Transcripts for Episode 116

These transcripts were generated by robots, not writers.

Cherie: Speaking about how writing is one of the best things that you can do for business as an entrepreneur. I got a degree in writing with an editing emphasis. It was technical writing. You know, it’s not creative writing and you know, sometimes people wonder, how does that translate into business? It translates in every single way. How do we have that AHA moment for period care as well? And you really looked at it as a writing problem. I had done technical writing, right, for 15 years and said, I take these really ambiguous subjects and I break them down for the layman into terms that they can understand and do so with both writing really concise writing and visuals, right layouts and so forth. That’s how you communicate it and that’s how you teach.

Welcome. I am very excited about this week’s topic. It’s something that I’ve never covered on the podcast before, which is periods. We’re going to talk about women’s health, we’re going to talk about equity, period poverty, we’re going to talk about also sustainability when it comes to our period. So I’m really excited about this conversation. And behind all of that is an entrepreneur with an amazing story of how she’s built her company and is really having a global impact. So even if you’re not a female and so the period topic is maybe not what you’re looking for. The entrepreneurial story is really beautiful and inspiring and there’s so much richness here. I’m really excited about this week’s guest.

Stacy: Cherie Hager is the co founder and CEO of Salt, a women owned B Corp that creates reusable and sustainable period care products that replace disposable pads and tampons. An entrepreneur and philanthropist, Cherie champions the intersection of for profit and nonprofit models through social enterprise and leads Salt’s social impact mission to end period poverty. Since their launch in 2018, salt has donated over 70,000 period cups and underwear to underprivileged women and girls in 50 countries as part of their 2% Give Back program. Before starting Salt, Cherie had been an entrepreneur in multiple ecommerce ventures and worked as a technical writer with 15 years of publication experience, coauthoring nine editions of collegiate textbooks in fields of fitness and wellness. Cherie is also the mother of five daughters and one son yes, that is, six children and considers them her greatest success.

Stacy: Cherie, I’m so excited for our conversation.

Cherie: Oh, I’m so thrilled to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Stacy: We met years ago when Salt was not even an official company yet I got to hear about your ideation and you were working on launching this business. And so I have had the honor and joy of watching you and knowing you through this journey, but our listeners are just meeting you. I would love for you to share how you started this journey that you’re on, of ending period poverty, of creating period equity and sustainability, not just in the US. But globally. So tell us a little bit about that founding story.

Cherie: Yeah, I would love to. And it was just an idea back then when we first met, and something I was passionate about, and it was wonderful to have you take part in it in so many ways, and we can go into that. But the way that Salt started is that I was having a conversation with our aunt in Venezuela. So both my husband and I come from Latin heritage. My mom is from Argentina, and he was born in Venezuela, and his dad was also born and raised there. And I was speaking to his aunt in Venezuela, and she was describing the situation there, how they couldn’t get anything on store shelves. Dictatorship plus high inflation makes for a bad recipe.

Cherie: And so she was looking into personal care items, and I thought, oh, my goodness, what would you do if you didn’t have things like toilet paper or diapers for children or things like period care? When I asked her, she said, well, I haven’t seen a pattern tampon in like, three years. And I just sat there and I thought of my five daughters and immediately started looking into reusable options for my family there. And I didn’t know that a lot of reusable options existed. It was the first time that I was introduced to the Menstrual Cup before and was so excited. I tried it out and was just enthralled by how great of a product this was. The fact that it was more sustainable, better for our bodies, better for the environment, that it displaced thousands of pads and tampons.

Cherie: It lasted ten years, which meant that I never had to visit the tampon aisle again. I literally would have one in my purse, one in the car and that was it. That was all I needed. And as I was experiencing this and learning about Venezuela, I also started lurking into period poverty and realized that this wasn’t a Venezuela problem, this was a most of the world problem. Lack of affordable and accessible menstrual care. And it’s called period poverty, which means that they have lack of reliable period care. And it’s 62% of the world. So there’s 800 million menstruators in the world and of those, 500 million live in period poverty. So as a woman, think about it. Let’s say you started your period today, but you don’t have access to period care. Would you go to school? Would you go to work?

