Gwen Whiting

broke up with rebirth.

We met actually, I think I just sold.

I mean, to me, it was just such a personal need.

The landscape of products and options for cleaning in 2002 when I started and I launched in 2004 was super limited.

It was the garbage at the grocery store and a dry cleaner.

That was it.

The vocabulary for me, I was a designer, apparel designer.

I had a textile background, but like I didn't there wasn't the terms of white space or

Or this, you know, it wasn't until after 2008, nine, when people just like woke up and were like, oh, here's an opportunity.

I'm going to do mattresses.

This was my own personal need.

And it was so obvious that it could be better and it should be better.

You were a business owner where you started a business where you ran a business.

My dad had his own small business and ran a company.

So I came from a house of that was a lifestyle was creating a business and, you know, a life for yourself and.

And in college, I had lots of ideas.

And I started a Thai business in high school.

I had a business plan in college that I did a lot of research and went down the road, but needed a job.

I was like, oh, I need to start something.

It was like, I want to get a job.

I want to create, I want to do all these things.

But then this was the idea that was worth going for.

And I did it on a smaller sort of cottage industry level, all those other ways.

But this was really the big business idea versus like a small side hobby or a passion or something fun to do.

Yeah, it wasn't a thing.

It wasn't a roadmap.

It was something that I didn't know how to do.

I built...

you know, a very small, responsible bootstrapped company very, very differently.

I built with credit card debt instead.

Yeah.

I launched with a hundred thousand dollar SBA loan.

That was the money that funded my first production run in the launch.

but that doesn't last very long.

I mean, I say that my 16 years of Laundress was a never-ending startup.

It was scrappy through and through the end and self-funding and

is that's just the nature of the game.

You don't get money thrown at you to like build a lux office or throw money just like out there that to just to spend it because you have it.

It's a very different approach.

So there's, you know, a bottom line and the responsibility and a compromise for every spend.

But I never carried a credit card balance in my life.

That was not something that our family did.

Our family didn't even use credit cards.

We had a credit card for rental cars to travel once a year.

It wasn't a thing.

And I was raised that credit card debt was the worst thing you could ever do.

Impossible.

But, you know, the money, the hundred thousand dollar went quickly in an inventory based company.

You have to buy your inventory.

And I needed access to cash.

And it's very comical because there's like this small mini female founder movement, like a very mini movement.

And they're like, oh, you're a woman.

You can get money.

And that was like really small money.

loans that were at nine percent and the interest rates then were like two three percent so it was it was it was better to get a credit card apr and like a twenty thousand dollar line of credit and then

And that continued.

And this is the day when you actually got the applications in the mail.

And I would probably get a, you know, I got an envelope almost once a week.

And if you just filled it out, they actually gave you a card and a line of credit.

So I was like, I became a pro at rolling over credit card debt from one card to the other and jumping APRs and jumping credit limits.

And, you know, quarter million dollars later.

That's how I funded the laundress.

And that all came down in 2008 with the financial crisis.

Oh, my gosh.

I mean, it was unhinged for the whole time.

You know, I

What I put myself through and that carrying that debt and living hand to mouth all those years is incredibly unhealthy.

And, you know, everything's trending and on Instagram and people see and think this is like such a sexy, luxurious lifestyle to be a founder and get money thrown at you.

And you got, I go to these events and it's like, I'm series C and series B and series, series, series.

And it's like, Hey, I don't know what you're talking about.

Be like, that's not impressive to me.

Like that's such a badge of honor.

And I'm like the outlier who walked away with selling my company with a majority ownership.

So it's a very different landscape of at the end of the day, what presents as sexy versus the reality of keeping your company and keeping your equity and having that versus giving it away.

all those years.

Exactly.

It's like the minute you raise money, you just gave that away.

You're not your boss anymore and you have stakeholders and you just gave your...

autonomy and authority and away.

Independence, the whole thing.

Were you tempted at times to take on outside capital?

No, because as horrible as it was, I knew that I couldn't give any part away for my own protection.

I loved what I did and I'm so passionate about it, which you experienced.

I was so focused on just getting through the day and the week and the month and the year.

And so I had a concept of the business plan that I wrote was like a five-year plan of you do it for five years and you exit.

And at the time I,

when writing that in 2002, the only other brands that had like a niche or a small brand or a creator brand outside of the giant corporate structures were acquired really quickly.

It was like Bobby Brown and Bliss Spa and Frederick Fakai.

