11: Having Grit As an Entrepreneur
Behind Their Success: Ep11
[00:00:00]
Paden Squires: successful entrepreneurs are the people that just didn't quit
Hello, I'm Paden Squires, and I'm the host of the podcast. This podcast is for those who are dissatisfied with where they are at in their life and career currently. I used to be one. When I got out of college with my master's degree, I started working in banking. I eventually moved to a Fortune 500 company.
I quickly found out being an employee was not for me. I was bored out of my mind and did not like it whatsoever. Something eventually lit a fire under me. I started studying for the CPA exam, listening to podcasts, and reading books every day. By doing that, I had passed all four parts of the CPA exam in eight months and quit my job.
I opened up my own tax firm, having never been paid to do someone's taxes. That was in 2014. Since then, I've consistently grown my business. Had a lot of success in other business ventures, including real estate, property management, among other things. And now, I'm looking for a new venture. I want [00:01:00] to help inspire you and other entrepreneurs to achieve their potentials and dreams, as well as learn from the stories of these entrepreneurs, as to see what has gone well, and what hasn't gone well for them.
Let's go create a bunch of healthy, wealthy, and wise entrepreneurs.
Paden Squires: Welcome back to the podcast. This is Behind Their Success. I'm Paden Squires, the host, and today we have a special guest on with us. We have Ericka Nicole. She took a chance and quit her career in forensics to build a luxury skincare brand named Silken. She is also the host of Behind the Silk, a podcast dedicated to helping busy millennials.
Paden Squires: Which I'm definitely one of those. Explore different self care practices, and prioritize themselves. Welcome, Ericka. How are you?
Ericka Nicole: I'm good. Thank you for having me.
Paden Squires: Yeah absolutely, Ericka. So, you know, in your intro there, you talk about leaving your [00:02:00] career. Give us a little background about yourself.
Paden Squires: So kind of where you started and how you got to where you are today.
Ericka Nicole: Yeah. So my background is actually in forensic science and pre medicine. That's what I went to school for. My plan was to become a forensic coroner for the FBI. That was my dream. So do I? Anyone would do it with a forensics degree, went into a crime scene, quickly realized that it is not what I thought it would be.
Ericka Nicole: Crime scenes are a lot smellier than you may think and how they make it look on tv. So I pivoted into lab work. I got into clinical toxicology for a little bit, and then I just realized that I wasn't feeling fulfilled. It just wasn't what I thought it would be. And then I was introduced to this concept of entrepreneurship, and I was like, Whoa, what is this thing?
Ericka Nicole: You know, to be able to have this impact on people outside of just my career. I think that was the biggest reason I wanted to get into forensics was to help people, right? I mean, exonerating free people, putting bad people in jail, giving families closure. It was the impact of it all. And then once I realized that I could have an [00:03:00] impact in another way, where not only could I have the financial freedom to do certain things, but also have the platform to help people in a certain aspect, it just changed my entire perspective on what was possible.
Paden Squires: Yeah. drawing to forensic science, is it, uh, Was it all the forensic TV shows as a kid? Yeah,
Ericka Nicole: It was. Growing up, I used to watch whatever my grandma watched on TV. That's the era I came from, before we had tablets and smartphones and we can watch everything else. So, CSI, Monk, Matlock, Murder, She Wrote.
Ericka Nicole: I mean, the classics, you know. Right.
Paden Squires: That's cool. So you got your degree. what was kind of the tipping point that, you know, you say you weren't feeling fulfilled.
Paden Squires: You, I guess you were in, in a career there or some kind of career path. what was the tipping point or where you, I guess, finally got brave enough or strong enough to make that decision to
Ericka Nicole: leave? Yeah, it was literally a light switch moment. When I tell my story, I tell people not to follow my path nor my advice because it was completely reckless and [00:04:00] irresponsible.
