An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

Hire people smarter than you at the tasks you want to most succeed in. Don’t be afraid of surrounding yourself with successful people. And, the corollary, don’t believe you have to do it all yourself. You will be surprised by how much of your success is the product of other people’s work.

As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Juli Lee of JULIANNA RAE.

As is the case with many successful entrepreneurs, Juli Lee of Julianna Rae started with a mission to find a solution to a common problem, to fill in a gap in the market. Asking a simple question like “Why isn’t there any (fill in the blank) in today’s market” led to a lot of research and experimentation and finally a concrete vision. Leveraging her stellar professional pedigree and leaning into her time-honored connections, Juli was able to create Julianna Rae, an instantly recognizable lingerie, sleepwear and loungewear brand for the modern woman. Julianna Rae’s Founder and Chief Designer, Juli Lee, had previously developed and delivered product for some of the industry’s major brands, including: Victoria’s Secret, Saks, Gorsuch and Nordstrom.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?

I was born in Taiwan and we moved to the US when I was still a chubby child. I grew up a stereotypical Asian child: thick glasses, a bad bowl haircut, always carrying a violin. I, of course, grew up with an older sister who was a super achiever — excellent student, National Honor Society President, French Club President, editor of the yearbook, a pianist and cellist — so well rounded she was spherical. I, on the other hand, was a little nerdy — OK, really nerdy, and either had my nose in a book, screeching on a violin, or was figuring out things like how quickly you could thaw a frozen turkey in the clothes dryer (answer: it takes a long time, the meat texture comes out terrible, and it does make the dryer very messy!) But, I did like to draw and often drew ballerinas (I was obsessed with tutus and pointe shoes!) and copied the fashion illustrations from department store ads that used to be on the 3rd and 4th pages of the Sunday paper. Still, we (my family) all thought my sister would be the creative one — she went to Stanford, and I would be the logical engineer — I went to MIT. Here it is, years later, and she is a lawyer and I’m a designer.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“You don’t get paid for being smart. You get paid for being effective”.

The first time I read this, I was dumbstruck by just how true it was (unless you’re a Jeopardy contestant), and how, time and time again, I’d seen it play out in life and in business. Since then, it has served me as a guide, reminding me that getting things done — and done well — is ultimately what’s important, not how many degrees I have or what my test scores were. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of “smart.” All else being equal, I’ll hire smart. But more often than not, all other things aren’t equal, and the other things count as much. Am I clear about what I want? How much work am I willing to put in? How can I bring other people into the mix and leverage their talents? Am I responsible, reliable and ethical? Can I stick it out for the long haul? All these count. Whether I set out to run my first 5K or launch a company. And in the end, it’s what I do (and how I do it!) that determines how successful I will be at everything.

Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

Oh my goodness — there are so many books that have had an impact on me at different periods of my life. But, that is why I am going to talk about Love in the Time of Cholera by the great Gabriel García Márquez. I am going to oversimplify and call it a great love story where the passionate “hero”, Florentino Ariza and “heroine”, Fermina Daza, fall in love but when she marries a prestigious and safe (eg, logical and predictable) man, Florentino pledges his eternal love for the death of her husband to reunite with her her — 51 years, 9 months and 4 hours. I put “hero” I quotes because Ariza doesn’t necessarily have what one would consider heroic qualities. I first read this book in my twenties and thought: a) passion is the way to go and b) persistence will get me over every speed bump. I then re-read the book ten years later and then ten years later again and what I got out of the book was completely different each time (though passion and persistence still rock!). I absolutely loved the book each time, but I had such a different take on the characters and the situation and even the title of the book. It really drove home how my own life experience had completely colored my reading and perception of the book and of course was doing the same to how I approached my own life situations and decisions. While that seems quite obvious, I realized that I also had to treat other people and my interactions with others with that same lens. This experience with this book and re-reading it several times has taught me to be more holistic when trying to solve thorny or difficult issues or at least have much more tolerance towards others when encountering angry or ill-informed people. Come to think of it, it is time for my next decade reading of this book!

