to solve in influencer marketing have come down to three parts, finding the right influencers to work with in terms of creating content and promoting your brand, to managing the complex workflow between your brand and potentially hundreds of influencers in your community, to analyzing the impact of these influencer communities on your marketing goals. I think that where we've really made our bread and butter is that second one, the building workflow. That's because if any of your listeners have built influencer marketing programs, and actually in our early days, probably our first two years, we didn't have our own software, so we experienced this ourselves when we were running influencer campaigns for our clients.Eric:The real work that goes into this is all the communication and the cumbersome project management, the data organization, the contracts, the product shipping, the payments, and just keeping track of all this stuff in one place, especially if you're working with more than, say 10 influencers at a given time, like that's where the real work is. That's where we really focused on building a platform that can provide meaningful scale to clients building this in a sophisticated way. I think at this point, we've got a range of sophistication levels from fortune 500 companies who have seven different teams working across different countries with outside agencies and the corporate office, to some of the biggest DTC brands in the world who have kind of built their secret sauce in influencer marketing, and almost need to design this customized system within our platform for how to do influencer marketing. So, it's come a long way in terms of the sophistication level that a lot of our clients have had.Stephanie:That's awesome. Since 2013, what kind of shifts in the market have you seen? Because when I think about influencers, especially back in the day, it's like, if you don't have a Kardashian, you don't have an influencer. Now it seems like way more about like micro influencers who have a trusted audience and people actually buy what they want. What kind of things have you seen like shifts in the market?Eric:Yeah, it's evolved in a lot of different, really interesting ways. You're exactly right. I think in the early days, well, frankly in the really early days, when we first started, almost no one was doing influencer marketing, which was obviously tough for our business because we were trying to go to every brand and convince them to spend even like a hundred bucks on an influencer.Stephanie:They're like, no, thanks. Out of budget.Eric:Yeah. I think that was already like pulling teeth. I think, back then, I think the only brands doing this were probably these emerging ecommerce brands where ... they can't compete on traditional advertising, so Instagram had become this place where they discovered already consumers were coming there to learn about what to buy, what to do, where to go. That was true, even though back then Instagram wasn't this kind of commercialized or sponsor place the way it is today. But even in our early days, what kept us going is that we talked to so many ecommerce brands and consistently what we heard was the biggest channel that they were focusing on was social media and specifically influencer marketing.Eric:Then I think, yeah, after a few years, maybe like 2015 and 2016, the industry kind of evolve to what you were talking about, where everybody was trying to work with Kardashians. It was all about working with the biggest fashion bloggers, the biggest celebrities. The bigger, the better. And you're thinking about these vanity metrics, like how many followers someone has, or how many likes they have, regardless of if they saw meaningful returns on investment. Those were the early cowboy days of influencer marketing. I think because of a lot of the mainstream brands got involved there, you started to then see an evolution of how a lot of the DTC, a lot of ecommerce brands were starting to think about influencer marketing because they were kind of getting priced out of these big macro celebrities.Eric:So, they started honing in on more specialized micro influencers, like you mentioned, who, they might not have as big of a following, but they were a lot more targeted, a lot more focused in the concept of created, which meant they were a great fit for more personalized experiences, more authentic content in terms of the segments they were trying to reach among their customers. I think the second thing that was really interesting about the way this evolved is that these same ecommerce brands started using influencers for more than just trying to reach their audiences like in an advertising way, and they started looking at them as holistic content creators, because when you think about what an influencer is, they're kind of like this studio photographer model all wrapped into one person, whose literal job it is to make engaging content for this generation.Eric:These brands started re-purposing a lot of their content and using it in all their different channels, from paid advertising, to ecommerce website, to email marketing and more because content became this King of everything they wanted to do across digital. Today, I think that's kind of even more the case where you're looking at even more long tail influencers, and even people that aren't