Ericka Nicole: And I remember going into the lab one day and someone had called out of the lab and you know, when you have to have a certain amount of people in the lab at a certain amount of time. So they were asking me to stay longer than I was supposed to. to. And I don't know what it was in that moment where it just switched.
Ericka Nicole: And I was like, I have had enough. And I remember just storming out of the lab. I went into my car. I called my partner at the time. And I was just like, I can't do this anymore. I'm quitting tomorrow. Like I'm over it. Just went on this whole tantrum, so to speak, and my partner is typically the more calm one.
Ericka Nicole: I was expecting him to say, you know, it's all right. We'll talk about this when we get home, you know, don't worry about it. You're just upset. And when I said, I'm going to quit tomorrow, he was just like, okay. and I was like, Oh, okay. That's not how I expected this conversation to go, but all right.
Ericka Nicole: So I went in the next day, I put in my two weeks and I was basically living off of my savings. I decided to take a sabbatical. We traveled for the remaining six months of that year. That was back in 2019 and just never looked back. And honestly, [00:05:00] one of the best things I could have done. I mean, being out of your environment, leaving, traveling again, very financially responsible, had no job lined up, no plan, no idea what was going to happen.
Ericka Nicole: But I got so much clarity during those six months of who I really wanted to be and what I was doing and why I was pursuing this career. Anyway, what was my motive? Like, I had so much free time to really think about the person that I wanted to be in the impact that I wanted to have. And I don't think I would have had that clarity had I not taken that sabbatical, if you will.
Paden Squires: Yeah, you know, I think it's busy entrepreneurs. I think that's one of our biggest problems really is that and I'm learning and implementing this some in my life. I'm going through some training and kind of self development stuff where, you set aside two times a week actually, where you just sit and think, sit and think for 30 minutes to an hour, kind of just however long you go.
Paden Squires: And that is like you said, to your point there is to just create some clarity. We don't realize how fast our brain is running and going from task to task and not necessarily, you, you can just miss [00:06:00] the, the big picture, right? It's so important to take that time to step back and get clarity in your life and take the time to, to see.
Paden Squires: And, once again, I don't know, we might need to change the name of the podcast like self awareness, but everything I ever talk about on this podcast is like, you know, you took the time to become even more self aware.
Ericka Nicole: And it's hard because that's not how we were. brought up most of us. That's not how we were trained, you know, in school.
Ericka Nicole: We all know schools train you to be a worker. They train you to be an employee. So when you take this risk or take this pivot that's different from the norm, it comes with a lot of resistance as well. When I quit my job, I did not tell anyone. that I quit my job. I mean, like when my mom would call me, I would still text her like between my working hours like, Hey, like I'll call you later.
Ericka Nicole: Like trying to keep up this facade because I knew it would not be received well, especially because, you know, we put all this money and time towards your education. And now you're telling me you're not using this degree that we sacrificed to put you in school for, especially also having immigrant parents as well.
Ericka Nicole: It's like, Oh no, that's not an [00:07:00] option. But sometimes you have to take the risk and just trust your intuition and you're like, you know what, this is what we're going to do. And you have to be mentally strong enough to also handle what comes along with that.
Paden Squires: That's such a great point. The ability and once again, being brave enough to, to kind of go against the crowd there and, you know, and, and, you know, your parents, you know, obviously I don't know the whole story, but your parents, I'm sure once they found out that just created fear in them, right?
Paden Squires: Just because they don't understand or, you know, just, they grew up in a different environment. Right. And, it's the ability to have that conversation or be brave enough to have that conversation. That's, uh, yeah.
Ericka Nicole: Yeah. And also being unable to understand that they're not going to see the vision that you have.
Ericka Nicole: And that's just with anyone, especially when you're pursuing entrepreneurship, you have this big grand vision of what you want your business, company, whatever to look like. And you have to understand that when you're explaining that vision to other people, they don't have it. clarity. They don't see what you see.
Ericka Nicole: So just because you're explaining it to the best of your ability, doesn't mean that it's going to be received well [00:08:00] by anyone actually.