And then there's a Bumble and Moe.

There's a handful of really small niche prestige brands.

That was like the birth of,

something non giant CPG and their track records were like really quick acquisition.

So I just assumed that that was like the lifespan of this kind of journey.

Not because I wanted to exit or understood what that even meant.

I just thought that's how that worked.

And then the 2008 financial crisis changed that.

And then you wake up one day and it's 16 years later and you're still doing it.

But I did expect to exit, not from a financial perspective, not like, oh, I'm going to cash my chips and have a windfall.

That was never part of my understanding or sensibility of it.

My feeling was that I could only take my brand and my company so far and a giant or a larger parent company

I needed that for my brand to like go to the next step.

Why did you think that?

Because it just seemed like it was needed to be bigger and to get into different distribution categories and things that I didn't necessarily have experience with.

Maybe I didn't have that much also interest in like getting into the grocery store business, but I just was like, okay, that's for someone else who does that.

And again, this is also sort of the understanding of what happened in the landscape, what other brand trajectories were.

I think that no one is more qualified or competent or passionate or the vision of

the brand than me, period.

And I was also in a complicated situation.

I'm saddened by what happened, but I can't regret it because I was in a very, very complicated, toxic partnership work environment.

So I kind of did what I had to do, but I didn't expect the outcome.

They came into my store on Prince Street.

I had a retail store on Prince Street.

I started talking to my sales associate.

Like it was so bizarre.

It was completely unprofessional.

And, you know, you kind of like always are like, what are you doing here?

Are you like sussy now?

Are you copying?

Are you like looking at the competition?

Like, what are you doing?

And you're having a dialogue with someone from my team.

Which is also strange.

Yeah, but I was like, what are you doing?

What can I help you?

What are you looking for?

Where are you from?

And he's like, oh, I'm from Unilever.

I flew in from Ohio.

Like, is Gwen here?

That's crazy.

It's crazy.

So this woman calls me from the store at my office.

30 blocks away.

And she's like, go ahead and go ahead.

I think you need to get down here right now.

There's a guy here from Unilever.

And I was like, will you please pass the phone, put him on the phone.

And I was like, excuse me, what are you doing?

Like you're in my store, in my space, in front of my team.

Like if you want to have a conversation, like, do you want to call me back?

You want to step outside and call me back?

And then what happened?

So then the dialogues, he stepped out and called me back.

But I guess in retrospect, I should have been like, what is up with these people?

Like, this is their process.

Exactly, exactly.

And I always said, because the store was sort of like the last thing on the business plan to-do list, because it was important to me to feature and showcase my whole vision in a brick and mortar place that you could understand what the whole world of the laundress was.

And I came from Ralph Lauren.

I was a designer for Ralph Lauren.

So we were very much in this like creating of a world and an environment.

And so my, my whole vision was on the website.

It was, you know, you could be on a shelf in the container store, Bloomingdale's or whatever.

And I had stores in Asia, but I was like, I need to have my own showcase.

And I joke that it's like hanging the fly paper.

And one day someone would walk in.

I didn't actually like mean that literally, but

So yeah, the next call was like, come to New Jersey and kiss the ring.

That was the week after.

So then that started the dialogue of...

Of like, do you want to be in the family?

You know, the Unilever family and like drinking the Kool-Aid.

And I always believed that my brand acquire or ideal like date for the prom was seventh generation.

I thought we shared, we shared a value system.

And I was just the prestige version in a shared ecological product value system.

So then when Seventh Generation was acquired by Unilever about three years before us, I was like, OK, like they care.

And so that started the discussion.

But the negotiation went on for like 13 months.

It was quite disastrous.

Their first offer was like a joke.

And the response was like, this is a joke, correct?

You know, like we are a incredibly profitable business and there was no value in our valuation to them of being profitable, right?

And I was like, you just paid this like stupid ketchup company who's not even profitable like this amount.

Like, are you kidding me?

Like we're a perfect, pristine, clean, profitable business.

Like where's the value in that?

And they're like, oh, we had to pay that investor guy and like the Belgians and like they were jerks.

And I was like, oh, I'm sorry, because we don't have a pool of investors.

So you think you can like get off cheap over here?

Did you think about saying no?

I did say no.

I was like, yeah, no, I don't think so.

But they kept coming back.

Yeah, it was a it was a long process.

Yeah, I have to, I do have to give credit to our female banker who like made all that happen.

And she was like, she knew the terms and she like got them where they needed to be.