considered traditional social media influencers, but are really important to the brands and their strategies from marketing perspective. Brands might be building programs where they're combining influencers, but they're also combining those with top customers, power users, experts, working professionals who do customer referrals, whichever groups of people who have the greatest word of mouth impact on the customers and trying to win over, regardless of if they have a social media following or not. I think it's a really exciting phase of influencer marketing we're heading into, where it really includes, even democratize, where brands are kind of looking for these authentic voices, no matter where they come from.Stephanie:Yep. I love that. Yeah, I was just going to say, it feels like now there's so much more opportunity for anyone to have an influencer if you find the right person, whereas before, not so much. But if you're thinking about finding an influencer in your space or finding someone to partner with or using your platform to find some, what kind of metrics would you look at to make sure they're a good fit? What should a brand be looking for to be like, "ah, this is my perfect person?"Eric:Yeah. I think a lot of it comes down to what the goals of this influencer program is. But I think, at the end of the day, a lot of that comes down to subjective type of qualities. Obviously, you can see if they have a big following, you can see if they have really high engagement rates, but at the end of the day, you want to look at, what are people talking about in their comment section? What's the type of narrative they're kind of build with their audience? And does that really resonate with the type of nuanced audience segment that you're trying to build with your audiences? Because that tells you a lot about how they're going to co-create this narrative with you.Eric:That's really what we tell people when we give them advice is, you should really be building relationships with these influencers and treat them as a part of your community rather than looking at it as a transaction. I think that one of the biggest mistakes I see a lot is that, people will look at influencer marketing almost as like buying ad space, and it's really not like buying ad space because content creators are people.Stephanie:Yeah, these are people.Eric:Yeah, these are people who have these like nuanced feelings about the content they make, what they feel comfortable with, what's authentic to them. This is like their livelihood. Communicating with that level of empathy is really important, and if you can find people that really match your brand values and are going to be true advocates for you, that really translates into the authenticity, both from what they're saying, but also the kind of content they make because influencer marketing is pretty mature now and audiences can smell inauthenticity from a mile away. So, it matters a lot to find people that really believe in your brand.Stephanie:How do you go about making sure that a relationship is built on your platform and that someone's not just going through and being like, "Okay, bye. I want this." How do you develop or encourage a relationship to be built before they start working together?Eric:Yeah, I think a lot of times, frankly, sometimes it starts not necessarily with a kind of a official collaboration or with an official contract or anything like that. A lot of brands, what they do is they'll do what's called product seeding, and they'll send these gift bags out to influencers or micro influencers. A lot of people try out the products. If they like the products, they'll have them give feedback, they'll invite them to some events, they'll have them be part of some community activities before they really kind of like level them up into true ambassadors for the brand that have these more formalized contracts and agreements and payment structures and things like that. I think, obviously not all of that is necessary, but it kind of creates this much more organic experience, where ambassadors almost like come to you or are built with you, rather than just saying to every person, hey, we've got this $10,000 campaign and here you go, who wants the money? Kind of going based on much more of a transactional experience.Eric:That's one way to go. I think other ways to go are influencers who can come to you and are creating a more of an inbound experience. What we see a lot is brands setting up kind of these programs and looking for new ambassadors and new influencers to the program. A lot of times those might be smaller, but getting people to kind of sign up when they're small, when they have smaller followings is a great way to almost like build this farm system of up and coming influencers that are working with you in their early days so that when they become really big and famous. Obviously they've been kind of long-term supporters, long-term advocates of your brand for quite a while.Stephanie:Yep. That's great. Yeah, I think I've mentioned a few times in different episodes that I was ... I forget who I was listening to, where they're discussing influencers and how to pick them, but they said you should zero in on the comments and how their followers are actually engaging, because if they're engaging in one way where it's just like, oh, that's pretty, I like