How This Founder Got Her Product in 700 Targets and Counting with Aimee LeMaire, Founder of Zeya

This transcript has been generated using AI technology. There may be errors or discrepancies in the text. The opinions expressed by the guests on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the show or its hosts.

Susan Sly 00:00
Hey there. What is up? Susan here. I hope you're having an amazing day, wherever you are in the world, and thank you for stopping by. Lots of great things are happening with Raw and Real Entrepreneurship®. Did you know listeners are up 500%?
And as we get into today's show, I have an amazing female founder. She is doing incredible things. Her brand is fast becoming a household name. She is in Target. She is selling out her direct-to-consumer. And you're going to hear how she went from idea to inception.
And before we jump into the show, I want to share a quick message—that the beginning of any great business starts with an idea. And to take that idea from something that is maybe on a piece of paper, to a Canva deck, to actually executing—it's hard. And as part of that hard, there are a lot of decisions that get to be made, and it's very easy, as a founder, to second guess yourself and to also start to listen to a lot of noise. And that’s what this show is about—raw and real conversations with founders who defied the odds. They talk about their wins. They talk about their failures. They talk about their learnings. We even talk about depression, mental health—all sorts of things that you deserve to hear, because 90% of startups fail by year number five. And my vision in life is to ensure that we change those odds.
As we go into today’s show, a couple of quick announcements. Number one, if you are a woman 30-plus and haven’t checked out my latest venture—thePause®—I encourage you to download the app in the Play Store, in the App Store. We have symptom tracking. We have incredible AI. Our agent is named Harmoni™. She knows what you’re going through. You can converse with her about everything from not being able to sleep to doing a workout plan for you. And think of it this way—this is so many apps all in one—for your mental health, your physical health, for any woman who is navigating perimenopause and menopause, this is for you. Check it out. thePause® App in the App Store and Play Store. It is fire. And we are getting rave reviews.
The second thing I want to share with you is—here I am, 53 years old, and a lot of you are asking me, “Hey Susan, what is going on? You look phenomenal.” I am down 10 pounds of body fat. I am feeling amazing. I’m wearing clothes I haven’t worn in years. And the secret—it's not so much a secret—is that I am using Isagenix, and I am putting the new creatine in my shake every day. I’m having BĒA, which is an amazing energy drink—adaptogens and not that harsh caffeine. The caffeine comes from yerba maté and green tea. And I also cleanse every single Monday. And the Cleanse for Life with Isagenix is backed by science. So check it out—go to susansly.com/trustedpartners and you can find out more.
With that, let’s jump into today’s show. My guest, from a young age, had a passion for fragrances and “scentscaping” her home—check that out, a new term. And she decided to move to L.A. from Louisiana and pursue a dream of being in the entertainment industry. However, she still had this whole thing brewing in the background—like, “What if I could…?” And you fill in your own “What if I could,” right? “What if I could start a business?” “What if I could launch a best-selling brand?”
And so, she decided to make some changes following the birth of her first child. She was unable to find fragrance products that would be transparent with ingredients and were baby-safe and pet-safe. So, she began studying and said, “You know what? I am absolutely going all in.” And so, she has launched Zeya, with a goal of bringing clean, better-for-you, luxurious fragrance products into the home that are affordable and captivate the senses.
As I said, she is in 700 Targets and counting. So freaking in awe of this girl. So with that, let’s jump into my interview on Raw and Real Entrepreneurship® with the one and only Aimee LeMaire.

Voice Over 04:22
This is Raw and Real Entrepreneurship®—the show that brings the no-nonsense truth of what is required to start, grow, and scale your business. I am your host, Susan Sly.

Susan Sly 04:38
Aimee, oh my goodness. First and foremost, I’m so excited to have this conversation with you. We’re both moms—different ages of moms. Husbands—both mine being a CPA, yours a VC. We’ve got those finance guys. And we were talking about different things we have in common as founders.
And one of the things—I want to just jump right in with the show—I was reading one of your quotes, which said, “I am a child of the ’90s. There was a freedom to explore different versions of who you could be.” And growing up in Lake Charles, Louisiana—this is like pre-social media days—I’m thinking, you know, Spice Girls, like all of the epic music. What inspiration did you take from your childhood into Zeya? Because there is so much of that iconic ’90s feel in the brand.

