Jianne Jamil | DIOME: How to start your NPD

In today’s episode, we’re joined by Jianne Jamil, founder of DIOME, a premium supplement brand developing science-backed formulas to support the demands of modern life. Inspired by her mother’s decades-long struggle with prescription sleep medication, she set out to create effective, natural alternatives without the negative side effects. Before founding DIOME, Jianne built her career in the luxury beauty industry across New York, Paris, and London with La Mer, Tom Ford and Bobbi Brown. DIOME launched with Rested, an award-winning doctor-formulated, sleep supplement developed with her expert scientific team, including naturopath Emilie Delanoue and medical doctor Dr. Jencikova.

DIOME launched with Rested, a doctor-formulated, sleep-optimising supplement developed with her expert scientific team, including Emilie Delanoue and Dr. Jencikova.

Stay tuned to hear Jianne’s insights on where to start with your NPD, building a science-led wellness brand, and how to market those premium products.

Jianne's advice: 

• Product launch advice: Efficacy is everything; your product must truly deliver results
• Health industry tip: Do thorough research before entering this highly regulated space
• Regulatory compliance advice: Check laws in every country where you plan to sell
• Supply chain tip: Confirm ingredient availability before committing to production
• Quality control advice: Test, test, and test again to build customer trust
• Entrepreneurship lesson: Use both data and intuition when deciding launch timing
• Startup growth tip: One hero product can be enough to build a thriving business
• Customer loyalty advice: Focus on longevity and building a faithful customer base
• Branding and marketing tip: Position your product carefully, especially for a premium science-based brand
• Business integrity lesson: Cut no corners — reputation is everything
• Agency collaboration tip: Brief your creative team thoroughly so they reflect your vision

FF&M enables you to own your own PR & produces podcasts.
Recorded, edited & published by Juliet Fallowfield, 2024 MD & Founder of PR & Communications consultancy for startups Fallow, Field & Mason.  Email us at hello@fallowfieldmason.com or DM us on instagram @fallowfieldmason. 

FF&M recommends: 

• LastPass the password-keeping site that syncs between devices.
• Google Workspace is brilliant for small businesses
• Buzzsprout podcast 'how to' & hosting directory
• Canva has proved invaluable for creating all the social media assets and audio bites.

MUSIC CREDIT Funk Game Loop by Kevin MacLeod.  Link &  Licence

Transcript

[00:00:00] 

Juliet: Welcome back to How To Start Up the podcast that dives into stories of startups told directly by the founders. I'm Juliet Fallowfield, founder of Fallowfield and Mason, a consultancy that teaches founders how to confidently run their PR and podcasting in-house. 

In today's episode, we are joined by Jianne Jamil, founder of Diome, a premium supplement brand, developing science-backed formulas to support the demands of modern life. Inspired by her mother's decades-long struggle with prescription sleep medication, she set out to create an effective, natural alternative without the negative side effects. We discuss in today's episode, NPD, new product development and everything that goes into it, from the formula to the packaging to the people. So stay tuned to hear Jianne's insights on where to start with your NPD, building a science-led wellness brand, and how to market those premium products.

Welcome, Jianne, to How To Start Up. It's wonderful to have you on today. I know we're going to chat about how to develop an NPD, but before we do that, I'd love it if you could introduce yourself to the [00:01:00] listeners and a little bit about the brand that you started.

Jianne: Yeah, definitely. So, my name is Jianne, I'm the founder of Diome. I started Diome over four years ago, but we actually just launched last year. So, the first three years were really focused on developing innovative products that were effective and that were going to help people with their daily ailments. And I can tell you a little bit about what inspired the brand, and you know why, really, I started this business after four years in the luxury beauty space. So, I worked for brands like La Mer, Tom Ford, Bobby Brown, amazing experience in the beauty industry. But what I was really passionate about was holistic health. And I had seen my mother throughout the decades really struggle with her sleep and anxiety, being prescribed medication, and not really being able to regain natural sleep patterns or really find herself again once she [00:02:00] stopped.

So, it was really a roller coaster of starting, stopping, and I always thought, what if there were products that didn't have negative side effects that could have helped her initially, but also today, now that she doesn't want to continue taking these products, that did affect her well-being.

