How One Idea Became an $80 Million Female Health Tech Company | Crystal Etienne

Summary

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Earn Your Leisure Podcast

Episode: How One Idea Became an $80 Million Female Health Tech Company | Crystal Etienne
Hosts: Rashad Bilal & Troy Millings
Guest: Crystal Etienne (Founder of Ruby Love)
Release Date: January 29, 2026

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Overview

This episode features an in-depth conversation with Crystal Etienne, founder of Ruby Love—a femtech company now valued at $80M—and co-founder of her investment fund, Cage. The conversation covers her personal journey from identifying a persistent health need to building a scalable, innovative business. The hosts explore the mechanics of femtech, breaking business barriers as a Black woman in entrepreneurship, the challenges and benefits of venture capital, and Crystal's strategy for legacy, wealth, and giving back—delivering insights, candid truths, and business realities rarely shared so plainly.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Understanding Femtech (03:27–04:37)

• What Is Femtech?
  • Technology and products addressing women’s health and personal needs: periods, menopause, and maternity.
  • Crystal clarifies: “Femtech is for like women’s health. Anything that's women's health and like personal needs.” (04:19)
• Why the Market Matters:
  • Seen as “recession-proof” and always needed.
  • Innovation overdue in a sector foundational to half the population.

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2. The Origin of Ruby Love (05:28–09:23)

• Personal Frustration as a Spark:
  • Crystal’s dissatisfaction with sanitary pads—"It's aggravating, it's stressful" (05:28)—pushed her to develop an alternative.
  • She was inspired during a moment watching TV, realizing “why after all these years am I still dealing with this problem in this way?” (08:11)
• Empathy and Anxiety:
  • Crystal and the co-host discuss the real anxieties young girls face around periods—embarrassment and discomfort.
• The First Product:
  • Designed special underwear with a slot to conceal and secure pads—“I wanted to make an underwear… that I would be able to put my pad in.” (09:23)

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3. Innovation and Initial Steps (14:09–17:39)

• Prototype Development:
  • “I got on a train… went to the fashion district… found a couple of manufacturers who did not take me serious.” (14:21)
  • Paid to get four prototypes made, tested them with her friends and daughter.
• Self-Patenting and Risk:
  • Wrote her own patent to save money: “I spent, like, 30, maybe, like, almost 40 days, like, writing the patent myself” (15:29).
• Business Background:
  • Prior to founding the company, she was a controller, managing operations for other businesses.

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4. Launching and Scaling: From Side Hustle to Million-Dollar Company (16:44–21:30)

• Early Branding:
  • Originally named Pantyprop—“because that's what it was. I thought of names… one of them was like… it was going to be called Bled. My sister was like, hell no Blood.” (16:52, 16:57)
• Marketing & Growth:
  • Relied on Google and Facebook ads, learning SEO and content marketing herself, often using Fiverr for blog content. “I called Google up... and they showed me how to do that.” (17:48)
  • First product launched in January 2016, internet marketing led sales to jump quickly.
  • “My next product was my period swimwear that I’m the inventor of. And that went viral.” (19:22)
• Sales Milestones:
  • Year 1: ~$300,000
  • Year 2: Over $1 million
  • “It scales rapidly.” (20:50)

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5. Behind the Scenes—Operations Hustle (22:33–25:29)

• Initial Operations:
  • All order fulfillment was handled by Crystal, out of her house, before hiring help.
  • Married, mother, and entrepreneur—“If you even called, like, you didn't know that you were talking to me. I was like all different types of people in 2016.” (23:26)
• Bootstrapped, Financial Discipline:
  • Used savings—"I always saved my money since I was 17 years old." (24:55)

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6. Raising Venture Capital as a Black Woman (25:19–38:19)

• Early Funding Attempts:
  • “Once I started, I knew nothing about the VC world… Most black people, we just don’t know.” (25:19)
  • She gave up on VC after two weeks initially; the business was scaling fine with self-funding.
• VC Success—Breaking Barriers:
  • 2019: Raised $15 million after joining Jason Calacanis’ Launch Program.
  • “If I was a white woman or a white male, you know, you could raise with nothing, just a simple idea. A black woman just can't do that.” (28:41)
• Navigating Racism & Sexism:
  • Crystal learned to manage VC psychology: "Just make them feel like they on top of the world… Even if you know it, don’t say it and just tell them that it’s a good idea." (28:28)
• Ownership & Power Dynamics:
  • The importance of retaining board control and understanding equity dilution:
    • “The most important is not the dilution… it’s actually the board that most people don’t understand.” (37:10)
    • Negotiated from a position of strength as a solo founder, keeping the majority share.

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7. Business Model Evolution & Product Expansion (39:17–49:37)

• Product Line:
  • Underwear, swimwear, activewear, and the signature “first period kit” to facilitate conversations with teens about menstruation.
• No Brick-and-Mortar, Online Focus:
  • Brief stint with Macy’s, but pulled out: “I was making way more money online. Retail is just like retail is for branding.” (49:40)
  • “No marketing, and it’s super successful. Yeah, this is rare.” (50:02)

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8. Lessons of Venture Capital—Pros & Cons (41:04–45:29)

• Misconceptions:
  • Many think VC is just a loan; “They think it’s a loan… They take it personal where you shouldn’t.” (41:04)
• Business vs. Personal:
  • “There is no in-between. You either gonna take it or you’re not.” (42:27)
  • VC forced the company to “operate bigger,” adding C-suite, more staff, compliance, and heavy operational responsibilities—at a cost to nimbleness.
• Would She Do It Again?
  • “I feel like if I didn’t have VCs, my business revenue would be over 200 million at this point… for me… VC… was a hindrance.” (42:27)
  • Eventually regained all her shares: “That’s why I got all my shares back. No.” (46:03)
  • Crystal highlights the loss of focus and increased operational drag post-VC: “Now, I had to hire a big C suite… It was a lot of time consuming.”

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9. Preparing for Exit & Generational Wealth (50:12–55:57)

• Scaling Down to Scale Up:
  • To prepare for a sale, Crystal streamlined operations: outsourced fulfillment (3PL), reduced advertising and payroll, shifted focus to operational excellence.
• On Selling the Company:
  • “I think that every company... if you are really trying to build like generational wealth and a legacy, you need to sell it.” (50:49)
  • Debunks the myth of legacy as perpetual ownership: “You will never lose the founder title. I’m only losing the CEO title. And the CEO title is a lot of work.” (53:36)
• Surviving Business Lows:
  • “We actually ran out of cash… Operation is expensive… This is business. It ain't personal.” (54:40)
  • Even with setbacks, strong brand equity keeps the company valuable.

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10. Real Estate and Life Beyond Ruby Love (57:18–60:57)

• Personal Wealth & Real Estate:
  • Crystal and her husband flip mansions on Long Island, a niche and high-maintenance pursuit: “Our landscaping bill last year was like $300,000.” (57:27)
  • Inspired by her grandmother, who owned 23 houses in the 1980s—“I would never be a tenant [landlord]… but I love mansions and the States.” (59:25)
• Giving Back & Mentorship:
  • Runs investment fund Cage, investing in and mentoring Black women. Average check size: $1,000–$25,000.
    • “It's the person and how you go about executing... If I could scale underwear... anything could be done.” (40:29)
  • New initiative: “Black Woman Conversations”—brunches and networking for Black women at different income levels.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Femtech’s Overlooked Potential:
  “The sanitary napkin was really… invented from a Black woman. And most people don't even know that.”
  — Crystal Etienne (07:08)

• On Innovation Sparking from Frustration:
  “Why after all these years am I still dealing with this problem in this way?”
  — Crystal Etienne (08:11)

• On VC Bias:
  “If I was a white woman or a white male, you know, you could raise with nothing, just a simple idea. A black woman just can't do that.”
  — Crystal Etienne (28:41)

• On Legacy and Selling Business:
  “You will never lose the founder title. I’m only losing the CEO title. And the CEO title is a lot of work.”
  — Crystal Etienne (53:36)

