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In this episode of the Startup CPG Podcast, Grace Kennedy welcomes Daniela Suarez, co-founder of iCalm Health, a pioneering company focused on creating natural supplements for stress relief. They delve into the inspiring journey of icalm, from its early beginnings to the intricacies of product development and the challenges that come with building a brand in the health industry.
Daniela shares the obstacles she faced, including a startling incident involving a scam related to a celebrity endorsement, which highlights the critical importance of trust within the entrepreneurial community. One of the most fascinating aspects of this conversation is Daniela's experience co-founding a business with her sibling. She emphasizes how their familial bond enhances collaboration and creativity in their entrepreneurial endeavors.
Daniela also underscores the significance of building connections in the startup ecosystem and discusses how organizations like Startup CPG play a vital role in fostering collaboration and support among entrepreneurs.
Tune in for valuable insights on resilience, community, and innovation in the competitive world of natural supplements!
Listen in as they share about:
- icalm Health Overview
- Awareness of Anxiety|
- Development of the Product
- Research and Formulation
- Launch Strategy and Target Audience
- Product Stability and Ingredients
- Flavor and Taste
- Shelf-Stable Product
- Working with Family
Episode Links:
Website: https://icalm.com/
Don't forget to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify if you enjoyed this episode. For potential sponsorship opportunities or to join the Startup CPG community, visit http://www.startupcpg.com.
Show Links:
- Transcripts of each episode are available on the Transistor platform that hosts our podcast here (click on the episode and toggle to “Transcript” at the top)
- Join the Startup CPG Slack community (20K+ members and growing!)
- Follow @startupcpg
- Visit host Daniel's Linkedin
- Questions or comments about the episode? Email Daniel at podcast@startupcpg.com
- Episode music by Super Fantastics
Creators & Guests
What is The Startup CPG Podcast?
The top CPG podcast in the world, highlighting stories from founders, buyer spotlights, highly practical industry insights - all to give you a better chance at success.
Daniela Suarez
Our goal with ICOM is to become a staple for natural, effective solutions that are calming people's bodies and problems. We're calming your nervous system. We can also calm a sore throat, calm a headache. Going forward, we will provide every type of relief using all natural products and herbs and solutions. We just want people to trust us and being able to calm their body in a natural, fast way.
00:38
Grace Kennedy
Hello everyone and welcome back to the startup CPG podcast. This is Grace and I am here with another founder feature. Today I'm talking to Daniela Suarez, the co founder of icom. ICOM offers powerful natural support for stress and anxiety with their stress relief shot. Daniella began ICOM because of her own personal need for anxiety relief and she spent years developing the product to ensure it was not only incredibly potent, but also tasted delicious. ICOM only launched a month ago, but they've already been making a name for themselves as a source of natural anxiety relief. Most recently, they were actually the top voted backpack brand at our Discotopia party at Nootopia now, which means they will get a free booth next year. I loved chatting with Daniella and learning about all things icom.
01:31
Grace Kennedy
So I hope you enjoy this episode and as always, let me know what you think.
01:37
Speaker 3
Hello friends. As you know, the Startup CPG podcast recently became a top 0.5% world podcast thanks largely to your reviews. I wanted to read some here. Jake from Philomanilla says we take all sorts of topics that could be complex and make them into understandable nuggets through casual and fun discussion. Thank you. We heard from Hamdan that this podcast helps him avoid paying the dummy tax. Being new to cpg, that's awesome. And then lastly we heard from another brand that's called Dirty Virgin. It's a virgin cocktail company that this podcast has been really helpful for them and they'd recommend to anyone starting in the industry. Please pass it along and if you can leave a review, please shout out your brand and I will try to read it here. Thank you.
02:17
Grace Kennedy
Hello everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. Today I'm very excited to be interviewing Daniela Suarez, the founder of icom. Welcome to the show, Daniela.
02:28
Daniela Suarez
Hi Grace. So happy to be here.
02:31
Grace Kennedy
So happy to have you. So I'd love for you just to introduce yourself and ICOM to our listeners.
02:37
Daniela Suarez
Yes. Hey everyone. I'm Daniela, the co founder of icom and here at ICOM Health we're on a mission to provide natural stress relief to everyone's lives. And we've developed a three ounce shot that is a very powerful supplement that helps alleviate Stress and anxiety. It's a powerful concentrate that calms your nervous system and doesn't make you drowsy, so you can take it in the middle of the day. And we like to say it's strong enough to help an ER surgeon, but craft it with your first date in mind.
