#awinewith Cassie Bell
MEET Cassie
Cassie is the Co-Founder of Butter Insurance.
Find Cassie here:
Butter Insurance website or Instagram @butterinsurance.
Transcript
Danielle Lewis (00:09):
Cassie, thank you so much for being here on Spark tv.
Cassie Bell (00:13):
Thank you for inviting me. I'm excited.
Danielle Lewis (00:16):
Well, I'm excited because you bought Prosecco, so you are already my spirit animal.
Cassie Bell (00:21):
Cheers. Thank you. Cheers. I love it.
Danielle Lewis (00:23):
It's so good. Alright, let's do this. So you are the founder or co-Founder? Founder,
Cassie Bell (00:31):
Co-founder,
Danielle Lewis (00:32):
Co-founder. Good. I'm glad I got that right. Straight up.
Cassie Bell (00:34):
Another half. Yeah, better half
Danielle Lewis (00:36):
Maybe. Oh no, I doubt it. So you are the co-founder of Butter Insurance. Tell everybody first, what the heck butter insurance actually is.
Cassie Bell (00:47):
So butter is an insurance business that's changing the way insurance is sold, delivered, and managed. We want to make insurance cool again if it ever was cool in the first place. Actually, to be honest, everyone hates talking about insurance's, kind of this ugly corner of financial services that no one really wants to think about or touch. It's never been exciting and it's kind of a shame because it's an important part of financial wellness and we see it as an important part of financial wellness. So we are making insurance easy, flexible, affordable, and bringing it back to people like us, younger people who kind of need smaller insurance, more microinsurance, more flexible insurance that they can pay really easily. And the way that we're doing that to start off with is by offering a single item insurance product. So you're able to protect just the things that you love, whether that's your iPhone or your designer handbag or your snowboard, whatever it is, that's your pride.
(01:54):
Enjoy. Yeah. That you've saved weeks or months for, and this is your favorite thing in the world. You can ensure just that item really cheaply, like $2 a week instead of your whole entire house, which people don't really need that much when you're young. We were renters and still am actually. And it was kind of like, well, I don't really want to insure my Ikea dining table, but my jewelry is really expensive and I need that. So it's kind of getting to that real microinsurance, real flexible insurance, really affordable insurance that is not so dark and scary and boring as the rest of insurance is.
Danielle Lewis (02:39):
And I love that you said it's a key part of financial wellness. I think that there's a really interesting movement going on right now, and obviously you've not said that you are particularly female focused, but I know for women there's a particular journey that a lot of people on at the moment about becoming more financially independent aware. And I think you're right, insurance is so boring.
Cassie Bell (03:04):
It's so boring,
Danielle Lewis (03:06):
But it's such a critical part of being an adult and making sure the things that we have and love are protected, whether it be ourselves or our things or whatever. So I love that. This is a super cool concept.
Cassie Bell (03:22):
I think it's like if you break your laptop or your iPhone or something and you don't have two, three grand in your account to buy another one and you need it for work or you need or whatever, then people have to turn to credit cards or buy now, pay later. They're getting into debt to replace these items and we don't want that. So being a little bit more preventative about that and protecting yourself is what we're trying to do.
Danielle Lewis (03:46):
I love it so much. So you said that you were renters and a, you didn't want to ensure that IKEA dining table, but the jewelry was important. Is that literally how you came up with the idea or did something else? The process?
Cassie Bell (04:00):
That was literally it. I actually broke a pair of earrings. I got a pair of earrings from my fiance as a gift, a really expensive pair of Sarah and Sebastian Hoops, which I loved. Yes. And I broke one of the clasps or one of them broke and one of them fell out of my ear and it was really expensive to replace. And I was complaining to Steph about how I didn't have insurance and I was up for kind of $600 and it was really frustrating and she was complaining back to me about how she'd spilled water all over her MacBook and had a similar kind of damage experience. And we were at a party, we were drinking wine, which knows
Danielle Lewis (04:43):
That's always a good recipe.