that shirt or something, that might not actually be an influential person you should work with versus someone who's saying, "Where can I buy that shirt right now?" If you see a lot of that in the comments, even if they're small, like they have people waiting to buy whatever they wear. I thought that was always a good reminder.Eric:Yeah, totally. I think that a lot of times, that that comes from some of these smaller influencers, because they're so focused on the type of content they make and their audiences really trust them with that messaging. I think a lot of influencers just understand that when they take these sponsorship deals, they're doing it in a way where they really need to make sure it looks, and it is the fact that they really care about this brand. They believe in the values, they believe in the product. I think audiences are really attuned to that, and I think they can pick up on that.Stephanie:Yep. I agree. In previous episodes, we've had a lot of guests tell us that it's been really hard to accurately measure the ROI of an influencer campaign. A couple of people have tried it or quite a few of them have tried it, but they just didn't know if they got the results or they didn't know how long until I see results. What do you advise around, how do you make sure to measure things in a way that you can see an ROI or not, and when should they expect to see some kind of success?Eric:Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, it is actually challenging. I think it's because, the reason is because I think influencer marketing sits at this unique intersection of brand and performance marketing where it's a little bit of both. I think if you're looking at as only one or only the other one, you're almost like undervaluing what you have in your influencer program. We actually have this internal marketing strategy team that works with all of our clients, and their job is basically to design this type of thing. Like, how are you going to measure the overall ROI of your program? Because it's so unique to every client. In terms of brand awareness, obviously that stuff is relatively straight forward. Like, how many views am I getting? How many video minutes are watched? How much engagement there are? What's the audience demographics that I'm trying to reach?Eric:Obviously this is an ecommerce podcast, so most people are interested in, how am I generating sales? That's where it gets really interesting, because like you said, it's not the easiest thing in the world to build the full attribution funnel for influencer marketing. Why is that? It's because all of this content sits somewhere that isn't pixel. It sits not on your own channel, and not even on your own Facebook. It sits on the influencer's Instagram page or their YouTube, and not all the time there's easy ways to click out of links. What we typically do is we build a combination of indirect and direct metrics to give you a sense of how your program is performing. There's definitely lots of ways to measure direct conversions. There's link tracking, coupon code redemptions, affiliate links, landing page sign-ups.Eric:Typically, those are very good ways of seeing directly attributable sales. Especially if you've built kind of this really great long tail of ambassadors who are all doing, like I said, whether your product seeding them, you're seeding them these gaskets, and you're not necessarily asking for anything, where you're building potentially hundreds or thousands of ambassadors who are ... you might not have a ton of following, but they really believe in the product and they're kind of posting about you. You'll start to see a lot of return in terms of referrals on that program, just based on kind of their channels clicking into those links and go into your website and buying things, something like that. But a lot of the times, when you're talking about influencer posts, because there's not an easy way to click out of this, of the posts, we tend to look at more indirect measures because a lot of times what happens is a consumer sees a post, they see the brand and then they exit to a browser and they go directly to the website.Eric:We say is that, hey, look at the indirect measures like referral sources from social channels, and that includes things like the Instagram shopping and checkout, which Facebook is investing a ton of money into all types of ways of commercializing your social channels. Then of course, there's the value of the content itself, which has been really interesting. Like I said, a lot of ecommerce brands are looking at these influencers as content creation vehicles, and so there's obviously the cost that it would've cost to create, potentially hundreds of purpose-built photos and videos, but what's even more is, what's the value of having 10 times the number of assets to personalize all these digital customer journeys from your paid ads, your ecommerce, your email marketing, and almost always what we see is our performance marketing clients will have an overall increase in their ROAS, but thanks to this kind of ongoing pipeline of constant.Eric:I think the last one that's super interesting thing has been really game changing over the last couple of years is actually using influencer channels themselves as paid ad vehicles. There's actually ... obviously there's easy functionality to