03:12
Grace Kennedy
Aw, that's so cute. I love that little phrase. And definitely something that's needed across all professions. I think everybody has high levels of stress these days. So I'd love to hear a little bit more about why you decided to create this product and why, you know, how this idea came to you in the first place.
03:33
Daniela Suarez
Yeah. So it all started when I developed a tumor in my right ovary after years of taking anxiety medication. And this was a very scary moment in my life. My doctor initially thought it might be cancer. I thought it was cancer, and thank God it wasn't. But it turned out to be a stress and medication induced tumor.
03:56
Grace Kennedy
Wow.
03:56
Daniela Suarez
Yeah. And at that moment, I knew I needed to find a safer, gentler way to manage my stress and my anxiety. But I realized that I couldn't just stop taking something and replace it with nothing because my anxiety was real. And I know that some people may downplay their own stress and anxiety. And while, Grace, a small percentage of people out there might actually never feel it. Nine out of ten people are simply not in tune with their bodies and they don't realize that what is causing them the brain fog, the inability to focus, the inability to problem solve or think creatively, and their lack of motivation is simply its anxiety. And also, the stress in my body actually triggered chest pains, migraines, sometimes nausea. Sometimes my stress would get so bad I had to sit or lay down.
04:50
Daniela Suarez
And that's not something I could afford to do in the middle of a work day.
04:54
Grace Kennedy
Totally. And it's. I think that we don't always realize how much, you know, our mental health affects our physical health. And I think that's something people are talking about more now and is so important. But, you know, so many physical symptoms do come up with anxiety. And obviously you had probably one of the most intense physical symptoms to come up. And that's so scary. And I didn't even know that was possible to happen. So what were you working in when this all started to happen? Like, what field were you in?
05:23
Daniela Suarez
Yeah, so my background is in technology sales. So I always had a very stressful job on top of the fact that I was always naturally a person that easily got stressed and was very anxious. So in addition to. So my additional stress from a High stressful job, like sales was really not healthy for me.
05:45
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely. I sales always sounds so stressful. Anybody I know who's in it is just like always working basically. So that sounds like a stressful environment.
05:54
Daniela Suarez
Because even though I was very good at sales, I actually won awards like this sales excellence award that my company would give to the top five salespeople globally. I was not good at managing the stress that came with it. I remember I would get so nervous before my sales meetings sometimes I would get really nervous to even have those dreaded weekly catch up calls with my boss where I had to tell them how many sales I made that week. Oh man, I hated those.
06:23
Grace Kennedy
Oh my God. Sounds stressful. Yeah. So you were figuring out how you were going to manage your stress in a different way because obviously the medication wasn't working for you anymore after this tumor. So how did you actually come up with the idea for ICOM in its form now which is this small shot version basically of anti anxiety or that soothes anxiety? How did you get from I need something to this is an idea?
06:54
Daniela Suarez
Yeah, no, great question. Well, it all starts first with trying everything that's already in the market. You don't come up with something new or an idea before you realize that it doesn't exist. So I actually tried over the counter solutions, anything I could find on cvs GNC Vitamin Shop that was a stress relief product. And what I noticed is that they were very weak in potency. For example, the gummies, they had barely any active ingredients and they were full of sugar, so they were practically candy. The pills, they were very low potency as well. They say take two or three or four as a dose and they still had contain only anywhere from 250 to 350 milligrams of active ingredients. And I'll come back to this in a second why this amount matters. But this is why they did nothing for me.
07:49
Daniela Suarez
And I even thought okay, let me explore with cannabis. But I, it didn't help me either. For example, CBD had no effect on me, but THC made me feel like a zombie, made me boring, apathetic. So I really, I wasn't my usual happy self on these things and I couldn't function or be productive. And this is when I realized that there was a huge gap in the market and I needed to create something that was natural yet very strong and effective in managing stress and anxiety.
08:20
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, definitely. And I do feel like often the solution you're presented if you go to a doctor for example, is either just take medication, or they're like, just sleep more. You're like, wouldn't that be great if I could sleep more? That would be awesome. So I. It's interesting that you did identify and find this sort of area where a lot of people need help with it, but there's kind of not as many. For the amount of products that are on the market that deal with anxiety, there's maybe not as many products that are actually effective. So I'd love to hear a little bit more about why that potency matters that you were talking about, and a little bit more, too, about how you chose the active ingredients in icom, because some of them. I've actually.
