Episode Summary
What does it take to build a brand people don’t just buy from—but genuinely want to be part of?
In this episode, Brittany sits down with Jesse McKinney, co-founder and CEO of Red Aspen, to talk about the mission, culture, and community behind the fast-growing beauty brand. Jesse and her co-founders, Jeannie Reese and Amanda Moore, started Red Aspen in 2017 with a mission to inspire women to stand up, stand out, and stand together—before they even knew what product they would sell.
They explore Red Aspen’s journey from launching with just a handful of false lashes to building a nine-figure beauty brand with thousands of passionate brand ambassadors. Jesse shares what it took to navigate explosive growth, challenge conventions in the direct-selling industry, and scale the company without losing the playfulness and personality that made people fall in love with it in the first place.
They also dig into why showing up consistently is one of the simplest ways to build loyalty, why progress matters more than perfection, and how Red Aspen intentionally brings its core values to life across everything from packaging and language to events and technology.
You’ll learn:
- Why Red Aspen started with a mission before it had a product
- What Jesse’s “200% committed” rule can teach entrepreneurs and leaders
- How Red Aspen turned its brand ambassadors into passionate superfans
- Why “playful” is one of Red Aspen’s core values—and how the company brings it to life
- What explosive growth taught Jesse about scaling a company and its culture
- Why Jesse believes people show up for you when you show up for them
- How progress over perfection can create a culture of trust and authenticity
- Why challenging industry conventions has helped Red Aspen continue to innovate
- What technology and AI can amplify—but never replace—when it comes to human connection
Learn more about Red Aspen here
Listen to the Episode
Listen on Apple Podcasts
Listen on Spotify
Watch on YouTube
Transcription
Brittany Hodak: Jesse, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Jesse McKinney: Yeah, Brittany, it is my pleasure. It’s, uh, really truly an honor
Brittany Hodak: Oh, well thank you. You know, I have learned so much about your company over the past year, and one of the things that I’ve heard you say in interviews that I find so fascinating is you said you had the mission before you had the product. And I’m just curious, how do you go about building a company when you know why you wanna exist before you know exactly what it is that you wanna do?
Jesse McKinney: Okay, but Brittany, doesn’t it kind of make sense to know why you want to exist before you know what you wanna do? That’s what I actually, like, tell people all the time. I’m like, “Well, I knew, we knew why we wanted to be around,” right? So my, my partners, Jeannie, Amanda, and myself, we knew that we wanted to create a community of women. We knew that we wanted to inspire women to stand up, stand out, and stand together by igniting passion with purpose. That was our mission. And so, you know, uh, if I’m making, like, an algebraic, you know, formula, you know, if A plus B equals C, and you start with [00:01:00] C, right? Like, you know where you’re trying to go, and maybe you have, like, one or two ingredients on the other side, you can fill in the pieces, right?
Like, you, you can, you can solve what the answer is going to be. And so, you know, I, I think that some of the most interesting companies, they know why they exist, and I think that’s really what creates a strong brand
Brittany Hodak: Okay. Well, you’re right. It does make a lot of sense when you explain it like that. I wanna know, when you were trying to decide what do we do and how do we bring this stand up, stand out, stand together to life, what was it that you brought to the table, and your sister, and Amanda? Like, how did you guys decide, “Okay, we know that we have the idea, we have the team, we’ve just gotta get the product”?
Talk to me about how that all looked in the beginning.
Jesse McKinney: Well, it was chaotic.
Brittany Hodak: Like all good startups should be
Jesse McKinney: You know, I’m coming at you from my office in this beautiful warehouse that we built with systems and team members and [00:02:00] employees. And the reality is that while this looks really shiny and fun, and there are flowers, right? Um, we didn’t really have a lot when we started.
We had, like, barely two pennies to rub together, but we had our mission. We had a lot of drive. We had a lot of determination, and I think most importantly, what we had was grit. Um, and we knew we were going to have to wear a lot of hats. We knew we were gonna have to do a lot of jobs. We knew that at the end of the day, you know, the buck was gonna have to stop with us, but also it was gonna have to start with us.
When you have to be doing the work and strategizing the work and everything in between, um, you know, I, I think that when… What I tell people, right, kind of in response to your question is, you wanna be an entrepreneur, have to be 200% committed on day one. You have to be 200% committed to your ideas, to your, to your mission, to, to the work that you’re [00:03:00] doing there will be a day that you will wake up and you are only 50% in it because you’re tired, right?