• On Supporting Black Women Entrepreneurs:
  “We invest and just in black women… not even just like monetary ways… we just invest a lot of our time and everything into black women.”
  — Crystal Etienne (40:03)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Time | Segment/Topic | |------------|----------------------------------------------------------| | 03:27 | Introduction to Femtech and Ruby Love | | 05:28 | Crystal's personal journey and motivation | | 09:23 | Product concept and initial prototyping | | 16:44 | Building the business, branding, and early sales | | 19:22 | Marketing and scaling via digital channels | | 25:19 | Approaching Venture Capital as an underrepresented founder| | 28:41 | Facing bias and learning VC “games” | | 37:10 | Equity, board control, and negotiating as a solo founder | | 42:27 | Pros and cons of VC—hindrance to growth and innovation | | 49:20 | Expanding product line; signature “first period kit” | | 53:36 | Legacy, generational wealth, and selling the business | | 54:40 | Running out of cash, operational realities | | 57:27 | Flipping mansions, maintaining luxury homes | | 61:10 | New initiative: Black Woman Conversations brunches |

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Takeaways

• Innovation happens when you address real, persistent problems—especially overlooked ones.
• VC can enable rapid growth but may add bureaucracy, dilute founder control, and slow nimbleness—especially for already-scaled businesses.
• Knowledge of business mechanics (equity, board control, exits) is crucial for lasting wealth and legacy.
• Representation, mentorship, and reinvestment into Black women founders remain rare—and much needed.

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How to Connect

• Ruby Love
• Crystal on Instagram: @iamkrystaletienne
• Black Woman Conversations: @blackwomenconversations
• Investment Fund: cageandco.com

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Transcript

[Crystal Etienne]

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[Crystal Etienne]

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[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

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[Crystal Etienne]

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[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

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[Crystal Etienne]

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[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

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[Crystal Etienne]

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[Crystal Etienne]

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[Interviewer / Host]

Guys, welcome back. URL. Back home for a little bit. So, yeah, this is, this is going to be a very dope episode. It's always good to talk to entrepreneurs and people in spaces that we haven't necessarily covered before.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

It's definitely a first for sure.

[Interviewer / Host]

For sure. I don't think I've even really heard of this situation before.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Yeah. The term femtech is not a term that I've heard before, but I'm glad I'm up on it now because there's an industry that is, when we talk about recession, proof of industries, definitely one always going to be needed. Hopefully it's going to be needed.

[Interviewer / Host]

Sure. So Crystal Etienne.

[Crystal Etienne]

Etienne.

[Interviewer / Host]

Etienne. So, yeah, entrepreneur. So she founded Ruby Love, which is a femtech company that's now valued at $80 million in just six years. And co founder of Cage, which is a fund that she has with her husband. They invest into into companies and has been extremely successful in, in the world of investing in entrepreneurship. So the femtech phrase is something that I actually never even heard of before. Female technology, I was, I assume that's what. And it's. Is it like female hygiene products?

[Crystal Etienne]

Yep. So femtech is for like women's health. Anything that's women's health and like personal needs. A lot of people don't know.

[Interviewer / Host]

So like, what are some examples of femtech periods? Okay.

[Crystal Etienne]

Menopause.

[Interviewer / Host]

So hygiene type thing.

[Crystal Etienne]

Because maternity is with it too.

[Interviewer / Host]

Okay.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah. So any type of technology that is women health related.

[Interviewer / Host]

Okay.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

So it makes the products, makes the technology, makes it a safer process for.

[Crystal Etienne]

All these generations, the innovation.

[Interviewer / Host]

But she also received one of the largest funding rounds for a solo black woman entrepreneur. So this is going to be a variety of good conversations that we'll have from, you know, the business and investing and also raising money as well. So thank you for joining us. Appreciate it.

[Crystal Etienne]

Oh, absolutely. Thank you.

[Interviewer / Host]

No, no problem. So, all right, so let's get into this. So I want to start with the female tech. So you kind of explained it briefly, but what made you want to go into it and what specifically do you provide in the female technology industry?

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah, so reason why I wanted to go into it because I was struggling with my sanitary pad. It's like for a woman, we get our period around when we between like 9 and 11, 12 years old and then you don't even realize that you had that thing for decades. Like it just come every month. It's aggravating, it's stressful. And we wear sanitary pads and sanitary Pads, they just don't look good. Y' all even seen one when a woman.

[Interviewer / Host]

What is it?

[Crystal Etienne]

It be sticking out our underwear.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

The sanitary napkin.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah. Like. Like a maxi pad.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Maxi pad or. Well, not tampon. Tampon you're not going to see hanging out, but tampon.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah, but a tampon is different from a maxi.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you're not gon.

[Interviewer / Host]

But you.

[Crystal Etienne]

I mean, yeah, tampon you don't see. But a maxi pad with the wings. I thought, yeah, men, y' all don't really pay attention.

[Interviewer / Host]

I thought people just use tampons.

[Crystal Etienne]

No, no, no, no.

[Interviewer / Host]

So the pad is one. It's one or the other.

[Crystal Etienne]

Girls usually start when you start with your period. Usually start with a maxi pad.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Yeah. So the pad is like the line. You put that on a lighter of the panty, Right. And then the tampon obviously goes inside of the vaginal. I was a healthy. Wait. So the tampon goes inside of the vaginal canal? Usually. So that is usually when people use that. I mean, you grow into that. But yeah, usually when you're going to do things like going into water, people tend to use tampons overpass, obviously, because of the look of it all, but that it's it. But because you said, like, this is technology that was invented in the 50s.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yes, it is.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Nobody thought to, like, hey, I'm sure women everywhere felt like, this is uncomfortable. Can we have something different? So, like, what spark you to say, let's change it?

[Crystal Etienne]

Yes. So first of all, the sanitary napkin was really people. Most people don't even know it was actually invented from a black woman. And most people don't even know that. Like, it just started back then. Like, she invented this. Mary Keller, she invented it. Nobody even knew that she invented this sanitary pad. And now, you know, like most white people, they just get the credit for it. But they didn't. So fast forward to me. I was just aggravated. My pad was just sticking out. I was watching tv. I was watching Wendy Williams on tv and I was laying on a bed. My husband was at his business. He had trucks and he wasn't home. And I was just like, this is just like crazy. It just looks nasty, like, for the pads to stick out. And obviously men don't even recognize that. Like, even though it bothers us, y' all don't even recognize it. Like, you didn't even know what I was really talking about just now. And you've probably seen it. It's probably been around you 50 times. Most people don't realize it. So I was just aggravated with it. And I was like, I have to do something about this. Cause like, why after all these years am I still dealing with this problem in this way? And as a health teacher, you understand, like, it's something that every month we wake up. A woman wakes up that gets her period every single month, and we are really aggravated with it. Y' all don't even understand, like, when you walking past people every day, it is a stressful, like, oh, my God, my period is healing. I just cramped time. It's cramps, it's the uncomfortableness. It's the. Also the worry. Like, if I had my period right now, at this moment, I'm sitting here wondering, like, when I get up off the chair, is the blood gonna be here?

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Yeah, like, it's that I had an all girls class. And so, like, they were 12 and 13 and 14. And I'm trying to explain this process to them and in their minds, this anxiety there, right? Because they don't know what's gonna happen when that day comes.

[Crystal Etienne]

And anxiety is serious, like, when it comes to that. And some people don't know how to. The majority of women and girls don't know how to deal with that. So that is what made me say, like, I'm a create something. I don't know what sparked me that day. I was like, you know what? I'm going to create something, like, to actually, like, fix it. And that's how it all started.

[Interviewer / Host]

And what did. So what. What exactly did you create?

[Crystal Etienne]

So I jumped off my bed and I was like, I'm going to figure out something to hold my padding in place so that you can't see it. Because that's how it started. That's what was bothering me, like, the fact that I could see my pad, like, out of my underwear. And I was like, it's nasty. Like, but it's not nasty. But it is nasty. And I don't like it. So I just got off. I drew like a underwear. I don't know, I won't even call it an underwear. I drew like a picture with, like a hole, like, so that it would like, that I would be able to put my pad in. So my product actually, like, a cup. Nope, it wasn't a cup. I drew like, I wanted to make an underwear and that I was going to put the pad in like a slot.

