Nicole Gibbons is the founder and CEO of Claire. She's also an accomplished interior
designer whose expert opinion has been sought by top media outlets like HGTV, Own,
Good Morning America, The Rachel Ratio, El Decor, Better Homes and
Gardens, and more. Her work in the design world enabled her to identify
the paint shopping experience was broken, and she saw an opportunity to improve the
process from start to finish. Nicole founded Claire to create an easier, more
inspiring way to shop for paint. She is passionate about helping people create beautiful
spaces they love coming home to every day. Today we'll hear from Nicole,
who walks us through her journey to a milly, a million in sales,
a million in revenue, a million followers, or a million in funding to
a mass. One million of anything is a major feat, and that's why
we're highlighting women who have done just that. You'll hear from women who have
made their marked, impacted lives, blaze trails, and a masked a Millie.
I'm the founder and CEO of Claire. We are a direct to consumer
paint brand that is aiming to make buying paint for your home or really easy
and really inspiring. For anyone who's ever bought paint at a big box store
or a hardware store, it can really cumbersome, time consuming, stressful process.
And so we're just simplifying everything, bringing everything to your door, and
innovated around the sampling process with appealing to fit color samples one step, no
mass, you can seep back to what the color looks like in your home,
and then we've curated the best color. So we make it really really
easy to find the perfect one. And the journey to getting here involved many
steps, and I really say that every step in my career led me to
this. When I was a kid, I actually thought I wanted to be
a pediatrician and I love babies. It was more about just like, you
know, I don't know, I love medicine. I love babies, and
that's what I kind of thought I wanted to do growing up. And then
you know, you go through your schooling and realize, um, you know,
different paths. So I went to college and I started taking an advanced
science classes and I was like, yeah, I'm not doing this for the
next twelve years, no thanks. And I had so many other interests.
So I was really interested in fashion. I was really interested in the music
industry, and so I started doing internships. I interned at Interscope Records,
I interned at peel To Skincare Company, I interned at a PR agency,
And through those experiences, I got a flavor for, um, you know
what working in PR might be like. And that's the past that I took
fresh out of college. So I actually worked in PR for ten years,
but um and now i'm I'm. I went from PR to running an INTI
design firm to now a new role as a startup CEO. So a very
far cry from my days of wanting to be a doctor when I was a
little girl. I didn't intentionally set out to become a startup CEO, but
I knew I wanted to build a brand, and so when I was working
in PR, I started exploring my passion for design through blogging. So it
was the early days of blogging, before there were influencers and people even really
monetized blogs. I started a decorating blog and it was really just to create
an outlet and talked about my love for design with people who actually care,
because my real friends didn't could care to you know, they there or less
about interior design, and so through that creative channel, I was able to
perform a passion for design or that was all run who does an eight?
So definitely not a good time to be leaving my corporate job. But fast
forward twenty thirteen, I left my PR career to build an interior design firm
and be an interior designer after five years of five hustling and working on the
blog, and so I set out to build a business and make a name
for myself as a designer. I started focusing on trying to create opportunities in
the media. I would be really inspired by Martha Stewart. I also felt
like there was no voice of decorating for a younger generation of people. When
you looked at all the personalities that were an AGTP at the time and that
you know had you know, relative like no names or who are relative no
names in the home space, there were all of older people that didn't really
speak to me. And so I initially set out to try to become like,
you know, a Martha Stewart esque decorating, entertaining personality. And so
I started doing lack of work in media, so I would appear on morning
shows pretty frequently. I booked a role on a DIY decorating show on the
Open Women Bring that work called Homemates Simple Um. It was a show where
we did one room makeovers for deserving families. And all the while I was
doing all of those things, I was also working with private clients and pier
designer, so ring many hats and just kind of hustling and you know,
on the PR circuit and just kind of constantly being out there. And the
further along I got in my design career, the more and more I started
to think about the kind of brands that I wanted to build. And the
typical path for an interior designer is usually furniture. It's usually a licensing arrangement.
