Skimm'd from The Couch: Chelsea Hirschhorn

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Chelsea Hirschhorn is not a natural risk taker. But she had to change when she started building Frida from the ground up. Frida is now a go-to parenting brand that helps moms and caregivers navigate the realities of parenthood. And this week, Chelsea told us that the risks she took along the way, from leaving her steady job as a lawyer to running unconventional advertising campaigns, were all worth it. 

On Risk

Chelsea: I really was not a risk taker at all…I toed the line. I would never in a million years have predicted that I would have veered off that course. I did what was laid out for me on a charted path. 

So much of the risk that I took in the beginning, and [building a business] requires so much risk, came from that naiveté. And just being brazen enough because you don't know enough.

On R&D

Chelsea: [Frida] evolved with each stage of parenting that I've actively navigated over the past seven years. And so when it started in the beginning, you could trace the product line to the age of my oldest child. I was solving pain points that I was experiencing at 3 o'clock in the morning. 

…. We’ve since evolved to over 100 plus employees with an R&D team and industrial designers. And my husband jokes, "We'll have to continue having babies to fuel the innovation pipeline." But the product portfolio has evolved as my parenting journey has evolved.

On Turning Off

Danielle: Is there something that helps you to turn off? It sounds like something that has been a work in progress.

Chelsea: There are obviously tactics like leaving your phone in a drawer totally out of reach that I think are universally accepted at this point. But there are realities of parenthood that make it more raw for me.

Like, when my four-year-old started turning my head to face him when he would talk to me and say, "Mommy, look at me." And those are really eye-opening moments as a parent that sort of are more effective than any phone-in-the-drawer tactic I think that you could use, honestly. They're raw and they're real. And you see the impact that you're having on your children every single day.