You’re tired and you’re, like, not really sure if you can keep going on. But if you were 200% committed to start, then the day that you wake up and you’re only 50% in, in it, you’re still 100% committed on that day, you know? And so I think that it was grit, it was determination, and it was just the vision that we had the ability to create something really cool, really spectacular, and, and live that mission every day
Brittany Hodak: I love that. Well, tell me about the early days when you started to think about the product and you started to think about the what that was gonna allow this why to exist in the world. How did you know you were really onto something?
Jesse McKinney: You know, and we went rounds and rounds on product. Uh, but ultimately where we netted was, you know, being a beauty brand would be really, really fun. Um, you know, we, we love all things beauty, right? I’m [00:04:00] actually, just as a side note, a big believer in like the… Like beauty comes from the inside out, right?
Like the way you treat other people, the things that you do, like that is what makes you beautiful. Um, you know, I do believe that beauty is only skin deep. so really like all of that being baked into, into our mission. Um, but you know, when we, when we got started thinking about product, there was definitely an element of strategy, and then there was definitely also an element of luck.
So, um, today most people know us for our makeup line. We’ve been building out our skincare line, and really the hero product that so many people know us for is our press-on nails. Our, uh, uh, we call them Nail Dashes. So it’s this amazing product. I’ve gotta make sure we send you some, Brittany, before the big event.
We gotta get you all decked out in
Brittany Hodak: I have some. They’re incredible, yes. They, I’m not wearing them now, but they look fantastic and feel so great on too
Jesse McKinney: They’re so fun, they really are. But what most people don’t know is that we actually started lashes, so, like strip lashes. And like I was saying, there’s always, in business, in everything [00:05:00] you do, there’s an element of strategy and there’s an element of luck.
And we said, “You know, there aren’t a lot of really, like, luxury lashes on the market.” And this would’ve been in, uh, 2017. So like, it wasn’t like you could really go anywhere and find, like, luxury lashes. You could find a lot of drugstore lashes, but nothing that was gonna be like the quality that we were thinking. so we said, “Let’s do it. Let’s go all in on that. Let’s go all in on lashes.” And like I said, we didn’t have a lot of money, so we didn’t have a lot of money to invest in inventory. launched Red Aspen, we had lash adhesive, a lash applicator, and I think six lash SKUs, individual lash, lash SKUs, and that’s all we had.
And we opened up our little, you know, shingle on the internet, our little sparkly corner of the internet. And, um, I think people really resonated with the business opportunity that exists within Red Aspen with the mission to earn commission, which rhymes. We should really use that in some way. Um, but when I talk about the element of strategy, [00:06:00] that was it.
And we said, “Let’s, let’s double down on that.” But the element of luck that came out of it was that, like, a month after we launched, Pinterest declared false lashes the beauty product of the year. And so we just saw our algorithm go, like, skyrocket and go through the roof because there wasn’t a lot on the market like there is today. And so that story sounds amazing, especially when you hear, like, we broke even in six weeks, and that also sounds cool, but we didn’t really have that much money to break even from. So it sounds good. But you have this moment as an entrepreneur where you have to say, should we, like, get… Should we get out of this and, like, recoup our costs, or should we go all in?” And we decided to go all in, and we reinvested every single dollar we had back into Red Aspen. We didn’t take a paycheck for close to three years. Um, and we reinvested in inventory. We reinvested in innovation and new products. We reinvested in team members. [00:07:00] we’ve really taken that exact same, you know, uh, methodology to this day, and we’ve said, “How can we keep reinvesting in this, in this company, and how can we make it the best beauty company where women can earn a paycheck,” right?
Like, that’s really what we’re all about. So long roundabout way to say we started with false lashes, and here’s our entire product offering. But it’s been such a fun journey. Um, and we have so many things coming out. In fact, when this podcast airs, uh, the cat will be out of the bag, and there are so many amazing products that we are launching this fall
Brittany Hodak: Which is so exciting. And, you know, one of the things that I would love for you to talk about the early days of, because it’s not just that you said, “We wanna be beauty entrepreneurs, and we wanna be in this business,” but you said, “We’re gonna start a direct selling company,” which is, I would imagine, in some ways exponentially harder.
