Secrets of a Successful Brand: Passion and People

In November 2020, the Kendra Scott WEL Institute hosted the Women’s Summit, a virtual event featuring many seasoned voices in the realm of entrepreneurship. This congregation of various figures provided a lens of expertise that provided insights into how to build the path towards success for your business and brand.

Liz Matthews, Senior VP of Brands and Experiential and Advertising Dell, acted as moderator for a conversation with Tiffany Chen, co-founder, and president of Tiff’s Treats, Abigail Stone, co-founder and CEO of Otherland, and Janice Omadeke, CEO and founder of The Mentor Method. In this Panel on Secrets to a Successful Brand: Passion and People, these amazing women are able to share how they harness passion and people to sustain a successful company.

1. Let Your Passion Guide You

Tiffany and Janice both shared that passion was at the forefront of their entrepreneurial journey. Tiffany recalled the early days of Tiff’s Treats, which was launched out of her partner Leon’s student apartment during their time as UT students in the late 90s after he urged her to capitalize on her baking abilities. In its infancy, Tiff’s Treats maintained one line of communication, a cell phone, specifically bought her the purpose of their company.

“We were students, we could go into any dorm (to distribute cookies),” Tiffany said. “We started from there, just as small as you could possibly start.”

Janice’s origin as an entrepreneur strikes similarly, telling the panel that she was an accidental entrepreneur who initially studied the field of entrepreneurship to support her skills in building her brand as a corporate designer and developer. Now, Janice is the CEO and founder of The MentorMethod, an inclusive virtual mentor matching program. “I thought (studying entrepreneurship at MIT) was going to be the extent of my business knowledge,” Janice said.

Janice shared her quest for mentors was limited to her parents and Marie Claire magazine articles. She flipped this into an opportunity to tackle a white space in the market.

Janice reflected on her upbringing, describing herself as a “byproduct of tech and mentorship” since her father’s career path was completely altered after he was sponsored to take classes that allowed him to hold a higher position in tech and afforded her family more opportunities.

“I realized that as an intersection of tech and mentorship, it was always ingrained in me to find ways to keep pushing the ladder down and sideways,” Janice said. “I realized there was a way to leverage my tech background to see that impact since I know what it can do.”

Abigail Stone, founder of Otherland, said her enthrallment with scents and candles remained consistent in her everyday routine, whether morning meditation or unwinding in the evening after work, Abigail shared she loves lighting candles to cultivate an ambiance for her home space.

This love for scents forged the way for Otherland. Abigail recognized that the candle market operated a broad spectrum. On the one hand, there were these sophisticated candles with distinguished scents, but were expensive and unfeasible for everyday use because the price tag urged her to ration the candle instead of enjoying it. On the cheaper end of the spectrum, these scents aired on the more artificial and cloying side, so she didn’t enjoy lighting them on a daily basis.

“There was this opportunity in the middle to work with the same master perfumers as the expensive brands, but do it at a much more accessible price point,” Abigail said. “The trick for me was bringing in the art component.”

Abigail maintains a lifelong love of art, influenced by her mother, and capitalized on that love to develop it as a method to sell candles online.

“People want to smell a candle before they buy it,” Abigail said. “We could use art to tell the story of each scent to create an emotional response from our potential customers.” Otherland works with different artists to tell a story with each collection. Through integrating scents and art, two powerful tools in storytelling, Abigail merged these two passions and created a candle brand different than anything else in the market. With passion at the foundation of their business endeavors, these entrepreneurs created a sturdy base for their brand.

2. Recognizing Opportunity

Janice disclosed that she thinks the MentorMethod is different because while most mentorship programs use demographics as their key points of matching, The MentorMethod digs deeper and instead of using aspects such as career goals and relationship dynamics as latching points to determine whether a mentor-mentee relationship is conducive. “My theory has always been that in order to build a successful and sustainable mentor relationship, you need to have that chemistry component, you have to want to meet with that person,” Janice said. “Those external parameters aren’t enough.” Tiffany said that Tiff’s Treats emerged in a market when delivery service was predominantly and primarily pizza and Chinese food, nevertheless cookies fresh from the oven. Finding opportunity in the delivery market, Tiffany said that these warm cookies were more than just that. By listening to their customers, Tiff’s Treats had a better understanding of how people wanted to use their brand. More than just a sweet treat, Tiffany said they realized people use Tiff’s Treats to signify to friends and family that they’re thinking about them in times of celebration and tragedy. “We realized we weren’t just delivering warm cookies, what we were delivering were warm moments between people, and I think that’s what keeps our brand evolving--that connection that people are finding between each other.” Abigail revealed that while people, particularly men, dissuaded her from pursuing candles, she was thorough with her research. She gathered information from every corner, from consulting her Uber drivers to collecting data through SurveyMonkey, she found an opportunity in the market to build her business.

3. People at the Center

In a year like 2020 where every aspect of life has been altered, placing people at the center is a key to brand success. COVID-19 prompted abrupt changes to the world, forcing businesses to rethink strategies, ensure a safe and quality experience for consumers, and acknowledge the hardships COVID-19 brought, and meeting these hardships with empathy. “Every human being, every company, and every brand realized the importance of authenticity,” Liz Matthews said. “We believe that there’s a kinder, gentler, communication that will come out of this.” As most people transitioned to working from home this year, people had to become intentional about connecting over technology. “If you’re setting up a meeting and there’s a clear agenda, you will get to those agenda items,” Janice said. “It doesn’t hurt to take five minutes and ask, and genuinely want to know, how someone is doing.” COVID-19 has also disproportionately affected women in the workforce, as indicated by 865,000 women leaving the workforce in September 2020 alone. This downward trend of working women detracts from the goal of having 50 percent of the workforce composed of women by 2030, making it now more important than ever to strengthen the support system for working women. “I think it’s important to lean on and leverage the institutional knowledge of other women,” Janice said. “I’m very humbled by the network of women around me building me up and giving me the critical feedback I need to be successful.”