Making Something From Nothing: Jilaine Swim Of Brooke Shannon Company On How To Go From Idea To Launch
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Patience is everything. Success doesn’t happen overnight. It is important to stay patient and good things will come your way.
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Brooke Shannon.
Brooke is a natural trendsetter who understands the importance of the people she surrounds herself with. She has a gift for encouraging others, and is a brilliant designer. Brooke has established and built a brand with purpose. With the causes and impact of the ocean pollution, she has dedicated her brand to make a change by letting people know there is a new way of shopping. Jilaine believes you can be confident in self-expression and breaking the rules while making a global impact.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
I grew up in a small town in the central valley of California. As a young teen my parents moved my sister and me to Orange County in order to foster our love of the arts. As a child I did not fully understand the state of our oceans. In high school I studied oceanography and was strongly impacted. I then got involved in beach clean ups and started to feel that I could make a difference. After high school, I followed my passion for swimwear to FIDM, where I realized that sustainability is more tangible than ever. In 2019, I graduated from FIDM with honors. Immediately upon graduating I was on a mission to pair my love of swimwear with my love of the ocean.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
My favorite life lesson quote is from Walt Disney: “All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.” This quote is relevant to me because I have always had the dream to create my own brand but knew that it wouldn’t be easy to do. Therefore, this quote is a great reminder that you must have the courage to follow your dreams because there will always be obstacles that you may face before reaching that dream of yours.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
A book that has made a significant impact on me is a self-help book called Untethered Soul. It talks about your inner dialogue being depicted as your so called “inner roommate”. You and the voice of your mind, that ongoing inner dialogue, are not one and the same. You, who you ARE at the core of your being, is separate and wholly distinct from the voice of your mind.
For example, when you are hard on yourself, and negative thoughts are talking down on you, picture your inner dialogue as a real person. Would you want to surround yourself with that person? The person that is a negative and is emotionally draining every time you are around them? NO! Our minds engage in a continuous, endless dialogue. That constant narration is meant to be comforting and safe. But it can also keep you stuck, anxious and fearful.
The overall solution is learning to identify and become aware of your inner dialogue to freeing yourself from the influence of this running dialogue. Of course, you can’t stop the voice but what you can do is change the way you attend to it.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?
While creating a business you will always come across challenges along the way. My advice based off my experience would be to always listen to your gut when it comes to people. It is important to choose the right people in the workplace that align with your vision and quality of work. Therefore, it is important to not ignore your gut feeling when it comes to someone that may be lacking in executing their work which could lead to an unnecessary challenge. It is also important to be okay with the idea of abandoning an idea that doesn’t work within your business. When creating a product or service, of course we all tend to fall in love with it and it can become challenging to change directions when it is not working. It is important to figure out what isn’t working and to be able to have the courage to walk away and refocus your energy on an idea that does work.
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
When it comes to researching whether or not their idea has already been created it is important to analyze the company, customer, competitor and the collaborator. Going in depth with these four perspectives will allow yourself to crack down on the business idea before investing time in brand development.
For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? We’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
There is a logical outline to go by when creating a business. First, you want to select a business idea. Second, you need to research the industry, market, customers, and the competition around your idea. Third, gather a startup cost analysis where you would evaluate your personal financial circumstances and match your start up needs to financial reality. Fourth, would be to write up your business plan. This is where you would organize your market research information and written documents that contain the goals and methods of the business and portraying the potential time frame that these goals would be met. Fifth step is to have a startup checklist which includes branding, legal entity and registration, licensing, state and federal tax registration, and business insurance. Once you have that secured and locked in that is when you can start your business where you can see your idea turn into a reality and finally land in the customer’s hands.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why?
- Timing is everything. It is important to use your time wisely and make sure you’re prioritizing the tasks for the week effectively.
- Wear a lot of hats. Going into starting my business I thought I could have my main focus in designing swimwear, but I jumped into the deep end of the pool and had to learn quickly and be able to take on different tasks that came my way. That could be anything from content creation to dealing with accountants and attorneys.
- Giving hard feedback. Having the ability to give constructive criticism to your coworkers in a civil manner is crucial when being a leader. It is important to not be a pushover and be able to prioritize your goals while staying true to yourself.
- It’s okay to not know all the answers. Nobody knows the answers to everything. Knowing that I have others on my team makes it possible to find a solution. By meeting weekly with my team, it has allowed us to collaborate and feed off each other’s strengths.
- Patience is everything. Success doesn’t happen overnight. It is important to stay patient and good things will come your way.
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
Understanding the market in which you picture the product would be categorized in and see if you could step into a particular niche that is missing within that market that you would like to invent.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
I highly recommend hiring a consultant or talk to a mentor that has been in the industry you are trying to create success in. It is nearly impossible to start a business completely on your own, so it is important to use your resources and network with people to guide you to your success.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
There is no right or wrong way to go about growing your business. A business based on the market and category of product will most often than not determine the better fit when it comes to bootstrapping or venture capital. Overall, business owners need to take a step back and really think about the amount of independence or ownership they wish to have and compare it to the different financial resources that are out there.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
By having the ability to create a brand with purpose, I have been able to dedicate my brand to make a change by letting people know there is a new way of shopping. My brand, Jilaine Swim, has been committed to being part of the solution in cleaning the oceans we call home all summer long, while bringing quality luxury bikinis to the market!
You are an inspiration to a great many people. 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.
If I could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, it would be a ‘self-esteem movement’. Inspire people to think in a more positive way when it comes to self-views and focus on the now instead of the pass and the future that lies ahead. You can find benefits of healthy self-esteem when you feel secure with yourself. Benefits when it comes to personal and work life.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment 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, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
I would love to have a private lunch with Kylie Jenner because she is a young and successful entrepreneur.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Making Something From Nothing: Jilaine Swim Of Brooke Shannon Company On How To Go From Idea To… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
