YouSaid · the spoken record

Nancy Twine

lines on the record: 95
first: 2023-12-04
most recent: 2023-12-04
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

“Yeah, it was pretty crazy. And there were points in which I did start hitting a wall because I was getting very little sleep, you know, being on the trading floor. I was also working with the London market. So I needed to be at the desk by 7 a.m. So I was getting to bed at like 1, 2 a.m. and then waking up at 5.30 a.m. day over day over day. And it started to become unsustainable.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, so no one in my immediate team knew that I was working on this project. I had a couple of friends at Goleman that I confided in, but only a couple that I knew would not say anything because I was serious about my work and I didn't want to compromise that. Didn't want it to get out that I was doing both.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so that was a big challenge for me. You know, how was I going to create a diverse assortment with only four SKUs? So what I decided to do was to create one shampoo for all hair types. And then I had three conditioners that were texture specific, though with four products, I was able to hit a pretty diverse client base.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it was actually one of the contract manufacturers that I didn't end up going with, but gave me some really great advice.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because I wanted to have something for every hair texture type and I didn't want to leave anyone out. And I was speaking to a contact in the contract manufacturing space that really advised me against a 15 product skew line coming out the gate. And he goes, If you can do it with four products, it's your best bet.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I was funding it through my salary, but I was being really mindful of how much I was spending because things do really add up quickly and I didn't have products yet. So I didn't want to get too far with spend before making sure that I could actually do this.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so it's a little hard sometimes to describe these things. Yeah. So I had to kind of study up on hair care terminology specifically. I was working on a treatment mask and I wanted it to have a very luxurious buttery rich texture. So it needed to have a higher viscosity. I also wanted the concentrations of what I called our Nova complex. And Nova stands for natural oils, vitamins, and antioxidants. I wanted the Nova Complex and this mass to be three times more concentrated than our other formulas.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so there was a small contract manufacturer privately run and operated in the Midwest. I had an opportunity to meet with the CEO of the contract manufacturer. And I think he was kind of surprised that I was this finance girl who had this side project of Know starting a beauty product company. And I think he took note of my passion. And I've been fortunate to work with people who have extended courtesies and opportunities to me because the passion became infectious. So even though I wasn't coming in with a big check size or, you know, a big production run, I do think there are a lot of people that just have that heart inside of them that want to see the underdog succeed. And so luckily I was able to get the time and attention and the dedicated lab time with the chemists to help me really tackle this project.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you're absolutely right. And it was very disappointing. Pretty much every conversation I had made the idea seem very far-fetched. And sometimes I would get close. Sometimes manufacturers would say, oh, we just started developing shampoos without sulfates, but we need the silicone base in order for it to hydrate your hair. If you don't have the silicones, the clean surfactants are going to dry out the hair. You can't have one or the other. But, you know, there was one contract manufacturer that came back to me and said, we've never done this before, but I think we can do it, especially if you're willing to dedicate the time to partner with our R&D team and to really work with us and give us some time.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you would call up, or you'd connect with some of these potential factories, and you would say, hey, I want to make hair care products like shampoos and conditioners and stuff, but with no sulfate, silicones, parabens, DE, dyes, all this stuff that's in pretty much 99% of hair care products. And I imagine most of the time they would be like, can't be done. That's not possible.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The way that I worked it was that after work is when I did all of my email stuff. So a lot of people were getting emails from me at like 9, 10 p.m. at night. And my calls, I would do those on my lunch break or some days I would take PTO when I just knew that I was going to have a really hectic day of calls and research because I had a ton of PTO because I never took time off. So I never really took vacation. It was just more so days to work on my business plan.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I am. And so that was really, really tricky because this would have been 2011, 2012. I had just become a vice president, so I had gotten promoted. But I was also trying to allocate time to work on Brio.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And at the time, I had no idea that you could outsource R&D and manufacturing to an outside company. And I only learned about that because I had told a friend about my idea and she said, oh, let me put you in touch with a friend who created a deodorant line. And I said, oh, I would love that. And I spoke to this friend and I go, how are you making this deodorant at home? And he said, I'm not. I'm using a contract manufacturer. So this was so fascinating for me. I said, this is cool. I can actually utilize the team and resources of another company to bring my idea to life. And so I was very, very organized and I did a bunch of research on Google. I started attending some local trade shows and I figured out the who's who and hair care contract manufacturing.