So you know, the person whose name is on the product isn't owning
and operating the company. They're just kind of, you know, putting their
name on the products. You know, maybe having some creative input in the
in the early process of you know, product development, and then taking a
fee or percentage of sales. And you know, that became less interesting to
me. The landcape had change, you know, the retail world was becoming
more e commerce focused, and I was really excited by what other young founders
were doing in different industries across the commerce and so like you know companies like
Kasper or worried Park or birch Box. You know people who are pioneering new
models for buying products, you know, creating easier ways to shop for something
that we're really challenging, like glasses, like mattresses. And I started thinking
about what I can do in the home space. That was like that home
is a pretty sleepy category behind the scenes. You know, the companies that
manufacture the furniture, the brands that really dominate the home space across all categories,
and are these really old companies that probably aren't innovating as fast as the
consumer landscape is shifting. And so I thought that there would be an opportunity
to do something really interesting and disruptive in the home space. There weren't a
lot of brands doing interesting things. I think one King's Lane came along and
really created something that felt really fresh, and I started thinking about what category
I could happen to in home that would be different. And so that meant
not doing furniture, that meant not doing betting or not doing something else that
was equally as obvious. And I had a full moment around paint. In
twenty sixteen, I was helping a forensic paint color and you know, I
was trying to go to the paint brand's website to show them the color.
And I realized, this website is a terrible experience. Why can't you,
you know, easily see colors online? Why are there's so many colors?
That I just started thinking about what a better experience could look like. And
that was really the origin of the idea. And when the light bulb moment
happened, and that was in twenty sixteen, and so in that year,
I was really busy in other areas designment of my business, and so I
didn't really focus on this idea and really dedicate or commit myself to pursuing it
until last year twenty seventeen, and so I decided to scale back my design
firm to explore what this could be. And early, you know, pretty
much as soon as I made that decision, things started to grow legs,
and you know, I saw all the potential and so fast forward, you
know, built out of supply chain, went out to raise capital, started
building a team executing on the business and we just launched Joun July thirty first.
It's been quite an exciting journey. So what did it take to get
to the actual launch? Nicole walks us through what I'll call after the idea
phase. So when it when it was truly in the idea phase, like
twenty sixteen, I just started looking more closely at the competitive landscape. I
started, um, you know, diving a little bit into market research,
but that was a big extent of it. And then January twenty seventeen rolled
around, and you know what happens every new year. You start thinking about
your goals and what you really want to do with your life. And I
felt like, while I had built a really great design career, it wasn't
very focused. You know. One day I was working with clients, another
day, I was doing something on TV, another day I was doing a
collaboration or some sort of project with the brand, and I was constantly you
know, on the grind, hustling, you know, wearing many and I
felt like I had, you know, seventeen jobs, and so I wanted
to I wanted to just really focus my efforts on one thing. And so,
you know, at the top of the new year, I really started
reflecting on what I was most passionate and most excited about, and I came
back to this idea for Claire. And so, you know, early in
that year, I had a lot of projects that I wasn't that excited about
in my other business, and so it was actually quite easy to take a
step back, which was a little bit of a risk, and it was
scary because I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna pause from what's bringing in all
of the revenue and focus on this idea that I don't really know where it's
going to go, but let me just kind of see, right, And
so I stopped taking on clients. I started saying no to everything, and
I just spent all my time and energy, you know, working on trying
to get this business going. And so I started driving way deeper into the
market dynamics. I started talking to people in the paint industry and in the
R and D space, and you know, you know, having a couple
of loose chests with some dcs that I got connected with, and you know,
all of those early conversations were really positive and gave me a really big
vote of confidence that I was doing something that's really had the potential to materialize
in the way that it had had envisioned, and I spent a lot of
time building out our supply chain. I knew that I would need to raise
capital, and so in order to raise capital, you kind of have to
have something right. You can't just be like I have brilliant idea. There's
a million brilliant ideas. So what I really spent my energy on was building
out the foundation of our of our supply chain, and also building out the
vision and marketing strategy for the brand. I come from the marketing background,
having worked in PR for ten years, and so when you're launching a new
company and you're doing something really disrupted, you ute to market strategy is really
really important. So I just spent a lot of time thinking about and planning
sort of what that how I would execute on this this brand vision that I
had, and and how we would go to market. And so by the
time I went out to raise capital, I had a really solid plan for
um how I would execute. I had partners lined up to help with our
manufacturing and other areas of our supply chain and M and I had a really
strong go to market strategy. So UM, I think that helped, and
UM, you know, I think as a as a founder, UM,
it's super important to have a big vision, you know, when you're raising,
particularly when you're raising free products. If you've already the bootstrapped a company
to a point where you have you know, exciting early attraction, UM,
you know, that's one thing, because you've got real metrics to show,
But when you don't have a product yet, you've really got to have a
strong vision. And so when you're raising capital as early as I did,
UM, you're really selling investors on a vision and on the potential of what
your business to be, because you know, at that point there's nothing really
tangible other than you know, maybe you know, in my case, we
we did some I did some mock ups and you know, branding and things
like that, but we had to starting manufacturing any syst products. So it's
really all about the vision. One of the first conversations I had was someone
in the R and D space and the industry, and that person felt like
the industry really needed this. Um. You know, their feedback was that
they're they've worked in the pain industry for years and even they hate shopping for
page and so I was onto something and so that was a really really big
vote of confidence. And then I also had a discussion with the VC.
