Speaking with Stephanie Redcross West about Vegan Mainstream and helping vegan business owners

Today we sat down with Stephanie Redcross West, founder of Vegan Mainstream. Vegan Mainstream provides hands-on training, advice and education for new and established vegan business owners. https://veganmainstream.com/

This series features conversations I conducted with individuals who have dedicated their work and lives to Vegan research, businesses, art, and society. This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media.

 

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:10] Hi, I'm Patricia. And this is Investigating Vegan Life with Patricia Kathleen. This series features interviews and conversations I conduct with experts from food and fashion to tech and agriculture, from medicine and science to health and humanitarian arenas. Our inquiry is an effort to examine the variety of industries and lifestyle tenants in the world of Vegan life. To that end, we will cover topics that have revealed themselves as common and integral when exploring veganism. The dialog captured here is part of our ongoing effort to host transparent and honest rhetoric. For those of you who like myself, find great value in hearing the expertise and opinions of individuals who have dedicated their work and lives to their ideals, you can find information about myself and my podcast at Patricia Kathleen dot com. Welcome to investigating Vegan Life. Now let's start the conversation. 

 

[00:01:15] Hi, everyone, and welcome back. I am your host, Patricia. And today we are speaking with Stephanie Redcross West. She is the managing director of Vegan Mainstream began mainstream dot com. You can find them online at Vegan mainstream dot com. Welcome, Stephanie. Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it. Absolutely. And for everyone listening really quickly, if you want to find out more about Stephanie and begin mainstream, you can jump on their Web site and you can also jump on the LinkedIn company has a huge presence on LinkedIn. So you go to LinkedIn and you type in Vegan mainstream, pull up their company Web site, as well as Stephanie. Redcross West has her own page there as well. I'm going to read a quick bio on Stephanie. But before I do that, I'm an offer everyone a roadmap. Today, I'm going to be looking at Stephanie's brief history as it pertains to plant based and or the vegan journey. Her academic background, early professional life, occupation, how she got to where she is now. And then we'll turn our attention towards unpacking the vegan mainstream as a company and its services, what it how it's actually conducted, as well as the components involved in it. And we'll also look at how it's changed since its inception and launch. And then we'll also during that time period, hopefully unearth the ethos of the company and more of the philosophical backing of it all. And then we'll turn towards any advice that she can offer for those of you looking to either get involved or kind of mirror some of what she's done with it. And then we'll turn our efforts towards asking what future endeavors that Stephanie has and perhaps separately as an entity being mainstream has as a company. Really quickly, before I start peppering her with questions, Stephanie, Red Cross West started vegan mainstream based on a simple idea to build a pro vegan world. We need a solid infrastructure of success, businesses and brands to ensure that an ethical lifestyle is accessible to everyone everywhere. Imagine ethical retail stores, restaurants and clothing options, skin care, cleaning supplies and educational materials in every mall or community. Every step toward making this a reality is a step that moves the vegan movement forward. In 2009, Stephanie started developing tools, training and support for the brave individuals who identify themselves as vegan professionals. Those starting and running vegan businesses all over North America and the world. She was well equipped to do this with more than 15 years of marketing experience with small businesses and Fortune 500 companies. Since then, Stephanie has been a frequent speaker at VegFest conferences and even her own bootcamp series. Through these types of engagements and her day to day work with vegan mainstream, Stephanie inspires others to turn their vegan passions into successful businesses. She is a leader who promotes the concept that there is room for all types of vegan business owners, not only those developing and selling food related products. We need vegan carpenters, fashion designers, accountants and more. Vegan mainstream provides hands on training, advice and education for new and established vegan business owners. We offer they offer a wide variety of services, including free webinars, resource articles, business coaching, marketing, count- consulting and self-paced online courses. They help authors, chefs, personal trainers, coaches and all kinds of vegan entrepreneurs launch and maintain successful vegan businesses. Stephanie, we spoke before the podcast briefly. I love this idea. I don't think a lot of people get into this business. I think that people, once they learn how to advise or coach, they actually don't come back to consolidate it in a way that kind of speaks across industries as as you begin mainstream are endeavoring to do. And I cannot wait to kind of unpack that with you. 

 

[00:05:03] But before we get there, can you offer us like a brief history about your academic and professional life and kind of develop the stage for where you came to the point where you are now? 

 

[00:05:13] Absolutely. I would say my background is really grounded in an entrepreneurial family. 

 

[00:05:18] So one thing that I started with and really kind of got the skills and when I was very young is, you know, my family had businesses, you know, so therefore, I was used to what it was like to run the front desk. I understood what it was like to even run credit cards even. I'm gonna probably date myself back in the day when you had to take a credit card, walk to a phone booth, call the 1 800 number and actually process the credit card to get authorization. You know, I went through some of those processes of what it takes to build a business that people are passionate about and proud of. That's where I kind of started from or kind of was was raised in. And then what I started to do is complement that. Whether it's through my education, whether it's through my business expertise, what I wanted to do is start to create almost building blocks in my life. Now, I'm always big on doing things that were. About so when I went to school, I decided I got some business background, you know, as a kid, but I wanted to do something that I loved. I wanted to do something that was dear to my heart, something that I was just very passionate about. A lot of people, when they look at my background, they're very surprised because I got a degree in Japanese and political science. And the idea is I just love the Japanese culture, the Japanese cinematography and literature. And it's just such a very just unique culture for me. And I have the chance to live in Japan like one of the summers while I was in school. And then later on, when I fast forward into my corporate life, I got a chance to work in Japan. So what I was able to do is start to realize that I could chart my own course when I was a kid. You know, it's very young when one of those high bargee grills, which probably started at all. I was like my interest in this culture. 