Because not only do you have to think about your brand ambassadors, and now you’ve got, I think, over [00:08:00] 14,000 of them, which is incredible, but also your ambassadors’ customers. So talk to me a little bit about that decision early on of why… Like, was it… Uh, ’cause I, I know you’ve also said, you know, there was, let’s say, some questioning of some of the conventional wisdom, where you guys came in and were like, “We know we’re in direct sales, but we’re not gonna do this.
We’re not gonna do that. We don’t think this is gonna work.” Uh, so talk to me a little bit about how when you guys made that decision and then said, “Okay, you know, we’re, we’re gonna go all in on luxury lashes, and then we’re gonna, you know, have the nail dashes and the other things that followed,” what was it about the direct selling model that made you…
W- was it just going back to, to the sense of you wanted to, you know, have everybody growing together, standing up, standing out, standing together?
Jesse McKinney: Well, I think you, I think you nailed it, Brittany. Like, really so much of it is about the mission statement. And, you know, I could sell a beauty product and say, “This is my mission,” but, like, how do you support it at the end of the day? Um, and, uh, so the business model that we chose, just for anyone who’s listening who might be interes- you know, interested or may [00:09:00] not know, we are a direct sales company, so we have independent brand ambassadors all over the country that sell Red Aspen products. But we knew if we were gonna do this, that there were some stigmas within direct sales that were going to be obstacles that we really needed to overcome, especially in 2017, right? It was a totally different time. So the idea of getting rid of any paper product that might be out there that r- you know, different reps would need to spend money on, like a catalog, right?
We knew that we were going to have to generate individual websites for every woman out there, and that those websites were gonna have to be, mobile friendly and, you know, um, provide an incredible experience, and that wasn’t really something because of the complexity, which you touched on, within our industry. Direct sales can be complex Um, there’s a lot of, like, tech that you have to overcome in order to make the model work, and so we’ve [00:10:00] gotten really, really good at that. But when we launched, we said, “This is really an amazing way to put our mission into action.” Beauty is a vehicle, but the sales model is really the way…
Like, that… While beauty is the vehicle, the sales model is really the way that we’re allowed to, like… It’s the gas for the vehicle. It’s what makes that mission statement go. Um, and so it just, it honestly just kind of all clicked, and it just made sense, and it has been such a fun ride. The most women.
Like, I am so blessed. The most amazing women have been brought into my life, um, all over, right? And I can’t imagine doing this without them. I- They’re tremendously hardworking. They love beauty. They love getting out there and, you know, showcasing products. They’re aligned with the mission. And what’s fun is that, like, most [00:11:00] more traditional beauty brands, they’ll have, like, UGC creators these days, right?
Th- they, they have, um, people that rep their brand. But when you talk about superfans, right? The brand ambassadors that, that we have the pleasure of serving, these women are superfans with the brand because they own a piece of the brand. Like, their heart is literally baked into the brand, and, it’s fun to be able to, to link arms with them and, and be able to say like, “Yep, let’s go forward on, on the hard days.
Let’s go forward on the great days. Let’s go forward on the busiest days. And, and I know that I’m in it with you, and I know- You’re in it with me
Brittany Hodak: I love that. And going back to the, you know, if we’re all in it 200%, then even on those hard days or even on those 50% days, we’re still in a really good place. Now, I, I’m, I’m gonna circle back with a question about, uh, those brand ambassadors in just a second. But one of the things that struck me right [00:12:00] away when I learned about Red Aspen is one of your company core values is being playful.
Yeah. And I love that because playfulness is not a word you hear all the time when you’re talking about company core values. It’s probably not on, you know, a lot of, like, boardroom walls. But it is so at the core of everything that your brand does and everything your ambassadors do. So I want you to talk a little bit, A, about how important that is for people who choose to be ambassadors with Red Aspen, and B, how do you protect that?
Like, how is it as the company- Yeah … has gotten bigger and bigger and you’ve added more SKUs and there’s been more technology that you’ve had to think about and, you know, more, I’m guessing here, but I’m assuming more things like, you know, spreadsheets and lawyers and meetings, and, like, the grown-up company stuff.
Like, as that has all, like, ballooned exponentially, how do you protect that playfulness? And then, you know, the first part of that question, how does it maintain its importance with your ambassadors as they’re all going about the [00:13:00] day-to-day of Red Aspen?