Aimee LeMaire 05:38
Yes, so you touched on something that’s like—a couple of things. So my childhood—I feel like I’ve always been obsessed with fragrance. Like I remember having a lemonade stand on the ninth hole of the golf course where I grew up. And so all the golfers would come and they’d buy lemonade from us, and then I saved up my pennies to buy a Macintosh Yankee Candle. I thought it was the coolest. And that was the beginning of my fragrance journey. My taste has certainly evolved and become more sophisticated from the Yankee Candle days.
But what I loved about growing up in the ’90s is there wasn’t a lot of pressure to be performative the way that I feel like this younger generation has. Like, they are almost afraid to express themselves or just be silly or goofy or, you know, relax—because they’re constantly on camera.
And how that inspired Zeya was—I was like, okay, let’s figure out a way that we can help people relax. Like, your home is your sanctuary. It’s the one space that you can just completely be yourself. And so, let’s make “scentscapes.” Like, I’ve been doing them since I was in my 20s. When I had people over and I entertained, I would always like put different scents in different rooms, and people loved it. So I was like, let’s make it easy for them, and then let’s also bring back some of the nostalgia in the design. So our device is designed like a floppy disk. So if you remember how satisfying it was to insert a floppy disk, our scent cards are like that—where you pop it in, you can set it for a month, and just really customize your space to reflect who you are.

Susan Sly 07:21
Which is—when you think about this whole concept—and I love what you said about the younger generation and not having fun. It’s actually—I even think for me, in Gen X—one of my intentions this year is to have more fun. And I’ve been sharing with the listeners—I’m doing an amazing, like, transformational leadership program that I go to L.A., like, all the time. And it’s like, okay—I realized, Aimee, that I’m not inviting fun in.
Because building a company, especially early stage, like that first like, “Okay, we have an idea. We have a Canva deck—woohoo, let’s go!” And we have friends, maybe over wine, that are like, “That’s a great idea. You should do that.” And then it gets real, right? And you're starting creating, or you’re putting in a PO for, you know, an allocation.
And Jen Pelka, who founded Unfemme Wines—full disclosure for everyone listening—is one of my portcos, as an angel investor. But Jen’s been on the show. Like putting in that additional order—like, oh my gosh—it’s getting real.
And I realized for me that I wasn’t inviting fun in. And yet I also realized—when I’m having fun, I’m more productive.
What about for you? How do you bring fun and escape in? Because that’s what your brand is all about.
Aimee LeMaire 08:51
It is hard, right? You’re dealing with such serious topics all day. But I think I really enjoy the creative process, like designing the fragrances, and so that—like designing different versions of the diffuser—and that creative outlet is really fun for me. And then just also talking to customers, like I talk to them every day and just get feedback from them.
And so I grew—actually grew up watching my father run a small business, and I feel like that sort of permeated into my day-to-days, because I like—I like that Zeya, we feel like a small business. Because you can pick up the phone and talk to somebody over here. But that’s fun, like just listening to feedback.
But as far as, like, hobbies—I feel like I have none right now that are fun.

Susan Sly 09:41
Besides, your kids are four and six. Their hobbies are your hobbies.

Aimee LeMaire 09:47
I’m like, is skincare a hobby? I don’t know.

Susan Sly 09:53
Is fundraising a hobby?

Aimee LeMaire 09:57
But no, it’s—it’s been a lot of fun just to watch the initial concept for the company grow into what it is today and, like, how we are touching people’s lives and helping them have fun. That’s my goal—help them have fun.

Susan Sly 10:13
That customer relationship—and we’ll get into that—it can be so incredible. And as part of it, it is an opportunity, especially in early stage, to get feedback and pivot quickly.
I want to ask you—going back to the lemonade stand—on Raw and Real Entrepreneurship®, I always want to know: what was your first business? So was it the lemonade stand, or was there something else?

Aimee LeMaire 10:40
Good question. I think it was the lemonade stand, because I was, like, eight. Like, we were really little when we started doing that. But I think that the people—the adults around us that were buying lemonade—just found it so cute. They were so precocious and, like, charging, like, an exorbitant amount for a cup of lemonade. Yeah, I think it was that one. That was the first one.
I feel like there was a—like, I was selling Goldfish, like snacks, on the playground, but that—I don’t know if that was a legal business or not.

Susan Sly 11:11
Well, we—if you are at the IRS and listening, just—just go back and don’t listen.
When I’m talking to founders on the show, Aimee, it’s so interesting because almost—at some point, I’m going to use AI to analyze all of the show content—you know, the hundreds of hours—because almost every single entrepreneur that comes on this show had a childhood business.
And I see, like, resale is a big one. So it’s like—the reselling Goldfish crackers. I’ve had a couple of the guys who would buy candy, resell it. I had someone selling watermelon. And then my favorite was selling rattlesnakes. He is thus far the only person.
And so Gregory Shepherd—check out that episode—so Gregory’s family was so poor, and they were living on this, like, a dirt platform, and there were all these rattlesnakes in Northern California. So he would catch them and sell them to the pet store. So yes, that definitely was not a business I would have ever been interested in myself.
But we see that so much with founders. There’s this entrepreneurial spirit. Are you fostering entrepreneurship with your kids? And if so, what—for you as a mom—is so important that they learn, especially now that we’re living in the AI revolution, robotics, and all of the technology that’s happening?

