Hello and welcome to Women in Retail Talks, the podcast where C-suite executive women in the retail space share their stories of professional growth leadership development, personal journeys and more.
I'm Marie Albages, managing editor of Women in Retail, a membership-based community of executive women at leading retailers and brands.
Today, I am thrilled to be joined by Neha Kumar, the co-founder and COO of Full Glass Wine, a brand acquisition and management firm focused on acquiring D2C wine companies.
So Neha and I talk about the origin story of her company, what the future of the wine industry looks like and some of her non-negotiables when it comes to work-life balance.
So Neha, thank you so much for joining me.
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm very excited to be here.
I'm excited too.
I mean, this is such a unique company.
We don't get a lot of like wine companies on here.
So very niche.
I would love for you to kind of just start with the inception story of Full Glass Wine and all of its acquisitions.
Absolutely.
You know we started off and part of this is just being able to look at the market and see what's going on, right.
And so for us, we were looking at the market and we noticed that there were a lot of direct to consumer wine companies, that they were all very good but they could use a little bit of love, and a lot of this has to do with what was going on at the market overall.
So if you almost take a step back and you say what was happening in 2020 and 2021, you had very high.
You know, you had a lot of capital that was in the market.
You had very low interest rates.
You had a lot of companies taking the capital and really pumping it into customer acquisition, brand marketing, all of these things across the board.
Now We anticipated there to be a good amount of consolidation after that.
Some of that is a little bit of textbook, right?
You have the highs and the lows of the market and what kind of goes on in between.
And so my co-founder, Lewis, and I said, listen, he has a really strong background in alcohol.
I've worked in wine before as well.
And we said why don't we actually take a bunch of these direct-to-consumer wine companies, put them under one umbrella and scale out the operations?
And then we had full glass wines.
So in June of 2023, we acquired our first company, which was Wink.
In October, we acquired our second company, which was Wine Insiders.
In March of this year, 2024, we closed on Bright Cellars.
And then in June of this year, we closed on a company called Splash Wines.
So we've done four acquisitions to date.
In 13 months, we're growing very quickly through acquisitions, but then also organically as well.
And it has been a very, very fun journey.
But I will tell you something, Marie.
If somebody asked me two to three years ago and said, Neha, are you going to be doing this?
I would have said, no way.
You know, sometimes in life, opportunities come up and you just go with it.
Yeah.
So that's what really happened here.
Yeah.
Okay.
I have so many questions.
I want you to first kind of take us back before even 2020 and you know, when you were forming the company.
Talk to me a little bit about how the wine industry as a whole has changed.
I mean, Wink, I think, launched in 2012.
And it was this new model of this subscription wine service, this wine club, whereas wine is a very traditional, very historical industry.
And really with e-commerce, it has just changed dramatically.
Walk us through a little bit about that process and that transformation.
I think what's really interesting is that what Wink did phenomenally well was create brand awareness for about who they are, and they started to target a new demo, which was the female millennial audience.
But direct to consumer and subscription for wines has been around for a very, very long time.
So you almost want to take it back to.
You know you're looking at these really amazing wineries.
You go there, you have a phenomenal experience, you drink their wine and you say listen, I had a great time.
I go back home, I want to get this product now delivered to my house.
And A lot of those traditional wineries have been doing that for a good amount of time.
The difference there is that their focus was more on the experience.
So they're very experiential companies, if you look at it from that standpoint.
But then now you can get that product when you go back home.
It gives you a little bit of the memory that you had when you were back at the winery.
But in addition to that, it also allows you the opportunity to get the product at home.
What Wing did is they really were able to push on the scale side of that and create a phenomenal brand and get out there on the market.
They got everyone who said, we don't want to be uppity, just wine people.
We just want to enjoy the wine.
We want to have fun with the wine.
We want to get to know these wines.
And so you were really able to with that type of a model which was very disruptive is so it's not the subscription component that was disruptive.
It was their marketing methodology of how to get in front of a different customer than typically had been looked at in the direct to consumer wine space.
