XPRIZE Inspiration to Fashion Innovation: Heather Eaton's Story

In this episode of the Speaking of Phenomenal podcast, we welcome Heather Eaton, a creative strategist and the Head of Product for Joe & Bella, a leading adaptive apparel brand. Heather shares her inspiring journey from management consulting at Deloitte to entrepreneurship and product strategy. Discover how Heather’s passion for innovative solutions in functional fashion led her to create impactful consumer products. Learn more about her insights on career adaptability, innovation, and making a difference in the lives of others.

Joe & Bella stylish, easy-dressing clothing for adults who are experiencing difficulties when getting dressed, whether due to age, a disability, chronic condition or recovering from an injury or procedure. Their clothes make dressing easier!  If you have a Joe or a Bella in your life you can Save 15% o

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Background
• 3:48 Starting a Bra-less Clothing Brand
• 9:12 The Importance of Diversity of Thought
• 20:12 Sharing Ideas and Collaboration
• 24:32 Lessons from Frankly and Joe and Bella
• 30:07 Functional Fashion and Preserving Dignity
• 37:30 Taking the Leap and Embracing Change

Transcript

In this episode of the Speaking of Phenomenal podcast, we welcome Heather Eaton, a creative strategist and the Head of Product for Joe & Bella, a leading adaptive apparel brand. Heather shares her inspiring journey from management consulting at Deloitte to entrepreneurship and product strategy. Discover how Heather’s passion for innovative solutions in functional fashion led her to create impactful consumer products. Learn more about her insights on career adaptability, innovation, and making a difference in the lives of others.

Joe & Bella stylish, easy-dressing clothing for adults who are experiencing difficulties when getting dressed, whether due to age, a disability, chronic condition or recovering from an injury or procedure. Their clothes make dressing easier!  If you have a Joe or a Bella in your life you can Save 15% off your order with Joe & Bella with code AMYBOYLEPHOTOGRAPHY (Not sponsored, just raving fans!)

Amy Boyle (amyboylephoto) (00:00.046)

Welcome to the Speaking of Phenomenal podcast, Heather. I am so glad you're here. Hi, Amy. Thanks so much for having me today. I'm excited to be here. Well, I can't wait for you to give our audience an introduction to the phenomenal you. Yes, absolutely. I'm happy to tell you just a little bit about my journey. I'm born and raised in the Midwest. I started my career here. I started working as a management consultant at Deloitte, and I did that for about four years.

And while I was there, I worked in a variety of industries, everything from sort of banking and credit cards to agricultural manufacturing to apparel and consumer products. And I actually even did a stint in a nonprofit at this really cool and innovative place called XPRIZE down in Los Angeles, which I'm happy to talk more about. And that experience actually is what led me to go back to business school. It really opened my eyes to sort of what the rest of my working experience could be and that there was a world out there.

outside of what I was learning and consulting. So that's what made me go back to Stanford. I got my MBA there and I graduated in 2020, so right into the midst of the pandemic. And while I was there, I really didn't have any idea about entrepreneurship, but that is the zeitgeist of Stanford and being in the midst of Silicon Valley. So as my classmates were talking about seed rounds and series A and all of these things that I had never heard of before, I was like, okay, I'm here. I should take advantage of this.

So I took this little class called Startup Garage, which actually was the class that DoorDash came out of. And I did it just as a learning exercise with a classmate of mine. We had this idea that we wanted to make this bra -less clothing brand. So something that would create support, coverage, and help you feel more comfortable without feeling constricted. And same thing, like we were really just planning to do it for the class. But as we were doing all of our classwork, this really took off and

We decided that we were going to do it full time after we graduated. It was an interesting situation for me because I had already accepted a job to return to Rothies where I had been working before in product strategy. But at that time, middle of 2020, everything was on pause in the world. And most of all retail because nobody had any idea what stores were going to look like or what people would buy and what people wouldn't buy when they weren't even leaving their houses. So.

