Being an entrepreneur wasn't on my list.
My background's actually in nursing and so I couldn't find a bra that I loved to wear for 12 hours shift and so I made one since that it's kind of taken off. We keep making more bra's but also lifestyle pieces. I love nursing but man, this business every day I wake up and this is what I want to be doing. Virginia Peterson is an innovative resilient and inspiring entrepreneur and the founder of
Swoop, a brand redefining comfort and confidence for women on the move. A former emergency department nurse, she turned her own search for a better bra into a successful business. If you see something that I'm going to say needs to be fixed or you see a problem that you have a solution to follow that passion. Come up with that answer and dive into that.
“I mean, I think that's one of the best things. I've taken some business coaching classes along the way.”
Do you just learn so much that you don't have to necessarily go back to school to get a business degree to do this? There's so much information out there and to dive into that. Especially right now, I feel like it's such a huge point of It spans the globe, like a super high school, internet helpers, today Apple is going to reinvent the phone. It's not over, I'm telling our weird. The living
your legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy. Hello, welcome back to another episode of Legacy Make. It's joining me today's Virginia
and we're talking about her amazing lifestyle brand. I had a very unique start. She's going to
share that story in just a second and is rapidly expanding small business and great story. So, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Of course. So, tell us the story.
“I love the story of how you got it into this. It's very typical, but that's how a lot of”
great entrepreneurial story starts. Absolutely. I feel like since I've been doing this, you hear this more and more. It's like being an entrepreneur wasn't on my list. So, my background's actually in nursing and so I couldn't find a bra that I loved to wear for 12 hours shift and so I made one and since that it's kind of taken off and we've started, we keep making more bra's, but also lifestyle pieces. And, and talk about the brand now just for someone that's, you know,
maybe listening on audio. What, what, what are you selling? What are the sort of... So, we sell bra's underwear, what we call a tunic, which is like an oversized sweatshirt, we sell rainpants, fleece overalls, and so everything is designed with function. This kind of our big thing. So, comfort and function. So, things that you can wear from start to finish, right? So, bra's in particular, not as tight as a sports bra and then not more supported than a bra
let. So, after 12 hours, you still feel good in it. So, we try to keep that in mind.
“Yep. And how's that evolution been from, you know, walking a day job to start in the business?”
Oh, man. So, nursing, I mean, we always have that luxury, which I'm sure people know,
you get to work three, 12s and then you have all this other time off. But even working three, 12s as an entrepreneur, it got busier and busier and more stressful and more stressful. Now, you work seven, 12s. I know, right? That's exactly it. So, you know, as the business grew, I backed off from nursing and then backed off a little bit more and a little bit more. So, I still have my nursing license, but I don't work nearly as much as I used to.
And what's, you know, what has been some of the journey and lessons going into the entrepreneur's eye? Yeah, I think the biggest and maybe I can, you know, there's parallels they're working in the emergency room and how stressful that can be versus like being an entrepreneur. But it's like same in the emergency room. It's like taking that breath and staying calm through the chaos. And I'm sure like all of us are feeling it these days. It's just, you know, I get choices.
I can either kind of not keep my head on straight and feel a little bit crazy day in or day out or I get to take a deep breath and make decisions on how we're going to move forward and keep the business going. Yeah, and I feel it's, um, yeah, I guess kind of similar because entrepreneurship, it's like you've got this chronic stress of like all the things to do. And for a lot of people, it's like making pay roll and paying the bills when they start, right?
And obviously, when you get through that eventually, it's the day to day's good, but there's
always a problem. The biggie get the more problems, right? Oh, yeah. And then I guess in
nothing, it's kind of the same because you're like, you're busy and then someone's rushed in with some problem, right? And as we'll hands on deck and then get our off and then another person
Dressed in.
