We recently connected with Kristi “Cam” Frank and have shared our conversation below.

Cam, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today. Do you have a hero? What have you learned from them?

Sara Blakely has been one the most influential people in my entrepreneurial journey ever since the very start… She is my hero. I’ve always looked up to her from every angle– her business acumen, her fashion sense, her hustle, everything! People say you’re attracted to others who you resemble, and I’ve always gravitated towards Sara’s story because I felt like I could imagine myself in her position. We share a passion for helping women feel confident and free in their clothes and have both invented products that are in support of that. Candidly, I see us both as blonde boss babes with functional fashion inventions.

The first time I learned of Sara’s story, I was hooked. Reading her journey about how she hustled in department stores all around the country and built Spanx from the ground up has paved the way for me to know the caliber of hustle it takes to launch an idea into the big leagues. One lesson I learned from her story was to know when to delegate and hire talent. In the beginning years of Spanx, Sara stepped down and hired Laurie Ann Goldman to be the new CEO because Sara understood that her expertise was a better fit to lead the company at the time. Sara’s leadership is so admirable and her smile is simply infectious. She is a mom, a wife, a friend (not of mine, I wish) and just an all around upstanding leader and female business owner. She rewrote the script for inventors and women all over the world.

Sara Blakely is my hero because she is a giver, evelates women, gives back to her people, the community, and to the general public with her quirky and inspiring coffee mug moments posted on LinkedIn. People admire their heroes in such ways because they wish to become them, and with Sara, this is true. It is truly a blessing to have someone to look up to and I just want to extend a thank you to Sara, should she ever read this, for inspiring me to create, innovate, and follow my functional fashion dreams!

Cam, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Hi readers! My name is Cam (fka Kristi) Frank and I am the founder and CEO of Clutch Creations. Clutch is a functional fashion and lifestyle brand that provides new, quality products that are convenient, reliable and stylish. Clutch was founded on a love for taking adventures and living life to the fullest, in style.

Our flagship product is a patented & trademarked phone strap called “The Clutch Strap” made from genuine leather that can attach to the back of *any phone or case using the industrial-strength adhesive Clutch Clips. We also offer a nylon version of The Clutch Strap that has the ability to be custom branded and printed primarily to businesses for events as a promotional product. This new sales channel for branded Clutch Straps opens the door for businesses to introduce a new and different way to showcase their brand front and center at their event and elevate the customer’s experience with a functional way to have their hands free at the same time and represent the event or sponsor.

The Clutch Strap was invented in 2013 when I was in college and packing for a music festival. I was struck with inspiration for a universal strap when I repeatedly noticed a lack of pockets in women’s fashion and I simply had nowhere convenient to put my phone that was secure, easily within reach, and still fashionable. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it’s no secret that we have our phones on us everywhere we go, the problem is finding a solution that takes our mind off its whereabouts, so we can live in the moment!

Clutch’s vision is to invent solutions for a world thriving on convenience and cultivate a conscientious community that supports our mission to make fashion more functional. #thatsclutch

Can you talk to us about how you funded your business?

Clutch has been funded out of pocket by me, Cam, from the start. Because I started this business as a sophomore in college, I really did not know at the time how much an investment starting a business would be. I had to learn what it meant to “boot-strap” a business and here’s how I managed. I started off by working multiple jobs and applying to compete in all of the pitch competitions that The University of Georgia provided. I got very involved in the entrepreneurship community and began building a name for myself and Clutch. Building credibility for myself as a founder and credibility behind the proof of concept for The Clutch Strap, our adhesive phone straps, was very important and allowed me to make connections that would ultimately help me in the long run of funding the business.

I competed in 5 national pitch competitions and although I did not win the prize money for any of them, I was able to gain feedback and insight from prestigious entrepreneurs and business owners which is invaluable! Through my experience of practicing pitching and networking, I learned a deeper understanding of ways I could fund the business and a better understanding of how much money it would take. In 2018, we got our first big break of being granted $10,000 from the Cobb County Economic Development and Entrepreneurship Fund. I was able to secure this money because I had had years of refining and improving my business plan and had built enough credibility for myself in that community that they knew they could invest and trust in the growth of Clutch Creations. As we are all aware, it “takes money to make money” and in this case, we used some of the money from the grant to put together a crowd-funding Kickstarter campaign.

Our Kickstarter was a huge success and we reached our initial goal of $11,722 within the first 24 hours! Many of our first backers were from relationships I’d built along the way, a huge reason why the campaign was successful all together. Then, our exposure on Kickstarter led to more opportunities. After completing the Kickstarter campaign, we were approached by a Japanese marketing company to launch another campaign on their crowdfunding platform called Makuake. We were able to have another successful crowd-funding campaign in a market I only imagined pursuing.

These efforts, along with our e-commerce website and securing multiple large wholesale and custom orders, are all the funding sources we’ve secured and used to invest all profits back into the business to continue our steady growth.

What do you think it takes to be successful?

I’ve always told aspiring entrepreneurs that they need to find the intersection of work and play and see where they are most fulfilled… that is where they will bloom.

I think success is a mindset and we all have the ability to achieve it and be successful in our own right. Since the question is directed at what do ‘I’ think it takes to be successful, I would say it takes patience, passion, and grit.

The idea of even being “successful” feels so Americanized. Are you happy? Do you have friends, family and people who love you? Fulfillment and happiness come from your soul and not from success. That narrative needs to be rewritten in such a way that doesn’t shame someone’s achievements compared to another’s or what society deems successful.

This is quite an interesting question because it is so debatable. The answer is, it depends. It depends on how you yourself measure success and if we are always striving to be better than we were yesterday, our meter for achieving success is forever a moving target.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.shopclutchcreations.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/thats.clutch
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/clutchcreations
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/clutch-creations/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/thatstooclutch
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjqWA2cw86MVih-V3cfK7lQ
• Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/thatstooclutch
• TikTok – @thats.clutch

Image Credits
Christina Boemio, Shannon Coen, Berny Echavvarria