COLD OPEN

JOELLE FLYNN 00:03
Why isn't there something like my lipstick, but for my teeth?

ZAK CASSADY-DORION
Welcome to the DTC Revenue Rocket Podcast. Today I'm joined by Joelle Flynn.

JOELLE FLYNN
We sold out in four minutes. Our backup plan worked.

JOELLE FLYNN
We did. We got a deal. We got a deal with Robert. A $250,000 deal.

JOELLE FLYNN
It's the best and the worst thing that can happen to your business at the same time.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION
Any metrics that ended up being really important?

JOELLE FLYNN
Customer acquisition cost.

JOELLE FLYNN
So women have been innovating since before we had a say in democracy, but 217 years later we're only at 4%.

JOELLE FLYNN
Your network is your net worth. Period, end of story.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 00:40
One habit first-time founders should kill tomorrow.

JOELLE FLYNN
It has to be perfect before it comes to market.

JOELLE FLYNN
Come pull up a seat by the fire.

EPISODE

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 00:59
Welcome to the DTC Revenue Rocket Podcast. Today I'm joined by Joelle Flynn. Joelle, welcome to the show.

JOELLE FLYNN 01:04
Thank you, Zak. It is so good to see you again. We won't talk about how many years have passed since we've been on camera together, but in my mind it's been like a day.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 01:15
That's what it feels like. Joelle, I'm super excited to have you on, because since the last time we were talking, you've done so much, and it's all really exciting stuff — from FunkkOFF! to Shark Tank to FIRE. I want to get into all that, but before we dive in, can you give a little background on yourself?

JOELLE FLYNN 01:35
I call it speed dating, Zak, but we can do that. The easiest, in three seconds or less: I'm a serial entrepreneur, truly from day one. People ask, "When did you start being an entrepreneur?" and I can't remember not being one. From literally the lemonade stand, to selling flip-flops, to getting my first full-time job at age fourteen and a half in a clothing store. I paid my way through college.
I graduated from the University of Delaware with an economics degree and was the youngest stockbroker hired at the time, at age 22, in 1994. I trained for Bank of America — it was NationsBank at the time — and I actually trained in Tower 2 in '94, not knowing what was going to happen there. It was the '90s, money grew on trees in the dot-com era, and I managed about $350 million in assets in the DC area for high-net-worth clients. They were all starting these dot-coms, and I was like, "What am I doing?"
So I walked away from my book of business and started a fintech. We tried to automate the mortgage loan buying process online for a couple of years, and I sold that company to a company that went under, because 2001 was fun. Then I moved to Northern California, invented a little product, got on Shark Tank, sold my company, and started FIRE. There's the speed dating. Voilà. And somehow, Zak, I'm still just 22.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 02:59
You look like you're still 22. I don't know how you've done all of that, but it's amazing. I think we could choose any one piece of that and talk for a whole hour. But I want to start with FunkkOFF!. Tell me a little bit about what FunkkOFF! is.

JOELLE FLYNN 03:19
First of all, it's a great name. Second of all, it's trademarked three times over. We Catholic school girls, I always say, like to drink and curse. But it was around drinking. When I moved to Northern California in 2009, I lived in a town called Tiburon, about thirty, forty minutes from Napa. So every weekend I would go taste wines and bounce around from winery to winery.
I love red and white wine, but red wines always stain my teeth purple. You know those people, Zak, where you look at them and wonder, "Do they even know their teeth are a horrible dark purple?" They're not aware. But I am very much in favor of my white teeth. So I would carry around a full toothbrush and toothpaste with me. Every winery I went to, I went to the bathroom, got the purple funk off my teeth, put my lipstick on, and went to the next winery.
I was at Opus One — I had to remember where it was back in the day — and I was in their bathroom putting my lipstick on, and it was truly the aha moment: why isn't there something like my lipstick, but for my teeth? So I thought, "Well, I'm going to figure this out." As a serial entrepreneur, I'm always trying to find a solution that hasn't been thought of before. That was in 2010. And I still have my prototype, which was not shown on Shark Tank. It's right in front of me, if you want to see it.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 04:44
Yeah, let's see it. I'd love to see it.

JOELLE FLYNN 04:48
I know guys don't carry purses, but as far as purses go, I'm one of the big-purse people. I find shoes and the kitchen sink in there. That's why I wanted something so compact. This was the original prototype: a ChapStick container with the round spinning toothbrush head that I yanked off my electric toothbrush. And I was like, "That looks pretty good." I knew I could get some extra gel in there, and I knew I wanted it square, because the round shape would twist in the water.
So, twelve patents later, here's the finished product: the all-in-one toothbrush and toothpaste that's reusable thirty times. Vegan, no fluoride, you can swallow it on the go, just like your lipstick. That's "I See Z," which we can get into with the book. I knew what I wanted FunkkOFF! to be. I knew I wanted it to be like my lipstick: reusable, eco-friendly, something I would use. There are real bristles here. You twist it up, the gel comes out, and the real bristles get the purple funk off your teeth. The cap is aerated with three stars, which also represent my three children. And there's a little mirror on the bottom. So I knew what I wanted, but from idea to getting it there was a long road, for sure.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 05:59
I love that. And you're going to love this: five, six years ago you sent me a bunch of FunkkOFF! cups, and my kids still use those cups all the time.

JOELLE FLYNN 06:12
The white ones, or the black ones?

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 06:13
The black ones with white lettering.

JOELLE FLYNN 06:13
Yes! I actually still drink my coffee out of them. I'm glad that's still around. Those were our giveaways when we did our Kickstarter, which was also a fun learning curve — trying to deliver this product in May of 2020, when our first production was supposed to come in and everybody was covering up their mouths and not eating or drinking. That was a fun hurdle. But I'm glad you still have the cups. That makes me happy.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 06:38
Something else you said that I can relate to and love is the three stars on top representing your three kids. ECD, the name of my agency, is the first initials of my wife and my kids.

