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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello and welcome to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz. This is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges. Each week, I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on the show who will help me try to help you. And if you're building something and you need advice, give us a call and you just might be the next guest on the show.
Our number is 1-800-433-1298. Leave us a one minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with. All right, let's get to it. Joining me this week is Sarah LaFleur. She's the founder and CEO of the women's clothing brand MM LaFleur. Sarah, it's great to have you back on the show.
Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here.
How excited to have you. You've been on the show twice before, actually. First time was in February 2020 to tell us the story of building MM LaFleur. And like many founders we've had on the show, you started the brand because you had a problem to solve, which was you were a corporate consultant. And just too many clothing options didn't really fit in with what you wanted to wear.
And that, of course, was back in 2011. And then along the way, you built this awesome brand.
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Chapter 2: How does David from New Jersey tackle self-doubt in his business?
But then you had some challenges, especially during COVID. And we're going to get an update about what happened. But it's a great episode for anybody who hasn't heard it. We'll put a link to it in the show notes. So before we get to our callers, I was hoping to just kind of catch up. Tell us a little bit about how things have been going since you were last on the show.
Oh my gosh. Well, I feel like I have lived 10 lives. And I think last time I was on your show, I think I was seven months pregnant and now my kids are five and a half. So yeah, it's been a wild five and a half years. And yes, COVID was horrible for my business. Our revenue in 2020 was down 60% from 2019. We had to go through three rounds of layoffs. It was so painful.
We had to close every single one of our stores. And then, reopened some of them. And then we actually opened some new stores as well. So, um, you know, we, we got the business to profitability in 2022, uh, again, and, um, have just been steadily growing since. And it feels like in many ways, I'm, I feel lucky that I, I got to have a second shot, um, at it. You
And it's been this amazing experience of getting to build and rebuild the brand and hopefully doing it smarter the second time around.
Yeah, I remember in our conversation, the thing that really struck me and I think was so innovative about this brand is the idea of a uniform. And I think about you a lot because anyone who's seen me do anything live or in public knows that I have a uniform. It's a blue blazer and everything. And sort of greenish trousers and a white shirt. It's just what I wear, what I feel comfortable.
I have 15 different blue blazers. And it might sound boring to some, but that's like what I feel best in, I feel. And the concept of M. Amalaflor works. was to create a uniform. Obviously, it wasn't just it was like a much more a broader line of offerings. But that was the idea behind it.
Now, you've expanded it where it's like, it's still very professional, it's still very elegant, but but it's not just for the office.
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think for the majority of, you know, white collar professionals, there's some virtual work mixed in with just how we work these days. So we have a really healthy mix of kind of more casual, we call it power casual clothing. So it's like it's a blazer and denim. Like that's that is like the way a lot of professional women dress these days. And
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Chapter 3: What strategies does Marnie from Australia use to justify her premium-priced product?
you know, jackets are now the power item. And I think it just, it makes sense if you think about her lifestyle. Like she might go to the office and then, you know, go to pick up her kids from school or she might go out for dinner with her friends. And to be able to just like take off that jacket, you know, it helps you go pretty seamlessly from professional to casual.
And now, whereas like I think a lot of women would have said like, Oh, I have a rack full of dresses. I think a lot of women have a rack full of jackets.
I think we're talking about women sort of roughly late 20s to sort of mid to late 50s.
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, we have almost equal age distribution, which is like one of the things I'm most proud about in our brand. Like we don't really particularly skew young or mature or, you know, I think the professional woman, like the way she's dressing when she's 27 is not all that different from how she's dressing when she's 47. Yeah.
Hopefully she has more disposable income and she's able to invest in more like quality pieces and things that she'll wear for the long term. But we really, we like to say it, you know, at MM, it's a psychographic, not a demographic.
Huh. That's really, really interesting. All right. You ready to take our first call?
Can't wait. This is so exciting.
All right. Let's do it. Let's bring in our first caller. Welcome to the advice line. You are on with Sarah LaFleur, founder of MM LaFleur. Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a little bit about your business.
Hi, Sarah and Guy. My name is David Rustiano. I'm calling in from Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey, and I am the founder of a company called SOAR. We make muscle recovery products, all natural, non-invasive ways to add wellness and self-care to your daily routine without adding much time or trouble to it.
