How a lightbulb moment led Poplight to a Shark Tank deal

Podcast summary

Join us in a conversation with Rose and Caroline as they share their remarkable journey from moving into an old house in Denver with limited outlets to inventing the Poplight wall light, landing on Shark Tank, and running a successful Kickstarter campaign.

Discover their insightful tips on market research, prototyping, and the importance of building a community. Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or a fan of Shark Tank, this episode is packed with valuable lessons and incredible entrepreneurial spirit.

Check out their website here (head here if you want to order a Poplight) and their  Kickstarter campaign here

Full transcript

George: 0:00
Welcome, Rose and Caroline. I am so excited to speak to you both after seeing you on Shark Tank. And I’m going to start you off with a big congratulations because I saw that your Kickstarter campaign just started shipping. The first people have gotten their Poplights. Yes.

Caroline: 0:14
Yeah, they did. Yeah. Thank you for having us.

Rose: 0:17
Yeah. Yeah. It’s a really, it’s a perfect week to talk to you because this is this is the kind of the door partly closing on our Kickstarter. So it’s like a perfect time to revisit it and go through it.

George: 0:27
Perfect. Okay. So for folks who have lived under a rock, who are not on TikTok, who don’t watch Shark Tank, who are not on Kickstarter, what is Poplight?

Rose: 0:36
Poplight is a wall light that Caroline and I created because we needed it. So we had just moved in together. And so we live in Denver. We had moved into this older neighborhood in Denver with older homes. And so it was like, the worst electrical outlet access possible. Like I think in our living room, the outlet was in the middle of the floor. In our bedroom, there was a single outlet. It was by the doorframe. It was just like, so inconvenient in such an old house. So we wanted to put in wall lights and we learned that it was really expensive. really messy and just not something we wanted to tackle, especially because we knew we were going to move soon. Our bedroom was teeny tiny. So like wall lights were what made sense for us. And we were like, Oh, we’ll just buy like a cute stick on wall sconce, but it didn’t exist. And then we just, and we were like, okay, it doesn’t exist, whatever. And we’re not going to do something. We’re not going to add a light that’s like too utilitarian. We really care about what our space looks like and feels like we wanted our home to feel like a home. And we kept coming back to this problem of we really want like a cute wall light option. So we basically came up with the idea for it because we needed it. And then we had almost a year of ideating, really thinking about the product design. And then maybe six months to a year into that process. We were like, we need to take this seriously. This is the, we really think this is a strong product idea.

Caroline: 1:53
Yeah. And I, this is Caroline. I’m pretty handy. Like I can do electrical work. I can do drywall, but like our house was old and I’m sure, yeah. Something always goes wrong when you open up a wall. And so sometimes even if you’re handy, the project is just like not a possibility. And yeah, like Rose was saying, we really like aesthetics and a tap light was just not going to cut it for us. And Rose has a lot of ideas. She’s like constantly looking at the world in a way that I find really unique where she’s like ideating and finding gaps and solutions to problems. And so she comes up with ideas of things we can do all the time, but this one really stuck.

Rose: 2:29
Yeah. And then a lot of product testing and trying to find product market fit, like not just, I’m going to try and be nice to you, but really trying to testing with Facebook ads could we get people to give us their email if they were interested in this was a long answer.

George: 2:47
That is a great answer, but I just want to rewind a little bit because a lot of people have ideas and you just moved in together and. Sure. You have this idea for a light, but there’s a big gap between having that idea and your friends saying, Oh, that’s great. And actually going ahead and doing it. So I’m assuming you’re not professional lamp makers right now. At least at the time you had full time jobs or other obligations. So then what was it that made you so convinced that you were going to, in addition to the life that you already have. Make lights.

Rose: 3:21
That honestly, the answer was just like a lot of research looking out into the marketplace and being like, is there anything like this? Is it unique enough that if we make it, it’ll be interesting and exciting. If we were to make it, what would be our plan for getting it to people? We’ve obviously leaned in a lot to organic social media because we were like, when we thought about this and the idea for it, we were like, this is a very Instagrammable product. That’s a great and approachable way for us to bring this to market. Cause I think if your product isn’t like a sexy visible product, it’s hard to be like, yeah, it’s a social media product. So just thinking Hey, okay, that’s approachable. We could maybe think about that. And then just like leaning into There’s nothing out there like it, the products that are out there that are like close to it are missing features that we think we can create.

Caroline: 4:07
Yeah, Rose is an economist by trade. And so she thinks about, the numbers, the markets. The selling points a lot. And before we decided to move ahead with actually finding someone to help us with the renderings and like the 3D printing, she did a lot of market research and also a lot of AB testing, just being like, is someone interested? Would they click on an advertisement for a wall light that looked generally like this and have these features? So we did a lot of forethought about whether or not this was like a viable product for the market. And Rose is, we always say Rose is the like math and I’m the buyer. So like between us, we really thought through the different parts of consumerism and selling. So I would also say, do your research and then also pull, get other people’s brains involved. Because when you look at it from one angle and one perspective, you’re going to miss things.