JOELLE FLYNN 06:52
I love that. That makes me so happy. Make sure your wife is happy every day. Happy wife, happy life.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 06:57
That is very true. We just got back from our anniversary trip, so that was a good time.

JOELLE FLYNN 07:01
Awesome. Well, happy anniversary.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 07:12
Thank you. Okay, so you're launching FunkkOFF!. You're going into the first big run, and all of a sudden it's May of 2020. COVID is in full swing. I'm sure you had issues with production. That must have been some stress.

JOELLE FLYNN 07:26
I know this is being recorded — it was a cluster-F, for sure. We wanted to raise — and I'm putting my little threes in there, and there's a reason for that — $33,300 on Kickstarter, which we successfully did. For those that don't know, Kickstarter is a crowdfunding site where the average Joe or Jolene can come and back your product, which basically funded the first manufacturing run.
So December, January, February, March, we were raising all this money, asking friends and family, and we said, "Yes, we're going to deliver your product along with your cups and mugs" — which you got — in May of 2020. And as May of 2020 came, I don't know if you could script a worse time in the universe to launch a product for your teeth. I don't think you saw one set of teeth out in public for the next year. So I was like, "What are we doing?"
And of course the supply chain was all messed up. We had to test the gel on the product, and we had to FedEx it back and forth from our formulator in Utah instead of being able to go there and test it in one day. So everything was super delayed. Everybody experienced it, of course. One piece of the product, the brush head, gets made in China, because there's just no facility for me to make it here, but everything else was done in the US. Everything was a logistical nightmare. It didn't actually launch to market until July of 2021.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 09:07
It's amazing. Even though it was a long time ago, I remember pieces of that, because that's about when we were working together.

JOELLE FLYNN 09:13
Which was a great experience, by the way. Before we turned the camera on, I said it, and I'll say it again: it was such a pleasure working with you and your team. You guys were always so forward-thinking, always, "No problem, we can do that," always even-keeled when we were asking the most ridiculous asks of you. It was a joy working with you.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 09:36
Thank you. The feeling was mutual. So you launched the first product — you said June of 2021. Is that when you first started shipping?

JOELLE FLYNN 09:45
It was July of 2021. My sign is Cancer, and my business partner, who I brought in in year nine, is a Cancer as well, so we wanted it to be a Cancer baby. July 2nd of 2021.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 09:57
I like it. So you persevered through launching a DTC, teeth-focused product during COVID mask days, which is just amazing. Then you had some great growth, and then you got on Shark Tank.
How did you get on Shark Tank? The people listening to this podcast are a lot of DTC founders and operators, so Shark Tank is something I'm sure some of them have been on. As an agency owner, I've worked with some companies who have been on Shark Tank, but I've never really dug into it, so I'd love to dig in a little bit. How did you first apply, how did you get on, and what did you feel when they said yes? Tell me all of it.

JOELLE FLYNN 10:41
Thank you. I'm still giddy about it. For those watching, I actually have one of my attempts here. I applied twice. We're on season nineteen of Shark Tank now, I think, and they air September through May — twenty-two episodes and about forty-five companies per season. So do the math for eighteen years. That's a lot of companies.
I applied in year four. I think I had filed one of my patents then, but I just had patent drawings, and I videoed in. I sent a bottle of wine to Sony Studios. I tried everything. I sent my video in and had one call back from a casting agent, but nothing went from there. Then in season ten, there was an open casting call in San Diego, which is where I got this. It was International Women's Day at the same time, and my two girls were sick from school that day, so they came down with me. I had more patents and more prototypes, and I did that walk-on. I was number 395 out of 600 people that got wristbands, so I pitched at about 11:59 at night. Didn't hear anything.
That was season ten. Then I got a call back from one of the casting agents to apply for season fourteen. So we were season fourteen, episode fourteen. We filmed in July of 2022. And I am still ridiculously obsessed with Shark Tank — I've watched every episode a gazillion times. I think it's the most beautiful and needed stage for entrepreneurs. For me, it's the epicenter of success, because it puts you on a level playing field — for us, with Colgate and Crest. It immediately made us global and immediately let us tell our story. It gets re-aired fifteen, twenty times a year, so it's constantly great for business.
Just getting on that stage was such a surreal moment for me, and something I truly worked hard for. I manifested it, visualized it, saw it. So I was excited. On the other hand — and if she were on, she would tell you — Sonia had never watched Shark Tank once. So that's what we were dealing with. All this excitement, and she's like, "Is it real? Is it real?" I'm like, "Yes, it's real." But I was super stoked.
They film in July — they just filmed this next season this July. And getting the deal or not getting the deal, even if you get a deal, you're not guaranteed to air. So that was a whole other hurdle to overcome: how much notice they give you, inventory, all that stuff.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 13:12
Okay, so they film it in the summer and then show the episodes during the season. But whether you get a deal or not, you don't know if you're going to air. How much prep time do you get before it airs?

JOELLE FLYNN 13:26
Take a guess on that, Zak.
Shark Tank airs every Friday night, and they give you three weeks. In inventory time, for me to pull a PO — a purchase order — today, to get all of the pieces together, the formulator, the gel, the components, to get it assembled, packaged, put in my 3PL, and ready to sell on my website, it's a twelve-week window.
So either we put a million dollars into inventory and we don't air, which would be a long time to sell that million dollars of inventory, or we know we're going to sell out, so let's have a backup plan. We did plan B — and we sold out in four minutes. Our backup plan worked, and that was to take pre-orders.
Let's just say we sold a hundred orders total on sellout day — there were more than that, but say a hundred. I would say twenty of them were inventory we had, and eighty of them were basically customers buying their inventory, for us to deliver to them in May. And they were happy to do so. We told them there was a three-month wait. So we captured three times what we had in inventory, just in pre-orders, by having our website ready to turn on.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 14:37
That's like a massive Kickstarter, in essence — a massive pre-order for the products.

