Ep 263 | Sarah Moret

Written By Yasmin Nouri

From Side Hustle to Millions: How This Founder Left Her 9-5 & Landed a Deal on Shark Tank

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Sarah Moret is the founder and CEO of Curie, a clean deodorant and body care brand on a mission to change the stigma around clean beauty. 

Sarah has been an athlete all of her life and was a very active person, and one thing she could never come across was a clean, aluminum-free deodorant that actually worked and fit her lifestyle. From this frustration, Sarah decided to start Curie as a side hustle in 2019 to solve her own problem.

Sarah then bootstrapped the company and financed it with $12,000 in savings and very early on was hitting six-figures with organic content, word of mouth, and PR. Fast forward to today, the company has scaled to be a $20 million success story and is sold in thousands of stores nationwide, including Walmart, Nordstrom, and Bloomingdales and has sold out dozens of times through live selling on QVC. Sarah also appeared on Season 13 of Shark Tank and landed a deal with Barbara Corcoran and Mark Cuban. 

In this week’s episode, Sarah talks about her transition from accounting to becoming an entrepreneur, the steps she took to turn her side hustle into a full-time business, and how she had remarkable growth with very little money. We also talk about the many rejections she faced when it came to finding manufacturers, getting into retailers, and participating in Shark Tank. Sarah also shares her crazy experience on Shark Tank what really happens behind the scenes that we don’t typically see, and so much more. 

Show Notes:

  • Overcoming fears and handling rejections. [03:05]

  • The reality of being an entrepreneur. [07:03]

  • Building a company from personal challenges. [08:53]

  • Graduating from Boston University and Sarah’s initial career path as an accountant. [11:15]

  • Starting Curie and Sarah’s risk-taking approach. [16:25]

  • Being scrappy during the early stages of Curie. [22:25]

  • Committing fully and early awareness-building for Curie. [25:19]

  • Leveraging influencers and media outreach. [27:29]

  • Pivoting to hand sanitizers during the pandemic which saved their business. [31:51]

  • Navigating manufacturer selection. [35:10

  • A behind-the-scenes look into Shark Tank. [38:08

  • Preparing for the Shark Tank Q&A. [57:52]

  • How Curie thought about funding for the business before Shark Tank. [50:06]

  • How Sarah overcame scaling challenges with the business. [51:45]

  • Managing mental health and avoiding burnout for sustained success. [54:17]

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Ep 264 | Dr. Casey Means
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Ep 262 | Allison Evans