Dear FoundHer...Real Founder Stories for Women Small Business Owners

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A group of executives walked into a room, and Leah knew exactly who mattered.

Dear FoundHer host Lindsay Pinchuk sits down with Leah Solivan to talk partnership marketing, founder visibility, and one of the clearest business growth stories from Taskrabbit’s path to acquisition. Leah built Taskrabbit from a Boston apartment with no MBA, no startup network, and no idea how venture funding worked. What she had was an idea she refused to stop talking about and the discipline to do the unsexy groundwork for years before the right opportunity arrived. That is the entire lesson of this episode, and it applies to every woman building something right now.

This conversation is for women founders who are tired of being told to run ads, chase virality, or wait for the perfect moment. Leah’s story proves that partnership marketing is not a tactic. It is a long game built on real relationships, real data, and showing up consistently in the right markets before you ever get the right meeting.

Taskrabbit’s sale to IKEA started with one lucky opening, but the deal did not happen because of luck alone. It happened because Leah spent years trying to get on IKEA’s radar, knew her numbers cold, and was ready when one person in a room of eight finally mattered. Taskrabbit was already operating in London, one of IKEA’s largest markets, and a quarter of its jobs were IKEA furniture assembly. Founder visibility is not about being everywhere. It is about being undeniable when it counts.

If you are a woman founder wondering whether the quiet, unglamorous work is moving anything forward, this episode will answer that. Building relationships in business the right way is slow. It compounds in a way quick wins often do not.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 From IBM Engineer to Taskrabbit Founder: Leah Solivan's Origin Story

03:33 Why Talking About Your Idea Is the First Step in Partnership Marketing

08:57 Rebranding From Run My Errand to Taskrabbit

11:09 How Leah Validated the Taskrabbit Concept Before Raising Money

13:23 Raising a Startup's First Round of Funding With No Business Background

19:40 Scaling a Business City by City and the Decision to Go International

21:26 Building Trust in a Gig Economy Marketplace

24:56 The IKEA Partnership That Led to an Acquisition

28:49 Life After the Exit: Investing, Podcasting, and What Comes Next

31:03 Three Actionable Tips for First-Time Founders

Connect with Leah Solivan:

Follow Leah on Instagram

Connect with Leah on LinkedIn

Follow Leah on X

Subscribe to The FoundHer Files Substack: http://foundherfiles.substack.com

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In honor of Mother's Day, get $200 off a new Dear FoundHer... Forum membership through the month of May. Join the community built for women business owners over 40 who are building real businesses on their own terms. JOIN US INSIDE HERE, no code necessary to save.

Thirty years ago, Jeni Britton started an ice cream company with no money, no backing, and no roadmap. Becoming a founder later in life turned out to be the best decision she never planned.

In this episode of Dear FoundHer, Lindsay talks with Jeni Britton, founder of Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams and Floura, about what it takes to build something that lasts. Jeni started her first company at 22, but she will be the first to tell you that the best entrepreneurs are in their 40s. The data backs her up. The fastest-growing segment of entrepreneurs in the United States right now is women over 45, and those businesses tend to be more durable than the ones built by founders half their age.

Real founder stories rarely come with a straight line. Jeni’s includes early risk, hard lessons, public crisis, reinvention, and building again with more clarity. Jeni talks about closing her first business, Scream, and what learning from failure taught her about the difference between making what excites you and building something customers return to again and again. She also walks through the 2015 Listeria recall that nearly took Jeni's down, and why she looks back on it as one of the most important moments in her company's history. Scaling challenges, crisis leadership, and knowing when to simplify your mission so your team has something clear to hold onto are all part of the conversation.

She gets into the founding of Floura too, her fiber nutrition company built from produce trimmings, and what becoming a founder later in life looks like when you already know the hard lessons. The second time around, she says, you know who to build with. Her coach and her advisor from the Jeni's years are now her co-founders at Floura. That kind of peer support for entrepreneurs is part of how the work actually gets done.

