As the founder of Lunya, Ashley Merrill and her team are reinventing sleepwear for the modern woman through innovation, design, and quality; resulting in a carefully edited collection of must-have pieces. Lunya’s core mission is simple – to make women’s lives better through product, experience and example. Ashley is utilizing Lunya, her background in tech and investing, to build her personal mission of helping create opportunity for women and girls. Beyond building Lunya, Ashley is an active supporter and board member for Girls Inc., a supporter of both Upstream and Planned Parenthood, and invests in many female entrepreneurs and funds. She is a Southern California native and resides there with her two young children and her husband.
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
- Ashley’s Father
- Ashley’s Husband
When business started difficulties overcame:
“aside from not knowing what I was doing which was a pretty big difficulty I think that the biggest challenge is yourself at least in my case that was true. That fear, fear was one of the hardest things. Every day was a rollercoaster of can I do this, why should I do this, will I be successful at this? And then hopefully I could answer each of those with a yes I can. If you talk to me in the morning the answer might be different than the afternoon. The volatility of the journey, the small wins in the small defeats which were constant. Overcoming that mental challenge was incredibly hard.”…[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
- Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t Book by Jim Collins
- Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success Book by Ken Segall
Favourite Quote:
“be the change”
Recommended Online Resources:
- Trello – Infinitely flexible Incredibly easy to use Great mobile apps. It’s free Trello keeps track of everything, from the big picture to the minute details
- Asana – Easily organize and plan workflows, projects, and more, so you can keep your team s work on schedule
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“it kind of comes back to that hedgehog principle. I like to advise people to really challenge themselves on their ideas long before they try to start anything. And I think you should be your harshest critic so that by the time you go to other people you are very confident in asking the tough questions and in answering the tough questions. And I do find that that trio of questions, that hedgehog principle about whether it’s defensible, about whether your idea can make money and about whether you have the passion and drive to go with distance are very useful”…[Listen for More]
More About Ashley Merrill:
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
“If you see a bandwagon, it’s too late.” James Goldsmith
Other Quotes From the Chat with Ashley Merrill:
- “it’s actually hard to look unlikely scenarios in the face with the lens of optimism. And I think that that’s really what leaders do is they see that it’s going to be hard but they believe they can overcome and they can convince other people of that to”
- “I view entrepreneurship as this ability to solve problems, overcome challenges, weigh pros and cons. You know is really much more of the mindset”
- “management experience has been the steepest learning curve for me”
- “as I have gotten older my definition of success has shifted”
- “if I can ultimately have people around me that feel really good about my intentions and what we are doing here both in business and in personal life I will feel successful with that”
- “I think that it can be an incredibly empowering point of view to think about yourself as a change agent. Instead of complaining about the things that you see, see them as opportunities”
- “I was comfortable with this idea of sprints and scrum which are… These are short development management cycles methodologies that help people to breakdown complicated problems into really digestible tasks”
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