09:00
Grace Kennedy
When I was looking at your ingredient list, I was like, I've never heard of that, to be honest.
09:03
Daniela Suarez
Yeah, no, that's a really good question, because it actually started off by creating a tea at home after the tumor got extracted. And I started researching very natural supplements, herbs to calm my anxiety naturally. And I started taking a homemade tea, and I started seeing improvements, but it wasn't quite where I needed it to be. I knew whatever I was doing just wasn't effective enough and that this is what made me go to nutrition school. I specialized in supplementation, and I also researched PhDs, and I reached out to one to teach me about what I was drinking and to see if what I was doing was right.
09:43
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, that's amazing. And what. When you guys came together to collaborate or maybe I guess he was more teaching you, what did you end up landing on for? I call him the formulation.
09:55
Daniela Suarez
Yes. So because at the beginning, raise, everything was for my personal consumption, I was just thinking about alleviating this problem for myself. And so the PhD really took a look at my formula and said, nature can definitely heal. Supplements are definitely an effective option to your anxiety problems, but the amounts you are using are weak. He taught me to increase them, and he also taught me which herbs were good and which herbs were not. There are a lot of herbs that have a lot of clinical trials, research to prove their effectiveness against stress and anxiety. But he also taught me that there are some people that have mutations, have bad reactions to some herbs, and so not all herbs are gentle on the body.
10:41
Daniela Suarez
And so I really wanted to make sure that our strong potency had the least impact with medication and someone who still wants to maybe still want to take SSRIs. And helped me create this very gentle yet potent formula.
10:58
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, it's amazing. And the other thing I wanted to ask about is I feel like some herbs are notoriously really bad tasting, even if they are really powerful herbs. So how did you, and I call them taste delicious? So how did you manage, you know, making the flavor taste great while also having these, like, high potency herbs in the mixture?
11:21
Daniela Suarez
This is such a good question, Grace, because getting the formula right was just the beginning of our journey, the beginning of the battle. And at first, the tea didn't taste good. The formula did not taste good. It. It actually tasted like shit. And because it was for my personal use, again, I was just drinking it without breathing. But then I gave it to my sister to try and. Because she was working in Goldman at the time doing investment banking, and that's a very stressful job. And she was giving it to her banker friends, was helping them with their panic attacks. She came to me and says, daniela, I think you have a very good product here. And that was like, oh, no. That's when I realized I needed it to taste better.
12:08
Daniela Suarez
And that's when I really went on a journey to try to find a flavorist. I wanted to find a manufacturer who could teach me how to make this taste good. Because this was now outside the PhD's expertise, getting it to taste good was a whole other mountain we needed to climb. So I spoke to many labs, formulation companies. We sent them our blend and everything they would return back to us was disgusting. It was completely unswallowable. I had to spit it out. I'll never forget, I was in the airport one day trying sample number nine, unable to drink it, and I just started crying. My sister and I really did not think we had a business here.
12:49
Grace Kennedy
Wow.
12:50
Daniela Suarez
Yes.
12:51
Grace Kennedy
So when did you find a flavorist who could actually make what you wanted? And how did that search, you know, end?
13:00
Daniela Suarez
So I went to a trade show, there's one in Chicago where a lot of manufacturers go. And I said, I have to find someone. And I find a couple actually flavor companies. And their only solution, they kept suggesting that I remove ingredients out, that I remove herbs out from my drink because that would make it less bitter and add more sugar. And I said, well, this is defeating the purpose. And they said, well, this is why everyone else is barely putting any ingredients in their gummies or in their supplements and putting so much sugar so for it to taste good, among other things, they're also wanting to increase their profits. And it's a whole other thing that made me really angry. But they told me, you are never going to get a shot that tastes good with this amount of herbal supplements into it.
13:50
Daniela Suarez
Like, they were laughing at me, pretty much mocking me and saying that I could never do it. And I'm someone Grace that when someone tells me, you can never do this, you can't do it. It's not gonna work. So, like a fire ignites in me, and I just go out there and do it. And one of these manufacturers ended up telling me about this flavorist, very famous flavorist that was really close to retiring, but he actually lived in New Jersey, right in my backyard. And he said he's the absolute best in the country. And go talk to him and convince him to work with you. And that's what I did. So I called John and I. I sent him my formula.