And that was really her doing of getting that done.

That was a really clanky, awkward situation because we weren't ready for market.

And because we had never raised money, we never had any of this like system set up that

Where if you raise money, then you kind of have done a little bit of, you know, you have a deal structure, you have like your lawyers, like you have some of that slightly put together or way more put together than me just operating a normal business.

And my business partner and I were not on the same page in any shape or form.

So that was like a whole nother layer to this.

So we like fumbled with a lot of not great fit in the very beginning and trying to get to the right team.

This banker was actually recommended by Unilever because she had done the Dollar Shave Club deals.

And so she had done big deals and

My business partner didn't understand.

She was like, that's like taking a divorce attorney recommendation from your husband you're divorcing.

And I was like, you don't really get it.

They like to do business with who they know.

Like that's that's how like a lot of these companies are like they want to work with the people that they know.

And certainly her precedence was like she shook every penny for the Dollar Shave Club.

So she's this woman was like not giving businesses away.

Yeah.

So the night before the deal closed officially at nine o'clock on Monday morning and everything was so touch and go and nailed later to like the last minute.

But on Friday afternoon, I like, it was all set up.

The, the wires were set, like the press release was set, like everything was set.

So on Friday afternoon, I,

I called the guy who did my like New York wedding dinner at the Waverly Inn and set up the back room at the Waverly Inn on Sunday night.

And I just started calling people and I said, hey, are you any chance you're free for a dinner on Sunday night?

And so all these people showed up and they just thought it was my husband and I invited them for dinner.

And I got my mom in and there was like 35 people there.

And, you know, my mom walks in and sees like my best friend from Boston is like, what are you doing here?

Everyone thought I was going to roll in with like a baby.

My mom was desperate.

It was a baby announcement.

And instead it was I had just sold my baby.

So it was a surprise event.

cell party the night before.

It was a very unbelievable gasping moment to just, and I was sitting at my desk chair and my open floor plan and my team didn't even know yet.

And I'm just like having this moment of like, holy shit, holy shit.

Yeah.

and trying to keep it together.

And, you know, my business partnership was so toxic.

Like there wasn't even like a hug, like high five, we did it.

I didn't really comprehend what happened or was happening.

I was in such...

like adrenaline mode for all those years.

And then, so I had a trip planned right after.

So I like literally left right away and went to France with some girlfriends that was planned and had like an amazing girls weekend.

And then was in Switzerland.

And I, I remember I like couldn't breathe in Switzerland and I was like, what is going on?

And I had so much adrenaline that I,

I could like it was pumping and I had nowhere to put it.

And it was like giving me this gasping, unbearable chest pain that like I couldn't breathe because I was like, I don't need all of this anymore.

And I have nowhere to put it.

So there was that initial physical response.

But I had a two year contract and I understood my contract that I continued as is.

And I

It was very awkward of like, what is my role?

How does this work in my like mama bear protect everybody mode?

So I went from like, you know, we were all a team and then I pivoted to mama bear mode.

Like I got to protect everybody and protect my tribe here.

But I kept waiting for like, where's the system of Unilever?

Like, where is it?

And this is where things went off the rails, which was, I said, we had this perfect plan in the deal room to execute, follow.

Like it was so perfect.

It was just like, here's like the path to success.

Like, this is amazing.

And then that literally got like left in the deal room.

Never surfaced.

And there was no one in charge or like, this is your person or this is the process.

There was this like enormous, like ambiguity of you don't own it, but we don't have anyone.

You're not in charge, but you are in charge.

But it was like a disaster.

There was no process at all.

And that basically the same ish.

It was the same, but you're like floating in the Unilever sea.

Yeah.

Like if they were just like, you are here and just like, we'll call you, we'll have like a monthly call.

So it was like, where's the lane?

And then they start like throwing garbage at you, like unqualified people and processes that make no sense and like accounting firms for like no reason.

Like it was just this like never ending toss of processes that were pointless and had no value.

And if anyone is listening and goes through an earn out, like you will never get paid because of all that crap that they throw at you that you have no control over.

Luckily, I didn't have an earn out.

But if I did have an earn out, I would have zero takeaway within the first three to six months because they like throw out this layers and process and nonsense that like I was incredibly profitable.

But after the six months of Unilever nonsense.

No.

Sure.

It's when it's like the salesmanship, when they dangle the carrot and tell you how much more you're going to make because they're so awesome and they know everything and you don't, and they're going to make you so much more money.