Paden Squires: Yeah, and your parents are just looking out for you, right? They can't see that vision. So they're just trying to protect you. Right. I mean, that's their number one job.
Paden Squires: you know, Ericka, what would you say, is your superpower, your best skill that helps you be successful in entrepreneurship.
Ericka Nicole: It's the grit. I think it's not giving up. You know, I'm a proud New Yorker.
Ericka Nicole: I love to say that New York builds a different type of person. And I think it really does. It's not giving up. Silkenn has been in the making since 2021. So we're going on three years of trying to build and launch this brand. And there were so many opportunities for me to just quit and just put it down and not pick it back up.
Ericka Nicole: But you have to have a certain level of resilience and you have to trust the vision. You were given. I think to be an entrepreneur, you have to be a visionary to be a good entrepreneur with any potential of success. You need to be a visionary. So being able to overcome obstacles and get knocked down and build back up and keep building, even though [00:09:00] you don't feel like you have even the materials to build, I think it's huge for me.
Paden Squires: You know, there's a great book out there called Grit, by Angela Duckworth. I don't know if you've ever had or read that. It really just goes in depth of how, really, what all successful entrepreneurs have in common is just that grit, right? Because it's the ability to keep taking steps.
Paden Squires: In the face of the unknown and just keep pushing because you do have that vision, right? And successful entrepreneurs are the people that just didn't quit
Ericka Nicole: Exactly, and you have to get comfortable with failure odds are you're going to fail more than you succeed So get comfortable with it
Paden Squires: Yeah, yeah, and that's so tough and you know, especially if you're maybe even more of like a social type person you might be more empathetic and what people think affects you maybe even more.
Paden Squires: And so the ability to be okay with people not understanding what you're doing and just blocking that all out. That's [00:10:00] something I think I struggle with, myself for sure.
Ericka Nicole: Yeah, it's hard, especially in this era of social media. I feel like we're in this time period where everyone wants to build publicly.
Ericka Nicole: And I think that's fine. I think if you're going to share your successes online, it would probably be very transparent of you to also share your failures online. But there is something that's also very scary about failing publicly because now it just takes on a whole different feeling. So sometimes you have to build and fail in private.
Ericka Nicole: Sometimes it's, it's a. Something to consider.
Paden Squires: Yeah. And I think, the overarching way to think about that is just like not having your identity wrapped up in the success or failure, right? Have your identity and where you get your self worth from the grit or the ability to keep pushing And have your self worth tied up and I'm the person that just keeps going.
Paden Squires: Now the outcomes, you know, I can control those to some degree, but like any certain outcome, any certain success or failure certainly doesn't define me. Absolutely. So what would you credit [00:11:00] as the best decision you've ever made? Entrepreneurially speaking,
Investing in a brand strategist. So let's rewind and give some context, right? So I took the sabbatical at the end of 2019 boom, 2020 happens. Now here comes COVID who would have thought we'd be entering a pandemic. A longer sabbatical than I thought I'd be on. So that time period kind of goes on and.
Ericka Nicole: You know, 2019 was also a rough year prior to quitting my job and taking the sabbatical. You know, I had a very traumatic loss in my family that really kind of just set the tone. So I just felt really lost during that period and I think that was the main reason why I was like, I need to go and kind of reassess and realign.
Ericka Nicole: So during that time period of me figuring myself out, skincare was always this big thing for me. It was always something that was very ritualistic that I can always fall back on to keep me on some type of routine. And, my first introduction into entrepreneurship was actually real estate. You know, real estate will become very big in 2020.
Ericka Nicole: Mortgage rates are low. Its money was being printed like never before. It was, it was a [00:12:00] great time, you know? So that was my first transition to entrepreneurship and that was an experience in and of itself. But then I realized that real estate was a very slow game. You know, people think, you know, flipping houses and having rentals, it's a get rich quick kind of thing, but it's not, it's stocks and real estate are a very slow game.
