In this episode we cover: ✅Challenges of creating a hardware product ✅Helping people overcome shame and stigma ✅Building a brand beyond a visual identity ✅Investing in your own mental health ✅Reaching your audience where they are With its range of sex toys and sex education resources, NORMAL has reimagined the sex shop into an online experience that is fun and informative, with the mission of empowering absolutely anybody to explore their sexuality free from stress and stigma. In this special live episode of Wild Hearts, founder of NORMAL Lucy Wark spoke with me on stage at Blackbird’s Sunrise Festival. Episode highlights from Lucy: “More than 1 in 5 searches on the internet is about sex. There’s an incredibly large organic interest in this topic.” “As a culture, we have a long history of religious and cultural ideas about sex being sinful, sex being something that should only exist inside marriage, or should only exist for the creation of children.” “It’s not like selling toilet paper or mattresses. You’re trying to help people tackle quite deep psychological stigma.” “Things like libido, desire, arousal, changes in the body, sexual dysfunction, relationship skills, and sex while ageing, sex in menopause, there is this enormous suite of challenges for which we are incredibly poorly prepared for by formal sex education.” “A brand is not a logo and colours. To build authentic brands that mean something to people, is about a lot more than just building a visual identity.” “I think having practices like therapy are incredibly helpful investments in yourself as a founder, and an operator, and just a good human being to be around, so that’s been probably the highest ROI thing I do.”