Ep 43 | Michelle Cordeiro Grant

Written By Yasmin Nouri
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Breaking the Rules & Doing Your Own Thing

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Michelle Cordeiro Grant is the founder & CEO of LIVELY, a community and brand that inspires women to live passionately and purposefully through experiences and products like bras, bralettes, undies, and so much more.

Michelle grew up with immigrant parents, thinking she wanted to become a doctor or a lawyer, but her true passion lay in working with products and building brands. At the end of a long and extremely successful career at brands like Victoria’s Secret, Michelle came to the realization that the $13 billion lingerie category was being dominated by a single brand and had a very narrow point of view.

This led her to go out on her own and create LIVELY with the goal of being a brand that strived to reflect real, authentic, everyday women like herself, who craved the feeling of being confident and comfortable. Michelle launched LIVELY in 2016 and has since opened four stores and fostered a network of over 140,000 brand ambassadors. She grew the business from its concept stage to a recent $100 million acquisition in just three years, beating the odds that many female-founded companies face.

In this episode, you’ll hear from Michelle as she describes the tactical steps she took to leave her career and build a company that she was passionate about, what it takes to build a brand from concept to acquisition, and how she built a community of 140,000 ambassadors.

Show Notes:

  • Learn more about Michelle’s childhood in an immigrant family in rural Pennsylvania. [3:11]

  • Her desire to belong and how it tied into her fascination with brands. [4:08]

  • Why Michelle says that being unique is a super power and it should be celebrated. [5:14]

  • How her early days in corporate America informed her decision to create her own brand. [6:57]

  • Hear about her ‘aha’ moment; not wanting to choose between a family or a career. [8:38]

  • The resistance she encountered during that transition and what it taught her about applying the fundamentals she had learned in corporate. [10:48]

  • What Michelle’s turning point was before starting a brand in the ‘Leisurée' category. [12:10]

  • The driving force behind pursuing this passion: building something totally different. [13:52]

  • Find out when Michelle decided to leave her career and go all in on building LIVELY. [14:09]

  • Michelle talks about the list she created of all the things she didn’t know and her advice for other entrepreneurs facing uncertainty. [16:08]

  • What it looked like to create a community by building a brand and not a corporation. [18:00]

  • How an email marketing strategy inspired by Harry’s launched the company. [20:36]

  • Learn why Michelle thinks the email referral program was so successful; the emotional hook that drew women to the brand. [23:27]

  • The strategy behind building a community of 140,000 ambassadors; finding women that demonstrated the same values as the brand. [25:43]

  • Michelle shares her experience of fundraising for LIVELY while pregnant with her son. [30:12]

  • Pushing through anxiety as a first-time founder and defying the odds by doing it differently. [33:58]

  • Find out about LIVELY’s growth trajectory; when they started to focus on retention. [36:23]

  • Engaging with the community to dictate product pipeline; launching a swimwear line. [37:40]

  • Building a business from concept to acquisition wasn’t about the exit; it was about building a strong, long-lasting, and viable brand. [39:30]

  • Michelle tells the story of Wacoal, the Japanese company that acquired LIVELY. [43:00]

  • Her advice for living in beta; the more risks you take, the better you’ll be at taking risks. [44:29]

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Yasmin Nouri
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