you know, who's going to handle this? And we're still really small team and I've kind of had people come and go, you know, over the time. But it is just like really, I think sometimes there's a big piece of letting go. And so it's like, I'll use this as a simple example, like when you are new nurse, everybody wants to put IVs in, right? It's just really fun to put an IV in. But as you become
“more the critical thinker, like you shouldn't be wasting your time when you guys, you should be worried”
about the airway and making sure that there's still breathing. So same in business, it's just like learning how to delegate those. Well, and I also being in business, I don't know if it's the same in nursing or not. But when you start, you mean, oh, eventually, you know, hopefully all these problems
stop and like, oh, yeah, I've been in business for 15 years, grown to 100 employees. They never
start. They might have changed a little bit and be a little different, but yeah, and maybe as a nurse too, when you start, you can go, it will get less stressful. No, it doesn't. Everyone's always dying, right? Like, you can get an injured and you know, critical state. Exactly. You have to learn, but but what I'm trying to say there is whether you're a nurse or business, you have to learn to let go a little because it eats you alive if you don't, right? I have, you know, I know in the first
years of my business, I'd always be stressed by all these problems, but you have to realize eventually if I'm going to do this 40 years, for 40 years, I can't get stressed by her problems every day. And if you're going to be a nurse for 40 years, you can't get traumatized when someone's in
at a sick, because it's going to happen every day. Yeah. And I know it can be my, my wife was a
nurse for a couple of years, and she was so traumatized by it every day, and I'm like, how you going to do that for the rest of your life? You're not, right? Well, she got lucky because now she, she just does bits for us, but it was, I know, nothing can be tough and so-called business. I mean, it's a great parallel to work through that. So tell us more about the brand. How do you see the brand growing the business growing? Yeah, for sure. So, um, you know, I, I'm pretty open
“about my numbers and financials and that sort of thing, because I think it's important to share”
that with other people, especially people getting started. So when I first started this business, I think the first year we made 60,000, and I just thought like, wow, that's crazy. I can't believe this even happened. So at this point, like our total revenue is over 600,000 of which we did 300,000 last year. Yeah. So it's just been progressing, progressing, and then I'm proud to be right, exactly. And all of that revenue has come from Alaska. Yeah. So we did, um, you know, 300,000 in
revenue last year in Alaska alone. So I've always had this in the back of my mind. It's like,
I just want to do a million dollars in revenue. And then you start to think backwards. It's like, how do we do a million dollars in revenue? And you start playing all these different scenarios. So, um, you know, for us, we're still in this like strong growth phase and bringing more items, more different lifestyle pieces to the brand, to try to grow that way, and then just trying to get in front of more people. So it's fun to, um, you know, I'm going to comment to just on like our
passions for life and that sort of thing. It's, I love nursing, but man, this business every day, I wake up, and this is what I want to be doing. So back to how do you do this for 40 years? I mean, I don't know, maybe one day that flame burns out, but, you know, we just wrapped up year four, moving into year five. And yeah, and I think I mean, a lot of it just like medicine is, it might just change where the passion is, you know, like when you start your passion about
making all the new products, right? And then same as us, and you might be passionate about and the ER, to, you know, set area, right? And then eventually you move to a different area, and I mean, it becomes the same in business. You know, I was passionate about these things, and now, you know, now I'm more passionate about these building out these departments or these segments of my business and entertainment division or celebrity. So I think you, you've just got to stay
aligned to that? Yeah, and know when you all lose an interest in certain areas, you know, and some areas of business I do lose interest in, and I just slot an employee in there to run
“them, you know, and then I'm generally, and I think the key is generally you should be going on”
to bigger and better things every time so you're going forward, not backwards, that's the big thing. So, so tell us about your business and now you go into it, what's the rest of your story? Yeah. Beyond that, outside of that before that. Right. So, you know, for me, I feel like starting a clothing brand, there's a lot of competition out there, obviously. And so, but there's got to be more within it, right? Especially right now, I feel like it's such a huge point of just being authentic.
You know, I see that a lot with your brand and the people that you spend time around. And that's like same for us. So we use real models. I think like every woman's real, honestly, but we don't
Hire models to be behind the camera, and we're trying to keep that going for ...