Ericka Nicole: And I knew that I wouldn't have the impact that I wanted to have if I played it slow and safe. So You know, I had the skincare concept in my mind, but I was like, how am I going to start a skincare business? I know nothing about this. and then I went down this path of hiring the wrong people, partnering with the wrong people, trying to build this brand, wrong manufacturers.
Ericka Nicole: Just, it was a journey. until I had to really take a pause in 2022 and really just realign, you know, kind of wipe the slate clean of all the failures and start over, build again. which is, which is scary. So, and that's, I think one of the biggest things that has made a transition in my business up until this point with us actually being on the right path is [00:13:00] building my team and hiring the right people.
Ericka Nicole: And I credit my brand strategist for a lot of things for giving so much clarity.
Ericka Nicole:
Paden Squires: Yeah, you know, brand, as a CPA or in CFP, I'm an analytical kind of money guy, right?
Paden Squires: I don't think it's until the last year or two that I really started to understand, and like, I'm a business guy. I've studied business my whole life, but really understand the power of branding and what. that means, even the story and the associations around branding and how powerful that can be, you know, as a guy that's been in business for over a decade myself, I feel like I'm just starting to understand the power of that,
Ericka Nicole: right?
Ericka Nicole: I think a lot of us accredit branding to the visual aspect, but there's so much more that goes into a brand outside of just the visuals that I don't think we consciously are aware of when we look at the branding of big companies like McDonald's and, you know, Nike and all these, Super big companies.
Ericka Nicole: It's a psychological thing, and we're just oblivious to it until you kind of [00:14:00] get into that world of understanding what brand strategy is. It's huge. And even like market research and market validation and getting these key indicators of understanding your market before investing money into bringing this Product to market.
Ericka Nicole: I mean, that would have saved me so much time and money. Had I done a little bit more market research.
Paden Squires: Well, sure. And, but like, you know, you're, you're so much stronger and better for it. Right. Like, you know, I'm sure you had lit some money on fire and you thought it was stupid, you know, looking back. And, and, you know, I've done similar things myself but at the same time, as long as you get the lesson out of it.
Paden Squires: Right? And, learn not to do that again or make the same mistake. Right. You're better for it, right? you know, there's a great podcaster out there called Alex Ramosi that I listen to a lot. He's brilliant. But he talks about paying down the ignorance tax.
Paden Squires: Right. Like you, you either got to do it through time and just bumping into things or, or through money, like no matter what, we all have to pay down this tax to get to success. Right. [00:15:00] And, you know, wasting money on, hiring bad people and making mistakes and whatever that's. That's just your entrance tax,
Ericka Nicole: right?
Ericka Nicole: Absolutely. And I think there's this big transition of business owners post COVID, where, you know, money was being printed. Everyone was starting a business. There was just so much noise in the space because businesses were taking off more than ever before. Businesses were overvalued. You had so many startups IPO ing in their first year.
Ericka Nicole: I mean, there was this big boom of e comm and now we're kind of coming off of that high and coming back down to reality where For you to succeed, it's not just, you know, drop shipping or throwing up a website you have to build a brand and having to shift that mindset of that time period into like reality, I think is a hard switch for a lot of new entrepreneurs.
Paden Squires: and I totally agree, you know, when you see, you see boom times like that or where money's basically free, right? You could, you could have gotten hundreds of thousands of dollars of loans at basically 0 percent interest. I mean, like the money was given [00:16:00] away everywhere. And that's when you see all those spikes, you see all those spikes in real estate, like as an accountant, you know, I deal with a lot of people in the real estate industry and everybody became a realtor Uh, was trying to buy houses Because they see that, you know, the quote easy money The problem is those times don't last and then when you get into the more lean times you get out of that boom Then you see all these real estate agents start dropping out of the market, right?
Paden Squires: And but the people that had real estate agents that had built a brand had been through several market ups and downs They didn't really have any problems
Ericka Nicole: And going back to paying down that ignorance tax, you know, being able to, when you're building, you have to pay to play, and I think that's something that a lot of people overlook, too.