[Interviewer / Host]

But, like, like, all right. So like when you play football, they have what's called a cup, where it's like, oh, yes.

[Crystal Etienne]

And you something like that.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

The jock strap?

[Interviewer / Host]

Yeah. So that's what.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

It's a cup. It's a cup.

[Interviewer / Host]

Similar cup is inside the jock strap.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Correct.

[Interviewer / Host]

That's what I'm saying.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

So you.

[Interviewer / Host]

That's what you did. Kind of similar. It's like panties. And you slide it inside the panties.

[Crystal Etienne]

Where I wanted my pad, where you don't even know that it's there. Like, if I'm in the locker room with another woman or whatever, you don't see it at all. Just like you don't see tampons. Most people were using tampons so that you don't see it. And for the comfortability of it, a maxi pad was never comfortable. It's just bulky. It's just big. And I wasn't a tampon wearer because I had pcos.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

So what's that?

[Crystal Etienne]

PCOS is when. Best way to describe it. PCOS is something that a lot of women suffer from. Like, not fibroids, but like, how most women suffer from fibroids. PCO is another form of a condition. And sometimes you get your period for, like, three weeks at a time. And I mean heavy.

[Interviewer / Host]

Three weeks.

[Crystal Etienne]

Sometimes it could go for, like, two months if you have pcos.

[Interviewer / Host]

Three weeks, two months straight.

[Crystal Etienne]

Straight.

[Interviewer / Host]

How is that even possible?

[Crystal Etienne]

With pcos, that's what happens.

[Interviewer / Host]

What does it stand for?

[Crystal Etienne]

I forgot. It's like poly. I don't remember exactly what it says. It's the long word.

[Interviewer / Host]

And that causes irregular period patterns.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yes. Like, one day, you could have regular, normal periods, like, for your whole life. And then one day I realized, like, wait a minute. I'm only getting my period maybe, like, four times a year. But when it was coming, it was coming, like, for one time. I had it for, like, a month and a half.

[Interviewer / Host]

How do you.

[Crystal Etienne]

So you can't really wear a tampon?

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

That's what I said. Cause even if you have a tampon in for a longer period of time, that could be unsafe.

[Crystal Etienne]

It can't push out.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

You can't push out. I mean, if it's in there for too long, it could be risky. Right. There's risks that come along with having tensions.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah. So in reality, with pcos, I really couldn't. I could wear it, but I'm gonna be changing it, like, every hour. Cause you're bleeding extremely heavy for a long time.

[Interviewer / Host]

Polystylastic ovary syndrome.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah, I told you it was long.

[Interviewer / Host]

Shout out to Ty Davis.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

I know. Todd Davis.

[Interviewer / Host]

Yes. We had this in real time.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Yeah.

[Interviewer / Host]

Okay. Okay. So.

[Crystal Etienne]

So I had that.

[Interviewer / Host]

So you have that. Is there A cure for that?

[Crystal Etienne]

No. You could take stuff, but it like to eliminate it like a little. But I realized I was having it because. Which I didn't know at the time I was having it because I was in pre menopause.

[Interviewer / Host]

So is there a cause for it? Like, cause I.

[Crystal Etienne]

Cause I went to the doctor about it. He just told me that I had.

[Interviewer / Host]

It because I, you know, obviously I'm not an expert in this situation, but you know, I'm speaking to different women, just watch different documentaries, stuff like that. And they were saying like even periods, a lot of times it's what you eat, it's the environment, it causes longer periods. Like they like, traditionally your parents should only be like three, two, two or three days. But when you have like a seven day period, it's like that's something that you could traditionally be eating to the wrong diet or, you know, a variety of stress. Different things of that nature can actually throw your cycle off.

[Crystal Etienne]

Right.

[Interviewer / Host]

So is there any cause for that?

[Crystal Etienne]

No. So my doctor never told me mine could have been stress because I was going through a divorce, like with my first husband at that time. So mine could have been that. But my whole life since I had my period, my period would come only like two, three days. And then one day I just noticed it was here. I didn't pay attention to it because I'm like, all right. Because everybody complains about their period. I never had a problem, I never had cramps, any of that stuff. But one day I was like, okay, like this is like the third time. And then it would disappear and not come back after like a couple of months. Yeah, it was, it was severe. So that's what, that's why I was always wearing. I mean, not tampons, maxi pants.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

So yeah, the technology you're making was really the actual garment, not the pad.

[Interviewer / Host]

Right.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

So the pad is going to be a regular thickness. That's going to be standard. What's going to change is the actual garment that it's going into.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yes.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Gotcha.

[Crystal Etienne]

Eventually I did a pad too. Like a particular type of pad. But start, that's at the start. No, it was just to make that more comfortable, to secure it properly, like under, like where I needed it to be. So it don't move. That's what it started from. That's all I wanted.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

You're designing this?

[Crystal Etienne]

Yes, and I wrote a patent for it.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Then you wrote the patent. So that was the next step. Right, the patent.

[Crystal Etienne]

Like a week after that I started writing the patent.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

And you're using it?

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

So how do you get other people to know how to use that?

[Interviewer / Host]

How'd you make it?

[Crystal Etienne]

Oh, yeah. So I live in New York, so that was easy. I just got on a train on a railroad from Long island to New York City, and I just walked around for. I went to the fashion district and found, like, a couple of manufacturers who did not take me serious. Because I'm walking around with a paper, like, I want to make this underwear with a hole, but the money talks. So I'm like, listen, just make what I tell you. I'll pay you. And it was like, okay. And I found four manufacturers to make it, like, out there, and I paid them. They really didn't take it serious at all. And I took it, and I just went with that.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

So they made. How many are you making to start?

[Crystal Etienne]

So I made four samples first with four different people because I wanted to see, like, how it came out.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Yeah. And then who were you testing on? Like, you're giving out to your friends. Like, hey, I got this idea. I want y' all to try it.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yes. So one of my friends was my guinea pig. I would have her test it and style it and all types of stuff. So she was my guinea pig, and my daughter was my guinea pig at the time.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

All right, so now. Now that it's tested and it's. And it's proven, now, you. You gotta get this out to the people.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

So, like, now what's the plan? How are we getting funding to manufacture more? What's the next step?

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah. So I always was well off with funds. But you still. Even though you got money, you still, like, listen, I need to. I need to figure out, like, what I'm gonna do, because I actually went all in. Like, I left my job. Like, I wasn't going back to work. Nothing. My husband wanted to kill me, but I was like, I'm all in. Like, when I had it, I just did it. I spent, like, 30, maybe, like, almost 40 days, like, writing the patent myself because I didn't want to spend the $6,000 to pay a patent attorney. And once the USPTO office told me that they mess up, too, I was like, well, they gonna mess up. They gonna mess up on my dime. I might as well write it myself and mess up. So I wrote that, and then I started, like, preparing to sell it. And then I just started researching. I had no marketing background. I had a business background, which is the best to have. I had a business background, but I had no marketing background. I didn't even know how to Do a website. And I did it. I figured it out.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

So what was your career prior to this? Cause you said, I mean, this is obviously a transition.

[Crystal Etienne]

I was a controller, so I was running a business. I was running people's business and operations.

[Interviewer / Host]

So, okay, so you. You. You have this idea. You get it made, you test it out. I'm assuming you probably tweaked a few things and now you're at the stage where you say, okay, now I want to actually get this out to the public.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yep. I created a website.

[Interviewer / Host]

You created a website. You create the name for the company. What's. What's the product's name?

[Crystal Etienne]

Oh. So when I first launched, it wasn't Ruby Loew.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

It was Pantyprop.

[Crystal Etienne]

It was Pantyprop.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Come on now. Did our homework.

[Crystal Etienne]

I'm shopping.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Talking about Brandi, talking about Penny Prop.

[Crystal Etienne]

So it was Panty Prop. That's why I always think it's funny when it comes up. So Pantyprop, the reason why it's called Pantyprop, because that's what it was. I thought of names. I don't even want to tell y' all what it was going to be. One of them was like, it was going to be called Bled. My sister was like, hell no Blood. She was like, don't do that. So the name was Pantyprop because it was something that you propped up in your panty. That's where. But I never had a problem with that name. Like, from the time that I wanted to the time that I rebrand it, I only rebranded it because you can't really scale the name Pantyprop. And we were selling globally in, like, all countries.

