Today’s episode is a real pinch me moment. I was a Three Ships customer before I knew Connie Lo's name. I absolutely love their Jelly Drops for the most amazing glow and their soft serve lip balm before bed. I found Three Ships at Credo Beauty, one of my favorite places for truly clean products. As someone whose allergic to almost everything, finding products that are safe, let alone work is few and far between.

So when my friend Amanda told me she had DM'd Connie on Substack and that Connie had not just responded, but written back with such warmth and kindness, I knew I had to shoot my shot. I sent the message, asked if she'd be willing to come on Mimir, and here we are!

Ironically, the interview itself ended up being about shooting your shot. There's a story in here about 23-year-old Connie at the end of a beauty trade show, walking up to a woman with her name badge flipped around that nobody else was approaching. Halfway through the conversation, it was revealed that she was the buyer from Whole Foods. A year later, Three Ships was in half of California. The year after that, the whole country.

That's the through line for the whole episode. The unsexy, slightly awkward, reality of how a brand actually gets built. If you are an early-stage founder, especially one in consumer or beauty, this is a rare operational masterclass.

We talk about Three Ships’ 37% repeat rate, and what Connie attributes that to. We talk through a replicable product development process, and the realistic timeline for beauty products. Connie also shares the biggest mistakes founders make when they decide to start their companies.

But outside of all the amazing wisdom Connie imparts, I’m really impressed by how she keeps her ego small, her identity bigger than the company, and her wins documented so she doesn't lose track of how far she's come. Connie is a huge inspiration to me and I am beyond excited to welcome her to the podcast.

Connect with Connie:

LinkedIn

Susbtack

Three Ships

If you want to support the podcast, please leave a review! If you're looking for more ways to contribute I would be deeply honored if you wanted to Buy me a matcha!

Also, be sure dive into ⁠The Well on Substack⁠ and check out the playlist of what founders are listening to

Colin McIntosh started Sheets and Giggles in 2017 and scaled it to $1.4 million per month by 2020. Last November, after eight years of building through COVID, supply chain crises, and a 2025 tariff shock that killed his first acquisition deal three days after Liberation Day, he sold the company.

I couldn’t wait to talk to Colin. I came with pen and paper in hand poised to document his meteoric rise. I had to know how he did it so I could replicate it. But in our conversation, he tells me why he wouldn't build it the same way again.

Colin is incredibly honest about the cost of scaling at that speed and right now, he’s a founder in recovery mode. I loved being able to pick his brain on all the mistakes he made, lessons he learned, and triumphs along the way. We talk about what strategic category selection looks like in practice, the three barriers that block new businesses (capital, complexity, risk), and why personal domain expertise is the only durable advantage in an AI era where the tools are commodity.

But what I can’t stop thinking about is his perspective on why entrepreneurs don’t get enough empathy and the structural challenges to starting a business in America today. It felt like we were both realizing at the same time that the best thing you can do as an early stage founder today is build a brand that’s like yourself. One that comes from a passion, a mission to help others that only you're equipped to serve.

So if you’re an early stage founder who doesn’t want to hear the raw truth of building, then keep scrolling. But the real ones know, entrepreneurship isn’t always glamorous.

Connect with Colin:

SheetsGiggles.com - my first company that we talked about a lot, sustainable bedding

SheetsResume.com - AI Resume Builder and Job Search Platform

ColinDMcIntosh.com - where people can go to learn more about me

Dive into ⁠The Well on Substack⁠!

Buy me a matcha!

playlist of what founders are listening to

I don’t know about you guys but 2026 for me is certainly earning it’s title as year of the fire horse. I truly feel like I’ve been riding a fire breathing horse bareback at full speed. I’m just here holding onto the mane for dear life and he’s burning down what use to be. If you feel the same way, then this episode is for you.

Last week I sat down with Allie Stark and it ended up being one of the most useful, fun, and fulfilling conversations I’ve had in a good minute. Allie coaches ambitious women through big chapters of growth and change, and she put articulate language on the experience of change. The way of being that got you here isn't going to get you there, and the in-between, the part where the old self is leaving and the new one hasn't shown up yet, is messy in ways nobody really warns you about. For some of us, it’s dramatic, for others it’s not, but I think it’s universal for everyone, especially us founders.

