In This Episode You’ll Hear About:

• How her best friend’s sickness in college led to a search for a better and safer way to use good household products and foods without the chemicals and perfumes and harmful ingredients that are in so many conventional products
• What Kelly and Allison did after graduating college that totally changed both of their lives and is now also changing the lives of Branch Basics consumers
• Why Kelly and Allison’s Co-Founder, who is also Allison’s Aunt Marilee, has been an incredible resource and consultant and asset in product development for the company
• How the three of them launched a website with a company store and discovered helpful content to deciding that they needed to build a brand
• How they had an opportunity to join an incubator program at the University of Virginia, which led to them meeting their future CEO, which led to a million dollar friends and family round
• Why a huge and hard lesson learned led to a stronger company and why doing the right thing was so important even though it was oftentimes difficult
• How they have been able to stay genuine throughout the whole process of building this company and why it’s ok to learn as you go
• What advice Kelly has for aspiring entrepreneurs who have a great idea and want to start a business

To Find Out More:‍

BranchBasics.com‍

Quotes:‍

“This whole experience has now led Marilee to be such an amazing asset to product formulation for us because we won't compromise on certain things because we know how it affects the chemically sensitive.”

“Our goal was how can we get Marilee's brain on the internet? It was not, how do we start a company to sell this product or that product? We had no business background.”

“Cleaning is an easier habit or easier product to change. You're not addicted to your cleaning products. It's not as hard to change as food, and it's not as expensive as an infrared sauna. And it makes such a huge impact on your air quality and your health immediately.”

“Our goal when we first launched our brand was to position it in a way that consumers would understand, so we made sure our spray bottles and our labels on that made sense to easily use it with the concentrate without having to get a measuring spoon out or figure out a ratio.”

“We were not going to go back out with something unless we knew it worked and it was actually really safe. Because even if something is safe, if it doesn't work people are going to end up resorting back to the toxic cleaners.”

“I think you figure it out as you go. I mean, I kind of like the fact that we didn't go to business school because we didn't think inside certain boxes or parameters, and we just kind of got creative and figured out as we went. And we stayed genuine to what felt right.”

“We want to be truth tellers. We want to not have a product that we're just trying to spin in a way to sell to you. We want to empower you to become your own better product advocate.”

“No one would willingly say, yeah, put these poisons in my products, yet we buy them every day because we trust that whatever is on the shelf is safe. And sadly, yes, we have to be educated.” 

“I think too often you can overanalyze and talk things to death and want things to look perfect or be perfect. Just start doing it and iterate along the way, and go in with the mindset of like, you're always going to be improving, you're always going to be testing and learning and making improvements. So don't let perfection hold you back from just getting started.”

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