Cherie: Would you feel comfortable doing this interview or sitting in an audience publicly if you had no period care? And of course not, because nobody wants to be embarrassed about leaking out in public. So when they don’t have period care, then women and girls start to get resourceful and use things like banana leaves, or old cloth, or bits of mattress pad or paper torn from school books, and even things like soil or ash, anything that absorbs to manage their periods. And as you can imagine, these are far from reliable. So as soon as girls hit puberty, you start to see school dropout rates just skyrocket in developing nations. So for example, in Uganda you have 91% of girls are enrolled in primary school and it drops to 22% in secondary school. And you have to ask yourself what happened? Right? Well, it’s periods.

Cherie: It’s periods that happen. And in rural India, one in 100 girls reaches the twelveTH grade. So it’s a major problem for girls education. So when we realized that a product this big, this little period cup, had the power to keep girls in school, keep women providing for their families, it’s just something I had to get behind. And so we have this 2% give back mission with salt and that’s to donate these products to areas with the most need. And like you said, we’ve donated over 70,000 of these cups and our period underwear also, which comes later in the story in 50 countries. And it’s just core to who we are. And I didn’t answer how we got into the business, but this was the realization that I had in the big impact mission that was going through my mind when we first met.

Cherie: And I was just trying these period cups and I said this has to get out to the world, it has to get out to the developing nation, it needs to get out to my friends and family here because it’s an incredible product. And there was things that were lost, like a lot of will switch to reusable care because of the cost savings or because it’s more sustainable. What’s always lost on them is that it’s just more comfortable too. I would wear it and I would forget I was on my period. These hold three to four times more than a tampon. Our discs hold even more. Our underwear can hold up to three pads.

Cherie: But we just launched a super that holds up to six pads, which I still think is incredible, and they’re more comfortable, and you’re not using that disposable care, less odor, all of it. There’s just so much to love about it, but it takes some behavior change. So we looked at it and I said, you know what? I think we can get this out to the world in a mainstream way, and we’ll kind of go into that. But my technical writing background really informed that.

Stacy: It’s so beautiful to hear you talk about this awareness that drove this passion and this mission that you’ve really built your whole company around. I’m sure there are listeners thinking, okay, but how did you go from that phone call to this global business? So can you tell us a little bit about how did you launch the business, and what has that growth journey been like for you?

Cherie: Yeah, so we launched it in 2018. I think when we met, it must have been either 2016 or 2017, and it was a year we had started we’d started thinking about it and so forth back in 2015, and then it really went on strong in 2017, where I was writing pages and pages of copy for the website, instructions for use right. While developing the product at the same time. You have to do it all. All while my husband was doing real estate, I had supported his real estate ventures also, and then I was a freelance technical writer doing these textbooks that you mentioned in my bio. And you just have to do it like a heights side hustle, right? You have to work on this passion project that you have.

Cherie: I’d approached my husband, and I talked to him about the period cup, and he’s like, what? What is that? Right? I said, I really want to get this out to more friends and family. And at first I actually thought, I just want to buy a good product from China or something and get them here and make them more mainstream, because I just didn’t find a lot of cups available. There were some on Amazon, but there was not really high quality ones, so I want to develop one. Well, we quickly found out, well, if we want to do it well, if we want to do this right, we need to have it be us made, us sourced. There’s a lot of fillers in China. It’s just not something that you want to risk with an intimate area.

Cherie: It’s also FDA regulated, so a lot of barriers. Right. Immediately when I thought, oh, my gosh. FDA regulation. And kudos to my husband. He’s a risk taker. He plows forward, and we’ve really been a very strong team, and he’s been kind of the unsung co founder this whole time. My face is more there. But we’ve really done this together. We navigated through all of those challenges. And one of the big challenges was just how do you make silicone injection molding, right? And each mold to create the cups. And were looking at two cups, one that was a regular size, one that was a smaller size, and they’re $25,000 each just to make the mold.

