The Inner Circle staff is at Shop.org in Los Angeles this week, and we’re mightily impressed with all the women speakers here!

Our favorite session so far, Women Rule: Entrepreneurial Inspiration, featured the female founders and CEOs behind Beautycounter, Minted and theSkimm. These extraordinary women shared how they’ve developed their entrepreneurial brands, among other nuggets of information. What follows are my favorite quotes from the panel, which included Gregg Renfrew, founder and CEO of Beautycounter; Mariam Naficy, founder and CEO of Minted; Carly Zakin, co-founder and co-CEO of theSkimm; Danielle Weisberg, co-founder and co-CEO of theSkimm; and Martine Reardon, former chief marketing officer of Macy’s, who served as moderator:

  • “You need to build direct and authentic relationships with your customers,” said Renfrew, whose beauty company has created a movement to disrupt the $62 billion beauty industry with a mission to get safer, more environmentally-friendly beauty products with nontoxic ingredients into the hands of everyone. “Having these types of relationships is so important to consumers today.”
  • “Use the crowd, use the power of a lot of people to stay fresh forever,” said Naficy, whose online marketplace of independent artists and designers crowdsources art and design through monthly challenges. “Consumers know more than us; we can never win against the crowd.”
  • “We meet our audience where they are, consistently putting the consumer first, and thinking about where we can bring the most value-add to their day, and what company resources do we want to devote to that,” said Zakin. “Having that consistent thinking has really saved us.”