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so after I had my business plan created, I told myself that I was going to tell all of my friends about what it is I wanted to do because I knew if I went and told everyone that I wanted to start a clean, natural hair care product line that they would ask me about it every time we went out and I didn't want to disappoint them. So it was my way of holding myself accountable. And so once I felt really good about the viability of this business plan, I knew the next thing that I needed to do was to start formulating. And that's where I was a little bit stuck because without my mom and without advanced knowledge of chemistry, I didn't feel comfortable formulating the products on my own in a way in which, you know, I could sell them to a Sephora, for example.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so, you know, after doing my research, I realized, one, there's a void for clean natural hair care, but there's also a void for effective clean natural hair care. So I had a premise that was compelling because I wasn't just kind of hopping on something that already existed. I was creating something that didn't exist. And so I had never created a business plan before. And I knew it was something that I wanted to be thoughtful about. So I did what I always do, which is I consulted my friend Google. And I Googled how to create a business plan. And I stumbled upon a website that offered a service where they would partner with you to understand your vision and then also give you some help on the financial side in terms of, you know, forecasting financial statements. And that's how I went about creating my first business plan.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's a great question because the word natural is not regulated the way that organic is natural means different things to different people. And for me, it meant utilizing a high, high percentage of naturally derived ingredients. And so basically what I mean by that is instead of pumping our products with silicones, which are synthetic polymers that give the illusion of shine on the hair, we actually used real natural oils to do that because not only is it natural, but the benefits, the vitamins, the nutrients, the minerals within natural oils actually serve a purpose in enhancing the hair's health that silicones do not. So that's really the foundational goal of why we do use natural clean ingredients in our products.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you're looking through just like doing research, right? You know you want to do something in natural hair care products. And by the way, what does that mean? Because you see a lot of hair care products that say natural on them or free of this or free of that. But what did, this is 2010, what did that mean?”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's really when the light bulb went off. And I said, this is a huge white space potential. It makes sense because of my personal background of focus here. This has legs to run with”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I know this sounds so nerdy, but the New York Small Business Library was game changing for me because I got access to research databases and reports that I otherwise would have had to have spent thousands of dollars on. And I was typing in different search terms like natural personal care market, natural hair care, clean hair care. One of the things that I noticed in these reports was that there were pretty meaningful sections on natural personal care for body, for skincare, but there were really small kind of paragraphs dedicated to natural hair care. And I thought that that was really interesting. And what it did tell me was that there were very few players in natural hair care at the time relative to the other categories, but that it was also a budding space.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I felt stuck because at the time, my own thing, like, what was that? What was that going to be? That was like this very nebulous, weird space that I just couldn't possibly think of. What would I do? And it really wasn't until my soul-searching journey after my mom's passing between these childhood memories of making my own products where my mom had gotten to in the development of her brand and then thinking, wow, I could create my own beauty product line.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it did happen, and I'm just going to be totally transparent with you. While I was at Goleman, I was seeing a therapist. And prior to my mom's passing, I was even thinking about, you know, what life beyond Goldman looked like. And she encouraged me to see if I could join my brother and his entrepreneurial ventures. And he said, you know, this is my thing. You should get your own thing. I was so disappointed and kind of offended.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Actually, hair care products mainly and partly because I have naturally very curly, curly hair. And the market for textured hair wasn't really established back then. So I found myself struggling with the products that were available and either needing to supplement them with other ingredients or just create my own products from scratch.