The Wonderful World of CBD, Being a Woman CEO, and Imposter Syndrome w/ Lindsey Holthaus, CEO of Plain Jane

AFFORDABILITY + IMPROVING LIVES

When Lindsey Was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis she needed something to help ease her symptoms and found weed and CBD to be incredibly cost prohibitive.

Being the boss that she is, she decided that it was time to get into the CBD business and use her public policy education and experience to make this life altering product widely available to people of all incomes. 

[03:00]

“I started smoking weed again. Still hated getting paranoid, but I found out about CBD, which has all the cannabinoids basically that weed has, and it doesn’t give you that same high, which is the part that I didn’t like. So I was smoking a ton of weed and CBD and it was really expensive” 

FEAR + EXPECTATIONS

Growing up believing that she had to be incredibly successful and productive in order to have self-worth, Lindsey struggled with the idea of what people would think about her when she left a good job to waitress and start a CBD company.

[05:52]

“There’s always a way that you can make money, but it’s more like, what are people going to think about me? Are they going to think that, like, I’m wasting my life, I’m wasting my degrees. 

So I really had to just get over what people thought of me and their expectations of me, because if I thought about that, I would just stay in a job that I didn’t love because other people had these expectations. “

YOUR PERSONAL IDENTITY

When she started to plan for leaving her job, Lindsey was terrified to let go of her identity: the smart kid with a masters degree. At the end of the day she was able to do the things that she really wanted to do when stopped using who she thought she was as her source of validation, something that she suggests all women examine in themselves.

[07:21]

“People use their career as their identity and their source of validation. And for a little while I did too. I was like, oh, my identity is that I’m smart and I get straight A’s and I have a master’s degree and I’m like, I know all these things and I use that as my identity. And I was scared to let go of that. Who am I if I’m not smart enough for not making a change in the world?”

[07:59]

“You have to let go of using your career or whatever you think your source of validation is to actually do the things that you want to do.”

CONFIDENCE IN BUSINESS AS A WOMAN 

We chatted a lot about being women and business and having self-confidence and belief in our worthiness.  

It is incredibly unfortunate that women have to be 1000% confident in what they are doing before they take the leap, well men are often born with an innate confidence that allows them to reach for their goals and dreams without constantly second-guessing themselves.

[09:01]

“If I had the confidence that a man had, like my two co-founders had all the confidence in the world and I had no confidence, I was like, why? Why do I think I can run a business? And I think it took me like a year of running the business and doing really well. I was still questioning myself. I was still feeling like a fraud”

[09:21]

“I was like, is this me? Am I doing this? How is this going so well? This is just luck. So it took me a really long time to have the confidence to be like, wow, I can run a business where a lot of men, I wouldn’t say all, but a lot of men just wake up with that confidence. And women have to be like really, really a thousand percent sure and overqualified to go after anything.”

FAKING IT TILL YOU MAKE IT 

So much of life is faking it until you make it.  A lot of the confidence that we have in our careers comes not only from your gender at birth, but the class that we were born into, our current socioeconomic status, our family, and the way that we were raised.

[11:51]

“Like, let’s just let’s just admit nobody knows. We don’t know where we’re making up the like all the laws and regulations now everyone’s making it up. No one has any idea, really. That’s how things I mean, working for the legislature, that’s how things happen. Nobody really knows. And someone’s gotta figure it out. Maybe it’ll change, maybe it won’t because nobody really knows. But I think being a woman, but also not having a lot of resources and not having a lot of money, those two things like the class that you’re born into has a lot to do with your confidence level. And so like me, like going to college, being the first one to go to college, I was terrified.”

SOLVING A PROBLEM FOR YOUR CUSTOMER 

It is incredibly important to base your business around a problem that you are solving for your customer. If you haven’t thought about that in your small business, it’s time to sit down with a pen and paper and start writing out what problems your customer might have and how you already solve them or how you could solve them with a new product or service, and what other types of people could you solve problems for with your product or service?

[18:53]

“I think that the reason the company is doing so well is because I created the company to solve a problem. And I think those are the best types of companies because you’re solving your own problem. Other people might be having these problems. Basically, it was access to affordable flower for people that needed it.”

PUTTING THE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO OUT INTO THE UNIVERSE

[28:48]

“That’s another thing to tell people, put it out into the universe. Because when I quit my job, I was like, I want to go work at a tech startup on the West Coast. And I’m not at a tech startup, but my co-founder worked for a tech company before. And both of them went to MIT. So it was like not exactly where I thought I would land, but just throwing that out there will maybe give you the first step.”

THERE IS NO BALANCE

This concept can be so hard for many of us to wrap our brains around.  There is no balance.  There will be years of sacrifice when you are starting a business or a new career path, and it won’t be easy.  There will be long nights, early mornings, and if you are lucky enough to have a supportive partner prior to starting that business, there will be a lot of sacrifice for both of you as you grow.

Stop imagining that you can “do it all” well.  It is about prioritizing and sacrificing to build the life that you are imagining.

[35:50]

“It’s really, really, really hard to find a balance. I wish there were an easier answer to that. And I wish that I could say, like, oh, you’re going to be able to do it But sometimes when you’re thinking about starting a business, you’re just going to have to just sacrifice a lot.”

Thanks to Lindsey and Plain Jane for offering our listeners 15% off at TRYPLAINJANE.COM with code beyondboss.