YouSaid · the spoken record

Aishetu Dozie

lines on the record: 26
first: 2020-10-08
most recent: 2020-10-08
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Look, I mean, it depends obviously on your circumstance, right? Because I think I am lucky that I'm blessed that I have a home to live in and that, you know, I can afford to take this type of risk. So I think first of all, people need to establish what kind of privilege they enjoy to allow themselves to not have a salary because you don't pay yourself money when you're starting this business. Every cent goes back into the company. So once I'm assuming you've done that, I think this is a really great time. There are funds outside there, there are grants, you know, looking for entrepreneurs to do really interesting things. And these are really crazy times. And so this is the time if you think that you want to be an entrepreneur, this is the time to go for it.”
2020-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Aishetu Dozie of Bossy Cosmetics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I am a testament to that. I mean, I've literally in April thought the business is dead, right? Like how do you have a product company that doesn't have products and doesn't know when it's going to have products? And is this even a good use of your time? The world is falling apart. Is the world coming to an end? And now I get this point about resilience. Now I get this point around grit.”
2020-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Aishetu Dozie of Bossy Cosmetics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. And so not only did you have consumers now looking for black owned breads, buying them. Then you have, you know, major retailers who are emailing you, you know, you look in your email box and you're like, huh? Like what me? And they're like, yeah, we'd love to talk to you about getting in our store. And, you know, I started off this year. I think I did an IG Live where I said by the end of 2020, I would love to be in five boutiques. And I had picked five cities. Then all of a sudden you have global retailers emailing you saying, you know, some customers have suggested you, let's talk. So it's in March when I kind of fell on the floor like, oh my God, my business is dead to today, I can't believe it.”
2020-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Aishetu Dozie of Bossy Cosmetics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It all kind of happened at a very interesting time, and so we're back in business and with this whole 15% pledge that's opened up whole new thing for us as well.”
2020-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Aishetu Dozie of Bossy Cosmetics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so that just kept me busy and then June happened. And I feel really weird guy talking about the death of George Floyd because, I mean, for the obvious reasons, you know, just a very broken period and a very sad period. But what happened for black owned businesses was it was almost like someone had switched the coding in the algorithm. Folks started looking for quality black owned businesses, and the press started to really talk about us. And then the people who just didn't even know about my business before did. And luckily at that time, Italy opened up again. China had opened up again. And so I flew out an aircraft of some of our products that were made. And I was like, let's go.”
2020-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Aishetu Dozie of Bossy Cosmetics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was miserable. And so that happened in March. And then in April, I sent an email out to our email list of a few thousand people. And I said, guys, look, I feel really bad. Lee, that you haven't heard from me, but this is what's, and I was honest. You know, I'm really sorry that everything is sold out on the site. I have nothing to sell you. At this point now in my Californian supplier is also shut down. So there's nothing to sell. And I'm like, look, there's nothing to sell guys, but can we chat? Can we talk? If anybody wants to talk about getting an MBA, I have an MBA. I'd love to give you advice about that. If anybody wants to talk about how to be a mom in these times, I would love to talk about that. And my customers started writing me back. Aisha, can you talk about this? Can we do this? Can you do an IG live on this topic? Can you do this? Can you do that? And it became this whole community discussion that had nothing to do with selling product.”
2020-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Aishetu Dozie of Bossy Cosmetics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they have managed to get one container out to Italy. And so I'm like, okay, thank God. Our stuff is getting to Italy. At least half of it's getting to Italy if we rush. By March we can launch some of them, not all of them. And then, as we all know, Italy shut down. So by my first anniversary march eighth, I had a good problem which is that our launch collection had pretty much sold out, which was great, but it had nothing else to sell. So there was like sold out, sold out on the website, you know, all my promises and announcements of guys, you know, we have this coming out. We're just, I had nothing to sell.”
2020-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Aishetu Dozie of Bossy Cosmetics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So in January, I started to get really nervous. And the reason is when we first started the business 100% of our supply chain was in California. And then of course as we started to grow and I decided, okay, look, this is actually going really well. I want to go into eyeliners, eyeshadows, all these. I want to get into full color cosmetics. I decided that I would diversify my supply chain. And so I went on this trip last summer with my product designer who's based in Paris. So we moved our formulation lab to Italy, our primary packaging suppliers are in China, and then our boxing packaging is in Germany. Well, march eighth was our first year birthday. And on March 8th, I was going to be unveiling a whole new collection. And then in January, my suppliers are like, yeah, we don't know. We might have to close for just a week or just two weeks. And then it became February. They were shut down. I started to have panic. I was like, okay, we need to get this out. Let's get that out.”