14:28
Daniela Suarez
He said it's a very challenging to work with this because of the high amounts of every ingredient we had, including magnesium, with which everybody who's drank magnesium knows how terrible it tastes. If you ever drink a magnesium that tastes good, you had a question how much magnesium they're actually putting in the product. But he was very famous for creating natural flavors out of cold pressing methodology, which is really complicated and advanced, but is the only methodology that allows for you to extract the flavor. For example, we use lemon flavor in our product. He extracts it from the lemon peel, and this allows for us to preserve the most nutrients, but also have an aroma. And it's the most natural lemon flavor that we could possibly use. And really, he's the hero that helped save our company.
15:20
Grace Kennedy
Wow. Yeah. And, you know, sometimes it's just finding that last person. You know, you've go to every single stone and then it's finally under the last one and. But sounds like he was also the perfect person for the job. So I'm so glad that he was able to do that. And obviously, ICOM does taste good because everybody says that. So, you know, you're getting good feedback from customers immediately. Which brings me to my next question, which is you only launched about a month ago. When this comes out, it'll have been about two months. But how are you bringing this product to customers? Because it's such a new thing. It's kind of a totally new way of also, like, dealing with your anxiety. So what strategies are you using to get this product to customers and then also educate them on what it actually is?
16:10
Daniela Suarez
Yeah, that's a good question. So we did launch a month ago, but during this whole product development process, which took years, we started online community. And actually, yes, we started like a Facebook group, a private Facebook group that we was just showing our whole journey. We even created a wait list. And this Wait list grew to about like 7,000 people. And we actually still have the Facebook group in Facebook open. It's not public, it's private, but people can still request to join. It's called ICOM Inner Circle. If anybody out there is interested in joining, we're still taking people in, but it's the most exclusive group of customers we have. They get to see behind the scenes that we show even more than we show on social media.
16:59
Daniela Suarez
We still try to show some behind the scenes in social media, but here we keep it very real. But right now, because we just launched, we're keeping focused on E commerce and grace because our product is very good. And don't take my word for it, I actually invite you and the listeners to go read our reviews in Think Testing. Think Testing is a third party independent review site where anybody can go and review every new product that hits the market. So it's very effective for getting customer feedback when you first launch because people are gathering points and they're just incentivized to really review every product out there. So yes, we have really good reviews. And the people on our waitlist were giving us were making amazing intros, referrals for us.
17:49
Daniela Suarez
We were getting these inbounds of people and when we asked them, how did you find us? They really found us through referrals. Yes. But we're also very active on sales channels through emails. We're also, whenever somebody comes from a referral acquires icom, we put them on an email list and we try to educate them. So this way we're building a lot of consistency on the product, how to take it, when in what situations they can take it and things like that. And one thing I'm noticing is that the product is really skewed on females right now. And so we're also thinking about points of contact and touch where these female customers can see us.
18:32
Daniela Suarez
So right now we're in many coffee shops and also yoga studios near office spaces in Manhattan where these women could go after work and do a little bit of yoga or do or a studio or a fitness studio. But soon they're going to start seeing us in delis and bodegas near their offices as well.
18:51
Grace Kennedy
Wow, I love it. That's so exciting. I mean, you only launched a month ago. It sounds like you guys have been very busy and thinking you're bringing up bodegas and more physical locations. Right. So obviously, again, it's so early in your journey, but what's been your thoughts or approach around starting to dip your toes into Retail or is that kind of on your to do list for ICOM in the coming months?
19:14
Daniela Suarez
That's a very good question. Right now we're really not dabbling our toes too much in retail. We don't think that's a tiger we really want to poke at right now. But yeah, we're very happy with the results we're getting so far dtc and we're really now just focused on getting the brand more known online before we start go knocking on big retailer stores.
19:38
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and I think it's probably wise and especially given that it is a product that can be shipped, I'm imagining relatively easily. Is it shelf stable?
19:47
Daniela Suarez
It is shelf stable and I'm glad you asked that question, Grace, because it's shelf stable using a very innovative natural preservative. It's called Mountain Ash Berry. No other supplement. It's using it today and it's the healthiest natural supplement a product could possibly have.