We cover a lot in this episode. The feminine economy, and what it looks like to build a business on generosity and reciprocity instead of grinding. The kind of leader who can actually change you. Why entrepreneurship is essentially identity work in disguise. And the single most concrete exercise to do during times of change. I did it over the weekend.

But the part of this conversation that genuinely changed how I'm thinking about my life right now was when I told Allie my deepest fear: what if I work so hard but I don’t get what I want. She didn't hand me a pep talk. She asked the question back at me sideways: what if you could be more playful and still get what you want? I've been thinking about that in every single instance of my life since. For anyone who runs on hustle and worries it might not actually work, that question is the whole episode.

For the early-stage founders listening, especially the women: we are in a wildly transformative cultural moment, and if the old way of doing things doesn't fit anymore, then this episode is exactly what you need. Allie hands you a softer way of asking the question, and a few real ways of meeting yourself in the middle.

Mentioned by Allie:

1. The Awakened Brain
2. The feminine economy - sisters

Connect with Allie:

Check out Noria: my learning & development platform for a new era of living & leading

ASW 

Connect with Maddie:

Dive into ⁠The Well on Substack⁠! Buy me a matcha!

playlist of what founders are listening to

Today I'm sitting down with Danielle Brooks, the founder of Honey Truck, a boutique honey brand. Danielle and I met through a podcast matching platform. In her pitch to me she told me that Honey Truck was built in the margins of her life. She didn't have the luxury of building fast, so she had to learn how to build intentionally.

It felt like she was speaking directly to me. I mean she was, but more specifically, she was speaking to a circumstance I am all too familiar with. I too am building in the margins of my life, constantly hunting for the path through the trees that gets me out and into the horizon of the future I want.

I learned a lot from Danielle, but the lesson that leapt out to me was how she didn't manufacture a differentiator. She paid close attention to what was already special about her product instead of searching the competition for where she fit in. She noticed her honeys looked different, tasted different, depending on where her bees lived. And she built her entire brand around that. As a marketer, that's what I'm always looking for. Not something engineered, and as founders that’s a lesson you need to pay attention to.

We also get into the mechanics of building a product-based business, from wholesale pricing to the question I think every founder building in the margins needs to ask themselves: Do I have a business or do I have an expensive hobby?

And Danielle shares a version of work-life balance that is the opposite of hustle culture. It's about doing the next right thing. Even when it's painfully slow, even when the gap between where you are and where you want to be feels impossible to close.

Honestly, that's the version of entrepreneurship that I designed this podcast to tell. If your scrappy beginning has you wondering whether you're doing it right, this is exactly what you needed to hear today.

Connect with Danielle:

Website: www.honeytruck.com

Social media: @honeytruckco

Dive into ⁠The Well on Substack⁠!

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If you’re a female founder then you’ll probably know this feeling all too well. You’re trying to launch a business but you’re also thinking about getting married, starting a family and it feels like the sand is slipping through the hourglass knowing that neither is going to stop and wait for you.

I’m right there with you. I’m getting married next year and my fiance and I are talking about kids. But my business is in the earliest of early stages and I can’t help but feel regret, like I should’ve started this business earlier. I find myself rushing, trying to get as much built as possible before my whole life changes. Being a female founder, this is the reality. You don’t know how you’re going to manage both.

Talking to Emma Stallworthy, founder of Your Reformer, was not only educational from a business perspective, for me, it was a sigh of relief.

Emma launched Your Reformer right after her second baby. She didn’t say it was easy or glamorous. But she told me that passion will carry you through the hard seasons. The business didn’t pull her away from being a mom, it made her a better one. That was what I took from this episode.

But we also get into the stuff that makes her business worth studying. The economics of a reformer rental that I’m shook no other fitness founder is replicating. Why she refuses to use the word pivot. How she mapped her entire product ecosystem around a single customer lifecycle so that Your Reformer could meet someone wherever they are in their Pilates journey and grow with them. And finally, what nobody tells you about all the costs of scaling globally.