George: 5:00
Yeah. So what I would love to know is. Obviously your journey by now is sort of, famous, right? You guys did a Kickstarter, you went to shark tank you’re selling now. Those are many big steps, but for folks who are listening, who are a couple thinking of, starting something like this, that have a great idea that don’t necessarily have institutional funding, VC funding, what kind of costs and things and processes do you go through before you even hit that first milestone of launching? Your Kickstarter because I’m sure like you just mentioned rendering 3D printing all of that costs money and you need to find folks to help you with that. Can you just break down what those steps were and roughly what it costs to get to that point?

Rose: 5:44
For sure. Yeah, absolutely. That’s the hardest part. And unfortunately, and I don’t think there was a way around this for us because we just didn’t know what we were doing, but you waste a lot of money in the beginning with people that tell you they can do something that they can’t, and you don’t have enough experience to know. We spent a lot of money on ridiculous so for example, we were working on 3d renderings of pop light and you do a lot of prototyping in the beginning. And those are all 3d printed in the early stage for a product like ours. And we got a 3d print from a product designer we were working with. And so our products at wall light, it’s like, it’s wall light size. We got this 3d print. It came in a humongous box. It was like, it’s three feet across. It is humongous. And we, when you pay for 3d print, you pay for the material to print it and the time it takes to print it. And then also the shipping, the weight, the size. So we paid so much money for this absolutely ridiculous 3d print. And we just didn’t know, like we didn’t ask the right questions and it took so much time to find a team that could help us get to the quality of product we wanted. Along the way, it was just like so many U turns of just making mistakes and then finally getting the professionalism and experience to I like this is my Caroline always tells me because I’m always trying to be like, how can we save a little money in the business by taking a shortcut? You really can’t with design and quality. You have to pay for that quality. And what we ended up doing is working backwards, finding a product we liked and finding out who made that. And then eventually you just make connections along the way. So once you find like a really high quality design team, they’re going to know a factory that they trust. They’re going to know a packaging design team that they trust. And then those connections start happening. And even if they’re referred to you, you still have to do your homework and talk to other people. Brands. We’ve totally messed up on that too, of trusting somebody’s referral and then finding out it wasn’t a good fit for us, but there’s no, the, I really just think you have to make mistakes and then you’ll learn.

Caroline: 7:42
We think a lot about how you can have two of these three characteristics. You can have time, you can have money, or you can have quality. And in thinking about this product, neither of us wanted to compromise on quality. Like it was really important to us that we delivered a product that was, Fantastic. Like we really wanted it to be something that people weren’t like, I like this, but, and obviously there’s going to be things that people would want to change and we’re so happy to receive feedback and iterate, but we really wanted to not compromise on quality. And then the balance that we strike is that I would always like to spend more money and Rose would always like to spend more time on something. So she’s always like, how do we do this on the cheap? And I’m like, how do we do this? So that we can have a little bit more time to focus on parts of the business that potentially might have more of a return on investment. And so balancing that is really important, but was Rose was saying, it is really trial and error, but something that we leaned into is. People giving us their recommendations, people they’ve worked with, had a good experience. And even if you get referrals and you get people that they’ve worked with and talk to them, like really ask hard questions and also ask people what questions to ask, because those who have gone through it really don’t want you to make the same mistakes that they made. And obviously take it with a grain of salt. The way that you do business is going to be different than someone else. But ask them what they wish they’d known. Ask them what they wish they’d asked. Ask them, what regrets they have. And then really try and focus your vetting with that information that you glean from people who have already, dug themselves into a little hole and had to work their way back out.

George: 9:21
Those are great questions that I’m actually going to ask you in a little bit. What, what do you wish that you had known, but just just to drill down on this a little bit, because I get this question a lot from folks. Do you have a ballpark number of what it took you know, you have all that product, like roughly what do you spend to just get to a certain point where you can take pretty pictures?

Rose: 9:40
It totally depends on your product, obviously but we spent about$40,000 on our mold and tooling. But that’s not that’s not like the end of the story. And then we were, ready to go making thousands of pop lights. I think in total we spend about$70,000 really getting everything set up, designing the product, perfecting the tooling. Cause there’s changes that still need to happen even when you get to the tooling phase. And then of course, with once you have the tooling done, we were ready to manufacture thousands of pop lights, something went wrong and we had to get more tooling made because the tooling we made the first time turns out couldn’t manufacture the amount of units we needed for a particular piece. So it’s just basically. If you think you have a budget, you’re wrong. Like you’re going to need more than you thought. And this is an interesting part about, I’m sure we’ll talk more about like the Kickstarter specifically, but like we thought we knew 60 percent of what we would need to know in the Kickstarter to run a successful Kickstarter, give people reasonable timelines, get the product to market in hindsight, we probably knew 2 percent of what we needed to know because you just have to go through it to learn it.

George: 10:47
Yeah. Okay. So roughly$70K just to get the product done and with the tooling and with some setbacks, which is not bad, which is not bad at all. And again, this obviously varies per product. But yeah, thanks for sharing that. I just think people like to Have these different numbers. All so you’ve done all that. You’ve developed the product. You’ve you did the tooling before the Kickstarter. Is that right?