JOELLE FLYNN 14:42
And we gave a discount to wait. They knew they were waiting, and they were patiently waiting. They were all wonderful customers. A lot of them were global and elsewhere, but we gave them a nice discount for the wait, and they basically funded their own inventory, which was the best way to capture the sale.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 14:59
And how big of an impact does it have on the Shark Tank effect if you get funded versus if you don't? Does it really matter?

JOELLE FLYNN 15:07
Of course it does. You always have that person who sees you on Shark Tank and just wants to try the product, whether you got a deal or not. And sometimes, if you didn't get the deal and it was a great product, people will want to go support you as well. But for me, from a business standpoint, my goal — my Z — was to get on that stage and get a deal on Shark Tank, verbally. Because no matter what happens from that point, you can forever say with your brand, "I got a deal on Shark Tank," and that carries a lot of weight. You've proven yourself on stage, and one of the best investors out there wants to fund you. I don't know what other kind of free marketing nod you can get like that.
For those that haven't watched it, you should go on YouTube. It's two K's, two F's — FunkkOFF!. It was the most unique ending I've ever seen in all the episodes I've watched.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 16:03
I love it. And for anyone who hasn't seen the episode: did you get a deal?

JOELLE FLYNN 16:09
We did. We got a deal with Robert. A $250,000 deal.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 16:14
And how much of the negotiation happened on set, and how much happens afterward and gets finalized later?

JOELLE FLYNN 16:20
There's a lovely legal disclaimer we signed covering all the things we can and can't talk about with Shark Tank. But we did shake on the deal on stage. As you see in the episode — I don't want to spoil it for those who haven't watched it, but it's been three years, so come on — we got no's from all five, and we had our backs turned, walking off the stage. I thought our deal was done.
Before we went on, we were very clear on who answers which question, because you don't want someone talking over somebody when the sharks are coming in. You want to be very respectful. So I had the margin question, Sonia had another question, and I had the counter. We went in knowing we were going to counter if there was a deal. Period, end of story. I'm the numbers girl, so I'm calculating. But when your back is turned and you think you're done, and then he pulls you back in, my brain shut off. Sonia is physically behind me, and now I see him, and he's going to make an offer, and all I'm doing is crunching numbers in my head while trying to read the room. Then some things went on. It's an interesting episode. But I would do it a hundred times over.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 17:29
Very cool. I'm sure. So what happened after the launch? You sold out in four minutes, you did back orders for three months. Talk me through the next couple of years of FunkkOFF!.

JOELLE FLYNN 17:43
Oh my gosh. You get into what they call the Shark Tank bubble, and it really is one. I don't want to say "worst," but it's the best and the worst thing that can happen to your business at the same time — the best being 90% of it. We must have had two thousand emails sent to us, just people asking questions. It was just the two of us trying to manage customer service, the new orders, the press — press releases, people wanting interviews, podcasts. Everyone wants to write your book, or sell your product, or they have an idea for you. You try to stay on top of that wave, because that first year is so crucial for touching base with your customers, retaining your customers, and getting your message out. You're getting your fifteen minutes of fame. You're taking every interview, trying to get on Good Morning America. You want to have this magic carpet ride.
And while it's wonderful, the flip side is that all of it distracts you from the business at hand. If you didn't have that, you could focus on your business — like I can focus on FIRE right now. It's different when you're getting pulled in every direction: do this interview, do this, boom, boom, boom. And you do it all, because that's why you go on Shark Tank. But it was a lot to juggle.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 19:02
Any advice for founders looking to go on Shark Tank? As far as how to handle it after the fact — anything you would have done differently, or how did you prioritize?

JOELLE FLYNN 19:16
A lot of questions, Zak. Here's this: we were in there for a little over an hour, and only eight minutes aired. I'm very type-A, and extroverted. I was most worried about spilling my glass of wine walking in. I love being on that stage. I love a debate, I love a question I don't know is coming. So I loved it all.
My advice for anyone going on that stage — and you know me well enough — I was a little guarded, because it is a reality show, and it's very real. I firmly believe the sharks do not know what is coming in whatsoever. They really want their natural reaction to the business, which makes the show so beautiful. And they want you to be animated, over the top. Well, 99% of my life I've been in investor meetings, which are very serious. You're talking your numbers, you're talking your business. So I wanted to be taken seriously, but I also wanted to be likable and animated. It's a fine line in how you answer the questions.
Looking back, what I would have done differently is just be one hundred percent authentically me — goofy, probably laughing and snorting at the same time. You put fifteen cameras in front of you, and it's something that will be memorialized forever, and you don't know which scenes they're going to cut of you talking or not talking. I just wish I hadn't looked at the cameras and was just authentically me. But everybody has regrets about something. We got a deal, so whatever Sonia and I said worked. I loved it. It's been a great community.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 21:01
Sorry, what's that?

JOELLE FLYNN 21:05
I said it's been a great community. We Shark Tankers have a private Facebook group. It's invite-only, no sharks are in there, but anybody who's ever aired in all these seasons can be invited in by another Shark Tanker who's aired, whether or not they got a deal. It's been a great community for getting together and asking for resources, because only when you go through it will you ever experience the Shark Tank effect.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 21:34
Such an amazing experience that so many DTC founders dream about. And the fact that you did it, you got funded — that's amazing. And the aftermath was very successful. So after everything aired and you got the funding, you must have had everyone reaching out to you: wineries, coffee shops. Then you're trying to decide where to put your inventory. Do you put it on your website? On Amazon? In retail stores? So my first question is: how did you decide which channels to put your product behind? And the second question is: what channel drove the most growth?