Cherie: And so if we didn’t get the actual 3D CAD file correct, right, if we didn’t get our model correct on what we wanted, then we literally had it etched in steel. And this is money coming out of our 401 KS, right? And so $50,000 just for that, let alone for everything else that you need your brand identity and so forth. So it is a lot of work, it’s a lot of hustle, and that passion is really what drives you. So I know then in entrepreneurship, a lot of people say you need to know your why. Oh, it’s integral to know your why because it’s a lot of hustle and it’s a lot of work, but it’s so well worth it when you have something you care deeply about.

Stacy: Yeah, I mean, there’s always going to be those big things that come up. And as they say, it’s like the problems get bigger the bigger your business gets, right? So it’s not like you solve all of them early on, and suddenly it’s like a smooth ride into the sunset of entrepreneurship. I’m curious to hear from you a little bit on you had experience with startups, and you have this background in technical writing. Were there any formative experiences, maybe even some failures or a failure? Because I feel like I learned the best from those, like those big moments where I maybe not failed or I overcame something big that really helped me grow. The thing that I have today is there a moment that comes up for you and you reflect on your you.

Cherie: Know, when you’re talking about formative experiences, that’s where my mind went first, and I was actually thinking about how I traveled to Was when I was a child. So I lived there for three months. I lived in Brazil also when I was even younger. And so I had a very international background, and so did my husband. We both have very inspiring immigrant stories where my mom moved to the US. When she was 14 years old, worked in a hanger factory in La. And then went to school and got her nursing degree and went to school in English and had to struggle through all the language barriers. My husband has a similar story with his dad. He actually has Austrian heritage, and they fled the war after World War II and went to Venezuela. So very kind of German Austrian race.

Cherie: So he’s a little bit whiter with blue eyes, but lived in Venezuela, very Venezuelan. So his first language, his father’s first language was German, second language was Spanish and then English. And he was actually I was writing textbooks with him and so he was writing his textbooks in his third language, which is very impressive. Moved to the States when he was yes, he was a gymnast. Was recruited to a US college because of on a gymnastics scholarship. Didn’t know any English at all and then got his PhD by the time he was in his 20s. So just resilient type of ancestry that we come from with our own parents. And so were just really grown and raised to appreciate the freedoms that we have, the opportunities that we have to work hard.

Cherie: And the times when I was in Argentina and in Brazil, I later did a lot of travel in Brazil. You just see the world, you see through old nations, you see some really difficult conditions and it conditions you to really have empathy and care for others and care for them is equally vidu. And I think a lot of times in the US we can be a little bit immune to that if we don’t see it as close by. And then when you go to third world nations, it really changes you. So that was really an experience that really taught me to be philanthropic. It’s something that has always been a passion of mine, is to ensure the equality of all people because I bond with all people and I’m very much both American and Argentine and grew up that way.

Stacy: The point about just having these experiences in developing countries, I think there is so much richness to really being in a place that’s so vastly different than the world that you come mean. We’ve lived in three developing countries, so we lived in Dominican Republic, Vietnam and Thailand. And I feel like all of those places were so formative for me and just, I don’t know, a real respect for humanity in all aspects and just, like, I guess seeing the beauty of really having a wide range of life experiences and really connecting with people that have such different backgrounds. And and to your point, a lot of that is so hard because when you’re in these, like, you see how much lack there is.

Stacy: And I’ve had a lot of experiences where I would go home after we’d be out in Thailand, maybe we’d be at a market and I would be so struck and heartbroken of all the things that I could not like, I’d see so many things that I would know. Maybe a child who’s not properly dressed and isn’t being watched, a three year old that’s kind of like running around or you see the conditions that people sleep in. And to your point, I don’t even think I thought about period poverty when I was in those environments because it’s so unseen. So all of what you’re saying really connects with me. And I’m curious to know because I know how much it impacts how I am a mom, I’m a friend, I’m an entrepreneur. How has that also carried into how you lead in your company?