And so that's really the mission behind Diome. It's finding these solutions, really, people ahead of time when they're starting to feel these ailments, because of modern world that we live in, and it's something every single one of us will face at some point. But also, those who want to feel better and to find solutions today. So that's really what sparked the idea and the commitment, really.

Juliet: You've launched, I think, one product so far. 

Jianne: Yes. So far, 'Rested' we launched it, we did a soft launch last year with a harder push this year. 

Juliet: It's so interesting in the wellness space, a lot of brands come in, all guns blazing with huge product lines, and that's it. You've [00:03:00] come in gently with one product, with rested, with a focus on it. And why did you decide to launch with just one?

Jianne: It takes a lot of effort, time, energy, budget to innovate in this space. So, I wouldn't say it's as much as the pharma space, but if you want to create a product that's innovative, that works really hard, that's safe, that's also going to be compliant on the regulatory front in many markets, it's going to take some time.

Especially if you want to test that product on humans. And, reiterate again and again, and this is what we've done with Rested. It was really important to us that every single product that we were going to to launch was going to be truly unique and effective. I think the efficacy piece is so crucial because there is a lot of stigma within the natural health space, the supplement space, that it doesn't work or it doesn't work as hard, and that [00:04:00] people do not trust these products.

And I understand why, because I've also, as a consumer, experienced that in the past, and it wasn't really an option to create many products at that point because we wanted to focus on one or two, and we can speak about the second one that we've developed, also. But it was really about being very focused, understanding exactly the problems that we're solving for and solving for problems that were the epidemic of our time. So we know today that a third of the world population just does not sleep well enough. And so that's enough of a challenge to tackle and to find a really strong solution for. And that's why instead of putting our energy in many different products, we just wanted to focus on one and do it really, really well.

Juliet: So interesting you say that, a lot of people I've interviewed with the podcast has said this is pick your specialism. And go deep. Like, you cannot walk into a room and tell people you're a specialist [00:05:00] in 30 different areas, they're not going to believe you. Do one thing, do it really well, and I had a 

friend, a founder of Dirtea, had a Mushroom brand. He came up to stay for the last couple of days. We were chatting about this and saying how if you can go really deep into something and become that expert, you have that knowledge base that will feed every element of your brand, and it's so exciting.

But in terms of that specialism and that expertise, I know that you have a similar background to mine, you've come from the world of luxury brands, you work for La Mer, Tom Ford, Bobby Brown. What lessons from those experiences have shaped your approach to founding your brand today, if any?

Yeah, it actually ties to what we just spoke about is that the best businesses and brands are built on hero products. So as much as these brands were innovating and had incredible new products coming up, some brands more than others, I would say, well La Mer, yeah. 

Jianne: Especially my experience at La Mer, I would say it's really that [00:06:00] hero product that drove the business, and I really saw that the key to any consumer business is retention.

And I was on the retention team. I was responsible for it and for loyalty in the UK. And so I really understood that in order to have longevity as a business and not a one-and-done, and this is what I wanted to build; something that would last decades and that people would love, and it would become a household name. We really needed to focus on longevity and products that had very strong retention. And so that was definitely the best lesson that I've learned at Estee Lauder. The second one is the kind of brand love, high touch elements to all of these brands and seeing how thoughtful the creatives, the marketers, everyone on the team, was going to be around how is the consumer going to experience this brand?

And we need to put a lot of love into every [00:07:00] single touch point from end to end. And so that experience was also great because you realise how much actually goes on behind the scenes, and you wouldn't really know that as a consumer. So those are the two main lessons that I say. I learned, and that I wanted to incorporate into Diome.

Juliet: It's amazing. So you spent three years developing the brand, the product, the everything before coming to market and launching. What were those first steps in getting your NPD going?

Jianne: The very first step was finding my scientific team. So as you just said, I come from a luxury background. I'm a marketer, and I wanted to go into the health space. That's an unforgiving space, and it should be. And so I knew that in order to create something meaningful, I had to partner up with the best scientific talent that I could find.

And so that actually took me over six months [00:08:00] looking for my scientific team. And I was so lucky to meet Emilie Delanoue, who's our product director, and she's been with me since day one. I met her through my early advisor at the time. She was her naturopathic doctor. And so with Emily, I've had a few calls, and we were so aligned on the needs and the really white space in the nutraceutical market, and also the passion and wanting to create something. It was beyond obviously that we all want to have commercial success and that's how businesses grow and survive. But it was so much more than that for both of us. And she also agreed as a health practitioner that there was a need and there was a white space.

