Episode 053
Brianne Mees
How do you turn a passion for local art and music into a thriving multi-million dollar business? In this episode of Women’s Million Dollar Conversations, Alice Tang sits down with Brianne Mees, the co-founder of Tender Loving Empire. Brianne shares the story of how she and her husband grew a small DIY space into an iconic Portland brand that supports hundreds of independent artists and musicians.
Brianne reveals the challenges of scaling a retail and record label hybrid and discusses how staying true to the “soul” of her business allowed her to navigate the million-dollar milestone and beyond. If you are a creative entrepreneur or a mission-driven leader, Brianne’s insights on community, curation, and “Tender Loving” leadership are a must-watch.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
-The strategic evolution of Tender Loving Empire from one shop to multiple locations.
-How Brianne reached the $1M milestone while maintaining a commitment to local makers.
-Why Brianne views money as a tool for “amplifying the good” in the creative community.
-Tactical advice for balancing the “artist’s heart” with a “CEO’s mindset”.
"I would just say think of the first viable step, move in that direction and then figure out the next step and trust yourself that you'll be able to figure out the next step once you get there."
1:14 Good morning everyone. I’m Alice Tang in Portland, Oregon, the host of Women’s Million Dollar Conversation. This morning I am very excited to meet with a new friend, Brianne Mees. You might know her and her store in Portland. She is one of the two founders of Tender Loving Empire who currently has seven stores. They are very successful in doing what they do and there is a background story. So that’s why she’s here.
1:38 Alice Tang: So Brianne, would you introduce yourself a little bit?
1:39 Brianne Mees: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me, Alice. It has been so fun to get to know you, and I’m super honored to be part of the Million-Dollar Conversation. So, yes, my name is Brianne Mees. I’m the co-founder and CEO of Tender Love Empire. My husband and I have owned and operated the company for 18 years now. We started in 2007 and we essentially exist just to support artists, musicians, small businesses, empower them to be seen and heard and inspire our community. And we operate as seven retail locations. You got it right. We have not popped up any new stores in the last two weeks since the last time we met. We’re still a Portland, Oregon company and she loves Portland.
2:21 Brianne Mees: I love this town so much. We have all of our locations, six of our locations are in the Portland area, but we two years ago, about a year and a half ago actually, we opened the Seattle airport location. So, yay.
2:32 Alice Tang: We’re out of town.
2:33 Brianne Mees: Yay.
2:34 Alice Tang: Very good. Brianne, you’re at Women’s Million Dollar conversation. We can’t help but ask,
2:39 Alice Tang: how did you get to your first million dollars? tell us about how do you get there and also what are some of the biases or challenges you run into and how do you resolve it?
2:53 Brianne Mees: Absolutely. Those are great questions. You know, it really was just a passion project at the beginning. It to be honest, I was reflecting on this and money really wasn’t a consideration at all at the beginning other than how could we save up enough to open our location? How could we save up just enough to pay her last month’s rent, build some furniture, buy some paint? And at that point, my husband was a valet at a hotel and I was waiting tables at a restaurant here in town, and we literally were saving all of our tip money in a shoe box that said Tenderloving Empire. And that was that was as little as we were thinking about money. We so we started TLE with very little knowledge about retail, very little capital. I had never worked a retail business. We had never run any sort of business. I didn’t know I didn’t know what a P&L was or cash flow plan. And so at the beginning, it was just really pure. It was really just a passion while we worked other jobs. But in 2014, seven years later, we found ourselves with a 2-year-old and life was getting a little more real. We were at that point we were making the equivalent of $7 an hour. We were paying our employees a little over minimum wage and we just wanted to do better for ourselves, for them, support our family. And we realized that in order to be better at the mission that we actually set out to do, which is to support other makers and artists that if we grew and expanded and really figured out how to run a company that we could have more of an impact. In 2014 is when I say we really started taking it seriously and we set our goal to make our first million dollars at that point and we were able to accomplish that in 2015.
4:45 Alice Tang: Wow.
4:47 Brianne Mees: Your other question I think was what challenges to that that we came across and hurdles and I don’t even know where to start because 18 years presents a lot of challenges for sure. I think being an entrepreneur is a roller coaster. It’s been an emotional roller coaster. That’s how I’ve experienced it to be quite honest. There’s highs. There’s so much to be grateful for and so many moments where everything comes into focus and you can really just feel the reason why you’re doing it and it’s all working and it’s beautiful. But there’s so many challenges. I mean, the pandemic, getting through the pandemic is a great recent example. as a small retail business in Portland, Oregon in the arts. That was no small feat. As you can imagine, it gets harder in some ways and it gets easier in some ways. You build up a me muscle memory to get through the hard things.
5:47 Alice Tang: That’s so true. I have so many goosebumps when you said you were waiting table and your husband was doing a ballet and you guys had a dream and you treat the dream very seriously although you said you don’t know about money but it calls to start both of you are very smart at the time and said it cost we are at this situation we decided to do our best given what we have it’s really all the tipment money in the sue box. I have tears in my eyes now in the sue box. I can really see you and him counting money every now and then and see how much we have. Are we there yet? And then make that jump and say, “Hey, I think we can. Let’s try.” And perhaps at that moment, please do not let me put the words in your mind or in your mouth. You might not know that you have seven stores. You might not even know if your first store would sustain. But this is such like you said a passion project. I’m passionate helping artists to have a place to show up and even if we fail at least we tried.