Cassie Bell (04:46):
And we kind of thought there should be some kind of insurance that you can just take out on those really expensive few things. And then it started as a side hustle and it was us just messaging back and forth and taking meetings at our full-time jobs on the side and it just, it grew from there and now we've been at it for over a year now, which is wild.
Danielle Lewis (05:12):
That's so cool. Okay, so you said you had a full-time job. What's the backstory here? Did you have career, other businesses? What's the pre butter journey?
Cassie Bell (05:25):
So I didn't have any insurance experience, that's for sure. Never worked in insurance. I didn't have another business. I was actually working as a lawyer, as a commercial lawyer at a firm in Sydney. I was doing m and a and equity capital markets, which was very financial, lots of contracts, that kind of thing. So quite different in terms of I'd never done insurance before or anything like that, but the skills were quite transferable in commercial and things like that, which helped a bit, but it was quite a jump.
Danielle Lewis (06:01):
Yeah, totally. Well, and that's going into today's chat. That is the biggest question I had for you. I was like, insurance, how the heck can you go? Oh, by the way guys, I'm starting an insurance company. I feel, I mean now that you're saying you had the legal background, I feel like you are in tune with a lot of the stuff you would've had to bring together. But insurance for me feels super regulated, super difficult to get into. What's it been like?
Cassie Bell (06:31):
So I mean being lawyers, so Steph also started, she's a trained lawyer as well. So being lawyers, it helped a little bit that we were comfortable navigating around the regular compliance. So it didn't really scare us that much. The other thing is I feel like insurance companies love to make you feel like insurance is really complicated because then you don't question them as much about why is my premium so high or why am I paying for this crazy health insurance that I've never used? And their kind of response is, oh, don't worry, we do some dark magic with risk in the background and don't worry, you pretty little head about it. Thank
Danielle Lewis (07:10):
You. That's how I feel. That's how I feel.
Cassie Bell (07:13):
And I think they do that on purpose so that you don't question it as much. We think insurance should be super accessible and it's not as complex as it kind of seems. So it was an idea that started that we became a little bit obsessed with. And don't get me wrong, there's always the imposter syndrome that creeps in. That's kind of like, who do you think you are running an insurance business? You're crazy. But it's not as complex as it should be, I guess is the answer. Yeah. So it was a tricky kind of jump because it was different, but you learn, learn as you go and you make things up as you go and it's all fun.
Danielle Lewis (07:56):
I love that. And I mean you're spot on. I guess you could say that about any different business people coming into product-based businesses where they've never manufactured something in their life or I started a software company and I'm not a developer. So you do just
Cassie Bell (08:11):
Figure it out. Exactly. You just learn and you're all consumers of that product. You know what I mean? Even if you've never created a skincare line before, you'd surely use skincare. You know what you want as a consumer, you know what you would like to see in the product. So you kind of build the product around the way you view it as a consumer. And it's the same for insurance. It's no real difference. We wanted an insurance policy that was flexible and affordable and accessible, and that's what we're building.
Danielle Lewis (08:38):
That's so cool. And I am assuming on the backend, so if I'm the consumer, so literally, so I got engaged at Christmas last year and proceeded to lose two stones out of my ring within
Cassie Bell (08:51):
Six months.
Danielle Lewis (08:51):
Did you? Yes. I'm a nightmare. Oh my god. I know. I'm just very heavy.
Cassie Bell (08:55):
Did they just drop out?
Danielle Lewis (08:57):
Well, okay, so one, I have no idea what happened and the other one I actually dropped it on, but I'm talking this height from on my desk. It just slipped out of my hand as I was putting it on and I was like, well, I don't think that should have happened. Right. It's stressing
Cassie Bell (09:12):
Me out now.
Danielle Lewis (09:13):
I know, I know. Well, to the point where I now have a placeholder one because I don't wear it anymore, I don't wear my good one because I'm so freaked out about, I only wear it on special occasions. Oh my God. But anyway, that was a tangent story, but so say that happened and I was insured with butter. I remember back to years and years ago crashing my car and going through the insurance process and it was a whole nightmare. I assume butter also wants to fix that side of things as well and make it super easy when a problem does arise to actually make a claim and all of those things.