 

[00:07:06] And I started studying. I started, you know, finding more about it and so forth. And that led me to making sure I was not only getting an education in it, but I was traveling abroad. I would go to Japan. Those are all things that I had dreamed of. And what I found in my life. And if people are kind of listening right now and ever struggling in your life, I would always say look back on the dreams that you had as a kid and see if you fulfilled some of those dreams. Because when you start to see the power in dreaming big and it coming true, you start to realize how much power you have in creating your own course. And that was you know, that was when I was a really, really small kid. But it created an opportunity for me to not only understand what I was passionate about, get a degree in it. And I look poly sci and politics mostly because of the negotiation and so forth. But it taught me that I could travel far. I can travel and do great things and I can try things. And with that same kind of excitement and gumption, I guess you would say I did the same thing in my corporate life. 

 

[00:08:16] So once I graduated from school, I said, you know what? I want to get building blocks. I want to make sure I'm understanding not only how small businesses work, but how the big businesses work out of businesses, their growing work, how do they scale, how do they have an international landscape. And by doing that, that's when I started working with couple of different smaller companies. And then I worked my way into working for G.E. and I had a great opportunity there where I work through different jobs, different kind of career paths, different sections within G.E., you know, where I was working in financial services one minute and then I could work in a completely different division. I worked in environments where I was only responsible for my business, my area of that business, or I was responsible for multiple businesses across global platforms. I did financial auditing. So I got my financial kind of acumen down. So that is as a business leader one day and potentially a business owner, I would have that background. 

 

[00:09:16] And a lot of what was important to me is to keep making sure not only was I getting those skills, but I always had that dream, like I mentioned before, that I could work in Japan and through G E, I was able to fulfill that. And I was able to not only work in Japan for four months, we had apartments, you know, we really lived like locals, which was really awesome. But I also had the chance to fly my family to Japan and we celebrated Christmas together in Japan so I could bring my family into my passion, into my love. 

 

[00:09:49] And this is how not only what I was passion about metal, as you know, driven by my career, I was able to do things that were important to me from a family life would important to me from a career and also just personally important to me from my always interest and appreciation for the Japanese culture. 

 

[00:10:06] Beautiful. So how did that translate into? 

 

[00:10:10] Did your vegan journey begin in Japan or is there a conversation or relationship between this kind of global citizenship that you embarked on and your interest in the vegan in the vegan life? Like, how did that inception come on? 

 

[00:10:24] Yeah, the vegan thing I would say has always been percolating. It wasn't necessarily because of my travels or so much in Japan, but more of the exposure I was having to so many different people. I wasn't just Japan. I did have the opportunity when I was working with G E to travel a lot. I was a lot of different countries, so I was actually exposed to different cuisines, different lifestyles. And then also we've always had this kind of health thread in our family. My mother had actually gone big and while I was, you know, grown out of the house. So when we came home for Thanksgiving, you know, Thanksgiving was vegan. And that started to give me a sense of what it's like to not just eat out and say, oh, yeah, eat at this fancy restaurant and go vegan, but what it's like when you kind of bring it home and bring it into tradition. So with my mother kind of introducing it to me, I had the opportunity from there to start to build a community. I'm really big about community building. Whether it's your professional life, whether it's things you're interested in. I started to hang out with more begins. I started to go to begin events. I joined a vegan kind of club. And at this time, this is around 2005 when I officially went vegan. I had joined a group that I was living in Connecticut at the time that met about twice a month. And what we would do is we would go to restaurants, we'd discuss things, and that's when we started to get more background on what this lifestyle means and how it impacts our environment, impacts pets, animals and the world. So we really started to educate me and that's what started me in that path. I was still working at G.E. at the time in 2005, so I kind of was bringing that into my corporate life. And, you know, we would do vegan cakes and big snacks. It is shooting at G.E. and so forth. And I started to just bring it in that way. And then eventually when I transitioned to my own business, I decided I wanted to to bring that together. 

 

[00:12:20] That's interesting because I feel like the 90 percent of the time when I speak with people and people who practice a vegan lifestyle, the bridge to it has it was diet, health and exercise. 

 

[00:12:31] And it sounds like your bridge to it was like you said, you know, this is community building you when kind of became involved with the community and came through that way. Was your mother involved with it due to health or was it just a curiosity or was it for a different reason that she became a vegan? 

