Emily Gerhardstein

I'm always curious. I've always liked to learn different things and be open to learning and evolving. I'm not perfect by any means, and being able to bring in people that are smarter than me, right, I have to be humble enough to know that I can't do it all. I have to be able to trust the people who I believe that can do it and also has the same alignment and vision and mission. That's why the trust and communication come in.

The best career advice I've picked up along the way is just to be a sponge. I tell everyone, especially the youth when I speak to students, that as soon as you enter the workforce, you don't give any comments yet, you just absorb. You be a sponge. When you have time and learn people's perspectives, then that's when you're able to solve problems and give solutions, and you'll look better too because you actually understand all the processes. I tell this to anyone at any stage, because as soon as I start a new job or a new client, I'm like, you just be a sponge. You have to learn their business before you put in your ideas, because each business is different. I've been in so many different retail brands and they all run differently, they all have different perspectives, different priorities, and you can't say the same thing is going to work here at this other place.

Believe in yourself. Trust in your intuition. Your intuition will lead you further when you have more experience. I am Korean and a woman, and I get a lot of unconscious bias in general, and I'm a founder and bootstrapping one of the most expensive consumer products. I'm a minority helping minorities, and we need to make sure that we are at the tables. To do that, we need to be able to uplift each other. It's always really good to find like-minded women who can do that.

The biggest challenge right now is that we're bootstrapping because we are trying to do a lot of good, but that leaves very little money into marketing. We have no money in marketing, so we have to rely on word of mouth, speaking engagements, and thinking of creative ways to get awareness. That's hard because we need capital up front for consumer products. If I went VC, which we have interest in, we really want to make sure we're making lasting impact and change. It's a tougher road that we're taking, but it's going to be a lot more rewarding. We're in it now, it's gonna be tough now, but once we set off, which it seems like we're almost there, we're getting that direction. Another challenge is because we're so different, not a lot of people know where to place us. We are health tech, we are assistive technology, but yet we're also universal design, and we're not a high-technology company. In health tech, people want some kind of AI or sensors and wearables, but we have really cool technology that we are developing and working on. We often get overlooked for grants because we're not hitting certain categories because this hasn't been done before, so we don't qualify. We often do not get picked because in a lot of people's eyes we're more of a low technology, but yet we can impact so many different people with so many disabilities and aging and caregiving. People devalue us, but yet we have such a big, incredible impact on everyday people's lives. That's the challenge right now, we're trying to educate as well and be like, no, we matter, clothes are important. There are people struggling out there, and everyone knows of someone who would benefit.

Trust and communication are most important to me. I would say communication is number one in personal and in work. Without trust, particularly when you're the one who's starting the business and it's your neck on the line, you need to have that trust 100%. And people need to feel trusted too because it works both ways. Especially when you're bootstrapping, there's only so much that we can offer, so people are trusting me with their time and energy, so I need to make sure I am fulfilling and being able to get us to where we need to be.