Inspirational Women Leaders Of Tech: Rebecca Lima of The Lieu, On The Five Things You Need To Know In Order To Create A Very Successful Tech Company

Know and understand your customers. — Many founders neglect this but it’s a major key for your company’s success. Put yourself in the shoes of your potential customer. Listen to them, discover their pain points, observe their behavior. It will help you create the right product or service which will lead to SALES. Also, this is not just a one-time thing, it’s a constant assessing and re-assessing throughout the lifetime of your business.

As a part of my series about “Lessons From Inspirational Women Leaders in Tech”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Rebecca Lima, Co-founder and CEO of The Lieu - a company whose mission is to support and meet the personal care needs of busy modern women. Rebecca has a passion for women’s issues, self-care, and is deeply motivated in taking down the social and physical barriers that exist for women in everyday urban life. In response to COVID-19, The Lieu has added new products like gloves, masks, and hand sanitizer to help keep employees safe and healthy on the job.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I started my career as an engineer working on onshore and offshore oil rigs all over the world (Abu Dhabi, UK, Alaska, etc.) Unfortunately, after some time, I developed many health issues and decided to leave the industry altogether. I left my career with no plan and moved home to Florida where I spent some time figuring out what I wanted to do next. I had played around with the idea of developing an app and decided to pick up coding. I moved to NYC to join a startup accelerator and I spent the next few years trying to build a tech startup around my app. After a few years spent on my app company, I decided to walk away from it (not an easy decision). I started The Lieu shortly after. It was an idea that consumed me because of the struggle a faced daily as a woman commuter. That’s how I went from a university-trained engineer to the founder of a female-centric personal care company.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began at your company?

I was pitching my company to a group of top-level executives at a legacy real estate company in New York (hopefully you get the picture). I was speaking about the importance of feminine hygiene and grooming in the workplace and how it positively affects female employees when those products are provided in the workplace. One of the older men at the table interjected and asked, “Don’t y’all carry those “things” (referring to tampons) on you anyway… why do I have to pay for them?” I chuckled and responded with this question, “Do you provide toilet paper in all your bathrooms?,” he responded, “Yes, of course we do.” I said, “The notion of employees bringing their own toilet paper is preposterous, but that’s what you’re essentially asking your female employees to do. For us, tampons and other feminine hygiene products are a necessity, not a nice to have.” I didn’t hear another peep from him after that.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

It’s not a funny mistake but it might be a quirky story. I would have customer discovery sessions on the subway, on the street, at Sephora, or wherever I could find a woman who would be willing to talk to me. Many times women would just brush me off, but I had many women that I met on the subway that would answer my array of questions. It was definitely an awkward yet fun experience, to say the least. I learned that I had to be bold in those situations because talking to strangers is nerve-racking.

Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey? Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?

Funding was a huge challenge when I first started my journey. The company desperately needed money to operate so I took on credit card debt to get things going (don’t recommend that to anyone). When times were tough financially, I got really down and depressed. Time after time, mini-miracles would happen and that honestly kept me going. A year into the company, I had finally raised some money and we really could make some moves. I thought about giving up so many times, but I knew then and I know now that I’m working towards a greater goal and that keeps me going.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

There are many people that I’m incredibly grateful towards. One in particular is my friend and mentor Christina. Christina is the definition of a boss babe. She built a company from the ground up, got millions in funding, and still was an amazingly kind and caring person. She helped me so much in the early days, from discussing potential business models to being a shoulder to lean on when I had my rough days. She got me through a lot in the early days and she’s still an amazing friend and mentor. I can’t thank her enough for supporting, cheering, and mentoring me.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“Stay in Your Lane” — This has been my favorite quote for a while because it’s so simple and effective. When taking a breath in swimming, it can be tempting to see what and where your competitors are in the pool. Although it’s helpful, it will disrupt your stoke and you’ll most likely lose tenths or hundredths of seconds of your time. This idea can easily be applied in entrepreneurship, focus on your plans and goals rather than worrying about what other business owners are doing or what others think. It’s your own individual race to win.

I have to remind myself of this quote because often find myself drifting into someone else’s lane. It’s so easy to scroll on IG or TikTok and play the comparison game. It only leaves me upset, unmotivated, and jealous. I have to remind myself that we each have a path and no two paths will look the same. I have to remain true to my path and mine alone.

Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. We’d love to learn a bit about your company. What is the pain point that your company is helping to address?

The Lieu is a B2B hygiene and grooming subscription service, delivering high-quality personal care products to workplaces, schools, and venues to support the needs of people in those spaces. Personal hygiene has been a widely talked about topic in the world today, due to COVID-19. It’s clear that good hygiene in our workplaces, schools, and venues will lead to a healthier and safer world. The Lieu supplies organizations with products that will not only keep employees safe and healthy on the job but give them a sense of comfort with our array of clean, sustainable, and eco-conscious products.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

The hygiene space can sometimes feel sterile and generic. We believe personal hygiene can be good for our bodies and good for our environment. We work with brand partners that share that mission.

We’ve had many female employees (from different organizations) reach out to us personally to let us know they’ve felt heard and seen in their offices. They also mentioned that they loved the products we provided and how cool it was to see those types of products at their workplaces.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

We are working on a new B2C subscription box for the wedding/bridal space specifically and we’re excited to launch that very soon. Wedding amenity baskets have been a trend for a few years now but this will be the first curated wedding amenity box that has everything guests need on the wedding day.

Let’s zoom out a bit and talk in more broad terms. Are you currently satisfied with the status quo regarding women in Tech? What specific changes do you think are needed to change the status quo?