 

[00:12:47] My mother really became vegan. More for spiritual person. Yeah. Okay. There's a second journey yet. So that was really her journey. And then I also had a health I wouldn't say challenge, but I had a health wakeup call, I would say when I was in college. And so before I went vegan, it would start a meal like that vegetarian path. And Ultimate leaves a lot of people to veganism is I get pretty sick in college and I added it up getting a cold. And as I started to research it and where it comes from and how it works. And unfortunately that weekend I'd been in three different states before I had returned to my senior year in college before I returned. So we couldn't pinpoint. But it's a very sobering experience when I see you calls you and they're like, where have you eaten? What have you done, where have you been? And you start to realize, you know, how serious these things are. And also, it just made me think about potentially going without. 

 

[00:13:44] And that started making it make more sense for my vegan journey. Absolutely. 

 

[00:13:49] So when let's get into unpacking like first, let's start off with kind of the brick and mortar nuts and bolts of vegan mainstream. 

 

[00:13:57] What was the inspiration for launching it? And let's see, I'm not sure if I rattled off the year of whether or not you launched it, but we thought that in 2009. And did you have co-founders? Did you bootstrap did you have funding and what was the inspiration for the launch or for developing it? 

 

[00:14:15] I funded it myself because I had just I was working at G.E. at that time. I was doing a lot of savings. So I did have some money that I used for my savings to start the business. 

 

[00:14:26] I would probably say it was really the idea that could I do a passion based business? Could I do a business that was something that I loved because most of my training and most of my time at G.E. was really in marketing. I had worked my way through the ranks and gotten to a point where I was a V.P. of marketing. So I had a lot of great experience, a lot of great exposure to marketing. And the concept was, could I bring my marketing together with veganism? Like, does that work? And I wasn't sure if that was impossible. I wasn't even sure if I was just, you know, had a cool concept, but not necessarily a business because there is a difference. Right. And that was kind of my starting point. Plus, I think it was also from a little bit of frustration. I don't know if this ever happens to you, but like I was visiting a lot of vegan restaurants and they were going out of business. 

 

[00:15:19] You know, it's tragic. It's really tragic. 

 

[00:15:22] And it's not even just on the business side, but small businesses, they struggle with how to run a business. They have a great idea, great food, sometimes amazing concept. But what it takes to run a successful business. The structure, the systems and the marketing is sometimes just too much. And my thought was, if I could bring that to them, if I could bring what I learned from corporate America, if I could bring what I learned from growing up, an entrepreneur or family to these individuals, could I help them accelerate or can I help them maybe not bend by the pressure of running a business? 

 

[00:16:02] Yeah. And I think you're I mean, it's right. You know, it's true. Some of the everyone loves small businesses, or at least that's, you know, even economically, you know, people in political campaigns. 

 

[00:16:12] We'll talk about those small businesses. They're going to help them out. You know, everyone across everything. And I think the beauty of it is because, you know, they are usually started by passion, by someone saying, you know, my my mother made Italian food, I'm going to up and sell Italian rare goods or whatever. You know, they're Vorlons by people with passion. But I can't really think of anybody who came out of school with their MBA and thought, I'm gonna start the world's greatest small business. It seems like to start a small business. You actually lack the business, end of it. You know, you have that passion and that drive to bring into your community, but you don't have the business aspect, which is why I think that, you know, what you're doing is with being mainstream is so incredible. I wonder. So when you started off well, let's let's start about unpacking it. So you go on to begin mainstream dot.com and your first as you know, as as a viewer, as a as a connoisseur, you're met with like this information based system. Can you kind of walk our audience through what your first experience should be and what the first like as as a potential customer would be hitting your Web site? 

 

[00:17:14] Sure. And then I can also give you some background on you mentioned before, like what my business was like when I started versus what it is. Yes. Yes. That's a very sobering experience when you start a business, how much your business changes. 

 

[00:17:27] Well, let's start there, because I don't want to get into the actual experience of what we have now until we have that history. So what was it? 

 

[00:17:32] As it began? And have there been major aspects of it that have changed or been embellished upon? 

 

[00:17:39] Yeah, absolutely. 

 

[00:17:41] When I first started, I still had maybe too much of that corporate in me. That was probably maybe one of my learning thing I had to learn along the way, because when I started, I was like, Oh, yeah, we're gonna be an agency. We're going to have a creative department, we're gonna be a PR department. We're going to have you know, I was almost taking kind of the marketing roles that I had you'd been used to in corporate America and started to create that. I had a large staff. I had this concept that we were just gonna be helping these businesses and they wouldn't be calling up and meeting ideas. We're gonna be churning out campaigns. And what I didn't realize or what I hadn't really thought about is understanding where my customers were today or at that point where were they in 2009 with them? 