And that together we could create something really special where I could really lead the brand, the strategy, the commercial aspect, and she could lead the product development and really finding all the right partners for us to be able to create something special. And the first [00:09:00] partner that we had to find was our formulator.

And so Dr Maria at the time, was Emily's professor at the Integrative Institute in Paris, and Emily introduced me to her, and she said, I just have a feeling she's really the person for us. She's incredibly knowledgeable, she has so much experience in innovation and development in the nutraceutical space, and she would be an incredible person to bring on board.

And when I met Dr Maria, it just clicked and I knew that she was going to be the one. I definitely think it's instinct, but I had already spoken to over 60 other doctors, health practitioners, lab scientists. So when I met her, I just knew that after all of these conversations, that was the person that was going to make this happen for us on the formulation side. 

Juliet: Because it would be so hard, because when you are looking at the end result and the beautiful packaging, beautiful branding, beautiful imagery, that consumer [00:10:00] touchpoint that they get, they don't know that you actually couldn't get distracted by all of that good stuff. You had to do all of the core inside of the jar first, and that is people, and everyone says this, people make or break any business.

And in the startup world, it's very hard to get the right people at the right time in the right place, especially when you are trying to raise or take funding. I was going to ask you, with the three years before the launch, your pre-revenue, how were you funding the business?

Jianne: So I self-funded the business, and I had a small friends and family, and early advisors round as well. It definitely is a big undertaking, and I need to be honest about that because I think sometimes you hear podcasts, and you hear founders talk about how they've self-funded something, and then they got this huge raise, and it's so much work. Even doing that, friends and family VC, that was a lot of work that was very uncomfortable. I had to learn a [00:11:00] completely new skillset. I'm very lucky, and I want to be transparent about that, that my husband is a VC, and he was so supportive. He coached me, he introduced me to people, he really helped me feel that confidence and help shape the narrative speaking to investors, which is definitely a muscle to flex and it's a skillset to acquire and no one knows how to do it before they actually have to go ahead and do it.

Juliet: Oh God. That expression experience is what you get after you've needed it. And the thing with a founder, and I think this is why I find this podcast so interesting, when I speak to people, is that you have to have so many different specialisms to run a business or start a business, but you are not a specialist in any of them.

And you might be a specialist in your previous role. So for me, it was luxury PR and consumer goods in press. But then, running a company, I was like, I've never had to write an employee contract. I don't know what my terms are of having to set up our accounting software. [00:12:00] I loved that stuff 'cause my brain was happy 'cause it was learning things that were new, but I wasn't on a deadline of launch.

So, I'm a service-based business; it's very different. With a product-based business, NPD, new product development. It's new, it's a product, and you have to develop it. That's a lot. But before all of that. You get the raise; you get the investment. Then you look for your partners and your people. So once you'd found your, is it Chief Science Officer? What's Emily's role again? 

Jianne: Emily is our Director of Products and Dr Maria is our formulator. 

Juliet: Fine. So, then you'd found Emily and Dr Maria. What was the next step in your new product development stage?

Jianne: It was agreeing on which products we should start with.

Juliet: Oh, right, so you hadn't already decided it was sleep.

Jianne: We knew that there were a few ailments that health practitioners and consumers did not have readily available in one product, so they had to keep combining different ingredients and [00:13:00] making a little cocktail for themselves.

Jianne: We knew that, but we had to make a choice, right? Where to start, and actually, it was Dr. Maria that was very firm, and she said to us, I will only work with you if we focus on sleep and stress, because that's the epidemic of our time. This is what I'm seeing in my office. This is what I have to prescribe my patients over 10, 20 different ingredients and products and have them mix it at the pharmacy in Paris, because that's a possibility in France, which it isn't here.

And we need to really combine that know-how into products that are readily available. And of course, one product is never going to work on a hundred percent of the population, but she was confident that it was going to work on 80% of the population because of her expertise and her knowledge, both clinical and in practice.And so she really made that decision for us.