[Interviewer / Host]

So, all right, so how do you scale? Like, all right, so once you get it going, make the website. You make the website. How are you promoting this? Like, how are you marketing this?

[Crystal Etienne]

So I started following. I had a big competitor at the time, and they had just raised, like, $2.5 million. So I was like, oh, okay. But my product was completely different than theirs. Like, totally different. It's same concept, but totally different because we still have, like, the hole, like the gusset that actually secures it in place. So I just thought it being where they were being. So say if they were being in, say, Google, I was like, okay, like, if I Google, like, my keywords, they were popping up. So I was like, let me figure out how to be where they are. So I figured that out. I called Google up, and Google had a number at the time. I don't even know if they still have it. But they had a number at the time. And I called them and I was like, listen, I want to do ads. How do I get my ad up there? I want to be like right below them. And they showed me how to do that. I used to Pay probably like 5, $10 a day in like, ads on Google. And then I started on Facebook. Facebook back then did not have reps unless you were spending like a lot of money, which I didn't know. But I figured that one out too. Like, I figured out how to do it. I would just read, I would look at YouTube videos, and I figured out how to do it. And within, like, I officially launched in January of 2016. So I came up with the idea in August of 2015, wrote the patent in September of 2015, did all that stuff, like the manufacturing and everything, like through that time, like the samples and they get in like a small run. And then I officially launched in January of 2016. By March of 2016, because everything went so fast, I was able to get all my products out. So my next product was my period swimwear that I'm the inventor of. And that went viral. And then we've just been up since then.

[Interviewer / Host]

Online marketing is how you got it out.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yep.

[Interviewer / Host]

Online marketing. Ads and stuff like that.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah.

[Interviewer / Host]

And social media wasn't really. You didn't really use social media?

[Crystal Etienne]

No, I actually just got. I'm just learning social media. I literally just got one here.

[Interviewer / Host]

Like, so word of mouth in online marketing.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Yeah, yeah. So you did the SEO, the search engine optimizer. So when Google.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah, I didn't know at the time I was doing that, but yes.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Yeah. So when it's. When you search, period. Penny.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yep.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

There's some competitors. We'll get into those later. But there's some competitors. And now you're coming up with them.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yes.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Gotcha, gotcha.

[Crystal Etienne]

And one of the big things, like, with the SEO, another big thing that I did, I was writing blogs that I didn't know was SEO at the time. I just was writing blogs. I would use Fiverr. I would pay. There was one girl on there, she would give me some real good blogs. This is like one of my top blogs to this day. I pay like, literally like $5 for that blog. And I didn't know it was SEO at the time, but I was giving out information. Cause that's what I had read. Like, if you wanna. If you wanna bring people in, give information that's relevant. So I just started writing blogs pertaining to what my product was.

[Interviewer / Host]

Okay. So how fast does this scale? Like, when you first start, like, numbers wise, like, how many units were you moving?

[Crystal Etienne]

Like, I don't even remember the units, but I used to tell my husband. He laughs about it now to this day. I used to be like, I just want to sell 20 items. Like, if we sell just 20 of these things a day, I'm good. And like, we know 20 is not a lot, but that was my thinking back there. I just wanted to buy, you know, do 20 of them. But it scales rapidly. So, like, the first year, I think I did, like, that year in 2016, I think I did, like, close to 300,000. And then the next year, it just shot up to over a million. And then after that, it was always like, revenue and revenue, actual revenue coming in.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

But how many products is it? It's the. The underwear and then the swimwear.

[Crystal Etienne]

So that first year was the underwear and the swimwear at that time.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Later, we start adding activewear.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yes.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Okay.

[Interviewer / Host]

And then the swimwear is the same idea, but it's just something that you.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Can go swimming in.

[Crystal Etienne]

So the swimwear has actual. Just another piece of technology in it. It's not like some of my competitors, they'll say it's waterproof. Waterproof. Who wants a waterproof swimsuit? Like, they don't know because they're not the inventor of it. I am. Our swimwear is actually water resistant. So if you see that they say waterproof the swimwear.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Do you have to it. That is the pad, right? Like, you know.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah, it's built in.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

You're not wearing a pad, you're not wearing a tampon. Right. This is one thing.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yep.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Oh, got you.

[Crystal Etienne]

It just looks like a regular swimsuit.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Yeah.

[Crystal Etienne]

And if you have your period, you on vacation. Because that's the worst with a woman. When you go on vacation, you have your period, you got to worry about it. So it serves for that purpose.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Yeah, I mean, that and the. The flow of water. Usually water slows down the flow of blood during the menstrual cycle, so.

[Crystal Etienne]

But not really.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Not always, though. You never know.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah.

[Interviewer / Host]

Okay, so, okay, so you're moving. You're moving these units, and you, like, drop shipping. Like, you have like a.

[Crystal Etienne]

No, I'm. We're shipping all from my house.

[Interviewer / Host]

So you just have a bunch of products in your basement?

[Crystal Etienne]

Yep. Every time, every day, I would go to the manufacturer, pick up, and it was. They were in Brooklyn, my manufacturer, a big manufacturer in Brooklyn. And they used to do for, like, a lot of stores. I would leave from long Island, Go get fabric in the city. Now I'm in my car, not on the train. Go to the city and then go to Brooklyn and then head back to Long island every day? Every day to pick up my son.

[Interviewer / Host]

Oh, your son was going to school and.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah, my son was younger at the time. He was. I had to pick him up from the bus.

[Interviewer / Host]

You were picking up product every day, shipping it out. Every. Shipping out once a week or shipping out every day?

[Crystal Etienne]

No, every day.

[Interviewer / Host]

Shipping it out every day?

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Yep.

[Interviewer / Host]

As people make orders online.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yep. So when I come back, all the orders will be sitting there.

[Interviewer / Host]

So how'd you. I'm assuming you're still not doing that now.

[Crystal Etienne]

Oh, no.

[Interviewer / Host]

So when did, when did you. When did you start to streamline the process a little bit more efficiently?

[Crystal Etienne]

Efficiently?

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

What, your progress?

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah, so the first year it was. No, I would say, like the first eight months it was all me. If you even called, like, you didn't know that you were talking to me. I was like all different types of people in 2016. And then in 2017, I hired my first employee. My husband was my employee all the time, like when he would get off his own business for work. But. And at that time, I was trying to convince him because we were moving so rapidly and it was just becoming too much. Because, like, that ride that I would tell you I did every day from long. And if anybody knows New York, going from Long island to the city, to Brooklyn back to Long island, that is a whole day process. And then I had a child who was in elementary school that I had to get off the bus by 3 o'. Clock. It was crazy. So when I would get him off the bus, then I would have express orders sitting there for me. I would have to ride to FedEx, come back, it'd be another express order. It was just a lot.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

That's a lot of mileage.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah. I don't even know how I did it, now that I think about it. But, you know, like, when you in the grind, you don't even. I didn't feel it back then.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

So how are you managing the inventory? Because that a lot of times when people get into businesses where they're selling products, the inventory is an issue. Right. Do I have too much and then I'm not selling, you know, I mean, do I have.

[Crystal Etienne]

I don't have enough. There was no inventory for me. It was just like you buying it. I am going to have it and I am. You gonna get it.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

So did the capital that it took to get that, that was something that you had saved already from your.

[Crystal Etienne]

It was my own funds. Yeah. I always saved my money since I was 17 years old.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Okay, so you've always been financially disciplined.