 

[00:18:28] Didn't have marketing budgets. May have. We're barely doing marketing, especially if they were doing brick and mortar. They were just doing foot traffic. So me coming and saying, hey, we can do advertising for you. Was it a large stretch from where they were? Right. So the idea of I was selling something that sometimes they didn't even know they needed, they didn't even see as something that they wanted. And I think that's a big I think that's the thing that's a universal challenge for us as we all build businesses is to make sure that we understand where our customers are today and what service do they need. And how do we develop that? So I had to pivot. I had to really restructure the business differently to start to understand where are my customers and what kind of support do they need? Do they need their team trained so they can take the ideas in-house and manage them as opposed to us managing them externally? And that was something we learned that we really had to beat. We had to be able to help people build their infrastructure as opposed to us being an outside agency source. That was probably one of my biggest learnings. The other thing that we had to realize and learn is that we needed to bring capabilities to our community. So how did we bring to best practices and how did we learn what was working and kind of. Working as business models or marketing models in other industries or in other ways that hadn't been, in a sense, veganized. Just like today, you know, we talk about like organizing your favorite pizza or organizing your favorite dish. The same, I think exists on the marketing side that you have to kind of small business ize it. And in many cases, for our customers, we had to organize it because for some people they weren't always thinking about the bottom line. They weren't thinking about the metrics. They really wanted to have an impact. One of the biggest things that we had to change when we taught people how to do planning was not just financial planning, but what we call impact planning. Meaning how many people do you want to serve? How do you want to service your community? How do you want to do give backs? Do you want to donate to your local charity? So adding those components to how we teach and how we help our community made a big difference for our customers. And those are things I had to learn along the way to make sure that we were servicing our customers the right way. 

 

[00:21:02] Absolutely. And it sounds like a lot of those core tenants that you know, that people can bring on. I think that different industries do things differently. And I'm not just. 

 

[00:21:12] Thinking about, you know, Vegan footwear as opposed to vegan food delicacies or something. But the communities itself. You know, there's a lot of market research, especially with micro influencers and things like that across social media where you have these intersections of people and, you know, the vegan community or people who. There's another community to sub vegan community that I'm kind of obsessed with. And that's these people getting ready to convert to veganism, you know, on account of a myriad of different reasons. And they're they're kind of spoken to on a marketing campaign and a very different way than people that have been vegan for 20 years and whose great grandmother was and things of that nature. So I think there's a lot. And it's interesting because I haven't heard a ton of the impact planning and things like that does sound to me like something that is not as brought to the the forefront of a young business. You know, small business attention and for good reason. I think small businesses where a lot of hats, you know. And so there's there's a lot of balls in the air. And you'd never find anyone more doing their own accounting as well as like their carpentry in the front as a small business owner. Right. They're all just doing everything. So that's interesting. And it is like what? Likewise. And conversely, as interesting that you had to kind of dig corporate yourself, but kind of record. Right. You know, the small businesses, that kind of exchange is interesting. So where is it now that you that you guys are at the and begin mainstream? Like where would you say the large amount of your services are? Do you have industries that you specialize with? Or is it just across the entire. I know in your bio I read that you're like, it's everyone. It's everywhere. It's the entire vegan community. But who are your clients right now and what is the growth been since 2009? 

 

[00:22:57] Absolutely. 

 

[00:22:58] I would say our client base is across the board and I was pretty surprised by that as well. Even when we started, I was really curious how much I would be in the food sector sector because that's a natural place. But really, what our experience has been is across the board we've worked with authors and helping authors go from a book over two courses, over two speaking engagements, over two large scale events. 

 

[00:23:24] So helping people kind of grow in kind of step by step fashion as they built out their community. 

 

[00:23:31] We work with vegan doctors, which that was a really big surprise for me. Many of them are looking at bringing wellness products in. Many of them are looking at kind of doing cross over where if they're servicing or have a patient, can they help them with the food? Can they help them with lifestyle management? Can they bring in other services and so forth? So we work with people in that kind of health care space. We also work with I've worked with book publishing companies. We work with people who do just events. So say they do conferences. They do want a year to a year, three a year. We work with people who do vegan matchmaking services. We work with clients. I'm just using my memory right now that do health. So they teach people how to do like acupuncture, massage, but use it in a way to actually treat some common health issues and challenges. So it's really across the board. And sometimes I've worried that, you know, do we dilute by going too far across? 

 

[00:24:42] But what I found is it's been great because many industries are trying to be more vertical. Many industries are trying to find those adjacent markets. And therefore, by us being able to crossover, what I'm finding is doing a product launch online, doing an online course launch is going to work for an author or for a doctor and going to work for a misuse. It s that it might be slightly different depending on their product and their service. But the idea is there is leverage across the board. 

 

[00:25:18] Yeah. 