If you’re starting a fitness brand, navigating life changes as a founder, or curious about alternative approaches to fitness business models, then this episode is for you.

Connect with Emma:

Your Reformer

Emma's LinkedIn

Your Reformer Instagram

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Most founders sit down to post on social media and go completely blank. But I have good news! You don’t actually have a content problem, you have a clarity problem.

At my 9-5 creating content is easy because someone handed me the mission, I’ve learned the market well enough to know exactly what pain points we need to address and how our product solves them. The content writes itself.

That infrastructure: mission, audience, pain points, outcomes, etc. is the part founders skip. They start posting because it feels like that’s what you’re supposed to do, and you are. But content without the foundation is not a strategy, so it’s no wonder you feel confused.

That’s why I brought Emma Tessler on to the podcast. Emma Tessler is the founder of Ninety Five Media and has been in social media since 2015. She has worked with hundreds of brands and she does not pull punches. Every single piece of advice she gives in this episode is downstream of one question: does this actually serve your specific audience, or are you posting because it feels like progress?

In our convo we cover what to do in the first 30 days of posting, what metrics you should be focusing on and spoiler alert, it’s not comments or follower count. What successful founder content looks like, and why paid options should always come last.

There is also a moment where we talk about an important nuance that I need every early-stage founder to hear. Nobody cares about your values. Values are internal. Your mission is what converts because it names the problem you solve and the person you are solving it for.

Make sure you stay through to the end because Emma shares her marketing growth blueprint built specifically for early-stage founders who want an expert-led strategy they can execute on their own. If you are ready to stop throwing spaghetti at the wall, this episode is for you.

Connect with Emma:

• Get $500 off your Marketing Growth Blueprint - exclusively for MiMir Podcast listeners!**
• Website
• Instagram
• Emma’s LinkedIn
• Ninety Five LinkedIn
• The Stop Scrolling, Start Scaling Podcast

Looking for more from Mimir?

Dive into ⁠The Well on Substack⁠!

If you'd like to support this podcast, I would be deeply honored if you buy me a matcha!

Rashmi Aimiuwu moved from Canada to Silicon Valley. The literal epicenter of tech, and spent months quietly wondering if she had any business being there. No engineering degree. No startup experience. Just 17 years in commercial real estate marketing and a growing frustration with birthday parties.

That frustration became GIVA, a gift-giving platform that just launched in beta. And in this episode, Rashmi pulls back the curtain on every step of getting there. From teaching herself to build a prototype with AI tools to firing her developer two and a half months into an MVP and starting from scratch.

Rashmi is the earliest stage founder I've ever had on Mimir, and that's exactly why I wanted her here. This show is for early stage founders, and her story mirrors yours more than almost anyone I've talked to. She's figuring it out in real time, building in a space she didn't come from, without a roadmap. Honestly, I'm learning right alongside her. I wanted to bring this conversation to the forefront because it shines a light on the parts that have to happen before you get the big breaks.

After listening to our conversation, you’ll walk away with how she validated the idea before writing a single line of code, what it felt like to jump into a business with zero technical background and sit with that imposter syndrome for months. and what she wishes she'd done differently with her name and brand from day one.

It's one of those conversations that's going to hit differently depending on where you are in your journey. But if you're early, you need this one.

Connect with Rashmi:

Givva's website & her LinkedIn profile

If you enjoyed this episode and want more, dive into ⁠The Well on Substack⁠! And if you feel called to support this podcast, I’d be deeply honored if you Buy me a matcha!

Today’s conversation is about the uncomfortable truths of entrepreneurship. Something every early stage founder needs to get familiar with.

I’m sitting down with Irene Saliendra, a serial founder who has built across multiple industries, from sustainable fashion to women’s health tech, and now runs Digital Flow.

So many founder stories get told in hindsight. But when you’re in it, the reality is a lot messier.

I experienced this myself when starting a company. You’re putting yourself in rooms where you feel underqualified. You’re figuring out co-founder dynamics, equity structures, accelerators, and fundraising, often for the first time.