Juliet: How wonderful. Having that [00:14:00] clarity and that support of, I'm looking in the eye of someone who's an expert and who knows the population, but your market, as you said, 80% and the epidemic that we are in, and also everybody listening who's starting and scaling a business, is going to be very tired. The fact you have one product, and I love the fact it's just called rested, 'cause you know exactly what it's going to do for you. So she put her foot down and was like, we're focusing on sleep and anxiety, what was the next step after that?

Jianne: After that, we had to give her the space to formulate. So what I mean, the space, it's time, it's support, and it's. I would say Emily's time in terms of checking all the regulatory steps. Every time Dr Maria would put a formula together on paper, we had to double-check, is this going to work for the U.S.? Is this going to work for the UK?

Are these ingredients available? How much these ingredients cost? Is it going to be possible to keep the price at that? So [00:15:00] it was a lot of back and forth. Every time we changed a couple of grams of each ingredient, to make sure that it was available, that we could source and source well, that it was going to be at a price that was acceptable for the consumer at the end of it.

And we are a pricey supplement, obviously, in the beauty space, 60 pounds is not that expensive. compared to the creams that are, you know, now 300-400 pounds if we're talking luxury. But in the supplement space, we were aware that it was going to be expensive if we wanted to do something really high quality, and we wanted to keep the price as low as possible because we also want to be inclusive, because that's part of our mission.

So, it was a balancing act throughout and every time we'd say, okay, this formula on paper is great, let's go and formulate it. We would go formulate a small batch and have it tested on about 20 people in [00:16:00] our network, and then use the LSEQ it's called, questionnaire, which a lot of pharmaceutical companies use as well, to really check that the formula was working for everyone.

And then we would go back to Dr Maria and say,people are sleeping really well, but it's a little hard for them to wake up. We need to rework it. Okay, they're sleeping well, but they slept better with the first version. So how can we combine that? And then one of them, actually, we laugh about this anecdote within the brand, is that we had an ingredient that made people have very vivid dreams.

And so that ingredient had to go. And so it was really reiterating again and again until-

Juliet: Sounds exhausting.

Jianne: It's exhausting.

Juliet: The irony of that and it's just like 

Jianne: You're supposed to feel rested. 

Juliet: And I guess there's three of you doing this, so you can support each other through it if one of you's getting disheartened. The other one's no, no, we we're so close. We're getting there. The iteration. The iteration.

But that whack-a-mole of [00:17:00] Okay. We're, we are 90% forwards, 20% backwards. 40% forwards. 50% backwards. How did you know that you were done and that you were ready?

Jianne: When the majority of the people testing it were asking for more. So they would come back to us. Do you have more samples? You, I really want more. Do you have more? And so that's when you know you have market fit on a tiny sample of participants, and personally, we also had tested it, right? So we were taking it, we took our time testing it.

So it's like we did it for two nights. We did it for a month, two months, and we had aura rings and Whoops. And we used whatever tracking device we could get our hands on. And so at some point, I also think in the R&D phase, you can get caught up by just wanting to do better and better, whether it's on the brand or on the product side.

But you do have to launch at some point, and you have to trust that you've done your best and that you're proud of what you've done, and that [00:18:00] this product is already helping people. And so it needs 

 to go out into the world. And that's what we did. And so I'm really glad, and I think, sometimes we shy away from speaking about intuition in business because obviously there's so many things that you have to do that aren't part of how you feel about things. But intuition was the guiding light throughout my career. The choice of even joining Lauder at the time, after college, or starting this business.

 A lot of it was intuition. And I think tapping into that and being confident and tapping into it is important. And I really tapped into it when it came to these big decisions too, because I had them on paper and it was an obvious cs, but that was the extra push that I needed to make these final decisions.

That did feel very final, I think, on the product side more than the brand side ever.

Juliet: It is so interesting you say that. There's a lot of people I've spoken to or working with that say, you can [00:19:00] lay all the groundwork, you can do all the sums, you can do all the spreadsheets, that then affords you space for the magic to happen. And it's that intuition, whether it's magic or dust or gut feeling or nuance or fate.

Lots of people have different words for it, but there's something I've noticed across all the founders is like, you know it in your gut. You have to trust and believe your feelings. And in business, I mean, no VC would probably want to invest in someone that's building a business of feelings, but I think they're, coupled together, right?

You need the spreadsheets and you need the gut feeling. Yeah, that's, I love that. And obviously, after good night's sleep, your gut feeling will be clearer and have more clarity around it for you to move forward. So tell us about the product rested. What does it do?