[Crystal Etienne]

Always.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Okay, so. But you obviously you're seeing competitors come into the space at the same time and they raising money, and they're raising money. At a certain point, are you looking at it like I have to go that route too if I want to be in the same breath as my competitors or I'm just going to keep doing, like, at certain point, you have to realize this.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah. Once I, when I first started, I knew nothing about the VC world. Like how I know now, which is like most black people, we just, we just don't, like, we don't know that you can actually raise funds to like scale your company. So I didn't know anything about it, but I had saw that, like, I saw the headlines when my competitor raised that $2.5 million. So I was like, oh, they raised $2.5 million. So I looked into that and I was like, okay, well, let me see if that's what I want to do. I tried it for probably like two weeks because raising funds is a, is a full time job. And it was taking me from the business. These people, these VCs, they, they just, they just waste your time. And I don't like people wasting my time. So I just gave up after that, like after like two weeks. So I don't really want to say I tried to raise funds at first. That was in 2000. At the end of 2016 is when I first tried it. By January I was January 2017, I was like, I ain't doing this no more. And I wanted to focus on my business because it was already just like going so, so much. So I just kept reinvesting that money and going to the manufacturers, getting stuff and sending things out.

[Interviewer / Host]

So when did you. But you did raise money eventually in 2019.

[Crystal Etienne]

So in 2018, at the end, I took it serious to raise funds.

[Interviewer / Host]

And you raised 15 million.

[Crystal Etienne]

I did a $15 million deal.

[Interviewer / Host]

So. All right, walk us through that process.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah. So in 2018, now I had a few more employees. We had just moved into our first office. So I was like, you know what? Because I remembered from before, like, this is a full time job that I have to do this. And I joined Jason Calacanis launch program. Jason Calacanis is known for, like, he was the first investor in Uber and stuff like that. Cool. He's real cool. And I said, you know what? If I'm, if They don't take me, I'm not doing it no more. Like I'm not trying to raise anymore. I was trying like for a month at that point again. And then soon as he saw, like I told him the numbers and in the VC world, like the numbers are supposed to talk, right? But not when you, a black woman, it don't. But for him he was like, you haven't raised no money yet. And I think at that point I probably was at maybe like $7 million, which I didn't know at the time. To me that was a little bit like $7 million. Like, oh my God, are they gonna give me money? But he looked at it like, wait a minute, you got $7 million, you got $7 million that you brought in in revenue in this little bit of time and people telling you no. He was like, oh, all in. So I did that program and by the end of that program, it was like a four month program. I actually was flying back to San Francisco every week, probably like two, three times a week. I didn't want to move there because I don't like San Francisco. I would just get on the plane and go every single week. And by the time that that program ended, I had 15 term sheets from investors and then I had one from an investor overseas in the uk who actually had become my investor at that time. And they don't want anyone else in the deal. So I had to turn down the other 15. That reason why I decided to go into the program and then I took the one, the one deal.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Talk about the process, right? We always hear the phrase that the most disrespected woman on the planet is a black woman, especially when it comes to D.C. talk about some of the struggles that you saw, you faced during that process that almost made you say, I'm not doing this no more.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah. So the VC world. Cause once I decided if I'm gonna raise funds, I gotta research like what's entailed with it, everything. So I completely understood it the second time around. Not the first time, but the second time. It's a business transaction. So unfortunately in society, people don't like doing business with black women. It don't matter what we say, what we do, how we look like when it comes to being a business woman, we are just not respected for some reason. So I'm showing up at the table with say $7 million worth of sales and they're telling me no. And I'm like, aren't, like. What I researched was like, isn't the whole purpose for you to make money, like, you have to make your LPs back money. So I'm showing you I have an audience. And I had already had my audience. I knew exactly who my audience was at that time. I had clicked off all the boxes. Whereas if I was a white woman or a white male, you know, you could raise with nothing, just a. Just a simple idea. A black woman just can't do that. So I had met James from Black Ops, and he said, you know what he said, I used to be like you, because I'm walking in there like, I know this, I know that, I know this. And he said, you know what he said? Just. Just make them feel like they on top of the world. And I said, I don't know if I could do that. Like, I really don't. But he said, no, I didn't think I could do it either. And he said, how you do it is even if you know it, don't say it and just tell him that it's a good idea. Like, oh. Like, even if you know it. I did that, and it worked. But why, as a black woman, do I have an even?

[Interviewer / Host]

Well, say that again. Even if you don't know it. Say that again.

[Crystal Etienne]

So even if you do know it. Okay, act like you blink.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Know it.

[Crystal Etienne]

So say. If you say something to me and I know exactly what you're talking about and you're explaining to me in detail, most times people will be like, oh, I know that already. You can't do that as a black woman, like, in the VC world, I have to sit there and say, oh, that's a good idea. Oh, okay, you know what? I think I'm gonna try that. Like, why?

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

That's a great idea. That's so. That's. I mean, it's ridiculous, right? The numbers are there, but this is part of the game that nobody sees.

[Interviewer / Host]

Right?

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Because a lot of times we. We don't even. We don't see. We don't hear the stories of black women in the VC world and trying to raise funds. You said something interesting about your audience, and you knew exactly who that was. And it made me think, well, I feel like your audience is everybody. Every woman is at your audience. So who. Who was the target audience that you're telling who to? The VCs.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah. So when I first launched, I thought it was going to be millennials. Millennials hate my product because it's thicker. My product audience is moms with teen and tweens.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Parents, teens and tweens. Okay.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yep. It's teen and tweens. And I figured that out within the first six months.

[Interviewer / Host]

So were you always, like, was the product ever, like, branded as a black company or.

[Crystal Etienne]

No.

[Interviewer / Host]

So nobody.

[Crystal Etienne]

I always say it in the background. It was just ran, like, corporate. It was ran corporate. Like, what I knew. Like, just run it. When you negotiate, when you talk about it, nobody even knew that Crystal Etienne was the founder. So you're not. I didn't do it on purpose. Like, I just didn't want to. I wanted to run it as a. Not focus on me, but more of the product.

[Interviewer / Host]

So you able to sell to everybody?

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah, I could sell to everybody but the. I know who my audience is.

[Interviewer / Host]

Who's your audience as far as race?

[Crystal Etienne]

White women.

[Interviewer / Host]

White women?

[Crystal Etienne]

Yes.

[Interviewer / Host]

Okay.

[Crystal Etienne]

And I always wanted it to be black women, but with black women, I'm a black woman. I had a daughter. Like, you gotta talk to us differently. Like, black woman is not going to, like, you tell a black woman, okay, put your daughter in the pool with that swimwear with her period. A black woman's gonna be like, I gotta try this out first. Like, what happened? Like, even me, I ain't throwing my daughter, you know, with that. But a white woman will. She's like, this is gonna save the day. And this is how it is. I would. Because I was just different with my daughter. Even when it comes to, like, women's health, like, it's just different. Like a black woman. You know, when I gave my daughter birth control pills when she was going to college, some of my friends was like, you really? Like, I'm like, I'm promoting it, but it's like, no, I ain't promoting it. No, I want to make her and set her up for success. Like, my daughter just graduated law school. She ain't never been pregnant. Because I had those conversations with my daughter, and she was on birth control pills, like, at that time, But a black woman and white women, we just. I don't know, it's just. It's just different. It's just different. And, like, we just. We. We just want to protect our daughters more. I don't want to say white women don't want to protect their daughters, because they do. But black women, we just, like, we can't throw our daughters. We just can't throw you out there to the wolves. We gotta test it first. So it's a different conversation that would have to be said. And the reason why I think the white women are more of my customer base is because what I did in the beginning when you asked me about My competitor, like, being where they were. It was like I went out where they were.

[Interviewer / Host]

And then in, like, promotion and all that. Did you use, like, white women as, like, models and stuff like that?

[Crystal Etienne]

Oh, no, I used everybody. Yeah. Because I wasn't like. Like, the white women just came to me. I didn't ask for them. Like, I love them that they there.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Yeah.

[Crystal Etienne]

And I would love black women to really, like, talk to their, you know, daughters about their health much earlier or their period or their personal care and hygiene. We just, like. It's just like, shunned, like, to talk about.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Yeah, I have the conversations.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah, some people do, but the majority, you know, does not. It's like, I don't want to talk about it.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

It's like, talk to dad. He's a health teacher.

[Crystal Etienne]

That's because you're a health teacher. Yeah.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

I mean, it's cool, though, because, again, it makes the conversation even more comfortable. Right. Because it could. It can come from mom or it could come from dad. And so it makes my daughter like, hey, I can go to both of you for this. That's understandable. Hey, Dad, I need you to go here to get this. So that's great. I want to go to the name change. Right. Because Penny Brock was the name. But at what point is it now when you're raising or trying to raise, you change the name?