Amy Boyle (amyboylephoto) (02:24.972)

We, Raphys and I decided to part ways very amicably and we, my co -founder and I started this startup and we said, this was a, you know, a horrible time to be building a supply chain in the middle of a global pandemic, but it was a really great time to be building a bra -less clothing brand because like I said, no one was cleaning their house. So great for zoom meetings. we had a great time building the company. We did it for about four and a half years. And then ultimately we closed it down at the end of

2023, and which was totally fine. were so happy with what we were able to achieve. And now I work for a variety of consumer brands, helping them to bring their own products to life using what I've learned working for retail companies and then also starting my own resale company. The brand that I'm most involved with now is called JoandBella and they're sort of the predominant upper end adaptive apparel brand for adults.

Fantastic. And I can't wait to dig in even deeper. I love the fact that, you you said undergrad and being going off into the consulting space, kind of a different animal in a way than getting really into it in the entrepreneurial world. Can you tell us a little bit more about, I think we started off with like how XPRIZE in LA really kind of opened up your eyes to like a different kind of thing. So what was that experience like for you?

I think starting your career as a management consultant is wonderful because they are very fast -paced and they provide a lot of really awesome training in a variety of industries. But what you always hear in consulting is that you can't tell other people how to raise their baby. And that is kind of how it goes in consulting. You can give advice until you're blue in the face, but ultimately if the client doesn't want to do that, then they're not going to do it.

So it can be frustrating when you see, have somebody's best interests at heart and really have done a lot of research and things like that and things don't go sort of the way that you planned. So X -Prize was this opportunity, it was an opportunity presented through the office of the CEO at Deloitte to go and spend six months stint working for this nonprofit in LA. And what X -Prize does is they're an incentive based prize competition

Amy Boyle (amyboylephoto) (04:51.682)

to solve world problems that they don't believe the market is going to solve on their own. So an example for this would have been like the oil spill in the Gulf Coast. At that time, that massive oil spill really opened people's eyes that oil spill cleanup technology had not been innovated on pretty much ever because it happened so rarely and you hope that so many safeguards are in place that it just never becomes a problem.

But then when it does become a problem, obviously it is a humongous problem. So what XTRIES did was they offered this prize to any team that wanted to enter. There were no prerequisites for what type of work you needed to be, if you needed to be a scientist, anything like that. They just said, if you can find a better way to clean an oil spill out of the water, we will award you, you know, can't even remember what it was, $5 million.

to solve this problem. And the people that won that X -Prize competition were actually tattoo artists. And they had been seeing how ink spilled across skin as they were doing tattooing and how they would solve that cleanup issue. And they extrapolated that into oil on water. And they solved it with this very low -tech, inexpensive piece of equipment that was plastic. It floated on the water and it had a large surface area and the oil would cling to it.

So they innovated this problem in a way that scientists maybe weren't going to approach the problem. So I was involved in a variety of different exercises, one on teaching experiential empathy using AR and VR. I was involved in one that was the goal was to make detecting the most common forms of cancer as inexpensive and as effective as taking a pregnancy test.

And then I was working on one that was in advanced robotics. So how could we advance robotics to help take the place of humans in dangerous situations like firefighting? So it was really, really cool being involved in projects like that after coming from consulting where obviously that's an expensive field where you're working for large companies to solve problems that they care about, but that you may or may not personally care about. So in X -Prize,

Amy Boyle (amyboylephoto) (07:12.96)

All of those things were things that I could really get behind and say, hey, the work that I'm doing every day matters and it makes a difference. And if we can solve this and even a little bit of a way, a little bit of forward progress, then we're making a positive impact on the world. Incredible. And I like the fact that you said something you can get behind, something that goes with your core fundamentals and everything like that. But then the flip

to like how these things were solved, taking off all the barriers, know, you go on LinkedIn, you're applying for a job and you're, it's entry level, but you need 10 years of experience. You're like, hi, how is that going to happen? It's like, some of these things are so counterintuitive where if we invite more people with ideas to solve things, maybe we could see some different outcomes. absolutely. think diversity of thought is such an under looked at

realm of possibility. And you hear that all the time in entrepreneurship and venture capital, that a big problem is it's called pattern matching and investors are looking for founders that meet a specific set of criteria. One, they're likely like them, but you know, they went to a project or like a very prominent preeminent school. They have, you know, a background in business or computer science, all of these things.