For female founders at any stage, if you have been telling yourself you are behind, this episode makes a pretty strong case that you are not.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Why Jeni Britton Is a Must-Hear Guest for Women Founders

03:42 How Jeni Britton Started Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams with No Money and No Backing

10:46 The Accidental Product That Put Jeni's on the Map

12:37 Why Word of Mouth Still Beats Social Media for Growing a Business

22:17 The 2015 Listeria Recall and What It Taught Her About Values Under Pressure

29:44 Becoming a Founder Later in Life: Why Jeni Stepped Back and Started Over

33:28 Introducing Floura: A Second Company Built from Produce Waste and Gut Health Research

44:01 How to Price, Scale, and Build a Product the Right Way

47:00 Why the People You Build With Are Your Most Important Business Decision

51:46 Why the Best Entrepreneurs Are in Their 40s

Connect with Jeni Britton:

Follow Jeni on Instagram

Follow Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams on Instagram

Follow Floura on Instagram 

Subscribe to The FoundHer Files 

Follow Dear FoundHer on Instagram 

Join THE networking community for women business owners over forty, The Dear FoundHer... Forum

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In honor of Mother's Day, get $200 off a new Dear FoundHer... Forum membership through the month of May. Join the community built for women business owners over 40 who are building real businesses on their own terms. JOIN US INSIDE HERE, no code necessary to save. 

Neka Pasquale turned a side project into a $48 million business, and she'll be the first to tell you she had no idea what she was doing.

She was an acupuncturist treating patients when she started making food and juices as part of their care. People loved it, word got around, and before long, Urban Remedy was growing faster than she could plan for. There was no roadmap. Just a lot of late nights, a lot of mistakes, and a refusal to quit.

On this episode of Dear FoundHer, Neka sits down with host Lindsay Pinchuk to talk about starting a business for the first time with no roadmap, no business background, and no idea the thing would grow into what it became. She shares what it was like fulfilling 500 juice orders while pregnant, shipping food across the country before she was remotely ready, and learning operations, HR, and food safety by making every possible mistake first.

The story of how Urban Remedy landed in Whole Foods is worth the listen alone. It didn't come from a pitch. It came from a bike ride. That's partnership marketing working exactly the way it's supposed to, and it's a reminder that the relationships you're already building matter more than any campaign you could run.

Scaling a business that sells fresh organic food nationally comes with scaling challenges most brands never take on. Neka talks about managing rapid growth without losing the mission, the burnout that built up quietly over 12 years of nonstop doing, and why protecting what your brand stands for gets harder the bigger you get.

For women entrepreneurs who are building something that actually means something, this conversation offers a candid look at what growth actually asks of you.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 How Urban Remedy Started by Accident

06:25 Managing 500 Orders While Pregnant

08:39 The Operational Chaos of Scaling a Business

11:15 How a Bike Ride Led to 400 Whole Foods Locations

15:36 Staying True to Your Mission at Scale

22:22 The Real Challenges of Scaling Fresh Food Nationally

23:39 When and Why to Hire a CEO

29:14 What Every Woman Founder Needs to Know Before Scaling a Business

Connect with Neka Pasquale:

Follow Neka on Instagram 

Subscribe to The FoundHer Files 

Follow Dear FoundHer on Instagram 

Free Forum Open House + Networking Session Come see what's inside the Dear FoundHer Forum SAVE YOUR SEAT

Join THE networking community for women business owners over forty, The Dear FoundHer... Forum

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In honor of Mother's Day, get $200 off a new Dear FoundHer... Forum membership through the month of May. Join the community built for women business owners over 40 who are building real businesses on their own terms. JOIN US INSIDE HERE, no code necessary to save.

If you're a small business owner who's been told to run ads to grow your business, and you're spending money on Meta or Google ads that aren't working, this episode is for you.