JOELLE FLYNN 22:18
It's such a great question. Anybody with a CPG product, a physical product in their hands, has the same struggle, I believe. And I think most of us attack it by trying all channels, because you always think this channel's going to be your best. I look at the website as one channel. My website customer is very different from my Instagram customer, who is very different from my TikTok customer. Looking back, we tried all channels, and it isn't until trial and error that you see, "Well, that one is outperforming that one." I never would have known.
The one regret is that I wish I had strong-armed a little more and doubled down on TikTok back in the day. We were more focused on Instagram and Facebook, which was a great channel for us, for sure, for our demographic of women drinking red wine. But TikTok Shop was just coming in and exploding back then, right after the pandemic, and I wish we had gone more there, because that is our customer. FunkkOFF! is a funny name. It's a tongue-in-cheek name. So each channel, you have to market to differently. You just do.
The Amazon channel — I mean, I live on Amazon — that's usually a one-time buyer. They'll try anything under $25. And we don't get their customer information, so we can't really retarget them. Our website customers are our most loyal. We're really intimate with them, and we see our repeats. Shopify can give us all that information. But that wasn't our strongest channel, except when there was a buy-one-get-one-free or something like that. I would say above all the channels, Amazon was our solid best seller. Every time we re-aired, it would sell out there first, and then people would come to our website. Which is what I would do, too — I buy everything on Amazon because it's just easy. What was the second question? I'm old, I get it.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 24:24
I think you got it. And maybe you're testing me, because I'm old and I can't remember what the second part of the question was.

JOELLE FLYNN 24:29
I might. Who's interviewing whom, Zak? You never know.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 24:32
All right, so Amazon and the website. I'm wondering about subscriptions. Did you have subscriptions on both Amazon and the website?

JOELLE FLYNN 24:40
We did. It wasn't a needle mover for us. The bundles were — three-packs, six-packs, where people could hand them out, or put one in the car, one in their desk at work. So the bundles did that, and subscription was not as strong for us as we thought it would be.
But then the wholesale division popped up, which was great. That became almost thirty percent of our sales — going to the Dallas Market Center, AmericasMart Atlanta, NY NOW, selling to boutiques and drugstores. Those customers buy big and they repeat big, and those are the relationships you really want to cultivate. We were in over two hundred stores, and they would place big reorders — four thousand dollars of a twenty-two-dollar item for Christmas, because they're stocking up their stores. I was head of the wholesale division. I really cultivated those relationships, and I'm still friends with a lot of them today, which is great. But wholesale is a whole other animal, I'll tell you.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 25:43
In our agency, a lot of our clients do wholesale, and that's one side of their business we don't touch, because I feel like if you, as an agency, try to do everything, you do most stuff okay. That's one thing that's just a different beast. We hand that off to partners.

JOELLE FLYNN 26:02
What are you doubling down on at your agency? I know it depends on the brand, but what channel are you loving?

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 26:08
Klaviyo. We love Klaviyo for email and SMS, and Klaviyo has rolled out some amazing products, with their customer agent and their marketing analytics. They've also launched a new product, Composer, which in six months, twelve months, is going to be even more amazing. It's going to do a lot of the work that operators do now — a lot of the execution — which is exciting to me, because it's going to free up people's time to do higher-level strategy. So there's some cool stuff happening.

JOELLE FLYNN 26:42
I never know if it's "Klay-vee-oh" or "Clah-vee-oh." It's like tomato, tomato.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 26:51
It is Klaviyo. They do bits on it at different industry events — "How do you pronounce Klaviyo?" And I should know this, but it's something about the founders being rock climbers, and Klaviyo being an ode to some rock-climbing apparatus. Or so I've heard. Maybe that's —
So when was the first time you knew it was time to sell, or that you wanted to sell?

JOELLE FLYNN 27:17
For me, my Z was getting on that Shark Tank stage and getting the idea in my head out into the world. People have ideas — that's why we have entrepreneurs — but I wanted to have it physically available, actually being sold on Amazon and in stores, and to get a deal on Shark Tank. And as the years went on from airing on Shark Tank in February of 2023, I felt like I had done everything I could for her in my capacity. I felt like I had successfully surpassed what I set out to do.
It was just time for her. She was ready to go off to college. You birth this idea, you go through some high school years of Shark Tank and hormones, and then she was ready to go off to college, and we were ready to have another firm with bigger capabilities, deeper pockets, and farther reach do things with her that we couldn't. You just feel like it's time. They're doing a great job — it's a great firm in New York — and it was the best decision. It's kind of like watching her settle in at college and have fun. I felt like I had done everything personally that I wanted to do with her, and more. And my creative, entrepreneurial juices were starting to percolate. I'm like, "What else can I do? What else can I do?"

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 28:50
I can understand that. So when did the sale take place?

JOELLE FLYNN 28:56
August of 2025, so just a year ago.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 28:58
Right. And did you stay involved after the sale?

JOELLE FLYNN 29:02
I'm on the board still. I stepped aside as co-CEO in December of 2025 and let Sonia manage the day-to-day. I was working on some other things. Then the new owners stepped in and started doing the day-to-day, and the transition was very smooth. We're still in touch. They ask us questions on things. As far as the day-to-day, I'm not part of it, of course, with the sale and the transition, but I'm on the board and still a majority stockholder and all that good stuff.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 29:35
That sounds ideal, right? Your ideas were percolating, you'd hit your Z a while before that, and you wanted to go on and do the next thing.

JOELLE FLYNN 29:46
Yes. Entrepreneurs don't sit still. There's no sitting still. But you kind of know when it's time. In the weirdest comparison, it's kind of like a relationship. You're just like, "Okay, I think we're good here. I think we've done everything we need to do here."