So I'm a member of an all women's co working space called The Wing.
Shout out to the Wing. I love them. And when the Wing was
in their early days, they would do these office hours where they'd have someone
cool and important come in and you could sign up to talk to them and
pick their brains. And so a VC this loan sus in line m posted
an office hour, so I had twenty minutes with her to talk to her
about whatever, you know, raising capital, building a business. And so
I just went and I said, Hey, I have this idea, here's
why I'm in the process, this is my vision for how I want to
build this company, this is my background. What bosts do you have on
how I should go about raising capital? And she gave me some really solid
advice and was very encouraging, and I didn't think she was sort of blowing
smoke. I believe she was really genuine and she felt like, um,
you know, if I, if I did a few things right and and
you know, kind of took them for advice, that I could have some
success raising capital and those two conversations happened ironically because her IF week in February,
that was when I kind of knew, I'm like, okay, if
I have at least one VC kind of cosiding that this is an idea worth
you know, kind of pursuing, and someone you know in the painted industry
who feels like the industry really needs something like this, that was enough for
me to say, Okay, I think the risk is worth it and I'm
just gonna kind of go all in. So pretty much from February of twenty
seventeen, UM, I've been all in on Building Claire. And you know,
it was tough, not without a lot of sacrifice. I went from
you know, doing really well to being like, you know, living off
savings and you know, that's a very scary thing when everything's going out and
coming in. So um, you know, but it was all worth it.
And um, and I'm super excited about where the business is today.
We launched less than two months ago, and um, you know, it's
a really exciting time. So and it's only the beginning piece of advice that
I've heard pretty much my whole life from many people over the years, that
I think still holds holds true, and it's probably the best advice is to
trust your gut. Um. I think you know, no one knows,
no one has better instincts than you do, and so um, you know,
oftentimes your your logic might tell you to go against your instincts, and
in many cases it turns out to be the wrong the wrong move. And
I think trusting your instincts ties in very closely with you know, sticking with
your vision. If you know you're on the right path, or you know
that you're doing something the right way, no matter what anyone tells you,
don't labor that comes you know that. I think it holds true in hiring.
Building a team is really hard, and I think oft in your gut
u usually leads you in a direction to know that someone's the right fit.
And and you know, I think many facets of running a business. I
think some of the best leaders trust their gut. And it particularly in an
early stage startup. You don't have a lot of data, right, There's
a lot of ambiguity, and so you've got to make decisions based on very
few data points, and so that's when your instincts kick into kind of know
what's the right path and so you know, it's probably a little cliche,
but I definitely think trusting your gut is the best advice. So I would
say if there's one area of the business that I probably enjoy the least,
and it just comes with the parator worry, so you know, I you
know, it's it's not something that I can't do, but probably the finance,
bookkeeping, accounting pieces of the business. I'm a creative by nature,
so that is sort of not what I've always been the most comfortable with.
