How Growing an Audience Centered on Integrity and Community Built This Female Founded, Family-Owned Brand
Dear FoundHer...Real Founder Stories for Women Small Business Owners
Lindsay Pinchuk
4.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 10 February 2026
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Building a breakout brand in the baby space usually looks slower and messier than people expect. It means facing real scaling challenges, making patient decisions, and staying committed to the product even when it would be easier to rush. In this episode of Dear FoundHer, host Lindsay Pinchuk talks with female founder, Andrea Faulkner Williams, of Tubby Todd, about what it really took to build a brand parents trust.
Andrea shares how Tubby Todd began with a personal family need and a hard reset most founders would avoid. After spending years developing their first product, they chose to start over when it did not work for their own child. That decision shaped everything that followed, including how they focused on quality, earned trust, and started growing an audience through real word of mouth instead of shortcuts or paid hype. Community, consistency, and listening closely to customers became the backbone of the business.
That foundation made the next stage possible. Andrea walks through how Tubby Todd expanded beyond direct-to-consumer, first onto Amazon and eventually into Target, without losing what made the brand work. Instead of relying on retail to create demand, they brought an already loyal audience with them. If you are a woman business owner, wrestling with scaling challenges or trying to grow an audience before taking a bigger leap, this episode gives a refreshingly honest look at what steady growth really takes.
Episode Breakdown:
00:00 How Tubby Todd Grew Without Paid Ads
03:00 Two Years of Product Development and Starting Over
04:00 Word of Mouth Strategy for Growing an Audience
07:00 “Be a Good Friend” Marketing Philosophy
14:00 Community Building Offline Through Play Dates
19:30 Scaling Challenges: Amazon to Target Retail Expansion
25:00 Founder Challenges: Confidence, Relationships, and Boundaries
30:00 A Simple Founder Framework: Why, One Goal, Quarterly Focus
Connect with Andrea Faulkner Williams:
Follow Tubby Todd on Instagram
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | One day, Toby Todd wasn't even on my radar. And the next, every mom I knew and trusted was talking about it. |
| 0:09.2 | That didn't happen because of paid ads and it didn't happen because of a big launch or a massive budget. |
| 0:14.8 | It happened because Andrea Faulkner Williams and her co-founder husband, Brian Williams, spent two years building a product that |
| 0:21.8 | actually worked. They put it in the hands of people they trusted to tell the truth, and they |
| 0:26.7 | let the community do the rest. If you think that growth has to be fast, flashy or forced, |
| 0:31.9 | this episode is going to change how you think about building a brand. And here's why this story |
| 0:36.9 | matters, especially if |
| 0:38.1 | you're building something of your own. Tubby Todd didn't win because they moved fast. |
| 0:43.3 | They won because they were intentional from day one and created a product they believed in so |
| 0:48.6 | much they knew others would believe in it too. Today with co-founder, Andrea Faulkner Williams, we go back before the |
| 0:55.7 | community, before the cult following, before the retail expansion, and talk about what it actually |
| 1:00.8 | took to get there. Welcome to Dear Founder, the podcast that pulls back the curtain on what |
| 1:09.0 | it really takes to build and grow a successful |
| 1:11.6 | business. No gatekeeping, no fluff, just real talk. I'm your host, Lindsay Pinchuk, |
| 1:18.4 | award-winning entrepreneur, founder, and proud member of the 1% of female founders who've led |
| 1:24.7 | their company to an acquisition. I bootstrapped my first company from $500 to seven figures before selling it. |
| 1:31.5 | I learned more from the mistakes than from the wins. |
| 1:34.7 | What started as a podcast here has grown into a movement, |
| 1:38.6 | supporting female entrepreneurs like you through not only this show, |
| 1:42.5 | but also on our social media, at our live events, |
| 1:45.7 | and in our online community, The Deere Found Her Forum. |
| 1:49.2 | Each week, I sit down with some of the most influential female founders of our time |
... |
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