boost posts that perform well, but there's actually, for in channels like Instagram, if an influencer has a business account, there's an option to grant advertiser access to a third party so that you can actually run a wide diversity of paid ads using the influencers content, where the ads are coming from the influencers channel themselves. This actually gives marketers almost this infinite number of channels to test on and has been an absolute game changer for brands looking to build more sophisticated paid social strategies. All those things are kind of like in combination, obviously are this complex web of how do you value the ROI of an influencer, but it's because there's this huge diversity of the ways that you could utilize them depending on your marketing strategy.Stephanie:That's great. Yeah. That's a really good summary, especially that last point. I don't think I have heard that, or I was not aware that you could leverage their accounts and kind of post from under their accounts. Yeah, that seems to be interesting.Eric:Yeah, it's little known, but it's become a lot more popularized, I think recently. Obviously you want to make sure that you have a firm agreement with the influencer. This is something that in our platform we kind of wrap up in a bow for you to be able to request, but obviously you're using their content, you're getting the right approvals from them, so they don't have their channel advertising to people or using content that they're not comfortable with. But assuming that they are, it's actually a win-win for both parties, because essentially what's happening is, as a brand, you're kind of leveraging them as a voice for your brand to kind of new audiences. For them, they're reaching new audiences themselves and in a way that can kind of get them more followers and more reach.Stephanie:Yeah, that's great. I could see there being a bit of like, making sure that whatever you write is in their voice, or is it like pretty transparent that this is a brand takeover of their account?Eric:I think it's typically a collaboration, and a lot of times what we'll advise is that, definitely having the influencer sign off on all the language and making sure that they're comfortable with what they're saying, because you don't want to get ... definitely don't want to misrepresent what they're saying, and it is in a partnership between brand and creator.Stephanie:Yep. Got it. All right. A little story time. First, we'll start with, what are some of the biggest missteps that you've seen brands experience when they've tried to set up their own influencer partnerships? What are some horror stories that you've heard in the industry? You know I like failure.Eric:Yeah, definitely I think a couple of common things that I see, and again, they kind of relate to this idea that, hey, these influencers are ads basically, and that leads to behaviors, like I said about not building relationships. I talked about that one already, but I think another one is basically taking too risk averse of an approach in the creative process. I won't name specific brands, but I think, especially when you're talking about like the bigger brands in the industry, the Fortune 500 brands, a lot of them struggle with the idea of kind of like merging their influencer strategy with their creative strategy, because they typically have this really rigid process of guidelines and brand safety that they apply usually to kind of $25,000 to $50,000 photo shoots, and they want to apply that same framework to influencers.Eric:And they're like, cool. They have to do this set of 20 guidelines, they have to check all these boxes in terms of what they're going to say, they have to say it in this way, and in this tone. At the end of the day, that just doesn't work because people are smart. Consumers are smart. Consumers know when something is super forced and inauthentic. At the end of the day, the whole point of working with influencers is that you're co-creating a narrative. You're supposed to be harnessing the personality and the creativity that's unique to each person, and by forcing them to kind of fit in this tightly defined box that is so clearly branded, that just leads to poor performing content. It's kind of defeating the purpose of using influencers in the first place. I would say that's the biggest misstep I tend to see, and it is typical among, I would say like the bigger brands in the industry.Stephanie:Got it. I could see brands, especially smaller ones, trying to find, of course, untapped influencers. What industries do you think there are a bunch of influencers that maybe you guys haven't even tapped into, and what's maybe bringing this question about, as I just did a recap episode with one of my coworkers around like the first 50 episodes, and we were talking about shoppable gaming and unreal and how there's influencers in these game worlds and how shopping is going to be in there soon. I was like, oh, it seems like there could be a lot of virtual influencers that maybe aren't tapped, but are there any industries like that where you're like, oh, we're exploring this or we see this being big in the future, but we haven't actually fully gotten it yet?Eric:Yeah. Well, I would say, even though it's been incredibly popularized in the last year or so, I would say TikTok is still wildly undervalued. I think