Rose: 11:12
I think so. Yeah, we had went into the Kickstarter a little naively being like, okay, we have our tooling. We’re ready to manufacture. The Kickstarter money will help us pay for our purchase order. But obviously it wasn’t A to Z like that.

Caroline: 11:27
Yeah. There were so many things that went wrong along the way. Yeah. We were really proud of ourselves. We were like, we are ahead of schedule. We will deliver this, before people even, can forget about the product. And then obviously. There was a problem with the water in the Panama canal. There are just so many issues that you cannot control for. But we, yeah, we thought we were ahead of schedule and honestly, everyone that we’ve talked to who’s done a Kickstarter is of the same experience. You can be as confident as you can be. But that’s also part of the beauty of Kickstarter, right? People are there with you from the beginning. And. Yeah, we’ll get into that. I’m sure. Yeah.

George: 12:04
Okay. So the Kickstarter is that, that first big milestone then in your journey. This is where people learn about it for the first time, or at least, get to engage with you and support you. You got funded within, The first hour, I believe 20 minutes. 22 minutes. There we go. So how does that happen? How does one get funded within the first 22 minutes?

Caroline: 12:28
You have a little social media mama named Rose. Rose has just like really tackled this from all angles. She really built up an audience around, the journey, the story, the product, and really made sure that people were like engaged and excited and also had some buy in. We had people vote on the colors that we were going to produce. We were constantly getting feedback. Anyone who signed up for our listserv, we would email them and be like, hi, how’d you find out about us? Tell us what you’re looking for in a light. And so she really did a fantastic job building community before Kickstarter happened or started. And we were up in our kitchen at 3am prepping, making sure everything was ready to go. And I think the excitement that was built around that was really Just the springboard for our minds being blown. 22 minutes was not what we expected at all.

George: 13:22
No, that’s crazy. And is that, and that social media presence and all the traffic was that organic Tik TOK, or was it some paid ads as well?

Rose: 13:30
Yeah we did run paid ads. We spent, I want to say about$200 to$500. We spent$500. The month of the Kickstarter. And that was just to capture email addresses because along with the organic social media posting, I think the most important thing to do before the Kickstarter is build an email list. We also did, we used the kick boom. Is that what they’re called? jep? No. The Kick Boom method. They have a book called Crowdfunding. The black book that I bought for everyone I knew. that. I can send you the link’cause it is a really helpful book, but we set up like a VIP. Process where people could deposit a dollar and get early access to our Kickstarter deals. And that worked really well because then you can do a little bit of inference about okay, somebody gave me their credit card for just a dollar, not me, but like they, they deposited a dollar. That means they’re probably pretty high intent that when the Kickstarter goes live, I should expect maybe 30 percent of those people to actually buy product. And then you can think about the math there. But we were able to. I think we had about 6, 000 emails when we went live with our Kickstarter. And we’ve been engaging those emails. We were talking to people. We also, something that’s really important and I think especially more important now, like in the last few months, more than ever, is that it’s getting harder to send marketing emails because the rules around Around sending emails are getting stricter. And so what we did was we sent emails to people that engaged with them, ask them to respond to us and answer a question. What color Poplight would they like? What would they like to see in the product? And once you do that, you go from being like a spam email or a marketing email to being in their inbox, which meant we were like front and center. And I think that’s really important. And that helped us gain higher quality email leads because you can be like one of millions of marketing emails that somebody gets every day. But once you’re in the inbox, it’s really powerful.

George: 15:15
That is very advanced stuff, by the way. That is because like you, this is, I do this for a living and this, and when I say this, it blows people’s mind. But is that’s such a, that’s such a great tip for email deliverability to have a conversation with folks and ask questions in your marketing emails, that is incredibly important. And yeah, to your point that it’s getting harder and harder every day to land in that primary inbox. Yeah. And this is where so many people. They’ll spend so much money on collecting those leads. And then if it lands in, in promotions or in spam, it’s, that’s just money that, yeah, super, super smart the Tiktok aspect, was that something that you were already doing? Before launching your Kickstarter, did that come after

Rose: 15:58
we were doing it? Okay, TikTok I love like I personally have so much fun on TikTok I laugh all the time when I’m looking at TikTok and so when we made TikToks and we thought about our social media presence, we were like, We want this to be fun. We thought about brands that we love watching their TikTok and we were like, we personally just can’t be serious people. So our TikTok should be a reflection of that. And so we just leaned into making it funny or as funny as we could make it. Still being awkward camera shy people. And I was just making content and I would try and learn from it. So I would look at my videos and be like, okay, this one did better. More people watched it. More people liked it. It got more comments and I’m noticing it was better lit. It was a natural light. It looked better versus this video. It was a little darker. It didn’t do as well. And then I would notice other things. Like I started this video with a question, it got more engagement. And so just looking at just trying and trying. And then also not being embarrassed to like, if you find a template for the video that works, just keep doing it. And that, that started to kind of work, we were getting like a few thousand views, but then we had one go viral and it was really just showing how the product worked. And that was like an aha moment where I was like, I keep trying to like, Think I’m like this funny Tik TOK creator and I’m like in my thirties on this platform that’s made for like much younger people. And I was just like, I just have to show people what this is. And that Tik TOK went viral. And that was actually like a huge part of our early like momentum because that’s how shark tank found us. A producer’s wife saw our Tik TOK and then a producer reached out to us and I didn’t respond to his email for three weeks because I thought it was. a phishing email. I was just like, this is not real. We were like, no. Yeah. They don’t want to talk to us. But that TikTok, it just put us in front of more people and people were talking about us. And then brands started reaching out to us. Retail stores started getting more excited about us. It just helped us. It proved to me that just posting on social media, it can be embarrassing. You feel like you’re making a fool out of yourself or I do sometimes, but it’s just a way to reach people that might be able to be. Help you with something or you learn something or you get connected to something, but just being top of mind for people is the most important thing.