And you know, we have a little bit of outsourced support, but at
this stage in the company, a lot of that responsibility rest on my shoulders,
and so I think that would be one area as a business that I'd
be happy to give up. I think one of the important things about being
a good leader is knowing what you're really good at and what you're not so
great at, um, And so I think that's something where thatscenaria of the
business where um, you know, I'm really looking forward to bringing in someone
who knows far more than me and is a much better expert at you know,
in finance, and I think just particularly the bookkeeping piece, it's it's
a little too in the leeds, you know, and you know, as
a company, you've got a lot of people to pay, a lot of
vendors to manage, and you know, um for particularly that piece of it,
it gets really tedious people wanting to follow up on their invoices and all
that kind of stuff, and when you don't really have a finance department in
a payable department to manage those inquiries, it just starts to a little too
in the week, I rather spent my time on the vision in the big
picture of the business. But you know, we're hopefully that's going to change
really soon. I've managed people in my career and teams, and I've had
people work for me, but it's a totally different level of ownership and accountability
when it's your company. And so what that means is constantly working on developing
yourself. Everybody has deficiencies, no matter how smart you are or capable you
are, and so really just trying to improve in the areas where you know,
I have the biggest opportunity to learn and grow. I think being a
strong leader is super important to growing and developing a strong team. I think
my company would be nothing without talents in the effort of everyone who works here,
and so keeping them motivated, helping them grow, helping them cultivate their
careers is really really important, and just being a good example for them,
but also creating values that sort of guide the way everybody thinks. I like
to think of like our company values that clear as our operating system. You
know, it's like the software that helps the computer run smoothly. We have
a set of core values and guiding principles that you know, everybody embodies.
And I think one of the kind of kool aid sounding things that you always
hear people talk about when they talk about startups with culture and creating culture and
hiring for culture fit and things like that. But it's really really important.
If you have people that are not aligned with your values, it's just not
going to be a good outcome. And so, you know, being able
to get a team of really smart, talented people on board with your company
vision and your core values and working together really collaboratively takes a lot of time
and energy. And so I spent a lot of time on people development.
I spent a lot of time giving feedback and you know, and I really
take my role as a leader very seriously. So when I was thinking about
how to build a team, I really thought about you know, and as
an early company, you've got to operate really leans. So I thought about,
Okay, what are the absolute must have roles that if I need to
fill, and what are some of those secondary things that, like, you
know, if I hired someone whose primary job function as X, they could
also do why right, And so I really had kind of four key roles
that I wanted to fill and it wasn't necessarily critical that I go that I
went about hiring or looking for those people in any particular order. It was
really just about finding the right fit for each role. And so m another
really challenging thing with HI for us is that you know, I was operating
this company in spellf mode, meaning we were operating a secrecy No one knew
what I was working on. We didn't have a website, you know,
you couldn't Google us, And that makes recruiting really, really hard because if
you have no Internet presence, it's hard for people to really validate that your
real company and really like to believe in what you're telling them. So when
you're recruiting for a company like mine at the stage that we were at,
Um, it's a lot of tapping into your personal network and getting intros.
And I mentioned The Wing earlier, which is such an incredible community and co
working space for women. And my first employee is someone who I happened to
meet at the Wing. Uh, you know, it's digital marketing role,
and um, you know, I was trying to, prior to my fundraise,
start thinking about like what is online app was just customer acquisition costing these
days and getting something nice on how to go about, you know, thinking
about our digital marketing strategy. And so I've i you know, we had
coffee, and she had really smart ideas and seemed really open and engaging and
seemed to embody all of the characteristics of someone i'd want to work with.
And so she actually ended up being one of the first people I reached out
to when I was looking to hire and and so that's how I found my
first employee. And I think, you know, when you're really really early,
it's a lot of like personal networks and referrals and and also a lot
of cold outreach on LinkedIn and stuff like that. But yeah, recruiting is
also one of the things that can be really time consuming, and you know,
you've spent a lot of time, would you grow If you're a fast
growing company that's got to hire a lot of people really quickly, you end
up spending a lot of time with recruiting. So but I think the best
advice I could give someone who is looking to raise capital and who might look
at what I've accomplished as a benchmark, Number one, I would say,
it's really difficult to compare your trajectory to someone else's. The best thing that
you could possibly do is just stick with your visions, tele agrate story.
You know, there's a book called Grit. It was written by this woman,
Angela Duckworth, and one of the one of the things that she talks
about is that, you know, they do all these studies and they look
at, you know, people who have the best pedigree on paper, you
know, and then people who may not have that same pedigree and kind of
measuring success. And what's really the biggest determining factor of success is not where
they went to school or any of that on paper stuff. It's how much
grit they have to keep going and keep keep at their vision and their grit.
And so I think, just maintain your grit. I think that's something
that I have. If you, you know, you ask me sort of
what my superpower is, I think that I'd never give up, you know.