not enough brands understand that TikTok has this enormous breadth and depth of not only audiences, but content creators, because I'm 38 years old and I look at a lot of like Parenting TikTok, I look at a lot of the Home Depot TikTok. It's so different than I think most perceptions are of, oh, it's just funny videos or teenagers dancing and things like that, because there's such a diversity of content and audience within TikTok that I think only a handful of brands are really taking advantage of. That's definitely, I would say a big focus for us going forward, is kind of getting in deep with tech talk and making sure that our brands can be successful there.Eric:I would say more to specifically your question around industries, I would say a lot of industries that we've seen that have kind of more emerging, I would say "influencers," not necessarily traditionally defined influencers, are more like professional fields. For example, one of my friends from business school named Trina Spear, she's founded this company FIGS Scrubs. I think they've had the strategy probably for ... maybe since they were founded, where they've almost created influencers out of nurses and doctors where, when they first started, there were no nurse influencers or doctor influencers or anything like that. But they started partnering with all these people that could just create really great content, and they might just be people in that professional field people that might have 500 followers, but posted really cool content and they would send the product, get them involved, get them bought into the mission and the vision of the brand.Eric:Now a lot of those people, they have tens of thousands of followers because of the partnership they've done with FIGS, and FIGS is an incredibly popular brand among the healthcare industry now, and has a really, really loyal following across ... up and down nurses and doctors and everything else.Stephanie:That's really cool. Yeah, I think we had FIGS on our list. I have to check with Hillary on that, but I think we had them potentially coming on maybe so. Yeah, that's really cool to hear how they do that.Eric:They're great. I look forward to listening to that one.Stephanie:Cool. How do you onboard new influencers, and who are some names of people that I would know? Because even though it's kind of vanity, I'm sure everyone listening is like, well, who are some names that I would know in your platform?Eric:Yeah. Interestingly, we don't really take that kind of approach when it comes to influencers, because a lot of times our influencers are brand-driven. What we try to do is we try to provide a system of record and a platform for our brands to manage all of their influencer programs themselves. This is actually an industry choice we've made, I think back in the founding of the company, where we decided pretty early that we were not going to win based on us having the most influencers or us having access to talent agencies or communities of people, because frankly, we were basically four guys who came from either a gaming company or a hedge fund, and so we were not going to win based on who we knew.Eric:What we decided to do is we said, okay, what we're going to do is we're going to build a platform that has incredible workflow and ability to scale up these influencer programs and have brands build the tools they need to manage them, and those brands will essentially onboard and essentially, almost onboard the influencers onto our platform themselves. It's actually played out pretty well where we now have hundreds of thousands of influencers on the platform. I think in a 95% of cases, those influencers were brought by some brand that we had on our platform who essentially invited those influencers themselves to the AspireIQ platform. This has been a really great way of feeding.Stephanie:Oh, that's smart.Eric:... a marketplace where when ... in [inaudible] teach about like, when you start a marketplace, you have to create standalone value for one of the sides, and that was our [inaudible] standalone value for the brands that they would essentially attract the influencers to the platform because we just didn't have them.Stephanie:Let's talk about the early days a little bit. I saw that you had worked at Pocket Gems, and I think it said you led a very large team who was mostly accountable for like 80 million in annual revenue. I want to hear a bit about your background and what you did at Pocket Gems that maybe helped influence AspireIQ.Eric:Yeah. I started my career in finance actually before business school, which is really disappointing for my dad because my dad was a computer science professor, so I didn't get into technology immediately the way that he wanted. But yeah, after business school, I went to Pocket Gems. Yeah, started as a product manager, built a couple of games there. Pocket Gems, for some background, is a mobile app gaming company. Really, it was an incredible experience because gaming, especially back then, I mean, you think about like, this pre-Zynga IPO and all the kind of the rise of mobile gaming, and everything was extremely data-driven and fast paced. It was a great environment to learn about how to build products that can grow and scale really quickly.Eric:But I think the biggest thing it taught me was essentially how much mobile and social