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LifestyleTranscript
00:00so we're moving pretty quick I think they're they're moving everything here so this presentation
00:13is meant to be a little bit longer I'm sure I'll be able to share it with the folks so y'all can
00:18have it because I have a lot of examples of like how I've ran through some of these situations
00:23on the deck which I won't be able to go through because I know we're rolling fast so hopefully
00:28we can share this out with y'all again like I mentioned earlier I'm just going to be running
00:32through kind of like product market fit finding your ideal customer so this is obviously geared
00:37towards those in like the entrepreneurial space trying to get something started I'll just kind
00:43of like run through a little bit of my background while they're pulling this up so I'm Jamaica I'm
00:47the founder of Rosen skincare at Rosen we do the next generation of mass acne care really focus
00:55on that multicultural guest so thinking about the scarring experience in that journey and what
00:59it's like to deal with breakouts in that space recently celebrated five years and thank you
01:06and four of those years were bootstrapped so recently we did close around with new voices fund and so
01:12we're one of their portfolio companies now if y'all are around for essence fest we'll be in their booth
01:16right by the main stage at the beauty carnival Rosen is carried in target and ulta and so we're in like
01:23over a thousand doors and so you know really excited about just the story of like how you find your
01:28ideal customer how you know the product is going to work in the market and how you can kind of like
01:32continue to scale that I'll wait for them because I don't want to like start getting too ahead of too ahead
01:39of myself but are there any of y'all in here I guess that our entrepreneurs are trying to start
01:45something okay okay okay cool cool cool make sure I'm talking to some people who are going to hear
01:51it cool I think it's good yeah sweet it's a little bit about me but I already gave you all that so
02:01we can just dive right in so really when we're thinking about like product market fit ideally like
02:08what is that right it's making sure that when you go into the category into the landscape you're really
02:14differentiated within the space you have something that you know not only makes sense within the
02:18category but the price point makes sense who you're talking to make sense the product makes sense
02:22really essentially going into a category and saying like hey this makes sense in the market people are
02:27going to buy it and one of the first steps to getting to that place is really understanding the
02:31market I think it's really easy to kind of come across with an idea or a product and maybe it's
02:36something that you've dealt with or an issue that you've had but really when you don't understand the
02:41market it's easy to go in kind of blind and it's easy to kind of turn your wheels spend a lot of
02:46time spend a lot of money and not see a lot of traction so when you understand your market you
02:51should be going in what's the competitive landscape what's the size of the market what's the growth what
02:56are trends going on what's that b2b interest so we're thinking about buyers we're thinking about
03:00investors you know maybe press and then like what do regulations look like in that market and so the
03:06reason this is important is because for example this is what no we're good it's just moving slow
03:14this is what Rosen's market looks like so we're in the acne space and so it's really crucial for me
03:20to understand who the competitors are in that acne space what's the size of the market is it growing
03:25for me I'm a brand that's looking to scale looking to raise money I'm looking to sell my company
03:28and so if I'm going into a market that say is a 50 million dollar market I have to own a hundred percent
03:34of that market to get to a place where anybody's even going to be considering acquisition right and
03:38so that's really not realistic so when you think about the goals for your company how big is the
03:43market that you're going after and is it growing are there trends aligned with it so that you can
03:47really start to pick up some of that b2b interest if it's a buyer at a store at a target or an ulta or
03:53if it's an investor but also really understanding that competitive landscape because if you don't
03:58understand that it's easy to go into a space where it's like hey I'm going to go in the acne space
04:02but I haven't done a ton of the work to look at the competitors and so now I'm launching the same
04:07thing they are or we're not differentiated enough and so really doing that work to look at what's
04:12going on within the competitive landscape that you're trying to attack is it a viable market is
04:18it a growing spot and then what does that white space look like and once you start understanding
04:22the white space which is ideally where those competitors lack that's where you start to come in
04:27and understand your differentiation and so I think now you've kind of sat down you understand like
04:32boom boom boom all right this is the acne market this is how it's growing I know what the competitors
04:36are doing and I know personally that there's this issue so for me it was looking at man like there's
04:42no brands that really speak to my skin concerns in the mass space when we're talking about like
04:46scarring and dark spots but also serving that up in a way that I wanted where it's like a more modern
04:51brand cleaner ingredients and so I understood the white space and it took us to really clean that up
04:57and get to a point of differentiation so you want to make sure after you understand the market
05:02that you're going into you're really understanding where's the gap and how are you coming in