I I'm really confident. And I think when you're going out to ask
people for lots and lots of money, got to be really confident in what
you're talking about. But also if you are particularly a woman of color,
you know, because you talk about sort of the statistic that you know,
and then the fact that, like the VC industry doesn't necessarily favor women of
color. But if you look at the overall landscape, there's you know,
tens of billions of dollars that are invested in new companies every year by venture
capitalists. And so if you, UM, if you look at yourself as
an outlier and don't fall don't think about yourself in that same bucket as the
you know, two tenths of one percent. Think about yourself as this founder
that's got this amazing vision, an amazing company, UM, and stick with
that and don't let anything else better you or UM or or UM you know,
sort of diminish your confidence. I think the best thing that you can
do is stick with your vision, tell a great story, UM, and
keep going keep pushing through all the nose. I know founders um whom who
went out to raise capital and we're told no hundreds of times before they got
the yes. I was actually just chatting yesterday was the chief marketing officer of
Peloton, and then I hope I'm not butchering the story, but she was
saying, and Peloton is now a four billion dollar company. And when their
founder first had the vision to build this company, he went out and pitched.
I think it was something literally like a thousand investors that all said no.
And he kept at it and kept at it. And you'd imagine that
even after the first twenty the average person would probably have their confidence knocked down
a little bit. Like he kept at it, and like, you know,
he's definitely got the last last because he's built an incredible business. And
you know, Peloton has like a thick valuation. There's the hottest startup.
Everybody's dying to know if they're going to go public and win and whatever.
And and I think it's a great example of of of grit and canacity and
just making sure that you never never waiver no matter what happens. Sometimes hecticness
of being a CEO and founder can actually get in the way and hinder your
day to day productivity. Nicole is going to share with us some of her
favorite productivity hacks. So I am big into efficiency and productivity hacks. I'm
a big fan of Embarrassed and you know other people who are known for,
you know, kind of like their expert advice on how to get more done
and how to be more productive. I can't say that I'm the best at
it. I probably fail every day at accomplishing something that I intended to do
that day. You know, there's just never enough hours in the day.
You know a few things that I do to try to sting really focused is
you know, as much as I can, I try to meditate. My
days are crazy. I'm pulled in many different directions. I am context switching
quite often, and you know, when you have a very very busy mind,
it's hard to ever find those moments to be still, and so meditation
really helps you master the art of creating those still moments wherever you are,
so when things do get hectic and crazy, you can kind of resentsor and
find your focus. So that's been really helpful, and that's one of those
things that you know, it's not easy for me to do every day.
I used to try to do the whole Headspace app twenty minutes a day,
which sometimes I still do. But then I found this other app called Simple
Habit, and it's literally like five minute meditations, and some of them are
even shorter. So even if you just get that in, it's really really
awesome. I try to do something every morning that makes me feel accomplished.
So whether it's making breakfast or making my bed, it's one of those small
little things that you can do, but it gives you a sense of having
checked something off the list right at the top of the day, and you
know, subconsciously kind of motivates you to just kind of keep going and just
give you momentum as you start your day. Another thing, too, is
I try to time block if I have to do certain tasks, like maybe
it's get through emails or you know, give feedback on just to you know,
on something that my team member has sent me to review. I try
to literally schedule in blocks of times to get those things done because sometimes it's
the only way I can actually get to it is if I put it on
my calendar. I literally put lunch time on my calendar because if I don't,
some days, I will forget to eat lunch. So I think keeping
a calendar and being really diligent about managing your time, I think it is
also super important for maintaining productivity. For me, I think success is just
being happy with myself wherever I am and with whatever I'm doing. I can
accomplish things that you know, most people could only dream of, but if
I'm not happy doing those things, it's not a success. And so my
goal is to love coming to work every day. I don't ever want to
feel burned out. I don't ever want to resent uh you know, and
anything about my my my job or my career. Um. I think when
it comes to um, family and my personal relationships, I think having those
relationships be healthy, UM and happy is also what makes me feel really accomplished
and successful, because when we're running a big company, having a support system
is really really important. UM. Yeah, I think it's just it's my
my measure of success is not tied to anyone accomplishment. It's more tied than
my own personal sense of contentment, UM and happiness. And and that's really
how I how I look at the idea of success and how I define it.
I'm a Yana Angel and thank you for listening to Emilie produced by Maizie
Media. If you enjoy this episode, you can subscribe to the podcast so
you never miss an episode. Because we have more amazing women lined up to
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next week for another episode of a Millie