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 30:00
There is not.

MID-ROLL

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EPISODE (CONTINUED)

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 30:15
Is there any advice you'd give founders on things they can start doing now to prepare for the due diligence period two or three years from now?

JOELLE FLYNN 30:25
That's such a great question. Looking back, everything is feedback on what you could have done differently. I always knew I wanted to sell eventually. I knew my exit was going to be a sale. This was not a company I wanted to hold on to for the next thirty years of my life. It was a product I wanted to get to market and get on Shark Tank. But I probably didn't think about what a data room looks like when somebody wants to come buy your company. Even as a stockbroker, I saw a lot of M&A deals, but I was never really involved in those discussions, other than matching up who's going to sell and who's going to buy.
So: take copious notes. Have a great bookkeeper. Have a great accountant. Make sure all of your agreements, your NDAs, are signed. They're going to say, "Show me your NDA. Can your manufacturer steal your idea?" So really cross your T's and dot your I's on financials and contracts, because they're going to want to see them. And when you can't pull it up — "I have a contract, but where is it? Shoot, I didn't get that signed."

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 31:33
Yes. I want to double down on that. As an entrepreneur, you want to keep moving. You can send contracts out, and the other person may not sign but continue moving forward, and you can ignore that. But that's one of the things that can come back and bite you down the road.

JOELLE FLYNN 31:55
Yep. And "Well, he said he was going to do it" doesn't really help.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 31:59
Any metrics that ended up being really important that you didn't think were going to be a highlight? Talk to me about that a little bit.

JOELLE FLYNN 32:07
Customer acquisition cost. It's different for each platform.
Amazon has their FBA fees. We tried three times to get on QVC, but we kept selling out of inventory — our re-airs on CNBC would take that inventory, and then we had to push off QVC. And then there are their buybacks, their returns. What am I actually making after I sell one unit on Amazon, versus one unit on my website, versus acquiring that customer through Meta ads or Facebook ads? It's about really honing in on not just what's selling the most — it could be Amazon selling the most, but that was one of our worst margins. Our website was the best place to be, but you can't force people to buy where they don't want to buy. So really focus on the unit cost: what does it cost me to sell on this platform, and where should we focus our ads?

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 33:00
That's great. So not just customer acquisition cost, but customer acquisition cost by channel — and then probably also, within the website, what it is on Meta versus Google versus TikTok. All of those specifics, they want to know.

JOELLE FLYNN 33:15
Yep. And I should have focused on that even more. You just want to sell wherever it's selling: "Put more inventory on Amazon, it's selling over there." But when you really break it down to what we see in our bank account after one unit is sold — it's a juggling act. Amazon changes their rules, then TikTok changes their rules. It's a full-time job just keeping up with the channels. But you have to, because each channel opens you up to a different customer.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 33:50
And that goes back to attribution, too. If we're talking about the website, attribution is really tough, because a customer may touch five or ten of your marketing channels before they make a purchase. Any suggestions on how to actually get good numbers for your customer acquisition cost?

JOELLE FLYNN 34:07
Have the right partners who can tell you that information, because you can't do it all yourself. And for Shark Tank specifically, people want to see the person who was on Shark Tank. They want to talk to that person. It's very different from going into Home Depot and seeing a great grill, Zak, that you want for Father's Day. People want that Shark Tank person who was on the stage. So that's where my focus was. I knew that was the bread and butter of solidifying and keeping customers: talking to that wholesale account, having a Zoom call with their staff, introducing myself, and showing them how it works. That's what I love to do. But someone else needs to help manage the rest. Almost every channel needs its own manager — I hate to say that. They're very different channels.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 34:59
They are very different channels. I want to reiterate that one of the biggest things metrics-wise that buyers had questions about when you were looking to sell was customer acquisition cost by channel. I think that's great advice for founders and operators regardless of whether they're looking to sell: figure out your customer acquisition cost by channel, so you know which channel to double down on and which one you need to pull back on.

JOELLE FLYNN 35:28
And buyers are going to want to know that, because they don't want to waste time going down the wrong channel when you just had three years of experience trying it. And of course margins, EBITDA, and all that good stuff. But everything's social these days.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 35:41
Sorry, what's that?

JOELLE FLYNN 35:45
Everything's social these days. You can't say "social media" without "CPG." They're one and the same. It's influencer-driven, video-driven, content-driven. It's unlike any other product out there. So you've got to know your channels. All right, I'll shut up.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 36:01
No, this is very true, and I think it's really important to stress. We work with bigger clients now, but in our earlier days we worked with smaller companies, and one of the big differences I see is that when companies are smaller, they don't think about this at all. It's just about getting the sale, and I get it. But sometimes they put more emphasis on getting sales in a channel that might not even be profitable. With bigger companies — not everything is always better, surprisingly — but one thing you do see is that they have a better idea of customer acquisition cost by channel, so they know what's profitable. And they know their costs as well.

JOELLE FLYNN 36:47
And that's who buys. Big companies buy smaller companies. That's why I say we should have looked at that more often. You just tied it all together, because they know that very well.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 36:59
Right. So, August 2025, you sold. By the way, I don't know if I said this, but congratulations on all of that, because it's just so freaking awesome.

JOELLE FLYNN 37:09
Thank you. We got our asking price. The terms — the lawyers fought through everything, and we didn't get exactly what we wanted on the terms, but we got the number.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 37:24
That's awesome. And how involved was the shark from Shark Tank throughout the process? I don't know how much you can share about that. Okay — next question.

JOELLE FLYNN 37:36
We got her sold. How's that?

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 37:38
So, August 2025, and about a year has passed. You have not been sitting still by any means. In fact, it's like you're just getting started.