No, I’m not satisfied. I think we’ve come a long way since I was in school and university but I think we still have quite a way to go. There are some awesome programs out there like: Built By Girls, Girls Who Code, etc. but what’s lacking is the duty corporations have to hire women in tech. I believe women and minorities should be given equal opportunities as our male counterparts. We can’t guarantee equal outcomes but giving equal opportunities will move the needle forward in the tech space.

In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by women in Tech that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts? What would you suggest to address this?

There is still an unconscious bias that lurks over women in tech. Women still receive “defense/loss” related questions during job interviews or fundraising meetings, while our male counterparts typically get asked “success” related questions.

One way that I’ve addressed this in my own company, especially in the hiring, is asking the same questions to whoever is in front of me. We, as founders and CEO’s, have a responsibility to make that change in tech and business. I have decided to hire equally, pay equally, treat people equally… it’s what needs to be done to make a long term impact.

What would you advise to another tech leader who initially went through years of successive growth, but has now reached a standstill. From your experience do you have any general advice about how to boost growth or sales and “restart their engines”?

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room, COVID-19. 2020 has been a crazy year and no one, including myself, was prepared for the economy to crash and the world to come to a screeching halt. So my first piece of advice is to be kind to yourself. It’s ok to feel your feelings, trust me, we’ve all been depressed, anxious, and stressed at some point in the last 6 months. We are living in uncertain times. Fortunately, as an entrepreneur, we have an incredible superpower… the ability to adapt. If you’re feeling stuck or you’ve reached a standstill, try something new. Whether that’s a new marketing strategy or releasing a new feature or product, the possibilities are endless. We have the innate ability to adapt, how do you think we’ve gotten this far! Take another bold step into the unknown, we’re good at it.

Do you have any advice about how companies can create very high performing sales teams?

We don’t have a large sales team but my one piece of advice for these companies is to empower your team to take creative liberties when selling and incentivizing them appropriately. You hired your team for a reason, let them do what they do best.

In your specific industry what methods have you found to be most effective in order to find and attract the right customers? Can you share any stories or examples?

Because we are primarily a B2B company, we’ve found that direct selling has been the most effective strategy. We have our hit-list of potential clients based on our criteria and we use personalized email marketing techniques to email new clients. Also, many new clients have come from recommendations from existing clients.

Based on your experience, can you share 3 or 4 strategies to give your customers the best possible user experience and customer service?

1. Have a positive attitude. It’s a simple idea but rarely applied. Don’t take things too personally, you have to have thick skin when dealing with people, especially if they are having a bad experience with your company.
2. Listen. We can learn many things about our company from our customers if we just listen to what they have to say. Make a running list of notes from customer calls every week, look back on those notes, and find ones that correlate with each other. It’s a great way to improve your service or product.
3. Have a frequently asked page on your site with questions that would help your customers. It will save you an email.

As you likely know, this HBR article demonstrates that studies have shown that retaining customers can be far more lucrative than finding new ones. Do you use any specific initiatives to limit customer attrition or customer churn? Can you share some of your advice from your experience about how to limit customer churn?

We’ve found that having a sticky product is the key to limiting customer churn. We have a subscription model which means that we get paid monthly and our clients are incentivized to keep their subscription active. Our clients and users love our products and service which makes them begging for more. We actually had an incident where are shipping was delayed 2 days to a specific client. We got a call from them pleading us to get them product ASAP because many of their employees were complaining to HR that their Lieu products ran out. I was grinning from ear to ear, that’s every founder’s dream.

Here is the main question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things one should know in order to create a very successful tech company? Please share a story or an example for each.

These are in no particular order:

1. Know and understand your customers. — Many founders neglect this but it’s a major key for your company’s success. Put yourself in the shoes of your potential customer. Listen to them, discover their pain points, observe their behavior. It will help you create the right product or service which will lead to SALES. Also, this is not just a one-time thing, it’s a constant assessing and re-assessing throughout the lifetime of your business.
2. Fail fast, fail often. — I never understood this concept until it happened to me. Failing fast literally means, when you fail (because it will happen more times than you can count), use that feedback to adapt and improve quickly. If you sit with your failure or think, “everyone else is buggin’,” you are probably wrong, especially if that feedback is coming from your potential customer.
3. Build a diverse and complementary team. — We see this all the time in the valley, a team of all white developer dudes hiring more clones of themselves and looking back wondering why they are having a hard time hiring for diversity. People find comfort in things we know or people that look like us, hence why we have a problem hiring for diversity. It’s not only based on our gender or ethnicity but even down to how disproportionate teams are in size. We need to step outside of the box we know and look for complimentary team members that can help push our companies forward.
4. Thriving market size & opportunity. — This kind of goes back to the first one but having a thriving market size is key to getting sales and the right kind of funding for your business. Many tech startups are not fundable, not because it’s not a good idea but the market size is too small. Investors want to see lucrative returns and that means the market size has to be in the billions. You could also be creating a new market like we saw in the ride-sharing space. In this case, you have a majority share of a space you essentially created and you have enough early adopters to warrant the ability to keep building your product.
5. Functioning business model. — business models are not so sexy to talk about but it leads to businesses going under. Look at WeWork, they were on the verge of going public until their business models were exposed. They were losing more money than they were making. It’s vital that companies do not fall for the “overhyped” model. Create business models that will stand the tests of our wavering economy.

Wonderful. We are nearly done. Here are the final “meaty” questions of our discussion. You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

My power of influence is definitely with women. When it comes to business and entrepreneurship, we often forget that behind every company there are humans with needs, feelings, and emotions. I’d love to help women navigate through business while empowering them to express their needs, emotions, and feelings. I want to break the stigma in business of being “too emotional.” We need that level of humanness to make business better for everyone.

We are very blessed that very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them :-)

I’d love to meet Warren Buffett. He is humble, down-to-earth, and such a powerhouse in business. He is definitely someone I would be honored to meet.