In this solo episode of Dear FoundHer…, host Lindsay Pinchuk breaks down why ads alone won't grow a small business, and the marketing foundation almost nobody is teaching women entrepreneurs to build first. Drawing on the same playbook that took Bump Club and Beyond from $500 of startup capital to a seven-figure exit, Lindsay walks through the three types of partnerships every small business owner should be running, the exact moment she finally turned on paid ads at Bump Club (year 7-8, not year 1), and how she's running the same playbook right now to grow Dear FoundHer.

This is the foundational episode for May 2026 on Dear FoundHer…, kicking off a full month focused on partnerships as the most underrated growth strategy for women business owners over 40.

• Why "ads are an amplifier, not a foundation" and what that actually means for your marketing budget
• The three types of partnerships every small business should be running (most founders are running zero)
• How Lindsay used audience swaps, expert co-created content, and brand partnerships to grow Bump Club and Beyond to seven figures without paid ads for 7-8 years
• The smarter way to run paid ads when you're finally ready (hint: not to your homepage)
• How a paid Huggies campaign funded Bump Club's email list growth, and how you can structure similar deals
• The exact 5-step plan to start running partnerships in your business this week
• Why Lindsay is running the same playbook right now at Dear FoundHer, and what year five looks like when the foundation is built

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Pausing a business you built from zero is one of the most honest tests of whether you actually believe in what you made.

Host Lindsay Pinchuk sits down with Angie Tebbe, founder of Rae Wellness, for one of those real founder stories that doesn't gloss over the hard parts. Angie built Rae Wellness into a brand with 4.5 million customers in three years. Then came the scaling challenges that most founders never talk about publicly. A retail rollout that went sideways, misalignment with a key partner, and a foundation that wasn't ready for the speed of the growth. Instead of patching holes or chasing short-term recovery, Angie paused the entire company.

What happened next is a testament to the authentic relationship Angie built with her customers. The community didn't move on. Customers kept checking the site. They kept spreading the word. They kept asking when Rae Wellness was coming back. That kind of loyalty is the direct result of years of community building for business and treating customers like partners from day one. Angie had been running focus groups with women before the brand even launched, getting feedback on values, messaging, and products before anything hit the market.

This episode speaks directly to women founders who are building something that actually means something to people. Angie talks about the decision to return, the team she reassembled, and the mindset shift she brought into this second round. She's growing an audience again, but on different terms. No paid lists, no boosted ads, no manufactured momentum. Word of mouth is driving new customers in numbers she didn't expect.

The bigger message is about scaling responsibly as a real strategy, not a fallback. Angie is staying close to inventory, operations, and aligned partners. She's moving at a pace the business can actually hold.

If you're facing scaling challenges or questioning whether your business deserves another shot, this conversation gives you something real to work with.

Episode Breakdown:

00:01 Rae Wellness Comeback Story and Why Angie Tebbe Paused the Company

02:35 Rapid Growth, Retail Setbacks, and Scaling Challenges

07:55 Community Building Strategy That Shaped Rae Wellness

10:41 What Angie Tebbe Learned During the Business Pause

14:44 Retail Buyer Interest and the Rae Wellness Relaunch

15:37 How Rae Wellness Rebuilt Customer Trust After the Pause

18:33 Relaunch Sales, Subscriptions, and Returning Customer Loyalty

20:26 Word of Mouth Marketing and Growing Without Paid Influencers

24:10 How Angie Tebbe Is Scaling Responsibly the Second Time

32:10 Three Founder Lessons on Values, Non-Negotiables, and Trusting Your Gut

Connect with Angie Tebbe:

Visit the Rae Wellness website

Subscribe to The FoundHer Files 

Follow Dear FoundHer on Instagram 

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

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A jar of homemade deodorant at a Portland farmers market became a multimillion-dollar acquisition by Unilever seven years later, and the woman behind it never had a master plan.