JOELLE FLYNN 37:45
I honestly feel like I'm just getting started, and that's a wonderful thing to say, Zak. I appreciate you, because I feel like I am. It's almost like 2010 again for me: "Okay, what do I want this to look like? What can I do with this?" I see my Z with my new venture. Selling FunkkOFF! was a big chapter. Fifteen years of your life is a big chapter — going through all the patenting and the trademarking. I got really involved on the patent side of things. A lot of people just pay their patent attorney to go file it, but I was really granular in the process, which is part of what I'm building with FIRE.
I was on the advisory board for a nonprofit called the UIA, which stands for the United Inventors Association. It's the largest nonprofit in the US for inventors, with about 140,000 members, so it's very large. I was on the advisory board for several years. Carmine Denisco is the president, and he's become a very good friend of mine. I don't know why I didn't look earlier, but last fall I said, "Carmine, you have no women on your board. I've got twelve patents." And he said, "Done." He called a board meeting, boom, and I was on.
And he asked me, as a friend, "So now what do you want to do?" That was the question: I need to do something with my forty years of entrepreneurialism, all of the hurdles. What do I want to change? What's my legacy? What did I need that wasn't built? That's where I started building FIRE — for two needles I really want to move for the female founder of a CPG product. This past year I've been cultivating that. And being on the board of the UIA has brought me to a lot of the conventions where they get booth space for their inventors, like the PGA Show and the National Hardware Show.
I also love pitching and helping out entrepreneurial students at the collegiate level. I'm very involved at the University of Delaware, my alma mater, and their entrepreneurial society, and at LMU as well. I just had a webinar this morning with Rowan University, talking to their students. Wherever there's an opportunity to speak, educate, and give back, I'll do it. That's where you see me all over LinkedIn, because that feeds my soul. But FIRE, for me, is my second-half-of-life legacy: to really help elevate the next set of female founders and inventors.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 40:27
I love it. So what does FIRE stand for?

JOELLE FLYNN 40:31
You know I love a good name, Zak. FIRE is for the two needles I want to move: the 4% needle and the 1.1% needle. The 4% needle: over the last decade, only 4% of patents have been issued to female inventors. So the "FI" in FIRE stands for Female Inventors. And I love asking this question: what year do you think the first patent was issued to a female inventor?

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 41:00
Well, I've seen this on your website, so I don't want to —

JOELLE FLYNN 41:03
Well, boo. Okay. But do you remember it?

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 41:07
1826? 1815?

JOELLE FLYNN 41:08
1809. You're good. You did do your research. I was invited to speak in Congress in March, and a gentleman gave me that statistic. Yes, 1809 was the first time a patent was issued to a female inventor, for a straw hat weave — a hundred years before we could even vote. So women have been innovating since before we had a say in democracy, but 217 years later we're only at 4%. FI stands for Female Inventors, and I want to move that needle toward 50%. I have two daughters and a son. I want everyone equally represented.
Then there's the 1.1% funding gap, which is just abominable, because it's actually gone down. In venture capital, only 1.1% of funding goes to female-founded companies, and we represent 48% of the companies in the United States. And if you gave us an investment dollar, Zak, versus a male-founded company, we returned 78 cents and they returned 31 cents on the dollar. So we're returning more than 2x, but we're only getting 1.1% of funding — and that went down from 1.9% the year before. So "RE" is for Rising Entrepreneurs. FIRE is Female Inventors and Rising Entrepreneurs.
You can join it for free. It's the ecosystem that I needed — from "I have an idea" all the way through to exit. That whole wheel: prototyping, CAD, sourcing. What's a 3PL? How do I get on TikTok? I need a media manager, I need a PR agent, I need funding. Do I do a convertible note? Do I do a SAFE note? Everything around the entire cycle to exit. I've cultivated some wonderful relationships with experts along the way.
How FIRE's ecosystem is different from other female entrepreneur groups — and every one serves its purpose; I've been in a lot of them — is that it's a true, full ecosystem for female-owned and -operated, physical-product-based businesses. That's where I can lend my expertise. I love AI, I use it, but it's not my expertise. It's about really helping them get through their entire business cycle, wherever they are in their product cycle. I'm only allowing two hundred women in. I want to keep it very intimate. I'll be interviewing every single female founder to make sure they are who they say they are and that they can contribute to the network and the members.
One thing that's pretty standard across any female entrepreneur you come across — and I'll challenge you to find one who doesn't say this — is: "We feel like we're doing it alone." That's how I built FunkkOFF!. At night, after my kids went to bed, I was at my computer trying to figure out how to source something or how to get a prototype made. When you have a trusted community of experts who can say, "I've done that, here's who you call. Go call here. Don't do that conference, do this one," it really helps elevate, motivate, and push along CPG product companies.
On top of that, instead of going to all of the conferences that cost a lot of money — to see that one speaker, I've got to get a hotel room, flights, tickets — I'm bringing the conference to you: in your room, in your chair, at your desk. Once a month we'll have summits with experts — from the USPTO, to a pitching expert, to an M&A expert — so members don't need to go anywhere.
And the last piece, which is just as important, and which makes it the full ecosystem: once a quarter we'll have pitch competitions with funding, where eight women will get money in their pockets to elevate their businesses and move them along. So it's truly everything: bringing the conference to you, the pitch competitions, networking with trusted members who are doing exactly what you're doing, just selling a different product, and trusted advisors coming in. We're all working together, but on our own products, if that makes sense.
But I have a huge vision — my Z — for FIRE. We're just launching it this month, and I'm very excited. So it's perfect timing to be talking with you.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 45:15
I love it, and congratulations. That is something that is very, very much needed. Those numbers are wild. The VC funding numbers surprised me. They shouldn't, but they do. The numbers that don't surprise me are that women entrepreneurs produce much larger returns than male entrepreneurs.

