Beyond your Products: Creating Brands with Connection (Season 2 Ep. 12)

Jul 3

Listen in on a wonderful conversation we have with Suze Dowling who is an Aussie and the Co Founder and Chief Business Officer at Pattern Brands. We don’t want to spoil a lot for you all, but we are obsessed with their mission and business model! Suze has an incredible background, having co-founded a branding and marketing agency in New York City, where she and her co-founders particularly focused on disrupting the direct to consumer space. In that vein, we talk a lot about how to create a brand with connection. How does a founder who is selling a toothbrush, for example, create a brand story that will transcend the actual product? This is what branding is really about, connection. Suze also gives solid advice on the unpredictability of business. While it's important to create personal boundaries, and how as a recovering perfectionist, vulnerability has become her business superpower. We know you're going to learn a ton in this episode. So let's dive in!

LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PLATFORM

What can you expect from this episode:

[4:30-18:37] Suze gives us a 360 overview of her business, Pattern Brands, their business model and how they support the continued growth of other brands. She shares how she started her company that takes us back to when she first landed in the US. She walks us through the experience her and her co-founders had when building their business. Suze explains how her company works with other brands and how their journey has led to acquiring brands.
[18:58 - 24:18] Suze shares what the next stage is for her business, Pattern Brands. She radiates gratitude talking about what her and her whole team are doing to grow and how she gets to appreciate her company’s products in her own home. Suze tells us her love for operations and figuring out the best ways to optimize her and her team’s time. Jess and Suze also get into their own values of how important their home space is to them and that “home” is also a feeling that is relatable to many people, especially for those who work from home.
[24:19 - 29:27] Jess and Suze get into the concept of purpose and how a lot of founders worry that their product is the only thing that drives the vision of their brand and we are here to say that is not the case. Hear from Suze and Jess on how the brand is so much more than the product.
[31:20- 35:27 ] Suze dives into her failing forward moments.She talks about embracing life’s unpredictable moments and her learnings about being okay with being vulnerable. She shares the mindset that helped her manage the navigation of running an agency business to now her current early stage start up.
[35:35- 43:51] We get to hear why Suze and her co-founders decided to close their marketing and branding agency and why that was the right decision for them. We conclude the episode with Suze giving her final advice to early stage female founders including what has helped her with setting boundaries with her business.