Jianne: Yeah, so rested was a very clear brief. We wanted people to sleep really well, have very high-quality sleep, but also wake up feeling energised in the morning. And that's the bit, I think that really makes it special because you can find products on the [00:20:00] market, whether pharmaceutical or nutraceutical, that will help you fall asleep.

And a lot of people obviously use melatonin. Even though in the UK you have to get it on prescription, it's readily available in the US and you can always get your hands on it. And so there are products out there that will help you fall asleep. But then what's that quality of sleep that you're getting throughout the night, and how do you feel when you wake up?

Not just when you wake up, but how do you feel at 11:00 AM? And then throughout the day? And then in the evening? So that was really the focus for this product. It wasn't just about we help you fall asleep. It's about your body knows exactly what it needs to do. It's being disturbed. All day because of the modern lives that we're leading.

Ideally, our brand would not exist in the world, right? Because our bodies are 100% equipped to do what they need to do.

Juliet: And listened to that circadian rhythm. I interviewed Russell Foster, who wrote a book [00:21:00] about sleep. He's the head of Neuroscience at Oxford University, and he was saying how circadian rhythms seeker, dear, about a day. It's about 24 hours, but it's not vigilantly 24 hours. But our bodies are in tune with that and we're in tune with the season.

So, take away all technology, take away all lighting. We would work it out and go back to sleep and have a decent night's rest. But given that we have meta rod for our own backs, rested comes in to placate that awfulness that we've created.

Jianne: Yes. And so it was really about improving the quality, making sure that every hour that you're getting everything that you can out of those hours and then you wake up feeling like I'm ready to tackle the day now. That's what a good night of sleep is supposed to feel like at the end of the day.

It's not just about being asleep for a long time, which is, now I think the awareness is there slowly because of the conversations that we're having today, the podcast, it's really in the zeitgeist of the awareness [00:22:00] around sleep. We really wanted to focus on, let's make sure your day is also great, because you've had a great night. And so that's what makes it unique.

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Juliet: The supplements and wellness market is highly, highly competitive and every year gets more so. How did you identify your niche for Diome, and what strategies have helped with that?

Jianne: It is. I would say in general, it's obviously a huge industry and it's growing, which [00:23:00] is always great to be part of a growing industry. I saw that with skincare when I was at La Mer. That being said, there aren't that many premium brands in the supplement space. I guess you could count them on two hands, internationally.

So when I talk about brand, it's both amazing products that are science backed, where there is a real scientific team behind it, innovation testing, but also, branding and connection to the consumer, and attention to detail, to messaging, to the creative assets, to the packaging, and a product that says something about you, because you're using it.

And so I think it's marrying these two that is a lot of work and a lot of investment, both in time and budget, and that's really, I think what makes us special and what I wanted to focus on was never cutting any corner on both ends. And it's difficult because at some point, you have limited resources. Again, in [00:24:00] terms of budget, in terms of time, you have to really get it going, but.

I think it's us being so thorough and saying it's better not to launch than to launch something we're not happy with, when it comes to at least the efficacy and how the product's going to be presented to the consumer. And those high standards really set us apart.

Juliet: Especially given that, retention is the crux of the business. Your customer acquisition will be costly, but then the retention hopefully will be there because the efficacy is so good, it's a no-brainer that they'll continue. And I always catch myself. I subscribe to nothing. I don't have Netflix, I don't have Amazon Prime.

And my friend’s like, what are you doing with your life? But it's because I heard this podcast years ago about the subscription model of a business that once you are a subscriber, you forget. People have all of these subscriptions, they're spending all of this money that they don't even know. They're not even getting the product arrive anymore.

So I'm not the normal person when it comes to these things, but you've got that moment to introduce the brand to somebody. If they don't come back, they're never going to come back. [00:25:00] So it was very important for you to get it right the first time. Whereas a lot of I think service-based businesses I've interviewed have said, actually, just get going.

Get out there. Iterate as you go. You can test and learn. Services evolve, but product, I think, behaves in a different way, 

Jianne: I think especially in health, especially ingestibles and especially sleep, 

I don't think we had the easiest entry points. And I always say there are many barriers and we have to work on the education, on the advocacy, on the trust, and it's really a halo effect once people do start using it.