George: 18:07
Yeah, and I think it’s interesting what you said about a B testing your way to. Performing tiktoks because I think a lot of people feel like there’s just no way of forcing success on tiktok because it just it happens or it doesn’t and you don’t know where you’re going to go viral, but you’re basically saying that you have a methodology to this or you’re looking at if a video performs well, what did I do in that video and down to the lighting and how you start it? So You can a b test your way to a viral tick tock is what you’re saying.

Rose: 18:35
I’m trying my best. I’m not saying I have the formula figured out. Like the algorithms are it can be a little frustrating because you’re like, all these videos got hundreds of thousands of views. And then I post one and it gets 10 views like what’s going on here, but you just have to keep trying. And I think it’s easy. I see creators do this less so brands cause brands, I think have to post, but I see creators get frustrated and be like, I’m done. If they’re working against me, I really just don’t think it’s like that. I think those. Platforms incentivize you to post every single day and we’ll get busy and we’ll stop posting as much. And that’s really just like us not prioritizing social media. And then you see that you see how that affects your reach. So it’s really just about, I think, just continuing to try.

Caroline: 19:16
Yeah, absolutely. Rose has just gotten curious. I think that’s like the methodology. Just be really curious. Like this one worked, that one didn’t. What’s the difference between the two? Let’s try this with a little tweak. Are we getting closer? But then also just noticing your sample size, right? If you post three things and you’re like, none of them worked, you posted three things, keep going. Yeah, just get really curious.

George: 19:38
All right. So you have this. This momentum from Tik TOK already building up, you’re running some paid ads, you’re doing the, you’re warming up your email list. You’re making sure you’re getting to the primary inbox. You’re doing a reservation funnel. So that’s a lot. So no surprise there that you got funded in 22 minutes, because that is actually, you’re doing the work. So the campaign launches within 22 minutes, you’re fully funded. Then what? How do you continue to grow that campaign further?

Rose: 20:06
Yeah we kept creating content so you get to them. It’s so hard and everything has been like this, but you work so hard for the moment when your Kickstarter goes live, it goes live. You’re exhausted, but you have to keep going. You have to keep making content. You have to keep emailing people. You have to email the people that have already backed you and thank them and let them know that things are coming. And there’s, you’re so excited. They’re on this journey with you. You just have to keep going. And it’s so hard because like Caroline said, because we’re on mountain time, we had to wake up really early to start the Kickstarter. It’s a whole day experience. It’s actually many weeks. Yeah, but you just have to keep going because that you have to. And I’ve learned this because I’ve made this mistake. I did this with our first viral tiktok when we were telling you about I didn’t keep going. I lost the momentum and then I just start from scratch again. And so with the Kickstarter, we really tried to keep the momentum. We didn’t do a great job of that because a lot of Kickstarters, we didn’t deliver our product when we thought we could. And it was really challenging to keep the vibe fun and light through that experience. I think a lot of Kickstarter, Kickstarters fall into that space. I’m not proud of it and I wish it hadn’t gone that way. But we’re really excited to be shipping now, but I think keeping the momentum going is challenged. So you’re just personally exhausted. You just have to keep going though.

Caroline: 21:16
Yeah. And we really care about our customers and their experience. And we have funded our own Kickstarters and had them come super late or funded other people’s Kickstarters. And we really just tried to be as transparent as possible. It’s Hey, this is what’s happening. And, taking accountability for the things that we can control and also just like understanding that there’s. A limit to Filling the Panama canal. Although we would have, if we could.

George: 21:44
You seem like very hands on people, but you just cannot go to the Panama canal and unclog it yourself. Like the DIY stops somewhere at a certain point. Yeah. Do you like our cat in

Rose: 21:56
the background?

George: 21:57
I love your cat. I love your cat. For the, yeah, for the people who are listening, we saw, we see a beautiful black cat and I, and also on your social media, so I saw you have the dog as well.

Caroline: 22:06
Yeah, it’s a family affair. She’s sleeping down here at our feet. Yeah.