So, for us, it comes back to like empowering other people. And so, we started with bras and underwear, and I'd like to think of it this way. When you wake up in the morning and you put those first pieces on that you are excited for your day, that you feel like with every breath
“through your day, you're going to be true to yourself and make things happen for you. And I think”
that that, you know, if you spend some time on our website or our social media, you'll see that. It's just the passion that we have for living fully and authentically. It's just really important and shows through our brand. Yeah. And I think, well, it's great with that. And you come as brands
as I always say, like, you know, I mean, great brands no matter what they do, there's a story behind
them in a mission. And sometimes that can be hard for you to come. You know, I work with clients that have candles or perfume or jeans. And it's like, how do you make a story behind it? But most of the time you can, right? And you've got to sell that story in that mission. And the thing, you know, we work with someone now on one of my other shows where it's like a breakfast cereal, or peanut butter. And it's like, how do you make a story behind that? But they have, they have a whole
thing behind it. And you've got to tell that story and a lot of the big successively commerce brands that are becoming famous, it's because they have that story built in, right? Because yeah, any time at any point at any time a product can be remade, right? It's essentially all the molds in China
or wherever, right? A lot of things come out the same five or ten factories. I'm not saying
yours does, but a lot of general products, right? Yeah. So if we know that most things are coming out the same five or ten factories in China, it's like, well, what differentiates you in it? It is that brand and that brand story. Right. So I love that. Exactly. Love that. So what about you outside of the brand and the story? What's some interesting life lessons you've had throughout your career and journey? Yeah, I mean, gosh, where to begin, that's like we got to go have a beer
“and we can talk for hours about it. I think probably the biggest thing, and especially like”
for me lately, is really just staying calm through the storm. I think that there's a lot of unsettleness right now and today, I mean, this is like real-time real life, right? We started during COVID,
so COVID for us, like, didn't really, you know, we were just just starting. We were like in our first
bra. So we didn't have that as a speed bump. These days, we do manufacture overseas and so trying to figure out how to navigate looking for the gaps right now in the market. And almost like looking for those gaps where we can really set ourselves ahead of other people, we're still really small, so maybe there's pros and cons to that. But, you know, I mean, I think it's like staying calm through the same calm through the storm, standing tall, and, you know, having passion behind
that. Yeah, I love that, love that. And what are some, you know, for people listening, they're going to watch the episode, right? What are some things that will take away lessons, tips, or even more
“of your story from the episode? Um, I think that if you see something that I'm going to say needs”
to be fixed, or you see a problem that you have a solution to, follow that passion, come up with that answer, and dive into that. I mean, I think that's one of the best things. I think with the business to, I'll come back to, like, I was a nurse, not a business person. I've taken some business coaching classes along the way. Websites or podcasts, like yours, you just learn so much that you don't have to necessarily go back to school to get a business degree to do this, that there's
so much information out there and to dive into that. Yeah, love that. And what for someone that wants to check out the product and brands, where do they go to find you? So we have a website where swoop.com, W-E-A-R-S-W-O-O-P.com, and you can find us there. Good. And last couple of questions around legacy. Yeah. What does that word mean to you? Legacy for me means that we create a brand that has life and become sustainable on its own. That when people wear a swoop product, that they feel good
about themselves, that they feel empowered to be truly who they want to be. Because I think sometimes we lose that in life, it's hard and anything helps to help find her way. Good. And someone else is out there, maybe they're in us right now, or in a job that, you know, they go into exchange joy, but they're thinking about something next. So they've got this desire to start a brand. What would you advice would you give them? I'm sure a lot of people say the same thing, and I'm
going to say it again because it's so important. Don't let fear hold you back. That there are people there who are willing to help you. So I'll say don't let fear hold you back and ask for help. Because it's even like making this connection with you. Now we've met down the road. I mean, I wouldn't hesitate to reach out and just be, maybe you could help me, maybe you can't, but you
Probably know somebody who could, or maybe somebody who knows somebody.
works. The next time you come up to a last feeling, be like, oh, I remember that girl. I interviewed.
“So it's just how it works. It won't be afraid. Good. Love it. Love it. Boy, guys, that's a wrap.”
As always, keep working hard to have an impact. Check out this amazing story in the full episode
coming very soon. And as always, keep building a legacy. I'll see you guys soon. Take care.
