(Ep 25) THE SILL -> Welcome to plant parenthood 🌵

Eliza Blank | Founder & CEO

Hey friends,

Back again with another edition of The Founder Newsletter - this is Episode 25. If you’re new here, my goal is to give you a quick synopsis of what got me thinking from this week’s episode of The Founder Podcast in 5 minutes or less.

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And who am I?

I’m Kallaway - a future founder trying to get some answers before I jump in the ball pit myself.

Let’s get it.

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This Week’s Episode (Ep 25) 🌵

Guest -> Eliza Blank, Founder & CEO of The Sill

Mission -> The Sill aims to enrich people’s lives through a connection with plants

Discount -> Use code “Founder10” for 10% off all products at The Sill

Episode available on -> Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Website

In this episode we talk with Eliza about…

🔨 Building and scaling a direct to consumer brand

🌱 Why having plants in your home improves your life

🏪 Executing on an omni-channel retail strategy

🤯 Creating a revolutionary in-store experience

🌐 Understanding and harnessing the power of community

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Summary 🔍

What is The Sill and how did Eliza get started?

Although Eliza grew up in a Massachusetts household full of plants, it wasn’t until she moved to New York City to go to school at NYU that she realized how important they were to her.

After moving into her high rise apartment in the city, she was desperate to find a way to bring nature back into her life and realized it was a big part of her wellbeing.

As she took frequent trips to the park to get her nature fix throughout the rest of her time in college, she never forgot how much she missed that connection with plants.

After graduating and spending a few years as a brand strategist, moving from apartment to apartment in NYC, she realized that there wasn’t a consumer brand designed to solve the pain point of discovering, buying and taking care of plants.

That’s where she got the idea to start The Sill.

Today at The Sill, Eliza and her team have built one of the largest community driven-brands for houseplants on the market today.

They have a simple yet powerful mission - to enrich people’s lives through a connection with plants.

They go-to market both online and through their 5 brick and mortar stores and are creating thousands of new plant parents each month.

In addition to a beautiful product and website, they drive an engaged community through their social content and Plant Parent Club, a membership that unlocks discounts and access to online workshops and events.

Here’s why I’m a fan and excited about the future for The Sill:

• Having plants in your home/apartment improve your quality of living. The greenery stimulates a response in your mind that reminds you of nature and creates a calming feeling. Additionally, plants produce oxygen which all humans need to live. The Sill is one of the premiere brands democratizing easy access to plants for people all around the country

• The Sill is leveraging the core community they’ve built over the last 7 years (around plants) and expanding into a full lifestyle brand. They currently do a great job of creating products that connect deeply with their customers, so I’m excited to see what’s next in the pipeline

• Eliza is a fearless leader and after talking with her for an hour, I have no doubt that she will crush it as The Sill enters their next phase of growth

Eliza’s Startup Manifesto 📜

What’s a Startup Manifesto?

At the end of every episode, I ask all of my founder guests the same question:

If you had to write a Startup Manifesto with 5 of the most important key lessons or pitfalls to avoid when starting out, what would they be?

Here’s what Eliza had to say:

1. Define success by your own value system.

2. Find people who believe in your vision and share the same values.

3. Earn your customers, don’t buy them, especially in the beginning.

4. Take your customers along with you. Being transparent and bringing them along the journey goes a long way.

5. Check in with yourself often. It takes a lot of you to be on the entrepreneurial path and it’s important that if you’re not passionate about what you’re doing, it’s going to show up in your work eventually.

What Got Me Thinking From the Episode 🤔

After reflecting on my conversation with Eliza, here’s something that really got my wheels spinning:

Community building 🤯

Eliza has built one of the most dedicated communities on the internet.

Whether it’s the Plant Parenthood Club (a paid annual membership that unlocks exclusive events, gifts and discounts for members) or the thoughtful social content, The Sill has made community a priority from the beginning.

And it has paid off big-time. With a dedicated community comes stickier customers, more frequent repeat purchases, and most importantly, referrals.

I think referrals are one of the most important and underrated things for a business to get right. The more customers you can turn into advocates that promote your business and brand to other people (without paying them), the faster you will profitably grow.

In my opinion, one of the best ways to build a core contingent of advocates is through a really engaged community.

We’ve seen Tesla do this beautifully, and more recently, Levels, who we featured on the podcast in episode 22.

All you have to do is go on Twitter or Instagram and look at the amount of people that are creating user generated content about those brands for free. Not only do they advocate for the brand, but also, they fight for it when someone is speaking poorly about it or comparing it with a competitor.

Big brands, especially consumer businesses, need this type of loyalty.

So how did The Sill build this super powerful community?

Eliza talked about it at length during the conversation, and spoiler alert, it’s not rocket science.

The number one factor is being authentic to who you are as a brand. She said to define your core values and then make sure they permeate through all of your branding, content, products and customer experience.

Second, they started early on. Eliza was delivering plants herself in the early days because she wanted to establish a deeper core relationship with her customers. That builds loyalty and community. Since then, Eliza has been ruthlessly intentional about continuing to engage deeply with her customers and instilled that in her leadership team.

Third, they were consistent. They made a habit of consistently posting social content and blogs that people looked forward to and sending messages across several key channels to anchor their customers to their brand.

And then they rinsed and repeated. It’s not hard to figure out how to build strong community. What’s hard is committing to it and executing day in and day out.

Community is one of those things that you won’t see on the “stat sheets” in the early days, but almost every major brand has developed overtime.

What’s your favorite community and why do you love it?

Wrapping it Up 📕

I hope you found this interesting and inspiring! If so and you want to help support my journey to bring The Founder to millions of people across the world, here’s a couple things that would be really valuable to me and the show:

1. If you enjoyed this post, share it with one friend that you think is on the same wavelength. Can’t hurt and would help spread the word!

2. If you haven’t already, subscribe to the newsletter so you can get them delivered to your inbox each week!

3. Listen to the full podcast episode with Eliza on Apple or Spotify. If you don’t have an hour to listen to the full episode, pick a couple of topics you’re interested in and skim through (topic time codes in the show notes).

If you’re feeling super giving:

4. Find our show on Apple Podcasts (https://apple.co/2VCosu6) and (1) subscribe, (2) give a 5-star rating and (3) leave a couple sentence positive review. This doesn’t seem like it would move the needle but it really is a massive help!

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Till next time ✌️

Kallaway

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Want more? Check out other companies we’ve featured on the show!

— 🥦 22. Levels | Josh Clemente

— 🐑 18. Naadam | Matt Scanlan

— 🧑‍🦰 17. Kombo Ventures | Kevin Gould

— 💍 11. The Clear Cut | Olivia Landau and Kyle Simon

— 🥘 7. Kettle & Fire | Justin Mares

— 🥾 2. Thursday Boots | Connor Wilson