20:05
Grace Kennedy
Wow. Yeah, I've never heard of that before. So it's a natural preservative that allows it to be shelf stable. That's amazing. I love it. And definitely, yeah, like I was saying though, useful and helpful to have a shelf stable product for sure. Especially if you're going to be going DDC and using your E commerce. So thinking a little bit more broadly, obviously you said it took years and years to develop ICOM and get it right. What has been one of the maybe let's say let's focus on post launch since that's the newest thing. What's been one of the most challenging parts post launch of actually now having your baby in the world. Yeah.
20:45
Daniela Suarez
So definitely product development was the biggest challenge. Right. That we faced almost quitting, but now that we got the taste to where we want it to be, I actually have. We have a joke with my sister, co founder. We say it's never going to taste like a Snapple, but it actually ended up tasting very closely to a Snapple. So we're very happy about that. I wouldn't say there's been one big challenge after that. It's just been constant challenges. We actually got scammed big time when we first got started by a big famous celebrity that I don't know if I should say their name right now, but we lost a lot of money actually. This celebrity reached out to us, knocked on our door and said, I have a lot of mental health problems. I suffer from a lot of stress and anxiety.
21:35
Daniela Suarez
This is something that speaks to me and I would love to be the face of it. And he entered a deal where he would post stories content for six months at a set price, and he wanted actually all the money paid up front. But we negotiated a 50 at the beginning and the rest later, and he ended up taking the money and posting for a week and ghosting us. And if I say his name, people will recognize his name. Wow. Yeah. Maybe I should say it because this is not right. So I'm going to say it right. Did I say it?
22:11
Grace Kennedy
Yeah. I mean, up to you, but.
22:15
Daniela Suarez
I think I'm going to say it so to prevent. Actually, I really care about other founders not getting scammed out there. Yeah, it's really costly for us. We're all like, if you're bootstrapped and you're not starting out with investment money, it's every dollar that comes out of your pocket and out of your life savings. This could really make or break your business. And for somebody to do that is just very challenging to overcome. Was Chet Hanks the son of Tom Hanks? And he's getting more famous and famous. He's really growing in social media.
22:46
Daniela Suarez
And he's always been very vocal about not dealing well with the fact that his dad was very famous and his life was always a mess and was on drugs and went to rehab and now he found God and he just really convinced us and we really thought we had found a good match.
23:00
Grace Kennedy
But wow, that is so terrible. And I'm sorry. You know what's funny is that I actually went to college with him.
23:09
Daniela Suarez
No way.
23:10
Grace Kennedy
Yes. And he was like, very much a, like, kind of chaotic presence on campus. But anyway, we won't get too much into those. Yeah. Small world. That's terrible, though. So how did you guys. I mean, I'm so glad you didn't pay everything up front, but how have you guys been now, sort of like recovering from that, or have you just been kind of trying to cut your losses and move on?
23:31
Daniela Suarez
Yeah, we cut our losses and we moved on. And we always feel like, well, karma gets everyone. And it just made us really more wise about celebrities and not just not converting, but also even that week, we got really very little, low results from that, but also just really analyzing contracts well, not signing contracts unless you absolutely must and just being really careful and then be more vocal and sharing with the founder community. I feel like being an entrepreneur is like wearing a target on your back for a lot of scammers and bad people out there. Starting from. Not all vendors and services are bad, but many out there are bad. And they just want to take your money and deliver either shit work or no work at all.
24:18
Daniela Suarez
So the more vocal you are with founders and the more things come recommended to you through another founder or personal recommendation, sometimes it's better not to work with them for the first time and. But it's just made us more open, more trusting in the founder community. The importance, discovering the importance of sharing these stories and for helping protect each other.
24:40
Grace Kennedy
Absolutely. That's so important. You know, we only have each other and I think that's a huge mission of startup CPG as well, is to bring people together so you can find those connections more easily and you're not having to, you know, just knock down everyone's door. You can send people a quick slack message asking them what their experience was like with XYZ vendor, if you know they used it. Because definitely personal recommendations are kind of just the gold standard of knowing who you can trust to move forward with. But I'm sorry that happened and definitely a good message to any founder who's listening to. Yeah, not work with that person. And I'm glad you said his name, you know, why not? So on the complete opposite side of the spectrum though, a more happy question.
25:24
Grace Kennedy
What has been one of your proudest moments since founding icom?