Cassie Bell (09:52):
Absolutely. So when I said at the beginning that we want to change the way insurance is managed, we've built this Butter hub or like a butter dashboard, it's a web app. You can log in and no matter where you get that butter insurance, whether it's directly through butter or through one of our retail partners, which we're always also partnering with, you can log onto your butter account and you can see all of your policies in one place. You can cancel them, you can get support, and of course you can make claims. So it's just when did it happen, where did it happen? That kind of thing. But it's all in a really easy type, form type flow. And then we update you on the status of that claim and it should be resolved within five business days. It's really quick, really easy, really intuitive. How cool working on that. Yeah,
Danielle Lewis (10:42):
That is so amazing. And that's really interesting. So Ring It said Ring was not insured and I did say that to my partner the other day. I'm like, I really think this is one of those things that we need to do as adults now we're doing that. Oh my God, that's so cool. So what's the process been building out that technology? Is that something, have you raised capital? Do you have someone else on the team? What's that kind of vibe look like?
Cassie Bell (11:10):
Yeah, so we raised a little bit of money just to get that app done and to get us off the ground. So we did a pre-seed round in two T tranches, tranche one was that little bit of cash just to get us going. We completed that in December last year. And then we actually hired a contractor to build the web app. Shout out to five to one. They're amazing vibe, a best friend and advisor now as well. So Steph and I didn't have a technical background, which I think used to be a barrier to startups or people. It was a perceived barrier to starting a business, but it's just not the case anymore. It's just as easy to hire an amazing contractor and sometimes cheaper. And they kind of built the web app for us, which is amazing. And now we're looking to hire some software engineers to take that over and run with it, which is cool.
Danielle Lewis (12:07):
That is so cool. I love that you said that. So a decade ago when we were building a software platform, it was very much the case that it was big cash, huge salaries for software engineers, all of those things. I mean,
Cassie Bell (12:22):
That's still the case.
Danielle Lewis (12:23):
Yeah. Oh yeah. Once
Cassie Bell (12:25):
Is still
Danielle Lewis (12:27):
Totally once. But I feel like there's so many things now that you can just get up a website on Squarespace in an afternoon and start testing your idea.
Cassie Bell (12:38):
That's literally it. If you have an idea, I mean insurance companies a little bit takes a bit long because there's a bit more regulation, but if you had an e-commerce business or something, you do set it up on Shopify, you can take payments by Stripe, you can market by, there's so many tools that you can use your database on Airtable, you could build your web app on Bubble. There's so many kind of software as a service tools so you can get it up and running in a week really? If you wanted to.
Danielle Lewis (13:09):
It's so cool. No, I just want to say that. No, no, no, but it's so true. And when I speak to people who want to take the leap, go from corporate to startup, that's one of the biggest barriers in their mind is whether do I start? It's just too hard. And I know I've made the mistake before of building, building, building and not validating it, not testing it with customers, spending lots of money and it being the wrong thing, but I'm like now you don't have to do that. Exactly Like you said, you can create something awesome in day to a week and have it out there and see if people will buy it.
Cassie Bell (13:46):
Yeah, just start. I think I actually have your love notes to female founders and I think that's the first page is start today. It's
Danielle Lewis (13:56):
Scary. Oh my god, I'm so happy that you have that.
Cassie Bell (14:00):
It's like everyone, no one knows what they're doing. No one knows how to start. No one knows how to make the jump from corporate to startups because you've probably never done it before. So you just have to start and learn and keep going if you like it. And if not, go back to your corporate job. It's not like they're hard to find.
Danielle Lewis (14:19):
Totally. And it's really interesting. So you said you side hustled for a bit, which I also love. You don't have to actually burn the bridge.
