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How Female Founders Can Innovate and Disrupt the World of Business Thank you, Alexa, for the kind introduction and I am super excited to be here today to say hello and tell you a little bit about Women Entrepreneurs Grow Global and have you meet three of my favorite Female Founders the first I will give a big shout out to SCORE for hosting us into Alexis for all her behind the scenes work to make this happen and to all of you for being here with us so without further ado let's get started. A little bit about Women Entrepreneurs Grow Global, we are a Chicago-based 501 C3 nonprofit organization, established in 2015 and we educate, inspire and nurture women entrepreneurs and business owners and how to go global. And how we do that is through webinars, WEGG workshops and webinars and our goal is really to make sure every Female Founder has the opportunity to disrupt the world in a way which takes her business global. You will hear from Female Founders who are doing as such today. And the why behind what we do, that comprises of these facts that you see here. And that is in the USA, there are 12 million women owned businesses of which only about 12% of those women owned businesses are U.S. exporters. And get export focus small businesses tend to be more successful, technology intensive SMEs are owned by women and more significantly more likely to scale up so the goal is really to provide all small businesses, including women owned businesses, more opportunity to thrive through global trade. And training and sharing like this webinar today is the cornerstone to empowering all business owners, men and women alike, to become strong exporters. And by removing barriers and in particular for women, we will bolster economic growth, propel companies and to the world stage and stimulate long-term benefits for all economies. And by the way, anyone, male or female, who wants to take their business global can. The world awaits and really the essential element needed to be successful in going global is just readiness. So now I want to give you an example of just a handful of very cool Female Founders who are innovating and disrupting in the global marketplace. First there is Esther Duflo and as you can see on the slide the Paris born MIT professor, received the Nobel Prize in economics for her experimental approach for alleviating global poverty and consider the youngest person and second woman to receive the honor. In her Nobel banquet speech she said I cannot help but hope that this prize with the emphasis on the essential question of how to improve the lives of others, and with one woman among the laureates, will encourage many others to come join us. So what she is really saying is if I can do this, so can you. Come join me. Won't you please? And then we have Kristin Davis, one of the masterminds behind the NASA exploration for vehicular mobility unit space suit and much easier to say X EMU and the engineers making history by designing the helmet and sunvisor and waste assembly that will be worn by the first women to walk on the moon in 2024 and her advice for the next generation is find something you are passionate about and pursue a career in it, Davis says if not you, who? Go change the world. And next is Jennifer Justice the entertainment lawyer who has worked on major deals for artist like Outkast, Beyoncé, and Jay-Z and she is represented hip-hop mogul for 17 years and helped larger company Roc Nation to combat the gender came -- pay gap at male-dominated record labels and made it her mission to represent more women and negotiate fair compensation and she said, I was making money for man by day and trying to overthrow the patriarchy by night. Says justice who now runs her own female focused advisory and legal firm aptly titled The Justice Department. Which leads me to Angie White and Betsy Mikesell, they were inspired by the struggle of keeping kids beds tidy and Betsy and Angie invited zippered prototypes and lunch Beddy's after successful kick starter campaign and selling globally and named 270 in inks 5000 after demonstrating the nominal growth in teaching how the world how to purchase and make a bed and then we move on to Dr. Sonat Birnecker Hart, owner and President of Koval and she has spearheaded product development, distribution and marketing turning her family business into an international presence with availability and over 55 export markets and since COVID-19 crisis sheesh has shifted her business to produce gallons and gallons of alcohol-based hand sanitizer for the medical community, retirement homes and those on the front lines who are responding to the unprecedented threats so she is really going from spirits to sanitizers. So while the business is wide open to everyone who has an Internet connection and the provider to take it on, let us have you meet three exceptional women entrepreneurs and we will start with Angie and Betsy from Beddy's and I will let you take it from here . Hello, so excited to be here and went to thank Alexa for hosting us in Laurel for the great introduction. Yes, thank you. I will start, this is Betsy, I am the CEO and this all started because I had twins with bunk beds and I could not figure out how to make their but it's and I was just getting frustrated with trying to make their bunk beds and figured there had to be a solution and then when I could not find what I made my own prototype and after telling a bunch of friends and families about it, they were like, hey, such a great idea and you should be selling these and so I convinced Angie to come along and be my business partner and together we perfected the prototype and Beddy's was born. So if you're not familiar with Beddy's it is zippered bedding and it is perfect for bunkbeds but also perfect for any bed and especially those hard to make beds. Right, we will show a quick video to give you an idea of what it is. [Music] Zip zip your bed with these, Beddy's. Okay, so as you can see, it is one piece bedding unit and goes on the entire mattress just like a fitted sheet but covers all of your bedding so you do not have to purchase the fitted sheet and the top sheet and like it and comforter, but it is all of your bedding in one and has a strong elastic that goes along the bottom of the unit so that it stays nice and snug on the mattress and it actually will fit mattresses, bearing sizes because of that elastic. Event up to 15 inches deep and down from there and it will stay nice and fitted right on the mattress. It has zippers on both sides so you can unzip from the very top, down, to the very bottom of the bed. The entire top piece comes off so that you can wash it easily. And then it also has the comfort panels that extend out so that you have this coverage and if you or you can kind of imagine sleeping in a sleeping bag and you have to be zipped up just to be covered, but that comfort panel foals out and covers you just like a comforter so you are very comfortable and we have a minke lining that we started with and since then we have expended to cotton for those that are in hotter claimants that want a cooler bed. And we are really proud of the design and Betsy is the inventor and made the first prototype with her mother and brought me on and we and I don't know how many hours and hours, Betsy, that we did the design but back and forth and this is what we have and we have improved it over the years as it has gone out to customers and we have the best zippers, and we have, anyway, nice quality fabric so that gives you an idea of what we are selling. So we started or after we had a prototype that we felt proud of, it was really important for Betsy and I to bring something to the market that we would purchase and that was in our mind at the entire time. And once we had that product, after hundreds of prototypes, we decided that we wanted to do a kick starter campaign and restarted it in March of 2014 and it funded in April 2014, and the purpose of the kick starter was to fund our first PO and Betsy and I first took out second mortgage on our homes but did not cover the cost of our first PO and the kick starter took care of the rest of that payment we did not have a lot of luck finding funding in the beginning because this was not a proven concept of what we liked about the kick starter is that it was a good way to bring it to a market and see if people believed in the idea and it did and we funded over $100,000 in 40 days. We are really proud that we or we did not realize that a kick starter success rate, as low as it was, so maybe that is good that we did not know that at the time. It funded and we were able to do our first PO and we also were able to get product to our customer when we promised it which we are very proud of too. One other interesting about kick starter is we were actually, kick starter, sold into Canada so we are already just from the get-go we were able to sell outside of the USO that was kind of exciting for us as well. And one other thing that has been a big part of our business is social media and because of the new concept people were not googling zippered bedding or sunset bedding so we had to teach our audience about the zippered bedding that even existed so we used social media and we were able to use Instagram, Facebook, YouTube has been a big opportunity for us and we have a huge international audience with YouTube with Instagram and Facebook. And restarted originally just advertising on social media all organically for the first couple of years we just did not have the budget and the other great thing about social media is that it was free. So we could build our audience for free on social media and we used a lot of social media influencers as well and they helped tell the story about zippered bedding and it was not until just couple of years ago that we started using Google ads because people were not searching it and out that we have gotten the word out through social media, through videos, now we are able to pay for Google ads and they are super successful as well. We used and did a collaboration with an author actually in Canada and that was our first collaboration outside of the U.S. and immediately after she posted our sales were going crazy outside of the USN that was really awesome for us and so we have worked with other influencers outside of the US and that helped take our audience will believe. We have a part owner that is a YouTube family and they have also done a ton for us to help get the word out globally and to reach a bigger audience. One other thing that was in the very beginning and this was before the kick starter, Betsy had created just a landing page for us and it is kind of a funny story but we had a video explaining the product and what did you do, you created a Beddy's Facebook page is that what was? Yes. You are posting to that and we did not have any followers and you thought nobody would see it. But I posted it to my own personal Facebook and that night it got thousands of shares and we both Angie and I is like what is even happening and then I realized that I posted it to my personal and so my friends had seen it and shared it and we had 5000 views overnight which is huge because we did not have 5000 friends. Over that weekend it was just multiplying by thousands and we were able to receive 3000 people giving us their emails just requesting this product and how do we get it and when is this available? So we had a lot of interest just from that first video. And I remember that happened and I know where was and it was Valentines weekend because it was in February and that really got us or really urged us forward to start the Kickstarter campaign probably sooner than we probably sand or., right? And the other thing trying to get money to fund this, we both took money on her home equity lines but when we would go to the bank they like literally first child for $20,000 in [Laughter], how else can we get the started and Kickstarter was just a great option for us. It helped test the market and get us some money that we needed and also people were invested in us early on and I think it kind of gave us this really cool -- all those Kickstarter people are still following us and still commenting and it is like they are excited to be a part of the Beddy's family almost. Yes, I feel like we have made an effort every year we give them their own special promotion and Betsy and I both generally feel it is because of them that we are where we are because they trusted in us and have continued to show support. And just like going back to the social media, because social media is not just in the you as, it kind of forced us to consider global options quickly just like that's he said, Kickstarter went into Canada and early on we had someone from candidate reach out who wanted to collaborate with us who had a huge very loyal audience. And along with that, you can target certain countries on Facebook, so that is something we started doing when we started paying for Facebook ads. I do note that we intentionally meant to go global but because of the channels that we used, it was something that we went ahead and did which kinds of brings us to our next slide and we needed to have options to be able to ship globally and Zonos, and I don't think it is on the logo but this is the Zonos logo and that is something you can use on your website to help you with global options. And this international sales, really great, they used to be called I global and that is what they were when they were when we started with them but now it is called Zonos and what they do is they offer built-in duty and tax calculations and compliant so that you know very straightforward to the customer, what they will be pain and no surprises at that you are also compliant with all the laws and everything. So you are not losing money either because you had surprise cost down the road and it is all very clear at checkout it is displayed for the customer. They have an extensive list of countries you can ship to and what we did is we looked at our website and looked to see what countries visit her website. The most. And we have chosen the top 10 countries outside of the you as to ship to and it is just a completely smooth integration so the customer has a great experience and can check out and in fact we were just talking at our meeting yesterday of expanding that list and with Zonos it is very easy and painless to do that so they integrate with all kinds of variety of carriers and we use UPS and USPS and it has been great and they are very easy to commend Kate with and we have had or I have had someone tell me that if he ever started a business, that Zonos and he actually works for UPS but with his experience with other small business owners he said Zonos is one of the first things he would put on his website and he was so happy to see that we had it and truly it has been a really great partnership with them. That is our presentation and we will turn the time over to Dr. Sonat Birnecker Hart. Thank you so much, Betsy and Angie, very inspiring. And thank you also Alexa and Laurel for everything you've done to get this going . I want to just take a little bit first about my company. So Koval distantly started in 2008 and first distillery in Chicago since the mid-1800s and already at the onset of her business we needed to disrupt a bit which is we had to get a number of laws changed to make it even possible to do the kind of business that we wanted which was be able to have direct connection to those interested in our product which was actually illegal at the time. So in order to do chores and take things and have a resale store on site similar to breweries we had to change the law so that was really the first thing that we had to do and since this is really about disruption, I will say that if there is something legally that is impeding your business, that it is possible to get it changed and to make it better. We make a number of different kinds of spirits and whiskeys, Jens, primarily but we also make the core and vodka. And we have tried very hard to make sure that our product brings something unique to the spirits category which is incredibly competitive. When we entered into the sphere, there were only about 26 distilleries in the entire United States. That is largely because probation killed industry and the only distilleries that were really still producing where those very large companies and their offshoots in fact if you want to see how a few companies were controlling all liquor in the United States about 10 years ago, you can go to a GQ, Google it, a GQ family tree of whiskey and you'll see that most of the brands that you think might be independent brands are really only made by about nine companies. So this was the environment that we were entering into. Very competitive environment, controlled by a style of business based largely on money, and big marketing. So the way that we had to address this was to really innovate. So this was an industry that had been existing this way for quite some time and I think that the industry itself try to become a little overconfident and continue to do things the way that they had always been done and the craft movement of beer showed that there could be disruptors and innovation in the beer category and talking about 10 years before we had this kind of disruption in the spirits industry. So one of the ways that we decided to innovate is obviously we used amazing equipment, but it was specific to more of a craft nature and what I mean by that is that many large distilleries are using a continuous still a very large still that is pumping out millions and millions of gallons of alcohol. By comparison Koval we are only legally allowed in the distillery to make 120,000 gallons per year and in truth we are making about 70,000 gallons a year so this is a completely different scale than what you would find in some distilleries in Kentucky. So our process was already everything about us was going to be different because our scale was entirely different and that was not something that we saw or it was actually something that was very freeing because when you do not need to become impeding at the same scale as your main competitors, you can do things a lot differently and so we decided to create different kinds of products that were very niche in nature and we decided to work with alternative grains such as oats and millet and these were not grains that were very popular. With the big boys. Because they were doing things that were tried and tested over many, many decades and people were used to purchasing. So when we brought out a bourbon that had mash of corn and millets which is very, very unique in the industry, we were able to provide consumers with a product that tasted very different, albeit was still part of the bourbon category. So these were the kinds of things that we wanted to do is to innovate with our product line and innovate with our use of still that was more focused on creating more robust green Ford flavors and allowed only allowed to use the hard cut of the millet at not allowed if you were using a industrious still and more creative in nature and that provided us with a unique and clean style. So with regard to this disruption obviously as I said getting the laws changed was important but I think also our ability to remain completely independent which is something that we did do a vertical business model and I think this is something that a lot of this is owners do not think about because we are so busy working on one thing we had really tired unrest to think about ways to increase our revenue stream because our industry is so cost intensive and you have to consider this in the products that we are making right now all the whiskey we make right now we cannot sell it for four years and in addition to that we still have to pay all the taxes on it now. So you're purchasing all the raw materials in pain all the taxes on it and yet you're not even going to sell it for two years and you have to ready plan for scale so you have to start scaling up our ready right now for what you think you will be doing four years from now and that is very expensive. So one of the things that we did is all of the knowledge that we gained and all of the information that we found in researching from change in the laws, from really educating ourselves, at the very beginning of this wave of craft distilling, we used to funnel into a consulting company. It has helped now over 3500 people interested in 8 distilling industry so we taught classes and taught workshops and resell to the federal government, governing agency, DTV, invited them to be involved in our workshops are really we started with the first educational offering for craft distilling in the United States and we had people coming to our distillery from all over the world from Africa and Europe, you name it, to learn how to start a craft distillery because at that time about 10 years ago when we started doing this, very few people wanted to get any information out but we realized in providing this service, everybody would help us grow and we would help them grow and in addition we would grow this craft industry and grow it well. Everybody in it was making a very high quality product and we were uniquely positioned to do this because my husband comes from three generations of craft distillers in both originally academic before this and we really turn this into a major research project as well. So all this information we passed on to others that we added another vertical line to it which we became the manufacturer's representative for all of the big hardware for the stills, for all the other equipment and to be able to start a distillery because the industry was so young that there was not a good infrastructure for it in the United States. So these were all things that we quite frankly had to do because we did not have investors, we were doing this completely ourselves that we started this business with $30,000, which was supposed to be a down payment on a home and I could say we do not own home because we continue to invest everything back into the business but we are one of the largest completely independent female own craft distilleries in the United States. As Laurel mentioned distribution and 55 markets and done this completely independently endlessly do to looking for ways to not only increase the knowledge but to use the knowledge to help grow our business by offering it to others. That is another way that you sort of disrupt it and in helping so many people we have changed the face of distilling in the United States. Not we have to, as we are building up all of our competition, and still competing against a very, very powerful large multinational company, we have to make sure that our voice is incredibly unique in a busy marketplace. And that also takes innovation and disruption. So some of the ways that we do that are things that I mentioned earlier, making sure that we have a very particular, high-quality style to our alcohol where we are using only what I call the filet of the distillate and that is the part that comes off of the still really wonderful organic grains from the Midwest, from a cooperative farmers and we have third-party certifiers to further show our consumers a level of transparency and also quality for organic and kosher and we can basically trace every whiskey bottle back to the grain on which it was ground. We have also very carefully cultivated our image with three beautiful labels that in themselves are innovative and the label that you see on this slide is a laser cut paper label that is also foiled and embossed and not only have our spirits 100s of awards but so has our branding. Which I can tell you in the beginning of our business we did not think was that important, and we had different Brandy when we first started, what we found that branding is incredibly important and is something that one should take very seriously. Shipment what we also do is we try to engage in really unique brand activations. Also collaborations, here you can see in Japan, we did a collaboration with Garrett's popcorn another Chicago company and we did this activation Soto Chicago focusing and allowed the strengths and strengths of efforts to provide a really unique Chicago flavored to invent in Japan which was very well attended. We also do other kinds of collaborations will we try and think of what we can do that is still not your typical marketing that you would expect from a large liquor company, which has a lot of traditional advertising, and so we have done a bunch of pairing dinners and classes and also focusing on education. This was an image something we did that O'Hare airport that was another collaboration and we find that collaborating is incredibly helpful. We worked with CB two to create a Chicago living room in which we served samples of our spirits at O'Hare airport for people waiting to get on their flights. The other things that we found is that when you do really wonderful branding and when you work with a lot of collaboration, and collaborative efforts, you start making a lot of connections with people and we have gained a lot of earned media because of it and this is just some of the examples of the earned media placements that we have received by doing things in a very unique way and really high-quality branding and working collaboratively as much as we can. Here is the other thing is I think it is important to play by your own rules and we will always focus on going global. That was something that was part of our business plan from the very beginning. Probably because both my husband and I are fluent in a few languages and my husband is Austrian originally so we saw that as a strength. But I think it is important that people really look at what their global options are because of all bringing to the floor all the time, it is really helpful in making your business grow and become very successful because all of these things really translate in many ways and cannot even imagine at the onset. The other way that we have tried to disrupt things and be really innovative at the same time is that we control all of our distribution channels. We do not go with any general importers. We have become our own general importers into Europe which is incredibly unique and I think the only other liquor company in the USA that does that is Bacardi and it has allowed us to control who our partners are. Because whether you are a large company or small company if you go with the general importer, you go wherever that general importer goes and you cannot choose a partner that may be outside of their network and better for you. So this has allowed us to have even more control and I think all of these things so that the importance that we have seen over the last 12 years of our business of being innovative, it is really also about being selectable and I think that that has really been an important dream, the covert crisis, when we realized that we had the right tools to make a very important needed item to fight against this pandemic which was hand sanitizer, and so we decided to ship and pivot everything to start making hand sanitizer because also we feel it is very important as I said we do a lot of collaboration, we feel very strongly about our community, Koval even before COVID every 365 charitable events a year and giving back to our community as part of the DNA per company so we felt that since we had the equipment to make hand sanitizer it was an absolute necessity that we wanted to do. At first we thought we would only make about a few batches of hand sanitizer and donate it and then go back to everything else. And the need was still great that we needed to figure out other ways to do it or else we would go bankrupt continuing to donate. So we reached out to others using a fund campaign and I work with of the foundations and I will play a little video for you and you can sort of see about our efforts in the hand sanitizer situation. Here we go. [Music] So that is a little bit about what we did and in fact we collaborated in this effort as well and we work with curries in addition to those who donated to her campaign and we work with members of the Bering committee who donated their beer for us to turn into hand sanitizer. Multiple hospitals and we donated pretty much every hospital in the Chicagoland area and we work with other logistics companies and then donated their time and their vehicles to help us make these deliveries because Koval was not set up to be in that kind of logistic effort and we found that working with the community for good that we found a lot of hope for the future and certainly getting through this crisis and seeing how my team has worked on it and all of the people that we have collaborated with, we hope that as we get through this crisis, that all of these lessons are coming together and working so beautifully in friendship and kindness will certainly last a lot longer than COVID. These are some of the people that have helped and thank you so much. Okay, thank you so much, ladies, and we will go ahead and move on into the Q&A portion of this webinar. We have been receiving a lot of great questions from our audience. And in the time remaining we want to address just as many as we possibly can. We will go ahead and jump right on into these questions here so Dr. Sonat Birnecker Hart, first question for you and we have actually had several folks in the audience asking about this and this one in particular comes from Sarah who is asking about how you went about changing the law and can you talk about who is in charge of doing the law changing in the company? It was me. I did it and basically you know I feel this is a right that we all have and the people that are making the laws, they really just an extension of ourselves and they are there to represent us. And I think a lot of people very or feel very separated from the process of what I did is I first in every state, different, local governments are organized, but in Chicago I reached out to my elder man who is sort of like a mini Mayor for my section of town in the city and I am sure in other cities that people have similar representatives, alderman, and we worked out a plan to reach out to the senator in my area as well as my house representative and everybody has Senators and House representatives for their district or their communities or their ward and the wheel got together and I explained what was the problem legally and how this was affecting my small family business. And how we needed to forget a way to get this changed, and so we worked on a plan and of course I did not hire any lobby is because I could not afford it and had to go down to Springfield to lobby myself where I went and I spoke with other people. I testified in Springfield as to why this bill was important. I had to speak to numerous lobbyists who were very much against me because such as the distributor lobby is, because they did not want to change any loss that might affect the three-tier system for liquor which means that I am only allowed to sell to a distributor and the distributor is allowed to sell to retailers but it means you cannot do any of the other activities. And so for me to ask to be able to have a retail license at my distillery was something that the distributors were really not interested because it would allow me to get one of the tears at least for my direct sales out of the distillery. So this is what I did and I did a survey of all the laws across the United States to find out which are states that have changed laws to make it easier for craft distillers at the time and at the time there were not that many because it was very early in the craft distilling world in Europe but there were some and Wisconsin change the laws just the year before I believe two years before. So that provided me with a lot of information and you could use the argument, you know what, Wisconsin, to get all these business and tax dollars, so you know these were the kinds of things it they had to really build up a lot of information because you know you have to help your Senator and House representatives and they are there to present it but does not mean they will do all the research for you. So being as prepared as you possibly can means that they will work harder for you because it will be a lot easier. So that is what we did and I got a change and had to get it changed a number of times up to us because originally we were only limited to making I think about $7000, which is very little. And that we are up to 120. So we have entered into the real world of craft distilling on the line and because of that we have seen a huge proliferation of distilleries going from just maybe about two or three and this includes also very large ones, about 12 years ago, 15 years ago, to now I think we are almost at 30. Thank you. Okay, thank you, so next question, this is going to be for Angie and Betsy, this is around the Kickstarter campaign and we have had several folks from the audience asking about this. This one in particular comes from Nicole and she is asking how did you go about preparing to get an Kickstarter? And did you have to invest in making a video, producing some samples, professional pictures? Did you hire someone to help with all of this and can you talk about that a little bit more? Yes, so we or everything we did was on a budget early on and did not have the money and every dollar we had was going into try to find our first PO so we hired a student from a college in our town and he made the video for us. We had been spending money on all of our different prototypes and when we finally got our final for the type is when we did pictures and we did not do professional pictures actually. A lot of things we could of done looking back now, that we could've done to make things better, but we just did what we could with the money that we had. Yes, we put the whole campaign together, and I think that was the first taste for me, how stressful it could be to run a business. And I remember foolishly thinking once the campaign is up then I will not have any stress and then you still need to worry about getting the word out, one of the things that we did was we signed up for an expo in our area and it was called what a woman wants expo and we do not have product and all we did was demonstrated because it is a new idea and we just told people if you like this idea, go to our Kickstarter campaign and support is there and I did see a question about the Kickstarter campaign and it is almost like a presell, an opportunity to put a product out there and let people or they actually prepurchase the item and that you use that money to manufacture so that is what they is and they do take a percent and it is totally worth it for us and it was a game changer and that is when we decided this is going to work and we can go forward. The other great thing about Kickstarter is if we did not hit that, we set a goal for $100,000 and if we did not hit the $100,000 everybody got their money back and we would not have produced the product but because we had the goal, we knew that we had enough money to go and start our first PO. One other thing I was going to say is when we went to the Expo, a couple of days before the Expo we had actually gone on to the local news stations, several different channels, and we talked about our product and we showed our prototype on air and then we told people if you want to see this in person you can come to the Expo and see it and try it and preorder on our Kickstarter. We were really lucky and when the first video that we talked about in a presentation that Patsy posted to her personal Facebook, we had news station and we had people reaching out to tell our story and I think it is an interesting concept and it was a new idea. Run by women. We had an interesting story. And so because we had no money, we did not pay to go on that news stations and like Betsy said, chick starter Mech was no risk but just the time we put into it. And because we could not afford to put money up front for something like that. And I think there is this really cool or people are excited to see you trying to bring a product to come to life so we had so many people rally behind us and we had yes, like Angie said -- the new station did not charge us to come an inch of the product and they were excited to see two Utah moms to get the product up and the audiences, just really well received. Okay. Next question, this is for Sonat and Sonat, we have received several questions from the audience around this as well, regarding the vertical business model. This one in particular from Helen asking, what do you like or dislike about it? Would you suggest using a vertical business model? I mean the vertical business model made it possible for us to grow this without selling out or selling in part to anybody. And maintain control so I am a very big fan of the vertical business model and that being said, it needs to be organic or it needs to be something that makes sense. Now obviously our vertical business model, everything revolves around the craft distilling industry. It also allows us to control more of what is going on in the industry and we are able to get a great overview of what other people are doing because we help them do it and helping other people, we learn more and that makes it even more better consultant and I would highly recommend it. I feel everybody has skills and talents and in the beginning our vertical business model was as simple as we do not have enough money to purchase the mashed tank we want so we went to the company that was selling the mash tank and we offered to make them a website in English. Their website was only in German. So we offered to translate their website into English and to help them with any of the business that is generated from it by representing them in North America. We were making websites, we were doing translation, we were doing anything we possibly could, but within our industry. To make more money. So we could invest that money into Koval. So I think that everybody, if they were to engage in a vertical business model, would have different things that they could do, depending on their experience. But you know one thing we can all do is teach. Hello, Sonat, sounds like we might of lost audio there. Can you hear me now? We only drop you for a couple of seconds. Could you hear me before where I was talking about how everybody can teach, sort of my final.? Yes, if you could just go back to the final.I think that would be perfect. Sure, I feel that for everybody that is interested in a vertical business model it would have to relate to their industry certainly or really to their own experience and what they have to offer and I would say you know in the very beginning we did everything we could, from translating websites, other people within the industry, to clean the websites themselves and we did a lot of tech work and also served as manufacturers representative but one think that everybody or all entrepreneurs have is a lot of knowledge about a particular industry and one thing we can all do certainly is teach. All right, next question here, this is from Catalina, question for Betsy and Angie, regarding manufacturing. Do you have your own manufacturing operation? Or do you outsource for this, what is your process? So we actually met with a designer early on. We traveled the you as trying to find manufacturing here in the USA and could not find anything. That would fit our needs. So when we met with his designer she helped us source overseas, I'm sorry, Angie I will let you talk Ambien. Yes, so our factories we actually have two now that produce for us and they are both in China and we had visited at one of factories is exclusive for Beddy's and feel like they are family and it is a female this is owner that owns the factory we have a good relationship and actually come out to the U.S. and spent time here and so we try to get out there three times a year and we are very familiar with the factory and the conditions are great and feel like it is a great partnership. Okay, we are down to just a few minutes left in the live webinar session so I am going to ask the next question for the entire panel. If you can just go around and offer your feedback and insight, this question is from an hour, she is asking after all of your success, can you talk about what you struggle with now? Or what is the biggest challenge for you as an entrepreneur? Sonat, starting with you . Sure, can you hear me? Yes, you sound great. Perfect, perfect, you know we have challenges every single day. I did not think that we would be shifting all of our production to hand sanitizer a few months ago so I think that one has to look at every day as being an opportunity for challenges and growth and innovation. One thing I will say is that in facing the challenges that you have really had an and 100% as we did for example with our shift to make hand sanitizer, in doing so, we have really pushed our company in ways that we never have before. It has forced us to innovate and it has forced us to learn more about online capabilities and it has really been and I feel all of these challenges, it is better and stronger when we really face them head on. So that is just is sort of our general outlook on challenges. I would say that right now the challenges are dealing with the post COVID world. It is something that is particularly affecting my industry which is hospitality industry at large. Very few bars have seen the uptick that is needed, even in places that have started to open and that is also true for restaurants and I can say that with regard to data, we have collected from our European partners, that have already opened, in advance of the United States. So I think that we are going to all be looking at more challenges related to COVID and all of the financial fallout of that going forward. I think 2021 is going to be a really interesting year so what we are trying to do now is just make sure that we are aware of this, that this will be a very challenging year, at least for my industry. And trying to make sure that we are making very careful decisions regarding finances and where we went to engage in gross and which markets we want to invest in because these are very serious decisions right now, particularly given that in many places particularly in Europe right now, you know, down quite a bit and in the United States as well. So focusing a lot more on retail is important for us. As well as online and I just think that we did not always focus on or we focused on in part but you know the on premise world was incredibly important before COVID and now I think it is a very risky shaky thing. So we have to sort of shift where we think that our efforts are best placed. I think for us we are trying to take our manufacturing to several different areas so that we or with the way the world is right now, everything seem so unsure and the other thing too is we're trying to be careful with what we are launching and make sure we do not have too much inventory but enough inventory and there are so many things that are still stressful and you just want to make sure that you are constantly making the best decision and best financial decisions for your business so you can continue moving forward. And I think for me and this is Angie, I do a lot of the behind the scene things but Betsy does a lot of the marketing, and our team has grown and even during the time, we have hired four people since the coronavirus hit us in March. Which is super lucky and we have the best team, but managing employees is hard, does all of the things that come behind the scenes and managing a business, that is probably my biggest challenge and want to make sure that you are doing everything according to the laws and treating your employees right. And even down to the programs you are using, customer service platform, everything, you just want and hope you are always on the cutting edge in making the right decisions that way and making it easier for your team and managing things well there. Yes, if I can add to what Sonat and Angie and Betsy just mentioned and I echo very much what everyone has said, particularly Sonat's comment about the post COVID-19 world. Extremely challenging for women entrepreneurs, Women Entrepreneurs Grow Global, our biggest single challenge is that we want to really do more for so many more women entrepreneurs and business owners and we can have the greatest ideas in the world, but the ability to execute is essential so that is really our single biggest challenge is to really do more and be able to execute well because we really believe collectively, working together, we can become stronger and have us all, I think, sore globally. So thank you. Okay, thank you all so much and these are all the questions that we are going to have time to address during this live webinar today. So if we did not have a chance to address your question, during this live webinar session, I would like to recommend connecting with your SCORE mentor after the session who can assist you further and answering specific questions and supporting you and helping you with your business needs and I would also like to mention that real-time mentoring assistance opportunity that was recently launched by SCORE constant contact and this is a free online virtual meeting place where business owners can go to get questions answers and advised by a professional SCORE mentors were ready and available on Tuesdays and Thursdays from two p.m. until five p.m. Eastern and they will be available shortly after the webinar so this afternoon. There is an expansive portfolio of resources available to partners and there is also peer networking. And more that can be accessed through that environment. Also we are -- I am sorry, going to register, you will want to click the real-time mentoring tab at the top of your screen and you can sign up to join there. Or go to find mentor. And as a reminder, link to this recording of this session, live session, and the slide deck, it will be sent to all participants in a postevent email going out shortly after the webinar means. On behalf of SCORE I would like to thank you all for attending today and I would like to give a very special thanks to these amazing women, Laurel Delaney, Dr. Sonat, Betsy Mikesell and Angie White and truly grateful for your time and this excellent presentation and your stories, sharing this with the SCORE audience, thank you. Thank you. It was a pleasure. Thank you so much. Thank you so much everyone in the audience today and take good care. [ Event Concluded ] ................
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