Three Things I Wish I Had Known in My 20’s: Catalina Girald

Catalina Girald is the founder of NAJA, a lingerie brand that is changing the industry.

While climbing her way up the ranks of Skadden, Arps, one of the most prestigious law firms in the country, Catalina realized that being a lawyer wasn’t exactly what she wanted to do. So, she started attending the New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology–literally sneaking off to classes in between meetings at Skadden. Finally, she decided to leave NYC, and get her MBA from Stanford.

While there, Catalina founded one of the first venture-funded fashion sites, MOXSIE, which was for independent designers. The site was later acquired.

Her new business, NAJA, is once again turning the fashion industry on it’s head. The idea came out of her frustration with lingerie, which is not only overpriced, but always portrays women in an overly sexual light.  She is not only providing fresh designs, she is also changing the production lead times.  In an industry used to seeing 12 month+ lead times, NAJA’s 3 month lead times (from concept to store), allows the company to respond quickly to trends.

Through the company’s Underwear for Hope program, a percentage of all NAJA proceeds go to training and employing women in the poorest areas of the world.

Now, Catalina shares what she wishes she would have known both personally and professional in her 20s:

On a personal level:

If I knew then, what I know now…

Do what you love:
I would throw myself head first into the things I love, regardless of what my family/ friends/ society expected.  We are often driven to pursue other career paths because of the status that they convey or fear that we may not be successful doing what we love. What I didn’t fully understand when I was young was that if we do what we love we will be successful.  Happiness is inside of us and does not come as a result of our ability to acquire material goods.

Appreciate all experiences:
I would actively train my mind to view every situation with gratitude.  Being grateful, for negative experiences as well as positive experiences changes the way we think as well as how we perceive ourselves.  When we can find a reason to be grateful, we are more at peace.  It makes us happier and causes others to perceive us in a more positive light as well.

On a business level:

If I knew then, what I know now…

Networking is everything:
I would spend 50% of my time on relationship building and 50% of it on pursuing my business ideals. To throw yourself head first into a project and ignore relationship building is harmful to your business long term.  Much of what we can achieve in business is a combination of our own hard-work, and the willingness of others to help us, believe in us, or give us a chance. No man or woman can build a company alone.

I would start companies with limited capital and wait to raise money when the company asked for it–what I mean is that a company is like a standard car, it will tell you when it needs to go into next gear.  I started my first company with venture capital financing almost from the beginning.  There were a lot of parts of the business that I wasn’t intimately familiar with–in fact, I didn’t know anything at all about some parts of the business.  Because we had money, I hired for those roles, but my lack of familiarity with the requirements of those roles made it difficult for me to manage or gauge the performance of the people that I had hired.

Learn about your business:
I built and launched Naja on under $100k–it forced me to be extremely creative and extremely careful in my spending decisions.  I had to learn each and every part of the business, because I had to do it myself.  Knowing every part of the business intimately, not only makes you a better CEO because you understand the work you are asking someone to do and can gauge their performance better, but it makes you more empathetic as a manager because you can put yourself in their shoes and understand what they are going through.  It also gives you a good standard by which to measure employees:  “if you can’t do it better than I can, then we have a problem.”

Starting a company on a little bit of money is actually also an excellent litmus test of the strength of your business. People will work for you for free.  If they don’t want to, your idea isn’t good enough.  In the end, if you can make something with potential happen on $100k, you will have proven something–to yourself and to your future investors.