Hi and welcome to another special mini episode of Aspire, brought to you by Shopify.

Now, one of the questions I hear the most from new founders is this. Where should I spend my money

when I'm just starting out? And what

matters most in the beginning and what can wait? Now, when you're building a brand from scratch,

every decision counts. The way you invest in the earliest days has a massive impact on what

your business becomes. Here's what I want you to know. You do not need to do everything at once. You only need to

focus on what moves your idea forward. Now, luckily, Shopify is a platform that actually lets you

put your time and your money towards the things that matter. So today, we're talking about how to

invest wisely when you're building a brand and where you can keep things simple. When I think back

to my journey with Good American and later on with skims, I didn't start with like a giant

checklist of what the brand should have. I started with what mattered most, the product and the

customer. For Good American, the entire idea came from recognizing how ignored most women were in the denim market.

I spent a huge amount of time understanding that customer, her needs, frustrations, and fit issues.

And that insight shaped every early decision. We know women with curbs wanted and needed more

from their denim. So we set out to solve those pain points

through innovation. Those innovations are still the very backbone of our denim assortment today,

recovery fabric, a four-piece trouser waistband, reinforced belt loops, all of those things. But the key

insights that led to those innovations came from us speaking directly and deliberately to as many women as possible

about their experience with denim as a category. We had women try early prototypes and we gathered

data from every single early interaction. We kept hearing the same problems over and over again.

So we focused on solving those problems. Getting early product or prototypes

into the hands of potential customers is one of the most important things that you can do as a

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