And that means that a lot of people that have worked in the fields that we're trying to innovate in, but in a different role, are not the ones who are getting listened to. But you hear all the time, I think the most exciting stories of entrepreneurs are the people that just have an innate knowledge of what's going on in the business, maybe they worked their way up from the bottom and from a really different area. I just saw there was this documentary about the guy that came up with the idea for Flamin' Hot Cheetos.

And he like just worked in the office building. think he started as like a custodian and then he like joined the assembly line and worked all this way. And then he presented this idea to the head of the corporation. And he was like, I think your customer would like these like spicy Cheetos. And now you think about cleaning hot Cheetos, they're an institution. Absolutely, right? We can't discount the fact that the people that are closest to the products.

Amy Boyle (amyboylephoto) (09:31.828)

maybe can re -engineer a whole new thought and differentiate and build out on products and other things in general. So how do we go from XPRIZE and then you're starting to going back to grad school for your MBA. So to work on these new skill sets from having like these, I don't know, would you say maybe like a more...

epiphany style, like kind of like things that you want to work on, right? Like a bigger picture things. Absolutely. And I think that has been really the trajectory of my whole career is I really have always wanted my work to have meaning or purpose. And in the beginning, so I grew up without very much money. And for me at the beginning, the purpose of that was to find financial security and management consulting was a great way to do that. So when you say you have to find meaning and purpose in your work, sometimes that is

paycheck and I think that that's okay. I don't I feel like people discount that but it's really hard to take a leap and do something and find self -actualization if you haven't fulfilled those lower hierarchy of needs categories. So kind of once I had achieved that goal for myself of having some financial stability in my own adult life, then I started looking at

What are other things that I aspire to do or care about doing? An XPRIZE was that aha moment for me that I wanted to be doing something that left a positive mark on the world and feel like I could really put my whole heart behind what I was doing. So when I went back to business school, I was getting an MBA, but I was also getting a certificate in public policy and social management, which was a little bit more on kind of like the nonprofit side.

And that had been a staple of my life since childhood, know, volunteerism, working with nonprofits, working with charity, but not in so much like a career sense. But what I did while was at Stanford, I was working in impact investing for energy and environmental causes. And then I also went and took this internship that then turned into a job at Rothy's.

Amy Boyle (amyboylephoto) (11:44.43)

I love working on consumer products. That's what I do now and I still do because I really believe in improving the physical world that we interact with and every day. And at that time that I was joining Rothy's back in 2019, it was really kind of revolutionary. I feel like now everyone has products made from recycled plastic water bottles and trying to solve the ocean plastics problem. But Rothy's was really a pioneer in that space.

They invented the technology for sort of knitting the yarns and knitting shoes in the way that many companies use now. And so it was a really exciting place to work where, one, I believed in the product that we were selling and I thought that the product itself was great, but B, there was a greater social mission to the company and those two things went hand in hand. And so I wasn't just doing nonprofit or things like what I was doing at X

that I was doing nonprofit in a way that also, you know, had a capitalist component, which feels a little bit maybe like oxymoronic, but I don't think it has to be always. And so that was a really exciting opportunity for me. I kind of spurred my eyes to look into problems in our everyday world that could be solved with a tangible product, but that would solve for a market failure or

create something new in the marketplace. And that's how we ended up with, frankly, which was my own clothing line. And the best ideas come from things that are close to the heart and things that we care about. So tell us a little bit more. I like your intro to frankly, like, you know, was the early part of the pandemic, people barely leave in their house. So why not a broad list, you know, but support in the clothing so that people understand how that works. Tell us a little bit more about how that came to be and

What were some of the lessons that you learned along that journey? my gosh, it was such a whirlwind and was such a fun part of my career. We started working on frankly, yeah, in 2019. So long before even a whiff of the pandemic was in sight. And we just thought, so for myself, I'm a petite woman, but I have like a larger chest. And so it's always been an issue to find clothes that fit, but it was...