Cherie: Oh, I love that question so many ways. And I’ll start really fast and just speaking about my family and because I think that all was integrated, but because those experiences for both of us were so formative. Because John was born in Venezuela and then I also had this time when I was young, in my childhood, when I was really able to experience Argentina and some of the poorer areas of Argentina. We have tried to do that very deliberately with our children to ensure that they see an international spectrum. And so we take one international trip per year when we do impact work with Salt. My kids have traveled with me to Nepal, to a rural area that lacked refrigeration. It was like going back 100 years. Everyone had a water buffalo, lived in mud huts. We’re using bottled water, we’re driving in Tuktuks.

Cherie: And to be able to see just that lack and see such happy people and also see how our products are changing lives, it’s just something that we really want for our children and also for our team. So impact is just so core to who we are. So we try to share the impact storytelling and all that work. We’re doing very mindfully at Salt. And then we also have impact trips that we’re offering to team members that have been with us for over four years so that they can go see what we’ve done hands on the ground. And these are volunteer trips where we’ll be doing volunteer projects and work. But we want them to have that same experience because there are a lot of Americas that aren’t well traveled into these third world areas.

Cherie: It can be a little scary entering those and we have to be really mindful of those risks. But I know that we’re well traveled there and it’s just having an awareness and knowing some basic principles and so forth to keep yourself well and safe. And so we’re really excited about that when we talk about how we lead too. We have a very pro family culture, a very empathetic culture. At Salt. I wanted this for females. We have an 80% female team. I think it’s really important to have an environment that is safe, that’s respectful, it is for anybody wants that. But you just don’t always find that. We all have our stories and experiences and so it’s core to who we are in our values. We’re invested in people, we’re devoted to the customer.

Cherie: We have values that are more front facing, like being optimistic and relentless, which is doing everything to the best of our abilities. But then we also maintain a very respectful culture. And another way that we’ve done it, in a way to support women in the workplace specifically, really comes from my own experience because I have six children, and here I am having full time work and needing childcare just like most families do. And something that we saw very much during COVID And that is that the burden of childcare disproportionately affects women, and it’s one of the primary causes of the gender pay gap. So that high cost of childcare for mothers who want to work is a struggle to know whether they send them to daycare and may not see them for eight to 9 hours a day.

Cherie: And so early on, where I needed the childcare, we needed ourselves. We offered an in office preschool five days a week, free to all of our team members with two preschool teachers. It’s now three preschool teachers. And it’s really been instrumental to our team’s success because we’ve been able to tap into stellar female talent who otherwise may not be in the workplace because they’re trying to make the decision. Sometimes it’s a wash with childcare because high cost of childcare is such a burden anyway. So we’re really excited to support them in that way. Our working fathers love it as well, for both. And then we offer a very flexible PTO and vacation if we don’t have any hard and fast rules. And we say take the time you need when you need it, just as long as you take care of your team.

Cherie: And that’s because there’s so many children’s events and sicknesses and recitals and PTA conferences that come up. And we didn’t want the burden of our team members coming to us and having to explain every single thing that they needed to do. We feel like that’s micromanagement that we can really have a high freedom, high responsibility workplace where they can take that time. We don’t have to track vacation. There’s no rules to how much vacation you get with how long you’ve been at the company. We say just take it. And then we’ll have open conversations. And I think that really lends to a healthy environment for families specifically.

Stacy: I love that. I was just thinking about this today before we hit record. I was telling you how this morning we had a doctor’s appointment. We visited a school yesterday, we visited a different school. There’s all these things that come up, they have to happen during the day. And I have thought so many times about families who don’t have that flexibility and having to take their very precious time off to do these things that they should be using that time for rest and for connection with their families. So I love that you have that flexibility.

Stacy: And to our earlier conversation, I do feel that being in the world, being in different cultures, it does give you just a greater, I think, respect for humanity and for people as beings that need space and independence and trust and all of the things that you’re building within. Salt so love so much of what you said. I’d love to talk about your writing background. Can we talk about that? Because I actually did not know this about you until I was prepping for our interview today. I did not realize that you were a writer with 15 years of publication experience. And what a gift coming into forming a company, because so many of my entrepreneur friends who are building companies, they are so I think, honestly kind of scared of the content world because it feels really overwhelming.