On this episode of Dear FoundHer, host Lindsay Pinchuk sits down with Jaime Schmidt, founder of Schmidt's Naturals, for one of those rare, unfiltered conversations about bootstrapping a consumer brand from a kitchen table with almost no money, no manufacturing experience, and a newborn at home. Jaime's path was not linear or polished. She was a social worker who moved across the country, got inspired by the Portland maker community, and started whipping up natural deodorant while pregnant because she wanted cleaner products and could not afford to buy them. That is where it all began.

What makes her story so useful for a first-time founder is how unglamorous the early days really were. Jaime hand-formulated everything using basic pantry ingredients, packed jars in a garage with a small team working off a changing table, and sold them on Etsy and at markets before she had a real website. Getting publicity came not from a PR firm but from sending samples to bloggers and YouTubers who were excited for new things to try. An early Today Show feature brought a flood of orders she was not ready for.

Transitioning from employee to founder meant learning wholesale, retail pricing, inventory forecasting, and supply chain on the fly as the brand moved into Whole Foods and beyond. Managing rapid growth brought its own pressure. Scaling rapidly through multiple manufacturing spaces while trying to protect product quality and stay cash-flow stable tested everything she had built.

Jaime's advice to women starting over or starting late? Stop talking yourself out of it. Find people who support you. And stop fixating on the end game. Just focus on the next real step in front of you. She did exactly that, and it was enough.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Jaime Schmidt on Building Schmidt’s Naturals From Scratch

03:16 How Schmidt’s Naturals Started at a Kitchen Table

06:09 Getting Publicity Through Bloggers, The Today Show, and Early Retail Wins

10:39 Bootstrapping Manufacturing and Scaling Into Major Retail Stores

13:08 Why Jaime Schmidt Sold Schmidt’s Naturals to Unilever

17:28 How to Scale a Consumer Brand Without Losing Your Values

22:20 Jaime Schmidt on Mentorship, Supermaker, and Investing After Exit

26:28 Business Advice for Women Starting Later and Becoming a Founder

Connect with Jaime Schmidt:

Follow Jaime on Instagram

Connect with Jaime on LinkedIn

Subscribe to The FoundHer Files: http://foundherfiles.substack.com

Don't build your business alone, join the FoundHer Forum to build alongside women just like you: https://www.dearfoundher.com/tour

Follow Dear FoundHer on Instagram 

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Are you looking to level up your business? Apply for Lindsay's year-long mastermind and mentorship, Marketing Made Simple for Small Business

Scaling a business means protecting your brand, your standards, and your sanity as growth picks up speed.

On Dear FoundHer, host Lindsay Pinchuk sits down with Gara Post, co-founder and chief creative officer of The NOW, for an honest look at scaling a business through smart decisions, steady leadership, and a clear brand point of view. Gara shares what helped The NOW build brand awareness early, why partnership marketing and earned media played such a strong role, and how women founders can create momentum without chasing every trend.

This conversation gets into the real work behind managing rapid growth, from franchise systems and team support to protecting the customer experience across every location. Gara also speaks to the emotional side of scaling a business, with pressure, risk, and the need for support as the company grows. For women founders who want a clearer path to scaling a business, this episode offers practical perspective, sharper thinking, and a useful reminder that growth works best when the brand stays consistent and the founder stays grounded.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Gara Post on Building The NOW

04:44 The Gap in the Wellness Market That Sparked The NOW

05:50 What Made The NOW Stand Out From Traditional Massage Brands

10:17 Scaling a Brick and Mortar Business in the Early Growth Stage

13:04 Organic Marketing, Press, and Growth Without Paid Influencers

14:54 The Franchise Decision and the Risks of Scaling a Brand

19:44 SOPs, Team Support, and What Helped The NOW Scale

22:51 Brand Consistency, Social Media Control, and Customer Experience

29:25 Product Strategy and Local Brand Awareness

32:00 Gara Post’s Advice for Women Founders and Business Growth

Connect with Gara Post:

Follow Gara on Instagram

Follow Gara on TikTok

Follow The NOW Massage on Instagram

Follow The NOW Massage on TikTok

Subscribe to The FoundHer Files 

Follow Dear FoundHer on Instagram 

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Join us for our free SWEEP workshop on April 9th to learn how to apply simple marketing strategies to your business. Register here

Apparis grew because Lauren knew how to spot demand before the business looked ready for it.