And then you're like, okay, great.

I'll keep an upside for all that amazing money that you're going to make and bring into our organization.

Yeah.

And so you only take a certain percent off at the table at the sale and you leave an open amount for your future upside.

But from my experience and what I know of other Unilever deals, no one gets an upside because

They say it's not based on sales or EBITDA or whatever, but fundamentally they throw all this expense at you, which then affects your bottom line and your EBITDA.

And you as a seller generally have no control over what they throw into your organization.

Right.

Yes, yes, yes.

The ad and the paper and da, da, da, da, da.

Yeah.

I was in my early 40s.

Like, retire?

Like, what does that mean?

I was so... My head was so...

like in the moment that I really wasn't thinking what life would be like after the fact.

And the second year was like,

2020 so my second year was like three like three months in the office and then i walked out of the office with everybody else in march and never came back so i had actually planned a very intentional last year of how i would wind out and step back and and pack up and like off board which never happened

So and then I'm like with everybody else in like crazy COVID times, which is hard enough for everybody, let alone in this incredible career shift, identity shift.

What am I doing?

What now?

What like what's going on?

There was so much change and shift that I was so personally intertwined with the brand.

that it was a personal identity.

It was what I did.

It was my life's work.

It was my legacy.

I knew that I needed to create space from that chapter into before the next chapter and sitting in nothingness for someone who's been like on the move was really difficult.

I mean, they had a such a different deal structure than I did.

And they did have covenants for that.

From what I understand, and I'm not an expert, but it seems as though Unilever is really breaching those terms that they had.

At the same time, Unilever is spinning off the ice cream business.

So they're like, we don't care.

We're getting rid of this entire division anyway.

And I don't know where that plays in, but if their deal wasn't transferable, I don't know.

They had autonomy for a very, very, very long time, which is incredibly impressive.

And Seventh Generation did too.

They had really built in structures in the deal of commitments to sustainability, commitments that they were able to get.

The difference with Ben and Jerry is that they still care and they're still around and still fighting for

Whereas seventh generation, I was there when like things were loosening up and the stakeholders were finally leaving who did care and the Unilever sheep were moving in.

So like that's the sort of progression of what I witnessed.

It's nice and sexy to market it that way, but it doesn't help anyone if everyone just believes that and isn't going in full awareness of...

yeah, scrappy startups, not so sexy.

The other thing that's not sexy is when you overfund and you over-raise and you have like such low percentage that you would have been better off sticking in your corporate job financially after 13 years of like killing yourself with a startup, you know, like that's not cool, but no one's sharing those stories.

Um,

about this as one of our most popular because there's so little discussed about this idea of equity like within a private company and how it could be dog shit yeah nothing yeah I mean nothing so that's not sexy either but it is important for me to to share all you know my learnings and the reality and hopefully educate people and so that they can be informed to make their own

decisions that work for them and just understand the implications of taking money, understand the implications of exiting.

I wish I knew more.

I mean, sometimes it can be amazing, but sometimes it's not.

And I think that my advice is just be prepared for the worst case scenario.

Yeah, it was like I never was officially excused.

So there was no nice handoff.

Like it was just kind of like slithered into the

I found out, similar to you, my friend forwarded me an Instagram post.

That's crazy.

I was getting my hair done.

I was like, what?

I mean, no.

And that was I ran such a squeaky clean operation before.

Literally.

Literally.

There was never a complaint, never a return.

I think there was literally one return where someone wanted to send back their $45 La Labo detergent because they didn't like it, but the bottle happened to be empty when we got it back.

So, like, that was the extent of that complaint.

And so, you know, no, nothing, nothing, nothing.

Totally unconceivable that this was the situation.

And this was completely self-induced by Unilever incompetence.

Period.

They imploded themselves.

No.

No.

It's the truth.

I'm being honest and it's the truth.

And so I'm not concerned about that.

No.

And that was a classic like dude response of, Oh, just buy it back for a dollar and like do it all again.

And I was like, I don't want their mess.

Like I did it.

I created the most beautiful baby.

She was perfect.

And I don't need to fix her.

It's not my problem.

Like I can't, I don't want someone else's mess.

in the contract that you would warn entrepreneurs about you know you obviously had like i'm assuming a non-compete non-disparagement all that stuff that's no longer in place yes it was a five-year non-compete non-disparaging the only thing i actually fought about or pushed back on was the five-year non-compete because they crossed it into personal care

And I just thought that was like egregious, not that I wanted to go make personal care, but it just seemed incredibly egregious to add that with laundry.