 

[00:25:18] And interdisciplinary, I think that a lot of people get you know, there there was this hyper activity about returning to the Netsch, which I appreciate. You know, I probably evangelized it for a hot minute and two thousand early aughts. You know, this whole like a Vineet and you'll be more successful. But we lost this kind of Jill of all trades, you know, moment where someone was inter-disciplinary, early, tactile, you know, and prepared to kind of apply other metrics and that kind of creativity that I think is coming back in that it's used to everyone's benefit. You know, I always think of social media platforms. In the first time I saw a job posting on Instagram, I was like, did they not know this is a photo site like this isn't supposed to be here? And then it was like everywhere. And that's how, like, all of you know, everyone was getting a job was job postings on Instagram. But it took someone creatively going. I'm going to put that on Instagram. That's got. Views. And so just looking at things from a slightly different angle and utilizing platforms across different areas like you're doing or suggesting that you do is I think is is more useful. It's more communicative and less exclusionary. And things like the vegan lifestyle risk becoming exclusionary. And if they're not careful. And so I think that even with the marketing campaigns being inclusive sounds clever. So you're the site is designed to bring people in. I know you have a bunch of different services that you offer. I covered some of them in the bio. But can you kind of unpack some of those because you don't just serve as like this expensive campaign for someone who has, like, you know, this twenty thousand dollar kitty that they can hire you with. You've actually got a lot of different facets for that. Could meet a lot of different needs as well as budgets and things like that. So can you walk us through your services? 

 

[00:27:04] Absolutely. 

 

[00:27:05] I would probably say our services are on two ends, kind of the high touch and or a little bit more of that, you know, personalization vs. things that we offer like our online courses so that people can get the content and take it at their own pace. I love our online courses because it's a great way for me to take what I teach even sometimes in my more customized, personalized programs. And I can create a video where I can show people, mention it, walk people through the process, and I can walk them through complicated things in online courses, but I can offer it at a reasonable rate. You know, we can offer it at a rate that someone can pay one price or pay monthly over six months as an example and get some of that learning. And what we do is do some support on top of our online courses. One thing that I'm really big on is what I want you to have the content and I want you to do at your own pace. I do want to nudge you along. So we do have like support where you buy a course from us. And what we tend to do is, you know, twice a month we get on a call with all students across all courses and allow them to see each other. They can even have a little bit of a quick chit chat. And then we talk about what are some of the trends, what are what's happening in the world, so that even if they're not doing their lessons, they still get that personal touch. But because we can do it with all students in a Xoom call as an example, it's something that's scalable, something that can be economical, where we can give a little bit about personalization because people can talk to me. And, you know, if we have 20 people on or 50 people on, great. If we have two people on great, especially when we first started doing some of these that were small. So some people were really able to get some good dialog going. So that's kind of one end of the spectrum with a level of support. We like to give and then the other side is where we do more high touch and we're doing more coaching. 

 

[00:29:00] So like we talked about before, most of our help that we find works best when we're teaching people how to build the skills within their business, how to make their team stronger. Even in some cases when I'm doing coaching, I'm teaching people how to hire, how to find the right people in their business, whether they're hiring someone full time or part time or even helping them with hiring freelancers. Because it's not easy finding help when you're a small business. It's not easy when you're saying, I want to expand and do something new like a podcast, but I don't know where to start. I don't know who to hire. I don't know how to evaluate and what I think is help people in that process. While we may not run the podcast for them, we're almost running beside them through our coaching program. And what we do is what I find for coaching works best is when it's frequent. So what we tend to do is we're meeting every single week. We're meeting every other week. And if we're meeting every other week, then we give people support through slack. So in between our meetings, if you have a question, something comes up, something doesn't look right. You jump on slack and you send me a quick message and I can support you. I can answer your questions. I can get you unstuck, because our goal or what I find for a lot of small businesses is they'll get stuck on the tech, they'll get stuck on an idea. They'll get stuck because they've got a bad review. They get stuck because they thought the project was going to go this direction and it shifted on them. So being able to be in touch with me through things like slack and other kind of tools like what's up by one client loves it. And it's actually get me a little more excited about it as well. It's a way that we can keep dialog going and they're still getting that personalized support as they're moving forward with our weekly plans or biweekly plans on, hey, this week we're working on launching your YouTube channel or this week we're helping you relaunch your YouTube channel. So we're gonna teach you how to update your thumbnails, how to make sure you're doing keyword searches. 

 

[00:31:04] We're gonna make sure that you're putting your tags in there. We've done an audit and this is what we think you should be working on. And then we give them the guidelines and then I can write the side them kind of almost a little bit of a mini partner as there implement throughout the week. 

 

[00:31:18] Absolutely. Do you do you feel confident in assisting brick and mortar as equally as your online small businesses? 

 

[00:31:26] Absolutely. We work with a lot of brick and mortar as well. The only industry I don't do as much in is the restaurant industry. I probably say that's my smallest segment of our customer base. But absolutely, we do a lot with brick and mortar. And also because a lot of people like the lines are starting to blur these days, I find in businesses where it used to be offline business, online business. A lot of places are trying to incorporate components or what they're trying to do is expand. They're trying to reach a new audience. So while their marketing works, what they're trying to do is talk to someone who can help them do more or kind of look at things differently. And then also the. 

 

[00:32:12] Being able to work with someone who understands the vegan lifestyle, like me being vegan and a vegan, being able to speak to another vegan, it's similar to working with your feet female business owner and working with another female. 

 

[00:32:24] There's some camaraderie in that. There's some ability to understand the walk and understand the challenges and understand why some businesses will not undercut the products that they're using as far as supplies because they want to give a better health outcome in their beauty products. 