On Dear FoundHer, Lindsay Pinchuk talks with Lauren Nouchi, co-founder and creative director of Apparis, about the kind of growth story women founders rarely hear told plainly. Lauren shares how Apparis moved from an early concept that missed the mark to a brand with real traction, and why that shift depended on listening closely to the market, making fast decisions, and building credibility one move at a time. 

The conversation gets into bootstrapping, growing an audience, scaling challenges, partnership marketing, and founder visibility in ways that feel useful rather than polished. Lauren explains how retail partners, pop-ups, gifting, and brand collaborations helped create momentum, and why staying lean forced better choices.

For women founders, the value here is the honesty around pressure, pivots, and the gap between how a brand looks from the outside and how it actually runs day to day. If women founders want a clearer picture of how trust, visibility, and demand are built over time, Dear FoundHer delivers that here.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Why Lindsay Pinchuk Brought the Apparis Founder to Dear FoundHer

01:25 How Lauren Nouchi Started Apparis

04:28 The Pivot That Helped Apparis Find Product Market Fit

07:25 The Bold Ask That Turned an Idea Into a Brand

12:12 How Apparis Built Credibility and Grew Through Wholesale

19:35 The Marketing Strategy Behind Apparis Growth

23:27 Building a Lean Team and Scaling Apparis

35:38 Lauren Nouchi’s Best Advice for Women Founders

Connect with Lauren Nouchi:

Follow Apparis on Instagram

Follow Lauren on Instagram

Join us for our free SWEEP workshop on April 9th to learn how to apply simple marketing strategies to your business. Register here

Subscribe to The FoundHer Files 

Follow Dear FoundHer on Instagram 

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

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Before you dive in, grab your free spot at my SWEEP Workshop on April 9th, the marketing framework that makes everything you're about to hear actionable for your own business. REGISTER HERE.

What does it actually take to grow an audience, get press, and scale a business, without a massive team or a marketing budget? In this episode, Lindsay Pinchuk pulls back the curtain on the exact system she used to build her first company, Bump Club and Beyond, from a $500 idea into a 7-figure brand working with Target, Nordstrom, Huggies, and Unilever. The real founder story behind the framework? She didn't know she had a system until after she sold the company.

That system is SWEEP, and in this solo episode, Lindsay breaks down how she's applied it, on purpose this time, to grow Dear FoundHer… from a passion project podcast into a full community, events platform, and mentorship program. This is a masterclass in founder visibility, growing an audience without paid ads, managing rapid growth as a solo operator, and building a publicity strategy from scratch.

If you're a woman startup founder who feels like you're doing all the things but not getting the traction you deserve, this episode is the one you've been waiting for.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• The real founder story behind SWEEP, how Lindsay built a 7-figure business while serving as her own marketing department, with little more than a couple of contractors by her side
• Why SWEEP was born out of necessity: what bootstrapping, scrappiness, and zero budget actually looks like in practice
• How Lindsay leveraged press relationships from her first company to land TV segments and build immediate credibility when launching Dear FoundHer…
• The intentional decision to launch with interview-only episodes for an entire year, and the audience growth strategy behind it
• How listener demand for real-life connection led to live events, and how those events became the catalyst for expanding into workshops, an online community, and mentorship
• The five-part SWEEP framework: Social Media, Website, Email, Events, and Partnerships + Publicity, and how to apply it to every piece of content you create
• What managing rapid growth actually looks like when you're a founder who is also your own marketing team
• How to build a publicity strategy that doesn't require a PR agency or a big budget
• Why company messaging and consistency across every touchpoint is the real driver of scaling challenges, and how to solve it

If You Loved This Episode: Share it with a woman startup founder in your life who needs a real marketing system, not another hack. And if you haven't yet, scroll down and leave a 5-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. It's the single biggest thing you can do to help other women find this show.