05:07this part I think is very crucial and has to be very hard on yourself if you're not good at being
05:13hard on yourself find a friend find a cousin find somebody who is going to be real with you
05:18so that you can lay out hey this is the market research that I've done this is what the category
05:23looks like this is what the competitors look like and this is what I think I'm gonna do
05:25and either yourself or somebody has to be real with you and say it's not that different because
05:32ultimately you need to be incredibly different to stand out and to scale efficiently unless you've
05:37got like buku dollars to spend so for example when I started Rosen I launched in 2017
05:43acne space was super traditional so like clean and clear Noxzema all the old players so for me
05:48we're going into the space thinking about how do we innovate how do we create kind of like this
05:52new wave of acne care how do I make the next generation of like a clear sill super like minimal
05:58routines very regimented in like mass accessible markets but for the younger consumer but now fast
06:04forward we know that there's I'm not the only new wave of acne we have star face we have hero cosmetics
06:09we have zitsticka and so we've had to reposition and niche down and really make sure we're continuing
06:15to stay different and so making sure that I'm not continuing to have the conversations and convince
06:20myself that I'm doing something unique enough that I'm not because at the end of the day if I'm only
06:25talking about that 2017 point of differentiation of newness in the acne space you put us against hero
06:31cosmetics which is a 50 million dollar brand like people are going to choose them because they know
06:36them their brand affinity and they have the marketing power and so you really don't want to put yourself in
06:41a position where you're not different enough to the competition especially when you know they're scaling ahead of
06:47you and they have so much more to spend and so really pushing yourself to concisely and cleanly understand
06:54what's the gap in the market how are you hitting it and how are you articulating that to the guest it should
06:59be something that's super easy to articulate very clean very crisp and it's not something where it's like oh yeah but if I
07:05have a conversation with them they'll get it you can't have that conversation at shelf you can't have that
07:08conversation over a Facebook ad you need to make sure that they clearly understand it very quickly and if it's too close it's just not going to be
07:16enough and so things that you know are common that that people might put up you know being a clean brand
07:23only you know being a black owned brand only like these are things that make it very difficult to be different
07:28enough some of them work June of 2020 being black owned was enough of a differentiator but unfortunately at this
07:34point it hasn't lasted and so you really have to make sure your brand is kind of standing that test against other folks
07:40um now you've kind of niched in right you understand the market you know what's going on in the landscape
07:45all right boom this is the white space and this is where I want to attack you've cleanly articulated
07:50your point of differentiation hey this is how they're doing it and this is how we're doing it
07:54your point of differentiation should be it should feel so clear to you of like I don't know why people
08:00are not stepping up to the plate and doing this like it makes no sense why this gap is here it should feel
08:05like that clean and that strong to you once you've got that now we're starting to move into like okay
08:11cool I get where I'm going with the business and I think I have a good point in the market
08:15how are you articulating that to the customer because this is going to be the big point when
08:20you start identifying your target customer thinking about the messaging that you craft around that
08:24and ultimately you want to think about the customer pain point so both functionally and emotionally
08:30what are they struggling with and how are you helping them out and so for Rosen we're looking at
08:37okay functionally we provide accessible skincare routines that prevent and repair dark spots and
08:43breakouts and so functionally like that's what we do um and so whatever your product is you're looking
08:48at like okay I've defined my point of differentiation I know how I'm different from these other brands
08:52in the space this is what we do this is how we do it and now really think about your customer
08:58emotionally if this is what you do this is the gap in the market how do they feel when they're living
09:03in that gap like how does your customer feel before you come along and then how are they going to feel
09:07after you because now you're starting to craft what you offer to the customer and so we're kind of taking
09:13this top-down approach of of messaging and brand fit and then now we come from the bottom up with the
09:19customer and ideally you meet somewhere in the middle and so we're looking at okay before us if they're if
09:25they're going to target and they're trying to find a product for their breakouts and their scars you
09:30know they might be frustrated because they kind of have to piece together different products for
09:33different things um they might feel you know not confident because they're dealing with scars so
09:37they're just like still trying to figure out their skincare routine and ideally after us it's like okay
09:41this is convenient I feel represented in the acne aisle we're not just talking about breakouts we're
09:45talking about scarring and dark spots um I feel confident I'm in control of my skin and so it's like
09:50now we're really telling this journey of like how the customer resonates with the brand and how they
09:54understand us and again it's really always filtering back to that white space that gap in the market your