Aimee LeMaire 12:43
Yeah, we definitely are just teaching our children the value of money and also the value of hard work. I feel like growing up, we were told, "Oh, you can achieve anything," you know, "follow your dreams, follow your dreams," but no one ever talked about how it's okay to fail. That's a big one—that we're like, you learn from failure. So like, just try your best, and if you fail, that's okay.
And then also, just for them, like, just not giving up and praising the effort as much as the outcome has been a big part of how we're fostering that sense of entrepreneurship. And then also we are just teaching them, like, how to—how to handle money, right? That was something that I wasn't really taught, like, I taught myself, right? But it wasn't really a big part of my household growing up. And so—in a structured way—so we made it in a structured way where it's like they can earn money by doing jobs.
And also, I think—I really think it’s like—entrepreneurship is a mindset, right? It's like just not being afraid to push the boundaries, not being—oh, the problem-solving aspect. Because that's a big aspect of entrepreneurship. It's like teaching our children how to solve problems and look for problems to solve that you can do.

Susan Sly 13:59
Oh yeah, yeah. Preach that, sister. Because it’s—it’s the, you know—for those of you listening, I did the Lady Gaga mic drop—but the—that we did the same thing with our kids.
So there was a job board—unload the dishwasher, sweep the kitchen, do all of those things. Each task was assigned a dollar value. And so they—they learned. And my kids were never the ones having the temper tantrum at the grocery store because they wanted something or whatever, because they knew that it wasn’t going to—nothing was going to happen.
And—and—and it’s okay. And when my kids would say, “I’m bored,” I’d say, “Good. Be bored. Find a problem to solve.” Right?
And—and that—raising kids, it’s so—I mean, even though our kids are different generationally by 10 years—but it’s so different now because there are a lot of distractions.
And for you—let’s get into your entrepreneurial day, because there are people now who are moms, who are dads, and we never want our kids to be an excuse—we want them to be a reason.
What does your entrepreneurial day look like? I mean, you are in 700-plus locations. The brand is growing. You have a lot of life living. Walk us through your day?

Aimee LeMaire 15:20
Yes. So, I have an early riser. My daughter wakes up at 6:30 every day, which maybe to some people, they hear that and they’re like, “That’s not early,” but I’m Californian-set now, so I’m like, that’s early for me.
So we’ll get up—she and I will spend time together. I protect that first hour and a half to two hours with my children. I don’t—I don’t do meetings, I don’t do anything during that time unless it’s an absolute emergency.
And then I find I get my best work done starting at 8:30. Like, that—the first three hours is, like, deep problem-solving. And then usually I’ll try to take a walk or, like, move my body at some point midday and, you know, to, like, sort of, like, beat that slump in the afternoon that a lot of people get.
And then in the afternoon, it tends to be more of the creative work. So like, designing something that’s not necessarily finance—which isn’t, you know, like—not my idea of fun. And I’ll do that in the afternoons.
And then when the clock hits six, like, it’s my time for my children. Like, they come home, we spend time together. And again, I protect that.
And then I usually pick up—because we’re running the company and we’re always thinking about—I usually pick the mantle back up around 7:30, 8:00, and start working again until—I need to schedule time for myself. I’m, like, listening to my schedule. I need to schedule some me time.

Susan Sly 16:47
Well, that’s—that’s one of the things on the show. There’s a lot of self-actualizing that happens—not just for the guests, but also for me too.
And that—when I wrote my book The Have It All Woman back in—gosh, what year did that come out? I was like—I don’t know—'07 or '08, during the recession? And my whole thing was, there was this big dialogue happening, Aimee, about work-life balance. And The Atlantic did an article and said, “We can’t have it all.”
And my pushback was—we can. Because it’s a personal definition. And it’s—you come from entertainment, right? So it’s like a scene in a movie or a chapter.
What balance looks like to Aimee right now—with a six-year-old, a four-year-old, a growing business—is very different than what balance looks like to Aimee 10 years from now. Right?
And that—to your point—what is not scheduled doesn’t happen. So if you were going to embrace self-care—because we were talking about this before the show—what would that look like for you?

Aimee LeMaire 17:52
I have been wanting to get into Pilates, actually. I know it’s so, like—but it’s such a movement right now, and women are just loving it. So, yeah—I know that’s not very deep, but, like, I really want to start doing Pilates.

