We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lindsay White. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lindsay below.

Lindsay, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

We always say we’re a brand that empowers, educates and advocates first… and we sell a product second. I think most brands really focus on selling selling selling. Here at TLMB we focus more on creating content that’s educational, relatable and empowering. We like to tell a story before highlighting a new product. We connect with our customers emotionally first, before ever trying to sell them a product.

When other brands were using models who weren’t currently breastfeeding. We focused on bringing in real moms, raw postpartum bodies, showing what motherhood really looks like instead of focusing on the perfect photo. If the baby spit up on mom, instead of photoshopping it out, we left it. When our customers see this they really connect with it “this is so real”. They see themselves in our photos. Other breastfeeding brands often times will only have the model showing the nursing bra in perfectly curated photos. Never actually showing a photo of a mother breastfeeding while using the bra so moms can see the functionality of it, and how it looks in use. Here at TLMB, we ALWAYS show the mother breastfeeding. It’s so important for our customers to see real life photos of moms breastfeeding. We don’t shy away from it. The more you see of something, the more normal it becomes.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I started The Little Milk Bar in 2018 when my mom asked me to go breastfeed in the bathroom while we were at a wedding. Thankfully I didn’t. But on the drive home I realized I wanted to start a brand that empowers breastfeeding moms, educating them on their rights to breastfeed their baby anywhere they need to, any time. I wanted this brand to feel like their best friend cheering them on, giving them permission to feed at the table. Sometimes we just need someone to have our backs, to say “it’s okay”.

It started with empowering merch that quickly sold out with every drop. But we ran into some hurdles. Anytime we posted breastfeeding moms on our social media, it would get flagged and taken down for “sexual content” what??? We were livid, and so was the motherhood community. So we put up a petition and got around 20k signatures in 1 few weeks. We got the attention of Meta and had a seat at the table in helping them change their policies (we still have work to do), but we helped make a change. We’re pretty proud of that.

After a few years of hearing from moms and their struggles with postpartum and breastfeeding, I decided to design a nursing bra that was comfortable to sleep in (the first of it’s kind). As a new mom who’s breastfeeding, its well known that you have to wear a bra to bed holding your nursing pads, otherwise you wake up in a puddle of soaked sheets from your milk leaking (it sucks). But all nursing bras on the market were big, bulky, strappy or looked like something the pilgrims wore. So I came up with a solution The Allie Bra. We can’t keep it in stock.

When then evolved into nursing pads, nursing tanks and have a few more products up our sleeves. We do still cary empowering merch, but it’s not our main focus anymore.

I went from sewing everything at my kitchen table. To now having an office with 6 employees. It’s been a wild ride.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Starting a breastfeeding brand where you rely mostly on social media to get brand awareness, we had zero money to run on ads, it was nearly impossible to execute when Meta would take down almost every post for “sexual content”. How do we market a product that we can’t even post about? It would’ve been easier to throw in the towel and say “hey we tried”. Instead we turned it into a marketing channel.

We went public with it. Told our followers what was happening. Got our community riled up with us and ready to have our back. Don’t mess with the motherhood community haha.

So we put up a petition, post about it like crazy. Got the attention of multiple online media outlets and it went viral. We got Meta’s attention and helped them change their policies to allow breastfeeding content. Instead of folding, we pushed back and got more eyes on our brand.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

I was scrappy! I didn’t know much about starting a business “capital” what’s that? I was so oblivious. I started TLMB with $300. I designed our Milk Maker tee, called around to some screen printers and asked them how much it would cost to order some customer tees. The minimum order was around 36 pieces. So I went with that. Put them up on a website I build on Squarespace, posted about it on social media and they sold out. I used the money I made from that launch to them place another order that was the next tier up from 36 pieces, I believe it was 150. Those sold out and the next launch was 300 units.

I bootstrapped for a VERY long time. Then I started the Goldman Sachs 10k Small Business initiative and that changed my life. It made me realize that if I wanted to get to the next level, I HAD to get capital somewhere to fund our next few big ideas. I could never get there by bootstrapping.

So I applied for my first SBA loan to help expand our product line. All this to say, 2026 is going to be our best year yet!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thelittlemilkbar.com
• Instagram: @thelittlemilkbar_
• Facebook: @thelittlemilkbar
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindsay-white-tlmb/

Image Credits

Shailynn Photography