Everything you just heard in this episode? It's SWEEP in action. Join me on April 9th for a free live SWEEP Workshop where I'll teach you the exact framework that makes marketing simple, consistent, and effective for women business owners just like you. Register for free, and I'll see you there.

Subscribe to The FoundHer Files 

Follow Dear FoundHer on Instagram 

This episode originally ran on April 18, 2023.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Before you dive in, grab your free spot at my SWEEP Workshop on April 9th, the marketing framework that makes everything you're about to hear actionable for your own business. REGISTER HERE.

What happens when a burned-out startup employee discovers jigsaw puzzles as her stress relief, and then decides to completely reinvent the category? You get Jiggy, one of the most creative and scrappy real founder stories we've featured on Dear FoundHer.

Kaylin Marcotte is the founder of Jiggy Puzzles, a multi-million dollar brand that transformed the humble jigsaw puzzle into a lifestyle product, a wellness tool, and a platform for emerging female artists. She launched in November 2019, just months before a global pandemic turned puzzles into the hottest product on the internet. She landed in Anthropologie before COVID hit, struck a deal with Mark Cuban on Shark Tank, and built a three-channel business with a team of three.

But here's what makes Kaylin's story so compelling for every woman startup founder listening: she did almost all of it without a marketing budget, without paid ads, and without a playbook. Just creativity, partnerships, and a relentless willingness to do the legwork.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• How Kaylin identified a gap in the market and built company messaging around elevating puzzles from a toy aisle product into a lifestyle and wellness brand
• The scrappy manufacturing process that got Jiggy off the ground, including negotiating her way onto the end of a factory run to meet impossibly low minimums
• Her early publicity strategy, pitching herself, leveraging HARO, and doing her own PR long before she could afford to outsource it
• How she grew an audience from day one by baking a built-in partner network into the business model itself, her artists
• The partnership with Anthropologie that changed everything, and how it came directly through Instagram before she'd spent a dollar on ads
• What founder visibility looked like for a one-woman show, and how leaning into organic social and authentic partnerships drove real growth
• Her Shark Tank experience from start to finish, how she got scouted, what the process was really like, and what happened to her business the night it aired
• The real scaling challenges of going from DTC startup to a multi-channel brand in Bloomingdale's, Nordstrom, and Macy's
• How she has managed rapid growth and built a B2B custom business, including a puzzle collaboration with Kacey Musgraves, with a team of just three people
• Why she believes getting press and building partnerships is a more powerful and sustainable growth strategy than performance marketing will ever be
• The honest truth about managing teams as a solo founder, and how freelancers, contractors, and a scrappy mindset have kept Jiggy lean and profitable
• 
  

This episode is for every woman startup founder who is building something from nothing, trying to figure out how to get press without a PR budget, and wondering if it's really possible to grow an audience without throwing money at ads.

Kaylin's answer is a resounding yes, and she gives you the exact roadmap in this conversation.

Connect with Jiggy:

• Instagram: @jiggypuzzles
• Website: jiggypuzzles.com

Everything you just heard in this episode? It's SWEEP in action. Join me on April 9th for a free live SWEEP Workshop where I'll teach you the exact framework that makes marketing simple, consistent, and effective for women business owners just like you. Register for free, and I'll see you there.

Subscribe to The FoundHer Files 

Follow Dear FoundHer on Instagram 

Loved this episode? Share it in your stories and tag @lindsaypinchuk and @dearfoundher. And if you haven't already, subscribe and leave us a five star review, it's how other women startup founders find real stories like this one.

This episode originally ran on April 18, 2023.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.