Stacy: They don’t have experience, they don’t know how to do it. They don’t even know how to measure success for people that they hire to do it. And then also you have this storytelling side that you’re able to bring into it and be able to create content. How has that shaped all of your content at Salt? Because it’s not obviously just written content. You produce videos, you have a beautiful brand. So much of that like visual storytelling. And the words talk to me about how your background in content has shaped your marketing and all the decisions that you make today at Salt.

Cherie: Oh, it is integral. And I love that we’re talking about this. It’s something that I don’t actually get to go into very often when I do interviews, is speaking about how writing is one of the best things that you can do for business as an entrepreneur. I got a degree in writing with an editing emphasis. It was technical writing. It’s not creative writing. And sometimes people wonder, how does that translate into business? It translates in every single way. I have never done more writing than in Salt. I did more writing in Salt than I have with my technical writing before where I was writing textbooks. You think? No. Really? Yes, 100%. And the way that it really shaped just my entrepreneurial experience is that when I first looked at this period care industry, very taboo industry, right?

Cherie: And then you look at reusable period care and it’s even more taboo. People think, oh, that’s gross, or oh, you have touch blood. And there’s all these misconceptions about reusable period care and then it’s not till later that they find out, well, it’s actually cleaner and it feels better and it’s just more beautiful all around, a more elevated way to really manage your period. That’s what we believe. And so we looked at the taboo and we said, you know, we have to shift this thinking into what the AHA moment that I had, that this is a better for you and better for your body product. And at the time, there was all these macro movements, right, with clean beauty care and cleaning products for your home and so forth. And it hadn’t really extended to period care yet.

Cherie: So I was capitalizing on that macro movement, the zero waste movement, this direction that people are going into it’s. How do we have that AHA moment for period care as well? And you really looked at it as a writing problem. I had done technical writing, right, for 15 years and said, I take these really ambiguous subjects and I break them down for the layman into terms that they can understand and do so with both writing, really concise writing, and visuals, right? Layouts and so forth. That’s how you communicate it and that’s how you teach. And there’s a lot of behavior change and a lot of teaching when it comes to reasonable period care, teaching somebody how to use a cup when they’ve used a tampon their whole life or a pad is difficult. Behavior change is hard.

Cherie: And this is what I was doing in our textbooks for fitness and wellness. I had difficult chapters like STIs and Addiction Behavior and Stress Management. Right. And Nutrition. And you’re trying to teach college students how to take care of themselves in healthy ways. And I said, it’s the same problem. I can do this, we can take this on and teach people how to have this behavior change with reusable period care. And the other thing I want touch on is just how huge brand is. Brand is everything. I’ve learned that more than anything in this business. We’ve done other businesses before. We used to import goods from Brazil. That was fun. I’ll go into that story later. But it was an e commerce site. Had learned some things and some learnings there and had done a lot of website copy and so forth.

Cherie: And we knew that to be able to tackle this problem, we had to have a beautiful brand so that we could present this product in an elevated way. One that was going to be Instagram worthy packaging that would be stand out on Target shelves. At the time, Target was our dream retailer, but we hadn’t gotten into Target yet. And we said we have to make sure that our packaging stands out, that they can understand what it is, that they can choose their size well. And so there’s just writing involved in all of that. And we really saw these two extremes where you had in the period care industry, when you walk down the period aisle, pinks and purples and flowers and women spinning in white dresses, right? This is kind of how it was sold to us. And I never liked the color pink.

Cherie: I like blue. I was also a little bit called a tomboy growing up and I didn’t really resonate with the period care aisle. And on the other side of the spectrum were these more progressive brands that were using kind of shock value to get attention, blood and body parts. And I’m like, this isn’t me. I don’t think this is the mainstream consumer. I just wanted a cleaner, better product. I’m a mom of five daughters. I want something that’s going to speak to them. And so we developed this brand that was just very clean, beautiful, elevated. We named it Salt because we wanted something. That invoked a feeling of a return to the natural. Salt is an essential element in the landscape and also in our bodies. And so our periods, right, periods perpetuate the menstrual cycle perpetuates the human race.