It's getting into people's hands, and it does the marketing for itself. 

Juliet: Yeah. 

Jianne: And the retention for itself as well.

Juliet: Well, the best PR is that word of mouth. It's the mascara effect. If you see a friend wearing a great mascara and they tell you what it is, you believe them. That word of mouth is insane, and obviously, press is really important as well, but it can fly for you. You've done the hard work, you've taken it out to market, and now your clients will be your biggest ambassadors, I'm sure, given [00:26:00] what you've built.

One thing I wanted to ask you about is you've been working on the product development in terms of what it does and how it affects people. When did you let yourself get distracted by branding and packaging and all of the fun stuff that a lot of founders are like, I need a brand, I need a logo, I need a business card.

It's like, you don't you need the product first, but when did you let yourself go there? 

Jianne: When Dr Maria started formulating and I had the headspace to find my creative partners in that domain. So obviously, like I told you earlier, it did take a few years, and from the first few months, I knew that was my role. I really had to create a brand that people loved. And so that started with finding an agency to do it with.

Again, it's the partners that you find. So I found my scientific partners very important, felt very confident that we were going to make something special happen. I believe we had a couple of samples already, and we knew what the products were going to be, the very [00:27:00] first two. And that's when I started doing an extensive search into the brand world. And that meant having another Airtable, not with doctors and scientists and labs, but with branding agencies and creatives. And I looked at every agency in the world. I mean, from Australia to the U.S., the UK, all of Europe.

Juliet: This is what happens when you grow up in luxury brands. You don't leave any stone unturned, and I think it's a lot of the work that people don't see. They just see the one end result. But it's all of the groundwork that you've put in to know that you've made the right decision. But that takes time and energy and effort.

So you vetted them internationally, the way we work these days, you can work internationally with brands. It didn't matter to you that you weren't necessarily going to see them in person-

Jianne: It was also COVID, so we didn't have a choice. 

Juliet: It's quite liberating in that sense.

Jianne: Yeah, it was, in a sense it was and you didn't have to get on a flight to New York and you could just do these calls and it was normal to do [00:28:00] them Zoom.

Juliet: How did you refine your choice with them? 

Jianne: I love references and the referrals and just understanding how they've worked with past clients and what type of work they did. And it's not about what brand were you a part of? It's what did you do for that brand? Exactly. Because you can see one brand on many different branding agencies, websites, and then you start thinking.

At what stage did you come in, and what exactly did you do and your team and who was on that team, and what did that person do? And I think that was, it's going back to the people and vetting people rather than just like big-name agencies. And that's why I stayed away from the very big agencies that offer comfort to a first-time founder.

Because you think if they've done this brand so well, then they can definitely help me build a brand. But then- 

Juliet: The people might not be in the team. The people that did that case study might not still [00:29:00] be there.

Jianne: And I wanted to work with the founders of any agency that I was going to work with because I know it's just different when the founders are involved and the stakes are much higher for them as well. And that was a prerequisite of mine. And not everyone is going to agree to that when you are a 20-something-year-old, coming to them with this idea, not even a finished product, and demanding to speak to the leadership and that they will be part of your project.

And so again, I think it was a lot of research and time, and it was also instinct. And when I met the team at Acne and Stockholm, I just loved the team so much and they really understood what we were building. They were behind brands that I loved as a consumer, Byredo, Westman Attelier, De Beers, I don't drink beer, but I love what they've created with that brands.

It's everywhere today, but even four years ago, it was very niche and I thought they had made like an incredible job at [00:30:00] that. And so I wanted to meet the real people behind those brands. And I read a lot of interviews as well. We didn't have ChatGPT back then, so it was a lot of Google and reading the actual articles and understanding who did what and who was mentioned in articles about these brands, and that's really the team that stood out. They were the first people I spoke to, actually, and then in the end it was them. So I had done all of this research, but it just confirms sometimes that your gut is so strong, and you just need the reassurance of the actual process being done properly. And I think the process, I just want to touch on that because maybe it's helpful for some founders.

I noted everything down. So I had an Airtable. At the time, we now use Notion, but back in the day, it was on Airtable, and I had the name of the agency, all the brands that they had worked on, what they had done for these brands, how much they were [00:31:00] asking for our brief. And keeping track of all of that is really important because sometimes we write it down somewhere and then we forget, and then we try to remember.

