563: From $500 to 120 Stores - How She Lost It All | Kristina Karlsson

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan

Nathan Chan

Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Business

4.9 • 665 Ratings

🗓️ 9 May 2025

⏱️ 77 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, Kristina Karlsson, founder of Kikki.K and Dream Life, opens up about building a $100M global brand, losing it all, and why she's starting again—this time, on her own terms. She shares: • The wild journey of scaling Kikki.K to 120 stores in 6 countries • How losing her business twice reshaped her view of failure and resilience • Why journaling became her most powerful tool for balance and clarity • The hard lessons from choosing the wrong investors and CEOs • How she’s building Dream Life with more freedom, purpose, and creativity If you’ve ever had to start over—or fear what would happen if you did—this episode will leave you inspired, grounded, and ready to create again. Foundr Community Offers Want 1-on-1 mentorship to launch or scale your brand faster? Apply for eCommerce coaching: → Starting your ecom biz? ⁠Click here⁠ → Already selling and want to scale? ⁠Click here⁠ Want all-access to step-by-step training from 7, 8 & 9-figure founders? Start your Foundr+ $1 trial today → ⁠Click here⁠ Omnisend | Get 50% off your first 3 months of email and SMS marketing with Omnisend with the code FOUNDR50. ⁠Click here⁠ to get started. Connect With Nathan Chan Instagram → ⁠Click Here⁠ LinkedIn → ⁠Click here⁠ Connect With Kristina Karlsson Instagram → ⁠Click here⁠ Website → ⁠Click here⁠ Dream Life Store → ⁠⁠Click here⁠⁠ Follow Foundr for More Business Growth Strategies YouTube → ⁠Click here⁠ Website → ⁠Click here⁠ Instagram → ⁠Click here⁠ Facebook → ⁠Click here⁠ Twitter → ⁠Click here⁠ LinkedIn → ⁠Click here⁠ Podcast → ⁠Click here

Transcript

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0:00.0	It was probably the toughest day of my life because we just went into administration.
0:07.1	That was just the hardest day of my life.
0:09.2	Like the day before, I was up 24 hours just to try to find a way to rescue us.
0:14.3	What was the business valued at at that time?
0:16.2	Over 100 million.
0:17.9	When we went under, I was like, the easiest options would have been to just disappear
0:23.0	and be depressed. That is when I decided, regardless who was going to pick us up, I said,
0:28.9	I had enough. I'm an entrepreneur. If I've done it once, I can do it twice. I'm going to start
0:33.0	again. She lived the dream every founder wanted. Scaling a startup into a $100 million global brand.
0:39.4	And then she lost everything twice.
0:42.3	What she's learned since might just change how you think about business, failure and success.
0:47.0	This is Christina Carlson.
0:48.6	Starting again, it's been a humbling experience.
0:51.2	We put all our dollars back into the business.
0:53.2	So we had nothing in the end.
0:55.2	And the great way of being an entrepreneur when you start is having no money because you just
0:59.6	have to be creative and you have to come up with ideas that you wouldn't do when you have a big
1:05.0	team and a lot of money in the bank. What are the three things that you've taken now that you're
1:09.9	putting into dream life?
1:11.1	You know, number one, passion, passion for the product and be authentic and being real,
1:15.3	living and breathing the brand. But the most important is to hear the stories. Learn the proven
1:24.9	methods and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship.
	...

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