Ericka Nicole: Again, you're either going to pay with your time or you're going to pay to find someone smarter than you, it's a very interesting dynamic.
Paden Squires: Yeah, there is no free lunch, right? There, it's, it's. you gotta pay in some way, whether it's time or money or, or whatever it is, it costs
Ericka Nicole: something.
Ericka Nicole: Exactly. [00:17:00] And it's not a fast process.
Paden Squires: You know, we talk about here a lot too. It's just showing up, right. And showing up day after day and, and putting in the work and building and building. And then you do that long enough, you'll. Fall into some luck, right?
Paden Squires: You know, it's a company, you know, they just talk about luck is a combination of like preparation opportunities coming together, right? if you're not prepared. You're not gonna be able to take advantage of that opportunity
Ericka Nicole: Exactly, and if you didn't go through the journey of failing and learning and rebuilding when we have these down markets in these downturns You're not going to survive because you didn't go through the training You know, you didn't you don't just go to the gym and just start bench pressing 200 pounds You have to work your way up to that.
Ericka Nicole: So when these downtimes come, you're prepared. You have the tools in your arsenal to get to the other side.
Paden Squires: So, tell me, Erica, what would you tell her right now? best piece of advice you could give her?
Ericka Nicole: Wow, that's deep. Keep going. Just keep going. It's, it's gonna be [00:18:00] okay.
Ericka Nicole: Like I said, it's been a long journey. So many, like, just so many adversities from quitting my job to COVID to hiring the wrong people to, I mean, I've lost so much money, like so much money. It's actually disgusting. I don't even disclose the amount because it's disgusting, you know, but trusting the wrong people hiring.
Ericka Nicole: Fake business coaches who were supposed to teach you something that they don't hiring the wrong marketing agencies And it's just been a lot and it's just you gotta keep going and eventually Because I think this is the first time in my business where I see a path forward where I can finally confidently say Oh yeah, I can see how this is going to work.
Ericka Nicole: And yeah, it took three years in the making when I expressed that with people like you've been working on this band for three years. Like, yeah, this is the beginning stage. So just keep going. It's going to be okay.
Paden Squires: sometimes you just have to take the first step. I think sometimes we think we have to have it all figured out.
Ericka Nicole: You have to have this 10 step plan, [00:19:00] but no, sometimes you just need to look at step one. How do I get from point A to point B? Okay, great. Now I did that. Now, how do I get from point B to point C? I talk about chunking down our goals all the time on my podcast, but once we start chunking down our goals, it makes things seem so much more attainable.
Ericka Nicole: So if I'm just starting a business and I'm just like, okay, how am I going to make this a billion dollar business? I may never start, but like, how can I get to my first 10, 000 a month? You know, let's start with some smaller goals and kind of work our way up.
Paden Squires: Yeah. you talked about, you know, your three years into building a brand and in my experience, we're going to watch entrepreneurs like year three is about the first time you start to get traction even.
Paden Squires: and that was in my business. My first two years were just kind of like, ah, and it wasn't until year three of getting, you know, three years under my belt of putting in the work and building the network and making the connections. That finally it starts to. you start to see a little bit of that exponential growth, right?
Paden Squires: Like, and it's, you come to [00:20:00] compounding, right? Just math that things start out extremely slow, right? Yeah. Compounding. It's just like nothing, nothing, nothing. Like you barely notice. And then you almost hit a tipping point and it takes off.
Ericka Nicole: And I think when we see all these People going viral and all these businesses exploding.
Ericka Nicole: Some of these people are overnight successes, right? I mean, TikTok is a thing, but there are some people who have been putting in the work for three, four, five years before whatever they were working on took off. But we don't see that we ignore the plateaus. We ignore the journey and we forget that this person's been making content for the past five years.
Ericka Nicole: We only want to acknowledge the fun part, which is the exponential growth. So you have to pay your dues.