Amy Boyle (amyboylephoto) (14:04.29)

like trying to, know, when you find that cute sundress with spaghetti straps, you're like, okay, well, I can't wear a bra with that. And it's just not going to work for my body type. And that was really frustrating. I wanted to make a clothing that you could wear without a bra that was much more inclusive to a wider range of shapes and sizes. And that was where the idea began. It had nothing to do with the pandemic. And then we had decided to go forward with it full time before the pandemic hit.

So we were, we had actually just flown to Los Angeles, found a designer and found like a factory that was willing to make some samples for us, maybe a week before all of a sudden all the airports were closed. So we weren't sure exactly what was gonna happen, but what we realized was that people were really interested in this. They needed to be on Zoom meetings. So they needed to appear professional, at least, know, from the waist up or so. And...

but they wanted to be comfortable because they weren't really going out in public. And so it just turned into these great tailwinds for us that helped to tell our story too. And there was this big article in the New York Times that we didn't even know was going out, but we had gotten featured in it about like, is the pandemic going to kill the bra industry? So we just happened to sort of be right place, right time.

But that didn't mean that there weren't challenges. If you remember that boat that got stuck in the Panama Canal and like held up all enterprise for like three months, our first shipment of fabric, we produced everything in the US, but we were producing our fabric, I believe in Spain at that point. It got stuck on the boat behind the boat in the Panama Canal. So we needed like an extra two months to bring our first

collection or our second collection, I guess, to market because we just could not get our fabric off this boat. building a global supply chain was really, really difficult. And it was really difficult in part because you couldn't go and visit offshore factories. We started by manufacturing everything in the United States. And we did that for ethical reasons, as well as just like the ability to go and be hands on during the pandemic. But ultimately,

Amy Boyle (amyboylephoto) (16:22.046)

lingerie, which we were using elements of that in the clothing to actually build the support structures into the clothing itself. The United States doesn't have the technology to do that. So we were forced to go offshore to build some of the more complicated components of our clothing. And that was that was really hard for us because ethics, sustainability, living wages, like humane treatment of factory workers were really important tenants of our business. And

We weren't sure how we were going to enforce it or be able to check up on those factories in Asia where we were going. Because like in China, which is where we ended up doing most of our manufacturing, you couldn't go there. They wouldn't let you in. What was lucky is that my co -founder is a first generation immigrant from China. So she had family on the ground in China that we could sort of enlist to go and help us and check out these factories. But that has, you know,

Some of those challenges in building a global supply chain have really come into a play with a lot of the clients that I work with now, because especially for some of these smaller brands that are just starting out, first of all, especially apparel can be a little bit of a sort of like competitive or secretive industry where nobody wants to reveal their sources or share information. And, and we never really understood that when we were starting out, we were like, we're small, we're not a competition to you.

We're just trying to get things off the ground. And so now that's one of my favorite parts of the business. When people work with me, I'm like, I can't wait to introduce you to this factory that I really trust that does good quality, but they really pay and treat their employees well. You can feel good about working with them. And a lot of times I'm getting these companies out of kind of bad situations, some bad relationships, which we went through as well as we were starting, frankly. So it's really gratifying to connect good people to good people.