 

[00:32:44] Why? A company like I have one person that wants to has a nonprofit and what they want to do is they need to fund their nonprofit. So what they're gonna do is sell products online. So now they have an e-commerce store and because they have an e-commerce store, they need to do all the marketing that they really want to sell good products, even though it's for fundraising for their nonprofit, a nonprofit. They don't want to sell just widgets and gadgets and things that break. They want stuff that's quality. So hoping and making sure that when they talk with me, I understand that. I understand that it's not just about the bottom line, it's about the customer experience. It's about is this sustainable? It's about does it make. How does it make an impact on our environment? Is it is it impacting animals? All of these questions I'm thinking, too. And I think our customers really appreciate that because we're almost Romi's like together or questioning ourselves. Yeah. Is this the right approach? Is this the best way to do it? And I think it feels kind of collaborative. 

 

[00:33:44] Yeah. And likewise, you're more likely, I suspect, anyway, to communicate that to the end customer. You know, and one of the biggest things I I'm a prolific believer in education and the opportunity for education across all platforms. You know, I feel like you you're more likely to gain a customer in any industry, in any country, in the world if you bring it along with education. And there's always this opportunity, you know, with veganism to educate, to educate about the environment, educate about sustainability, to educate about the future generations of about everything, you know, about some welfare and humanity and empathy. And you can go on and on. So I love the idea that you're kind of collaboratively doing that and then reaching into the possibility of communicating and educating that to potential customers. It sounds like a lot a much bigger bang for your buck. I'm curious since you've been in the game for a while, doing what you're doing since 2009. What do you think you must have collected like a top five, right. The top five playlist of like this. It's the things that all of the businesses that come to you have done wrong or are getting ready to do wrong from the get go. Can you kind of cover some of those? 

 

[00:34:55] I probably say number one thing is most businesses struggle with making money. It may sound strange sometimes when from people who already have that business had on that come out with an MBA and they can go starting a business like why wouldn't the business want to make money? But in a lot of the legal community, a lot of individuals were starting these businesses. They would help people. Their metric is their impact. And what happens is sometimes that impact or what they can do for their community becomes so big that they're not looking at the finances. They're not do it. They're not realizing that they could make more money if they cut some of the expenses. And I don't mean cut quality. I mean cut some of the things that may not be needed anymore in their business or shifting or making changes and also not feeling guilty for making money. 

 

[00:35:50] You know, there's a barrier when you're trying to help someone, especially since a lot of people are health coaches. It's a very common business that a lot of people do where they're starting their own business and they're saying I'm a lifestyle coach or a health coach. 

 

[00:36:03] Then like, how can I charge someone to help them with diabetes? How can I charge them with this and helping people understand that they deserve a living wage? Just like we all do. And I think those are things that a lot of people struggle with when they're starting starting their business. The other thing is how to market smart, how to use the time that you have and be efficient with it, as opposed to being everywhere and every platform and trying to do everything that anyone's ever mentioned to you. So starting to say what really is my secret sauce? Where should I be? What makes me unique and different and therefore from unique and different? How do I show up in these channels like YouTube in a different way? How do I show up in LinkedIn in a different way? And if I show up in a different way, maybe I'm going to look a little different than my competition. Maybe I'm not going to have as many likes as my competition. Maybe I'm not gonna have the numbers that, you know, many of us sometimes fall in love with on these like vanity numbers, words like I got this many people this person has. People in helping people understand that we have. You have to be effective in your marketing because you can have a large following. But if we're not driving sales, if you're not helping people, then you just have a big following. I don't think we've really gotten to the success of your business. And then the last thing I always tell people is to build on success. So what a lot of people try to do is just expand on good ideas or expand on the potential of something. So if I did this idea, meaning if I did online course, it could be huge. I could have. Five thousand students. Yes, you could. But before we start with the five thousand students approach, let's start with 20 students that love what you do and not because 20 is where you want to be. Not because 20 is the benchmark of success. But what 20 means is when you have 20 customers that have gone through your course. Love your course, rave about your course, give you feedback, help you make your course better and stronger. Then we can get much faster to that 5000 number. So helping people understand that success can breed success, especially if you focus on finding improving kind of that proof of concept on your business and then expanding from there as opposed to trying to do it all. 

 

[00:38:36] Yeah, I think that's a good point. And it's it's one is as simple as it sounds that even the most sage of entrepreneurs lose sight of pretty quickly. You know, that end game that that payout, that pie in the sky is really what you hear more of the talk of those types of conversations in the very beginning when it's like just talk about, you know, getting a handful of people. Let's just start with that. And I agree with you. I think that that it can sound a little deflating, but it is where all success comes from. Right. These building blocks and things like that. 

 

[00:39:05] And if you read a lot of people's stories, that's how a lot of it starts. It's just that right now we read the article of two thousand and twenty. Yeah. We go back in that founder's story and look at what did they do 10 years ago when they were starting. So when they were in your shoes, six months into your bet, their business one year into their business, where were they? 

 

[00:39:26] And I think sometimes we get confused by where someone is today as opposed to where they started. Yeah. 

 

[00:39:32] The industry since you since you've been around has really taken off. 

