Ignore Limits Others Place on You - Katie Sturino
Invested Podcast | Season 2 Episode 1
Entrepreneur, bestselling author and body acceptance advocate, Katie Sturino shares career wisdom, including the power of trusting your instincts, embracing vulnerability and refusing to let others define what’s possible.
In This Episode
Sarah Gaul
Managing Director, Baird
Sarah Gaul is a Managing Director in Baird’s Global Investment Banking business. As a senior member of the firm’s Financial Sponsors Group (FSG), she provides advice and support to private equity firms.
Katie Sturino
Founder, MEGABABE | Author of Sunny Side Up and Body Talk
A trailblazing beauty founder, a bestselling author and leading voice in the body acceptance movement, Katie has built a career around making women feel seen, supported and empowered.
Moderator:
Angela Pittman Taylor
Director of Corporate Communications, Baird
As director of Corporate Communications, Angela oversees Baird’s global Public Relations and Internal Communications practice. Additionally, she leads Baird’s Chicago-area brand strategy and advises on the firm’s Inclusion & Diversity marketing strategy.
Transcript
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Meet our guest, Katie Sturino – Founder of Megababe
Angela Pittman Taylor
Welcome to Invested. We're hosting a mini-series on how to build and sustain fulfilling, engaging careers throughout the different seasons of life with bold and authentic choices. We are talking to several women about their stories in doing this, and we hope listeners will find wisdom and inspiration. My co-host for this mini-series is Sarah Gaul, a Managing Director in our Global Investment Banking business. Sarah, welcome.
Sarah Gaul
Thank you, Angela. It's so nice to be with you today, and I am really excited for our conversation. Our guest needs no introduction, but I am trying here, and she has such a dynamic career that I'm going to try and be succinct. Our guest today is Katie Starino, who is an entrepreneur, author, and body acceptance advocate. Katie is the founder of Megababe, a personal care brand that offers taboo-busting products like Thigh Rescue for thigh chafe and Bust Dust for boob sweat, among lots of other awesome products. Her first book, Body Talk, is an illustrated workbook designed to help women accept their bodies. And very recently, she also released a novel, Sunny Side Up. I'm sure many of our listeners, like me and Angela, know and love her from following her on social media, where her candor and humor provide both entertainment, but also just a ton of inspiration and encouragement. So, we're really excited. Katie, thank you for being here and welcome to Invested.
Katie Sturino
Thank you so much for having me. And yes, that is my ADHD proof that I cannot stay focused in my career.
Sarah Gaul
You've done everything. It's awesome. And we, and so let's try and like, we got to dive in because there is so much to talk about. Let's start with Megababe, the company you founded. You tackle, as I said, various sort of taboo body issues, boob sweat, thigh chafe, BO. So, tell us, where did this idea come from? Let's start there.
Katie Sturino
It came from the fact that I live in New York City and anyone who's ever been through a New York City summer knows that you really have to prepare yourself to go outside. And I was finding that all the products that were made for thigh chafe were targeted towards men or athletes or were just super embarrassing. And personally, I can't walk two blocks in the summer without a product on my legs or I have to wear pants and who wants to wear pants in July? So I decided to look into like who was going to be the next big beauty retailer to solve this problem and to give us something that was going to be clean, cute and effective, and not something we were embarrassed to pull out. And no one was doing it. So, for a couple of years, I just watched the market. And then I talked to my sister and my best friend from camp. And I was like, guys, we're going to make a chafe stick. And they were like, what is chafe? And I was like, let me tell you.
We decided to launch without any beauty experience in a space that is crazy competitive, but we did it because we knew that there was an entire population out there that was being underserved. So, we launched actually with Thigh Rescue, which is our hero product, and Bust Dust, which is our talc-free powder that you put in your bra to help absorb boob sweat. So that's how Megababe was brought into the world, unapologetically and just ready to help people feel good just in the skin that they're in.
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How was the idea for Megababe first received by investors?