were going to change the world, and pretty much changed the world so much more than I had ever conceptualized, I think, before joining, in almost a similar way with the way the internet changed everything in the late '90s. It's because of the fact that we have this super computer in our pockets that's like a high-definition video camera that makes any of this stuff possible. I think, as we were building games there, as we were building apps, as we were doing user acquisition, I could tell, based on the things that were working and the channels that we were working for, for our own growth, that all this was happening here organically. When you looked at social media, everyone can create this amazing content that's just as relevant and meaningful as what's done in studio, and it's completely democratized, giving a voice to anybody with a mobile phone and social media.Eric:I wanted to work on something following that, that could take advantage or basically capitalize on the fact that the world is essentially changing from what I call companies to people. Because when you open your phone, you look at most content nowadays, chances are it's something that a regular person made. It's not a company. It was kind of obvious, at the time, to a lot of us that were founding the company that people were going to be at the center of how these businesses or brands were built. That's what we were focused on doing. We didn't have it all figured out in terms of what we would do or the product we would build. We started with social media and went from there, but we just knew it was around this idea that brands and building a brand, building a marketing strategy needed to be much more people oriented, and around this idea that mobile and social were going to change the world.Stephanie:When you launched into aspire IQ, what were some maybe hiccups or missteps that you guys made in the beginning when trying to figure out this marketplace and building the platform, anything happened there of note?Eric:Yeah, it was funny because again, it was for people who didn't come from the marketing industry and we're trying to get into ... which I think, when I gave people advice, people would always ask me like, "Hey, are you going to ... should I start this company? I really want to do a startup." A lot of times the advice I give is, "Look, if this is something you have to do, it shouldn't matter what I say, that you're going to do it." I think this was really interesting thing where we all had this intense belief that this was going to be a thing, that this would work, even though none of us had come from the industry. I think, because none of us had come from the industry, that really put us at this disadvantage for, who to talk to. We were really scrapping trying to find our first sales and talk to any ecommerce brands that would listen to us, talk to any brands that would listen to us.Eric:It was such early days that we couldn't even charge any money for the product we made. We built this product in about a year, and we basically had to give it away for free because people just didn't value it. They didn't understand why they should pay a platform for influencer marketing. I think we actually had to create ... is really funny. In our first outreaches to influencers even, we were trying to scrape together these first influencer campaigns where we had to pretend that we were the platform, but actually underneath, it was just the four of us trying to run and match-make with different influencers. But we were saying like ...Stephanie:[crosstalk] service.Eric:Yeah, but we were saying like, oh yeah, there's something really like technological going on under the hood. Don't worry [inaudible] the brands. But it was actually just us trying to run the different influencers saying, "Hey, look, can you please join this campaign?" We had to use the pseudonym actually, because nobody would respond to our emails among influencers. They didn't believe that we were a real company. We had to use pseudonyms of people that sounded more legitimate to make sure these influencers would respond to us.Stephanie:Oh, that's crazy.Eric:In the early days, again, not only were brands not really doing a lot of influencer marketing, but the influencers themselves weren't doing a lot of "influencer marketing" among sponsorship opportunities. This wasn't as much of a business for them, where they're already and set up to take a lot of these inbound requests. In the early days, that matchmaking process, like you said, was quite difficult. Of course, nowadays, it's almost like a machine where everybody ... if you have like 5,000 followers, you might even have a manager at this point. Yeah, in those early days, it was a lot of a lot of talking on the phone to explain who we were and what we were trying to do.Stephanie:Yeah. That's great. I think that also is such an advantage that when you don't come from the industry, it reminds me of like us building up this media company like none of us really knew what we were doing in the early days, but from your perspective, I could see a lot of people thinking about building an influencer company and being like, I need to partner with Hollywood, I need to go to CAA. There's a certain way things are done around here. I think that's actually a huge advantage when you don't really know what you don't