[Crystal Etienne]

After I raised.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

After you raised.

[Crystal Etienne]

So after I raised, it got real.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Yeah. So why did you change it? And how do we get to the name?

[Crystal Etienne]

So after I raised. When you raise a fund, deals close. You know, wires start coming in. Like, the pressure comes on now, and I don't ever feel pressure for nothing, but I felt pressure. Like the next day after that first wire came through, I said, okay. Like, I knew what I was getting into. It's a. It's a business deal. So now it ain't just me. It's literally not just me. It's like, now there's a board that. Even though I controlled the board, like, I negotiated very well, my attorney was really good. Negotiated. I still controlled the board, but it's still. You still. You have an obligation and a fiduciary duty, like, to do certain things. Like when you take someone's money, it's not borrowing money from your aunt, your mama. It is a business deal. And that a lot of people don't understand also. So changing the name was because when you raise funds, you are basically telling the world and telling your VCs and all their LPs that gave them the money. I am Going to scale this, and I am going to make you a return. They're not giving it to you, you know, to just sit it there and not do nothing. So you have to start scaling. So the word panty actually is, like, offensive in some countries. Because at first I was like, no. Like, this is because we've never had a problem. No one's ever complained about the name, like, our customers or anything. So I was like, we're gonna lose everything that I built up, like, over these last three years. Well, it was like three and a half years at that time, we're gonna lose everything. And I didn't wanna change your name. And then I was talking to my investors, my investors that were in, and they was like, you know what? Just like, think about it. But we need you to change your name. And then I really thought about. And I said, you know what? Like, I'm all fair game. I really thought about it. I said, you know what? As long as we don't lose nothing, then let's change it. And then that's when I change it to Ruby Love.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Ruby Love. And you talked about having VCs, but a lot of times when people raise capital, they lose equity in their company. And so how did you go about that? Right. Like, you don't want to dilute yourself to the point where you don't have control of the own. The thing that you built.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

So how was that for you?

[Crystal Etienne]

So two things. One, I'm a solo founder, so right off the back, I have the edge there. Solo founder. If you are two partners, you start off with 50. 50. So right there, you got diluted way down. But the most important is not the dilution. It's actually the board that most people don't understand is who controls that board. Because that's when you see founders getting fired and things like that, or saying they stepped down, whatever they want to call it. It's fired, though. Like, if you control the board and the vote is always in your favor, you still got to discuss it. But as far as, like, the equity part of it, that really is not a big deal. But I didn't lose that much equity because I already had. I negotiated because I. I bootstrapped it. Like, I already bootstrapped it to. I think at that point, we was at like $12 million. So I'm not gonna give you 50% of my company. Like, why would I do that?

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

He went into the negotiation knowing that this is the number, whether it was 20%, 30%, this is what it is at this valuation.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Okay.

[Crystal Etienne]

It was a $500,000 legal bill like to negotiate like that whole entire thing. But it worked out all the way in the end. Even to this day, it worked out in my favor.

[Interviewer / Host]

So did you have another round of raising after that? Nope, that was just the first round. That was it.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yep. In 2019.

[Interviewer / Host]

Okay, so. And then you invest. You have a. You have. So let's talk about that. When. When did that start? And but how is that going for you?

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah, so after my company was like all set up like I had like 54 employees. Like everything like the. I put the operation like in sound like where it just operates. I think me and my husband was just like, you know what? Like this is like messed up. Like what happened to me like all these years like building this quick scaling company and it's like really messed up. And then we were like, we know what we want to help people. We want to help black women that are being ignored. And that's when we just said we just going to put our own personal wealth. We don't have no LPs, nothing. We use our own money. Like most of the people that are giving out money is not their own. It's not their money. It's LPs, like. But we use our own funds to do that.

[Interviewer / Host]

And how much money have you invested so far?

[Crystal Etienne]

So we invest all the time. We invest either a thousand to twenty five thousand dollars. Like. Cause we get you like at the, like the. We call it soil. You know, it has like pre seed. We live under pre seed because some people just don't. Some people just don't understand it. And I. My goal and his goal was to get. Take that black woman and like really show her like everything I told y' all of protecting yourself early and not just thinking it's your mom is money. So we invest and just in black women. Black women, period. Like to do it like in not even just like monetary ways. Like we just invest a lot of our time and everything into black women.

[Interviewer / Host]

Has anything worked out so far?

[Crystal Etienne]

No, because everything is all new.

[Interviewer / Host]

Okay.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah, we just started that in 2020, I think. Okay, so no, 2021 actually.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Well, fundamentally, what are you looking for when you're investing? Right? Is it obviously you said black women number one.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

But what, what are you looking for inside of these companies to say, all right, this is worth an investment? And once you've made that, do you stick with them in the sense of like a mentorship?

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah. So we do mentor as far as like what we're looking for we're looking for a company that you believe that can scale, because you could scale anything. Like, it could. It could be a paperclip and that could be scaled. It's the person and how you go about executing that. That's what people don't understand. It ain't really about the idea. It's about, like, what you do with the idea. Like, if I could scale underwear, you know, with a hole in it, like, anything could be done.

[Interviewer / Host]

So what are. What are some of the biggest mistakes that you think people make when they. When they're trying to get VC money?

[Crystal Etienne]

They think it's a loan. They treat it like a loan. I get that all the time. Especially, like, the level of the women that we like, want us to invest, like they don't know anything. So that's what. That's what we started noticing. I would have people cry on the phone to me like, oh, my God. When I tell them, your business is not scalable right now. They don't get the right now. So they think it's a loan. That's one of the mistakes that they made. The second one is they just. They take it personal where you shouldn't take it personal. Like, anything in business, you cannot take that personal. Personal is personal, but business is. Is business. And those are two of the biggest mistakes that especially black women that we.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Make when it comes to. To vc. We've heard both sides of the coin, right? Where it's, you know, what if you don't have to take anybody's money, don't. Because you. You don't want to have to answer to someone. And then obviously there's the other side where it's like, well, if you want to scale and to grow, not because you need the money, but because you want to expand, you do it. Does that in between phase was like, what am I supposed to do? So I know there's plenty of people listening to the show, and they're at that phase. Talk about the pros and cons of doing both, because you've done both, right? You've had the business without it, tried to get it, and obviously you've had the business with the funds raised.

[Crystal Etienne]

And then I also have the business without the VCs, either.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

There you go.

[Crystal Etienne]

So there is no in between stage. It's either, are you able to and willing to deal with what it is to scale your business there. There is no in between. You either gonna take it or you're not. I actually feel a lot of people would be like, oh, but you had a $15 million deal. Like, you know, what are you complaining about? Like, why you don't have VCs anymore? Like, why did you get all your shares back? Like, why did you do that? Why'd you do it? I feel like if I didn't have VCs, my business revenue would be over 200 million at this point because of where I was. I was already on a fast, fast, fast, fast. I feel like vc, for me, for my particular situation was a hindrance.

[Interviewer / Host]

Why?

[Crystal Etienne]

Because we were already so fast and so scaling and it was a very. It was already, you know, when you, like, you think about everything like before you do it, like, that's where the grind.

[Interviewer / Host]

You had to answer to people, now answer to people.

[Crystal Etienne]

And you have to do certain things. So now I had to hire a big C suite where I'm paying people. Everybody in the C suite is getting over $200,000. If you would have told me that prior, I'm like, oh, no. Like, I can't do that. So that's one you have. It's a lot of time consuming. You gotta have board meetings. And board meeting ain't just like getting in a boardroom and just like sitting, talking about stuff. You have to prepare for that. You have to literally, now I have 54 employees. Now I'm responsible for 54 employees that really, I would say that probably half of them wasn't even needed at the time. When you get into vc, they don't tell you. It's like this unspoken thing, like, where it's. They don't tell you and it's not said, but it's like, okay, I gotta do it because it has to be done. I have the money. And now you also feel like. And I'm very frugal, like, when it comes to, like, money. So I don't even spend. And that's one of the problems that me and my VCs actually had, like my, my partners, my investors is that, yeah, okay, I have the money, but that's not relevant to us. Like, VCs go based on. Most of the world goes based on everything on data. And sometimes data is good, don't get me wrong. But sometimes data is not the answer. Like, it's just not. It's like real life, real grind, like in this. And sometimes I would ask them, like, are you, you over here, you over there, across the seas? Like, are you in this building every day? Are you receiving these emails every day? And it's not. So it's a, it's a grind. So VC money is not for everybody. Everybody wants it. Everybody literally wants it because they want the headline. But if you think past the headline and you look under the headline, it's not for everybody.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Could be a hindrance. It sounds like from your experience that taking the VC almost stopped a little bit of the innovation from you. Right. Like, you lost a little bit of the grind that got you to this point.