Sarah Gaul
That's incredible and so needed. And so now you can find your product everywhere and multiple places at Target, which I'm sure is just incredible for you to see. But tell us how how was the idea first received. And you said it's such a competitive landscape. What were some of those conversations with sort of potential retail partners?
Katie Sturino
Well, it's so interesting because beauty is so competitive, but when we started talking about a chafe stick for women who just wanted to walk, people did not get it. They were like, “Whoa, we have something in the runner section,” or there's this, “We have, you know, fresh balls for her, so she's good.” And I was like, no one, no one wants to use that. In fact, I can't believe you just said it out loud. So, it was very hard for the first couple of years because one, retailers, chemists – I mean, so many of the people we talked to in media were like, “I don't get it. This doesn't really seem like a problem for anyone. I've never heard of this.” I'm like, you aren't, it's just because no one's talking about it. It's happening all over the place, women of all sizes. So, it was really hard to get over the giggling that would happen, you know, when you talk about boob sweat or things like that.
But to get back to the retail conversations, they didn't know where to put us. To an extent, they still don't know where to put us because it's not a space that's been built out yet. Since we've launched eight years ago, there have been actually a lot of copycats, big brands, big P&G-owned brands have added chafe into their marketing for certain other products. There's been a lot of competition that has come into the market, but when we started, it was a white space so that we had to educate everyone around us about what this was and what shame-busting, taboo-busting beauty could be.
Sarah Gaul
That's so interesting. You're addressing this need, but what made you believe in yourself? Like I can do this. I'm going to create this product. I'm going to run a business. Like, what? How?
Katie Sturino
Because I knew that if I needed this, I just wasn't the only person on the planet that needed this. And I knew from talking to people that it was a problem. And I also knew that the way people whispered the word chafe – “I chafe, yes, I chafe,” – that there was so much shame around it. And people were embarrassed to admit something that so many people deal with. And I thought, that's not really right. There's something to be done here about that.
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How was Megababe founded? The story of a self-funded, woman-owned company
Sarah Gaul
And those early days, and it's so fun that you started this with your sister and your best friend. And so you're obviously a female-founded company. You're self-funded.
Katie Sturino
We are self-funded and I love talking about it. Yeah.
Sarah Gaul
Tell us more. I mean, like you did not have experience running a business, right? And you identified this need and your passion sort of drove you, right?
Katie Sturino
Yes. Well, I've always been an entrepreneur. I had my own PR agency from a young age. That's where I got educated in that. And then I launched my own platform around body acceptance. And in 2017, if you recall the beauty market, it was all get a ton of funding, tons of marketing everywhere, fold in a year. Like it was just a very crazy time for businesses. And we were like, “What? We're not going to go that way.” In addition to the fact that I think when we were first launching, we took some meetings and they were so disheartening because it was quite often with men who didn't understand the problem. and would just stare at you and be like, “I don't know, my wife doesn't have that.” So, we were like, “You know what, we're going to do this on our own.” So, we did, and we focused on – and this is what we still focus on – sustainable growth. We have not grown less than 33% year-over-year since we launched. We have bootstrapped this thing to the max. We've kept our team very small. We didn't take salaries for the first four years. We really, really have done this, I would say differently. Are we doing it right? I don't know. But we're still here, knock wood. And that is something I'm very proud of because it is such a hard thing to have a brand and a business in this space.
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Navigating Self-Doubt and Fierce Competition in the Beauty Market
Sarah Gaul
Well, and 30%-plus growth every year, I'd say you're doing this right. Thank you. massively successful, but I think a lot of women and really anyone taking any kind of risk, you just face so much self-doubt. And I feel like often, we can just be our biggest skeptics. So, were there moments in this journey that you really sort of doubted yourself or, I mean, the concept or how did you sort of work through that?