Cassie Bell (14:28):
Exactly. In fact, I would encourage people not to do that. I mean, yeah, sorry, when I say start today, I mean start building or planning or thinking about it. But we kind of spent six months building up testing it and going out to investors and seeing if it kind of had legs and playing with a few designs and things like that, creating decks, but also saving that little nest egg from our corporate salaries to be able to go salary list for a couple of months, which we did. And that's really important because if you have no money, I mean if you have no money sitting there backing you up, it's really hard to make that jump. And you might give up after two or three months because there's just no cash and it's really hard.
Danielle Lewis (15:20):
Yeah, that is a really good point. The financial stress
Cassie Bell (15:24):
Wellness again.
Danielle Lewis (15:25):
Exactly. Oh my God, I love this. Good theme for the show. But it's so true. If you are thinking about the money, then you make different decisions for the business and you're right.
Cassie Bell (15:37):
Exactly. Exactly. You might make pastier decisions that'll get you a quick buck, but not kind of more long-term decisions I guess. So yeah, I think having that nest egg for me was really important because it allowed me the freedom to give it a good chunk of time before assessing, okay, well is this going to work or not that pressure.
Danielle Lewis (16:04):
Exactly. And I just think it's really interesting. I do love the financial wellness thing that's going back, but it is so true. Just taking as much stress there is enough stress building a business without adding the fact that you can't eat.
Cassie Bell (16:21):
Exactly. Yeah. So yeah, put some pennies away. Love
Danielle Lewis (16:25):
It. I love it. Yeah, then do it. So talk to me. You've mentioned capital raising, what was that process like?
Cassie Bell (16:33):
Yeah, so I said we raised a trench fund. We, I've actually just raised trench two, so we've raised in total, I think just under a million dollars when we close this trans two, it'll be just over. It is very daunting to begin with. We learned a lot along the way though, particularly with the type of investors that we wanted on our cap table, I think. So when we started in the startup world, we thought that VC money was kind of the be all and end all, and you had to get the interest of those big venture capitalists, otherwise you'd never survive. And we got the interest of a couple of them, but we kind of learned along the process that actually angel investment is much better for us, at least at this early stage because those angels have a expertise across all different areas of business and we've got five or six angels at least that we can call up on any given day and say, hi, I dunno how to do this.
(17:37):
Tell me how you did this in your business or whatever. And they can tell us, which is amazing. VCs sometimes give that kind of support, but it's a very personal kind of relationship between us and our angel investors. So that we learned a lot about, and we really appreciate that relationship with our angels. You also learn a lot about what to say and what not to say about, I guess we kind of had to predict some questions because there's not enough time and 30 minutes to answer every question and investors won't ask every question. So you have to be able to almost predict the things that they should know about your business and make sure you say those things and then don't worry about any waffly stuff in the end. It takes a while to refine that pitch though. So that was probably a big tip.
Danielle Lewis (18:33):
Yeah, I mean it's so funny. So I've raised capital as well, and I love that. So that's what I used to do when I first because the same, I just didn't know what I was doing when I started. I was like, I don't know someone that can lend me a hundred bucks, let alone invest in
Cassie Bell (18:46):
A company literally. It's bizarre.
Danielle Lewis (18:49):
But I love that. It is. It's a learning process. I used to, every meeting I took, I used to write down all the questions that they asked until I realized they all asked the same
Cassie Bell (18:59):
Questions. And there's a pattern.
Danielle Lewis (19:02):
Yeah,
Cassie Bell (19:02):
Yeah, there's a pattern. And I think one other thing that you kind of learned raising money for the first time. I remember when someone gave us our first a hundred thousand dollars and I was like, oh my God, I have someone else's money kind of in my hands. This is so daunting. It's really stressful for the first little bit because I've never seen that amount of money in my entire life. So it's really stressful to take that from someone, but then you have to remember they're backing. You got to back yourself. It's going to be okay. Yeah. So that was another kind of learning, I guess, from raising capital.