JOELLE FLYNN 45:37
Two times. Actually, a little over two times — two and a half times, I think.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 45:49
So with FIRE, you're creating the network out of some of the pieces you had along the way in your journey, plus a lot of the stuff you wish you'd had that would have really helped accelerate you. You're taking everything you've learned since you first started being an entrepreneur, and you're using it to empower other women entrepreneurs to shorten their learning curve and be more successful.

JOELLE FLYNN 46:21
One hundred percent. Your network is your net worth. Period, end of story. I wouldn't have gotten anywhere I've gotten, in any of the builds, if it weren't for the network — men and women lending a helping hand, lending a conversation, taking thirty minutes to educate me on something or point me in the right direction. "Shake this guy's hand, or this woman's hand over here, because they know better what you need." It's knowing who to call. Bringing that trusted network, with funding, to you at your own computer, in an affordable way — it'll help accelerate our innovators and our female founders, for sure. I can't wait. We're going to have little happy hours, too, on Fridays: pull up a chair, have a drink. What worked today? What didn't? What do you need? What's your win? Really making a community out of it.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 47:08
I love that. But if you're doing happy hours, you've got to make sure everybody has their FunkkOFF! so that if they're drinking wine, they can —

JOELLE FLYNN 47:16
Of course. Always. And speaking of what everybody has — I do have a little mascot for FIRE. Do you want to hear about it?

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 47:22
Yes.

JOELLE FLYNN 47:24
They just came in. It's the dragonfly.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 47:25
I saw that on your website. It was on the side of the website when it first loads.

JOELLE FLYNN 47:30
You really did do your research. I love you. Yes, and I'll tell you why. There's a personal story to it, and there's a business story to it. The personal story: my first cousin Kim passed away a year ago May. I had not been to her new home, and her backyard had this beautiful greenhouse full of dragonflies. One of my sisters bought me a dragonfly necklace to wear to the funeral, so I started doing research on them, because I'm an entrepreneur — I've got to learn about these dragonflies.
They're over three hundred million years old. They're older than dinosaurs. You want to talk about the most resilient creatures. They're born in water, and they stay in water until they're ready to emerge. All four of their wings move independently, and they have an almost one hundred percent kill rate, because they don't follow their prey. They anticipate where the prey is going to land — Z, Z — and then they go and get it.
I think female entrepreneurs are the most resilient creatures out there, because against all odds — we couldn't get a credit card by ourselves until the seventies, couldn't get a business loan until the eighties without our husband signing — we've been so resilient through the years. So that's why the dragonfly is there. They're just amazing creatures.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 48:47
I love that. And FIRE isn't just US-based. You were just down in Cartagena, Colombia, right?

JOELLE FLYNN 48:52
I'm going in November. I'm so excited. Being on the UIA's board, they report to a nonprofit called the IFIA — so many acronyms these days — the International Federation of Inventors' Associations. Globally, any nonprofit or for-profit serving inventors kind of reports to the IFIA, and the IFIA was created in association with the United Nations. Don't ask me how, Zak, but I got appointed by the IFIA to the Women Inventors Committee, in association with FIRE, to represent female inventors in the US. Hopefully we'll be going to the UN. My kids laugh — they're like, "The building's going to blow up when you walk in, Mom." I'm like, "I know, just let it be."
But joking aside, I have women from India with their own women inventors group reaching out to me wanting to be part of it. So it's absolutely a global initiative. And it's amazing that no matter the country, the women all want the same thing: they want equality. They want their voices heard. They want to be in the room. They want to have the conversation. They want a seat at the funding table. So yes, it's very global, and I'm very excited.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 50:13
Love that. And in Colombia in particular — at ECD, a lot of our employees are women from Colombia, and they're amazing.

JOELLE FLYNN 50:22
I can tell you just from working with this group — it's called GIMI, with LATAM and Nova LATAM, mostly based in Colombia — they're the most amazing women. They are so on it, so organized. I ask for something and it comes right back. So I'm really excited. I'll be speaking there for a bit.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 50:46
Very cool. Cartagena is also beautiful. My wife and I were down in Cartagena in March of last year, and we had a great time.

JOELLE FLYNN 50:56
Okay — offline, I need some recommendations. I think I have one free night.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 51:01
Yeah, we'll follow up. I've actually spent a decent amount of time in Colombia visiting my team. We did our full company off-site last year in Medellín.

JOELLE FLYNN 51:10
No way, that's amazing. How big is your team now, Zak?

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 51:10
Thirty-five.

JOELLE FLYNN 51:14
Congratulations to you. That's amazing.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 51:16
Thank you. It's an amazing team. The growth has been awesome. This year it feels like we've been on a rocket ship in particular.

JOELLE FLYNN 51:25
Well, they've got a great leader, so that's for sure.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 51:27
Thank you. All right, we're coming up on time, but I've got one last topic. I feel like we could do ten episodes, Joelle.

JOELLE FLYNN 51:38
We should just keep doing it. I love it.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 51:41
Side note: if you ever have any amazing women entrepreneurs in FIRE who you think would be good on the podcast — open invitation. I would love to have them on.

JOELLE FLYNN 51:52
Five steps ahead of you on that, Zak. Yes, and I know of some already. We have a waitlist going, and I know some of the women on it. And not only entrepreneurs, but inventors too — great, exciting stuff.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 52:08
Inventors — that would be awesome. I would absolutely love that. Okay, so while you're doing all of this — helping the world's women inventors and entrepreneurs, and all the other things you're doing — you're also writing a book right now, with Mangus Literary.