Katie Sturino
Yes, that's every day still. Still, because there's a couple of different reasons. One, competition coming into the space with funding. That is so scary. Like, yes, it's cool to see the category expanding, but at the same time, when you've got major brands coming into your territory, it's very scary because you're like, “They could just wipe us out.” But thank god we have such a loyal following and community, and I think that people recognize us as the brand who brought this to life. So, there's a lot of loyalty there. And then two, retailers. Retailers change their mind all the time. It's like one day you're new and hot and the next they're shifting their focus and then they shift it again. And it's hard to ride those trains, especially because we depend so much on retailers for our visibility and for our growth because our marketing budgets are not the same as a lot of our competitors. I think every day you feel like, “What am I doing?” Which is so funny because on paper, you look like you're crushing it, but internally, there's a fire to put out every single day.
Sarah Gaul
But I refuse to give up.
Katie Sturino
Yes. I refuse. I refuse because I get those. Yes. So, we have someone now who works in customer service and she'll send reviews or notes from people. And I'm like, “You know what, a hairspray brand doesn't get this kind of feedback.” It's people whose lives have been impacted by our products because they either don't feel ashamed anymore or they are able to wear whatever they want or they went to a wedding and they were comfortable wearing this dress or their child was chafing during a soccer game and they're seven and they were able to give them this cool product that didn't make them feel embarrassed. So, I feel like my purpose in this world and the mission of our business really is to help women feel more comfortable and confident in the body that they're in today.
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Katie Sturino’s Body Acceptance Advocacy
Sarah Gaul
Exactly. So this is perfect because obviously Megababe and really, your life's work, has been around body acceptance and advocacy. Talk about sort of the ways that you have intertwined that kind of throughout your career and the advocacy that you've done, because it's really powerful.
Katie Sturino
Thank you. I really appreciate that. So, I know earlier I made a joke about how I have so many different jobs, but the truth is they're all with one mission, which is just to help women feel good about themselves. And I think that has there has been, what's the word I'm looking for? That's been overused a bit online and you're like, okay, we don't need this like toxic positivity or whatever it is. But the truth is women, especially right now, they need to keep going back in for inspiration for how to feel good about yourself as you are.
I originally wrote a workbook called Body Talk in 2021. And it's super colorful. It's fun. It's easy. There's homework in it, but it's fun. And it's basically a step-by-step guide for how to learn to love your body, which just seems really basic. But it kind of is what we need because you're taught your whole life not to. So, to learn how to do that now seems crazy, but it's true. It's something that I think is so important for just for our own self-love journey. And if you have children, I think they can feel that on you if you've done that work, you haven't done that work. So, that is one thing. And then I had a podcast for a long time called “Boob Sweat” where I talked about things that people weren't talking about. Again, it's destigmatizing things that are so normal for women – infertility, divorce, just all the things that can really put women down.
And then I decided that I wanted to bring my messaging into fiction, because I think that there's a lot of room for a character out there that you want to attach to that inspires you. And so I wrote Sunny Side Up, my novel, which came out last summer and comes out in paperback this coming summer. And that was incredible to hear of people who gifted it to friends or were in a rut themselves, read it, got inspired, started the online dating account. Just there again, it's the like one-on-one connection that I have with people that always let me know that I'm doing the right thing. That's what we do with Megababe is we take the things that you feel like, “Is this weird? Am I the only one?” And we normalize it.
Sarah Gaul
Right. And I want to come back to Sunny Side Up because Angela and I love that book. Talk about your general social media presence, right? Like “Supersize the Look” is so relatable, which I also feel is sort of an overused term.
Katie Sturino
It is. Yeah, it's authentic.
Sarah Gaul
You are, yes, very, but you are. You're so authentic. And like on your Instagram, when you posted like, just like, “This is my arm jiggling.” And most people's arms do that. And that's normal.
Katie Sturino
But why is it radical to do that? Isn't that crazy? It's radical to show your body moving that way because we're, because the imagery that is put in front of us is like, rock-hard triceps. Like, why aren't you trying to lose 20 pounds on a GLP-1. The messaging that is put toward us is always just, “You're not good enough.” That's what I'm trying to do, normalizing some of this stuff with my content as well. “Supersize the Look” I started.
Sarah Gaul
Long time ago.
Katie Sturino
A long time ago, in 2014.