Danielle Lewis (19:42):
Yeah, I mean it is super interesting. That's such a great point. It's probably the second time we've touched on back yourself, imposter syndrome, those types of things. But I find that investors, yes, they back good ideas that they think might make them money someday, but the thing that I have learned especially about Angels is that they're backing you. They're backing the fact that even if what you just said you were going to do doesn't quite pan out, you'll figure out a way to make the vision work.
Cassie Bell (20:10):
Exactly. It's like your ability to problem solve or pivot or abandon an idea when it's not going. How can you take this business to the next level? I think that, yeah, the angels that we have, they love butter, they love the idea of butter, but like I said, we have a really close relationship with them, so I think they're back from Steph and I too.
Danielle Lewis (20:31):
That is so cool. I was chatting to another female founder yesterday or the day before, and she's really early stage, but backed by VC and there's a lot of pressure to get it right, to move quickly. Totally.
Cassie Bell (20:47):
You
Danielle Lewis (20:48):
Spot on about angels, there's a little bit more strategic alignment and that relationships that you can build and expertise that you can get into your business early, that's such a smart move.
Cassie Bell (21:01):
And I think in this market it's been quite interesting to watch some really big startups who were very publicly backed by big VCs who have had to make a lot of job cuts and that kind of thing because of potentially, and I'm speculating that the kind of VC way of running startups recently has been grow at all costs, spend the capital, grow, grow, grow, hire, hire, take every opportunity instead of taking a little bit more of a measured approach. And sometimes that pressure really can get to founders and they have to do that or they feel like they have to do that. So I think watching those companies lay off staff is a learning experience for all other founders as well that maybe everyone just calmed down a little bit. We just take a bit more measured approach. Yeah,
Danielle Lewis (22:03):
I think that's such an important point though, because it is exactly what I've noticed as well is you see grow, all the headlines are we've raised this many billions of hired this many people, look at our fancy new office and then with the market change, everyone loses their job because suddenly it's like, oh, got to focus on profit.
Cassie Bell (22:25):
Yeah. Well, that's it. It's like why are we measuring success by the amount people can raise instead of the amount that they're making for the business? It's headlines, and I think it's been a bit of a wake up call in the past six months in this moody, moody market,
Danielle Lewis (22:42):
But it's important to look beyond the headlines. I think it's really tough as a founder coming in, especially if you're corporate esee new founder coming in and you're just reading media, you're on startup.com or whatever it is, and that's all you hear. So you're like, oh, obviously I have to raise money. Obviously I have to build some kind of crazy product. Obviously I have to scale like a unicorn, otherwise I'm a failure.
Cassie Bell (23:07):
That's totally it. And there's so many businesses that are so profitable and they're not in the limelight every second of every day. They don't correlate necessarily. But yeah, you have to learn that too.
Danielle Lewis (23:19):
There's no headline that's like, congratulations on profitable
Cassie Bell (23:22):
Slogan. Yeah, exactly. You hit profitability. Well done.
Danielle Lewis (23:28):
Oh my god. There needs to be an anti startups media outlet. There's the good news. I
Cassie Bell (23:34):
Would love that you notice the good ones
Danielle Lewis (23:36):
That only tell good news stories. There has to be startup levelheaded media come out.
Cassie Bell (23:41):
Yeah, yeah. Stop down or something just
Danielle Lewis (23:45):
Still out.
Cassie Bell (23:46):
Yeah. I love it.
Danielle Lewis (23:48):
So good. So good. So what's next? What's kind of coming up for you guys? What are you working on and planning for? Well, I guess it's the end of the year now, so maybe 2020. I know.
Cassie Bell (23:59):
No, it's still, so we are, we've been pushing for launch for a while, so we are just pre-launch, but we're so close. I want to say November. I'm going to put it on the record and say November. You've got to hold me to it now. I won't put
Danielle Lewis (24:16):
A date every day. November.