George: 22:10
I do think, just, this is a bit of a tangent, but the pets and the way that you do your TikTok, which is very clearly in your own home and with your own family, it does really help. Because you are up against Amazon sellers from China that also make some form of, wall battery lights and whatnot. But they can never recreate that personal feeling and that personal connection with an audience that you can as actual creators, a duo, a married couple that is working on their dream. And so that, that did actually strike me as very, maybe not, maybe it is, or it isn’t intentional, but it did strike me very efficient that you’re able to build this connection through your social media by showcasing your actual life. Was that a choice?

Caroline: 22:59
I think it was the financial choice. It’s just it’s us at our kitchen table. That is probably headquarters. We’re currently on our couch. I think for the longest time it was just like, this is what we can do and afford. And we’d go to a friend’s house and we’d be like, Hey, can we put Take a couple of photos of pop light in your living room. Go to a friend’s house, hang out and bring a pop light because we needed to take photos. And we’d be like, we’ve exhausted our home and we’d bring them a pizza. And we just realized over time, like that is the most fun. Like it is just us in like my DSLR from like my high school photography class. And just like really winging it on Photoshop. But yeah, it started out as the only choice we had. And then as we’ve gone on, we realized that it works for us. It works for our community. And we have a really fun time doing it.

Rose: 23:51
Yeah. I think people do want to see you in your home being real. I think like just with what you said, people want to buy products from real people. Especially real people who have the problem that their product is trying to solve. And I wish I could say it was like our genius branding to make it feel like it was us at home, but it was really just we like, even with the Kickstarter video, we got quotes to have a professional like studio made video and we couldn’t afford it. So we made it ourselves. We shot that on an iPhone and Caroline edited it. And it is, I think it’s perfect. I wouldn’t have paid for a studio version if I had known Caroline could create that. And she learned how to create it while she made it. And it’s amazing. And it just it all came down to us being like, we can’t afford it. What can we do at home? And then the other thing is now that we have a little bit more money to play with Caroline, Studio imagery, it doesn’t perform as well. People want to see you like naturally lit in your home.

George: 24:45
That is true. That is so true. We run a lot of ads for a lot of folks and then we’ll get the most perfectly pixel, perfect design thing with logos and whatnot. And they spent a fortune on designer. And performance is like zero. And then we just take like a random screenshot from one of the B roll things that was lost somewhere on the Google drive. And it performs the best because yeah, it’s just attractive to people to see real stuff, right? You don’t want to, you’re scrolling on social media. If you see something’s an ad. You want to skip the ads. You want to see the real stuff. So

Rose: 25:14
yeah, also consumers are so sensitive and aware not sensitive in a bad way, but you and I, we can all look at something and be like, this is an AI generated image. I can look at this. I can tell it’s fake. I can look at this. I can tell it was like really Photoshopped and consumers see that too. You’re scrolling through Instagram. You look at a picture. You’re like, I’m pretty sure this is fake and people can see that in your content that you create too. I do think there’s a place for edited images, maybe on like your product pages, maybe in your Kickstarter photo imagery of like your product, but I think in live content, people really want to connect with someone. Yeah,

George: 25:47
So you made your Kickstarter a huge success and then you went on Shark Tank. This, I love speaking to folks who have been on Shark Tank because I’m one of those people that has just been watching the entire Show since day one, you didn’t have to audition. You actually had someone reach out to you who you then thought was a scammer and you didn’t reply to them. While there’s thousands of people queuing for hours outside the Las Vegas convention center just to, have an audition, but okay. That’s you got that down. What happens next?

Caroline: 26:20
So a lot of work, right? They reach out. We had a chat with them, made sure they were real. Google the email. It was like Max Wedlow. Are you real? And then we got assigned a production team and our producers were these two incredible women who are just amazing. So supportive, such badasses really brought the energy, the expertise. And we had such a positive experience. There was a lot of work to be done. You do have to provide a lot of numbers, a lot of information, but they really have it streamlined. Like they’ve been doing this for years and years. And so the process is Really well coordinated. But there’s a lot of like work to give them all the information that they need to prove that we’re real people in a real business. And then it really went pretty quickly. We got the go aheads. We practiced our pitch. I swear. Anytime we were in the car, Anytime we had a down moment, it was like, Rose, tell us about your numbers. Caroline, tell us about the future of pop light. And we would just rehearse constantly.

George: 27:20
And I’m guessing there’s two parts of this, right? There’s the financial part or the due diligence and the business side of things, and then there’s the creative part. Now, I don’t know if you can go into this, but someone told me that. For what we see on tv, what you bring to the set. You were in, in a bed and you had this wall with the pop lights. You have to provide that yourself or you have to pay for that yourself. Is that correct?

Caroline: 27:41
I actually

Rose: 27:41
dunno how much of this we’re allowed to share, I guess I just don’t know. Yeah, because that’s fair. And we’ve talked to other shark tank people. We’ve learned things from them that we were maybe told differently. So I just don’t know what they try. I just don’t know. Sorry. Maybe we can say, and we had, and I, what I can say is we had such a great experience that we take it so seriously to be respectful of Everything they asked us to do because the experience was so positive.

Caroline: 28:06
What we can say is what they can do for you, they will. Yeah.

Rose: 28:09
Exceptional. Incredible team.