Right. mean, these kind of things, if you can start breaking that stigma down about gatekeeping, like the secrets, if you will, you know, to share. So I was on a Zoom call the other day and just reuse the analogy that rising tide raises all ships, maybe if not, if they're stuck in the canal. But you would hope they would raise it a little more. Just like get it out of there. But, know, why not share so that other people

Amy Boyle (amyboylephoto) (18:47.362)

I don't know, like the idea of almost like hazing mentality where I had to go through it, so you'll go through it kind of thing. It's like, well, but we could all go faster and better and stronger together if there's less of this, well, I can't share this kind of stuff. So I really appreciate that that's something that is a part of your ethos as well. It's such an important thing. every job I've ever worked in that has come into way of the push and pull of

a scarcity mindset versus an abundance mindset. So it's interesting to see it in action and it's interesting too because I think it is natural sometimes to feel that yourself and then having to pause, take a step back and say, is it like, why am I doing this? it, you know, the lizard brain reacting or is there really a need to do that?

And how do you get to understanding that? What would you give for advice for assessing a situation to the need versus maybe a commercial success that might not be a need?

you're responsible for your employees well being. think that's a part of being a business owner. And so if there were a situation where sharing information would be detrimental to my own team that I am responsible for, because if we gave that information, it was going to put us out of business tomorrow, or it was going to delay something and I was going to have to lay people off. I think that that's a reasonable exception to gatekeep or something like that.

But that being said, think that a lot of times the reason that people feel this sense of competitiveness is that they just want to stay like one jump ahead. And you hear that a lot in entrepreneurship. You hear all these companies that are operating in like stealth mode and they're like, well, I just don't want, I can't tell you what I'm working on. can't tell you what my idea is because you might go and steal it and you might do it before me.

Amy Boyle (amyboylephoto) (20:52.782)

If you think that this random person that you just met today at like a cocktail party and that you told in passing the like two seconds, abbreviated overview of what your company is, if you think they can take that knowledge and build what you've spent the last six to 18 months working on, then, then you probably shouldn't be doing that. Honestly. first of all, the highs and lows of being an entrepreneur and the drive that is required to be successful at it.

and to stick with it when the going gets tough, you cannot underestimate it. So first of all, that's going to eliminate 98 % of who you talk to anyway. And then those last 2%, if they can do it better than you, in a lot of situations, I'm like, even now, I've seen more braless clothing brands pop up since we closed, frankly, down. like,

You know what, if they succeed, I am thrilled for them because it's a solution that I want in the world and that I want to be able to use. And if they can do it better than we did, then I'm okay with that. I wish we could have like, you know, made it into the next skims. I don't know that the world needs more skims. I wish we could have done something like that. But if somebody else can do it, then I think that's great. And I think that we have to think about like, what is the net positive for the world as opposed to just what's the net positive for us.

But I think it can be hard to do that. I think the other lesson that I took away from when we were early and frankly, our investors especially were like, look, patent law, is getting a little technical, but it's really difficult to protect intellectual property in the fashion industry. So people were like, people could steal your idea and they could do it. And we were like, okay, yes, that's true. But we, and they were like, you should be secretive about it.

But we decided to take the exact opposite approach and we talked about our idea and what we were trying to build to anyone and everyone who would listen. And not a single person that we talked to tried to steal our idea. And second, a huge number of those people would come back to us and they got us into articles in the Washington Post and Reader's Digest, or they connected us to people. They were like, hey, by the way, my friend runs the largest fabric syndicate in Indonesia. Would you like to talk?

Amy Boyle (amyboylephoto) (23:12.01)

them. We're like, yeah, absolutely. Those are all resources that you do not get if you don't tell people what you're interested in. And people can tell when you're passionate about it and when you care about what you're building and they want to help you succeed. I really think most people want to help you if they can. I agree. I think that's definitely one of the top pieces of advice any entrepreneur can have is it's first of all, you're getting better and better at your pitch.

and what you believe in every time, right? Your enthusiasm is contagious. And like you said, it could open up some random door that if you went knocking on it, you'd be waiting forever to get in potentially. And somebody could go, well, that's, you know, that's my neighbor, my co -workers, brother -in -law, whatever. And all of a sudden you've got an in that you never would have had. It's just, it's not to be overlooked. And definitely it's it's a great way to just get better at what you're doing, but also being