2020-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Aishetu Dozie of Bossy Cosmetics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I'd love to do that, but I promise you, somebody will find a reason to sue us. It has been a very interesting few months, guy, with people believing that they own that word. And, you know, just my own personal search of, you know, in the last six months, our businesses exploded.”
2020-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Aishetu Dozie of Bossy Cosmetics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Almost flip it on its head. But there's so many different bosses in the beauty industry now. I mean, you've got, we're bossy beauty or bossy cosmetics, there's so many different versions be bossy, bossy, this, bossy, that. And so, you know, we are in the process of rebranding the company because it's impossible to get a trademark with the word bossy now in the United States because there are at least 20 companies that use the word bossy. And of course, being a former banker, I understand, you know, ownership of IP. And so that is very critical for us. So it's a very interesting time for the business and growth perspective as well.”
2020-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Aishetu Dozie of Bossy Cosmetics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Why you pick the name? Absolutely. So there's a good and not so great part of the name. So when I had come to this, okay, I'm going to start a beauty company. I thought, what should I call it? And literally Bossy hit me in the face, right? And I thought what I want to use with Bossie is I want to, it is the word for me that really encapsulated the kind of woman I was trying to speak to. And when I say self-identifies as ambitious, she more than likely, at least once in her entire life has been called bossy. And that was always, and I definitely have been called Bossy multiple times in my life, right? And what that meant was, you know, you have a viewpoint and you want to make your point heard. You know, they don't say you're assertive or you're a natural leader. And so I wanted to take this term that has historically been used in a very pejorative fashion for women.”
2020-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Aishetu Dozie of Bossy Cosmetics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have never had a lower barrier to entry to starting as an entrepreneur today. You know, it's free to set up an Instagram account. It's really easy to set up a bank account like all these things. Create a really tiny product range. You can even shoot the photographer yourself if you want to with an iPhone and just go out there and give it a try. And I really do believe, which is something we've been doing at Bossi, is you just keep getting better and better. Like you improve, you improve, you improve. Yeah.”
2020-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Aishetu Dozie of Bossy Cosmetics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They would all say to me, Oh my god, that's a great idea. How come nobody's doing that? Oh my god, that's cool. Like, you're gonna offer free coaching services? How are you going to make money from that? Oh, wait, you're going to interview women to talk about this? And that's when I was like, wait, my customer likes this. So let's just focus on the customer. And so that's, that was the blessing in the rejections, is that it forced me to focus on the ultimate user.”
2020-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Aishetu Dozie of Bossy Cosmetics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just self finance, and I had a few friends who were like, hey, we want to support you and wrote me checks, and I started on my own, right? So no institutional money. And I said, let's just start this. And not having any institutional capital makes you super scrappy, makes you think about every cent you spend. What is the potential return on this and is it useful? So it was a really interesting place to find myself, which is I really did think, oh my God, I'm Aisha. I should be able to raise lots of money. And then realizing that I can't raise any. And the thing that really excited me was when I spoke to women.”
2020-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Aishetu Dozie of Bossy Cosmetics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Clearly not. Right. And that's the thing, it's like it's pointless to even continue a conversation when you're speaking to a potential investor who doesn't even understand your industry. Or the one of the most offensive was this is so niche. This is only for black women, right? And there was that sort of underlying unconscious or maybe conscious bias of because I'm black, the only woman I can really appeal to with my product and my marketing is another black woman, right? So it was this is too niche or just some really silly things that led me to, okay.”
2020-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Aishetu Dozie of Bossy Cosmetics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. A lot of people said to me, men, by the way, said to me, what is the connection between work and beauty? The two have nothing to do with it, each other. They're not listening to how I built this.”
2020-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Aishetu Dozie of Bossy Cosmetics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did. So first of all, I'll say that I wanted to start small, but of course I live in Palo Alto and you kind of have this notion that, wait a minute, everybody who wants to start a business here just has checks written to them, right? And so you're like, oh, okay, well, if I want to start small, I'll get somebody to write me a check. And I go, you know, trying to speak to venture capitalists. Of course, I do a bunch of blind emails. And I send several repeatedly. I'm not sure anybody responded to any of them. And everybody that I spoke to made me hate the idea.”
2020-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Aishetu Dozie of Bossy Cosmetics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's where I was like, you need to start in lips because I'm not a celebrity, I'm not an influencer, nobody knows who I am. But if that's the area which people are willing to try, then that's where you need to go. So that's how I started with lipsticks.”