Susan Sly 18:07
Okay, so—so in front of the global audience—the show will probably come out after this actually happens—you and I, let’s go to Pilates.
So when I’m in LA next time, let’s schedule it. We’ll go. I will source for us a place to go. We were talking about, like, Santa Monica—somewhere like that. And let’s go.
Are we doing mat, or are we doing reformer?

Aimee LeMaire 18:31
Well, I want to try the reformer. It's so intimidating, and I'm like, excited to, like, jump in and do something scary. So let's do—

Susan Sly 18:38
Reformer. All right, it's on. Okay, so now, in front of a global audience in 140 countries, we have committed to doing Pilates reformer. Okay, so that's checking that off your box, right?
And what—the value of self-care. Let's talk about the landscape of raising money as a woman. So last year in the United States, less than 1% of VC funding went to women. The year before that, it was 2.4%. So we're talking about declining. This year—when we're doing the show, 2025—we don't know what that number is going to be, but with interest rates the way they've been, VC firms are diminishing. So there aren’t as many firms as there were in 2020, 2021. It is a very different landscape.
And so let’s talk—and like, so many people who write in about the show, they’re like, “We love when you talk about the raw and real truth about fundraising.” So for Zeya, how did you start this company? How did you go from an idea to a prototype? That’s the first question. And then, at what point did raising money come into the equation?

Aimee LeMaire 19:53
So I started the company with the concept of functional fragrance. I had gotten rid of all of the fragrance products when I got our dog and had our first baby, because there is such a lack of transparency in the ingredients. So everything—everything was out. Like, all my scent-scaping disappeared.
And I was trying, like, essential oil products. They were cumbersome. You had to refill them every day. And—and I was like, golly, like, I just want a product that's easy to use, that I can set for weeks—because I don’t have time to mess with anything day to day—and helps me to relax. Because you have so much anxiety as a new mom, right? The first time, especially.
And—and so I took that concept and I pitched a couple of incubators. And one of them was actually connected to a large entertainment agency out here in LA. And they were like, “We really love this concept.”
At the time, it was like candles. And I had been tinkering with this diffuser—that this new way to diffuse fragrance—because I was, like, just trying to make it easy, to where you could set it and forget it and it would actually last a full month. Because that was the thing—a lot of the products claim to last a full month, and they’re like, ten days. They last ten days.
And so when I brought that to them, they were like, “This is the idea. Like, this is the idea. Let’s go out.” You're gonna need—like, they gave me some—a small pre-seed check to get the idea going, to create the prototype, with the goal being to go out and raise the seed round and then, you know, bring it to market.
And creating the prototype was interesting. I enlisted the help—once I had the idea down and it was working in my house. It was very, very ugly. And I met with a group of engineers—like industrial engineers—to make a prototype that we could mass produce. Because I was like, this is something that I feel like—like, I did a deep-dive white space analysis, and the industry actually hadn’t been—there hadn’t been any innovation since, like, Febreze in the '90s, right?
So there—it hadn’t—the technology was designed, like, the plug-in technology was developed in the '40s to mask the smell of tobacco in the home and hasn’t changed since, really. I mean, there have been a couple of bells and whistles thrown on it, but essentially, it’s heat and a plug-in. It’s heat and oil.
So we worked to create this new version that doesn’t use heat, that’s better for you. The fragrance formulation is another story. That took me three years to actually get it to where it smelled luxurious but didn’t include a lot of the traditional ingredients that were endocrine disruptors that fragrance often contains.
And we—this team of engineers—we worked together for a long time. Took us about 18 months, really, to develop the prototype, set up our supply chain. And then, while all this was happening, one of my friends introduced me to a broker who was in Minneapolis. And the broker loved the idea, loved the concept of the company. We didn’t even have a working prototype—we had, like, a deck and a, you know, like a—
And so we went in and talked to the buyer. And we were like, “This is what we're building,” you know? And she was like, “I really like it.” She's like, “Come back to me when you have something, you know, concrete.”
And so I sent the working prototype in, and they were like, “Yeah, this is great. Like, we want to do a test with you.” And so we decided to launch DTC and Target simultaneously, which I would not recommend. If I were to go back and have the ability—I was like, I would not recommend it.
I would say, if you are listening to this and you are thinking you want to do an omnichannel approach, use the time in DTC to iterate. Use—and to get to know your customers, to know their preferences.
It worked out well for us, because we had instant product-market fit, instant concept-market fit, because it is something that I designed for—like, with consumers in mind—people like me. And we had a lot—we spoke to a lot of people during the process, like, a lot of consumers. But yeah, I would say do DTC first and then do retail.