25:30
Daniela Suarez
I have to say that our most proud moment was winning Discotopia. Discotopia was the event that startup CPG held in Denver, Colorado in the middle of Nootopia now, which is one of the biggest trade shows for health and wellness. And it was particularly incredible for us to win this event because all the founders, the brands, the products that were participating in this contest brought their A game and were there sampling to new customers, to buyers, and every product, they rocked. So, and also being able to get real time feedback right there from the people. It was really a big confidence vote for icom. And it also, it was incredible to see, as so many people were saying, it works. I love the flavor. I noticed the effects immediately. Just hearing that there during the show was incredible.
26:31
Daniela Suarez
And still with all this great feedback, we didn't think we'd win. But two days later, discovering and finding out that we won, were on Cloud nine. We couldn't believe ourselves and were like, man, this is the confidence boost we needed after all this hard work and sometimes not everything paying off. And this was our biggest sign to just keep going. You have a product that can help many people's lives. The journey is not easy, but people are giving you the thumbs up, telling you to keep going. And that Was, yes. The most important thing for us.
27:04
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely. And just so anyone who's listening knows, they won based on votes from the guests at our Disco Topia party. So they received the most votes out of any of our backpack brands. So it's not like it's just three people at startup CBG deciding who wins. This was our whole party deciding, which was many, many people deciding that ICOM was their favorite thing they sampled. So a huge accomplishment. And also you get a free booth next year at Newtopia now, which will be amazing and super excited to see what you guys do there and see sort of what you make of it as your first, I guess, huge, big trade show. But thinking, I guess, of the future as well. What are you looking forward to, you know, in this first year of icom?
27:49
Grace Kennedy
What are some of the things that you're excited about and also some of the things that are on your list of goals, perhaps for this first year?
27:56
Daniela Suarez
Yeah, that. That's a good question. I think the future looks calm and stress free. No, no, actually that's a very difficult one for future to be that way. But. But I seriously think the future looks golden for icom. We're just getting started with our first stress relief shot, but we already have in the pipeline new products that we want to create based on what customers are telling us they need. And so in 2025, we're going to come with one to two new products.
28:31
Grace Kennedy
Wow.
28:32
Daniela Suarez
Yes. And for the rest of the year, for 2024, we're going to just. We're gonna still be going heavily growing our presence online. And in 2025, I think we're gonna start our bigger retail expansion. So just so you know, Grace, like, our goal with ICOM is to become a staple for natural, effective solutions that are calming people's bodies and problems. So just like we're calming your nervous system, we can also calm a sore throat, calm a headache. I think going forward, we will provide every type of relief using all natural products and herbs and solutions. So I think we just want people to trust us and being able to calm their body in a natural, fast way.
29:21
Grace Kennedy
Yeah. That's so exciting. Can you tease at all what the next products or what they're going to be tackling?
29:27
Daniela Suarez
We're between two right now that we're just. Again, if people want to know what that is, they should join our private group in Facebook inner circle. We're actually. Yes. Asking people what should be the next problem they want us to solve. And we have two winners coming out there. So it's open, but I'm going to let people go and then find out for themselves.
29:53
Grace Kennedy
I love it. Okay, well, I'll just give my vote here publicly, which is I say sleep, put me to bed.
30:00
Daniela Suarez
You know, we're getting a lot of that, Grace. Yeah, we tell people, but there's so many products out there. But we do see a big problem with the products. There's just so much on sleep out there. But everybody keeps putting melatonin in their product and it's so bad for you. So there is a case for a clean, healthy, yet very effective and potent sleep relief shot.
30:28
Grace Kennedy
So something to consider.
30:30
Daniela Suarez
Yeah, definitely is part is one of the options.
30:33
Grace Kennedy
Okay, good to know. I love to hear it. I'm so glad that it's one of the options. I'm. I'm hopeful, so. Well, I did want to know and we're nearing the end, so I won't ask too many more questions, but I did want to know. You co founded this with your sister, and I've said this before on the podcast, but if I ever tried to work with my brother, one of us would be dead and it would not go well. So I'm curious what it's like working with your sister and how. How that sort of, like, balance works for you guys of like, you're both a family and now you're also business partners.
31:02
Daniela Suarez
Working with my sister has been really like a blessing because it's so difficult to sometimes trust your partners and the people that you're working with a single goal in mind. And that is easier to do with a sibling for sure. Obviously, we still fight and we sometimes have disagreements, but we definitely really trust in each other, that we want the best, not just for Icon, but for each other. And were lucky that we did grow up pretty close, even though we're five years of age gap, like, we're not. My mom raised us like twins, and I don't know if that affected mentally or what or she caused us any damage in me or her because we grew up thinking like were twins, but we did grow up being each other's best friends.
