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

Lauren, appreciate you joining us today. Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?

I got into the world of athleisure entrepreneurship because I was desperately craving creativity, autonomy, and excitement that my “regular job” wasn’t providing. For 4 years, I balanced building Sunderday with the frustrating existence of a high demand 9-5 which ended up being a strategic and rewarding move. Sunderday exercised my creativity, big thinking, and risk-taking side of my brain which helped drive innovation and growth in my day job. My day job kept me close to the happenings in the marketing and media world, kept me sharp with business practices, and allowed me to meet people who would become mentors. Not to mention the steady salary that allowed me to fund my start-up, and take risks I wouldn’t have if I didn’t have a safety net.

Fast forward to the present day, Sunderday is doing great, and I am also employed as the head of marketing at my dream company. That “regular job” void I was trying to fill is gone. Sounds amazing, but there was one problem. That fire I felt for Sunderday wasn’t as strong because that void was gone. I didn’t need a creative, exciting outlet- I was getting that and more in my 9-5. Sunderday took the backseat for a while, until I realized if I didn’t re-focus, I may lose what I worked so hard to build. It was tough, but I retrained myself to use the new job’s inspiration and energy to fuel the progress I worked so hard to achieve. It was a conscious shift, but I was able to find focus and balance between the two priorities. Sunderday isn’t in a place where I am needed on it full-time, but if and when it is, I will be able to make that decision when it serves me and my companies best.

Grit, a great support system, and luck have gotten me where I am today. What I’ve learned is having your own company is a series of wild ups and downs. Some months I’m so focused and sales are soaring, other months I make mistakes and wonder why I started all of it in the first place. I became my own coach and cheerleader, (side note: having a great community and mentors is a must as well!) and worked on keeping a focus on a steady clear path forward.

As an entrepreneur, every experience you have (in work and outside) can be an opportunity – to grow, learn, make a mistake, meet someone game-changing, see something different, or make a change that catapults your business. The quote “A body in motion stays in motion, and a body at rest stays at rest.” really captures what it means to start a business – keep on moving!

Lauren, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’ve spent my career as a marketer for agencies and large brands. In 2016, a good friend and I decided to start a men’s clothing company (with zero experience in start-ups, manufacturing, or fashion). We were bored and unmotivated in our day jobs, and inspired and energized by the entrepreneurial spirit of NYC. Our idea came from his basketball community, wanting and not satisfied with the overpriced and underwhelming options for athelisure and lounge pants and shorts.

We set forth on creating a solution. My business partner had a captivated audience of potential consumers, and I had the creative and marketing skills and drive to figure out how to manufacture clothing. It was a fun few years of building a business, and we succeeded in selling primarily through word-of-mouth and experiential marketing tactics. After 3 years we decided to dissolve our partnership and go separate ways. It was an incredible experience that we are grateful for, but it became clear our approach and vision for the business were too different to be able to build a successful future.

I was then free to build what I wanted in a brand, using all of the skills and lessons I had learned. I would not have started Sunderday on my own without that confidence-building experience. In June of 2020, I launched Sunderday. I wanted to reinvent the hoodie, and give it a fresh new place in the wardrobe. Sunderday hoodies are lightweight, breathable, and soft, with a tailored silhouette, and a style that’s fresh and unique. We have 5 classic styles and are working on new colors and patterns (with some potential collaborators) that will drop in the upcoming seasons.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

During my time at marketing agencies, I worked with big clients with big budgets. I was conditioned to be polished with every move I made, ensuring I had all of the information available before making a decision. I quickly learned that you just can’t do that as an entrepreneur. You’ll never have all of the info, and there’s usually no roadmap to follow. It felt nerve-racking, but over time, I learned to use my gut more to make decisions. I became confident in taking risks. If the risks lead to failure, I knew the learnings gained could be instrumental in making my business stronger.

When you own your own business, other people will have a million opinions about it. Find mentors with valuable advice, and don’t worry about everyone else. Listen carefully to critiques and praises, but stay focused and don’t get distracted by the noise. I started a clothing brand with zero experience in fashion or manufacturing, and asked myself repeatedly “what the heck am I doing?!” Turns out, I may not know it all, but as entrepreneurs, we never will. I doubled down on the skills I was great at, and learned as much as I could about everything else (thanks YouTube!) I also made an effort to build relationships with people in the industry, leaning on them for advice, feedback, and inspiration. All that said, there’s no roadmap, so embrace it, learn from it, and don’t forget to enjoy it.

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

The standard question entrepreneurs should ask themselves before starting a business is“what problem is my business solving?”. I started a hoodie company… and for that first year, I didn’t have a solid answer to that question. I built a great product and brand, but I was just a brand in a sea of thousands of others in the athleisure space.

Then I got out in the real world. I was bringing a few hoodies everywhere I went, showing strangers, and giving them away to friends and family. I was visiting friends in Hawaii last summer, and Sunderday was a hit. My friends loved the lightweight, breathable, towel-like fabric of the hoodies. They brought them in their beach bags for day trips, threw them on after evening surf sessions, and wore them to the bars and restaurants at night. I was so focused on winter months and traditional hoodie categories, I didn’t even see the summertime beach category opportunity until then. At that moment I realized Sunderday could become the summertime hoodie. It was a position in the marketplace that wasn’t crowded and had an audience that understood the value. When I got back from Hawaii, I built out the marketing to position Sunderday as the summer hoodie. Within a month, I had more sales than my busiest winter month. I would have never found this opportunity if I didn’t get myself and my product out there. As an e-commerce brand, it can be easy to hide behind your computer, but being out in the world with your products is so important for brand growth.

Contact Info:

• Website: sunderday.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sunderday.co/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shopsunderday
• Linkedin: linkedin.com/company/sunderday/
• Other: Instagram: @sunderday.co