BBW MEMBER INTERVIEW: Autumn Hassett, Entrepreneur/Self-Employed

Autumn Hassett, Entrepreneur/Self-Employed

Less than a year

@wearthewonder // @autumn.in.newengland

https://www.linkedin.com/in/autumnhassett/

I was born and raised in Philadelphia and attended Temple University. During college, I was recruited by General Mills and relocated to Minneapolis. I worked in sales for several years before being transferred to Boston, where I've been for the last 7.5 years.

I worked in corporate America for about 5 years after college. I really enjoyed working in sales (and selling cereal, c'mon), but I was living in Boston and was really intrigued by the tech scene. I was brought into a startup (ThirdChannel, backed by RedStar Ventures) and worked in Customer Success. I ended up running the Customer Success team after about 8 months and loved it. We worked with incredibly popular brands, such as New Balance, Luxottica (Ray-Ban, Oakley, Chanel), Fender, The Honest Company, etc. After a few years at ThirdChannel, I found out I was expecting my first child and realized the commute wasn't going to work with being a mom, so I resigned. I wanted to take about 6 months and figure out what I wanted to do and enjoy being a mom, but I only lasted about 3 months. I had worked with my mom during high school and college (starting in 2002), and always had an entrepreneurial spirit. She started Wear the Wonder back in 2015/2016 and I loved the journey she on. I decided to join forces with her in February of 2019 and haven't looked back.

Our clients have been incredibly supportive of our journey. With repeat customers ordering every month, the quality and uniqueness of our products is evident with our customer retention rate. We strive to create the most unique wearable and functional art in the marketplace, which allows you to embrace nature in a new way.

``The more ridiculous you feel, the better you're doing it.`` I grew up dancing and you had to 'sell it' during performances. My teacher would always say that if we felt silly, we were probably doing it right. I've taken that with me in sales and through my career, because especially as an entrepreneur, you need to step out of your comfort zone since you're doing all the tasks.

Where the Crawdads Sing

I'm a certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), so planning and organization is my forte. I use Trello to plan all of my tasks, Canva for design and Later for social media management.

Having a phenomenal Q2 and beginning of Q3 despite being in the midst of a pandemic. I pushed my business hard when the pandemic first hit, investing in my website, SEO and social. I spent countless hours researching how to make my business better and it definitely paid off.

It doesn't 100% matter what you go to college for, what matters is what you do with your time. Major in something that will give you options for careers post college, get a job during school, join a sport or club, and work yourself to make the most of every single experience. Companies want professionals with grit and perseverance.

Reading for sure. I read about 50 books a year, and there isn't a day that goes by where I don't turn a few pages.

When I was little my dream was to be Miss America. I never made it that far, but I competed in the Miss Philadelphia pageant, one of the prelims to Miss Pennsylvania, when I was still in high school.