How did you get started with Golde?
I first really got into Wellness growing up. I was raised by a single parent with a pretty severe autoimmune disease and when I was a teenager, my mom actually switched over to seeing a more holistically minded physician and long story short, it caused incredible improvement for her symptoms. It was very eye-opening for me. I thought, okay, well this will be my career path! I was pre-med in college and had full intentions of going off to medical school and pursuing this, holistic medicine track until I found out from my Mom that she had stopped seeing that doctor because she just couldn't afford it anymore. So that really forced me to reckon with what exactly it was that I wanted to do in wellness and how accessibility played into it. So that was the Inspiration Point. I was looking at my experiences as a consumer and feeling caught between this crunchy granola stuff I grew up with in Upstate New York and this new wave of offerings that felt so prestige that didn't really align with me, nor could I afford it. I wanted to center wellness and make it more approachable, and most importantly fun.
At MINNA we believe in creating beautiful, ethically made products and using business to do good - how do these concepts relate to or inspire your business?
What we do is really very intentional and really focused on this idea of how we can create products. I think we have a digital community that is really centered on helping people feel like their best self. With that, we're really centered on this idea of offering things that we really feel will make our customers lives just a little bit better. We're really being thoughtful about what we're putting out into the world and making sure that it feels like a value-add for us and and for the brand community.
What about your home makes it feel like home? What is a favorite memory of yours in your home?
This is an interesting one because right now I'm living up at my mom's house in Upstate, New York. I've been here for just like short of a year now. We're starting to look for our own place and figuring out what that means. It's been really interesting to look through a pandemic and through so much movement. It's also really deepened my understanding of what really defines home as home. I think it's really surrounding myself with the people that I love and luckily I always have my partner around. Luckily we partner both in life and business. So, that's a big one. From an actual objects perspective, I think there are certain Kitchen Essentials that I really love and lean on or even just little housewares that create that sense of home. I love having smaller items that I can move from place to place. Like, I have these great napkins and it's small touches like that, that really make home feel special.
What are you reading/listening to/watching/looking at lately?
I have been watching so much Gardener's World on BBC. I started watching it during the wintertime when I was desparate for any time of greenery. It's basically a gardening show that goes around the UK and interviews different gardeners. I was hoping for inspiration in building our own garden. It's so nice to be able to have our own food right in the backyard. Gardening has been a big focal point for me in 2021 which has been fun.
What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?
Something that I was told and I continue to pass on to other folks is to know when you're lucky. That really speaks to the fact that we all have opportunities. I think it's very easy to fixate on the things that we don't have and the things that we can't do and the things that other people seem to have. Instead, it's kind of, like, always looking for that little like a crack in the sidewalk that you can grow through. That's been really impactful for me in this this process of building and and scaling a business.