And now, I mean, you've got these four brands and they all have these like unique Right.
They're all targeting kind of a different audience.
Can you walk us through what each of those is?
Yeah.
And it's so interesting because we would play some games internally on over under when we're evaluating companies.
And we would say, how much of an overlap is there going to be with a lot of the email lists?
Right.
Because at some point in time it's like wait.
How can that be that there are such different demographics?
But they are.
And so Wink.
The first company that we acquired is very again it's millennial, female focused fun buzzy, all of those types of items.
I was at a company before which we took to exit called Create and Cultivate.
And I always say Wink and Create and Cultivate are the same type of an audience.
And so they love to go out.
They love to take photos.
They love to socialize.
Aesthetics is a very important component to that demographic as well.
The second company that we acquired was Wine Insiders, and that's very different.
Wine Insiders, a lot of these customers have been there for years and years.
They really want to have wines that are curated for them from all over the world.
So the curation of the international wines is a very big component to that demographic.
Wink is actually just national wines.
So that is a very different idea, a different concept.
And then Wine Insiders also is a transactional product.
So Wink is subscription.
Wine Insiders is people are buying one-off packs.
Wine Insider also, most of their pack sizes were 12 bottles.
So it's people who don't want to go to the grocery store.
They don't want to carry these things.
You get it nicely delivered to your door.
Now they are of a more seasoned demographic.
And there's actually a pretty good percentage of males in that demographic as well, versus Wink.
Again is more of that create and cultivate audience.
The third company then that we acquired is Bright Cellars.
Bright Cellars is a very young, trendy type of a crowd or, as I can probably say, they like to think of themselves that way.
So we might start to hit over a certain age demographic, but they want to think of themselves as young and hip.
But it's really interesting.
Like they're very big on Facebook, right?
So it's a different type of demographic there.
But Bright Cellars also is subscription.
And then the fourth company that we bought is Splash.
And Splash is very focused on that demographic is very focused on value.
So 70 plus percent of the packs that Splash Wine sells are 15 and 18 pack.
So it's really people who want good bulk wine.
It's a perception for them that they are getting very good value on that type of a product.
So four brands and counting, right?
All these acquisitions over a very short period of time.
What would you say are some of the biggest challenges to the last couple of years doing that?
So the biggest challenge is doing so many different things at once.
And so one is integrating all the data.
So we have years and years and years of data for each one of these brands, which is just a gold mine within itself.
Having said that, they're not all, I mean one is written and I'm going to, you know, just be a little facetious, but like one is in German and one is in Italian,
So you can't, they're not, it's not an apples to apples comparison.
So to sift through the data, to put it into a format that's going to be a proper language for us, takes a lot of time.
And that's something that needs to be done very, very properly, with a meticulous attention to detail.
Essentially then, on top of that,
So that's that part.
The next thing was to get them consolidated all onto the same sub stack.
Um, like all on the same tech stack.
And we want to make sure that everything is running operationally efficiently internally, which is a very important component for us as well.
Then the third thing is the personnel integration, right?
So it's making sure that we're looking at all of these components, not from a hi.
I'm a part of Splash or I'm a part of Wink.
It's actually, I'm a part of Full Glass Wine.
So those three are very, very key items.
That And the only way that we've been able to make it work is because we have a really great group of people.
Now that's our internal employees.
That's the external sources that resources that we utilize.
But if somebody were to say what's the one thing that's made it all work today, that within 13 months you've done four, you've closed on four acquisitions in this type of a market?
It will, I 100% say it over and over again.
It's because the people that we have.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I mean, I can't imagine the time and the dedication that it takes, not to mention you leading through something like that, where you're integrating that personnel on top of you know, doing all of the new technologies and making sure that they're trained on everything.
I mean, how do you lead in those kind of times of transformational change, when you're onboarding new processes and new people and, you know, having them understand even just the culture of your company?
How does all that work?
Honestly, the only way we've been able to do it so far is because we have to lead by example.
It's so much work.
I mean all hard things in life and all great things in life and all things in life that are worth.
It take energy and time.