By the way, having selected a book, a shout out to podcasts! I am so glad they have come into their own and they are such a great way to learn new things or catch up/go in depth on things I once read/heard about. I have so many favorites that, well, they defy the meaning of “favorite”.

Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?

Julianna Rae started with this question, as many good ideas do, from a group of us just sitting around: “Why isn’t there any fill in the blank?” In my particular case, the blank was “lingerie and sleepwear for us gals in our 30’s and 40’s” (and as it turned out, 50’s 60’s, 70’s and so on!). Having worked at Victoria’s Secret, I hadn’t thought about the question because we owned the market and sold so much — who cares if we weren’t the perfect answer for everyone. So I went shopping. Everywhere. A lot of miles put on my car.

Many good ideas are about filling a gap in the market. These days, it is much easier to find out if that gap exists — the internet will allow you to go shopping far and wide — to see if that gap is really there — whether it is a product or a service. When you start typing in the search, if others are looking for the same thing, that search or other forms of the phrase will pop up. That will tell you others are searching for the same thing. I didn’t have the luxury of a well populated/searched internet when I was starting the business (“google it” was not in our lexicon yet) so I had to do a lot of asking of friends. The next piece was to test this with disinterested parties: fellow strategy consultants and the investment community. What were the holes and was the idea good enough to fill them or compensate for them. Here’s where numbers matter and I would say be very careful about launching a good idea without a good sense of the numbers. That’s your reality check. So, in the end, it was a balance between maintaining enthusiasm and realistically beating your idea up. At some point, you just decide to go forward or not.

Once I decided to go forward, I called a lot of people to ask on the actual how-to’s to start a business. I used my alumni group, contacts that my work colleagues knew (I was lucky, I worked at a strategy consulting firm and had also worked in M&A at another large company) and called other successful entrepreneurs out of the blue. Most entrepreneurs know how hard this is to do so are happy to share war stories and give you advice. In addition, my alma mater has a great mentoring program for anyone connected to the school who wants to start a business. Many schools will have this now so that is another great resource.

Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?

For filling in a gap, these days there is the internet. But maybe this is the wrong question for a product or service that no one knows they want (Amazon, anyone?).

It would be thrilling to have such an idea and bring it to fruition. Most ideas — even great ideas — exist within a framework where someone has done something similar before. So, I’d say put that aside; it’s irrelevant. But what IS important is to not think that just because you have an idea that it’s a good idea. You have to turn the telescope around. Start with who you think wants what you have to offer, or (as anyone would tell you) what need or desire is being met that isn’t now being met fully. I created a line of apparel…nothing new in that! But what I recognized (with instigating help from enquiring friends) is that back in 2004, our segment had only one recognizable brand with enormous market share. And that brand told a very specific story, that spoke to a very specific demographic. So, I identified the segment(s) that weren’t being served and the needs that weren’t being met. Interestingly, it wasn’t just a product gap, it was the messaging gap that was most glaring — and it’s taken almost two decades but that messaging gap has become well recognized. Today’s women wanted to purchase sleepwear and lingerie for their comfort and their satisfaction, and back then, the primary message they were getting was just the opposite. So, again, I’d say don’t worry about whether an idea has been tried out before, focus on who think your customer is, what you think they’re missing and then test that.

For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.

Oh dear — I am going to be a bit of a disappoint here because I did not file a patent, I had the BEST sourcing contact, and a big part of our idea was to go direct to consumer with what was a nascent channel at the time, the internet. Part of our appeal, at the time, was that we were so exclusive, you couldn’t find us at a retail store! But, steps:

1. Make a storyboard or prototype so you can communicate your idea well enough so you can get to step 2. Have a name for it — but it doesn’t have to be set in stone. But it helps whoever you have to communicate your idea to if you can call it by a name and start planting seeds in other people’s heads.
2. Who will make it — go to trade shows for your particular idea — if it’s food, go to food trade shows. If it’s apparel, go to clothing trade shows. If it’s luggage, go to a travel trade show (or think outside of the box — go to a funeral trade show. Companies that make caskets probably do or can make luggage!) There are trade associations for every manufacturing process, product, and service. Their job is to promote that industry. They will also be happy to help you. And then, there are many online platforms that will help you with this today. Now, I did say I had the BEST sourcing contact. Remember when I said to use your alumni group? It turns out the man who was the pioneer of what we call offshore production also went to my school. I called. He answered. He was invaluable in getting me my first few sources. Once we had the business running, a lot of manufacturers will call because they want to supply you.
3. Get some money to make a few pieces of your idea: if it is a physical good (and not a service), once you have a few, take pictures. These days, it’s all about pictures. If it’s a consumer good, Instagram it. Tiktok it. Etsy it. Facebook it. If it’s an industrial good, get a website right away (if it’s not for consumers and doesn’t have to be transactional, this will be really quick) and put up some pictures and some copy and create a youTube video. You will then have links to point any potential customer, investor, media outlet.
4. Figure out how you will distribute it — if it’s retailers, these same retailers will go to the same trade shows so you can definitely do some networking there. Once you do have product, it is common to set up a booth at a tradeshow to get retailers to pick up your brand. You can parallel track this with a DTC channel on the internet. That means building a website. There are so many off the shelf website building platforms now that are fairly inexpensive and will get you up and running in no time.
5. Get the word out. Advertising is expensive so is your idea one that you can get some conversation going in any of the free channels? So many outlets need content these days — can you interest any of them to write about your idea? If you are doing a tradeshow, many of the tradeshows now have online presences and need to keep their website fresh. Can you get them to highlight your piece(s)?
6. Get more money if you need to do paid advertising. If you have sold any yet, you will have achieved proof of concept (someone will pay for this! Okay, it was my mom, but she valued it… !) Do try to get someone who is not related to you to purchase — that tells a potential investor that they are only giving you gas money. Which gives them more of a chance of recouping or making money on their investment.

I am leaving out all sorts of steps like think about the branding, packaging, how you will service the customer before and after purchase, how you will actually get the item to the customer. All these things are important, but can be done along the way.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why?

1. Make sure your investors’ vision of your company and how you think you need to grow are aligned. You are the one who has to show up every day and make it happen. It can be like a marriage. Just like you would have the discussion about whether you wanted a children or not with your partner, make sure you have those critical discussions with your investors before you take their money. For example, we had one major investor who’s early goal for us was profitability. Our early goal was growth and then profitability. I think we spent too much precious time early on trying to straddle both goals when we should have been focusing on growth.
2. Carve out time from running your business to continue to “sell” your idea and your passion. Whether that’s to the press or to the investment community or to the trend setters or your customers, you should invest in getting and staying in front of the groups that will expand your idea.
3. Understand the cash flow profile of your business. In our case, inventory is critical; having it in stock, financing it and moving it (converting it back into cash). Each of these plays a great role in how much flexibility you have to operate and to grow. Remember when the crash of 2008 came? We had a lot of inventory come in right before the crash and every time we walked by those boxes, we had an unpleasant reminder that all our cash was sitting in those boxes. If we were going to continue this business, we needed to move those boxes, however we could (yay, flash sale sites!).
4. Hire people smarter than you at the tasks you want to most succeed in. Don’t be afraid of surrounding yourself with successful people. And, the corollary, don’t believe you have to do it all yourself. You will be surprised by how much of your success is the product of other people’s work.
5. It’s not always going to be fun but it shouldn’t be painful. Make sure to build joy into your business and a mission beyond profit into your success. We have created a culture where we all like being at work — we are happy to help each other and fill in for each other when necessary — and this culture comes through for our customers. They often write physical letters to (as well as email) us and leave reviews to how helpful and pleasant our customer service associates are. We even had one customer leave us a singing voicemail!

Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?