Caroline: 28:11
Going into doing like reality television. I was feeling pretty hesitant. I am like a full time individual and couples therapist. And part of my whole spiel is I am not that known by the people who come to see me. And then I was like, it will be on national television, winging it. And the experience was like very heartfelt and kind and supportive. There was never a moment where I was like, you just want a bit or like a piece of feedback or something you can put on the internet. It was really fun. Really supportive is great.

George: 28:44
One of the things that also I think is crazy about shark tank. And I think this is public knowledge is that you are, first of all, you’re not guaranteed that they’re going to air your pitch, right? So you can go through all of this, the practicing in the car, the, the paying for your own says, I not even have an error, but I also heard that some folks aren’t there even cut from the pitch selection on the day off or like the day before I recording. And you have no idea if this is actually going to happen. Is that right?

Rose: 29:13
Yeah, it’s a gamble. Yeah, it’s, let’s just say you’re maybe an anxious person who’s already at a pretty high level of anxiety. The whole experience is very like from finding out they want to talk to you to doing I think we had a six or eight month process of just when they, by the time they reached out to, by the time we filmed, we had been talking to them a lot. And the whole time they’re like letting you know it might not happen. And then you go there and you’re on set and they’re still telling you it might not happen. And then in our experience, it’s I guess this is normal, but I don’t actually have experience in it, but it’s it’s TV. So the schedule is changing all day. So we got there for what we thought would be an early filming and we didn’t film until late into the evening. So like you’re there all day at a level 10 waiting to do your best. And by the time you go in there, you’re like, I don’t have anything left in me and you just have to do your best. But yeah, the whole thing is there’s a lot of unknowns. And I, I think, and I’ve learned this through every step of this process. The entire pop light experience is you can’t bet on anything. Like nothing is a sure bet until it happens. Yeah.

Caroline: 30:10
Until it aired. We filmed and they still were saying like, you’re not guaranteed an air date. Yeah, you could not edit. Something could come up. They might cut an episode for some reason. It could be legal issues. Yeah, there’s

Rose: 30:23
something. Yeah, there’s a lot

Caroline: 30:24
of things

Rose: 30:25
that can go wrong.

Caroline: 30:25
Yeah, but they’re very clear with you about that the whole time. Like they let you know what the risk is and then you get to make an informed decision.

George: 30:33
Yeah, but it is just from a meta perspective, right? A few years prior to that, You’re just a couple moving in together, looking for a wall light. And then all of a sudden you’re pitching like on national TV reality. There’s a level of, like resilience and flexibility and just that you just have to get through this journey. It’s like a

Rose: 30:57
fever dream. It’s like everything that’s happened, even this week, starting to ship our stress already to ship pop lights for Kickstarter backers the whole time. I’m like, I don’t know if this is, if I’m dreaming this because it’s. It’s all happening so fast, but at the same time, it’s so slow. But yeah it, a lot has happened and there’s so many things that have happened that when we started pop light, we were like, maybe in five years, this will be something we can think about doing maybe in three years, this will come across as a, like a feasible opportunity, but everything’s happened so much faster than we thought. And it is a lot, like we talked a lot about whether or not we wanted to be on Shark Tank, is this who we are? As a

Caroline: 31:31
pre order product? Yeah, it didn’t make sense for our business. We only had prototypes. Let’s just say that. They were not finished products. And

George: 31:38
Tooling samples is what you called it on the episode, right? Yeah,

Caroline: 31:41
exactly. Tooling samples. So we had our tooling made. They were, like, as close to production as we could get them. But they were far from perfect. Yeah.

Rose: 31:48
And

Caroline: 31:48
so

George: 31:49
Lori gave you a compliment though.

Rose: 31:50
She did. And I almost blacked out because I was like, Oh my God, if Lori thinks they’re okay, because you, as the person making the product, your standards are so high. Like you’re at us as the way we want it to run this business. Caroline was saying, we cared so much about the quality. And when we brought those samples to Shark Tank, I was like, these are bad. They’re going to see right through this. So when Lori said that, I was like, I need to dial it down.

Caroline: 32:14
Yeah.

Rose: 32:15
Yeah.

Caroline: 32:16
But to your point it absolutely is a whirlwind and it requires a lot of flexibility and we both prioritized being flexible for pop light. And then also just my job is flexible. I am my own boss. So there’s a lot of responsiveness that could be allowed. But yeah, things are going to come out of left field and we decided to just Roll with it and make it work and pinch ourselves as we went.

George: 32:45
And you got a deal with Mr. Wonderful. Tell us about that. Has that closed? Are you in due diligence? How does that work after shark tank?

Rose: 32:53
Yeah, there’s a long, due diligence is a long process. The sharks, from what I’ve heard and from our experience with Kevin, they have it down to a science, they’re doing this all the time, so I don’t think it’s anything like. I don’t think it’s anything like if we were like talking to a VC and starting from scratch, the sharks are like, this is their bread and butter. We’re still talking to Kevin. It’s a long process. But the team, it’s just it was so surreal to like when the deal happened and we shook his hand and then he walked up and, or he walked up to us and took our hands, I was like, I cannot believe this is happening. That was for me the moment where I was like, because when you’re in the shark tank, it’s just felt like I was like giving a speech in high school. I just totally blacked out and it made it real when we shook his hand. That was like for me when I came to, but like all of the sharks were so nice and Kevin and his team have been so awesome and they have they have communities and meetups and that’s been really nice. So we’ve met cause we’re in Denver. We’ve met other Kevin’s invested in all those people we’ve met have been like phenomenal support systems because they’re all doing the same thing you’re doing. They’re trying to build a business. They’re trying to balance their families. Like it’s just, it’s been awesome to learn from other people that have been on shark tank.