Right.
And so we're putting so much energy and time into this right now, my co-founder and I, and the only way that we can do it is by leading.
Is do is leading by example.
So we?
It's one of those things where you almost say, like you know, some people will talk about work-life balance or some people will talk about you know, I am this way at work and I am this way at home with my friends.
We're just one.
We don't have the time or capacity to be anything different.
So the way I am with my kids is the way I am at work, is the way I am all around, because it's around the clock and we're a remote first company.
So I think a lot of that plays into that component as well, right?
Cause you start to lose that line of, work and home and the kind of in between there.
So, but it really is, it's leading by example, showcasing who we want to be as this company.
And then I'm a huge proponent of auto-suggestion and repetition.
It's almost as if people talk about going to church, right?
So could you just say, I'm going to go to church once and I'm good.
The reason we have a concept of church every week or something else that we're doing, whatever it is, even if it's meditation, right.
If you're spiritual, you might do it once a week, once a month, but it's the constant repetition of doing something over and over again.
So, and the reason I'm sharing that with you is we purposely and intentionally constantly remind everyone we are full glass wines.
We're not Splash.
We're not Wine Insiders.
We are Full Glass Wine.
We have a new head of marketing that started with us recently and he came from the direct-to-consumer meal company Thistle.
And he had a piece on his luggage the other day when he was traveling to come see us.
He had a big sticker that said Thistle on his suitcase.
And my co-founder was like we have to get our Full Glass Wine stickers and get them on his bag everywhere.
Right?
But those themes seem little but they actually make a big difference and a big impact to the employees as well.
Now, does that consistency and that repetition of the company, does that translate to the audience as well?
Or is that just mostly for kind of the internal purposes?
And then from an audience, from a consumer perspective, they are still kind of those individual brands.
You're correct.
So it stays internally.
Having said that, That was a part of the difficult challenge that any company is going to have when they're doing multiple different acquisitions at the same time, which is the personnel integration component.
Right.
So what that does is allows us to have a team that now know their direction and their mission.
They can go forward.
The way that we run internally is and a lot of companies will do this component is they have a shared operating and finance services.
Right.
That's kind of standard.
We also have a shared marketing services.
So we have each one of our brands has a dedicated brand group and the brand group is really focused in on the vibe, the pulse, who the consumer is, the colors, the look and feel.
But the marketing services, you want to think of everything from email to SMS and all of the things.
We essentially have a very focused group that's looking at what are the platforms that are going to be used.
What is the pricing?
How can we scale?
How can we do these things?
What's trending in different types of ways?
What's going on with the elections?
Because that's going to impact our customer acquisition costs across the board and show the while the brands stay distinct.
And we'll kind of see as we continue to evolve.
We've only been around for 13 months.
Right.
But, you know, we'll continue to see what is going to be in store for each one of the brands.
But at this point in time, the brands run independently and we go from that standpoint.
Now, what I would like it to be, though this is the goal is we want to be the one-stop shop for all things wine.
So let's say you have a regular subscription with Wink, but then you have a big party that's coming up and you want to be hostess with the mostest and you want to serve a pack of internationally curated wines.
You don't want to have to pick them.
And you would like a nice kind of a set to come deliver to your house one time.
I would love for it to be that you're not going to go somewhere else, but you actually stay within our umbrella and you utilize it.
So you almost want to also look at it as if, even within our portfolio the different brands they're serving different needs for potentially the same customer at different points in time within a customer's life cycle.
And that is the ultimate goal of what we're looking to create here.
That makes a lot of sense.
Yeah.
How does... technology play into all of that?
I mean, you don't have to mention AI.
Where do you see AI playing a role?
Where do you see kind of the technology advancements playing into this industry?
So technology is everything.
And I think that's also why we saw a big surge in a lot of direct-to-consumer companies across the board over the past eight years.
Not just with wine but various different CPG products as well, because it was a lower barrier to entry for people to come in and essentially be able to get access to this type of a service that they could provide.
And so that, that is huge.
And as that continues to advance, it does make it easier for people.
