Hi, everyone. I'm Hilary Kerr, the co-founder and chief content officer of Who What Where,

and this is Second Life, a podcast spotlighting women who have truly inspiring careers.

We're talking about their work journeys, what they've learned from the process of

setting aside their doubts or fears, and what happens when they embark on their second life.

Today on the show, I'm chatting with Anna Harmon, the co-founder and CEO of the Ear piercing and

earrings brand, Studs. Anna started her career as a mutual fun formation

lawyer, but pretty quickly she realized that her passion was not in the world of law. She then

spent a few years at Bridgewater Associates before moving to a startup called fits and then to work

in an incubator at Walmart.

During this time, she'd been thinking about starting her own business

and had even created her own female shark tank with some friends to bounce ideas off of.

Lots of founders talk about finding a pain point that they want to solve with their company,

and Anna's happened to be

quite literal. She wanted a new ear piercing, but couldn't find a place that was hygienic,

affordable, and comfortable. She realized that there was a huge white space in the market for a

piercing destination that was more mature than Claire's and more inviting than the tattoo shop on the corner.

So she and her co-founder developed the concept for Studs, a clean, cool, ear-piercing store

that made ear-piercing a desirable experiential moment. They opened their first store in November

2019 and were immediately profitable.

Customers were drawn to the easy experience and elevated innovative offerings, like their

trademarked earscape concept, where a Studs employee helps you curate a custom array of

studs earrings to complement your new piercings. Over the last four years,

...