This week on How Success Happens, I spoke with Lo Bosworth, founder of women’s wellness brand Love Wellness. Bosworth became a public figure as a teenager after appearing on Laguna Beach and The Hills, two California-based reality shows.
She later moved to New York City and started experiencing chronic health issues, which ultimately started her journey to launch Love Wellness in 2016. Today, Love Wellness is a multi-million-dollar business with 40-plus employees, and its gut, vaginal and hormonal health products are sold at major national retailers, including Target, Ulta Beauty and Walmart.
You can listen to our entire conversation above. And below, I’ve pulled out three key takeaways from our chat.
1. Success happens when a gap in the market meets your interest or personal needs
“The aha moment I had through my experience was I kept going to CVS, Duane Reade and Walgreens looking for solutions in the women’s health aisles for the problems that I was experiencing and not being able to find anything,” Bosworth says. “That was very clearly, to me, the white space opportunity. I thought, oh my god, these probiotics, suppositories, switching to cleansers with no fragrance and gentle formulations, have fundamentally changed my health and, ultimately, my life and how I feel about myself. And there was no brand in this space. And this was at the time of Glossier and Casper — brands with capital B’s. And I thought, can I create a women’s health business with innovative and effective products that change how we women intrinsically feel about our self-care routine?“
Bosworth wanted the products to “evoke the same feeling you get from holding a brand-new lipstick and being excited to use it.” She wants to translate that emotional experience into wellness products.
Timestamp — 18:03
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2. Embrace authenticity to create connections and build community
“No one was speaking publicly about gut and vaginal health,” Bosworth says. “I knew it was a risk to be so open online about my experiences. Still, I felt super passionately about sharing because of the amazing results I had achieved with the help of doctors and from my own personal research and education efforts. I didn’t care what other people would think. Thankfully, many people immediately resonated with my story, and my gamble paid off.”
Timestamp — 25:54
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3. Build a best-in-class team, and let go of your ego
“When I decided to bring in Maria Dempsey to replace me as CEO earlier this year, I was so exhausted. When you have never managed a team of 40 people before, you don’t know how to manage a team of 40 people,” Bosworth says. “If you have never led a marketing organization or a sales and ops team, how, as the leader of the entire organization, are you supposed to develop talent under you? You don’t know how. I was doing my best, and I think I brought the business very far. I’m tremendously proud of my efforts and still work full-time at the company. But for me, when I was operating in a CEO function the last few years, I was just so focused on operating and growing that I didn’t have the energy or time to think creatively about my business or innovation and where the company could go next, which is what I’m good at. Now that Maria has stepped in, I have so much more time to focus on the things that I have always excelled at.”
As for the future of Love Wellness, Bosworth sees the brand expanding into new categories and ultimately becoming a full-blown lifestyle brand. It will remain true to its original mission: to bring consumers incredible innovation that will change their lives in the most natural way possible.
Timestamp — 47:13
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