So keeping track of all of those conversations, all the comments, also the feelings that I was getting as I was speaking to them, that was really key, and that helps make that decision. And another thing is the brief. The brief is just as important, and that goes for the product development as much as the brand development.

So what do we want to do together? What do we want to achieve together? What do I need your help with, your support with? And that is really important because the project can only be as good as the brief that was given to the team. 

Juliet: Yeah, and they're not psychic and I've been on both sides of the fence, but when a client can't brief me. That's a huge red flag because I don't believe we'll be able to work very well together if we cannot communicate together. And it could just be not a good fit. But I think when you are looking at [00:32:00] service-based businesses to support your brand, you need to have them fit in so many different ways.

And it's the communication style, how well you get on, how much you respect each other, but it's an equal partnership. It isn't, we are going to pay them money so we can kick them to the curb whenever we like. They are your expert. They are better than you at that thing, but you need to convey what you need from them or what you need them to do for you.

And this is what we find in PR and podcasting a lot, is people are like, I'm just going to externalize budget and it's going to be fixed. It's like, no, no, no, no storytelling. You are your best storyteller. let us teach you how to do it. Or if you are going to externalise brief to an inch of your life. So, for you writing that branding brief, what would you say, and I'm sure you would've tweaked it along the way, what were the kind of glaringly obvious things that you left out, and you're like, how did I miss that?

Jianne: How did I miss that? That's an interesting question. I think I was too focused on what I want out of this [00:33:00] partnership. So I want a name, I want the creative colour scheme, the tone of voice. So I was very clear on like a checklist almost of what we had to at least have that at the end of the project and. A lot of the magic of brand building is in between that, and it's in the long conversations, and the workshops, and I was so lucky with Acne because they had so much experience, and they were so generous with their time. They came to London, we went to Stockholm, and it was very much about the dialogue. Like you said, it's a conversation, and it's us respecting them, them respecting us. If I didn't feel like something was working, it wasn't going back to the contract and saying, you have one iteration left.

There was none of that. They were super flexible and they understood, when we liked something, we didn't say, we have two more left that we can test. We were just like, let's go with it. It's perfect. We don't need to spend more time on this. But then other things we wanted to spend more time on, and then I remember at [00:34:00] some point when it came to tone of voice, I really pushed on that and I said.

I want the best person for this job that really understands what we're doing. And I think you have to externalise it like you need to find someone else, because it's not working the way that we're doing it today. And mind you, we had an amazing run so far. So all of these conversations we're just very honest, open, and they were so receptive to that.

And they said, okay, we're going to go out there and we're going to find that person. And they did. And so I really believe that the respect, the friendship, that has a lot to do with it too. And that can't really be part of the brief, but it's something that you should look out for from the beginning. It's to have this kind of good,relationship from the onset.

Juliet: Amazing. It sounds like you've learned a heck of a lot in quite a short period of time. And just anyone, I encourage to anyone listening look at the website because you can see the fruits of your labour, and I know that you've got another product [00:35:00] launching next year, early next year. What's that? Can you tell us a little bit more about what that's going to be called?

Jianne: So it's going to be called Grounded. Grounded, what actually developed, in tandem with Rested, they're sister products, and they're both developed by Dr Maria. And like I said, from the very beginning, we were only going to work together if we were going to focus on these two concerns that both Emily and Maria were seeing in their practice.

So it was like high stress and disturbed sleep. And so for the stress product, that was a whole other journey because it's a liquid product. If anyone knows R&D, they know liquid is much harder than powder and capsules. And we wanted to create a product that worked under 15 minutes because the concern there was both chronic stress, so people that are chronically stressed throughout the day, but also acute stress.

So if you get stressed before the plane is about to take off or a presentation we've had some people use it actually, the samples that we had, to pass their driver's [00:36:00] license. We actually have three instances of that already. And so we needed to make sure it was fast-acting. To be fast-acting, it cannot be in capsule form; it had to be in liquid form.

So that's really how we went about it. 

 But it's an interesting challenge, and it's what makes it unique. Just like what makes rested unique is that feeling you get in the morning and throughout the day. For us, Grounded also had to do something special that isn't being done on the market today.