George: 34:02
That’s amazing.

Caroline: 34:04
And regardless of whether or not you’re on shark tank, I think I have mentioned this before, like people are happy to share their information with you like it is so isolating to build a business from your kitchen table and feel like you’re making huge mistakes and doing something that you should have known better about. And the reality is that we’ve all been there and we will continue to be there. And the Shark Tank community has been really phenomenal and giving us recommendations and resources. But just reach out to people if you have questions and you want to know how they’re doing things. Like I would say nine times out of 10 people will make time for you. Yeah.

George: 34:40
Amazing. What is next for Poplight? You’ve you’re shipping your Kickstarter this week as we’re recording. You’ve done Shark Tank. What happens next for you guys?

Rose: 34:52
I know Caroline wants a vacation. Honestly, we’re expanding our color line for pop light. So we love our colors right now. Our community chose a lot of them and we’re hoping to roll out more colors. The end of the summer, early fall, next year, we’ll focus on new designs. So we’ll be rolling out more pop light designs, but it’s really just about getting better at the things we’re just okay at expanding. We’re going to bring on people to help us with some aspects of the business that have outgrown the two of us, which is going to be, I think, really great for us personally, but also just like great for our brand to just bring in people that have a lot of experience and can help us grow. But I think it’s really easy to have this moment where you’re like, we’re going to do everything now. We’re going to do everything. We’re going to drop a million designs. We’re going to do a thousand colors, but we really try and be like what works for us, it’s two people that are doing this and we want to do everything to such high quality.

Caroline: 35:42
And

Rose: 35:42
I think it’s just about staying focused on what our customers want. But I think for the next month, we’re going to be obsessed with customer feedback. We’re going to try and FaceTime or get on zoom calls with as many customers as possible. Ask them how their pop light experience is going. And it’s just gonna be about perfecting from there.

Caroline: 35:58
Yeah we are very cognizant of the fact that we have been a preorder product up until this week. And so I think we both had some fears around are people going to love it as much as we do? Also, some of the parts of the product that we obsess over quality wise we’re like little customers. Notice the things that we’re really worried about. Will we get feedback on things that we didn’t even consider? So we really just want to spend some time fine tuning that customer experience, making sure the product is something that people love in their homes. We’ll recommend to others we’ll grow with them. And then from that experience. Building off of that into our new product lines and our new color ways and just making sure that this is a brand that people love like we do.

George: 36:40
That’s super exciting. And is this your full time job now, or you’re still working? For Rose it is?

Rose: 36:46
It is for me. It’s full time for me. For Caroline, it’s probably more full time than she would

Caroline: 36:50
like. Yeah, I’m a individual and couples therapist, and so that’s my full time job. But we do a lot of work on the weekends. We do a lot of late evenings. We have a call with our manufacturing team in China every week that starts at 8 p. m. and it often goes until very late. I pitch it where I can. We do a lot of like chats and iterations. And then Rose really does all of the implementation and coordination. And her brain works really well that way. So it’s good. It’s a good balance.

George: 37:19
For anyone who’s listening now, who is like you, but a couple years ago with an idea, What is

Rose: 37:33
I like that we spent a lot of time designing our products, but we could have moved faster. I don’t think that’s my biggest takeaway, But I think just getting prototypes in your hand is the best way to figure out what you want and what you don’t want. I also think being honest with yourself about what you want out of obviously you want to get your product to people, but what do you personally want to do? Are you somebody who wants to learn about email marketing? Are you somebody who wants to like, get really good at social media? Do you just want to be managing inventory? Because when you’re doing this, especially if you’re doing it and you’re just going to bootstrap it and be like founder led and run. You’re doing everything, and not all of those things are fun. For example, the amount of time we’ve spent on logistics, like learning about the Panama Canal. I never thought about the Panama Canal for one single second of my life, and now I think about it all the time. The term palletized shipping

Caroline: 38:26
never was in my orbit, and now it’s

Rose: 38:29
all we talk about. Yeah, and it’s just Do you want to wear all those hats? Do you not? Can you afford to hire somebody to wear some of those hats? If you can’t, are you comfortable wearing them? Cause there’s parts of running a brand that are just like, they’re not fun. And there’s like your customers see 0. 05 percent of the business and then the rest of it you’re doing behind the scenes so that 0. 05 percent looks like fun. And that part is really hard. It’s some of it’s so thankless and it’s not you’re not in it for the thank yous, but like people don’t like, unless you’re doing this, you just I totally underestimated how much stuff we had to do and learn about IP. I love

Caroline: 39:05
Intellectual

Rose: 39:06
property. I love talking to our legal team. They’re amazing, but I do not understand more than half of what they’re saying to us. Trademark, copyright, still confused. It’s just it’s so complicated. And I think just being honest with yourself about what you want to do, what you don’t want to do, because if you hate what you’re doing every day, it’s so hard to do it well, at least for us, we have to like, love what we’re doing to do it really well.