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know, I had to start going through her stuff after the passing that I found the photos and was reminded of this project she was working on. And so I think definitely created this light bulb moment and also brought me back to some of the childhood memories that I had with my mom where we were making a lot of our own beauty products in the kitchen of our home. Fortunately, we had access to a lot more than what my mom did growing up. We had a local health food store where we could actually buy extracts and oils and butters and salts and sugars. And we were making just custom beauty products for our needs, the needs of friends”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, my mom was in the process of starting her own skincare line. It was called something like skincare RX, but it was all about kind of taking what she learned, chemistry and even her medical career. I mean, she was talking about, you know, infusing plasma into facial creams, like really cool advanced stuff. I remember she had like two or three formulas that were pretty developed and there was some packaging. It was like these white jars with gold lettering. And I was so kind of caught up in my finance life that I kind of forgot that my mom was working on this project in the background. And it really wasn't only until”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It did. You know, another thing that was really sad for me is I remember, you know, the weeks and even months leading up to my mom's passing, so much of our conversations were just around the fact that I was working way too much and I was exhausted and even some nights I would call her crying because I felt like I couldn't do it anymore. And I wish that our conversations would have been more substantive. You know, after the experience of losing my mom so suddenly and realizing that this life isn't necessarily promised to me either, I knew that whatever I was going to do, I wanted to wake up every day and be excited about going into the office.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Took off about two months, which doesn't seem like a lot of time, and it probably wasn't, but because I had been working so much that two months felt like a year”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I will say that my brother and I have always been close, but that experience, you know, brought us even closer. And I couldn't have imagined going through that experience on my own. And I did take some time off.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah Was a huge shock. I have friends who have lost their parents through battles with cancer, Alzheimer's, but it was a journey that they had mentally prepared themselves for. I didn't have that opportunity. But not only that, it was the first time that I truly realized that this life is not promised to anyone. We owe it to ourselves to find our happiness, to pursue our passions, and to make the most of this life because it's so, so fragile. And I feel like I had been so naive. I never even fathomed my mom not being around to see her grandchildren, any of that.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, she was the type to say, you know, get there and get on it. You got to do what you've got to do. Yeah, I never was guilt tripped. I was encouraged. And so from that standpoint, my family and my friends understood.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was working a lot, and I think that my goal of making myself indispensable to protect my career during a tumultuous time probably put me in the position of being taken advantage of at times. There were, I'm sure, some of my classmates who would never come in on a Sunday night randomly because their boss texted them. However, everyone knew that I would be the first person to say yes and leave a dinner with my family to go into the office to work on a deck for my boss, even with 15 minutes notice.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was definitely nervous because had gotten laid off in 2008. It was part of the reason why I knew I had to make myself invaluable. I knew that if I became invaluable, it would be very hard for my team to lay me off, which is why I invested the time and energy into being an incredible support not only for my team, but teams around me that needed support.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I actually interned for two summers. I spent my first summer in legal and compliance and I quickly realized that that part of the firm was just not something I was interested in. I was very, very bored. And while I was in legal and compliance, I was actually sitting on the sales and trading floor. And I was so intrigued by what was going on around me. And I said, I don't know what that is, but I want to do that. That is where the action is at. I mean, people are standing up in their seats. They're shouting across the room. People were having fun. There was so much energy. And I thought to myself, I have another summer that I could spend at Goldman. I want to spend it in sales and trading. And so voila, that next summer, I did a sales and trading internship. And you come in each morning and you never know what you're going to get. Markets are constantly moving.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I have a lot of different stories of these little mini entrepreneurial ventures. I loved creating and then the validation that came from people actually wanting to spend their money on my creations. And so ultimately when I kind of gave up on the idea of becoming a famous pop star, I started to think more about how I could translate the passion for entrepreneurism into a career path and major. And so that was really kind of the first part of my journey of even contemplating a career in finance.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So outside of wanting to be a musical pop star, I also had this hobby of creating and selling things. I was very, very entrepreneurial as a child. In middle school, this was when the movie Clueless came out. those cool like feather pins were so popular But no one knew where they could get them because Etsy wasn't around and I went to Michael's, my local craft store and got ribbon, pens, all sorts of stuff, feathers, and created replicas of those clueless feather pens and I would sell them at school.