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Chapter 4: How did David from New York address sustainability in his candle business?
This is like a fascia kind of thing, right? Like loosening your fascia. Is that the idea?
Yep, it is. It works on soft tissue and fascia. And we originally created it with athletes in mind, but it's really, it's straddled into the wellness and healthcare space. We work with a lot of physical therapists. My co-founder is a doctor of physical therapy.
And when did you start the business?
Like so many businesses, we started during COVID. My men's soccer leagues were shut down here in New Jersey, so I needed something to keep my mind and body occupied. So I went for a long run and my hip flexor was sore. So when I got home, I jumped in the shower like normal and I saw a bar of Irish Spring in the soap dish that my wife had just put in there.
And it has a little bit of a curve on the bottom and it reminded me of... the Graston tool that my doctor, my physical therapist, who's now my business partner, used on my calf when I had a calf strain. So I started to scrape my hip flexor and it felt great. And I worked my way down to my quads and my calves and my Achilles. And it was an immediate feeling of relief and recovery.
So being the designer that I am, I jumped out of my shower and I ran into my studio and I started drawing logos and doing a Google search for real therapeutic massage soap. And I realized that there was nothing like it out there. So I wrote myself a little poor man's patent. And then a few days later, I called my partner, Dr. Dan, and he was interested. And we've been running ever since.
Nice. Okay. And this is sold through your website or do you sell in stores or where can people buy it?
Sure. We do sell it at source soap.com. Most, I would say maybe 85 to 90% of our sales are direct to consumer, but we work with a lot of physical therapists and forward thinking chiropractors and athletic trainers. And they do sell it in their offices. We actually just landed a deal to get our non-soap tool after we realized that people really embrace this idea of
of doing, you know, do-it-yourself muscle scraping. We made a lightweight tool that people could fly with, run with, travel with. It's not metal. It's TSA approved. And it's a very lightweight, you know, we have a lot of people that run marathons and they'll keep it in their vest while they're running and they'll treat their muscles right there on the fly.
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Chapter 5: What challenges did Sarah LaFleur face while rebuilding her brand post-pandemic?
When we originally started, we did 16,000 in sales. Then the next year, we did 33. And then the year after that, we did 120. And then we were lucky enough to be on a show called Shark Tank, which was really an amazing experience. And we did about 440,000 that year. Then we came back down to earth a little bit in 2025, and we're back down to about 105,000. Got it. Yeah.
Yeah.
So it's pretty good. We had that shark tank spike, but now things have kind of leveled up. Okay, before we dive in further, what is your question for us?
Sure, so Sarah, listening to your episode of the podcast while I was running, there were so many touch points that I felt I could connect with you and ask you about. Our moms being a big inspiration in our life was one of them.
But the question that I centered on, because I think it's a big issue for a lot of founders in our spot, whether you're successful or not, we all have that little bit of self-doubt. So even as our companies and our ideas start to work, self-doubt never disappears. It just gets a little quieter. How did you learn to trust your instincts and keep moving when you weren't always sure you were right?
Great question. Sarah LaFleur, I want to bring you in here for this, obviously. Self-doubt, I will just say from the get-go, when I have founders who I meet who have no self-doubt, those are the ones that worry me.
I was going to say, I was going to crack a joke, like self-doubt, I don't know what you're talking about. But I was going to say, it's not a little bit. I feel like managing self-doubt is like so much of the job. And I think managing your own psyche is the number one CEO job.
Yeah.
I started working with this mental strength coach last year. Primarily, he teaches meditation, and we also do a bunch of other things. Journaling is one of them. But it is the first time in my, gosh, 14 years of running the business where – I'm finding some relief. And, you know, we've been through hell and back.
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Chapter 6: What insights does Sarah provide about the changing fashion preferences of professional women?
But for some reason, I can't. I love it too much.
Yeah.
I feel the same way. I feel like without the business, there'd be less purpose in my life to overcome those challenges and overcome those emotional hurdles. The business has turned into one of my prime motivators to help other people feel better physically, makes me feel accomplished mentally and emotionally, if that makes sense.
That's so beautiful. I mean, what more could we ask for in our lives?