Jesse McKinney: Yeah. So we have, uh, four core values, and actually what’s fun is that all of our values have their own conference room here in our building. So
Brittany Hodak: Oh, that’s so fun
Jesse McKinney: I, I share that only to say we have a playful conference room. And so it’s kind of at the forefront of your mind when you go to book any of our rooms. You’re like, “Oh, there, you know, there are the values again.” Um, we really believe in being playful at the heart of everything we do, and I think that you’re right. As we’ve gotten bigger, we’ve definitely had to say like, “Okay, how can we double down on playfulness here?” One of the ways that we do that is through our packaging and through our collections. How do we tell a story?
So every week we drop new products, and those products tell a fun story in a meaningful way with fun, vibrant, and playful packaging. So, you know, if we launch a… Oh, what’s a good example of a collection? If we launch a Small Town Smoke Show, [00:14:00] that’s a upcoming collection that will have already launched by the time this airs. If we launch a Small Town Smoke Show collection, how does the packaging work together? How is the packaging playful? What does it make you feel? What does it make the customer feel? What does it make the brand ambassador feel? Is she excited to wear this? Is she excited to show this off? Is she proud of this? Right, so there’s that. The other way that we really try to be playful is we choose our words very specifically. So in, when you have a new customer, um, instead of getting an email that’s like, “New customer,” email is, “Booyah, you have a new customer.” And booyah has become so ingrained in our everyday vernacular, we literally have brand ambassadors that will make shirts that just say booyah because it’s so import- We’ve, we’ve had booyah emails going out since 2017.
When you sign up a new team member, when you have a new customer, you get your booyah email. other thing that we do, we have really fun brand trips that we take [00:15:00] every year. So we were just in Mexico a couple of weeks ago. We’ll be in the Dominican Republic next year, and we try to make it so it is fun, so it’s inviting, so it’s welcoming. Um, these are our incentive trips that you, that you earn, and we call it our girls weekend, um, the event that you and I are gonna be at here at our annual convention, and it’s fun. It’s not just a conference. It’s a girls weekend. It’s about reconnecting and being together. So I think our events are playful.
You know, we have incentives, sales incentives that are playful, and it doesn’t mean that you don’t work hard, right? I think that there’s work hard, work hard, play hard, but there’s also work hard and play hard together, you know? And I think that it’s totally possible to marry those things. to your point, you have to be really cognizant of it. You have to think about it. You have to take an active stance in saying, “How are we going to play in everything from our packaging to the way that we, you know- [00:16:00] uh, administer philanthropy, right? Um, how can we look at playfulness from A to Z in everything we do? And it’s an active choice
Brittany Hodak: Well, I love that and I love how intentional you are about it. Just for everyone listening, what are the other three core values, and what are some of the fun ways that you’ve brought them to life as well?
Jesse McKinney: Yeah. So, um, playfulness. We have, uh, courageous, curious and fulfilled. And so with, um, one of… You know, here’s a way to kinda like wrap them all together. At our girls weekend event, our conference, we actually give every year a core value award. We give a playful award, a curious award, um, a fulfilled award and a…
Did I say curious, playful, curious? Curious, playful, courageous, fulfilled. I had to do all of them. But there’s an award given to one brand ambassador for every one of those core values, right? And we really try to bring that back to, to her, to the brand ambassador. Who is the person that is the most [00:17:00] deserving that award?
Because they embody that value so intrinsically. So I think that’s a, a really good way of like wrapping up. That, that’s something we do for, for all of our core values that all of our brand ambassadors look at and say, “I aspire to be that.”
Brittany Hodak: I love that. Well, okay, let’s get real for a second. What is the hardest thing about leading a company whose success depends so heavily on people that you do not technically employ?
Jesse McKinney: Yeah. Well, you know, I think you have to keep everybody swimming in the same direction, right? You have to keep everyone, um… And, and, and not only that, keep them swimming in the same direction, but everyone has a different level of commitment as well. Some people do this as just a fun hobby because they love the product, and they’re like, “Oh, I could totally sell this to my friends,” right?
So like you may have somebody that’s just, “I’m here because it’s my hobby and it’s fun, and I have my own [00:18:00] little sparkly corner of the internet,” the way up to you have someone who has made it their full-time career, right? And so not only do you have to manage the expectations of the hobbyist, but you also have to manage the expectations of the person who, like, does this for a living full time. Um, I’ll share a story with you. Uh, oh- it was spring of ’25. Um, we were running out of inventory right and left, right and left, right and left, right and left. And, um, we just could not keep inventory on the shelves. Specifically, going back to that launch inventory, when I talk about us doing a launch every single week, we couldn’t keep inventory in stock.
It was going on the website. So you know, Brittany, if you had a website, it would be redaspandlove\brittanyh, let’s say. would show up on your website at, like, 10:30 in the morning on a Tuesday, and it would be sold out by 10:31 that day, [00:19:00] right? And, and that’s hard because I think if you’re a more traditional brand, you look at that and you go, “High five.
We sold out of all of that inventory,” right? And sellouts are amazing. Do not get me wrong. It’s so great to have a sellout. it was hard to manage expectations when you’ve got sellout, sellout, sellout, sellout, sellout every week after week. And then your brand ambassadors are feeling like, “Well, wait a second, this isn’t fun. I was marketing this last night as this new product that’s launching tomorrow, and now I can’t even get it for my customer. That’s really, really hard.” so sometimes I think with indirect sales, the way that you have to think about it as a business owner is counterintuitive to the way that a lot of more traditional e-commerce brands would want to think about their business, right?
Inventory, that would be a great example, right? The way that you incentivize your UGC creators as a traditional business, right, and the way that you incentivize ambassadors [00:20:00] within a direct sales model are completely different. Um, and the list goes on and on and on, but there are definitely different expectations to manage because your brand ambassadors are that much more committed to your brand.
So when they raise the bar of commitment, we have to meet them where they are in that bar, in that level of commitment
Brittany Hodak: Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s funny. I’ve got two little boys who love Pokemon cards, and I don’t know if you have any Pokemon fans in your life, but it’s, it’s the same thing, right? It’s like, you know, my husband has these, like, Discord servers that he’s a member of, of like, “Well, we think there’s gonna be a drop at this time on this place.”
You have to be, like, waiting to have it in your cart or it’s just gone. And yeah, you’re right, it is a double-edged sword of, you know, people saying, “But I really wanted that one, and I’ve been looking forward to that one.” And I was wondering about that when I, um, I, I read in a couple places where your sales just exploded during COVID.
I think one of the numbers I saw was like 850% growth or something that just [00:21:00] sounded, you know, insane. And I think a lot of times from the outside looking in, people say, “Oh, hyper-growth is wonderful. That’s amazing.” But all I could think as a founder is I bet that sucked. Like, I bet there were so many things on the inside that you were like, “What do we do?
This supplier can’t do this.” Like, I… There must have been so many headaches and so many things for you guys to have the public facing like, “No, everything is great.” And that’s, you know, I think one of the things that I, I know your ambassadors really appreciate is that, you know, even when things are selling out, even, even when there’s, like, so much demand that it’s hard to keep up with it, they know that you guys are working so hard and doing so many things to ensure that that product, you know, is A, gonna be super high quality, and B, hopefully there’s gonna be enough to meet that demand, even if people have to wait a few weeks for, like, another drop that they really like.
Jesse McKinney: Yeah, and it has to be a two-way street, right? Like, I have to trust that the product that we are making, like, you know, I will put my, my [00:22:00] full force behind it. But you also have to trust that, know, the, the brand ambassadors are, are gonna go out and they’re going to, also put their full force behind it. And we’re really, really fortunate and lucky and just so blessed because there hasn’t been a time that they haven’t. Now, there have been times that they have been skeptical, let me say that. And think skepticism is completely fair. If, if they were just following us blindly, I think I’d be a little bit concerned, but is, um, is healthy, right?
So, um, in fact, when we launched press-on nails, we were at, at an event in Arizona, and we told all of them, like, “We are gonna do this.” And everyone there looked at us like we were nuts. And I was actually talking to, um, one of our like original brand ambassadors about it, uh, earlier this year, and I was telling her about a product that’s coming up. And [00:23:00] she was like, “Huh, I never really thought about like us doing that.” And I was like, “You said the exact same thing when we launched press-on nails, when we launched Nail Dashes.” And she said, “Oh my gosh, I did. This is gonna be so good.” And I was like, “I know. I know.” So yeah, and, uh, to your point about, about growth, think the highlight reel, whether it’s the business highlight reel, the highlight reel of that friend or influencer on Instagram, your highlight reel only shows that much, right?
What it doesn’t show in our case was the sleepless nights, the meeting… Literal sleepless nights. I mean, we would… In that huge 850% growth period, it wasn’t like we went from a, a s- like a big run rate to a bigger run rate, and we already had systems established. We went from a small run rate to a very large run rate. And, um, what that meant is that we had to do every job during the day, and then at night we would meet and talk [00:24:00] strategy. And I barely remember that, that time of my life. Um, but what that meant is that we would oftentimes work sunup to sundown, spend some time with our families, and hop on a call around midnight or beyond and talk about the strategies, the things, like sync up, and then go do it again the next day. And, you
Brittany Hodak: I think we know why you don’t remember that time in your life then, Jesse Watts.
Jesse McKinney: And I had, like, two pretty small kids, so, you know… A- a- and it, and it was hard. But, you know, I think you figure out ways to get gritty, and you figure out ways to, to manage and be… It comes back to that commitment level. Like, I was tired. Jamie and Amanda were tired. But the outcome of it today is amazing, and we are so privileged to have learned from it, right?
And to be, and to say, like, “Okay, let’s go make some investments in, like, a new shipping system,” for example. Um, let’s make those investments because [00:25:00] again, like, we believe in Her. We believe in our brand ambassadors. And we doubled down, right? here we are.
Brittany Hodak: I love it. And I know how loyal your brand ambassadors are to you, and how much they love the brand. I’m curious if there’s anything that comes to mind for you that you think has led to that disproportionate loyalty. Maybe something that from the outside looking in, or from like a corporate standpoint might feel small or insignificant, but really means a lot to your ambassadors, and really it stands strong because of the culture that you’ve all built together.
Jesse McKinney: Yeah, I think just showing up every single week. So every Monday night, myself, Jeannie, or Amanda, one of the three founders, will show up for a meeting that all brand ambassadors are invited to every Monday night, and it’s been that way since we launched in 2017. There may be some other people that enter the mix now because, like, if there’s a [00:26:00] scheduling conflict or we’re traveling. But I would say 98% time you’re going to get one of the three of us. As we film this, it is Monday, and Amanda will be on our news tonight at 6:00 PM, our news and inspiration, to share everything that’s going on to announce tomorrow’s drop. And people show up for you you show up for them, and I think that that’s as easy as the formula is.
If you show up for people, if you personally care about them, um, if you sh- if you not only tell them that you personally care for them, but your, your actions and your behavior and your language is also a, a form of communication, right? If you show up for them, then they will show up for you, and it’s just, it’s just that simple
Brittany Hodak: It really is. And you know, one of the things I love to say is super fandom is a two-way street. And one of the other things that I say a lot is when I talk about the difference with customers, this idea that fans return, but superfans recruit. They’re the people who are creating more [00:27:00] customers, and obviously your business model has a lot of recruiting and recommendation built into the inf- uh, infrastructure, both with the investors and with your customers.
I’m curious, what have you learned over the past nine years about why people recommend brands to their friends?
Jesse McKinney: Do you have another hour? I can do
Brittany Hodak: Trust me, I wrote a whole book about it. I talk about it all the time. I have all the hours. I have all the hours, all the Monday nights. This is my favorite topic in the world, which is why I’m interested to hear, uh, what, what you’ve learned and, and what has really stood out to you
Jesse McKinney: Probably the biggest thing that I have learned in terms of like creating culture that I am proud of is that you have to strive for progress, not perfection. I tell people all the time, I’m not perfect. will, I will stumble over words. I [00:28:00] will think that I can do something and I, I, I may not be able to do it.
Um, I will make one million mistakes, a million of them, then I will learn and I will make a million more mistakes. But I will never promise you that I will be perfect. I will promise you that I will be imperfect, but what I will promise you that I will always treat you like a, like a business professional. I will always treat you with respect. Um, I will always listen to you. I will always hear you out. I may not agree, but I, I will listen.
I know Jeannie and Amanda will listen. I know our team will listen. Um, and I know we will talk about it. And so I think that really setting the expectation of like, “This is our mission and these are our values.” And what I can promise you is that I will make mistakes, and what I can promise you is that I will let you down. Um, and if you’re [00:29:00] willing to accept me as someone who’s imperfect, then I’m willing to accept you as someone who is imperfect. And I can promise you that I will always give grace, I hope that that culture, um, you know, from the top down, I hope that, that, that grace is extended. I hope that we always seek to understand. Um, and I hope that we go into our exchanges, whether it’s with other brand ambassadors or the customer relationship, to provide solutions and going into it with an understanding that we are imperfect humans who are just trying to do something sparkly with our lives, right? We’re just trying to be the best versions of ourselves and not take ourselves too seriously and have fun along the way. And I think that, to me, those are the ingredients of, of really, like, binds us together. I say that really authentically. Like, [00:30:00] know, if, if I’m a brand and I am promising you the sun, the moon and the stars, I can’t deliver on that. I can promise you to be perfectly imperfect, I can’t really promise anything more
Brittany Hodak: I love that, and I think one of the things that so many brands are learning, and so many big brands are having to sort of be, like, dragged kicking and screaming, is the fact that we are living in a world where authenticity is going to beat polish pretty much every time, right? Like, that is what we want.
And I am curious, as you’ve … You know, like you said, so many things have changed in 2017 across the world, right? In just about every ways. But especially when you look at social selling and direct selling, and some of the stuff you guys are doing with your TikTok shop lives, and I mean, it’s just, it’s so cool, and it’s so innovative.
But you’re right. It’s all so incredibly authentic. And I, I just, I love that. I love how fun it is to watch
Jesse McKinney: Thank you. I really appreciate that, [00:31:00] Brittany
Brittany Hodak: Yeah, of course. And, you know, I’m curious, as, as a founder, when you think about the role of technology and AI, like what are some of the things that you know technology is never gonna be able to replace when it comes to social selling, and what shouldn’t it replace? Like, there’s things that, you know, it will, and maybe that’s fine, but what are the ones that it’s never going to and that’s all right because it shouldn’t?
Jesse McKinney: Yeah, technology’s never gonna replace your heart. I, I think that’s pretty much it, the summary in and of itself. It, it’s not gonna replace your heart or your brain, but it is going to amplify both of those things
Brittany Hodak: I love it. And I know, uh, at the onset you said, “Okay, we’re not doing the catalogs, we’re not doing the print, we’re not doing the parties,” some of those things. What are, what are some of the, the things that you’re sort of actively saying no to now that are the norms around social sellings that you’re like, “I don’t care if [00:32:00] every other brand does this.
Like, not for us”?
Jesse McKinney: Well, I can think of it in an opposite way. Um, things that we’ve actively tried to do or actively done that everyone was like, “You’re nuts.” So we, um, this actually goes back to technology. Uh, uh, there are a couple of things that come to mind. One is we integrated onto Shopify a couple of years ago, which we were one of the first to do it, just because we were like, our dir- traditional direct sales technology is antiquated. How can we utilize a, uh, Shopify… Or how can we utilize Shopify to make sure that we are providing the best checkout experience, website experience for her? And we were like, let’s get in there and get weird with it, and let’s figure it out, and everyone’s kind of followed us into that realm. Um, another thing that we did is we went onto TikTok this year, so our brand ambassadors can now have their own TikTok showcases, which has been a blast.
And figuring out all of the mechanics of that has been, um, a challenge, but it’s been really rewarding to watch. And so I think that [00:33:00] what’s interesting about your question is when we started, we thought to ourselves, “What shouldn’t we do?” And now I think we’ve really been proud of ourselves because we’ve been asking the question, what should…
Like, why not? What could we do? What should we do? Maybe it’s not traditional, but let’s figure it out. be bold. Let’s be courageous. Let’s figure it out
Brittany Hodak: I love that. So do you just find yourself all the time when you’re shopping and out in the wild borrowing best practices or saying, “What’s an element of this that we can use?” Even if it has nothing to do with beauty, nothing to do with direct sales, are you just constantly looking for things to say, “How can we take like a flavor of this and incorporate it into what we do?”
Jesse McKinney: You know, yes and no. Um, I think that there are elements within a really good brand experience that are just baseline expectation now. Like, that 10 years ago wouldn’t have been. Yeah, and a good example of that [00:34:00] 10 years ago, right, is like, um, uh, like text marketing, right? I mean, you just go back 10 years and you think to yourself, “Oh, okay,” and now it’s like an expectation that if I wanna get texts from a brand, like I should be able to do that, right?
Like I wouldn’t think twice about something like that. So I think that the baseline expectation has changed, and we’ve definitely had to keep up with that. Um, and then I think there are things that you see brands do that you go, “Oh, that’s really cool.” Yeah, like I love that they’re doing that. Um, one of the most notable ones that I’ve seen lately is with all of the, um, sorority recruitment, how brands are like sponsoring that.
They’re going in videos, and I’m like, “Brilliant. Brilliant,” right? Like you can learn a lot from others if you just have your eyes open.
Brittany Hodak: Yeah, it’s so good. J- all of college marketing right now, since NIL came onto the scene, there’s so much happening with creativity and sponsored content that it’s… You’re right, it is so, so fun to watch.
Jesse McKinney: Ja,
Brittany Hodak: Sure. Yeah. So Jesse, what is a brand or a product that you’re a superfan of right now and more people should know [00:35:00] about?
Jesse McKinney: Uh, you’re gonna make fun of me. Are you
Brittany Hodak: I’m knocking my credit bureau partner
Jesse McKinney: I feel like everybody probably knows about this, but I, you can ask my husband, I am obsessed with Da- Dave Ramsey and Ramsey Solutions, and specifically the pair that is Rachel and George together. Oh my gosh. I just, I love watching them. I love what they offer.
I love their advice. I think they are just so They’re such a good duo, and I, I’ll, I’ll find them just in my feed over and over and over again. And I think it’s because they’re giving such practical, like with Rachel especially, like such heartfelt advice, and I just identify with so many things that they’re saying, even though they’re so different fundamentally. Um, I think that so much of what they do at Ramsey Solutions is so meaningful for so many people, and I just, I love what, I, I love what they are about and I love the, the brand that, that, that Dave and the team have built there
Brittany Hodak: Well, and it’s such a great example of, you know, how Dave has scaled that empire [00:36:00] around the same idea, right? Like, don’t get into debt. This is how you get out of debt, and he’s been saying that for so long. So their office is, I don’t know, 10 miles down the road from here or something. And when my husband and I moved to Franklin, Tennessee 10 years ago, we, everybody was, like, talking about Dave Ramsey, and we didn’t know who he was.
We hadn’t heard of him yet. He, he, I think he still had the national show. Uh, but he was like a, like a big deal celebrity here. And I would see people at the grocery store with the envelopes, and I’m like, “What in the world is happening here with this?” And, like, we, we probably had three different people gift us the, like, Financial Peace University, like, here’s the thing.
Like, every time we were telling our friends our… Yeah. Everybody’s like, “Oh, you just bought a house? Like, here, I need to give you this Dave Ramsey thing.” So I would not make fun of you no matter what you said, but you are in
Jesse McKinney: and
Brittany Hodak: good company
Jesse McKinney: came into our relationship with the, the book, right? Like, we both, we
Brittany Hodak: Oh my gosh
Jesse McKinney: it. We had two copies of this book, and I was like, “Oh, my gosh.” And I just… I, I think that the [00:37:00] product that they offer, like so many of them now, but it’s, uh, it’s really well done. It’s really well done, and they’ve honestly inspired me so much to think about, like, “Is this important?
Is this something that I need to focus on?” And, and, like, even from, like a, like a spiritual perspective, from a, um, an ethical perspective, just, just… And also, I feel like I’ve been given, with their content, so much just, like, free advice, and it makes me a superfan. It just makes me a superfan of them
Brittany Hodak: Well, you and your husband will have to come to Franklin and watch some of the podcasts get recorded.
Jesse McKinney: Oh,
Brittany Hodak: Join the audience,
Jesse McKinney: George,
Brittany Hodak: maybe ring the bell.
Jesse McKinney: just like well done. Like, hats off to you. I think you’re amazing.
Brittany Hodak: Awesome.
Jesse McKinney: incredible
Brittany Hodak: . Okay. Where can we find out more about you and Red Aspen? Assuming you’re not in the Ramsey, uh, podcast studio watching that recording happening, where can people find and learn more [00:38:00] about you and this incredible brand that you’ve built?
Jesse McKinney: Yeah, head over to redaspenlove.com. You can also check us out on Instagram or TikTok. Our handle is, uh, @redaspenlove
Brittany Hodak: Jesse, thanks again for coming on the show
Jesse McKinney: It was a pleasure, Brittany. Thank you
Paragraph