2020-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Aishetu Dozie of Bossy Cosmetics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. So the first thing I did, I was still a student at the time. So the benefit of being a student at Stanford is you have access to Euromonitor reports and all these various research reports. You know, I just read and read and read. And then the first, one of the most important things I learned was that the average woman wears something color on her lips on most occasions. But she is least loyal to the person who makes her lipstick. Like the average woman who wears makeup is very religious about the foundation she wears or the eyeliner or the mascara. Like she'll have one product that she's like, this is my one thing. But for lipsticks, she'll have 10.”
2020-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Aishetu Dozie of Bossy Cosmetics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's exactly the core of what Bossy Cosmetics is. And our mission statement from day one, it's on our site, is empowering women to look, feel, and do good. Like the do is the action. It's about wanting women to go out and do more, be more.”
2020-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Aishetu Dozie of Bossy Cosmetics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They just go back. Keep reiterating and keep reiterating. And so I was like, wait a minute. I don't have to have millions of dollars. Day one journey can literally be start really small. And I immediately knew I wanted to do something with color and I wanted to do something with women. I had learned over the years that ambitious women who like myself climb the ladder often deal with issues around imposter syndrome, deal with issues of lack of confidence, even though we don't show it, but inside we're shaking, right? And so I started talking to women. How do you think about confidence? What do you do? What do you do to get ready for this big meeting or promotion or job interview? And so many women talked about I get my hair done. I put on my makeup. I put on my lipstick. And there was this connection between how you look, how you feel, and how you perform. And that's where I was like, let's go. I'm going to start a beauty company.”
2020-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Aishetu Dozie of Bossy Cosmetics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So when I left my job in banking, I was thankfully accepted into a fellowship at Stanford, so that's how I came to Palo Alto, which is where I live right now. I was a part of a fellowship, a one-year fellowship called the Distinguished Careers Institute. And what I love about the DCI Fellowship is they take people who have established some level of success in their careers, but are looking for significance. And so I spent one year at Stanford, most of my time as in the design school, which was probably one of the most transformational years for me, because the main thing I learned was you can actually do anything you want to do. You don't have to have all the information. Just give it a try, right? Have an insight, go out there, test it in the marketplace, create a prototype, go out there, engage with customers.”
2020-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Aishetu Dozie of Bossy Cosmetics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I had a panic attack, I'll be honest with you, where I was in the hospital in Lagos, Nigeria, which is where I was living in my last role. And when I had decided, okay, I'm quitting, I'm not healthy, I'm certainly not mentally happy doing this job, but I don't know what I want to do just the sheer fear. I was so petrified of loss of status, loss of income, you know, that business card, your identity has been so wrapped up in this thing. I thought I was having heart attack turns out it was a panic attack, and at that point, you know, at the hospital my husband and I looked at each other, and it was just very clear that something needed to change.”
2020-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Aishetu Dozie of Bossy Cosmetics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You make more money, you keep getting higher and higher and that whole adrenaline goes. And for me, four years ago, I was super stressed out. I have three children. I was traveling all over the world. I was very senior as an investment banker. But I wasn't healthy. And when my doctor said, listen, you're going to have a stroke if you keep going this way. For me it was a come to Jesus moment. And that was the beginning of the journey. At the time, I didn't know that I would start a makeup company because I had no makeup background except for the fact that I was an avid user. Beauty products. So that's where it started from.”
2020-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Aishetu Dozie of Bossy Cosmetics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I think I fell into finance, and also I was very good or talented at math, and I was very good at economics. And when I started, at my first job was at Goldman in New York, I thought I would do it for my two years as an analyst. That was it. And then I was offered a third year analyst position. I said, okay, one year and I'll go to business school. I kept saying one more year, one more year. And, you know, as they say, golden handcuffs.”
2020-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Aishetu Dozie of Bossy Cosmetics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it's interesting. So go back, it's important to mention I'm a first generation American citizen. My parents are Nigerian, my father's passed away. And after the war in Nigeria, they moved to the US to get college degrees, both of them. I was born in the middle of that process, and my parents got a divorce, they split, my father went back to Nigeria, and we lived in the US until I was ten, and then I moved back to Nigeria. Now, when I went to Cornell, as you said, I don't think I was passionate about finance. I just knew that I needed to pay for my own education, right? And I also knew that I needed to take up loans and get scholarships and grants, et cetera. And so I love school with, you know, quite heavy debt. And, you know, you just very quickly make the mental calculation and realize finance is where the money is, right?”
2020-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Aishetu Dozie of Bossy Cosmetics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT