237 | More Than Just a Product: Build a Community with Tu-Hien Le
Our guest on the pod this week is Tu-Hien Le. Tu-Hien is the Founder & CEO of BeaGen, a company that makes products that helps make it easier and more delightful for moms to breastfeed. She's also an e-commerce business coach and the host of the Express Yourself Podcast
Resources mentioned in this episode are:
Interview with Tu-Hien Le, Founder of Beaugen on Creating a Successful Product Community
NOTE: While it’s not perfect, we offer this transcription by Otter.ai for those who are hearing impaired or who don’t find listening to a podcast enjoyable or possible.
SPEAKERS
Tu-Hien Le, Paul Zelizer
Paul Zelizer 00:01
Hi, this is Paul Zelizer, and welcome to another episode of the Awarepreneurs Podcast. This podcast is all about the intersection of conscious business, social impact, and awareness practices. Each episode I do a deep dive interview with a thought leader in this intersection. Someone who has market tested experience, and is already transforming many lives. Before I introduce today's guest and our topic, I have one request. If you could go over to Apple podcasts or whatever app you're listening to this show on, hit the subscribe button, do a review, it helps tremendously. Thanks for considering it. Today, I'm thrilled to introduce you to Tu-Hien Le. And our topic is More Than Just a Product: Build a Product Community. Tu-Hien is the founder and CEO of Beaugen, a company that makes products that helps make it easier and more delightful for moms to breastfeed. She's also an E commerce, business coach, and the host of the express yourself podcast. Tu-Hien, welcome to the show.
Tu-Hien Le
Thank you so much for having me.
Paul Zelizer
It's an honor to have you here. And we got a lot to talk about. You've been doing great work for a while. And I'm so excited to introduce our audience to what you're doing. Excellent. I'm very happy to be here. Before we dive into the work, part of what you're doing, were called aware printers to him. And one of the ways we like to get to know somebody is ask you about a wellness or a resiliency practice that you personally use for this important work. Yeah, so for me personally, and for the year 2022, a wellness practice that I would like to maintain into every day is meditate.
Tu-Hien Le 01:43
I think it's one of those just really underrated skills, but 510 minutes a day of meditation to let go of any worries, stress, thoughts, fears, and just be still with yourself can go a long way and could set the tone for the rest of your day. So for those of you who already practice meditation, or thinking about it, I think this is a great way to start your day, and to you know, incorporate into this year's wellness practice. I do seven minutes a day. And I used to try to do longer, like 20 or 30 minutes, and I would like be really irregular with it. And then I beat myself up and then I was like, why am I beating what let's just move the bar a little bit. Seven minutes a day, I haven't missed a day for a really long time. And I used to I'm talking decades of intermittent meditation. And I just like found that sweet spot seven minutes is enough to kind of help me settle in. Like be bring my like ground itself to my day as opposed to my scattered oh my gosh, I got to do this and this. And now this is a lot of research just a couple minutes a day. So I just want to like, you know, cosign nights makes a huge difference. Thanks for that. Then I just do 10 minutes a day. I'm not like an hour meditation personal. So you kick my butt already? Oh, no. Yeah, just try to get at least 10 minutes a day guided meditation, just to help start the day, right. So this intersection of like a product business and having positive impact for moms and families, and community, like give, give people a little bit of your backstory. And what were you doing before you started Biogen? And how did you decide that what the world really needs is a company that helps make breastfeeding more delightful. Yeah, so my background is not entrepreneurship at all. I studied finance, I was working in finance, you know, in New York City in Hong Kong. So that fast paced like exciting lifestyle of working in banking. And that's what I was doing. So what really changed my life was when I had my daughter, and it really put everything what I was doing into perspective. At the time, it was like, no matter what fancy job I had, or what fancy degree I had, like, I was still a woman, mom trying to do what's right for my child and feed my child. But I was having, you know, my own physical limitations and trouble doing this. And I had connected with the mom community on Facebook and trying to understand like, Okay, how, how are moms handling these challenges with breastfeeding feeding a baby and all the challenges of like not getting sleep and all that. And I really started to understand the difficulty that women were having once they I had a baby. And so I was like, Well, this is interesting that no matter like, you know, the background of a woman, a lot of a lot of women are experiencing this. So I am specifically in breastfeeding and pumping. So then I was like, Well, what if? What if I created a solution to helping other women through this challenging time to help, you know, not only breastfeed their babies, but to help make them feel better about the journey that they're on into motherhood? So so my husband and I, we decided to he helped me kind of come up with a product, which is now our flagship product for Biogen called the breast foam cushion and created this product to help women through their breastfeeding journey.
Paul Zelizer 05:57
And that moment that a light bulb went off, like, Oh, I'm not the only mom who's having these challenges. And it seems like, there's a lot of women out there who, let's just say breastfeeding is not delightful in the modern lives that we lead now. And you kind of had this lightbulb go off, like, like, what helped you make that connection from like, Oh, I'm struggling with this thing to like, wow, there's a lot of other women and, and then make that next step of this, like that critical moment and social entrepreneur journey? Oh, I can do something about this. Like, yeah, you could say about that moment.
Tu-Hien Le 06:42
Um, you know, it just started off really organically talking to different types of women, and seeing with all these are women, with like PhDs, and, you know, masters, or stay at home moms that seem to be experiencing very similar challenges. So it's not just like, based on like, education or socioeconomic background, like all that's interesting. That is, it really is like, could be any, any woman. And then, and then I just had this idea of like, well, what if I could create something to change that? And I guess a light bulb in my head went off when I, when I realized like, well, if I came up with that idea, then is it my responsibility to like, see it through and see if I can actually do it? Or else? Why would I have the idea? And I kind of I believe that? No, there's the universe or higher being or whoever, whatever you might believe in, if they, if you're the one that you know, give has an idea for something, then the universe gives that idea to you, because you're the one that can like, see it through and execute it and bring it to life. So I kind of went off of that belief like, well, if I have an idea, maybe I'm the one that I can actually bring it to life. So that's why I like to talk to my husband, and he helped me, like help articulate the problem and help me bring a product to life.
Paul Zelizer 08:14
Now, if you're like me, your listener, like Paul, and you have no idea how one would go about making a breast pump cushion, or any other product, but that that's the one you like, you were in finance, what did you know? Like, how did you go from, okay, I'm gonna do this, to like how to today when we're gonna get into it, it's something like six or seven years later, and you're selling a lot of these things, and we'll get there. But like, just help our listeners understand if you have an idea for a product, and you're not an engineer, or somebody who's familiar making products for a living. What's that process look like?
Tu-Hien Le 08:51
Yeah, I mean, I wasn't familiar with it at all. So I figured I should be around people who are familiar with building things. So I just started having conversations in my local community, I went to a maker shop in my city, and spoke with different people to understand what they do, they do in maker shop, they do a lot of like, woodwork, electrical programming, they build and tinker a lot. They build things out of plastics. And then I was just kind of describing my my problem that I want to solve. And then they will kind of throw out ideas like, oh, you could use a plastic, you can 3d print things, and like, okay, and then just start exploring that way. So it's interesting when you're innovating and trying to invent something that's never been invented before. You have to be willing to try all the crazy ideas and be wrong a bunch of times in order to find that one time that you are right. So it's just, it's just a matter of having a lot of conversations with different people to see if you can hone in To know the direction and the idea that you want to execute.
Paul Zelizer 10:06
And that's a great tip, if somebody is wanting to get going with a product type business maker spaces, I'll put a link in the show notes that I've heard of called the maker movement, and most even medium sized cities, even smaller cities, even some rural communities have some kind of maker space. So anyway, thanks for that tip. That's a great one. Mm hmm. So you land and you know, you go to maker space? And I'm sure I don't know, did it take five iterations or 500? Probably a couple of 3d printer things that you said, Nah, that's not gonna work, right?
Tu-Hien Le 10:39
Oh, yeah, we, um, I think we ended up being just an r&d as far as like testing out crazy ideas for about like six to eight months, and we created over 45 prototypes that were wrong, or maybe not wrong, but just like, you know, not the answer, just getting closer and closer to the the final answer. So we tried it at least 40 times. And we're willing to be like, Okay, this didn't work, this worked. And just to keep trying. In when you're innovating. Again, when you're inventing something new, you just have to be wrong a lot of times and be okay with being wrong, because with each time you are wrong, each time you get to know it gets you closer to the right answer. So it's just about being resilient, and being able to take all the the wrongs in the nose, knowing that you're getting closer to the answer.
Paul Zelizer 11:38
So eventually, 40 Something iterations into this, you're like, oh, my gosh, this thing actually works. Like, walk us forward, like what started to happen? And especially given our title today, like when did you start to like engage other women and other families in this?
Tu-Hien Le 11:56
Yes. So I took a really grassroots approach that I had a pretty, like core set of women users from the beginning. So I was always talking to them, I would, I was always trying to understand how they were feeling, what their biggest pain points were. And really getting to understand the psyche of the customer throughout the entire innovating, in invention process. So they were involved throughout the entire thing. Every piece of feedback they gave us was always trying to be incorporated into each version of the prototype we created. And then as we create the prototypes, you would send about, get some feedback, and then just constantly have this loop of, okay, get feedback, go back and tweak the prototype, send a new prototype out and get more feedback. And I really believe that having such like a, like a close connection to our customers, and our end users is what helped drive the success of the product, because we had the user buy in from the beginning. So we had, I had already assembled a group of women focus group, before I even knew what the first prototype was going to look like. So they would just give me just lots of details about their background, and you know, what they struggled with what kind of solutions they were looking for what they thought they were looking for. And I just extrapolated all that data to try to give them what I felt like I could solve for. So I mean, like, some moms would say, like, Yeah, I wish I had more time. Well, I don't know if I can solve for more time, but I can solve like a specific pain point. So um, so yeah, they were always involved from the beginning.
Paul Zelizer 13:57
And anything you could say because this is such an important. I don't factor in success, this maybe that word predictor, maybe longer through again, like, yesterday, I was talking we were printers as a podcast success team, where we help social entrepreneurs, whether they want to start their own podcasts or be a guest on a podcast, learn how to do it. And I was speaking to to just yesterday, right? Same kind of thing, like how's this working? Or what about this person as a guest and one person wasn't sure if it was a fit. So we spent like 10 minutes on the phone just helping her think about her values of somebody as a very big marketing platform and seemed on the surface. But there were some questions anyway. And sometimes I talk to social entrepreneurs. I'm like, Well, have you talked to anybody who's your intended client, ideal client or customer? They look at me with a blank stare on my face, on their face, right? Like, if you could help a newer impact founder. Help them understand just how important is this to be talking to people Along the way, what would you say?
Tu-Hien Le 15:02
Yeah. So if you're trying to, you know, you're a new founder, and you're trying to build a product or service, and you're not quite sure exactly what it's gonna look like you can, you can kind of hone in and talk to the end customer who you think you want to serve, and just get to know them and understand what their pain points are. What are they looking for? What are they valued the most. Because if the deeper you understand that about your customer, the easier it will be for you to develop a product or develop a solution, but also be able to bring it to market and communicate that solution with them. So for example, if you're speaking with the end user, and you listen to the words and the phrases that they use, then when you bring your product to market, you use those same words and phrases, it'll resonate with them better. So then there'd be more likely and more attracted to your product and to your solution. So just getting tips like that just an all you need to do is just have a conversation, you don't even really need to like, ask them for anything. It's not like you're asking them to buy anything from you, you're just getting to know them, it can be so valuable. So I highly encourage all new entrepreneurs or all entrepreneurs to have an open dialogue with their customers, or who they think their customers are, so that they can get to know them as best as they can.
Paul Zelizer 16:30
Couldn't agree more. Thanks for articulating that. So well. Yeah. So so we're we're going back now like, was it six or seven years ago that Bowdoin started?
Tu-Hien Le 16:41
Yeah. 2015. So it's almost seven years ago?
Paul Zelizer 16:45
2020? Yeah, I was doing the research as of late. I think they might be in their seventh year now. Congratulations. So. So you start going in, like, give us a sense of like, your first year to like, how many breast pump cushions Did you sell? And like, oh, that community? Like, like, what was it like coming out of the gates and like your first like business? And yeah, this impact focus? What was it like?
Tu-Hien Le 17:09
It was scary, and you know, exciting. A lot of like, I don't really know what I'm doing, but I'm just gonna try it anyways. But I started off with a Kickstarter campaign. So Kickstarter, for those who are not familiar, is a crowdfunding campaign. So you're basically collecting pre orders before you deliver the product. And my goal was to raise $20,000. And I thought, okay, if I can get $20,000 worth of orders, then I will build the product. I will go into manufacturing, we had everything lined up as far as all the details of shipping and materials and all of that. But I was like, you know, if I don't have at least $20,000 worth of orders, then I don't know, there's enough demand for me to do this. So we did a 30 day Kickstarter campaign ended up raising a little over 24,000. So the allocation, thanks. And then that was the indication to me, I was like, Alright, yes, I'm going to do this now. You have $24,000 I can start manufacturing. And we produce our flagship product, the breast pump cushion, came out to market in I believe it was like three or four months after the Kickstarter campaign. And then we just started selling. And so the after the initial hype of the Kickstarter campaign, it's the demand slow down, for sure. Because now I needed to transition from like, product inventor to like a business person, and learning how to run a business, how to create sales, understand marketing, and I was learning all that as I was going. So the first two years are just a lot of like, understanding social media, understanding email marketing, understanding, just marketing in general, and learning how to almost like become the number one salesperson for the company, putting myself out there. So it was it was a long journey. And it took probably a little over three years of just grinding and just have a little bit of market traction just based on like the original community but nothing like too huge just three years of just grinding and keeping the name out there and you know, some sales but nothing like huge until three years into and that's when we started like actually getting traction and started creating and then like, I guess Three years worth of doing a lot of stuff and creating momentum eventually paid off. And then so then that's when the company actually started to grow and gain, it's even more momentum.
Paul Zelizer 20:16
Anything you could say to hear and I love that articulation of going from being like product inventor and like visionary founder, I've heard it called to another language that sometimes you like chief evangelist, right? Like being out there and saying, Hey, this is a really good thing. Here's why it's a good thing, here's who it's for, and being comfortable evangelizing your product or service. And so many of our listeners who are just incredibly impact oriented people and want to make a real difference in the world, like they have these big visions, and then they're like, oh, shit, I gotta sell it. You can say about, like, what you've learned about how to be an evangelist, or to do sales and marketing in a way that, you know, like, now, as I hear you talk, it doesn't sound like that big a deal. Anything you could talk about, like, what helped you flip the switch to just oh, this is just part of what you do?
Tu-Hien Le 21:14
Yeah, I would say in the beginning, I was very, like self conscious about, quote, selling and putting myself out there. I was always concerned like, Oh, what if I say the wrong thing? What if somebody knows more than I do. And then after a while, like you realize, it's, it's not really about you, it's about the customers that you're serving. So it's almost your responsibility, that you have to put yourself out there, put your mission out there, put what your your company's doing out there to help the people, the customers who are looking for your solution. So it's not about whether I'm going to say the wrong thing, or my hair looks wrong, it doesn't matter. It just matters that I'm getting the message out there. So I'm just the spokesperson for it. So that the customers who are looking who have the the problem that I'm I can solve can find me. So I think once you kind of like, change your mindset about that, it makes it easier to get out there and go on a podcast or, you know, give a speech, write an article and share what you're doing. Because you're you're you know that you're doing it to help your customers.
Paul Zelizer 22:37
It's a good thing that it doesn't matter how your hair looks, because I don't have any great Oh. I love that Duyen about, it's not about you. It's about the customer that you're serving. And certainly for me, my original training was in community mental health, and no business training at all. came from the nonprofit and community mental health space. So it was, that was the hardest part for me. And to make that switch, it's not about like, the things I'm saying or how I look, it's about am I communicating the people I want to help and it's about them. And when my nervous system made that switch, something got easier for me. It's like I'm trying to help a certain kind of person for a certain kind of reason. I'm an introvert, I'm not the kind of person that naturally grabs the mic and says, Let me stand in front of the stage and tell everybody how great I am. It's the last place I want to be. And it's important to like, be visible. Again, not about me, but about the people I want to help. So I love what you said there. I just wanted to highlight that. Yeah. Cool. So let's do this. Let's take a quick break. When we come back, I want to hear what Biogen looks like now you have a range of products, you have a podcast you do coaching for other people around products and ecommerce. But before we do that, a quick word from our sponsor. Do you have a business that's about making the world a better place and you want it to grow both in terms of helping more people your impact and your income so you can live a good quality life? If so, I'd like to talk to you about some research for a second. When scientists look at what helps humans grow in the direction of their goals, the single biggest predictor, whether it's a fitness or wellness goal, or growing our business is what they call social support. In other words, do we have people that we can share? Hey, I had a great day to day and a really accomplished a bunch of goals this month or who I thought I was gonna say my biggest client ever and it fell through Ouch. People who have tips and experience and can say hey, here's a great referral for that website or that logo or you need a lawyer or hey, here's a way you're languaging something that might not be quite as helpful. Get the impact that you're looking for with the kind of audience that you're trying to serve other people who are on the ups and downs of being on a social entrepreneur journey. But we're printers has a community like this, several 100 members strong all over the world, very generous people who will help you with both strategy and emotional support. As you're on this social entrepreneur journey. If you'd like to find out more, you can go to a where printers.com forward slash community. And thank you to everybody in the AWARE printers community who helped sponsor this podcast. So to hand in the second part of the show, we like to joke about putting on our entrepreneur glasses. So if you were going to just put on your entrepreneur glasses and tell us what is Bhojan look like now, in terms of products and revenue streams, six or seven years into it? What will we see?
Tu-Hien Le 25:54
Yeah, so Wow, six, seven years later, Biogen has grown tremendously, I would say the big. The big turning point for the company was when I started spending more time on my professional and personal development. A lot of it was understanding, you know, myself, what I was scared of what I was holding myself back from. And once I was able to kind of like overcome some of those hurdles, I was able to let the company grow and flourish more. So right now we, you know, our breastpump cushion is our primary product and our revenue producer. But we also have other partner products, we offer digital products, we scaled into a seven figure business. And, and we are continuing to develop new and exciting product offerings for our customer base.
Paul Zelizer 27:00
Nice. And what's your team like these days.
Tu-Hien Le 27:04
So we are a team of I would say we're mostly parents, and we're all working part time remotely. So the company was built for for women and for moms. And so I wanted to give a space for other parents who are their primary caretakers and our families. But also we're all ambitious, and creative in their careers, too. So they're both moms and dads, who are, you know, taking care of their families, but also like, are ambitious. And they they want to work and they want to, they want to contribute to their families. So happy to find this, like cool niche of parents to join my company to work to knowing that we can't work full time that we still have a family to take care of. And so we have, we have nine people on the team. And yeah, we seem to get a lot of stuff done. When you're, when you have when you're a parent and you have many responsibilities, you tend to be very organized and efficient with your time. So the time that they do have working, they get a lot of stuff done. So I'm very proud of the team.
Paul Zelizer 28:18
That's like the community inside the company. Talk to us a little bit about like, what's the community of the people who use your product?
Tu-Hien Le 28:27
So yeah, so since we started, we were always grassroots plugged into the new mom community. And we started off in the Facebook groups. And since then it's just grown word of mouth has grown, where other moms will recommend products to their mom friends and their mom like family members. And then it's just organically has grown that way. And so we have a pretty decent sized social media presence and collaborating with other brands in the space. And since then, just the community has always been very supportive of what we're doing and trying to help help women and moms through this new breastfeeding, new mom journey that they're going on. And yeah, and it's it's exciting to see how the community has grown with us.
Paul Zelizer 29:25
We have lots of parents who listen to this show, too. Again, if there's parent has young kids and was like, oh, gosh, I don't quite fit into the corporate structures out there that want me to work 6080 100 120 hours a week, like that's just not for me. I'd love to start my own business. I have an idea actually, but I'm scared. Mm hmm. What would you say to that person?
Tu-Hien Le 29:51
That's, uh, it's normal to be scared. I feel like I'm still scared every day but I just, you know, have faith myself that I can do it. And I feel like, if I can do it, you know, I really truly believe that other people and parents especially can do it too, it just takes a little bit of courage. You don't have to, like go all in right away, you can just explore, have a conversation with other people who might be doing something similar to you, and just gather information, and then see what you can do. You know, parents, we have limited amount of time. So it's, it's not feasible for us to work 80 hours on a project, maybe you can only put like eight hours a week into it. And that's okay, you can do what you can do. And that's the best. And that's all you need to do. So I think it's worth exploring, and just having a conversation with other people see what you can do.
Paul Zelizer 30:56
Yeah, such great advice, I think about what you told us how you started, you started talking to moms really early on and saying how there's anybody else, you know, experiencing some of these challenges? And there's got to be a way and what my you know, what are the nuances of your challenges? And, you know, 40 Something iterations, right, yeah. So So I just want to highlight for listeners that gathering info and having conversation and then also like, you're saying, it doesn't have to, we don't have to replace the corporate thinking right? With what we create and thinking about it, as, you know, a side gig or as a, you know, something we're iterating in and, and can scale it as we're ready as kids get a little older, or there's more revenue coming in, and we can throttle back and maybe some other things we're doing to bring an income to the family. So anyway, I just love the suggestion here of like, starting early with gathering information and talking to people, and not trying to rush into making it your full time thing, but like put a time you can into it and see what kind of feedback and results are getting. And then you can make choices about to invest more time, energy and money or not at that point. So great advice. So in addition to Bowden, you also do some work as an E commerce business coach, tell us about that part of your work?
Tu-Hien Le 32:19
Yeah. Sometimes I wonder where I find the time to do all this, but through so through my journey and building Bhojan and understanding how to grow and build a company. I feel like I made mistakes. And I learned from them, and do the process. Other entrepreneurs decided to want to connect with me and asked me like, Oh, what did you do? How did you start? What What should I do? And I just love connecting with other entrepreneurs as they go through and start their, their journey as well. Because I know firsthand, I know how intimidating and scary can be, especially really don't know what you're doing. So it's always, it's always helpful to have somebody who's like a year or two or more ahead of you, that's been like, Oh, I've been there, you're totally fine, where you are, you're exactly where you need to be, you just need to take these next three steps. And that's it. And so that's how I kind of started into the business coaching world. Other entrepreneurs would connect with me and asked me, like what they should do if they wanted to bring a product into the market. So I enjoy doing that I enjoy connecting with them, and guiding them and helping them bring their vision to life.
Paul Zelizer 33:47
Nice. And on top of all that as if it wasn't enough. You also are a podcast called tell us.
Tu-Hien Le 33:55
So my podcast, express yourself is focused on for women. In the new mom phase, we talked a lot about maternal health. We do talk a lot about breastfeeding, but all topics related.
Paul Zelizer 34:16
I like to joke My name is Paul I'm podcast obsessed. Our listeners know I'm obsessed with casting. But one of the questions I get the most is alright, Paul, I get it. You get to talk to cool people. And it's nailed because you record it and then as many people as possible and it's relational. Like literally people put you inside of their body to listen usually with earbuds or air pods or whatever. Like it's pretty intimate, probably the most intimate form of kind of scale technology we have. I get all that part but it doesn't work. Like do you actually get any business benefits from doing this thing you're so passionate about. So so if somebody had that question like do leverage podcasting either as a Post or as a guest, what would you say to that person? Like, does this actually do anything in terms of one's business goals?
Tu-Hien Le 35:07
Oh my gosh, I love podcasting. It's the, for me as being a guest on other podcast, it's been one of the best ways for me to share my message as far as what my company does, and the impact that we strive to make, and being able to reach many different audiences that I currently don't have direct connection with. So it's, it's a lot of fun to talk to other podcast posts and to talk about, you know, this, my story and all that. But then on the flip side, as a business, having the having our own positive podcast has also been helpful and like, expanding our network by bringing on these amazing hosts, to share their expertise with my audience. And then same time, I get to learn more about the topic as well. And then it it also helps like, it helps us become like an expert in this space, too. So that moms who are we're, who we already have, as part of our audience gets to learn more from us in these different topics. So and I think it's fun for not only for me as a host, but also for the audience to learn about all these like cool topics, too.
Paul Zelizer 36:29
Yeah, totally. So the way I sometimes like to talk about and I'm curious if this resonates for you like what you were saying in terms of being a guest and leveraging the platforms like your host, you know, what it takes like, having a podcast takes work, if you're gonna have it anyway, not just like, turn on a phone, in a coffee shop with all kinds of background noise and not edit it. Okay, that's not a lot of work. But something that has some quality and thoughtfulness and provides value, there's some work there. And when you're a guest, you get to leverage what somebody's been building for. however long that podcast has been around. And I like to say, on a, on a shorter term, like if you need to get your message in front of many more people, there is nothing I know that's more effective, more relational and more fun than being a guest on podcast. Yeah, shorter term life for exactly the reasons you described. And then in the longer term, to build your brand, and your thought leadership and build your network with incredible thought leaders. Having your own podcast, nothing can replace that. But that's a bit of a longer build, because you don't just get on a podcast that already has 3000 downloads per episode or 20,000 downloads per episode. It's, you've got to build it to there and that can take couple years. So that's how I like to think about it short term. You right, really want to think about guesting on shows, and long term to really set your business apart and really begin to hit degree of scale that is very exciting to many people who listen to this podcast. That's when it might make sense to have your own podcast. Does that resonate at all?