Paden Squires: some people on social media, how they market entrepreneurship as this, cars and houses and success but they don't show the real, the real background of it. Right. The real struggles. They don't, they're not being fully authentic.
Ericka Nicole: Absolutely. The working nine to five and then working five to 1am, [00:21:00] you know, like it's a real grind and the sacrifices and the, the financial strains that come with trying to start a business and setting realistic expectations that it's not a quick process, you know, a million dollars in 90 days.
Ericka Nicole: Okay, you know, like let's let's be honest. Let's be honest.
Paden Squires: you're setting false expectations for people that don't know, right? Like they haven't been through it before, so they believe that this, you know, there's some magic formula and it's easy and whatever.
Paden Squires: Nothing worthwhile is easy.
Ericka Nicole: Exactly. there's also a balance, right? Because I do believe in paying your dues and putting in the work, but sometimes you have to pivot. Which is awkward, you know, sometimes you also have to know when to drop the thing and move on to the next thing, you know, it's a hard thing and it comes with discernment.
Ericka Nicole: but that comes over time as well,
Paden Squires: if you ever watch Shark Tank, you see Mr. Wonderful and he'll, you know, just coldly tell somebody to take their business out behind the shed and shoot. Right. it is a fine line of [00:22:00] there's grit and you're never going to build anything without pushing through a million obstacles.
Paden Squires: But then there's also being able to be a realist and understand, yeah, maybe this business is just, there is no path forward, but discernment you talk about, can be tough times. Yeah.
Ericka Nicole: you are a solopreneur, you're a founder, your brand, your business is your baby. You've dedicated so much time, money, learning, just so much into it that it's hard to not be emotionally connected to your brand, but you still have to be able to operate your business as a business.
Ericka Nicole: And after a certain amount of time, if it's not making dollars. Then maybe it's not making sense. Yeah,
Paden Squires: right. Yeah. I mean, there's obviously something broken, right? You have a broken business model and you know, there could be a million different reasons as to why. but find out what the problems are and.
Paden Squires: understand whether you're willing to fix that or there is a practical path forward, but also not just be quitting because you're just too scared, right?
Ericka Nicole: [00:23:00] Exactly.
Paden Squires: You want to talk more about your company and, and just kind of what, exactly you have out there.
Ericka Nicole:So Silkenn is my baby. It's my brand. We are a skin care brand, hopefully launching this year. We're actually in our raising phase, so we're raising capital to kind of take the initiative. but we are a skin care brand based out of New York City, and we focus on creating skin care that not only protects the microbiome, but really protects the skin from environmental stressors.
Ericka Nicole: That was something that was very important to me being from New York. You know, New York can be a dirty city. We can be honest, you know, so I've realized that even when I was traveling and doing the bulk of my traveling, my skin would behave differently in different areas. If I was in the drier climates in Arizona versus maybe more humid climates in the Caribbean versus being home in New York, my skin would behave differently.
Ericka Nicole: And that's what really interested me. Skin dynamics and understanding how the skin works and is composed. And then I have my pre med background to kind of support my theories and my studies. So our brand is really for that city girl, city [00:24:00] boy, that urban dweller, the frequent traveler, that go getter mentality.
Ericka Nicole: Those are the key values that our brand really caters to. and it's been a journey to get here, you know, going through the R and D process and finding good manufacturers and, Finding manufacturers in the United States, which was very important to me. I wanted to make sure that we were formulated here close to home so that I can go visit the lab and be very collaborative and involved in the process.
Ericka Nicole: I know some founders are very hands off. They kind of like this is what I want. Find someone to go make it. But it was very important to me to be very ingrained in the process. So going through all of that and then, you know, there's things that you want to go overseas for, for things like packaging, because that's just more cost effective and that's fine over there.
Ericka Nicole: And then there's just so much that goes into building a skincare brand, I guess, that I also didn't realize, like all of the testing and the focus groups and then dermatology tested and the packaging testing, can this product go into this packaging and, it's been a learning curve for sure.
