Lee Rhodes
speaker
89 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
Lee Rhodes’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
My name is Lee Rhodes. I was in Seattle, Washington. I got diagnosed with lung cancer with three very young children under four. And someone blew a tiny little vessel for me, hand-blown glass, which is huge in Seattle. It's in Marano, Italy, and it's in Seattle, Washington. And it was sitting on my kitchen island. I dropped a tea light in it.
And the color of the glass lit up and it made me feel something. I felt calm. I felt like I could handle everything that was happening and coming at me. And that's the beginning of Glassy Baby. We sell, we hand blow about 1,700 colors of one thing that we use generally for products. for votives and we put candles, tea lights in them, but people can use them for whatever they want.
They each have a name and they each have a story and they mean something to people. Once you have color and flame and dancing light, you feel better no matter who you are and no matter where you are. And these are really just beacons of hope and healing and they work. And I think that's the most important thing about what I do every day is that we sell a product that
makes the world a better place, even though it's a tiny little motive and a tiny little piece of the economy.
Yeah. I think every entrepreneur, as they start their plan, they can write it down all they want on a piece of paper. They can get as organized as they want. But just innately, every business and everything you do in life has levers. And some of the levers are helpful and some of the levers aren't as helpful. And for me, I didn't have many of those levers.
I had a business where I was a woman, so I couldn't get a loan anywhere. Even to this day, getting a loan for me means I need to you know, put up something, whereas any other man, uh, is out there getting a bank to, you know, be their partner. Um, I think that in retail specifically, um, levers are important. You need to be able to have a sale. You need to be able to have a discount.
you know, or, or, you know, January sale or something like that. We don't have any of those because of the nature of our business being handmade. Everything is still as valuable and there's no, we're not perishable. So we just hold onto them.
But I think, I do think you're right that the most, when I have to put a one to 10 of the levers that you, that you have when you start your business, the number one thing that's been the most difficult is being a woman. The caveat to that is I have a man's name. My name is Lee Rhodes. And so I have sat in banks.
I have sat in insurance offices where people were saying, oh, we're just waiting for your husband. And I'm like, oh, no, I am Lee Rhodes. So I've lived the experience so much. And I think that The the the answer of as a woman getting the answer no for me has meant, OK, how do I make this work and how do I make this happen for myself? And I think that's what women specifically need to figure out.
For men, I haven't been one, so I don't know.
Yeah. I guess I say this all the time, and I think it's just the most important thing, is as a woman, we get up every morning and we are multitasking all day long. It is not a skill set of mine. I've had to force myself to multitask. Women, if you're a mom and you're a wife, generally you're a multitasker, especially if you're working. And that's just what we do.
And I think that the most important thing for women, especially if you're an entrepreneur, is to... Take that minute between noon and one and don't fill it with anything. Take that hour and don't fill it with anything and just give yourself a break.
I said, I think that the most important thing we don't do for ourselves and the way to get ahead and really stay focused on your business or on your passion or on, you know, your Pilates classes, whatever it is you're doing. the way to make that really have impact in your life and be fulfilling and continue to make you passionate is to give yourself a break.
And you just got to take the time to do that and breathe through that because even though we're multitaskers, we cannot do it all all at once. We can do it all. We just can't do it all at once. And that's the biggest thing I tell women all the time because it's something that It took me forever to learn. My kids are in their 30s. So, you know, I don't take care of them anymore.
And I'm still learning that skill, which is, I think, you know, a lot of really successful women will say to you, just take a break, center, reorganize. And I think men are much better at that than we are. They're better at asking for help.
Well, so my products are made in Montana recently and in Seattle, Washington. But I did go, I was told by a very, very smart retailer many, many years ago. He said, you're never going to make it work. First of all, you can't make something in America handmade. You can't make that. That'll never work. You can't make something handmade in America and sell it at the price you'll need to sell it at.
That'll never work. You can't do either of those things and be successful and give money away. at the cash register, which is what we do. And everyone said to me, you absolutely cannot do it. It will not work. You'll go under. There's no way this business model has legs. And it was so interesting to me because one of the gentlemen who I believe in so much said, you need to make these in China.
And I thought to myself, okay, well, I'm making them in America. I don't know what making them in China, but I really respected him. And I really wanted to do right by him and have him kind of believe in me. So I went to China. We made Glassy Baby there. We imported them. They sat in boxes in my warehouse for years, for probably three years total.
I could never incorporate the story of we made these in China with my, we pay a living wage to hand produce. blown glass artists in Seattle, Washington, with 401ks, with incredible benefits, with a living wage. And we sell these healing lights and these beacons of hope and these deep breaths that we help people take. And we're not willing to make them here in America.
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