Susan Sly 24:17
I have so many questions, like all over the place. No, it's so good. It's Raw and Real Entrepreneurship®, and we get to—like most entrepreneurs, we have ADD brain, right?
So what I'm so curious about is, so you have your deck, you have your prototype. And one of the questions that—in my mind—is like, how did you come up with pricing? Because that’s always a big, big thing, especially when you’re creating a category within a category that doesn’t exist.
And for all the listeners—if you’re new to the show—a little bit of my backstory. I went to MIT Sloan, and I also went to engineering school, like, back in the day. But one of the courses I took at Sloan was all on pricing. And as someone who had to create pricing for a product that didn’t exist in the market—an odd product—in my past startup, I know the pain of creating pricing for something in a category, and you’re like, “I don’t have a reference point.” Like you said, there hasn’t been disruption. How the heck did you create the pricing?

Aimee LeMaire 25:25
Well, the product itself is so high quality—like the oils are designed by master perfumers, like the people who make the perfumes that you pay $400 for. That’s the level of oil that we’re working with.
But I wanted to make sure that the pricing was done in a way that everyone could afford it. So it’s like attainable luxury, because we’re living in a time where it’s like—we’re being squeezed everywhere. And I was like, it shouldn’t be that people who can’t necessarily pay $90 for a reed diffuser are smelling poison. Like, that’s not fair.
So we worked so hard to figure out a way to keep the pricing down. Like our refills are $8.99—to keep the pricing and the COGS—like our cost of goods—down, so that the business was viable, because you still have to make a profit. And also something that people could feel comfortable buying every month. And our diffusers are $19.99.
Again, it was just like—we just worked really, really hard to make sure we were giving a quality product for a really good price.

Susan Sly 26:35
And with that, to get to that price—so then there’s that whole immersion in unit economics and economics of scale and supply chain and gross profit and all the things the VCs want to see.
So for just like a super quick masterclass, Aimee, for anyone listening who is producing, like, a CPG product—like a consumer packaged good—give your top three tips for creating pricing models. Because I think that would be so incredibly valuable to people so they can get it. Because you didn’t just—you didn’t just go, for those of you tending to meditate and like, “$19.99, that makes sense!” Yeah. So like, what are your top tips to come up with that pricing?

Aimee LeMaire 27:30
Okay, top tips. I would say:
Know who you're targeting, right? Know who you want to target. If you’re looking for, like, a niche luxury product, your pricing strategy is going to be very different than if you’re going for a mass audience—which is what we're going after.

If you are going after a mass audience or mass stage, which is kind of where we live, you can always optimize your supply chain. Like, there’s always the economies of scale. So I would say: go for the customer experience first. Just do it in a way that, like, okay yes—like, if this ingredient is slightly more expensive for this first run because you’re only buying 3,000 units—go for the better quality. Because you need to establish your customer base first. Then, as you grow, you can grow into that model—because you are buying 30,000, 300,000, hopefully 3 million units eventually—and then you can improve your margins that way.

And then—yeah, that’s what I would say. Like, give the best product you can for the best price, knowing your audience. And then just being honest with yourself. Like, I didn’t have tariffs on our bingo card right when we launched the company. And so we’re looking right now—like, I really don’t want to—but we’re looking at a possible price increase just because our component—one of our components—comes from overseas. And it’s a bummer, right? So it’s just like, you have to give yourself grace with pricing. It's like somehow—

Susan Sly 29:07
—with anything. Like, adapt to your terrain, right? And the terrain changes. And there are the things within your circle that you can control, and the things outside your circle you can’t control. You can’t control a pandemic. You can’t control tariffs. There are so many things you can’t control.
And I see a lot of entrepreneurs getting burned out about focusing on things you can’t control. It’s such wasted energy. But saying, okay—sometimes I’ll journal, Aimee, and I’ll be like, “Okay, Susan, what can you control about this situation?” Everything else you can’t control—just like, doesn’t matter. Throw it out. Because, you know, as CEOs, it’s like—we have to focus on that.
Okay, let’s talk about raising money to scale. So your husband is a VC. He invests in later stage, and he gave you some advice. However, with raising money—it, for me, is one of the most—I’ve pitched, you know, well over 100 VCs in multiple companies. It is, for me, one of—it’s fun, but I’ve had to get to fun. But it also is—I feel so exposed. I can’t imagine what online dating is like, because I’ve been with my husband for 25 years, and we met in high school. So I’ve never had to experience that, but I just feel it’s very exposing.
So what advice did your husband give you that you can share with everyone listening, and what was the experience like for you when you first went out and started pitching?