Ericka Nicole: But I think we're finally at the tail end of having it kind of figured out and we are growing and I now [00:25:00] have a solid team of people that I'm really confident in because we're doing the damn thing and we're flying the plane while we're building it and we'll just see where it takes us.
Paden Squires: You know, and the amazing thing is, my wife had a business partner and started a product company and it was like a drink mix and that was. Just seeing her and them trying to figure out and navigate all of that. I have a tiny glimpse of understanding what you have probably been through.
Paden Squires: I can imagine building like a product that people put on their skin. And then what All the things you've got to figure out to even begin to do that. Yeah. Yeah. I can only imagine the hoops you, the things you've learned trying to figure that stuff out. We struggled hard just trying to get a product made.
Paden Squires: you know, I was kind of on the sidelines, but I mean, it took us almost two years to get a product. And, you know, create
Ericka Nicole: it. Because R&D is a process. And like, testing these formulas, it's not like you just get a formula and you use it for a week and you're like, okay, [00:26:00] yeah, this is great.
Ericka Nicole: Like, no. You know how many iterations of a product you have to go through to make sure it's the right thing?
Paden Squires: And same here though. When you come to manufacturers, sure. You know what the first manufacturer did was run off with a bunch of our money.
Ericka Nicole: Oh, yeah, due diligence on manufacturers is a whole nother category I can go down.
Ericka Nicole: I've, I've seen, heard, it's, oh yeah, manufacturing, you have to have a lot of discernment. Do your due diligence, do your research.
Paden Squires: Yeah. The story behind that a little bit was that we gave them money to run a test run or something. And then, uh, as soon as we turned over the money, they said, Hey, we're about to close.
Paden Squires: Um, we're not sure we can stay open. We're trying to get loans to stay open You didn't let us know that until you got the money,
Ericka Nicole: right? Yeah There I had another horror story. There was one manufacturer. I won't name them I probably should so people don't work with them, but they're out in the West towards the west coast and I was like [00:27:00] doing due diligence on them And I was talking to the guy and he was giving such good feedback and I was like wow It seems like he knows what he's talking about and something really just prompted me to like google the company like just in depth and like lawsuits and I typed into google and all this stuff came up pending lawsuits and foreclosures and class action suits and I was like and we were discussing like a good amount of money, like maybe like 20, 000 at the time.
Ericka Nicole: And I'm like, Oh my goodness. People are crazy. So yeah, that discernment.
Paden Squires: So Ericka. What's the best way people can connect with you? They like what they hear. They like your brand. They like you. What's the best way they can interact with you?
Ericka Nicole: Yeah. So the timeline for the Silkenn launch is TBD.
Ericka Nicole: We're raising capital right now, hoping to launch by the end of this year. But if you want to follow the journey and sign up to our wait list and be the first to be notified of all the. Fun events that we have coming up to promote the brand. You can go to silk and co. com and sign up to our wait list. I also have a podcast where we take the conversation from the outside to the inside.
Ericka Nicole: And we talk about self [00:28:00] care and prioritizing yourself called behind the silk. And you can follow us on Instagram @behindthesilkpod. And if you like me and you're interested in me, you can follow me at the Ericka Nicole, Ericka is spelled E R I C K A. And we have a good time on Instagram. That's my most active platform, but that's my name across all social media.
Paden Squires: Awesome, Ericka. Well, it was great having a conversation with you. I can tell, um, you're going to do some big things. You're, you're confident, strong. It was just a great conversation and getting to know you a little bit.
Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. If you found it valuable, please rate, review, and share it. That is the best way to help us build this and reach more people, as we're trying to accomplish our goal of helping create more healthy, wealthy, and wise entrepreneurs. You can follow us on social media by searching for me, Payden Squires, or going to @padensquires.com. On the website and social media, we're always sharing tips of personal growth, and there we can actually interact. I'm looking forward to it. Thanks guys.