Cherie: And so we just developed it in that way, and we did a lot of beautiful imagery that included our models in the natural landscape. Anyway, I feel like I’m going off a lot, but brand is really key. And then along with that, it’s your brand voice. So when it comes to writing, we’re very deliberate about our brand voice. We said, how are we going to speak to our consumers? We had a focus group at the time of a thousand people that we had got in grassroots way, where I would just invite people to lunches in Idaho and Utah and wherever I could get a hold of friends. And I would invite my friends and say, bring your friends. Bring your laptop. Lunches on me. I just want you to invite people to our focus group. I want to ask them questions.

Cherie: And we would A, B test different types of writing. And what really resonated with people and what we found is it was a combination of a very approachable voice, but one that was knowledgeable enough and authoritative. And we put a name to that voice and we called it your best friend’s older sister. And the reason why is because when you’re going through your period for the first time, you’re not always just talking with your mom. That’s kind of lame. You don’t want to talk with her all the time. Well, your friend, maybe you got your period before them, or maybe they’re going through the same thing as you are. But that best friend’s older sister now, she’s cool, she’s trendy, she knows what’s up. She’s had her period for a while.

Cherie: And so we really owned that language, and it’s worked so well for us. People say they love our voice. They feel like it’s witty. Oh, there’s so many things I’ve learned when it comes to language, the last thing I’ll say is also humor. We use humor in a very mindful way, and it’s more on the clever side. Not like slapstick funny, generally, not crass, right? It’s more like we’re writing a very intelligible paragraph about period poverty or about our mission. And then we add something delightful and clever at the end that makes people laugh. Because when they do, when you make somebody laugh, they associate that hit of dopamine that fun moment with your brand just like you would with any friend that makes you laugh at a party. So there’s a lot there. I’ll let you make some comments, do another episode.

Stacy: All on the writing, all on the content and writing piece. But so much what you said, I’ve been watching that also evolution over the years. I remember getting the first generation of the salt cup, and I don’t know what the packaging looks like now, but you had this kind of cylindrical package, and it was so beautiful. And I remember just thinking, like, this is lovely. It was, like, surprisingly lovely. I wasn’t expecting that. And I do think there is, like, a delight element to your brand that’s just, like, bringing a little bit of a joy to this thing that has historically been hidden and something that we’re embarrassed about. But it’s actually, like, creating a beautiful moment with it and creating fun. And that voice.

Stacy: What I think is so cool about all your storytelling around the written voice, your best friend’s, older sister, is that absolutely carried through in all your visual communication as well. It’s just interesting. I’m like going back through the files of my mind, thinking about some of the things I’ve seen of yours over the years. But what I really hear, and I hope that people will pay attention to this, is there was an really intentional effort to uncover your voice and understand the people that you were trying to reach.

Cherie: Yeah, that a B. Testing of the focus group was integral for us. We did it with our visuals. We had them try the cups, obviously, when were first launching. So we hadn’t even launched our product, created this focus group before we even had a product in hand. They got our very first products, and we had a few testers. Right? We had a few testers. And as an entrepreneur, it’s such a roller coaster when you’re first developing a product because you’re getting real time feedback and it’s raw and it’s the best thing that you could do is respond to that feedback. So we’d hear people talk about our product, what they liked, what they didn’t like, and we responded to it. And also our packaging, everything, right? Can you understand what size you need? And so forth. And it matters so much.

Cherie: And there’s a lot of your first assumptions that can be true, and there’s a lot that can be challenged. And you need a pivot. And it’s really important to be able to get that proof of concept, to get your very first prototype, and then to take it to market and to listen to your customers. We’re very intentional about listening to our customers. Our CX team, our Customer experience team, I could go on about them forever. But they’re called our coaches. They’re our salt coaches. They are real humans that answer real questions and help people find success every day. And they are also intentionally delightful. So, like you said, bringing that level of delight, they do that in every interaction because we always say, what are the customer experience moments that you remember the most? Well, they’re your worst or your best. Right?