Tu-Hien Le 38:13
Oh, definitely. And it's just a lot of fun too. And I think I hope that other entrepreneurs realize that so it is a lot of work. It's worth it. It's fun.
Paul Zelizer 38:28
So when you look ahead with specifically about Jim, but everything you're doing when you look ahead a couple of years from now, like what do you see is in your near future?
Tu-Hien Le 38:39
Wow, I'm I'm working on figuring out what the next six months is going to look like for my company. Um, you know, we're we at Biogen are building something new and exciting. And we're gonna we're building a new digital community for the moms but not just specifically in breastfeeding. We want to we want to expand it to just moms in general, and focus on building it's going to be in the wellness space, so that moms can feel their best in order for them to be their best for themselves and family and their job. So we are we are working on building this digital community in the next year or so. I'm excited to bring it to bring it to life. Oh,
Paul Zelizer 39:35
exciting. Please do circle back around when it goes live. I would love to Yes, we'll know about it. Well, too. Yeah, no, I could hang out with you all day. I really. But I don't want to do that to our to our audience. I know you're busy and I know they're busy. If there was something you were hoping we were going to get to in this interview and we haven't touched on it yet, or there's something you want to leave our listeners With besides all the links listener, I'll put the link to the bowden site and to Ian's ecommerce business coaching and the podcast and the maker movement, and all the things will be in the show notes. So all that will be there. If there's something you wanted to leave our listeners with, as we start to say, goodbye, what would it be?
Tu-Hien Le 40:20
Yeah, I wanted to share three strategies that help as that help entrepreneurs build their community as they're building their product and solutions, the community that go along with it is going to be really important. So as I was building my community of women, I focus on building the community around three different points. So one of them one is having a clear purpose. really honing in on exactly why you're building your community. And the second is to have shared values. Getting, you know, really focused on the core of what you're building, and why will help attract the right people to your community. And the third thing, which I've sprinkled through this conversation, is to always listen to your customers, because they are going to give you so much information and feedback that's gonna help in inform you on how you can better build your community and communicate with them.
Paul Zelizer 41:38
That's awesome. Thank you for those suggestions. And again, I couldn't agree more. We have this podcast success team for aware printers and our master class this month was called actualized your vision with core values plus podcasting. In that masterclass, give it away, folks. Right, that the like essential was No, get three to five core values really crisply stated, then write a sentence to five sets of one to five sentences about what each one means to you, right? One of our printers, core values is social entrepreneurship, because I think it really is one of the best ways to change the world and make it a better place. For instance, so write your core values down and then put it on your website, either, you know, put it on, if your podcast has a dedicated website, maybe on the about page, if you have like, you know, Paul zelizer.com/podcast. In other words, it's just one tab on a larger website and put it right at the top even before the episodes even before you write. So like if you go to our printers the about page, it doesn't start with here's Paul Zelizer, the guy that started where printers starts with our four core values and what they need. So I'm just giving very specific like, Yes, I can't agree more. And, and so often, when people go to find out what a were printers is about, they come back with the message of I love your core values, right. And that is the beginning. Oftentimes, they long and very rich and very profitable for all involved, kind of win win win relationship, because it's core values base. It's not who this guy Paul is, it's not the shiny, flashy projects, products or services that our printers provides. Start with core values. So I love what you're saying, I just want to highlight that TN and any way you can bake that in and make that visible is likely to make your journey much much, much more enjoyable, and profitable as a social entrepreneur. So great, great advice. Thank you. And thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciated having you here.
Tu-Hien Le 43:51
Thank you so much for having me, it was such a fun conversation. I really appreciate you inviting me on.
Paul Zelizer 43:58
So that's all the time we have for today's show. Again, all the links will be in the show notes. Before we go. Just a reminder, speaking of community, we love, love, love listener suggested topics and guests. If you have an idea for the show, please go to our website, go to the contact page. And we have three simple criteria that we use to that we try to be really transparent about like how are we get anywhere between 103 100 pitches a week. Many of those from, you know PR companies and podcast booking agencies. We've been around for a little while and established relationships, but we love it when our listeners suggest so take a look at those. If it is a fit, please, let's talk because we love guests that you want to hear about and hear from. So for now, I just want to say thank you so much for listening. Please take really good care in these intense times. And thank you for all the positive impact that you're working for in our world.