And sometimes you’re doing all of that while still trying to hold down a job, pay bills, and convince people your idea is worth believing in. I’m still doing this!

So it was really refreshing to sit down with Irene and talk about what it takes to move before you feel ready. Irene is sharing tips for validating your idea, how to ask better questions instead of just pitching harder, and all the unsexy, and often awkward motions you need to put in place to have healthy co-founder relationships.

We also unpack accelerators and fundraising. I imagine these things are top of mind for any founder in the early stages as it was for me. So I had Irene dive deep. You’ll learn when they’re useful, when they’re not, and what they’re actually designed to do.

But one of the most powerful takeaways from this conversation is something deeper.

Building a company doesn’t just create businesses. Those can come and go.

What entrepreneurship really builds is self-trust.

Once you’ve navigated uncertainty enough times you start to realize that no matter what happens next, you know how to begin again. And that’s a kind of confidence no one can take away from you.

If you want an honest look at what early-stage entrepreneurship actually feels like, keep listening. Because sticking through the uncomfortable parts of the journey is often exactly what changes you.

Connect with Irene:

website

linkedin

Dive into ⁠The Well on Substack⁠

If you feel called to support this podcast, I'd be honored if you Buy me a matcha!

Today’s guest is Samantha Diamond, co-founder of Bird&Be, a reproductive health company built alongside fertility doctors to help people be proactive about their fertility — from “trimester zero” through pregnancy and postpartum.

What I learned from Sam is that empathy, when embedded into how you build, becomes a competitive advantage — especially in stagnant industries.

Fertility, and female healthcare more broadly, hasn’t meaningfully evolved in how it shows up for customers. There’s very little empathy for the emotional reality of the journey.

Sam saw that gap firsthand, and what she’s done with Bird&Be proves that mission-driven founders build more than just products. They have the power to shift the culture that surrounds those products.

Through intentional product design, obsessive customer listening, and a retail partnership with Ulta, Bird&Be has moved reproductive health from the back corner of the pharmacy into the beauty and overall wellness conversation.

If you’re building in fintech, healthtech, edtech, climate, HR — any space where trust matters and culture feels stuck — this conversation will show you how mission, when embedded deeply enough, can become your edge.

You’ll learn how Sam operationalizes empathy at every level of the business. And what it actually takes to go from an idea in 2016 to a national retail expansion in 2025. We unpack the long timeline, the patience, and the strategic decisions required to scale without losing the mission.

Finally in true Mimir fashion, I couldn’t let Sam go without asking her how being a founder has shaped her as a person. She’s sharing the key to resilience, putting in uncomfortable reps, and how to found in spaces you don’t have technical expertise in.

Keep listening to learn how empathy can move from pretty words to infrastructure — and how that shift can change not just your industry, but the culture surrounding it.

Dive into the well on Substack!

Buy me a matcha!

Connect with Sam:

birdandbe.com

@birdbeco

LinkedIn

I originally wrote this piece as a Substack essay, but as we head into 2026, aka the season of vision boards and productivity hacks, I wanted to bring it to the podcast too. This topic has been sitting with me for a long time because I think so many of us struggle with the same fear: Why am I not reaching my goal fast enough? And even when we do hit a milestone, why does the joy disappear almost instantly?

I started questioning the illusion of progress we all subscribe to. If reaching the dream is fleeting… then what’s the point?

I explore that question through a few different lenses: Ecclesiastes, the story of Exodus, and even my very humbling personal experiences. What ties it together is this: success doesn’t save us from doubt.

So, a big part of this episode is about learning how to enjoy the work. But that requires something most of us aren’t taught to cultivate: self-grace. When you treat yourself like a creator instead of a critic, you actually build the emotional safety required to notice the small wins, learn from mistakes, and feel proud in the middle.

Going into the holidays, if you’ve been feeling stuck, discouraged, or disconnected from your own progress, this episode is going to give you language and logic for what you’re experiencing, and a path forward that is more sustainable than any productivity hack.

Thanks for listening!

Come hang out on Substack over the holidays.

And if you’re going to try your own 60-day habit stack, tell me what you’re choosing so we can keep each other accountable.