Caroline: 39:25
Yeah. Yeah. I always think about the fact that there is something for everyone. Yeah. And it can’t be everything. And so while we have really taken on a lot of parts of pop light, just the two of us, because we had to we are thankfully getting to the place where we can prioritize outsourcing to people whose bread and butter this is, right? They dream about email marketing and SMS, and we’re just like learning as we go. So I think knowing that you’re not going to know everything, being willing to ask those questions that you might. Worry that you don’t know the acronym and that might make someone. Know that you aren’t as professional as you think you are. Just be honest, be real. Like you’re starting something from scratch. So I would say recognize your limitations, be vulnerable and ask for help. And then on an interpersonal level, if you’re doing this with a partner, whether it is like platonic or romantic, or like you have a firm contract in place, be really realistic with each other about what your non negotiables are, how much time you have to spend. What boundaries should look like. We’ve really worked that out over the years, but there have been times in which, our priorities have been different. And those are things that you just really have to negotiate and be honest about. And it’s a constantly evolving process. Like it’s a conversation you will return to again and again. But business partnership is challenging and know your strengths, know what you should lean on each other for, know what you don’t know, and like really trust the other person’s expertise. And be humble about the fact that this is really hard. It’s really hard.

George: 41:03
It’s hard. Yeah. I think that’s such a great conclusion that, because to summarize your big takeaway from the both of you. It’s really hard. It is. And I do love, Caroline, that you are a couples therapist and that you’re saying these things also a little bit as a couples therapist because, again, whether or not you’re in a romantic relationship or just a business relationship, it is a relationship and Maybe seek out a relationship therapist as a business couple. Yeah.

Caroline: 41:34
Yeah. Even if you’re not married having someone to help you navigate these conversations is really important because oftentimes we have found, and obviously there’s another level of being like life partners, but we have found that we’re not always having conversations about what we’re having conversations. It’s not whether or not we like the chat bot, it’s like about time and prioritization and Return on investment like there’s so much nuance there and the two of you or three of you like you’re not gonna Weedle that out together get some help. It’s totally fine to get a third person in the room to help you dig in There’s

Rose: 42:10
also like even for a solo entrepreneur It’s not just our relationship But if we were if you were doing this by yourself, you have a relationship with your manufacturer You have a relationship with maybe a vendor you’re working with a marketing agency. Like those relationships are really hard too stuff goes wrong all the time. And it’s very easy to point fingers, but it’s not productive to do that. So figuring out like, how do you, if you want to have a longterm relationship with your manufacturing partner, like what do you need to do that?

Caroline: 42:37
Yeah. And. A little sidebar there is we have worked with some people that we very early on got a vibe. Were going to be challenging people to work with. And because of where we’re at and what our budget was and who we knew and the like time that we had to deal with this thing, we definitely tolerated some partnerships that were not good for us. And so if you see a red flag, I would highly advise you to address it immediately. Like we had some older. Folk roll their eyes or scoff at questions that we asked. And that’s not a partnership that’s respectful. And that’s not a partnership that’s going to help you grow and it’s going to be mutually beneficial. So there are other people out there, like those aren’t the only fish in the sea and if they can’t work with you in a respectful and professional way, do not work with them.

Rose: 43:25
Yeah. Just like the end hire slow fire, fast. Like somebody doesn’t work for you. You have to move on. We’re like too small of a business and too young of a business to like, We just have to be agile and we need people to align with us.

George: 43:39
Yeah. And the wrong hire or the wrong person or the wrong vendor can have such a detrimental impact, right? At this age, it’s like a precious little flower that is very easily trampled by the wrong person.

Caroline: 43:52
Yeah. And I’d also say if you’re a small business, I think there’s a really good thing to be said about having your community support you and getting people around you to help you. And we definitely have leaned on friends in an informal way to support us with things. But if you’re doing something that is going to be a long term relationship or is really important to the business, write a contract. Like you don’t need a lawyer to read it, but definitely have bullet points around expectations, deliverables, consequences, payment structure. Like it’s really easy to just be like, we’ll work it out. We’re friends, but there’s nothing that will kill a friendship faster than just like being misaligned and not feeling like something was fair. And that will just, that’ll ruin you. It’ll be really sad. Don’t do it.

George: 44:39
On that high note Caroline and Rose, thank you so much for sharing your story. This has been such a fun episode. Really love your story and I’m very excited for. The future. It’s crazy to think that you’ve had this entire journey and basically you’re just beginning you’re shipping this week. So I’m super excited for the future. will hold for you too. And thank you so much for your time and sharing your wise words with everyone listening.

Rose: 45:03
Yeah. Thank you for having us. Thank you so much. It’s so fun to talk about. It’s also, it’s a good time to reflect on it. Absolutely.