Cherie: You don’t really remember anything in the middle too much. And so we’re actually very deliberate about creating more of those incredible moments. We delight our customers all the time. For instance, if their dog ate their cup because apparently dogs just love silicone. We’ll send them a new cup, we’ll send them a dog bone. Or if they’ve had a child, we have salt onesies that we send. We have so many stories. Someone having a weding, they’ll get a wedding gift, they’ll get flowers from salt. These are moments that we create, like you said, to delight them. And I also loved that you touched on the taboos and the difficulties in this industry and how our deliberate voice is elevating that it’s.

Cherie: Actually, one of my biggest pet peeves in the period care industry is people speaking about periods with shame, with, like I said, some crassness with euphemisms. It just doesn’t have to be that way. Again, as a technical writer, I’m used to speaking very straightforward, but in ways that are respectful, in ways that people can understand and bring these conversations. People want to have these conversations. Both women and men want to have these conversations. And we speak to it in a straightforward way without these euphemisms and taboos, then we can make progress. And so in all of our ads and all of our branding, it’s very much about empowering women and it’s very much about telling an elevated story about periods because they shouldn’t be something shameful that we need to hide. We don’t need to hide tampons in our sleeve, right?

Cherie: And have wrinkle free wrappers and so forth. This is something that affects over 50% of the population. This is periods, like I said, perpetuate the human race, these beautiful cycles. And they should have some kudos, not censorship. It should be something that we celebrate and that we speak of, and it’s integral to our hormonal health. There’s so many things, but in everything we do, we elevate it, and we elevate it to a level of the divine, honestly. And we showcase it as the same powerful cycles as Mother Earth instead of with shame.

Stacy: That is absolutely beautiful. I love that perspective. I think it also just honors our bodies and all the work that they do to get us through every day. I’d love to hear what you’re most excited about right now in your life and or business. And where can people buy your products?

Cherie: Yes, so I’m most excited about just the innovative products that we’re creating. We use a very deliberate design, thinking, product process, and empathy interviews with our customers to find out what they want next. And so we have a lot of things in the lineup that I’m super excited about and everything that supports a woman in all phases of life. Just speaking about our underwear really fast, it’s not just for periods. It’s also for everyday wear. It’s the AHA moment that we want all of our customers to have. It’s the AHA moment I had with my own daughters. They wear our underwear every single day. And that’s because women live with wetness for 24 days out of a 28 day cycle.

Cherie: And so between discharge and increased discharge during ovulation and then period week, and sometimes also bladder leaks that you have when you get older and have had kids like me, and then postpartum bleeding, so forth, we just need absorbency in our underwear. We didn’t even talk about this, but yes, we also create underwear, and it really is an everyday underwear. We created it very intentionally to be super comfortable. The underwear is a premium underwear, and we use premium fabrics, sustainable fabrics that are comparable to some of the best underwear companies out there that also have the thinnest and driest and most absorbent gusset. So we’re taking that gusset technology. It took us three and a half years to get to. It’s patent pending. We’re taking it to other areas of know, sporting swimwear, and so we’re really excited about what we’re bringing.

Cherie: And you can find us on Salt, you can find us on Amazon, and you can also find us in all Target stores nationwide. You can find us in CVS. We just launched this past spring. We’re expanding into all Whole Foods regions, which we’re excited about, and some other retailers, hopefully, that we can announce soon. So you can find us on store shelves, and then also, if you don’t see us on shelves or all of our products on shelves, then visit us on our website.

Stacy: So exciting and so many exciting things in the works. I need to get some of that period underwear. I’m really excited to try that. And I know it’s available in Amazon Europe. So for everybody listening in, pick your Amazon, because we have so many different Amazons to order from here in Europe. Cherie, thank you so much for this conversation. I feel like we could have gone on and on, but I’m really inspired by your mission and really grateful that you shared that with us today.

Cherie: Thank you. Thank you so much for the great conversation.

Stacy: And thank you, listener or viewer, for tuning in today. This was such a great conversation. I hope you gained a lot from it. And I want to thank, as always, the team that makes this show possible, rita Dominguez for her amazing production, and Catherine Fishman for Project support. These women make this show possible. I am incredibly grateful and I will be back with you before you know it. You can always access show notes, including any links mentioned in this episode at stacyennis.com/category/podcast, and you can connect with me stacyennis.com on Instagram @stacyennis.