The Female Founder Show

Balancing Retail Entrepreneurship and Motherhood: Insights from Nicole Leinbach

• Bridget Fitzpatrick, Nicole Leinbach • Episode 11

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Curious about how to balance a thriving business and a fulfilling family life? Join us on the Female Founder Show as we host Nicole Leinbach, the brilliant mind behind Retail Minded and the Independent Retailer Conference. Nicole shares her transformative journey from the corporate world to entrepreneurship, highlighting the indispensable role of financial planning and strategic market research. Nicole's insights are tailored especially for aspiring female entrepreneurs, providing actionable advice on understanding market competition and leveraging technology and education to support small businesses.

In our candid conversation, Nicole opens up about the art of intertwining motherhood with entrepreneurial ventures. She reveals how a supportive partner and clear communication have been pivotal in her journey. Nicole also discusses her exciting future plans, which include more travel, writing additional books, and creating impactful content for small businesses. Tune in to discover how Nicole seamlessly blends her professional goals with personal fulfillment, offering a blueprint for a balanced and rewarding lifestyle. Connect with Nicole at RetailMinded.com and on social media under Retail Minded to follow her inspiring journey.

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Voice Over:

This is the Female Founder Show with host and entrepreneur Bridget Fitzpatrick, exclusively on ASBN.

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

Hello everyone and welcome to the Female Founder Show. Today's guest is the founder of Retail Minded and the Independent Retailer Conference. She's an author, a mother and a professor. She's been recognized globally as a top 10 retail thought leader and is highly sought after speaker to small business audiences around the world. I'm talking about Nicole Leinbach. Nicole, thank you so much for joining us.

Nicole Leinbach:

Thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to it.

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

Yes, this will be fun. Now you were in the corporate world and you made the transition, the big leap into starting your own company. So can you start there and tell us how you started your business?

Nicole Leinbach:

Yeah, you know, I was so fortunate to always have an idea that I wanted to work within the business of retail, and so I studied that in college and very aggressively pursued a career that took me to companies that included Adidas America, franco Sardo Footwear, and I held some fantastic roles on national levels and local levels. But long story short, I also knew that what I was learning along that path, I should say, is I wanted to bring it into my own business. That both gave me time to be flexible for myself and my family, but also to give back to small businesses, because that was always a passion of mine.

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

Yeah, so many people get into their own businesses for those very reasons. How did you find that transition to be from corporate to your own business?

Nicole Leinbach:

It was definitely an adjustment. I mean, the first thing to think about is budget. Can you afford to do it? And you know I was fortunate to be able to do that. But that's also when I was approached by where I went to college to become an instructor, and so it did offset at the time those first few years where you're just building back what your expectation of income might be. So that was always nice, and I'm still a professor there 17 years later. And you know that was certainly just an opportunity to redefine my daily life and how I would plan both my professional world and personal world and balance being an entrepreneur along the way.

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

Nice, nice. Now you're an expert in retail, specifically retail technology, which is hugely important post COVID, so can you talk to us about retail minded and how you're helping small businesses with that?

Nicole Leinbach:

Yes, you know, one of the great things about technology in general is that it brings clarity that the human touch and the human eye alone simply cannot do to all types of businesses. But when we look at retail specifically, there's moving inventory, there's logistics of delivery. Certainly, during COVID we all, as consumers, had a more familiar understanding of that because of delays of shipments and across the world things are being shipped right. So inventory is managed by technology. But more than just inventory of social media, you have email connectivity to your customers. So technology, it's really a huge driver of commerce, both brick and mortar as well as online. So Retail Minded supports a variety of businesses in mostly content and education. So I say that news, education and support is what defines retail-minded and our audience is primarily small business owners, but our clients are primarily technology companies and a variety of other companies.

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

Okay, cool, Great. Now what advice would you give to those women who might be thinking about starting a business?

Nicole Leinbach:

Such a great question because the first and foremost thing I would say is go for it, you know.

Nicole Leinbach:

But I would also say do your research, take the time to bring clarity to yourself and what you both want to deliver and can offer and how you're going to do that. The competition is tough out there and, as much as we want to put forth our best effort, sometimes we are also not recognizing the challenges of the marketplace. So look for the competition of who might be your competition and understand them, so that you can both compete as well as learn from them and maybe offer something different. You know my unique role is pretty niche, but I will tell you there's others like me and over the years we've become advocates and supporters of each other, but that also comes with time and respect. So certainly look out for what the competition is, what you can uniquely offer in this business. You might create and then identify a strategy for three months, six months, 12 months and even five years ahead, so that you have a strong understanding of what you have to meet in order to reach those goals.

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

Great advice. Great advice there. Now you're a mother of four and extremely busy, so how have you balanced the demands of entrepreneurship with other aspects of your life, such as family?

Nicole Leinbach:

You know my, my fiance, is also an entrepreneur.

Nicole Leinbach:

We're a blended family, two and two together, four kids, three dogs, and he simply understands what it's like to have a role that is not always traditional. It's not defined by a nine to five expectation, if you will, so that's great, Having a fantastic partner. Number one to me is what's going to be the best thing you can do as being an entrepreneur, because and if you don't, you can absolutely do it but for me it's really nice having those four kids and three dogs, and I travel quite a bit for business, so that's great. But also just communication I'm being very clear of, not only to your children but to your partner and even to yourself.

Nicole Leinbach:

You know, I have a map that really is more of a calendar for our family and they understand OK, mom's out of town this week, but she's here this week, you know, and those are just realities of our world. But we definitely make it work and I will tell you, I even recently just brought my 14 year old daughter on a business trip and she joined me on stage, and you know. So sometimes our out of ways, out of the ordinary experiences can benefit our kiddos in other ways as well. They're learning.

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

Definitely. Yeah, the support is so important from your spouse or significant other, so I'm glad you brought that up. And speaking of the family balance and your daughter, you recently wrote a book with your daughter, shadow Siblings, so can you talk to us about the book and what the process was like working with your daughter?

Nicole Leinbach:

Yeah. So during COVID we had a little extra time in our hands and when my son was three years old, he lost all his hair to a condition called alopecia, which is it's non-life threatening. There's really no other side effect other than he has no hair on his body. He has the most advanced form. So head to toe, no hair anywhere.

Nicole Leinbach:

And my daughter, along the way I was able to observe held a really unique role in being a sibling to someone with special needs attention or simply a circumstance that they got a lot of attention and there's other kids out there like that. So together we wrote this book called Shadow Siblings and she has since spoke at schools and camps and even via Zooms to organizations about what it's like to be a sibling to someone in that position, what it's like to be a sibling to someone in that position, and it's just been such a great experience to both work on the book and talk about marketing and business and margin and markup and the realities of operating. It's not just sell a book, make money. There's a lot of stuff to get there right. So she was excited about the message, but she was also excited about the business.

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

Oh, that's great, and the message is helping other people. So you're teaching her at a young age that you can be rewarded financially and be helping people at the same time. That's huge, absolutely yes, yes. So now we also talked before the show about a new project that you're launching called Retail Uncensored. I know there are a lot of people watching today that could get a lot out of this, so could you share with us what that?

Nicole Leinbach:

Absolutely. You know, one of the things over my expansive career you know I'm 20 plus years within the retail category is learning Right, I've learned so much and I want to give back, and so a buddy of mine within the industry his name is John Lawson and myself together are launching Retail Uncensored, where it's more or less a coaching program. It's sort of like a six week summer school, if you will, that keeps continuously growing. As you pass six weeks you have the opportunity to do another six weeks to elevate, and what we're doing is we're teaching the business of retail, because nowadays you can want to start a small business within the retail sector and have no idea where to go. Of course there's Amazon and Etsy or a brick-and-mortar store, but what does that really mean? We talk about the technology you need.

Voice Over:

We talk about the integration of technology that you need payment category the responsibilities, even the I hate to say it the ways not to get scammed when sourcing inventory.

Nicole Leinbach:

You know, there's a lot of things that we've learned over the years and we've seen people go through their own struggles, so we're just bringing a lot of clarity with actionable steps so that they can apply it to their businesses and hopefully build their own business that makes them happy.

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

Yeah, Now would this help people, whether it's brick and mortar or e-commerce.

Nicole Leinbach:

Yes.

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

All types of retail. That's great. Exactly yes.

Nicole Leinbach:

Because it's really the retail operations behind the scenes and a lot of the base of that goes either direction, and then we'll have advanced experiences that are more specific.

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

Okay, and when does this launch? April 1st, 2023. So it's coming here soon, very soon. Good Well, congratulations on that. Thank you In your free time, if you have any. After all of this, you've created the first sexual wellness trade show that kicks off in July. Talk to us about that.

Nicole Leinbach:

Yeah, I'm really excited about this because one of the other things that I define myself as a retail geek and that means I look at a lot of data and one of the things that data keeps telling us is that the category of sexual wellness is growing.

Nicole Leinbach:

It's becoming more mainstream. You can go to your local Walgreens, sephora, target and buy various items within what would be considered sexual wellness, and so with that, I started to go to a lot of trade shows and various experiences that I didn't feel really defined the category as best as they could. They really pushed themselves into different sectors, whether it's adult novelty or maybe it was considered alternative lifestyle, but nobody narrowed in on the wellness of our sexual health, and so that includes everything from reproduction to, you know, lotions, lubricants, health wellness. Of course, you know there is the conversation that you know pleasure products will be there, but it is everything that falls into this, and we're doing so with an elevated approach so that it really supports consumers, but beginning on that B2B side. So business to business trade show that's cool, that's cool.

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

And you have experience hosting conferences and trade shows before. Since you're the founder of the Independent Retailer Conference, Can you talk to us about that and who would benefit from going to that conference?

Nicole Leinbach:

Yeah, in fact, we just had our most recent one last week in las vegas. We hold it on site at asd market week, which is another great trade show. It's about 40 000 attendee plus trade show, where retailers source their inventory, whether they're selling online or brick and mortar, and so we've partnered with them for about 10 years now and we produce this conference delivering real-time education. The idea is to engage, learn and connect. We want our attendees to engage with our speakers, learn from them and ultimately connect with the brands that are being represented there, and these are typically going to be service providers, technology-focused companies that are driving the operations of retail.

Nicole Leinbach:

So, whether it's online or offline, those are the types of companies you can expect. What is really great about it? It's very informal. So, whether it's online or offline, those are the types of companies you can expect. What is really great about it? It's very informal. So the word conference can sometimes be misinterpreted as stuffy or just complex, but it's actually a very relaxed environment where we welcome people to talk to each other, learn from each other, and the goal is really to boost your business.

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

Okay, great, I love that. Now I have a friend starting an e-commerce business and she's got it off the ground, but she just it's in a saturated market but she's got beautiful items to sell. What do you think she should do to make herself stand out from the rest?

Nicole Leinbach:

Well, the first thing I would say is that make sure that her branding is strong. So whatever her name is, logo and, of course, all those social media handles that you should capture and Collectively, make sure that they mimic each other. If they vary, it's hard for your customers to find you between one spot and the other. And then make sure you have strong and consistent communication. I always offer the five seeds of communication anytime you're launching a business. And to be clear, concise, correct, courteous and courteous is really just your brand tone, whatever that voice might be, so someone else who might be humorous depending on the brand and consistent. So clear, concise, correct, courteous and consistent across all of the touch points in which customers engage. The advantage that most of us have as business leaders is that we are also customers ourselves. So if your own business is not reaching customers and destination that you as a consumer are, make sure you're there as well.

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

Okay, great advice for anyone starting a business or any business really Now. Your drive is so impressive and the fact that you're helping so many people makes it even better. What has been your biggest success since starting your own business?

Nicole Leinbach:

What a great question. It's a challenging question, though, because I mean, I would like to believe that my greatest success is actually my family, and so in building my business I know it's cliche, but like I get to come home, I get to bring my you know daughters on business trips, I get to take my son on experiences that have been designed more or less through business. So family is really the reason why I do so much of this. It allows me to have a lifestyle that I prefer, and so with that, I feel like my business is really. The reward to it is having a life I love living, and that comes back to my family.

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

That is the best answer, for sure. Now, where do you see yourself in the next five years?

Nicole Leinbach:

Oh gosh, I mean, in the next five years the kiddos will all be out of the house Someone's still in college or whatever they prefer to do. So I look forward to traveling more and I always say that during that timeframe I'd like to write another book. I've written a few now, but I think my goal would be to write more books, do stronger content experiences and travel the world. I've written a few now, but I think my goal would be to write more books, do stronger content experiences and travel the world. I've been fortunate to go, you know, australia, amsterdam, various places speaking, but to be able to write and travel, you know, as a result of writing, you hear many times. So I think that's what I look forward to just traveling the world and sharing, you know, hopefully, positive insight that supports other small businesses. That's what I look forward to just traveling the world and sharing, you know, hopefully, positive insight that supports other small businesses. That's fantastic.

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

Now for those businesses that would like to get a hold of you. What is the best way to do that?

Nicole Leinbach:

So retailmindedcom is our anchor website and you can find me on Twitter at Retail Minded. The only exception would be Instagram is Retail Minded World, and that's a little bit more of my personal slash professional life, but I love sharing, so Okay, great.

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

Well, nicole, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it and we hope to get to talk to you again soon.

Nicole Leinbach:

Thank, you for having me.

Voice Over:

This is the Female Founder Show with host and entrepreneur Bridget Fitzpatrick, exclusively on ASBN. If you're a female founder and would like to help other female founders with your inspiring story, we would love to hear from you.

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

This has been a JBF Business Media production.