 

[00:39:36] Right now, my journey into veganism, I think began very similar with your timeline. And I always find myself fairly lucky because I feel like it's changed like the exercise and environment. You know, it's it's it started out being ridiculously different. It's gone through all of these changes and fads and things like that. And then ended up kind of, I think, getting to a place of normalcy. But the vegan industry, I feel like not even just a decade ago was still very outlandish. You know, a lot of people thought it was cult like and it was extremist and a lot of things that I don't affiliate or associate with it. But because you've been around throughout all of that, have you seen techniques change? And like where we stand right now, I mean, the advent of social media has been since 2009, you know, I mean, the entire platform in which you're probably running a lot of your client stuff on. But have you seen a social media side? Have you seen that the community that has changed things like game changers that came out a couple of years ago and stuff like that, it's turned a lot of, you know, unsuspected clientele into vegans. And so I'm wondering if with that, has any of your strategy or how you advise your clients changed with the change of, I suppose, just the times or the tides? 

 

[00:40:54] Absolutely. I think a lot that has changed is even back to a comment you made earlier about educating. 

 

[00:41:00] Often the thought was, this is why you need this, is this what you need to do? But we don't explain why. Why is it beneficial to the individual? Why does it matter? Why does it even matter to either. Values that they already own? So someone who already cares about the environment. How is veganism going to help them with something that they're already passionate about? How do you start to bring these things together? 

 

[00:41:27] Because I think before it was almost like what we were passion about, what we cared about. They had to compete. It was one or the other. You were either vegan or this or that or this. And I think what we're starting to understand is that we are a little bit of a whole people. We have multiple things in multiple faceted and dynamic interest and interest also changes over time. So starting to help people understand why going vegan, why going plant base can make a difference if you have a young family helping people understand how it makes a difference from the health standpoint, what does it mean for an environmental standpoint and educating people through that process as opposed to shaming them? Now, sometimes you people need a wake up call. I want to make it sound like everything is a hold my hand and I'll walk you there eventually. So sometimes you need a little bit of a shock. But at some point, we also need to make sure that people have to understand what and why we want to replace some of the things that we've done before, especially some of the traditions. That was probably one of my hardest things about going vegan initially is that there are traditions. Even like I mentioned, my mother switched up Thanksgiving and it's like, wait a minute. We grew up with this. You know, and you're starting to try to adjust or other things that are a part of your cultural dynamic types of foods that you eat and you feel like you're leaving behind your culture. 

 

[00:42:54] Sometimes you may feel like you're leaving behind things. And I think what's changed in a lot of the marketing is people are starting to help people understand how you can still bring those things with you. You can bring, you know, the snacks, the dishes that you've cared about or you eat as a kid. We can visualize them for you. The fact that people now have a vegan cousin, a vegan needs a vegan neighbor that has helped normalize veganism because people are starting to see those individuals in their lives. They're seeing that their CEOs are individuals everywhere who are a part of this lifestyle. And those individuals just talking about their lifestyle. Not everyone who's a vegan has to be a, you know, in the position where they're converting vegans. 

 

[00:43:39] Like that's not necessarily every vegans full time position. Yeah, I think helping people understand that that they don't have to do that all the time and also understand that they can just be a living, breathing example of the fact that we can care about the animals, we can care about the environment, we can be passionate about these things. NBC go and look sharp because that was my struggle when I first one rogue and I was in corporate America. I was like, I can't take a burlap sack to work. I'm just I'm not getting done with that. Yeah. So that is I still needed the things that were important to me. 

 

[00:44:15] You know, like my heroin, my hair to go natural. But at the same time, I need natural hair products. I need products that are going to work with. So I think the other thing that shifted in the movement and it's one thing that I'm continuing to hope we can we can continue to shift is the fact that we need solutions. 

 

[00:44:36] Threw out all product lines. 

 

[00:44:39] We need solutions in everything that we choose because there's so many things in our houses that we buy that we purchase that should be organized, that can be organized. And I think people in the beginning weren't thinking about those belts, were thinking about their couches. Yeah, yeah, we're thinking about those choices. So therefore, it's created industries for us as we start to kind of drive veganism more into the mainstream. 

 

[00:45:08] Absolutely. Yeah. My final frontier, the interior of the house was a few years in. But the final frontier is any kind of new car purchase. 

 

[00:45:18] The old car purchase. There's always leather. What happened to the fabric interior? Even the velvet, they're easier to clean. I mean, as far as they're they're more comfortable. They're less sweaty. I don't even understand why you can't find them anymore. But yeah, I start to find these areas where I'm like, we need to get someone producing something, you know, some Stella McCartney of the car interior world where you can rest, assure whatever you buy. There is good fashion designers. It's an incredible passion of mine being a former fashion photographer. You know, having these labels that you can rest assured, like. Yes, high end labels, low end labels that, you know, that they're that there is a vegan aspect to them, as is nice. I think across everything. But you're right. We need to find these communities and start factoring them out and making sure that we get other opportunities. So I'm wondering, given what you're doing now, it sounds like you had a healthy growth, a healthy trajectory. I know that with the COVA 19 pandemic, the next question I have always sends people into a little bit of a spin. However, you can take it prior to or even in stride with. But what do you think the next like one to three years looks like for Vigen mainstream and your role there or separately or together? How does any of that work? And do you have three like a three year goal plan or is that kind of old school and you you do a different like six month plan? 