It invites openness, right? We talked about, you know, maybe what the universe has out there for us or what have you. It just it creates that abundance if you're sharing as well. So I think that's pretty fantastic. I think that's true. And I think the other side of that is we never did that in a one sided fashion. You know, we of course took help when it came to us and when doors were opened for us. But we needed a really important. My co -founder and I were like tons of people would come and want to talk to us.

if they wanted to start their own apparel brand or if they were getting started in, you know, XYZ. And sometimes as an entrepreneur, I mean, it was, we were a two person team the entire time. And we were like, we don't have a lot of extra time, but we always made time to take those phone calls and help people and make the connections where we could. I'm thinking specifically, we had like four other companies that were maybe just, you know, a few months behind us and what they were building and

Three of them used our warehouse, two of them use our accountants and they were like, we trust that you guys did a lot of research and you like the relationship. So we tried to help and give back in the same way that people gave to us wherever possible. Well, and that now brings us into Joe and Bella. Tell us how you got into that and what it is and what they do and everything else. Well, yeah, speaking again of just sort of being open about what you're doing.

Amy Boyle (amyboylephoto) (25:31.218)

And when we were shutting down, frankly, we reached out to basically anyone that we had ever talked to, including investors who had passed on the opportunity. And we just said, you know, we're starting this new adventure. I was like, I want to use the skill set that I use at frankly building the supply chain and actually bringing products to life. So product and product, product strategy, and sort of the more creative brand marketing were really my areas of domain when we were at Frankly.

so I reached out to all these people and I said, Hey, this is what I'm looking to do. If you have any companies that need help in these areas, please let them know that, you know, I'm available and I would be interested. And sure enough, one of the investors who had passed on frankly, and she, but she had kept in touch and really, you know, liked us as people was like, my husband actually started in an apparel company and he, you know,

He could use some help on the product front bringing some things to market so she connected me to him and that was how it all began and It's been really gratifying again working in functional fashion to solve a problem that the market is not solving to work with Joe and Bella and So Joe and Bella is an adaptive apparel brand They make clothing that solves not just a physical but sort of an emotional issue which is

As you age or depending on certain physical disabilities, struggle to get dressed on your own. It can be more difficult to lift your hands overhead. Think about like after a shoulder surgery or something like that. So it be more difficult to get dressed on your own. But at the same time, mentally, you're like, I don't want to give up the independence and the dignity of dressing myself and dressing in clothes that feel like me.

So what Joan Bella does is they make a really high quality product that looks just like normal clothes that you would see sort of anybody wearing, but they have these built -in adaptive features that make it easier for them to put on, take off a comedy special needs like a catheter bag, for example. So it really, the needs that they're serving are across the board and not just for older adults, but

Amy Boyle (amyboylephoto) (27:50.318)

for anyone in a specific situation, like I said, surgery, recovery. We work with a lot of patients who have Alzheimer's, things like that. And it's really about keeping the dignity in getting dressed and reducing any pain or friction that comes along with that experience. Well, when we did our first chat, I shared that both my father had had a stroke 10 years ago and he was always

He was a retired physician and to go from dressing every day to after a stroke, kind of just left with sweatpants and stuff like that, which was not his thing at all. He didn't want to leave the house even when he could because of the fact that, to your point, the dignity aspect was kind of stripped away and it accentuated the challenges that he was going through at the time. It just seems like, if only I had...

had access to something like this, could make his life easier. Same thing for my mom. This would have made such a massive difference for just independence, feeling like yourself, all these good things. I like how it ties into, you were talking previously about mission driven work. This seems so fulfilling. What are some of your biggest things you've heard from customers or what have you learned yourself since you've joined the company?

Leah talked about this last time we spoke, that's where the name Joe and Bella comes from. We say that everyone has a Joe or a Bella in their life. And it may be someone very close to you, like for you, your parents, or it may be somebody that's a little bit removed, everyone's life is touched by this in some way at some point throughout your life. So I think that that, you know, it's not something I personally, I haven't had to be a personal caregiver to anyone.