Cassie Bell (24:19):
Yeah. Well, we really want to get into market for, obviously Christmas. People are buying expensive stuff at Christmas or in the sales that they should have that insurance on, whether that's gadgets or things like that. So we are hopefully launching within the next month. That's the plan. So laser focused on getting, dotting all of our i's and crossing all of our T's with our underwriter, getting all of our really boring processes in place so that it runs quite smoothly when we actually launch. So into all the boring stuff, but also the marketing stuff, which is quite fun.
Danielle Lewis (24:56):
Yeah, that's a really interesting question actually. So what's the plan? So Spark, we always like to talk about sales and marketing as your best friend. If you don't have customers, you may not have a business. So keen to hear what the plan is there. What do you plan to do from a sales and marketing point of view once you're ready?
Cassie Bell (25:16):
So the sales side of butter is quite different to other insurance. So most insurance is direct to consumer only, and we think it's kind of not enough anymore to ask customers to log into Google and type in insurance and then kind of fight for the top five spots on Google and throwing money into Google ads like that. It's a bit old school and it's a bit lazy. So the way we wanted to distribute butter was actually through retail partners. So putting butter into checkout flows the same way that Buy Now pay letter kind of sits in that checkout but will actually sit in checkouts.
(25:59):
Oh my god. So that means it's kind of twofold. First of all, it's really convenient for the customer to take out and you're kind of taking it out at the point in time when you want it, which is when you've just spent your money on this brand new amazing thing that you've just bought. But secondly, it makes it kind of super seamless because we use the data from that transaction to actually populate the quote and buy in for that insurance. So instead of you doing a form where you're like, it costs this much and I bought it on this date and here's my receipt, that's all done. So you just click a button and you have insurance, which is so much easier than doing all of those forms. So that's kind of the sales aspect. We will do direct consumer as well, but we will have those kind of retail partnerships. I guess First distribution partnership is actually through F Os, which is really, really cool.
Danielle Lewis (26:54):
That is so cool. Yes. Yeah,
Cassie Bell (26:56):
It's amazing. They have been incredible and super supportive of butter. So we'll kind of integrate into their new digital ecosystem, which they're building out at the moment and sit within that as an insurance provider so you can pay using your iPhone and get butter on that item at the same time, which is amazing. So that's kind of the sales, I guess, distribution strategy in terms of marketing, we really don't want to be boring already. There's so many boring insurance ads and I'm just so sick of seeing them on TV from what we call the acronyms, which is GIO and RAMI. Yes. So a little bit cheeky, a little bit more, I guess organic. So TikTok is amazing. I'm not talking about TikTok ads, talking about accounts like Ryanair and Lingo who aren't even selling you stuff, but they are selling you stuff at the same time.
(28:05):
They're just kind of entertaining more posters, like milk Run style advertising is awesome. Just different, different and more engaging and less throwing money into Facebook ads and hoping that something sticks. It's particularly important with insurance because you're not constantly thinking about insurance, you're constantly thinking about food or FMCG or something. Consumer goods. It's something where you kind of have to capture a customer where they're thinking about insurance. So obviously putting butter at checkout helps with that, but we also want to capture particular times in people's lives and particular areas where people are shopping and that kind of thing, so that it's quite targeted and we're not wasting our precious, precious marketing budget.
Danielle Lewis (29:00):
I mean, but it's so interesting. I do love that because there is so much same out there right now and I really feel like even social media, it's just a lot of crap that you're just scrolling through and it's so obvious when something is an ad.
Cassie Bell (29:21):
Well, that's the thing. I think Instagram is falling out of favor a little bit because it's so hyper curated. Brands are spending upwards of half a million dollars to create one shoot that'll give them maybe a month's worth of Instagram content, which is just ridiculous. No, it's true bad. It's ridiculous. And people can see through it and it's like, I'm bored of that. That kind of hyper curated, aesthetically pleasing advertising I feel like is falling out of favor a little bit. At least with me. I resonate. It is organic stuff. I
Danielle Lewis (29:59):
Concur.
Cassie Bell (30:00):
Yeah, good. I'm Go ahead.