10:00point of differentiation you really want to understand both functionally and emotionally how
10:07you're going to resonate with your customer because that like I said really starts to bring you to the
10:12place of understanding your target customer which really is going to influence pricing retail strategy
10:17product development all of that stuff and so this is a lot of the groundwork to do when you're
10:22starting out your journey to make sure you're speaking to the right person and you're really
10:25getting through to the right audience and then you know after this point you do want to start defining
10:32that customer so ideally you've kind of flowed through this process you began to understand what
10:38you do for them what gap you serve in the market and then now you can start building out this persona for
10:44this customer right what are their pain points what is their age or race or gender you know what
10:49ambitions they have outside of product like let's think about them as just like an individual human
10:53um what other brands do they shop and like how do they navigate that shopping space and so this I
10:59won't go through all of it but this is like an example of literally what we use as a framework and
11:02like what we define some of these points as at Rosen and so it's really thinking about super niched in
11:09who are we serving and who is this person um for for us you know we like to niche in on like the 18 to
11:1524 year old black woman um this is a great time to really figure out think of like one individual that
11:22you're serving right and I think a lot of times we kind of say like well again my product works for
11:25everybody like I can go you know from high school to you know adults use it and and you know every race
11:32uses it and every person and that's dope and it probably does work for everybody but your messaging
11:37needs to be exactly to one person you have to talk to one person and you have to have that key
11:42point in with them so that when you're thinking about marketing when you're thinking about strategic
11:45choices it makes sense because the choices that a six-year-old white man is going to make versus an
11:5018-year-old black woman are totally different they're different aesthetics they're different
11:53interests there's just so much going on and if you start talking to everybody you're kind of talking
11:57to nobody and so it's like okay cool you you understand the market from the top down you're again
12:02you're understanding your white space how you come into the competition now you know the pain
12:07points your customers dealing with you're understanding how they look at your competition
12:10and what they're resonating with and then you're really understanding okay cool now I'm building
12:15them out as a human and there might be some assumptions that you make in this stage where
12:20you're trying to figure out okay oh yeah like maybe they shop these brands and then maybe do the research
12:25and you start building the brand and you're like okay yeah maybe maybe starface isn't really something
12:29or maybe my customer doesn't use black girl sunscreen so then you go back to the drawing board and you read
12:33and you adjust those assumptions but really you'll start building out this persona because
12:38now all of your framework through here is going to be building out your brand and so ideally again
12:45going through the market defining your point of differentiation how are you attacking that gap
12:49that's in the market how does that point of differentiation relate to your customers pain points
12:53and then defining that those customer pain points into a customer avatar from here we're getting into
12:59again like I said product development which products are you going to make what lines make
13:04sense what ingredients make sense that really depends on the customer where does your customer shop are
13:08they somebody that shops at Target or are they shopping at Sephora frequently that makes a big difference
13:12on pricing on packaging on the ingredients you can use what are what are the messaging who are the
13:18influencers you work with so you really want to start defining all this but again really understanding
13:24this again from like the top down and the bottom up approach so that you know
13:27you're not going into the market with a product that doesn't make sense a product that's not going
13:33to scale I think it's very easy to launch product it's very easy to launch brands that I don't
13:37understand why I'm not getting traction I don't get what's going on it's because you're not clear
13:41enough on what you're doing and it's probably because you're not different enough again you can
13:45have a lack of differentiation if you have a lot of money to spend but I know that black women are the
13:50most underfunded group as far as entrepreneurship goes so oftentimes we're trying we have to be scrappy with
13:55what we want we want our ROI to go as far as possible so make sure you're really understanding
13:59what's going on in that space how different you are I know I have to wrap here soon my name is
14:05Jamika I'm the founder of Rose and Skin Care you can find us at Rose and Skin Care on everything
14:10shop us at your local Target or Ulta my personal Instagram is Jamika Rose and so that's J-A-M-I-K-A
14:18Rose with an underscore people are DMing me questions all the time so if you have questions let me know
14:23shoot me a message on there I'll probably hang out around here a little bit more and I can dive into
14:28to other stuff with getting started but this is like the most important thing so hopefully it was
14:32helpful and hopefully you know it starts to build that framework and help you start thinking about
14:35some of these key pieces when it comes to building your brand good luck and thanks thanks for having me
14:42thank you
14:44you
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