[Crystal Etienne]

Never lost the grind. It was the grind with the trying to explain it and then now taking time to do that and then like second guessing yourself because you have someone, you have their money, and you're like, okay, I want to do the right thing. Because I want to do the right thing by my investors, and I want to do the right thing by myself, and I want to do the right thing by my customers. And that when you put all of that together, it's a lot for people to deal with past the headline.

[Interviewer / Host]

So you wouldn't have done it?

[Crystal Etienne]

No. That's why I got all my shares back. No.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Okay, so you saw your path to 200 million. It slowed you down. Where is that path now?

[Crystal Etienne]

So what I did last year was I decided, you know what? Like, because we were going for so many years, we were scaling so fast, there were things that, first of all, my VC should have told me. We were still running our own VC firm. I mean, our own fulfillment center, like, in our building. First thing they should have told me was like, don't run a fulfillment center. I don't even know we were in a fulfillment business. But you know when you just keep going, you know that story when I told you I was going home, picking up my son, going to do the things, all I did was just hire new people to do that. But I shouldn't. I shouldn't have outsourced that to A3PL. So last year in 2022.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

3Pl.

[Crystal Etienne]

A3PL?

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

What's that?

[Crystal Etienne]

So A3PL is where they actually ship your stuff.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Okay.

[Crystal Etienne]

Out for you. Like, we don't do no shipping in the building. Like, no more. For, like, since last year, I scaled that out to a 3 PL, which should have been done especially at the rabbit rate that we were shipping. We never had enough people to, like, actually get it out. If you look at our reviews, all of our bad reviews are based on people not getting their item. It's not on the product. It's like, I didn't get my stuff on time. Which is. People say, oh, that's good. Those bad reviews are good. But no, it's like, you have to figure that out. But if I would have went to a three plus years ago, say like in 2016, 17, even when I was only shipping maybe 10, 20 items out. That should have been done right off the bat. And then I also would have not spent so much on payroll because payroll is the biggest expense that that was one. So I had to scale it back in order to prepare it to be sold eventually. So there was so much stuff I had to outsource customer service. One point, we had eight people in customer service service, a customer service department handling customer service. There's no company that should be handling customer service. You should manage customer service, but you only need like one or two people. But we were actually having a full customer service outsource it because now you're just managing the company. That was another thing I did. So I did all of this last year and I scaled the company back. We actually stopped advertising in June of 2000. No, like May of 2022. Up to this day. We still do not advertise right now. I scaled it all the way back.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

So it's worth a mill.

[Crystal Etienne]

Well, we built up over the years, built up almost a million subscribers. Yeah.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

So that's the data.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah, so.

[Interviewer / Host]

So it's a subscription based service.

[Crystal Etienne]

Is that subscription based subscribers? Is that we have a subscription like for like our product, but it's not like our biggest thing. It's just people. We just have a customer base. We have a large customer base.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

So how do you. This is a lot. A lot of people. And this is worldwide, right?

[Crystal Etienne]

Yes, we sell globally.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

This is global. So like when do you add a new product? Because that. Obviously we add them all.

[Crystal Etienne]

Already.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

So this is it.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah. Any more product, we would innovate to a different category.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Underwear, swimwear, activewear.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yep.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Activewear was recently at. Where was that at?

[Crystal Etienne]

No, that was all done at like the first year.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Oh, okay. So you had all those, the three products and we just selling those.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah, it wasn't three products. We have a lot of products. One of our biggest items is actually our first period kit. After like our actual, like our swimwear and our underwear is our first period kit. So it's a kit where parents could talk to their kids when they first get their period. That is like one of our big, big products.

[Interviewer / Host]

Do you.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Are you in schools?

[Crystal Etienne]

No. So I did no retail. I was asked to do retail and I did it once. I was in Macy's once. I pulled my stuff out because I was making way more money online. Retail is just like retail is for branding. Back then I didn't Think like that.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

So it's all online, really. No marketing, and it's super successful. Yeah, this is rare.

[Crystal Etienne]

It is rare, but it's doable. It's a lot of work, but it's doable.

[Interviewer / Host]

Okay, so, all right, so your plan is to sell a company.

[Crystal Etienne]

Absolutely.

[Interviewer / Host]

And you have a timeframe.

[Crystal Etienne]

So back then, when I first raised the funds, it was, you know, they give you seven to 10 years. But now, like I'm preparing it. Scaling a company and then preparing it to sell it is two totally different things. So, yes, like in the now, at this point of view, somebody was to ask me today, like in the next couple of years, because I just put everything operationally sound like the way a company that is going to get acquired should be. I just did that last year.

[Interviewer / Host]

Okay, and what's your rationale for wanting to sell it?

[Crystal Etienne]

Okay, so I think every company and black people are going to kill me because we know how we feel about it. But I think that every company, the majority, I would say 98% of companies, if you are really trying to build like generational wealth and a legacy, you need to sell it. Most people, especially us, as black people, feel a legacy is, I'm a pass it down to my kids. I'm going to do this.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

How can we have anything if you sell everything?

[Crystal Etienne]

Right? What people don't understand that actually explained this to people that I mentor to, like, do you really think that the Hiltons is running the Hiltons still? But we still think of them as running it. No, it was just a legacy. Like, that's what you're known for. And they're going on living their life and doing other things. Like every time a black person, especially a black woman, sells her business, we just seen it happen this year. Every single time it happens. Every. We're all mad when in reality we really should be congratulating that black woman because that's another one of us being able to build that legacy and generational wealth. Like at this point now, we ain't going to be the Mary Kellers. Where you forget that we created the sanitary pad. It's like, no, I made that. Like, I created that and now my kids and my grandkids and this is able to live off of that legacy. And that's what people don't understand. And I think it's because people don't understand, like how VC works, how getting a company acquired works or getting it to IPO works. They just don't understand that. And that's where the I don't want to Call it ignorance, but that's where the, the knowledge needs to be taught. And I, anybody that I mentor, I talk to, I explain that to them. And then they finally get it. They're like, oh, like, if I think about it like that now, I actually get it. It's not like you leaving the black people behind. And it's actually like, no, like, I'm doing this for us because we sold it now. I could cash out. And that legacy is always. You will never lose the founder title. I'm only losing the CEO title. And the CEO title is a lot of work. Like, who wants to do a lot of work? If you think about, like, say, like a Jamaican restaurant, like, just one Jamaican restaurant, like, they be slaving in here. Like, that's why they mad. Every time you go into a Jamaican restaurant, they got an attitude that means the food's good. Yes. But if they actually took that one Jamaican restaurant and scaled it into 10 and then made it a franchise, and then somebody brought that one day, you still always will be that founder. And unfortunately, our kids, they don't want that. They're not kids. I don't work that hard and I don't blame them.

[Interviewer / Host]

What's your exit plan? That's important.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah, the exit plan is important.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Never enter before you know how to exit. So have you had offers along the way already?

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah, I've had offers. Last year. They were lowball because my revenue went down because I stopped advertising and I had to scale it back. But I kept. The reason why I had to do it is because I kept going for years. It was very transactional. Like the company, we got all those sales because it was very, very transactional, but it wasn't prepared to really be like, operational sound to prepare for a sale. So I did. But they gave low offers because, like, the revenue went down because I scaled back.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Any of the people or the company that offered you surprise you at all or was it like your competitors that you knew were watching you and watching the growth?