Sarah Gaul
And it still stands up. Like, it's so good.
Katie Sturino
I think so too, because all it is just taking the concept from women I heard from all the time who are like, “I want to wear this, but I don't think I can because X, Y, Z.” And just showing the celebrity that like I myself at whatever size I am able to whatever the size I am, it's bigger than this celebrity. And I can show them that, like, “I can wear it and you can wear it. And look, we both look good.” It's also deconstructing that concept from US Weekly from a million years ago, early aughts, where it was like, “Who wore it better?” It's just women versus women, women versus women, women versus women.
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Has the Broader Body Advocacy Message Changed?
Sarah Gaul
I think I know the answer to this, but you've been doing this for so long. It's all been around sort of body advocacy. Has your view of advocacy changed over the years? Unfortunately, it's needed just as it was, you know, when you started over a decade ago. It's still the same message.
Katie Sturino
Let me ask you a question. If you walked into a room of 25 women and said, “Raise your hand if you think you have a good body,” how many would raise their hand?
Sarah Gaul
None.
Katie Sturino
Two? Yeah. I don't know. Not 25.
Sarah Gaul
No.
Katie Sturino
So, I'm just saying that for me, that is what I have always been doing. So the terminology, body positivity, body neutrality, body acceptance, all of these terms and the people and the wording and the messaging that have been going on in this space since about 2010 – when was Ashley Graham on Sports Illustrated? So,15. So I would say since 2015, this conversation's been in the zeitgeist, and it had to enter the zeitgeist because things had been so bad for women and body image publicly.
And I think people ask me this all the time about with the rise of GLP-1s, “Is your message still relevant?” My message is more relevant than ever. Yes. I think the fact that people don't understand that a drug that results in weight loss for many people and positive body image are like, they don't understand. They don't understand how badly this is needed?
Sarah Gaul
Well, and just the notion that your body changes and that's normal.
Katie Sturino
Yes, but we will un-normalize that.
Sarah Gaul
Right.
Katie Sturino
Yes.
Sarah Gaul
And it's like, you age, you go through certain life events.
Katie Sturino
Yeah.
Sarah Gaul
You can fluctuate and your body can look different.
Katie Sturino
But the tolerance for that is so limited. And I think that's what's interesting. And I explore that. I'm exploring that with myself right now. I just turned 45. It's an interesting thing to explore in other areas of your life outside of just like your body shape for me.
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Katie Sturino’s Advice on Building a Career You Believe In
Sarah Gaul
So, for our listeners, you have been able to build this awesome career, all really rooted in advocacy and obviously tons of hard work. Would you have advice of, whether it's body acceptance or another worthy cause? What would your advice be of building a career around something you really believe in?
Katie Sturino
When you're working with something you really believe in, you don't burn out from it. Like, I don't like that exists that the messaging and the feeling that women are taught to be small, metaphorically, and that we need help getting louder – that lives in my soul. That's just in my body. So, I don't ever tire of that message because it's just there. So, I think if you're starting a business and you don't have something that feeds your soul in it, I think that you can really burn out faster because you're like, “Why am I doing this?” Like, I decided to make a kitchen spatula, and I thought I had a really cool idea for kitchen spatulas, and now I'm in this market and it's flooded and it's hard, and why do I want to keep doing this? So, without that core fire beneath you, I think that you can really burn out. Right? Or you can burn out anyway, but I'm just saying, I think you get there faster.
Sarah Gaul
Right. And then that's also, to your earlier point, I mean, that core mission, that's what helps you push through any sort of self-doubt or because it's, “I believe in this mission.”
Katie Sturino
Yes, yeah, exactly. And they need us.
Sarah Gaul
Absolutely.
Angela Pittman Taylor
There's also a little bit of a risk to passion, right? When you're working with something that you're very passionate about, the risk of there being a blind spot and you don't really realize what's happening there. So, can you talk a little bit about your experience with that and how have you tried to manage that and maintain your self-awareness? Because we feel the self-awareness from you. How do you try to keep all of that in balance? Because passion sometimes can create that blind spot.