But at the time, I was like, the last thing I want to do is ever make a product again.

So see you later.

And then I didn't even really register on the non-disparaging detail until after the recall.

And I had to panic and pull out all the contracts and make sure where I stood and what was going on and revisit all of that.

And that's when I really understood the non-disparaging agreement because I never...

but like mentally had that in my mind also to exercise what I deal wise, whatever, fine.

What I do wish that I understood and had in place.

And this is something that I would recommend to other people in this process is to have a very clear agreed upon plan of transition, right?

And that was what we did not have zero.

And it was, I had an employment contract that said, you just keep doing what you do.

And that was like incredibly loose and vague, but there was no transition plan zero.

And that it was the downfall of many is that there was no proper transition plan or what that looked like or a person or a process that

And now that I've spoken to other companies and other CPG, then like they share their process and like, oh, they're like, we put one person in the organization, all these different really strategic, like normal processes that you would think a giant CPG brand who had acquired a ton of brands previously would have a system.

And they didn't.

And that was like my Pollyanna assumption that like, oh, they do this like all the time.

There has to be a very clear playbook.

And there wasn't.

And that was just like so stupid and my assumption, but it is incredibly, that's like my one thing I would say, understand exactly the playbook and who does what and how it happens and like really button up that.

I mean, if you go down an earn out path, that's like a whole nother situation of protecting yourself and like really putting the guardrails on of like how you can...

you lose that but again just go in with worst case scenario like not that that will never happen like every worst case scenario you could ever dream of that's what you plan for and have a good therapist like ready for you also so important try to put that in the contract yeah like get that ironed out right away i was not prepared not prepared

You know, I didn't.

I had to wait a long time, and I'm actually not that...

savvy or involved in Instagram so I didn't and it was very heartbreaking like this woman wrote me about she just washed all of her sweaters and she was freaking out and like what's and I do I boil and it's like you can't put them hot water it's just like it was so heartbreaking I was like your sweaters are fine there is nothing wrong with your product like I couldn't say these things I couldn't say there's no bacteria there's nothing wrong with your product you are fine it like

this is just what you're like.

I couldn't say that.

And I was like, the minute I open up like one thing, like I couldn't.

So I just had to silently.

Yeah.

I just had to like silently.

It was circumstantial.

So I,

Unilever implodes, self-destructs, pulls everything off the market, doesn't sell anything for nine months.

Nine months, not a single product was sold, not even a laundry bag, not even your ironing board cover.

And I knew I had a...

hunch what they were going to do.

I waited to see what they did.

And they did exactly what I expected them to do, which was relaunch the brand with a seventh generation formula.

with my label on it with some nod version to my fragrance because they like banned, Unilever has their own rules that are not like actually health and safety like rules by the US government or the international standards.

So the fragrance was like completely stripped down to like, I had a fine fragrance, it was a perfume.

And then I dumbed it down to like a Unilever style fragrance

They just, they're so arrogant that they thought my customers were like, were dumb and that they wouldn't notice that they were getting a seven generation formula.

And I was like, no, my customers are actually like really savvy.

They are not dumb.

They're sophisticated.

They're savvy.

They see results and they understand the value.

And like, you can't play that game.

And so they came out with like a dumb, dumb version.

And I had 85 products at the sale.

And when I sold to Unilever, they came back with like five.

And so I was like, okay.

Here we go.

I can't, I can't leave all of my customers, you know, hanging to dry.

Like, and I had customers that relied on my products for 10, 15, almost 20 years.

Like I was not going to leave my customers abandoned with like the stuff that they could already be buying all along.

I wasn't going to leave my customers hung out to dry.

So I, I stepped back into the laundry room and it was fun to re imagine and recreate this product category 20 years later with a different, you know, I'm a different person.

I have a different sense of

of, you know, different orientation.

I have a different sense of what luxury is.

The laundress was the luxury of fine fragrance.

And now my luxury is aromatherapy, essential oils, getting results through aromatherapy while I'm cleaning that I'm doing anyways.

Like that's where I, I get a, you get a sensory bonus with the fill.

And there was a lot of improvements that, that, and fun thing, fun, um,

upgrades and materials and formulations to play with at the same time.

And then pushing sustainability to the next level where I came out with PET, 100% recycled bottles in 2004, which was unheard of.

