In This Episode You’ll Hear About:

• How Adelle’s childhood in Central Coast California included entrepreneurial flair and drive to be a high achieving difference-maker
• How she started out wanting to become an actress, studied political science in college, and then found herself enrolled in the Acton School of Business in Austin, TX, graduating with an MBA.
• Why after graduating from Acton, Adelle decided to go into product marketing at BigCommerce and then TrendKite, both of which were incredible learning experiences that provided valuable lessons that she carries with her still today
• How she met and worked well with her business partner, Garrett Ozar, at both BigCommerce and TrendKite before founding Eterneva together in 2016
• Why she believes that the ability to collaborate well is vital to the health and success of a company and how she strives to cultivate that within Eterneva
• What led to the awareness of and connection to a lab-grown diamond company that became the answer to honor her dear friend and mentor who passed away 
• How the tenacity to find a way to honor her friend and mentor by having her ashes turned into a diamond that she could treasure, led Adelle to discover that there was an immediate product-market fit for Eterneva 
• How the early days of bootstrapping Eterneva not only helped them build the company with intention but also helped them realize that they are coming alongside their customers in their grief journey in powerful and positive ways
• How Adelle’s knack for networking has helped them through great fundraising rounds with wonderful investors who have been a great resource 
• How their successful appearance on Shark Tank led them to an investment from Mark Cuban 
• How and why Eterneva has experienced continual growth and partnerships even through COVID, including a partnership with Baylor University’s grief program to learn more about grief and how people can be helped through the process
• Why she is passionate about ideas for future expansion as they continue to create and build this brand new category of grief wellness

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To Find Out More:

eterneva.com

Quotes:

“What does it mean to live a life of meaning and how do you make sure that you're integrating that into what you go and do, cause you don't want to live with regret and look back and say, what was this all for?”

“You learn what it's like to fail, to fall on your face, to not get it all done, feel unprepared and  completely sleep-deprived.”

“There is no A+ in business. You just have to figure stuff out.”

“You should wait and make sure that you found the idea that is worth 5 to 10 years of your life. There should be a checklist, and it should clear that bar before you jump ship.”

“This is not really a diamond company that we're building. This is just as much about the grief changing journey that somebody is going on by having something positive to look forward to at a time they had nothing to look forward to. It's creating a conversation with their community in a way that nobody was engaging with them previously.”

“It's just kind of that constant balance of making sure that everything you're saying is really intentional and just erring towards building morale, building the team up and making sure that the levers behind the scenes are working.”

“You just have to constantly be humbly failing and learning and trying to be better.”

“We're really creating an entire category and our biggest opportunity is awareness building.”

“Advisors are wonderful, but I think what has been really great is having a CEO coach.”

“Really what we are is a grief wellness brand. And our vision is to be leading a cultural movement that de-stigmatizes loss and opens this conversation up…”