Katie Sturino
You know what? I'll give you an example of passion failing at Megababe, which was six years ago, I made a melasma blocker that it was like a mustache of zinc that you wore to the beach. I made it in blue. I made it in sand. And people weren't ready for it. They weren't ready to have a big mustache at the beach. And I've had to realize that there are just certain things that are just for me, and not everyone is there yet. So that is something I have to always be checked with.
But at the same time, I think that my passion and my inability to sometimes see why we wouldn't be involved or wouldn't be invited in a room or why we wouldn't be there has been a superpower for us, because I think some people are like, “Well, not there or not, I mean, not for you guys.” I think some people look at us like that and I'm like, “Well, why not? Why not us?” Like, what are you saying? So I think that is definitely something that my business partners, Kate and Jenny, probably have to deal with more than they want to – me being like, “Well, we should just do this.” But I think that it's also served us very well. But you're right, passion does create blind spots.
Sarah Gaul
Let's circle back to being a published author. So we talked about Body Talk, which is incredible, this awesome sort of practical guide workbook. But then last year you published Sunny Side Up.
Katie Sturino
Yes.
Sarah Gaul
So you talked a little bit about this, of sort of having kind of this relatable character, but like on top of everything else, how did you even pursue this? You're like, okay, I'm going to write.
Katie Sturino
So I've had a book agent since I was doggaging. Her name's Alyssa Rueben. She's the best. And I have stayed with her. She stayed with me. And she knew that one day I wanted to write this book. And so it was like, “Alyssa, when can I write this?” And she's like, “You’ve got to write Body Talk first.” Okay, fine. So I wrote Body Talk. Yes. And then, I was so glad that I did. It was also really hard. And so I didn't mind having a little break in between those two books. And then finally it was time and she said I could do it. So we pitched it and it was such a cool, scary, overwhelming, incredible process to do.
Sarah Gaul
So, tell us more about that, because did that feel – you'd written Body Talk, which obviously was awesome, but this was different. And so did you feel like you really were stretching yourself or what did, how, what did that process look like?
Katie Sturino
I think the thing about writing a novel is, one, it's a different kind of art. It's a different thing to put out a piece of fiction that has elements of you in it and that has come from your brain and jokes and words that you've picked and sex scenes – it's just a different thing to have that out in the world. It's vulnerable in a way that I did not anticipate.
Sarah Gaul
I can imagine. Yes, that would be very vulnerable.
Katie Sturino
Yes, it is, because it's fiction, so there's obviously... it's not real. That's not like my exact life story, but certainly there are elements that are similar to my own story. So it is very vulnerable. And I did not, and I still – obviously, if you notice the change in my tone, I don't think I know how to deal with the vulnerabilities around the book. It was like being like totally pried open. I didn't understand what that would feel like.
Sarah Gaul
And it was obviously met with massive success. And it's such a good, such a good book. Is there more writing in the future, do you think?
Katie Sturino
Yeah, I think I just need to keep going to therapy to understand how to deal with the vulnerability issue.
Sarah Gaul
Right. That would be…
Angela Pittman Taylor
And did that vulnerability catch you a little bit off guard? I think sometimes people might – you're out there with a platform and you're very open, but maybe you also had some control about the exposure in that platform.
Katie Sturino
Exactly.
Angela Pittman Taylor
And it's a little different when you're...
Katie Sturino
I'll show up in my underwear. I'll be in a swimsuit, shake my arm – but those are things I'm I can control. Listen, if they get on the wrong side of the algorithm, rude, mean comments come in, but I'm prepared for that. I don't think I understood what it was like to have your art criticized. And I've since have read a lot from other people who say, “You have to get to the place where you're like, ‘I don't care if you liked it or you didn't like it, I like it.’” I just wasn't ready for that.
Sarah Gaul
Do you think you're there now? I don't know how you, I was going to say give us tips and tricks to…
Katie Sturino
I have no idea, but guess what? The paperback version is coming out, so I'll be back pounding the pavement and I will let you know if I get there, when I get there.
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