Spring Place NYC Panel: Three Entrepreneurs on Personal Wellness, Professional Values & Aligning Influencers With Your Brand Voice
FROM LEFT: Chris Roth, Daniella Pierson, Wendy Nguyen, and Beca Alexander
Our partnership with Spring Place kicked off recently, and we hosted our first panel of 2020 to discuss influencer marketing as it pertains to the wellness space.
Moderated by our very own Beca Alexander, our panel included one of our exclusive influencers Wendy Nguyen, who’s also the founder of Artemis, a premier CBD Boutique based in West Village; The Newsette founder Daniella Pierson; and Highline Wellness co-founder Chris Roth. The three panelists discussed how they started their own businesses, control stress without losing motivation, and prioritize wellness. With two of the panelists being entrepreneurs in the CBD space, the panel also lead to a discussion about the personal doubts - and legal restrictions - that influencers have when picking the brands they choose to work with.
On Prioritizing Wellness:
As entrepreneurs, all three panelists lead extremely busy lives. Making time for wellness and self care is essential to not feeling burnt out. For Daniella, who started The Newsette as a sophomore and continued to build the brand full-time straight out of college, wellness starts with not being hard on herself anymore. She keeps Saturdays completely work-free and creates space for life beyond her business.
Wendy, who has been a content creator for almost ten years, recently shifted gears when she opened a premier CBD shop in the West Village, in part because she recognized that being as pain-free as possible was the key to her personal wellness. While stress used to be a major motivator, physical manifestations of stress (like not sleeping well or having a rapid heart rate) were not conducive to productivity and actually hurting her in the long run.
Chris Roth, co-founder of Highline Wellness, shared a similar sentiment when talking about his transition from investment banking to starting a CBD business a year ago. Next to using his company’s products to help with sleep quality, anxiety and better focus, he started prioritizing working out every morning before setting foot in the office.
On Working With Influencers:
After covering how wellness fits into the panelists lives, the discussion shifted to how influencer marketing pertains to the wellness space, For Chris, a successful influencer partnership is all about finding influencers who share the same core values. When starting Highline Wellness, in order to get proof of concept and insights on the messaging that would work, they sent out 150 samples to friends, family and influencers from their personal network. While the trial group contained people with 500k to a million followers, follower count wasn’t the main focus; they also wanted to activate the “alphas” of friend groups who had influence in their own circle. He also believes in true collaboration with influencers; Highline Wellness provides influencers with facts and talking points to guide their creative concepts, but allows the influencers to get personal with their experiences and make the content their own.
On Developing A Brand Identity:
Wendy spent a great deal of time honing in on the brand identity of Artemis. As the only minority-woman owned CBD shop in New York, Wendy sought to highlight woman-owned brands and created a section in the store dedicated to women’s health. Even the name Artemis (the goddess of the hunt and womanhood) ties into the core values of the shop. Since the store doesn’t have its own branded product and serves as a curator of CBD products, finding a brand voice was a different process. To Wendy, it is important that the values of Artemis are felt and seen once you set foot into the store, as every customer experience and movement in the physical store is supposed to help guide the future online presence of the company.
Daniella has created a unique and defined voice for The Newsette. As head of a media company, her responsibility lies in managing the song and dance between both readers and advertisers in order to please both sides.Though she relies on advertisers for revenue, The Newsette only partners with brands that align with its established point of view. One thing that Daniella prides herself in is that The Newsette has grown a reputation for not sacrificing values for a check size, leading brands to approach the company wanting to align with The Newsette’s set point of view when working on collaborations.
Chris also addressed how his co-founders and him worked on finding a brand voice for Highline Wellness. Their efforts were especially rooted in the lack of understanding around CBD and its advantages, which influenced them to build the identity of their brand on the pillars of transparency, honesty, reliability, as well as being educational & approachable.
On Sticking To Core Values:
Daniella stressed that everything The Newsette does ties back to their underlying mission of empowerment. If a potential brand partner does not align with that mission, it isn’t a fit, no matter the size of the paycheck. Her ultimate goal is to build the world's biggest empowerment company, extending The Newsette’s influence beyond content and into products in the future.
Chris similarly stressed the importance of aligning Highline Wellness’s business practices with causes they believe in. To celebrate the company’s first birthday, Highline Wellness announced they would give 5% of all purchases that week directly towards charities surrounding the Australian wildfires. For him, it’s not only important to sell products, but to use their platform to support causes that they stand behind.
Through her presence at the Artemis store in NYC, and by continuing to share her personal wellness journey and the impacts of CBD on it, Wendy strives to empower others to live a pain-free life. Just like our other panelists and our moderator Beca, she wants to keep prioritizing wellness in her personal life to help reach professional goals in the long run.