Aimee LeMaire 30:42
The advice he gave was very literal. He taught me—like, I didn’t know what pre-seed versus seed meant. That’s how green I was to the world of CPG. You know, when a movie gets made, it’s funded by a studio. It’s very straightforward.
But yeah, when it comes to raising money, there’s a certain language. There are certain KPIs that a company needs to hit in order to be viable for a certain round. There are certain valuations that you need to hit to make sense for an acquisition. So he was super instrumental in teaching me what to look for, what to aim for, and just how it works.
What he couldn’t teach me—and I’m sure he definitely tried—was the mindset going in. I think it’s because, as a woman, you’re constantly taught, “Be grateful for what you have. Be demure. Don’t say anything. Just accept it.” But when you're raising money, it’s the opposite. You have to go in with the mindset of: “I have a treasure. We can grow this treasure together.” They have as much to gain as you do.
I didn’t have that mindset. I was so nervous about this idea, like, “Oh please, you know, like—please, money.” It’s just not the right mindset. When you go into a pitch, it’s like—you have a great idea, go take it out there and be confident. VCs want you to succeed. That’s the thing—they want you to do well because they want to make money.
So yeah, I would say that’s one thing I wish I knew going into pitching. You have a great idea. And that’s why I say—get DTC data before you go out to retail. Because you’ll likely be raising money once you have some traction DTC, and then you’re going into retail. So you have that data, and it makes it a little bit easier. You’re not pitching a dream. You can literally say, “Look—people love it. These are the numbers.”
Which is where we are now, and it’s a much better place to be when it comes to raising money.

Susan Sly 33:03
How much was your—if you feel like disclosing—how much was your initial round you were raising, and how many VCs did you pitch to get it?

Aimee LeMaire 33:13
Gosh, I pitched probably over 50, I would say. Yeah.
And oh—that's the other thing too. A no or a rejection doesn’t mean that you have a bad idea. It just means that they can’t see your vision. Or there are factors that you can’t even see—like, they can see the vision, but their mandate has changed, or they’re looking for a really specific business type. That was the other thing.
Nos are not a reflection on you, generally. Sometimes they are—like pitching style, right? Coming in and having this... I don’t want to say I was insecure, but I was. I was insecure the first few meetings I took because I didn’t know what I was doing. I was nervous. It’s like pitching your baby out to the world. Then you get rejected by people and think, “Oh, maybe it’s a bad idea.” It’s like—no. No.

Susan Sly 34:11
Did you raise that first on a convertible note or a SAFE, or what was the structure of that first round?

Aimee LeMaire 34:18
We did a priced round for our first.

Susan Sly 34:22
And how much total did you raise?

Aimee LeMaire 34:24
Two million—for our seed round.

Susan Sly 34:28
Okay, and were you already at revenue when you raised that?

Aimee LeMaire 34:32
No. But we did have a Target business award. So I honestly don’t think the landscape has changed—and I don’t know that a DTC business without any traction really moves the needle, unless it’s just the next huge AI thing or something like that.
You need to have a road to profitability and a clear roadmap, a clear customer journey, a clear customer.

Susan Sly 35:05
Yeah, and we were talking about this before the show. It’s so fun to have this conversation, and I love your transparency. It’s Raw and Real Entrepreneurship®. I pitched 50 in order to raise that. To do that—to be so exposed—right? Like you said, it’s like someone saying your baby is ugly.
But I wrote down, “No means they can’t see your vision.” And sometimes I think—because I wear both hats. I wear a venture hat, and I wear my fundraising hat—that especially in this current landscape, the scorecard has changed.
For people who don’t know—if you’ve never pitched VCs—they have a scorecard. And what is the scorecard this year? Because money is more expensive. Smaller check sizes. There’s still a lot of AI funding. There’s a bit of nerves around CPG—because of tariffs, because of... So you look at it and go, “Okay.”
Especially as women, we have to be scrappier. What advice, going through the process, do you wish you would have known—especially as a female founder—that you know now?

Aimee LeMaire 36:32
I think this is going to be raw and real: you deserve a seat at the table.
And that was something that, as a woman in business—we—look, I was in business in the 2010s when it wasn’t very female-friendly. It was before Me Too and all that. But as a woman, you deserve to be there. You’re smart. You’re capable. You have a great idea, and you can execute it.
And honestly, if you look at the stats, women execute CPG brands better. Sorry guys—we just do. Because we understand the customer.