know and you just move forward and figure it out, and maybe do it differently.Eric:Yeah. I think that, that definitely helped us, I would say in the later stages of the company, because by the time, like I had said, in 2016, 2017, when this took off as an industry, we were one of the few companies that have built this as a true software platform, because all of this came from technology. So, how are we going to win? We weren't going to win because again, we were connected to the right people. So, we were just heads down, really building as much of the product we could essentially understand based on our own running of these campaigns. When the industry took off, we had assembled this immense product advantage versus a lot of our competitors that were essentially glorified agencies. Back then, I think a lot of companies were effectively ... because you might come from an agency, so you think that an agency is the way to solve this problem, this matchmaking problem.Eric:But what we saw was something much more nuanced, which was, okay after you've solved the matchmaking problem, what are you going to do with these influencers, and how are you going to make this a scalable program that will last the test of time? All those things were built into, essentially how do you create almost like a CRM workflow with analytics and all the different automation that we built into it that would be relevant, frankly, for people that weren't really doing anything back when we first started. We were basically lucky that we survived the first few years with almost like making no money, that we could make it to the maturity of the industry when our product became more relevant.Stephanie:Yeah, that's good. Because some people are a little too far ahead and you guys were ahead, but you ended up making it work, which is awesome.Eric:Yeah, absolutely.Stephanie:Now that we're talking a little bit about the future, I want to head into the future. What do you think the future of influencers looks like maybe in like five to 10 years?Eric:Yeah. I think that, like I said, I think influencer marketing is going to keep diversifying to ... just not people who necessarily have social media following it. I think it's going to be around who is influential for your brand specifically? Again, it could be professional, it could be experts, it could be customers. I think a lot of the brands we talk to that are on the bleeding edge, like a Glossier for example, is the gold standard, I would say, of this, who's one of our favorite partner customers. They figured out, I think first that, it doesn't really matter if you have this massive social following. They've built this community of fans, employees, even healthcare workers, things like that, and regardless of who you are, they do an incredible job of making you feel like a part of the community, probably because the brand started out of this shared love of Emily Weiss's beauty blog.Eric:Regardless if you have a following on social media, they highlight a lot of their community members in their marketing. They give them exclusive first looks so they can get feedback and build buzz around new product launches. They take an active interest in pretty much what all these different communities, how they respond to products, and that shapes a lot of the strategy that Glossier has as a brand. I would say they're one of the first, I would say community led brands. I would say that that's going to be, what I would say is the future of, not just influencer marketing, but building commerce brands in general, because what you see now it is there's such a dependence on third parties for a lot of ecommerce companies on generating leads from places like Facebook ads.Eric:That's almost becoming this increasing tax on the cost of doing business of running ecommerce. When you've built an advantage for a brand like Glossier, where you almost have your own channel of your community that generates all this buzz and brand awareness and referrals that, that becomes this competitive advantage, because you can build growth without relying on third parties doing all of your lead generation. I think that's what I'm really excited about as kind of the future of influencer marketing, but also the future of kind of commerce in the way brands will start to own their own communities and their own channels.Stephanie:Yeah. That's a great answer. I think that's the gold standard that a lot of brands probably want to figure out is like, how do you build that community that you can leverage and not always having to rely on external customer acquisition? But it'd be interesting to dive into their model of like, how do they actually build that up and build that community of fans to then have that network to launch to with their products and whatnot?Stephanie:All right, cool. With a few minutes left, let's dive into the lightning round brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I'm going to throw a question your way and you have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready, Eric?Eric:Fantastic. Ready. Stephanie:What's up next on your reading list?Eric:Ooh. I think that one book that I really love and just read is a book by Carrie Melissa Jones called Building Brand Communities. She goes into a lot about how you ... similar to the Glossier example, you really need to co-create an