But my grandma, before she passed last year, she had had three strokes and two different kinds of cancer. And so, like, I wasn't her primary caregiver, but when I was there to visit, there were instances where I was helping her get dressed or helping her use the bathroom. And it's just something that you don't think about until it affects you. And then it's all you can think about. So it has been, think, at Frankly and at Joan Bella, I think hearing from your customers,

Amy Boyle (amyboylephoto) (30:11.668)

is the most exciting and rewarding part of the job for me. And that's good or bad. At both companies, I think they're really good at listening to customer feedbacks. At Frankly, we did this, and Joe and Bella does this. We keep a log of all of the things that our customers say to us and the ideas that they bring to us. And we try to work in what we can to improve our products every time we remake them or recut them. So that is something that

It's fun. Like, so for one example, we make this magnetic button down shirt so that you don't have to, especially if you have maybe arthritis in your fingers or something like that, you don't have to get small buttons through small holes. You just put the shirt on, snap it together, basically using the magnets and there it is. But some of our customers were like, you know, our body shape isn't shaped like a 26 year old's, which is kind of the standard fit model for most clothing companies. So we changed the fit of the shirt

specifically to fit sort of older adults and how their bodies change over time. So all of those types of changes, we keep logs of what customers say and try to take into account what most customers are saying as we improve the products from time to time. I will make sure that everything you're talking about is listed in the show notes because like you said, it may not be now, but at some point it might be a resource.

Or again, you're talking to your friends and family and someone mentions this need or a difficulty or a challenge and you said, I just heard about this amazing way so that things could be any bit better, is so much better. And especially when it comes to how you feel about yourself, I think that's just a whole new way to enhance the healing as well. Sometimes when you work in fashion or apparel, think of it as a little bit of like a frivolous profession.

And that was something I faced. A lot of my classmates for Stanford were working on AI or honestly, or lots of awesome other things like carbon capture, things that were improving the world in amazing ways. And I was working on braless clothing or now on adaptive apparel. But you think about the role that clothing plays in people's life. It's one of the things that we interact with the most.

Amy Boyle (amyboylephoto) (32:28.332)

Like you said, it has a huge impact on our own identity, both how we present to the world, but how we feel about ourselves and things like this in functional fashion, especially what Joe and Bella is doing for its customers and not just for its customers, but our customers loved ones, being able to see them feel like, my dad or my grandfather feels like himself again for the first time in a long time. And he's excited to go out and go go do X, Z. That makes

That makes a big difference in one life at a time in all of these places. And I don't think that people should discount how impactful and how beneficial that can be to the wellbeing of all of these customers. I really love all the different things in your personal journey that have taken you one to another that adapts, builds, and grew. What would you say to someone who

Like you even said, Stanford does all these amazing things we're working on fashion. But that's a passion, that's a need. So how do you help others see that their ideas are worth pursuing?

What we used to talk about a lot at school was that entrepreneurs, you find your sweet spot when you overlap what the world needs, what you're passionate about and what you're good at. And that ended up being functional fashion for me. I cared about it from a personal perspective. The world, it didn't seem like for both, frankly, and for Joe and Bella,

It didn't seem like unless a small guy, a startup, an entrepreneur took the initiative and said, I've seen this problem for people that I love or for myself. It didn't feel like the Kim Kardashians of the world were going to put their name behind it and solve it themselves. So it felt like it took us a certain type of person to fill a need that existed in the world. And it was something I was passionate about and it was something that I was good at.

