Molly Borman Heymont - The Instagram Iceberg: Changing the Way We Think about Instagram as a Business Tool

Standing before 300 people in his Wharton School of Business class, Larry Heymont grabbed the mic, took a deep breath, and announced, Im here to talk about my wifes nipples.

The crowd went wild and relief washed over Larrys face. Understandably, Larry had some concerns about addressing his wifes nipples in front of his classmates, as nipplesor any part of the female anatomy for that matterwere not in the typical rotation of publicly discussed business school topics, especially at a school-sanctioned event.

Startups, valuations, and growth hacking? Yes. All day long!

Nipples? No. Never.

But, as Larry continued his speech, it became clear his wifes nipples had more in common with the business world than anyone would have initially suspected.

Larrys wifes nipples, or more accurately, my nipples, have been at the forefront of all my major business decisions for the last four years. My company, Just Nips, makes adhesive nipple enhancers for women who want that extra chilly look.

The product itself is an adhesive petal-shaped pasty, not unlike the ones women wear to cover up their nipples. Instead, Just Nips pasties feature a soft plastic nipple shape on top that, when worn underneath your shirt, look like a fully erect nipple.

Our customers range from women wearing Just Nips for cosmetic reasons to women who use our product as a nipple replacement after undergoing a non-nipple-sparing mastectomy.

From a business perspective, Just Nips has been fully profitable since our second month in production and we have been the fastest growing breast cancer accessory on the market for two years in a row.

Reporters, panelists, and fellow entrepreneurs often ask me how Ive managed to scale Just Nips so big and so fast, and my answer always comes as a shock: I havent spent any of my precious time, energy, or company resources on Instagram in the past few years.

Of course, this wasnt always the case.

Before I started Just Nips, I was busy building my career in social media. I got my big break, if you will, in 2013 while working as a copywriter for Ralph Lauren. On my way to work one morning, my neighbor Josh grabbed my phone and added himself to my list of Instagram followers. I didnt think much of it, except for the fact that I was late for work, and he wouldnt let go of my phone. Annoyed, I grabbed my phone back and left for the day. I noticed later that Josh posted on Instagram all day long. And he was funny. And he had a ton of followers. I was intrigued.

The next time I ran into Josh, we talked about his account,@TheFatJewish (today boasting over eleven million followers), and how he and his then-wife were also running separate Instagram accounts for their dogs. Its important to note that in 2013, we definitely werent referring to specific Instagram profiles as accountsthis was a time way before people had multiple profiles, business profiles or finsta profiles. In fact, you couldnt even toggle between profiles like you can today. You had to manually log out and log back in each time you wanted to post. What a pain!

These were the early years. What Josh and his then-wife were doing, essentially building up their personal brands (a.k.a. pioneering the influencer concept) and their dogs brands (creating an entire ecosystem of pet influencers), was uncharted territory. From what I could tell, they were also making good money.

I was soon brought on board to help run their dogs Instagram accountsa new side gig I could manage alongside my desk job at Ralph Lauren. As needed, I would take the dogs to meetings like photoshoots and appearances and capture content during my lunch break or free time, all while learning the ins and outs of this new Instagram economy.

After a while, I quit my job at RL and built up a roster of social media clients. I had quickly gotten the hang of juggling multiple clients with various goals and strategies when a dream opportunity came my way: to run social media for Barbara Corcoran, the real estate mogul turned Shark Tank star. I had relentlessly emailed her team until I got the interview and was hired on the spot.

It goes without saying that working for Barb was very different than working with any of my other clients, mostly because her world was so unique. She wasnt just a single entity. Barbaras social media presence represented her, her personal business, and all of the businesses and entrepreneurs she invested in through Shark Tank. Barbara was extremely hands-on with the businesses she invested in on the show; therefore, I worked closely with those businesses. At this time, social media was all the rage, and figuring out how to crack the code and drive more Instagram-led sales for Barbaras portfolio companies was always top of mind.

In between posts, grams, and tweets, I found myself dreaming of running my own business. Given that watching Shark Tank for hours on end was a very real part of my new job description, I often found myself wondering why I couldnt do what the entrepreneurs pitching on my TV screen were doing. As far as I was concerned, I was in a unique position to make the leap into starting a product-based brand. I had e-commerce experience from Ralph Lauren, I had social media marketing experience from working with all of my clients, and surely some of Barbaras business expertise had rubbed off on me, right?

It was a fool-proof plan with the notable exception that I did not yet have a product to sell.

While cleaning out my desk drawer in my New York City apartment, I found a pack of pencil cap erasers you stick on the end of your pencils. I laughed to myself, thinking that they looked like pointy nipples. (Really mature!) Then, I found some safety pins and affixed the erasers to my bra where my real nipples are. I pulled a sweatshirt over my head and voila! I looked like the coldest girl in the world.

I began tinkering away, forming various shapes and sizes of erasers to correspond with various cold temperatures, and that was thatI finally had my product to sell. This momentary stroke of boredom (read: genius) would serve as my foray into entrepreneurialism.