And that's about just feeling calm, feeling focused, not feeling groggy, which is also a concern with anti-anxiety or stress medication and supplements. And so, they were developed in tandem, so I would say they were ready at the same time, but we wanted to launch one at a time because in this year we've learned so much.

And we've made many mistakes that we will not repeat with Grounded. I'm sure we'll make more when it comes out, but at least there is more experience, and I'm glad that we kept that launch budget [00:37:00] a launch that was going to be a little bit more mature.

Juliet: Yeah, so something that we do is our previous guest has a question for our next guest and so Neada's question for you was, how do you see AI reshaping the landscape for employment? And this is obviously completely off, maybe not because a lot of the previous guests, we interviewed Richard from Fathom AI, saying that he doesn't really recruit anyone under 30 because AI's replaced all of those roles.

AI is changing the way we grow and scale businesses. How do you see it changing and reshaping the landscape for employment? And what jobs do you think will surface or be greatly affected by AI? Quite a big question.

Jianne: Yeah, I think it's a nuanced conversation. We talk about it a lot with my husband because he is in the VC, and it's obviously taken over that industry. I want to be careful because I think as much as it's exciting and it's amazing for a founder like myself, because all of a sudden I have all [00:38:00] these incredible tools that I can use and I don't have to hire as many people and I can create and bring my vision to life with skills that I didn't have in the past just by prompting.

So that is amazing for a founder. That being said. I think we have to be very careful how many people are going to be affected. And I've had weeks ago, and I heard the journalist talk about it, just saying we don't use it, we don't want to use it we're actually, you know, afraid it is going to take away our jobs. And not just that, it's a lot of the IP that's out there on the internet.

It's work that we've done for years and years that's being repurposed into these engines, and we're not getting anything out of it ourselves. So I think it's a nuance conversation. We have to be sensitive. That being said, I think there will be new jobs that. I believe humans are incredibly adaptable.

They'll learn how to use these tools because to me, those are tools. They're not going to [00:39:00] replace humans at the end of the day, just like Google didn't replace anyone or the internet, it's just going to change our world and offer more time for a lot of people to upscale to do what they love, and remove a lot of the more operational, tedious tasks out of the way.

So I, I am excited about it. I think it's something we need to think about with a lot of, grace as well. and not forget who it's affecting the most, but also. to use it to, benefit, all of, not just businesses, but humanity as well.

Juliet: Yeah. Good answer. I like that. And what would your question be for the next guest?

Jianne: My question for the next guest would be, what is the most difficult decision that you've had to make as a founder, and what lessons can you share from that?

Juliet: Oh yeah, that's a good one because I want to go back and ask the back catalog that question because every day you have to make difficult decisions. There's always something that [00:40:00] crops up and you're like, really? Really? But then you kind of get hardened to it and used to it, and you have to roll with those punches.

And a lot of people are like, oh, you're so lucky to be self-employed. I'm like. There's no luck involved. It's really hard. But then someone else said, I interviewed Rachel Harris, who's the AccountantShe financial influencer and founder of Strive X, and she's like, you are unemployable now. Once you've done your own thing, you can't go work for somebody else because they know that you know, and you've seen the other side.

You see how things operate, but pros and cons to both. But I think this is what I love. Podcast for, is that anyone that's sitting on the fence about thinking of starting or at the beginning of their journey, they're not alone. 

Jianne: But there are tough decisions to make, but that's okay.

Juliet: That's life. 

Jianne: 

Everything is hard. So it's about choosing your heart. and I remind myself that every day

Juliet: Being in corporate was also hard, like I need to remember that. 

And looking back, you forget very quickly; your brain automatically forgets negativity and wants to let it go. [00:41:00] But if you actually sat and really thought about the pros and cons in your old roles, there were many. And I think everything comes at a cost. So yeah, it's not plain sailing by any means, but there's so much joy to it as well, and you get to create something. Look at what you've created. It's amazing. 

Huge. Congratulations, 'cause it's not luck, it's hard work, and you've done that work. So well done on launching Rested, and cannot wait to see the launch of Grounded. 

Jianne: Thank you so much. Such a pleasure speaking to you.

Juliet: If you'd like to contact Jeanne, you can find all of her details in the show notes along with a recap of the advice that she has so kindly shared, and do subscribe and follow our podcast to hear Candace from Studio 88 on next week's episode.