Best friends, Bianca Gates & Marisa Sharkey shared a mutual frustration of finding comfortable, stylish slippers to wear while entertaining in their homes and teamed up to solve the problem for women around the globe. Bianca spent 15 years leading marketing and advertising at Univision, MTV, Facebook and Instagram. She helped some of the biggest home and fashion companies in the world, build their brands and accelerate the growth and was eager to jump at the opportunity to do that with Birdies Slippers. Marisa was born for a career in the retail industry. She grew up learning from her father, a retail veteran, and would spend weekends tagging along with him going store-to-store learning about retail trends. After earning an MBA, she joined Bain & Company and worked with leadership teams across retailers and consumer brands to help develop and execute growth strategies before joining Ross Stores as the Group Vice President of Strategy.
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
When business started difficulties overcame:
“Getting shoes made is really difficult and it’s just not something that exists in every city, you can’t just ask them to make a hundred so really our absolute challenge initially was finding someone to help us manufacture them and we were lucky and we persevered to find a good resource and immediately we learned so much more”…[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
- Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead Book by Sheryl Sandberg
- Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike Book by Phil Knight
Favourite Quote:
“If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together”
Recommended Online Resources:
Shopify – is the an ecommerce platform that allows you to sell online, on social media, or in person.
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“Be obsessed with your idea and the problem that you are solving, your obsession is what’s going to take you far. Start small and then scale big, a lot of people say they have to create this big business plan and they have to worry about fundraising and how are they going to attack it, just start it in the kitchen, just start. Ask for help, be specific”…[Listen for More]
More About Marisa Sharkey & Bianca Gates:
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
“I may not have all the answers, but I do know the questions you no longer need answers for.” Robert J. Braathe
Other Quotes From the Chat with Marisa Sharkey & Bianca Gates:
- “It’s not about going fast, it’s not about crossing the finish line, it’s about getting as far as we humanly can”
- “Ideas are worthless, it’s about execution and in order to execute correctly you need a lot of people to help you get there and if you’re not sharing your idea with others you’re not going to have the resources and the help that you need to go fast and to go far and that’s a big problem”
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