Yeah, I would double down on what you said, Sarah. I mean, I think that this is one of the questions almost every founder feels, and certainly I hope every founder that comes on our show, because we do vet them. We want founders who have self-doubt to come on the show. It's critical, right? And I think for the most part, it doesn't entirely ever go away, but it evolves.
It becomes easier to manage, right? And the... The trick is, like, how do I make decisions even when I'm not feeling as confident, right? And, like, even with this show I've been doing for 10 years, there are times where I certainly have self-doubt. You know, are we doing the right thing? Did that interview suck? You know, I...
I think that's natural, and I think it's important to constantly interrogate how you're doing things. But I think the way to avoid kind of spiraling into just endless uncertainty, at least in my case, and Sarah, you may have a different take or similar, is... I look at signals that actually matter, right? Like data or feedback or when I interact with people. And that is really helpful.
And in your case, there's going to be tons of data, right? Like who's buying this repeatedly? And what's your customer acquisition cost? And You know, what are the conversion rates?
And that's going to ebb and flow, but it helps to kind of focus, at least for me, when I start to really think about the fundamentals, even when I have times of self-doubt, it just, I find that leaning on the data, even when it's not always great news, is really helpful because it gives me something to kind of benchmark against. Does that make sense?
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Chapter 7: How can founders manage self-doubt while growing their businesses?
you know, get you through those nights where you're laying in bed going, what am I doing? You know, especially in this competitive world that we're all in on social media.
Yeah. I mean, I, first of all, you're an athlete, so you're, you're kind of, you're already here, but I think this, this idea of like practice, it's, it's, it's all about the practice. And, um, I will say like for me personally, like meditation, which I did not used to do a year ago, has been game changing for me because I like work myself into these spirals at times.
And then I like need to find the calm within. Like ultimately like no sense of external validation or the numbers. Like that's not really what's going to lead me to calm. It's like I have to find the calm within me. And so, you know, I think that could be anything. It could be a walk in the park. It could be a coffee with a friend. It could just be you sitting quietly like somewhere.
But I think it's like how can you know that, you know, everything you need you have right here? Yep. And how can you get yourself back to that state? I think that's… That's so important. And then I was going to say, I feel like, David, you clearly hit on something with this soap, but I feel like your mission is bigger than that.
And I wonder if maybe you could channel some of that energy not into sales and marketing, but maybe it's new product development. Because I think you're onto a bigger mission about helping athletes take care of themselves easily and more affordably.
I have some ideas.
You have some ideas, right. Okay, great.
I do. I mean, the ideas never stop. It's going through them and qualifying them mentally first. And Guy, I wanted to work this in, but you gave me an opportunity. Sarah, my closest thing to meditation that I do is I go for a three or five mile run and I listen to this podcast. I mean, that's my moment of Zen. I love that. You've got me through many miles that I didn't want to run.
Okay, great. Well, I and meditation is awesome. I totally agree when I am consistent. It is a game changer. Hiking in the woods. I try to do that a few times a week. I'm lucky to live near the woods.
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Chapter 8: What final advice does Sarah LaFleur offer to aspiring entrepreneurs?
And one more thing. It's a big responsibility, but a dog. I got to take my dog out for a walk twice a day to energy release a few times a week. That is like, that is really the best.
He's one of my best buddies, my little dog, Teddy. He's been in a lot of our social media. So we have a lot of followers on TikTok that tune in just for Teddy.
Awesome. David Rustiano, the brand is called Sora. Thanks so much for calling. Good luck.
Thank you, guys. Thank you.
Thank you.
No, I love those questions because it's not about like, hey, how do I... It's not necessarily about how do I make more money with my business. It's like, how do I just... As you know, running a business is an emotional rollercoaster ride. Running anything can be really, really hard on your mental health.
Yeah. I could not agree more. It's hard because it's hard. And I think sometimes founders need to hear that message. We're like, oh, why can't I just get this right? Look at this other brand having this kind of success or whatever it is. And, you know, it's not for the faint of heart. It really isn't. And I think we just have to, you know, it's an acknowledgement with yourself.
Like it's hard because it's hard and you chose the hard path. And The Hard Thing About Hard Things, I think that's the name of the book.
Oh, Ben Horowitz. Yeah.
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