 

[00:46:42] I have this. 

 

[00:46:44] The way I work is I have what I kind of call my big goals. So if I'm looking a year out, two years out, three years out, it's the big goal. So I only have one big thing that I'm looking to do. And often when I have those big goals, they're like fundamental changes. They're not just my financial outlook looking. So for my financial outlook, I just do that on a on an annual basis. But my big goals are normally things like if I'm if I want to do a shift in my business, especially when we started doing the online courses, that was one of my earlier shifts, is starting to say that time and our people interested in these online courses. And now what we're doing kind of when I look at our kind of long term plan or that trajectory, it's about how do we offer more variety across more industries? How much of our courses, how much of our training is a either coming for me? How much of that is it driven from a collaborative approach? So therefore, we have the model on how to create a course, how to set it up, how to get students, how to support students. So do we collaborate with other industry experts? Do we collaborate with some of our associations out there, which has been a big change in the movement? You know, having associations like the plant based food association, you know, there's a new association coming online that's actually looking at materials, like you said, looking at sourcing materials. So there are alternatives to leather. 

 

[00:48:05] So working with some of these organizations to create content, to create information and to create kind of that baseline training that everyone can get from a business, from starting a business. 

 

[00:48:19] I don't feel like we have that in place right now. We're doing that more in the health side or teaching people or in the cooking class side like this is how you get started with being vegan. What I'd love to be able to do is say this is how you get started with a vegan business and these are the core concepts, training and approach that you can do and also kind of expanding that outside of just me as the instructor, but having like having the ability for me to train other people. I love the models where you have some of the big players in online marketing where you I mean, they have a team of consultants. They have a team or group of people that are able to coach at the level or in the way that I like to coach, because I'm not a you know, they talk about carrot in the stick, which for me, I've been good example. But I really want to motivate people. I want people to feel good every day. I want people to feel inspired. I'm always looking at the silver lining. So being able to train and bring in a team of people that can help people and motivate people that way as opposed to motivating people through the not so not so nice way. So helping kind of expand my vision to a larger team, because right now my team is more based on the function of our business, managing our social media, email, marketing our editor, our coder and so forth. But being able to have a team of people that can coach around the world would be such an amazing thing because veganism is also growing. It's a little bit different in Australia. It's a little bit different in the UK. More products and businesses are coming online. More of the corporate entities like in the UK, you're seeing a lot more of the kind of traditional food players jump into the market where they're not doing it as much in the US. 

 

[00:50:12] So it was really interesting to be able to kind of have pockets of support that are regional based as well. 

 

[00:50:18] Yeah, I agree. And I'm I'm glad that you brought that up. I just returned from Australia. I tried to hit Europe and different places yearly, but Australia. They have. And Ireland as well when I was there last. But they have a stronghold on random products, vegan cheese. Like why is it so much better there? You know, they got into the olive oils. The Greeks, all of those cats started making vegan cheese decades before we did over here. And so I think that's another preconception. People feel like this vegan is this very United States made born idea and thing. And it's it's not just spiritually backed and goes back, you know, thousands of years as as most dietary things do. But it has. Pockets and communities that have gone into their own realm with it, you know, and they have their own flair and Australia. I was tickled their restaurant scene, not just their food scene, their day. They have artists that identify under these vegan labels, you know, ceramic artists and people that really want to express and talk about the core core tenants of their being in life and things of that nature. 

 

[00:51:21] And so I think it's it is true. It varies across the pockets. And being able to unify that globaly would be quite beautiful. I think that's an awesome future plan. And I look forward to following you and keeping keeping track of it. We are out of time today, Stephanie, but I just wanted to say thank you so much. I love what your company does. I think that big and mainstream is awesome. And it's the way that I think a lot of industry should be headed in towards this, like cleaning up house, really figuring out how to launch a successful business and making sure you come from that healthy foundation is is so awesome, especially with, you know, the fact that it's got this vegan focus and you're kind of bringing everything together into that. So thank you so much for meeting with us today. I really appreciate it. 

 

[00:52:04] Oh, thank you so much for having me at a great time chatting. 

 

[00:52:08] And I really hope for your audience. We were able to kind of inspire some people, help some people if they're thinking about starting a business, if they're planning or if they're getting stuck, that the idea that there's many of us out here that are pushing through creating businesses and I appreciate your podcasts as well, giving a voice to people like myself to talk about our careers, our aspirations and how we would like to at least be able to support our communities. So thank you, apps of us. 

 

[00:52:39] My pleasure. Without a doubt. For everyone listening, we've been talking with Stephanie Redcross West. And you can get on vegan mainstream dot com and you can also find them on LinkedIn as well as Stephanie there for everyone and our audience. Thank you for giving us your time today. And until we speak again next time. Remember to eat well, eat clean.