"Reserve at least ⅔ of your budget for sales and marketing" with Heather + Genevieve Unterseher

Perhaps it’s our mammalian brain, but let’s face it, we all like to look at boobs. Heather Unterseher and her 16-year-old daughter Genevieve embrace that concept and created The Boobie Bling. It’s for women who aren’t ashamed of their bodies and want to decorate their décolletage. BoobieBling is the newest in Cleavage Couture.

What are the interview questions for entrepreneurs?

Can you tell our readers about your background?

• My husband and I started our first business together when we were 24 and 25 years old. We were young and dumb and newly engaged.

I love learning languages and majored in Chinese with a minor in education. My husband was a budding music producer so we combined our talents to create a product to teach English as a Second Language in a really fun way with lots of sound effects and music. That business ultimately failed. 

Financially desperate, we decided to move back to my husband’s hometown in South Dakota where we could buy a house for $18,000! From there we leased a warehouse from the city for $1 per year, in which we could store our failing products, and told our friends and family that we had warehouse space available. We created the “order fulfillment” category on the early search engines like Lycos, Yahoo, and Google and started shipping for other people. Pamela Anderson Lee was the #1 search on the web in the late 90s and she was one of our first clients.

I’ve been married for 30 years and have been a serial entrepreneur. I have 3 kids and have recently launched a new company with my 16-year-old daughter.

What inspired you to start your business?

• Our first business teaching English was inspired by naivete. How hard can it be to “make it big”? Our 2nd business was inspired by desperation. We needed to make money.

But my most recent business venture with my daughter Genevieve is my favorite. 

The inspiration was an accident, really. I have an old pocket watch with a chain. I was messing around with it and the chain got stuck between my bra straps. I looked down and the chain formed this really lovely accent across my cleavage. I called Genevieve over and asked her what she thought, and she agreed with me that it looked great! We then called her cousins who are fashionistas, and they also loved the way it looked. That was all the affirmation we needed to move forward with developing the product.

Where is your business based?

• Right now it’s based out of our home. Since Genevieve is a high school junior and is really busy, we try to keep our interactions, decisions and action items confined to Saturday mornings. I do the behind the scenes work of finding influencers, interfacing with our web designers and paying the bills. Genevieve is in charge of developing all of our content for Instagram and approving the influencers’ content. She knows what’s cool. I definitely do not.

How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?

• I know nothing about jewelry, so the first thing we did was look online for a jewelry designer. We needed someone who could help us design a product rather than a wedding ring. Fortunately, we found the perfect partner in Manouk Karamanoukian at Custom Fashion Jewels who has helped us tremendously.

What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?

• For most of my life my husband and I have run businesses that are service businesses. Selling a product in the internet world is new for me. So the first month we hacked around the internet and found a couple of influencers who posted for us. But it was clear that we were going to need a lot more help navigating online marketing. We still felt like influencers were going to be a big part of our strategy. My next step was to find a marketing agency that I felt connected with our brand and could help us with ads and strategy. Consistent posting of Instagram content along with Facebook/Instagram ads has been the best way to raise awareness. 

What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?

• Our biggest challenge was during product development. We knew we wanted the chain to attach to the bra straps, but we couldn’t figure out the best way to do it. We spent months playing with paper clips, stick pins, and bobby pins before our jewelry designer helped us come up with a magnet solution.

How do you stay focused?

• The whole product development phase was during Covid, which was really fun. Genevieve was a 15-year-old sophomore at the time, going to school online, so this gave us something fun to think about and do together after school every day. 

How do you differentiate your business from the competition?

• This is a very specific type of jewelry with a specific purpose. All jewelry is meant to make you feel beautiful. But BoobieBling is meant to be a little bit more. It’s meant to give you permission to show off your body.  As Harry Winston said, “People are going to look. Make it worth their while.”

What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?

• We have really leaned on our marketing agency, Firebelly Marketing to help us with this. I thought we would put up a website, get some influencers and then focus on sales. Firebelly has taught me a lot about the social media sales funnel. We have had to “warm up our audience” for a few months before focusing on sales. Our focus has been to post consistently and to find influencers whom we feel are a good fit for our flirty and fun brand. People have to trust the brand, trust that we’re a real company with real followers and real engagement before they feel comfortable buying.

What's your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?

• I have 2 pieces of advice. 1) Reserve at least ⅔ of your budget for sales and marketing. I was really young when we started our first company that sold products. And I remember thinking at that time that this was a slam dunk because the product was so good. It was before there was internet, so we were mostly looking for retail outlets and distributors. We spent all our money on product development and thought everything else would just come to us.

This time around I knew that we had to spend most of our money on marketing and the sales effort. We did develop a really great product, but we did a very small (and expensive) first run just so we could get started. 

2) You will undoubtedly put together a solid budget for product development, web design, sales/marketing. Even though I have started companies several times, and I’m the numbers person in our main company, we have spent 3x what I thought we would get this off the ground.  

What's your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?

• My favorite app is Headspace. Being an entrepreneur is a wild ride of ups and downs. Headspace reminds me that there is always blue sky above the clouds, and to just enjoy the ride.

I am an avid reader. I’d have to say that my favorite books are anything that Malcolm Gladwell has written. His easygoing writing style combined with data and social dilemmas have taught me a lot about myself and human nature. I think about a lot of his concepts when I’m doing business.

Does a podcast count as a blog? I love The Daily by the NYTimes. It often has great content for discussion around the dinner table in the evening. 

What's your favorite business tool or resource? Why?

• Years ago our main business was struggling. Our company, One World Direct is a 3rd party fulfillment company and at that time Amazon became a direct competitor to us. We were having a hard time attracting clients and making money. So all of our management read a book called Scaling Up by Verne Harnish. It has amazing resources and tools to help you really focus your business. 

Our team started working through the workbook, but we had a lot of questions and couldn’t quite wrap our hands around all the things we needed to do. I found a Scaling Up seminar which was invaluable. 

After the seminar it was clear we were just scratching the surface of the work we needed to do, so we hired the seminar leader, Bahaa Moukadam, as our business coach. It’s the best thing we’ve ever done. 

Who is your business role model? Why?

• I can’t say I have a specific role model. I read a lot of books about a lot of different companies and entrepreneurs. Every business and every time period is different in terms of what works and what doesn’t. Rather than having a specific role model, I try to glean nuggets of wisdom from lots of different sources.

How do you balance work and life?

• I have worked from home for 16 years, which I love. Genevieve and I have had to set some firm boundaries around work and life. During the week she really wants to focus on her school life, so I try to minimize my questions and interactions with her about BoobieBling as much as I can. We save our business discussions for Saturday mornings.

I have had the same work/life balance issues with my husband since we worked together. During the workday, it’s all business talk all the time, including during lunch and when we take thinking/walking “breaks”. During dinner with the family, we limit work talk and work is off-limits after 9 pm.

What’s your favorite way to decompress?

• I listen to books while I’m cooking dinner. I also love to take long walks.

What do you have planned for the next six months?

• I’m really committed to making BoobieBling grow. As soon as Genevieve has a junior year under her belt, we’ll spend a good chunk of the summer developing content and we hope to start developing some additional accessories. I think it’s a great product with a great message. And it’s really fun to be working with my daughter.

How can our readers connect with you?

heather@ephemerie.com