[Crystal Etienne]

No, no, it was just companies that just come out of the woodworks. We had two offers for, like, to buy it, but it's low balls. I know it's worth way more than that. And you offering it at a time when, like, I'm scaling it back. So all we have to do is just scale it back up. We actually ran out of cash. Like, most people don't even say that. Like, the company ran out of cash.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

How did that. So how did that happen?

[Crystal Etienne]

Operation is expensive. Like, to do all those things that I Need like it is a. It is a lot of money. Like, so first of all, if you running your own fulfillment center, we have a 10,000 square foot warehouse. We had to move that whole entire thing to a 3 PL. That's expensive with trucks. You don't even. That one caught me by surprise of how much it was. So it costs a lot of money. Whereas money that you were using for advertising, now you gotta use it for this. Like, this is business. It ain't personal. Like I always tell people, like, my personal life is a. Okay. Like I ain't got no problems. I ain't got no financial problems. I ain't got no issues at all. Like, I am personally good, but when you ask me about my business, I'm like, oh, Lord, like, take me away. And people, people can't even get that. Like, how is like your business aggravating you? But your personal life is good again because it's business.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

So when you run out of cash, from a business standpoint, I mean, that's gonna. That could affect the personal. Right, Right. No, I mean, if I run outta cash, right? Like our business runs outta cash. A business, A business runs outta cash, right? And I gotta go home and I have a wife. Like you have a husband. Like, how are these, I mean, y' all doing this together?

[Crystal Etienne]

You don't pay yourself. How.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

How are these conversations going at. At home?

[Crystal Etienne]

Well, you always gotta make sure you can pay yourself, right? So running outta cash, we still have a big audience that we still are selling. It's just not being scaled the way it was. Like, that's what people don't understand. Yes, you do run out of money, but every day there are still sales being made. Now you just have to reorganize finances. You gotta cut your payroll down. You gotta do things like that. And those are things that people don't understand. Like, we literally ran out of cash. But we are operationally and we are still in a good position. And then we also have great brand equity and great branding. Whereas we built up a business. I literally built up a business that people want to buy. So we ain't never bad. It's just you might have a headache some days, like, oh Lord. But as long as you could keep the lights on and make your payroll, you know, and get your orders out, because it's a consumer product, it's not service. As long as you can do that, then you're good. You still have a business. And it's still. If I was to shut the business down tomorrow, which it wouldn't but if I say if I did, somebody still will want to buy it because of the brand equity that is there. Yes. So it's. Yes. You rent when you hear people run out of cash. Yeah, they ran out of cash. But, like, was your business in a sound position to keep going, to keep bringing in cash?

[Interviewer / Host]

So you live in a $8 million estate. I do, so, yeah. Talk about the challenges of that.

[Crystal Etienne]

Oh, so that's my personal life. That's where that challenge comes from. It's a lot. Most people be like, oh, my God. Like, I wanna. You know, I wanna. I wanna live in a mansion. And I love it. Me and my husband have lived in. That's what we do. We flip mansions. Right. So living them to maintain them is a lot. My taxes is $100,000. Our landscaping bill last year was like $300,000. It's a lot. So me and him always ask people, like, do you want. Like, I know you wanna live here. I know it look nice. I know you want to drive the Maybach like he does, but do you want to maintain that?

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

It's tough.

[Crystal Etienne]

Everybody always want it, but they don't want to know what comes with it. But for us, that's a business too. Like, we live in the mansion. The mansions take way longer to sell than, like, how people flip houses. It takes way longer. Like, we buy them for cash, we fix them up really fast. And with mansions in the States, you cannot. You can't just put, like, cheap stuff in there. Like, you got to get, like, the good stuff. Like, a refrigerator is like $30,000 like, to go in. So we just have an eye for it. We love to doing it, and then we just like living well.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

So you got the wolf pine.

[Crystal Etienne]

We had wolf at our last mansion. This one we did Viking and true.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Oh, Viking. Yeah. $30,000 for the fridge.

[Crystal Etienne]

It's a lie.

[Interviewer / Host]

So.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Yeah, it's a fact. I've seen that. So. So y' all have out. That's. This is part of the real estate portfolio. Are y' all doing that specifically in New York or y' all. Throughout the New York.

[Interviewer / Host]

Okay.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Long Island.

[Crystal Etienne]

Long Island.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

That's not bad.

[Crystal Etienne]

And it's a hard market. Long island is a hard market because your money is sitting there. Like, we just pay cash for it. So, like, we have money just, like, sitting there. But, like, if you pay $4 million or something in cash and you could get back 8, $9 million, it's okay to sit and wait for that for, like, two years.

[Interviewer / Host]

So what made you want to get into that market of flipping mansions.

[Crystal Etienne]

I just always liked real estate. My grandmother in the 80s, which, when I was younger, I didn't realize it. My grandmother, a black woman, was buying and selling houses in Queens and Long island, which for in the 80s was, like, not easy to do. And she owned 23 houses at one point. And I just loved it, like, going with her, like, fixing up the houses and things like that. What I didn't like, I would never be a landlord because that instance, dealing with her when I was younger, like, as a young child, turned me off from tenants. Like, I called all types of names from her tenants, Collective rent, so I would never be a tenant. I know a lot of people flip and they want to do the Airbnbs. I know that my personality is not for tenants, so the easiest way to do that is to do what I like and I like. I've always loved mansions in the States, so why not do that?

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

So you're selling to the 1%? Yeah, pretty much.

[Crystal Etienne]

That's why it takes, like, a year or two to sell.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Yeah. So do you have a team that helps you renovate these? Or you just. You're doing this yourself? You're renovating?

[Crystal Etienne]

Oh, no, no, no. Not for probation. No, no. We have people that we call in, like real contractors. Yeah. When you're dealing with the States, with these towns, especially in Long Island. No, you got to do everything right. You got to get permits, you get an extension. You can't just, like, throw the walls up. No. They will come and tell you to take all your walls down, because I think they're. My husband told me it can't be like pvc. It has to be like, a particular type of pipes and stuff like that. So. No, we have people that come in that we hire companies to do that, that we've been dealing with over the last couple of years, though.

[Interviewer / Host]

Okay, so what's next? What's next for you next year or two? I know obviously planning to sell your company, so you're working on that, but. Yeah. Any other initiatives? Anything else that you guys are working on? Looking forward to.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah. So preparing for the sale in the next couple of years to keep flipping mansions in the States. Probably our next one, though. We're going to live in that one and then do another one because it's the first one we lived in through construction. And then the next thing is we took our investment firm and now made it a brunch. Black woman conversations that actually scaled up real quick. Like, we just even just. We just went on Instagram with That maybe in like April. And we almost have like 10,000 followers for that. That is bringing a group of. Because I have high end friends and I have low end friends. So bringing a bunch of women at different levels because at every level everybody's still always got the same problem, especially as a black woman. As a black woman or a black man, we all usually have the same problem. I don't care how much money you make or what level of status you at, we still deal with the same stuff. And it's been working. We've done. My team, I have a small team for that that handles like the social media and the operations for that we do the brunches and we do them in my. We do them at my house.

[Interviewer / Host]

Yeah.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

We say high income and relaxed income.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yes.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Never low.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yes.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Just relaxed.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yeah.

[Interviewer / Host]

Well, thank you. This is a great conversation. How can people follow you on social. Your website information.

[Crystal Etienne]

Yes. So my company is rubylove.com. my Instagram is. I am Krystal Etienne. But bear with me on that one because I only got on like a year and a half ago. I think I'm just even learning Instagram. And then our investment firm, if they're people are interested for me and my husband to look at their company or if they want to be invited to the brunch, they could go to black women conversations or cajunco.com.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Yeah. And all y' all competitors out there that end with an X, stop playing. You know who you are, who we love. That's the brand.

[Crystal Etienne]

Exactly.

[Interviewer / Host]

Sure. Well, thank you guys for rocking with us. We'll see you next week. Peace.

[Co-host or Interviewer (Health Teacher)]

Peace.

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[Crystal Etienne]

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[Crystal Etienne]

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[Crystal Etienne]

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[Crystal Etienne]

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