Danielle Lewis (30:03):
Yeah, no, I love that. That's awesome. And I assume as well with the financial wellness lens, there will be a little education piece in there, so there'll be the funny, the relatable, the organic, but maybe a little bit of education too dropped in. Yeah,
Cassie Bell (30:22):
There will be. I mean, people know about insurance. I think the education piece is more, there's a different, it's a different option. It's butter is quite a different proposition to home and contents insurance, and I guess educating people about that difference and that point of difference and why it's actually smart to proactively get insurance and instead of reactively getting insurance at some kind of milestone or when you drop your engagement ring can lose two stars. I think that only
Danielle Lewis (31:00):
Happened to me.
Cassie Bell (31:04):
I think that will be the education piece. Here you go. Education starts here. Ensure your engagement ring.
Danielle Lewis (31:09):
Oh my God, I love it. You know what, if you change one person's life,
Cassie Bell (31:12):
You've changed.
Danielle Lewis (31:13):
You've done well.
Cassie Bell (31:16):
Amazing. Oh my
Danielle Lewis (31:17):
God, that's so good. Oh, I love it so much. Alright, let's wrap up on one last question for you. Oh my God,
Cassie Bell (31:25):
I didn't even realize the time.
Danielle Lewis (31:27):
I know. I
Cassie Bell (31:28):
Feel like forever
Danielle Lewis (31:29):
A bottle of wine and talk a lot.
Cassie Bell (31:32):
Okay, wrap it up then hit me. Me.
Danielle Lewis (31:36):
So a lot of people tuning into Spark TV are early stage founders and yes, from the outside looking in, you are going through it right now. Right? There are good days, bad days. Before we hit record, we were talking about coming off the high of some huge startup events. So balancing the energy, maintaining the energy can be quite difficult. And you've got a co-founder, so you've got someone to bounce off. Lots of people are solo founders. Is there any piece of wisdom, advice or an insight that might help people keep going if they're having a bit of a rough day as a female founder?
Cassie Bell (32:15):
I think it's be kind to yourself. You have to be kind to yourself. I just read something on LinkedIn this morning that said, being a startup founder is champagne and razor blades. So it's really, which sounds very, we brought the
Danielle Lewis (32:31):
Survey,
Cassie Bell (32:32):
Today's a champagne day. So it's good. It's really up and down. And I think you have to stay in your own lane a little bit because it's so easy to get distracted by those headlines. Like we were talking about, I raised a million dollars, this company hired a hundred people. This company is partnered with X, and you have to put the blinders on a little bit and focus on your own success in your own lane. And it come, the success will come to you, but also be kind to yourself in that process. So if you're having a bad day, take a break. No one's going to die. If you don't reply to an email, it's fine. We're not surgeons. We're not saving curing cancer or ending well. Oh, some founders are. I'm not true. One of them,
Danielle Lewis (33:27):
Most people aren't.
Cassie Bell (33:29):
But just be kind to yourself. Take time. Because I think what we've found is if you are not at your best, not only does that impact on other aspects of your life, beyond your business, but also your business will suffer inevitably. If there's burnout in you, the founder or in your team, the business will suffer. It's inevitable. So it's really important to be kind to yourself and take care of yourself and stay focused to keep your blinders on.
Danielle Lewis (33:59):
I love it so much, Cassie. You are incredible. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. And everything you are building at butter. I can't wait to harass you until launch day.
Cassie Bell (34:09):
I know. Every day in November I'm going to get an email. I can be
Danielle Lewis (34:13):
Done yet. I promise I won't, but
Cassie Bell (34:17):
I'm going to read a love note every day until we launch.
Danielle Lewis (34:22):
Oh my God, my God. Nothing makes me happier. That is so good.
Cassie Bell (34:26):
Amazing.
Danielle Lewis (34:27):
Oh, you are awesome.
Cassie Bell (34:28):
So much. That was really fun.
Danielle Lewis (34:30):
It was Cheers.
Cassie Bell (34:32):
Cheers.