They were clear, it was concentrate, it was plant-based, like all of these things that were unheard of then.

What does it look like now?

Everything is in the refillable pouch with a reusable bottle that you can decant into and more saving on plastic and doing the sustainability and packaged goods is not, there's no perfect answer, but kind of pushing the space to be better.

I'm just dying to know, would you ever sell?

No, this business is not made to sell.

I would probably retire or hang up my hamper before I sold.

And that's what it is.

The greatest luxury, Nicole, as I'm sure you know, is to love what you do, have a purpose, work with amazing people, create jobs, positively create the economy.

I was so proud that I had hundreds of factory workers employed because of my brand.

Those are the wins.

And

selling, everyone just thinks you're going to go to the beach with a pina colada, but you can't stop it.

There's a satiation of creating and doing.

And for me, I have a creative itch and I need to be doing something purposeful.

And when you sell that and you lose that,

it's very difficult.

And it's like, wow, I had, I loved what I did.

I had all this amazing stuff.

And like, I think that's the biggest thing that people don't really understand what they love about what they do or what they love about their businesses.

And like, that's the best gift is to truly appreciate that.

And, you know, you're profitable and growing and running a great business.

That's, that's the win.

And just making beautiful product and being happy and doing it for fun and having fun with it and working with amazing people.

There were more because there was a settlement before mine.

So there was a first round.

So, yeah, there are there are thousands of women that were affected by this doctor at Columbia.

Yeah, so I had the allegations and sort of rumbling that he was a predator or a sexual offender.

It was around 2013.

And the sort of...

people would maybe recognize because Evelyn Wang, when Andrew Wang was running for president, briefly, she came out about, she was in the actual criminal case.

And that's sort of when I kind of became a high profile handful of women in the criminal case against him.

And, and,

He essentially was acquitted by the same judge that acquitted Jeffrey Epstein.

So if you Google Jeffrey Epstein and Dr. Haddon, you can get the facts on that detail.

So I heard these rumblings of these other cases, but it wasn't until the TV commercial where this was now the class action for being a patient of Columbia and Dr. Haddon.

that was now available as the Victim Survivors Act that they opened up a few years ago.

So that's where all of this case and this opportunity to come forward came.

and the class action came up and why that happened but if you read the essay that's in mary claire you kind of follow my journey of understanding now i'm a 49 year old woman now i started in my early 20s and he was my first gynecologist my first real doctor with my own insurance card at columbia in new york we thought we were like stars being taken care of like i had

Made it.

And he had a protocol and a process that he had a routine that he followed with people who he could take advantage of because there was no point of reference.

I didn't know any better.

I didn't know what was supposed to be a proper exam and what wasn't.

And so joining the class action and, you know, lifting the rug and or I should say opening the filing cabinet after all these years and really processing and understanding what my reality was that I kind of like shoved in literally in this filing cabinet was a significant abuse.

I had a small group of victims that I...

I knew we all were the same doctor.

And so we had a small group going through it together, which was like, I couldn't have done it without with doing this alone.

So I'm so grateful.

This is also like I said, this is like a power of friendship and as much as a story of abuse, but just how I've been so adamant about sharing the realities of my business journey and

And I feel like I have this platform.

I need to use my voice and I'll cover any topic.

And my ego doesn't prohibit me from doing these things.

I am willing to sort of self-sacrifice my privacy for the purpose.

And this specific case is 100% the power of numbers because I truly believe it was only the power of numbers that

of all these victims that we were able to get to this far of this class action.

And like when it was very early on with Evelyn Yang and was only a handful of victims, they were like dismissed and pushed aside.

But now it's like so much bigger and powerful.

And

I wrote that essay throughout the two years of going through the process and the aftermath.

The goal was to create a safe space to have shared conversations.

And whether it's people writing me privately and sharing or using this as a piece to open up dialogue with people in their family or their friends or loved ones, or just being seen or heard or feel a shared sense is,

And we need to leverage all of that power.

I thought about this question and to me, it's have a person.

And I went through so much of the laundress alone, so much alone without a person.

I just, there was, I didn't know anyone, right.

You know, creating a business or struggling.

And it's just like things that I didn't feel comfortable sharing, but this a person doesn't have to always be the one person that

where one person doesn't have to be the everybody person.

So it's whether it's a person for the hard stuff or a business person or a relationship person or, you know, the therapist or whatever, just to have a person in whatever you're going through, who's there for that topic to give you a safe space and not be alone.