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were actually UVA's first hip-hop a cappella group. And so I had so much fun. And that stemmed from me really finding music in high school. And it created kind of this fantasy for me of one day being a pop star like a Mariah Carey. But when I went to UVA and got exposed to hundreds of talented singers both within my archipelago group and outside of it. It was an awakening that I was just okay. This is not going to”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So entering UVA, I would have never thought that I would become a finance person. What I did know is that I loved music. I was in an a cappella group. In college.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But one of the things that I focused on or made emphasis of was that I was able to really build a community of close friends that span all different sorts of ethnicities and backgrounds.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had a phenomenal experience at UVA, but I think one of the things that was so different starting out there was that a lot of the other black men and women didn't have the same type of diverse high school experience that I had. So I know that there were a lot of people where it was the first time really ever in their life they were around white people. So there were elements of self-segregation that I witnessed during my early times at UVA that I didn't quite understand in terms of, you know, black group separating themselves in the libraries or in the dining halls. And it was so new to me because it just was so different than my experience in high school where everyone sat with each other.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so one of the things that was kind of interesting because it wasn't really a product that I used growing up, but these kind of thick kind of butters that you could use for all different sorts of things, really dry skin feet, elbows, knees. And then, you know, other sort of medicinal needs like cuts or burns, different types of salves that would almost leave your skin glistening. But I just remember visiting that house and it was just like a lot of stuff, lots of jars, anything you needed you could find in that house. And if you didn't find it precisely, it could be made or derived from something. And that was really kind of the attitude and spirit.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was a little bit different than that. I think, you know, my grandmother, again, was really kind of faced with the challenge of providing for eight children with very, very little. And she was very thrifty. I know one of the things that she used to do is she would stretch the little bits of product that she would get her hands on. So, you know, maybe she used some oils and extracts to stretch, you know, a quarter bottle of lotion to be able to fill it back up to a full bottle. And she learned how to distill her own essential oils and this kind of natural chemistry created this unique situation that I think ultimately too inspired my mom to later become a chemist and then an MD PhD.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was definitely a tough childhood. They didn't grow up with a lot. And the fact that my mom grew up in that type of environment, not only not having a lot, but not being able to see what success and beyond that lifestyle could look like because so much of wanting to become better or becoming successful comes from seeing other people who look like you that have done it. And when you don't even see the possibility, but knowing within you that it exists and having that faith and belief in yourself, it's so, so powerful. And that was very much my mom's story.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so my mom is from West Virginia. She's one of eight children. And my grandmother is from there. And that's where she raised her tribe in a very small rural town called Rand R-A-N-D.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My mom was a family doctor, and I don't even know if that term is quite used anymore. And I do remember at a young age being at her doctor's office, and it was always full. Know a lot of people ask me where I got this very confident entrepreneurial experience from, but I think that there was so much value and power of me seeing my mom running a successful practice, really running a business. My mom was an entrepreneur and seeing that at a young age, seeing her confidence, seeing her joy and the fact that being a female, being a black female was not a hindrance to any of the dreams and goals that I would ultimately have in life.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The easiest part about building a business is the day you imagine it in your head, because everything that happens after it is really hard. The research, the business plan, the pitch to investors, finding the factory, the distributor, the shops to sell your product, each one of these steps is an obstacle, and for the most part, each step creates a new problem. Too many problems can become overwhelming, and soon enough it can also become tempting to just ditch the whole idea entirely. To build a line of natural shampoos and conditioners without most of the synthetic ingredients you'd find.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I walk into this auditorium and I look around and I'm like, ah, here we go again. There were five of us who were going on stage to pitch our ideas. And the four other men who were presenting all had tech companies. And I just remember being like, oh my gosh, not again.”
2023-12-04 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Briogeo Hair Care: Nancy Twine (2020) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT