"Find the right support system when beginning to build your own venture" with JoAnna Hartzmark
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JoAnna Hartzmark, Founder & CEO of Revelle (https://revellenation.com/), never imagined that she would become an entrepreneur. A firm believer that the best paths in life aren’t linear, she worked in numerous industries — from financial services to fashion, to tech — before landing where she is today. Educated at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, JoAnna was always seeking out the next opportunity that would enable her to feel like she was truly adding value to her customers’ lives. Revelle was born out of a desire to help women feel beautiful every day by shifting the narrative around how to find clothes that actually fit — join her in reshaping the future of retail for women everywhere.
Can you tell our readers about your background?
The truth is, I never wanted to be an entrepreneur. In college, I became obsessed with understanding how the world was shifting into the digital age, and how I could use data and analytics to understand the nuances of human behavior. I sought out a career in financial services, feeling that it would enable me to apply what I learned in school to developing unique financial products that would add value to people’s lives. While this experience helped me build an incredible foundation of analytical skills, I ultimately realized that I lacked passion for the world of finance, and left to seek out an industry that would allow me to establish a true connection with the customers I was trying to serve.
It was during my time in business school that I became fascinated with the fashion industry and how it was being forced to innovate as people began shopping more online. I landed positions at luxury retail brands Gucci and Ralph Lauren, but it quickly became clear to me that I could make a much greater impact from outside the fashion industry than by operating within. I found myself drawn to the tech industry, where so much innovation seemed to be centered as more and more experiences moved online. It was my years working within tech that exposed me to how much change was possible with the right vision and leadership and ultimately led me to start my own company aiming to disrupt the status quo of the fashion industry and prioritize the needs of everyday women.
What inspired you to start your business?
Every woman knows that clothing sizing is ridiculously inconsistent. It’s one of those problems that are so ubiquitous that we tend to simply accept it as a fact of life. But those inconsistencies feed into every area of women’s lives, not just affecting how they feel about getting dressed every morning, but also impacting their confidence in their own bodies and how beautiful they feel every day. I decided that this wasn’t a burden that women should have to learn to live with, and that there had to be a better way to help women navigate the world of fashion without feeling overwhelmed by the inconsistencies of endless size charts. So I started Revelle, a powerful platform that helps women navigated the overwhelming online shopping experience to find jeans that actually fit.
Where is your business based?
New York City, NY
How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?
I spent a great deal of time talking to everyday women about how they feel about the problem I was trying to solve. When addressing something as widespread as the difficulty of finding clothes that actually fit, I knew that I had to take extra care to ensure that I was finding a new and unique perspective to build a solution to a problem that many others were likely also thinking about. These conversations led me through numerous iterations of what I thought I might build before ultimately landing on the Revelle that you see today. And it’s my goal that this foundation — of speaking directly with consumers — will set the foundation for how we continue to evolve the company moving forward.
What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?
Conversations about the fashion industry, body image, and shopping online are happening everywhere, especially on social media. We’ve found that participating in those conversations — but not necessarily always trying to lead them — has really helped us not only raise awareness about what Revelle is building but also been so important in exposing us to new facets of the incredibly complex problem we’re trying to solve.
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
Being a solo, self-funded founder has created a unique set of challenges for me as I build Revelle, especially in the midst of a global pandemic. The feelings of isolation that we all feel we’re already a regular occurrence in my life even before March 2020, because the only person who truly understood what I was trying to create was myself. It took a great deal of effort for me to push through the days (or weeks, or months) when I doubted myself and my vision, and that emotional roller coaster has been one of the biggest challenges that I continue to face every day. I’ve made a deliberate effort to seek out the support of other fellow founders who can relate to what I’m going through, and my closest friends and family have also played a critical role in making me feel like I have an emotional safety net to fall back on.
How do you stay focused?
As odd as it might sound, I’ve found having a small side project to be massively helpful when I’m feeling mentally blocked trying to build my business. Especially at the very beginning, I found myself often overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work that would need to be done to create even the first phase of Revelle. My mother suggested I do something creative, purely for fun, with no specific goals tied to it other than giving my mind a break. When I’m struggling to focus, I’ll set aside some time to work on it. While it may be counterintuitive to shift attention away from your primary goal, I’ve found that allowing myself the space to do something completely different helped me feel mentally fresh the next time I turned back to building Revelle.
How do you differentiate your business from the competition?
Revelle doesn’t shy away from admitting that getting dressed in the morning is about so much more than just finding clothes that ‘technically’ fit. So much of shopping is intrinsically tied with how we as women feel about our bodies. Rather than simply using technology to dictate how a woman should feel in her clothes, Revelle brings women into the conversation so that they can have a say in how they want their clothes to fit, and what truly makes them feel the most beautiful every day.
While this is a complex endeavor, we believe that our technology has also harnessed a key insight that enables us to more effectively help women on this journey. When shopping for clothes, we oftentimes find ourselves singularly fixated on the size number on the tag. Revelle is based on the fundamental concept that the shape of a woman’s body is far more important than her supposed size — especially since sizes themselves vary so significantly between brands. After all, different brands are cut to different body shapes, whether brands are transparent about that to customers or not. Revelle has harnessed that intelligence to help women navigate the thousands of brands out there to find the ones that fit her the way that she wants and make her feel beautiful.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
We feel that building relationships through marketing is far more important than driving individual transactions, especially when building a company that is addressing such a nuanced problem for women everywhere. Given that, we’ve focused our marketing efforts on building connections with our consumers through real conversations, most notably in the world of social media. We made a conscious decision early on that we would prefer to grow more slowly if it means that we can be sure that we’re building something that women will truly find valuable.
What's your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
I can’t stress enough how important it is to find the right support system when beginning to build your own venture. Entrepreneurs often fixate on being sure their idea is groundbreaking and innovative, but the truth is that being able to navigate the ups and downs of trying to bring that idea into reality is what causes so many people to fail along the way. Making sure to have a support system in place that can help you push through the moments where you might need someone to lean on can make all the difference — whether that’s your co-founder, significant other, parent, or even a new friend in the industry.
What's your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?
I finally took the plunge and purchased the premium version of the Calm app during the pandemic, and it was life-changing. I was very reluctant to try meditation at first because I was operating under the assumption that the point of meditation was to calm your mind. But as a very type-A personality, that concept didn’t appeal to me. It wasn’t until a friend convinced me to read 10% Happier by Dan Harris that I began to understand that meditation is a practice to help you focus your mind, not to calm it down. Now that I use the Calm app regularly, I’ve found meditating to be critical to maintaining my focus throughout the ups and downs of building a business.
While this likely doesn’t count as an actual ‘blog’ per se, I’m oddly obsessed with reading the Reddit ‘Am I the Asshole?’ (AITA) thread. I find learning about the situations that people find themselves in and how they attempt to navigate themselves out of them to be utterly fascinating — perhaps it’s another extension of my passion for understanding human behavior (even at its worst…).
I would by lying to you if I said my favorite book was any other than the Harry Potter series. Growing up, I was roughly the same age as Harry, Hermione, and Ron when the first books came out, and I was completely sucked into the wizarding world that they inhabited. Harry Potter created a universe where good triumphs over great evil, and to this day I find myself re-reading the series often when I want to escape into a thoroughly unique and separate world from my own.
What's your favorite business tool or resource? Why?
As someone who often gets a little too fixated on the numbers, I’m a bit embarrassed to admit how often I find myself entrenched in Google Analytics. But to create a truly powerful user experience, I believe I have to do everything in my power to ensure that the Revelle site is enabling users to generate as much value as possible for themselves. And Google Analytics is a critical tool that I use to make sure I’m always working towards that goal.
Who is your business role model? Why?
There are too many to list here, but I’m a great admirer of Carly and Danielle, the founders of theSkimm. They took an issue that many felt was already ‘solved’, namely consuming the news, and adapted it specifically for the needs of the modern woman. I frequently reflect on how hard it must have been for them to convince people that their solution was worthwhile when I’m sure plenty of people told them that women seemed to be doing just find with the status quo. Although we operate in different industries, I look to Carly and Danielle’s example often when thinking about how to approach building Revelle.
How do you balance work and life?
Badly.
When starting your own company, it’s incredibly easy to feel like you have to be actively working on your business at all times. Especially as we’re all spending more time at home during the pandemic, the boundaries between work and life are so blurred they might as well not exist anymore. I find that imposing an artificial schedule on myself can only do so much because creating your own company requires a lot of work outside of ‘normal’ hours. So I’m always sure to force myself to take specific breaks throughout the day — walks, full meal times, and chunks of time for non-work conversations with friends. Even if I need to work into the night on a particular project, I always make sure that I’ve given myself some time.
What’s your favorite way to decompress?
I absolutely love reading, and spending a few hours steeped in the fictional world of a good novel is my favorite way to decompress. Whether a murder mystery, historical fiction, or re-reading Harry Potter for the umpteenth time, I love to escape into a new and unique world for a few hours to relax and unwind.
What do you have planned for the next six months?
Revelle is just getting started, and we’ve been overwhelmed by the initial response since we launched. In the next six months, we plan to release new features that our early members have been asking for and doing everything we can to get the word out about what we’re building. We hope you’ll join Revelle on this exciting journey as we reshape the future of retail for women everywhere.
How can our readers connect with you?
Follow me on Instagram @joannahartzmark and the company @revellenation— DM me to connect!