Amy Boyle (amyboylephoto) (34:43.181)

And I think thinking about that is really important as you look at your career, if that's a place that you want to be in your career where you're looking for a little bit more self -actualization, is thinking about those three categories and then trying to work within it. And sometimes there's lots of things, right? Like I love lots of stuff besides clothing. Like if I could read manuscripts for a living and get books published, like maybe that would be a career I would pursue. It's not where I ended up.

through a variety of, like you said, growing and building on past experiences. But there's lots of areas that you could go and pursue. I think the hardest part is the bravery to take the leap. And I don't say that lightly because a lot of times people talk about like, you have to be brave and take the leap. But there are lots of situations.

where it's not just bravery. You have a family relying on your income. You have, you know, a spouse that can't leave their job and you would be dramatically impacting their life if you, you know, decided to take this leap. But if you're in a position where you're like, I can, I can take the leap. Like what's the worst that can happen is that I fail and then I go and try something that I was doing before. I think that it's worth taking a shot.

And I'm being realistic about like, okay, I can take a shot and I can make it last for three months, six months, a year, three years. And then if it's not working, then we say goodbye to it. And that's ultimately what happened with Frankly is we were constantly saying, when would it not make sense for us to keep doing this? And for a long time, it made sense to keep growing the business.

We got it through all these hurdles. were actually finalists. We were supposed to go out and film for Shark Tank before we decided to close the business down. But at some point we said, you know, we've been doing this for over four years and it's just, it's taking a toll on other areas of our life. And we don't think we can take it to the next level where it is so beneficial to the communities that we're serving and beneficial to us.

Amy Boyle (amyboylephoto) (36:58.446)

in our own personal and professional lives. So we said goodbye and it was kind of sad, but it was also the right call. So I think being brave, taking the leap, sure, but also not being afraid to be really, really brutally honest with yourself and say, this isn't working and I need to make a change. Not everything is for a lifetime and that's okay. 100%. I've had multiple guests talk about seasons of their lives, right?

chapters, it's their life, their career, how things work with their families and family dynamic. I mean, these are things that if we were supposed to stay in one place, we'd be a boulder somewhere and we'd be really too hard to move. But we are very, we're mobile, tactile people that can shift and adapt, hopefully. And yeah, that's it. like you said, you have to be brave enough to leave. also have to not be so

in your own way, right? You could be your own worst enemy when it comes to that. I like that brutally honest with what is working or not working. Those are, it's a great way to look at it. And again, it's nothing to say that something like that couldn't come back up or it's not going to evolve into something completely different. So it seems like the healthiest of ways to part with something when you're like, well, now this part is done and we're going to go to another area of whatever stacks. Absolutely. I mean, like we hadn’t closed down Frankly when we did, I probably wouldn't have fallen in with Joanne Villa and it has been such a rewarding part of my career to work here. And I'm excited to talk to people and I'm so proud to talk to people about what we're doing. you know, it is, I think being optimistic about what you learned and what that might bring for you in your future is a really good way to look at it as well. Excellent. Well, you know,

As all my episodes go, I'd like to stay on for hours and hours, but we'll have to cap. So could you give everybody a way for them to either get in touch with you or let us know how to find Jo and Bella, et cetera? If you want to find me, probably the best way is just through LinkedIn. I'm Heather Eaton on LinkedIn. I don't do a lot of the fancy social media or anything. I did a lot of that, like founder facing, as Frankly, and I was excited to set that aside when I disappeared there.

Amy Boyle (amyboylephoto) (39:21.214)

But Joe and Bella, if you have a Joe or Bella in your life who you would like to buy some adaptive clothing for, that looks great. The website is joeandbella.com, all spelled out. And we're actually, it's really exciting. We're releasing a bunch of new clothing, especially in the women's category this fall. So we've got a great new cardigan coming, a new blouse, and a really cool men's zippered sweatshirt.

I'm excited to bring some of those products to life and excited for our customers to add to their assortment. Excellent. Like I said, everything will be listed in the show notes. It's been such a joy to talk to you today and learn about your journey. And also hopefully it stirs up some ideas for our listeners as far as the adaptability of our own selves. Like how can we change and learn and be curious and grow? So thank you so much for sharing that with us today.

And thank you, Amy. I think podcasts like this, where we highlight the real experiences of real women doing incredible things in the world, are a great way to learn about the possibilities that are out there. So thank you for all that you do.