experience of communities with shared values, kind of mutual benefit, how is your community going to interact with you as a brand? I love that book. We actually sent it to I think all of our customers.Stephanie:Oh, nice. I'll have to check that out. That sounds like a good one. What is the best piece of advice you ever received?Eric:Yeah, I think the best advice I ever received was either from like a personal or professional level, are you growing as a person? Are you scaling? Are you developing new skills? I give that advice either to employees at the company or people who are asking you for advice. A lot of it has to do, its just kind of acceleration in any way that makes sense or is meaningful to you.Stephanie:I love that. That is good. What's up next on your Netflix queue. What are you enjoying these days?Eric:Oh, wow. Netflix. I just started watching Killing Eve. I think it's an older show, but that's ...Stephanie:Okay, is it good?Eric:Yeah. I love that show. I don't know if I'm as big of a fan of Sandra Oh, but it's a BBC show, and I love pretty much all BBC shows.Stephanie:Okay. I'll have check that out. I have not even heard of that one. What do you wish you understood better right now? It could be a trend, it could be a piece of tech, anything.Eric:I think the thing I wish I understood better is how Silicon Valley works. What's funny is we've never been kind of the favored child, I would say, of the tech industry here and in terms of raising money and things like that. I think marketing has never been the sexy object, the way crypto and those things were. I think I wish I understood the way VCs thought better.Stephanie:All right, Eric. Well, this has been a really fun interview. Where can people find out more about you and AspireIQ?Eric:Yeah. Definitely you can check out aspireiq.com/upnext. Yeah, we've got some interesting reading there. We've definitely got a case study on Purple Mattress and a bunch of other cool stuff to read.Stephanie:Ooh, nice. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for joining. We will have to have you back for round two, maybe even in person in the studio in the future.Eric:Hopefully the world works out that way. Thank you so much, Stephanie. It's great to be on. Fun time.

Corner Office from Marketplace
The co-CEOs trying to disrupt scrubs

Corner Office from Marketplace

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 5, 2019 17:17


Health care employs more people in the United States than any other industry. About 11% of all all private-sector workers work in health care. Heather Hasson and Trina Spear’s company Figs is out to reinvent and disrupt the uniforms that many of those workers wear: scrubs. We talked with them at Figs’ warehouse in City of Industry, California.

Launch Pad
Scrubs That Flatter

Launch Pad

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 7, 2017 27:38


Scrubs that fit well. Scrubs that flatter your body. Scrubs with antimicrobial fabric, to stop bacteria and infections from spreading. The medical apparel industry is a $10 billion industry in the US alone—so where have scrubs like these been? That’s what Trina Spear asked herself, and her answer was FIGS, which she calls the “highest quality medical apparel in the world.” FIGS has the potential to turn the medical apparel industry upside down. As she explains: “it’s a commoditized industry that we are de-commoditizing. It’s an unbranded industry that we are branding.” Listen to Karl and Trina talk about why FIGS is a B-Corp that gives away a set of scrubs to a healthcare provider in need for every set they sell. And just how many meetings it took for Trina to raise their first $2 million in funding. (Spoiler: about 100. Which Karl points out is totally normal, for you entrepreneurs out there who are feeling discouraged about heading out to meeting #43.) See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Today's Leading Women with Marie Grace Berg ~ Real Stories. Real Inspiration. Real Take-aways. 7-Days A Week!

TRINA Spear, is the co-founder of FIGS. FIGS is revolutionizing the outdated medical apparel industry through its use of 100% ridiculously soft, performance fabrics that are tailored to perfection. For centuries, medical professionals have been subjected to inferior medical apparel and a mediocre shopping experience. Not anymore! With the creation of FIGS, they now have access to scrubs that feel better, last longer, and provide unparalleled freedom of movement. For every set of scrubs sold, FIGS gives a set to a healthcare provider in need. FIGS hope to change the way people think, the way people feel, and most importantly, the way people perform when they put on the FIGS Scrubs!

scrubs figs trina spear
Biz Women Rock
BWR 019: Trina Spear: Building a Medical Movement With Scrubs

Biz Women Rock

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 24, 2014 46:23


Trina Spear and her Co-Founder Heather Hasson want to change the world. And they're going to do it by selling and giving high quality, fashion scrubs to healthcare professionals all around the world!! The unique business is not just about their super suave (and highly functional and comfortable) scrubs. It's about the attitude and vision of its leaders! Listen to Trina's interview and I guarantee you'll leave with your own business on fire (in a good way). :)