Susan Sly 37:15
One of my friends founded Womaness—she’s also in Target. She was a VP at Target—and we were talking about that. It’s just really understanding it.
Because especially—to be in Target is such a huge deal. Every year, I would go to National Retail Federation Conference in my previous company, and I never missed any of the talks that Brian Cornell was doing—the CEO—because his vision, even for the employees, is so huge.
And Brian, if you're listening—or anyone from HR—my vision is that thePause® will be an employee benefit for all Target employees. That is going to happen.
But to be in Target—it’s such a big business, and how he runs it is absolutely incredible. We are the main consumers, and I can’t remember exactly what percentage of shoppers at Target are women, but it’s so high.
To your point, Aimee—who knows it better?
I do want to ask you, this concept of entrepreneurial failure... We're talking 90% of startups fail. And yet, here you are with Zeya. You're slaying from the outside world looking in—plus you're raising kids, you know, plus, plus, plus.
How do you look at setting milestones for the company, especially going into territory that you haven’t yet taken? Like, the question really is, Aimee—how do you approach challenges that you’re like, “Okay, that’s a goal, and my investors want to see us achieve that goal—those milestones—but I’ve never done that before in my life.” How do you manage to do that?

Aimee LeMaire 39:08
I think that as an entrepreneur, you have to have, like, an unlimited amount of tenacity.
Because for me, like goal setting—it’s not like, “Oh, maybe we can do it, maybe…” It's like—we will. You have to go in with that mindset, that you will. You can't let other people's failures distract you, and you also can't be afraid of failure.
So like—you go in, and let’s say you don’t hit the goal. But you do everything you can to. You’ve learned something. The company improves because of it—because you’re able to glean information, make a different decision next time, pivot in a direction.
Like—we're constantly learning. We get customer feedback. We pivot. We make something better. We—yeah.
It’s just like—you can’t go in with the mindset like, “Oh, maybe we'll be the 90%.” I think you have to have this, like—not delusional—but sort of distortion field when you have an idea, that you are going to be successful because you have the greatest idea of all time.
And whether that’s true or not—time will tell. But you also just have to put the work behind it and not be afraid.

Susan Sly 40:25
I think you do have to be delusional. And I'm laughing because one of my friends—he calls me, my nickname is “The Delusional One.” Because in my past company, selling something that didn’t exist in the market, he was like, “You know, how are you going to do that?” And I’m like, “Oh, we just are. I’ll figure out a way. I’m scrappy. We’ll get it sorted out.”
I think when we go to Pilates, we should have t-shirts that say “Delusional.”

Susan Sly 40:59
Amy, I want to ask—how do you handle, like, when you have wall-kicking moments? Because we have them.
Whether it’s—you mentioned tariffs, or it could be supply chain, or it could be a customer you thought was going to order X number of units, and the order ends up being smaller because they're constricting on budgets—like, whatever. All the stuff you deal with.
How do you handle those moments?

Aimee LeMaire 41:24
Is it the stress aspect of it? Or... Yeah.
Well, I don’t think anyone—like—I think we’re so early in our journey. I mean, we launched three months ago. So I’m still at the stage where I feel everything really intensely. And I have friends who are business owners, and they’re operating huge companies, and they’re 11 or 12 years in—and they look at me like, “Oh, Aimee. It passes. You’re going to feel it all right now, but that feeling, it passes. You’re going to get used to it, and then you’re just going to keep pushing through.”
But I quit drinking alcohol, because I found like—running a company—it’s not helpful for me. So I quit that, and I started a fitness journey, which has helped. Just going for walks, getting sunshine—helpful.
So, you have this moment of overwhelming stress, you have this huge problem you have to solve—for me, when I’m doing something where my body’s a bit distracted, I problem solve better.
So that’s what I do. Whenever I hit a wall, I keep thinking, I keep working, I talk—I talk to everybody.
I have a group of people who are great advisors, so when I do get into those situations where I’m just like, “I have no idea what to do,” I turn to people who have been in the business for 30 years and just say, “Hey, I’m stuck.”
And that’s why I think mentors are so important—or even just friends who’ve been through what you’re going through. It’s so important. Yeah, the physical, the mental—those are the two things I do.

Susan Sly 42:59
Yeah, I love that, because we have to—as entrepreneurs—we have to come out of it fast. Like, we cannot say, “Oh yes, I’m going to have a pity party for a month.” It doesn’t work like that.
We’ve got maybe five or ten minutes. So going for walks, not drinking, the exercise—and now we’re adding Pilates to this regime.
For years I did personal development speaking, and I was doing one multi-speaker event with Tony Robbins, and Tony said that when he would have that wall-kicking moment, he’d go and be angry for like a couple weeks. And then he realized how much it was costing him.
And he’s like, “Okay, I’m giving myself a day,” and then, “I’m giving myself two hours,” then, “I’m giving myself an hour,” and then, “Five minutes.”
And five minutes was it. And I took that, Aimee, and I went—I’m going to adopt that. So when something happens, I’ve got five minutes, and that’s it.
Even that is a luxury, because—what could I do in the other four minutes?
And now I’m being challenged to do 20 seconds.