This might seem a bit repetitive:

1. Make sure you have or can create a market.
2. Develop the concept to the point where you can pitch it.
3. Build a case for why it will succeed.
4. Let others in. Let disinterested parties shape your concept and find its weaknesses.
5. If you’ve gotten this far, then try figure out the money; you’ll need the money but don’t bring that question in so early that you stifle your idea.

There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?

I’m sure every case is different but I would recommend only going to a development consultant for answers to critical issues that would prevent you from moving forward with your idea. An example in my industry might be sourcing expertise for a particular fabric or manufacturing capability. While we didn’t need help sourcing our manufacturing and fabrics, it would be perfectly reasonable to hire an expert to help you find your way through the many options out there, especially when China and India alone have thousands upon thousands of options.

Other than that, while you’ll never get everything right you should have a deep enough understanding of your idea and how to implement it to rely first on your team, your network and your own resources.

What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?

I don’t think I have much to offer that one wouldn’t get in a textbook on entrepreneurship. What I can tell you is that you have to pay very close attention to financing. In starting Julianna Rae as a direct-to-consumer, internet-based luxury apparel company in 2004, I naively assumed that with access to a global retail market we would only need a very small SOM (ahre-of-market) to grow rapidly. This, along with our having very good margins, led us to the belief that in a relatively short period of time we would be funding growth from operations. What we underestimated is the cost of getting yourself in front of the right people who want your product, and the cost of building a brand that made selling your product that much easier. So, we bootstrapped and then we sought outside capital. We were fortunate that the combination carried us to the point where we are today, a business that can manage its financing through sound operations and treasury functions. But, it’s no surprise that most businesses that fail early in their lifecycle do so because they underestimated their funding requirements. So, if you can fund it yourself, great! But do your homework and be realistic. If giving up a chunk of the company is what you need to see it through, consider it. One piece of pie is better than no pie at all!

How have you used your success to make the world a better place?

I’m not sure that I have to any great degree. As a company, we probably stop at simply making people happy, often around a special event or around a meaningful time in their lives. Fulfilling a wish or helping make a special moment that much more special isn’t much but we take great pride in it.

Perhaps, from a broader perspective, we did specifically set out to design styles that appealed to an older customer with a more mature body shape and size which we felt most lingerie and sleepwear companies ignored. Some of our early photo shoots used older models that didn’t have model-esque figures and we did not re-touch the photographs. The backlash from potential customers was quick and severe. But that was back in 2004 so we are glad the world has changed quite a bit since then. We did also only use natural fibers and craft products that are meant to last, the virtual antithesis of “fast fashion,” believing that our customer was looking for something to last and keep them happy for a long time. Closer to home, we’ve built and kept a team that enjoys the ride and can participate in the success of the company.

Is that “making the world a better place?” Not for me to decide.

You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

I would like to start a movement that would convince people to lay down their arms, at both the personal and the geopolitical level. There are so many problems to solve but stopping violence or slowing our tendency to resort to violence would do the world…a world of good. I once had the idea of starting with 1 minute. If everyone and every government laid down their weapons, or took their fingers off the button that sends the missle for just one minute, I believe there would be a shared palpable sense of relief that might trigger a move towards 2 minutes, or 5, or … once they feel that relief, wouldn’t they want that feeling always?

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

Narrow it down to one… Wow. That is really tough because there are so many interesting people in the world. But, I would love to meet Hilary Clinton. She has been a partner to such a well known, influential person and she is so brilliant and accomplished in her own right, I wonder what she thought her biggest role was at the time of the Clinton presidency and how she navigated between supporting the President, doing what she thought was important to do, and managing the expectations the rest of the world had for her (which almost seemed like an invisible cage). And now, I would love to pick her brain on what she think is her most important project today, what she wants her legacy to be, and what she thinks are the most critical things have to be done (not necessarily by her) right now and not wait.

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Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.

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Making Something From Nothing: Juli Lee Of JULIANNA RAE On How To Go From Idea To Launch was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.