The bond between mothers and daughters is one of the most powerful that can exist—and for a few members of the Forbes 50 Over 50 list, that bond is fueling entrepreneurial growth.
By Victoria Kempter, Contributor
What do make-up brand Anastasia Beverly Hills, snack company SkinnyDipped and coaching platform Medley have in common? One-half of each founding team appears on Forbes’ and Know Your Value’s 2022 and 2023 50 Over 50 lists of women finding their greatest success at age 50 and beyond. But they’re more than female founders: They are mothers who founded companies with their daughters.
Going into business with a family member can present a minefield of potential problems. But for the women of the 50 Over 50 list, and their daughters, working together is somewhat of a driver of their business success. Here are two case studies:
SkinnyDipped: Val and Breezy Griffith
The Griffith family has always been close. Val Griffith, 65, and her husband prioritized experiences, taking their daughters Breezy, 35, and Emma, 27, to far corners of the world when they were kids and connecting over food.
In 2012, when Val was in her fifties, the family was blindsided by the untimely death of a close family friend. Reconsidering her life’s priorities, she found herself wanting to spend more time with her daughters. While Emma was away studying at University, Breezy, about to turn 25, was closer, had time to spend and, moreover, an idea: creating healthier versions of the chocolate-coated almonds they bought at the grocery store. What if they flipped the chocolate-to-almond ratio? What if, the duo thought, they found a way to “skinny dip” an almond to be a little sweet but not as decadent?
The pair grew obsessed with crafting creative flavors like Dark Chocolate Peppermint or Strawberry Lemonade, using yogurt instead of chocolate, for lower-sugar, drool-worthy treats. When Breezy’s best friends joined in, they officially launched SkinnyDipped in 2016. From their kitchen table, they built a homegrown business that has accrued $100 million in cumulative revenue since 2018 and is now distributed in over 25,000 stores nationwide. They created a snack empire by combining just a few ingredients, now working with 30 employees, and achieving 25% year-over-year revenue growth. Today, they’ve raised over $25 million in venture funding, including investors like Shakira, project profitability by the end of 2023, and are about to close a buzzy Series A funding round later in August.
Those numbers don’t tell the full story of building the company, though. In the earliest days, Val calls their business dynamic “very typical mother, daughter.” They needed about six months to set rules and get to a point where they could appreciate each other’s skill sets, rather than be annoyed by them. Val admits that it took her a while, but today she knows her daughter’s motivation and charisma made her a natural fit to be the company’s CEO. “She is velocity, she is power,” Val says of her daughter.
Val, meanwhile, as Chief Innovation Officer, runs all of the company’s innovations. No part of the creative process is outsourced, so Val is the brains behind flavors like top-seller Dark Chocolate Cocoa Almonds, Kourtney Kardashian’s favorite Lemon Bliss Almonds, or the Birthday Cake Cashews. Breezy calls that a superpower for the company.
Breezy remembers how, when they first started out, they promised each other to never let the business come between their mother-daughter relationship. “Hard stop,” she says. Looking back, there were times they had to sit down and course-correct, making sure that they were holding to that.
To other mothers and daughters aspiring to go into business together, “Take a breath up front and talk about where you’re headed,” Val says. “Divest from your own ego and really know what each one of you brings to the table.”
Medley: Edith Cooper and Jordan Taylor
Good timing is the reason that Edith Cooper, 61, and her daughter Jordan Taylor, 32, ended up founding a company together: After 30 years on Wall Street, Edith retired from a leadership position at Goldman Sachs in 2018, just as Jordan was about to graduate with an MBA from Harvard University and was looking for a cofounder for her coaching idea. Instead of looking outside the family, Jordan went inwards and found in her mother someone who would help her build a community and coaching career development platform. (story continues after break)
For Edith and Jordan, becoming equal cofounders didn’t shift the family hierarchy. Edith believes that she was never a domineering mother, partly because she worked a lot and the kids had very busy lives themselves. “I might not have been there every minute of every day saying: go left, go right,” she remembers, “There wasn’t a need to be perfect, but there was certainly an expectation that you needed to do your best.” This is a mindset that translates well to entrepreneurship.
At Medley, too, it was Jordan who is credited with the idea and, while they work on eye level, the women made the decision to make her CEO. They still lead together. It wasn’t an entirely seamless transition; the two had to learn to understand each other’s styles of leadership. “It’s ironic and funny on a meta-level because that’s what we do at Medley,” says Jordan. Edith, especially, says she had to learn to work as a team and that she’s not her daughter’s boss—there’s no space for her to provide guidance in the same way she did with her Goldman Sachs employees. “I don’t want to be the boss of this relationship, I want to be a partner, collaborate,” Edith says.
That collaboration has resulted in raising a total of nearly $5 million in funding, including a $3.7 million seed round in 2021. But moreover, they’re staying agile: In response to inbound demand, they evolved from a direct-to-consumer focus and launched an offering for businesses who want to provide coaching to employees. BCG is among its clients. After just 9 months in-market, Medley has grown revenue 3x.
When asked for their best advice for other aspiring mother-daughter founding teams, Edith and Jordan say every situation is unique and the advice is often individual. Jordan, for instance, decided to call Edith “Edith” in all business settings, rather than “mom.” “It’s just easier and less awkward for the team,” Edith says.
They’ve learned to lean on the familial trust they’ve built together, which is something that can get them through moments of business difficulties: “We don’t have things that we are afraid to talk about,” Edith says.
They’ve also learned to deliberately create space for their mother-daughter relationship, intentionally spending time as though they didn’t work together. “I still want to be a mom,” Edith says. And Jordan still wants to be my daughter.”
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