31:59
Daniela Suarez
And I know that's not the case with every sibling, but in our situation, I have a lot to give credit to my mom for doing that. She would even dress us the same sometimes. People would, we do look a little bit similar. But people still today ask us if we're twins and I always like to say, oh, like. Or people ask like, who's the oldest one? And I love that question. Because I am the older one. But yeah, no, we've been blessed with a good friendship. That's key.
32:30
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely. That sounds so wonderful and so fun to get to be in business as well. Probably with someone who you are so close with and is your friend.
32:39
Daniela Suarez
And also Grace, actually. We are so different, yet even though we're so similar and we have different strengths and we both play to each other's strengths. Yeah. We're like, okay, we need to solve this problem. You're good at that. You do it. We're good at this. Like, we just know each other's weakness. We know each. When you know each other so well, you can better decide who is the best person to tackle this problem and we just go for it.
33:05
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, I love that. And that's such an important thing. And it's also so nice to have a someone like you said to bounce ideas off of that you really do trust, like, wholeheartedly. So one of my final questions that I always love to ask people is just what advice would you give to yourself if you were starting this all over again? Or if a founder came up to you who is a few years behind where you're at now of just launching icom? What advice would you give to somebody?
33:31
Daniela Suarez
My advice would be to start dabbling and playing in these communities of people that are doing what you want to do sooner before you jump in the pool, you will learn so much. You may even discover that, yes, you're on right on the right track and this is what you should be doing. Or you'll quickly learn, oh, this is not what I want. This is not the lifestyle I want. And so a community that can do that. There aren't many out there, but I would. I wouldn't recommend any other than startup cpg. So you don't need to have a business, you don't need to have a startup in CPG to even join the startup CPG community. But I would say join it as soon as you can. In that way you see what entrepreneurs are struggling with.
34:21
Daniela Suarez
What's the lifestyle, what personality type do you need to be? And so. Or like what? Yeah, what are the things that you need to know before getting started? I think it would just help so much. You would gain so much wisdom that you don't. Yeah. You wouldn't know otherwise.
34:39
Grace Kennedy
Totally. I love that. And just so everyone knows, I didn't pay Daniela to say all these nice things about startup cpg. She's being genuine.
34:47
Daniela Suarez
Because I only discovered startup CPG after I created icom, after I was already in the pool, swimming, trying to swim. And if I had known about this community way before, it would have been, yeah, like a life changer, a game changer. Who knows, maybe I still would have decided to do I call? Maybe not. Who knows? But so many things would have gone smoother.
35:09
Grace Kennedy
Mm, totally. And hindsight's always 20, of course. But I think that's great advice and anybody is welcome or just, you know, coming to a startup CPG event. Just check it out, see what's up. We're happy, everybody loves talking. Everybody's very friendly here. So just come on in. So speaking of our community though, that's question is, you know, how can our listeners, our startup CPG community, support ICOM and learn more about icom?
35:33
Daniela Suarez
Oh, great question. Well, for starters, check our website. We are really proud of what we created there. It's www.icom.com. Also follow us on social media on icomicom health instagram and TikTok and we try to show everything we do behind the scenes. And if you want to be even more intimate and be part of the focus group, I would recommend that you join the Facebook private group, ICOM Inner Circle.
36:03
Grace Kennedy
I love it. Well, everybody check it out. Go order some icom as well. You know, get yourself stress free heading into the holiday season as well. I'm sure people are going to be needing a little bit of stress relief coming up with the holidays. But it was so much fun to talk to you Danielle and to learn all about icolm and I can't wait to see what you guys do next. And congratulations again on winning at Nootopia. Now the backpack brands. And yeah, just excited to see what you guys do next and thanks for coming on. All right everyone, thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, it would help us out so much if you left a 5 star review on ratethispodcast.com startupcpg I am Grace Kennedy, the host of the Founder Featured series.
36:48
Grace Kennedy
So feel free to add me on LinkedIn or reach out to me on Slack. I'm always on the hunt for new and exciting brands to feature. And if you're a potential sponsor who would like to appear on the podcast, please email partnershipsartupcpg.com and finally, as a reminder for anyone listening, if you haven't already, we would love for you to join our community on Slack. You can sign up via our website startupcpg.com.
37:15
Daniela Suarez
Sa.