Aimee LeMaire 44:09
Oh—I misunderstood the question. When you said wall-kicking, you mean like the frustration, dealing with that?
Yeah, I thought you meant when you get to a problem that you don’t know how to solve.
So I think to answer your question—actually answer it—the frustration, that flare that you get...
Yeah, maybe I need to listen to Tony Robbins, because it is so frustrating. But then you have to sit there and take yourself out of it.
I think it was Warren Buffett, actually, that said, “If you stop reacting emotionally and start reacting logically, you can do anything.”
So for me, when these super frustrating things happen, I just take—like you said—two minutes, 25 seconds, and just go, “Okay, how are we going to solve it? Let’s just go.”
Because I don’t even allow myself to feel the frustration anymore. It’s just pointless as an entrepreneur. Not even going to feel it. I mean—you can, some days you’ll feel it 20 times a day. But if you sit there and wallow in that feeling, you’ll get nothing done.

Susan Sly 45:08
No—especially with, you know, the conversation around raising money. You’re going to have VCs. They often don’t reject you outright. We’ve talked about this on the show.
They send you like, “Oh, you know, it’s just not a fit with our thesis,” or, you know, whatever they say—a bunch of stuff.
Anyway. That piece around—you have to come back really quickly. And I think even the strategies you gave—those are also huge. Like, to be able to do that.
My final question for you—with regard to Zeya—walk us through that customer experience. And for everyone listening, we’ll put a link to purchase in the show notes. The different scents—talk about the product.

Aimee LeMaire 46:02
Sure, yeah. So we launched with two colors for the diffuser. We did an antique white—we actually have one, if you guys are watching—yeah, antique white, it's like a floppy [disk], pretty. And you can mount it. So that's the thing—it’s dripless. You can put it underneath the kitchen cabinet, or a coffee table, or somewhere you want to hide it if it's not your style.
So we launched with four scents, and they were basically designed in a way that—you probably won’t like all of them—but you’ll definitely find at least one that you like or love. And they’re all designed to be used in harmony, and they’re designed to be used in stages of life.
So we have:
Welcome
Conversation
Third Date Vibes
Epilogue

So it’s all meant to be action-oriented, right? Like, you want people to feel happy in your house—you want to set the mood for a party—you put in Conversation.
And then the customer—generally, what we’re seeing—is they’ll buy the Sampler Set, which comes with one diffuser and all four scents. They’ll try what they like, and then they tend to add in a few more diffusers, and then the scent that they like—they’ll order a bunch of cards.
And then I want to start doing recipes for people—like scent-scaping recipes. Actually, it’s on my list to start having our team create. Because the idea is to allow people to set their home with their scentscape in a way that supports their wellness goals.
So, like, if it’s productivity, put Epilogue in the bedroom to help you sleep, put Conversation in your office to help you concentrate.
Yeah—so that’s the goal with the product. And I think that’s the way that customers are using it.

Susan Sly 47:45
Yeah—I already think there’s a friend of mine who definitely gets to experience Third Date Vibes. That’s so perfect. She’s doing a lot of dating now, which is fun.
And my vision—my favorite thing to do in the morning, every morning—I’ve never said this on the show, so everyone gets to experience this—I sage my house.
Okay, so I order California sage, I sage my house. I love the smell of sage. It’s very calming to me.
And I’m like, okay—after I do that, pray, meditate, drink my coffee, exercise—I’m ready to go.
So I don’t know, my vision is... RTG, like, Ready to Go. I don’t know what that scent is.

Susan Sly 48:24
What is RTG? Let's go! Let’s make money, let’s change lives—let’s RTG it. So, yes—one called Delusional, right? I think entrepreneurs—
Well Aimee, it’s been amazing to get to know you. And thank you for being on the show.
Everyone listening, we want to hear comments, give a shout out on social, order your Zeya—I can’t believe the price point. It’s amazing.
And Aimee, I’m excited to do Pilates, sister. So let’s go.

Aimee LeMaire 48:58
Right. Thank you so much for having me.

Susan Sly 49:01
Absolutely. To everyone listening—just want to say, God bless, go rock your day, check out previous episodes, and I will see you in the next episode of Raw and Real Entrepreneurship®.

Voiceover 49:14
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This transcript has been generated using AI technology. There may be errors or discrepancies in the text. The opinions expressed by the guests on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the show or its hosts.