And so where I see that fitting in is, you know, the surge of essentially potential of their competent competitors in the market.
Right.
And that's, again, what we saw before.
And that's why we're now going through and looking at a consolidation.
Now, having said that, for us, technology is a big thing because it allows us to be able to do two things.
One is it allows us to be able to properly balance inventory in our warehouse.
So we specifically have three warehouses at this point in time.
And it's a very good thing, because it allows us to be able to ship the products to the customers quickly and efficiently.
Everyone.
You know somebody orders something on Amazon this morning and they expect to get it later that day or the next day.
So there's a certain mindset that's been created.
So again, the first thing with technology is of the ability to be able to properly do inventory management and weighting of that inventory amongst three warehouses.
So right now, depending on where someone lives, we can ship a package within one day.
One third of our customers get it within one day.
Two third.
The other one third get it within two days and the other one third get it within three days.
For a product that is very heavy to ship and with all the compliance items that we have, that's phenomenal.
So that's one thing with technology.
The other side of technology, or two sides of the same coin, is which is really helpful and great is essentially helping consumers better adjust their profile and their preferences on the types of wines they like.
And that works out very well, even more so with subscription companies.
So if you think of Wink and Bright Cellars every time, if you go in and you rank the previous wines that you had accordingly, the system can further fine tune that.
Now, the algorithms we've acquired two companies that have these algorithms, they're really good.
As we continue to incorporate AI, and we have some great things on the horizon as well that are up and coming in our business within the next year or so.
But those types of things will allow the consumer to have a better overall customer experience.
Because what also happens is not only do you need to modify your profile within the first so many months you know the system can do that for you but also your tastes start to change over time.
So I had a, you And so after I had my first baby, my palate completely changed.
Right.
And so it changes because you have some sort of a chemistry change in the body.
But also it can change because now you know certain things happen potentially from an economic status of your income level.
And you might want to try more refined wines or something different.
Or you just had a recent trip to Chile and now you want some wines from Chile.
So those types of factors come into play and technology and AI are very important components.
Right, you're exposed to something else that makes you change your tastes.
Yeah, it reminds me of.
We did an interview on this podcast with a leader at Stitch Fix and it's almost like the same kind of you know, you have all of this data, but for you guys it's wine and for them it was apparel.
But it's, I mean, such a fascinating tool, right?
That's a perfect, that's a perfect analogy, right?
And I love that we're in wine because it is a fun product.
Having said that, if it was water or clothes or whatever it is, I don't know if water is the best example, but you never know.
A lot of people are very specific about the water that they drink.
It's just a great analogy because we own the data.
Right.
So if people are shipping on Amazon or if you're retail, you don't get that data.
Right.
Because Amazon owns the data and then the retail stores.
You know it's hard to get that data for you specifically,
And so it gets.
It's challenging, but we see everything, we.
And then also, because it is an alcohol product, people are required to enter in their age.
And so we also have a pretty good idea.
And that helps us further with the demographics.
Right.
They entered their birth date.
Sorry, correction there.
They entered their birth date.
But that makes a big difference for us in analyzing the customers.
Something else you said prompted another question for me is the regulations around this.
I mean, each state has their own alcohol laws.
And I'm sure you have to work with like the departments of each state around that.
Like, how difficult is that?
What is that process like?
You know, it is it's definitely a high learning curve for people who are new to the space.
We have partners and people who've been in the space for a very, very long time.
My co-founder was the original co-founder of Goose Island Beer and he also had a company called Beverage Solutions which was a direct one of the first original wine clubs which he sold as well.
So we have and I myself worked in direct to consumer wine before also but we have a lot of knowledge and expertise.
And so I don't think it's hard, but my mom would always tell me everything is hard until you know how to do it.
Right.
So once you know how to do it, it isn't difficult.
So.
There are certain states we don't ship to, which legally you're just not allowed to, but everything else we stay on top of and just monitoring and making sure if there's any changes with certain states, which we have had one state that has gone through some fun things the past year.
And so it is important to stay on top of those items.
Yeah.
That's so interesting.
It's such a, it's another layer, right.
For such a unique industry.
So, I mean, you mentioned kind of a few past jobs.
I'd love to kind of go back and hear how you got into this startup journey.
You know, what appeals to you about this?
I mean, it sounds like you're very, very passionate about it.
So I'd love to kind of walk through your career journey a little bit.
No, of course.
I mean, I love the startup space.
I absolutely love it.
It is hard.
It is crazy.
You never know what's going to happen, but you are alive.
Big corporate companies are great and they have a lot of wonderful things about them.
They give people stability, security.
I just think it's kind of who you are as a person and what phase in your life you are.
Am I going to want to do things like this forever?
I don't know. right?
Maybe in some years I'll say I want something that's a little bit more calmer.
Like I know what's going to happen at the end of the day.
But in the startup space, you just don't know what's going to ever occur, but I genuinely love it.
I went to UCLA for undergrad.
I joined the dark side.
I went to USC for grad school, which is actually where I met my husband.
He's a double Trojans or a house divided, but I worked in banking for some years.
I was at Bank of America.
And after I ended up leaving because I wanted to start my own startup.
And I did that and I worked on it for about a year and a half, two years.
It was a financial planning online tool.
And I got a lot of, you know, people say you get a slice of humble pie.
I had multiple humble pies thrown into my face at any given point in time.
Right.
It's definitely a humbling experience when you leave the big corporate company world where there's a lot of perks.
Now, if something goes wrong with my computer, Google and I are IT.
When I was in banking, we have an IT department and they take care of everything for you.
So it's definitely different.
But I ended up leaving and banking and working in my own startup.
And it didn't go the way that I would have wanted.
So I realized where my skill set really lies is working with companies that have a good enough amount of a foundation.
So some good Play-Doh.
And then now they want to really scale it and take it to the next level.
So I've worked with various different companies over the years.
And one of the ones that I was at most recently is a company called Create and Cultivate.
So I joined Create and Cultivate end of 2018, early 2019 and I got brought on by now.
The previous shareholders and board members of the company.
And they had said, listen, we're looking to get this company acquired.
Can you scale it for a year to two years and then get this company sold?
I teach undergrad at UCLA.
I teach accounting and finance courses, and I also am teaching some courses.
In the entrepreneurship school, and so to be able to take a private company through a transaction single handedly was a badge that I really wanted.
And so I said, you know what, this could sound like a, this sounds like a phenomenal opportunity.
So 2019 I think it was like February 3rd my I had a seven week old baby at the time and I decided, you know, that was going to be my first day at Create and Cultivate.
So I worked with the company.
I was there for, you know, just under three years, but in March 15th I'll never forget March 15 2021 we closed the transaction to a private equity firm for a all cash offer at a pretty premium multiple on the company at the time.
And you just want to remember, Creighton Cultivate's a media slash events company and there was a global pandemic going on.
So to be able to close and solve that deal was was absolutely amazing.
It was a great, great experience.
We went through three transactions to get the company sold.
So it was a lot going on.
And of course, I was pregnant with my second child at the same time.
Yeah.
Wow.
And it's great that you have experience now doing both, right?
Like getting a company acquired and now acquiring companies.
So that's great.
Any advice for women that might be listening who are going down the same path of, you know, having that startup or having that entrepreneurial mindset or, you know, looking to go kind of more the full glass wine route and acquiring other brands?
Any advice there?
The advice that I'm going to tell you might not be what you were originally thinking, but I'm going to give this a go.
If you have an idea, and it's like kind of two parts to it, right?
If you have an idea, the number one thing is you got to let go of any self-doubt.
Any self-doubt that is there, you got to just push it to the side.
Now, the thing is that's so much easier said than done.
And I'm sure a lot of people have said things like that in some way, shape or form, to you, to everybody else, to all your listeners, right?
So there's a second part that I came up with that actually worked out really well for me is put a fixed amount of time for that.
And for some reason, when I told myself, listen, Neha, get rid of any of your self-doubt.
So anything that comes to your mind, just go and do it until this time.
And I actually did this last year and I said all right, for the next seven months, whatever comes to your mind, you got to go out there and do it, just seven months.
And then after those seven months, you can let all the self-doubt come back in.
You can figure it out then.
And um, you can get worried about what other people are going to think if you're going to make it or not make it, or if this is going to happen or fall apart.
But for this seven months go all out.
And what I did was is I enrolled my husband into the conversation, my mother into the conversation, my mother-in-law to the conversation, some of my friends, um.
So they all knew, for the next seven months I'm going to go all out and I'm going to push out any self-doubt.
And it was so amazing because I ended up creating a community of people around me who are my constant cheerleaders and constantly kept helping me kind of push through everything.
I still can't believe we've acquired four companies and doing more great things up on the horizon here in 2020 just over 13 months.
It was 13 months, two days ago.
So the biggest piece of advice I would have is to push self-doubt aside.
And if that is hard which it is tell yourself.
For the next 30 days, I'm going to do whatever comes to my mind and I'm going to go with it.
I'm going to push everything to the side for that moment.
What are some?
Can you share some examples of you know, during those seven months when you were pushing away that self-doubt, like what came to fruition?
Absolutely.
I started to.
I'm not.
I grew up in a little bit of a different world where we're told show you know, when you've achieved something, don't talk about it.
Which is a little bit different from today, because now you have Instagram and all these social tools and LinkedIn.
And I used to think I only want to put something out there when I'm at the point of I've accomplished something.
I don't want to talk about it before.
And part of it was because you might look bad.
Another part of it is what if you don't actually get it to that point?
So why talk about those things?
So I started to share stuff online a bit more like this podcast, right?
I started to talk about things more.
And what I've actually achieved from it.
The number one most amazing thing is that it's actually therapeutic.
Because it's a reminder to myself also of what I've accomplished.
And it takes me away from the daily grind for a moment because sometimes we forget what we've done.
So that's a huge thing that I've accomplished.
Now, in addition to that, the number of outreach that I've gotten by starting to share myself for accolades, for different business introductions, for everything else across the board, has been a significant game changer.
And I'll tell you something really big that ended up coming up was we were looking to acquire a recent acquisition.
And one of the investors that we had been talking to ended up reading some pieces about me that had come up online that I didn't think were that big of a deal, but they really did.
Because when they read something about me, they read that I'm very actively involved in teaching women to invest.
And for them, that was a huge deal.
And it was coincidental that that one of those investors wives were in my class.
Oh, wow.
And it was absolutely coincidental.
So it's just, you put that self-doubt aside and you put yourself out there.
And at least for me, that was the issue, right?
Again.
I grew up in a world, in a time period, where you're not supposed to go out there and talk about the things you're doing.
It was considered a little bit of a taboo.
You show up when you've arrived, right?
And so it's made a very big difference for me.
Yeah, that's such great advice.
I've been working on like I mean, negative self talk is huge, right?
I've been working on like every time I have a negative self thought, to counter it with two positive self thoughts, and like I've been doing it a week and it is already like changing my mind about things.
So I totally like that.
Yeah, I like that.
And it's funny because everybody always says like oh, maybe they should take some Excel course, or maybe they should go back to grad school, or maybe they should write a book.
And I mean when you're in the right frame of mind and you go out there in the world, it's kind of magical what can occur.
The people you can meet, the connections you can make.
But it really does come down to who you're being, not always what you're doing.
And what you said about like the outreach that you got as you were kind of sharing your successes.
I mean, we hear that all the time of like I just don't want to be alone.
You know, at the top of my game in the C-suite at these retail companies.
And they come to women in retail and they start to share their struggles and their challenges and beyond, shocked that they aren't alone and that other people are facing the same challenges.
And it leads to these amazing connections.
And so like the power of networking is so real.
It is.
It's human connection, right?
We all want to feel like we're connected to something in some way, shape or form.
And when you know it's not just you.
It's almost like you know if you're going up hiking on a hill and it's really hard, and all of a sudden there's a hand right behind you that's helping you out a little bit.
That small hand that kind of gives you that little push is almost what can get you to the top.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I love that.
Okay.
So you mentioned you're a mom.
You're also a university professor, and I would love to kind of close with asking you what are some of your non-negotiables when it comes to work-life balance.
You mentioned at the beginning, there's no differentiation between Neha at work and Neha at home.
But when it comes to things outside of work, your family, what are some of your non-negotiables?
It could seem small, but a big thing for me is I have to go work out.
And the working out isn't just about the body.
It's a very big mental item.
And so I do a lot of barre classes.
And in barre classes, it's almost a pre-orchestrated dance that you're doing.
And there's no mental thinking for me when I go in.
And what's so nice.
When I go into the classes, I almost feel as if I'm handing myself over to the class not just the instructor, but the whole class.
It's a community effort.
And you're going through the motions and not thinking.
And it's my own version of a meditation.
I am a huge, huge believer.
And so this is a non-negotiable for me is you have to take care of yourself first before you can take care of anybody else.
It's the old adage of, you know, you're on the plane and then the air mass fall down.
First, you put it on yourself.
Then you put it on the kids sitting next to you, because if you don't take care of yourself first, there's nothing else that you can do.
After I had my first child, you know, was going to create and cultivate at the time hard.
Absolutely.
Was it going to give me the accolade I wanted if I could get the company sold?
Absolutely not.
Having said that, a huge part of why I did it is I had a lot of difficulty right after I had a kid.
It was hard for me to understand who I was in the world.
Postpartum is a real thing.
It's a real medical condition, and it was really challenging for me.
As soon as I started working at Create and Cultivate, within two days, I stopped crying.
I got back on my feet.
It was great for me.
And Everyone doesn't need to go and do something like that.
Everybody has their own journey.
For me, I felt fulfilled knowing that I could do a good job at my work.
And then when I would go home, then I ended up being a better mother.
Is my life hard right now?
Absolutely it is.
In 13 months, we closed four companies and we're doing other stuff up in the pipeline.
It is a lot.
But my daughter said to me a couple of weeks ago she watched a show and she kept saying mommy, I want to go to Harris to see the tower.
And for a couple of days, I kept going, what is she saying?
First to see the tower.
And then I realized she's saying, I want to go to Paris to see the Eiffel Tower.
We're actually going now next week for a mommy and me trip.
And we're going to go to Paris to see the Eiffel Tower.
Is it the worst time for me to go right now?
Absolutely.
But, but this is, it's important to me and it gets me excited.
So my two things are, is one is you have to take care of yourself first.
And number two is you have to continue to find the excitement when, whatever it is, if it's work family, like anything across the board, you got to keep that excitement.
You got to have fun again.
Cause if you don't have fun, what's the point?
Yeah.
I love that.
Okay, so before I let you go, I just want to ask one more question.
Anything you can reveal about you know what the priorities and goals are for Full Glass Wine in the next I don't know six months year, five years.
Oh, I love these.
I love the question, right?
I'll tell you why I love the question, because it's a reasonable question.
At the same time.
You know, I'm in startup mode, so our mentality is going to be what's going to happen today.
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
I mean, but you always have to have a plan, right?
And so our plan is to grow the company through, you know, customer acquisition and organically over the next 24 months or so.
The number one priority is to properly ensure that it's a seamless experience for the customers.
We want to make sure that the customers that we're bringing on board are excited to be in our community, and the only thing that we really want to do here is further enhance their entire customer experience, whether that's through better customer service, through quicker shipping times, through more of a fun unboxing experience, through enhanced offerings, which we now have the ability to do because some of the brands had very limited offerings.
But now under umbrella with all the brands, there's so much more we can do.
So our focus in the short term right now, for the next six months or so, is really to ensure that the customer experience is as seamless as possible.
Well, I look forward to seeing what you do next.
Have so much fun in Paris and we'll have to have you back on sometime.
Thank you so much, Neha.
It was a pleasure being here and thank you so much for having me.
Thanks for listening.
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