JOELLE FLYNN 52:15
I am, and I'm very excited. When Shark Tank happens, you have eighty-five people asking to write your book. And with AI, anybody could write their own book. But I'm not a writer — my SATs were 410 English, 780 math — so I'm not going to write my own book. But I have a story to tell, one of resilience for sure. From my mom declaring bankruptcy when I was fourteen and a half — which was like an episode of Schitt's Creek, where everything was repossessed out of our six-thousand-square-foot mansion — to the obstacles of paying my way through college.
I really want to inspire that girl: that fourteen-year-old, that teenager, that high schooler, that college girl who thinks, "Oh my gosh, if she has been through this, then I can get there. Look what I can go and accomplish." Because entrepreneurialism is not an easy road, Zak. It's a very humbling experience, especially when you feel like you're funding it all yourself.
It's called I See Z, because I see the letter Z in all of my companies and projects, including FIRE. Sometimes you start at A. How do you get to B? Well, prototype. How do you get to C? Well, you call somebody. Someone else gets you to D. With FIRE, it's still crystallizing, but the overall picture is there. So it's called I See Z, and hopefully it'll be out in the first or second quarter. We'll see. I feel like I've picked the best group to help me get it to market. Jeff and his crew are amazing.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 53:53
That's awesome. Congratulations. All right, I've got a couple of rapid-fire closing questions for you. You ready?

JOELLE FLYNN 54:01
Yeah. But before you do, I've got to put on my business hat. If you want to go to FIRE, go to jointhefire.org. Jointhefire.org. Okay, done. There.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 54:10
One habit first-time founders should kill tomorrow.

JOELLE FLYNN 54:12
"It has to be perfect before it comes to market."

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 54:15
Yes. One tool or resource you'd hand every new inventor.

JOELLE FLYNN 54:17
Inventor. I don't know if it's a resource or tool to hand them, but I would make sure that what they're inventing is something somebody actually wants to buy. Just because you think it's great, and your immediate family and friends think it's great — I've seen hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on something where, who told you that someone wants to buy it? I would never say that to them, but just make sure someone wants to buy it before you go down that road.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 54:47
So to paraphrase, one tool or resource you'd hand every new inventor: market research. Do your market research before killing yourself inventing something.

JOELLE FLYNN 54:53
One hundred percent. And the easiest way to do that is to go to Kickstarter, do a thousand-dollar campaign, and see who ends up buying it or not. The market will tell you.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 55:04
That's great. And if I were to phrase the question as one tool or resource you'd hand every new female inventor, the answer would probably be FIRE.

JOELLE FLYNN 55:20
I'm just going to say FIRE. Yes. A trusted network that you can integrate into, feed off of, learn from, and give back to, where everyone has the same common purpose: how can I help you? I take a lot of Zoom calls — "Joelle, I have a friend with a product," or "I have a friend with this idea" — and I always ask, "How can I help you?" But FIRE is where you go. Start there.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 55:46
And where do you go to learn more about FIRE?

JOELLE FLYNN 55:50
Yes, jointhefire.org. It's free to sign up as a Spark member, and the next tier up is $111 a month, or with the yearly discount it comes to $99 a month. Most women's groups are $250, $350 a month, and with this, it all comes to you: handshakes, experts, funding, and like-minded women. I wanted to make it affordable, but also have people put some skin in the game. I figure $99 a month is like a nice dinner, or a cup of coffee a day. Pull up a chair and come into FIRE. Come pull up a seat by the fire. How's that?

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 56:28
I like it. We'll make sure to have a link in the show notes, and we'll create a clip specifically about this ending, about FIRE.

JOELLE FLYNN 56:40
Thank you, Zak. It is the Year of the Fire Horse.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 56:43
The Year of the Fire Horse. All right — when's the year of the firefly?

JOELLE FLYNN 56:49
Dragonfly? I'll take any fly. I'll have to check if there is one. I would assume there would be. That's a good question. I'll get back to you on that. If not, we'll make one.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 56:57
The dragonfly, sorry. If there isn't one — maybe this will be the year of the dragonfly as well.

JOELLE FLYNN 57:04
There you go. I love it.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 57:06
Well, it was awesome having you on. It was great catching up, and you're doing some amazing stuff. Everyone who listens to this should make sure to keep their eye on what you're doing, and what you're doing next.

JOELLE FLYNN 57:19
Well, Zak, thank you so much. It's always great to catch up with you. I hope we can do this again and have some more fun. And so, watch this — ready? How can I support you right now?

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 57:31
How can you support me? Anybody who asks for a great e-commerce marketing agency, send them our way.

JOELLE FLYNN 57:37
Perfect. I would love to have you come talk to FIRE.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 57:42
I would love to do that. Even for the entrepreneurs who are just getting started, I'd love to give some advice on what to do first and when to hire an agency. What has changed is that entrepreneurs can now do a lot themselves that they needed an agency for before. So the time to hire an agency is, I think, delayed a little. That's maybe important for some of these first-time entrepreneurs to know: you don't need to dive right in and hire an agency. You can do a lot yourself.

JOELLE FLYNN 58:20
I love that. And maybe add on the do's and don'ts — the top mistakes, and what to look for in an agency. Because an agency is a big-ticket item on our P&L. That was one of our big ones. So what to look for and what to avoid. You'll be coming in and speaking — count on it.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 58:36
I love it. I would love to help your female entrepreneurs. A little side note: in a previous life, I worked for microfinance banks in Peru, helping female entrepreneurs in the microfinance space.

JOELLE FLYNN 58:58
You just earned your angel wings. Well done. The gentlemen who support FIRE, we call them Torchbearers. So you can be the first verbally, officially announced Torchbearer of FIRE.

ZAK CASSADY-DORION 59:11
I would be honored. Awesome. Well, Joelle, thanks for coming on. It was great to see you. Excited to stay in touch.

JOELLE FLYNN 59:19
Thank you so much, Zak, for the opportunity. We will definitely be in touch. And here's to a great Q4 for all of your clients.

OUTRO

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