6:58 Brianne Mees: That’s exactly right. I think so many people think that they have to start perfectly to succeed.
7:07 Alice Tang: Right. And of course you don’t say we’re going to close our business in three weeks. That’s why we start now. Nobody think that. But there is always a risk.
7:18 Brianne Mees: Yeah.
7:18 Alice Tang: So I’m I’m just going with my heart if that’s okay because every interview is different. You really touch me some way. So allow me to go.
7:27 Brianne Mees: Absolutely.
7:28 Alice Tang: I think entrepreneur journey in your situation or maybe in many but specifically I’m sitting in front of a successful business owner you Brianne and your husband is really a journey about letting go.
7:45 Brianne Mees: Absolutely.
7:46 Alice Tang: When we said it’s easier, it’s really we let go of the fear of failing, the fear of not having enough to cover like the next three months rent, the fear of is there another pandemic just like the last pandemic, right?
8:05 Brianne Mees: And those fears don’t go away, but I think you get maybe just used to them and you and as you have more and more um experiences where you have success getting to the other side of the challenge in one piece and sometimes even a better situation than you were before. I think that it just builds on itself. The strength to get through and the the knowledge that you can find a way around even when things feel impossible or insurmountable.
8:35 Alice Tang: Yeah, it doesn’t get easy though. The pressure is always there. Especially, you know, with growth, there’s more mouths to be, there’s more people depending on us. There’s more zeros added at the end. And so, the pressure still is there and but you at least have experience of getting through the challenges.
8:53 Alice Tang: Crazy enough that I think of what kept you going is the question. So of course there are times when you say gee we are at onto the last penny and talking about financing through different banks or what what kept you going?
9:08 Brianne Mees: There’s been so many of those moments over the last 18 years. It’s such a mental game being an entrepreneur. It’s takes so much like mastery over your own thoughts and and not that I have mastery over my own thoughts but I try. Um, and I think that because the beginning was so pure and we just lived in our mission. We weren’t thinking about the pressures of growth or we were going to get rich someday from this or we really just lived the mission for so long. I think a lot of founders jump right in and immediately have this pressure to grow and expand and that’s fine. That’s a great path for some folks, but for us that wasn’t our experience. And so I think because we had those seven years so deeply rooted in the why behind our company, we can go back to that. We had so many beautiful years before we were worried about growth that it just shapes how we navigate the hard moments. The other pieces are therapy. You know, I’ve done a little therapy and I’ve read every self-help book in the world and I have a great business partner who’s my best friend. He’s my husband, too. So that presents its own challenges of running a company with your husband, but ultimately he’s kept me sane and kept my head in the game and just talking to other entrepreneurs, other mentors that have had similar experiences and that gives me the strength to know that I’m not alone. That this is just the experience for entrepreneurs and I can get through it.
10:38 Alice Tang: Beautifully said. I’m counting numbers because I’m a number woman. I live in the world of numbers and look at a lot of others numbers and reflecting our conversation it took you and your husband 8 years to get to your first million and then from then 18 years of business you’re now at 8 million.
10:58 Brianne Mees: Mhm.
10:59 Alice Tang: Um so you’re eight times that. Mhm.
11:02 Alice Tang: The question I have in mind and I’m sure the audience too is how did you scale from one to eight in the last 10 years and within the last 10 years we also have the pandemic. So could you share a little bit?
11:18 Brianne Mees: Absolutely. Yeah. I think like you mentioned at the beginning or a moment ago you were saying that when we first started we probably didn’t have the seven locations in mind. we did absolutely did not know. And I think sometimes when I talk to people when they ask this question, how did you get here? Um it’s just it was step by step. It was one foot in front of the other, one day at a time. And that’s really the only way I can explain it that we opened our second location and we figured that out. And then we started seeing that there was better results for ourselves, for our family, for all of the vendors and artists that we set out to support. We were paying them bigger checks and we’re really making a community impact. So we’re like, why would we stop here? This is great. This is us fulfilling the mission and this is us being able to do more for our community. So in 2014, we opened our second location and that was on Hawthorne. So our first location doesn’t exist anymore. We moved to the West End location. Our second location was on Hawthorne. In 2015, we opened on Northwest 23rd. In 2017 was our first location at the PDX airport. 2019, we expanded our West End location to double its size and open our Bridgeport Village location. So, it was just this cadence. And we did it all through bank loans. We didn’t do it through the classic investment route. So we just bootstrapped it and did our bank put our own house on the line and got bank loans and took all the risks needed to do that. And then in 2020 we were supposed to open our second PDX location and we were applying for our Seattle location but we all know what happened in 2020 and so that was a delay and we put the opening soon signs up and Jared and I looked at each other and we were like I don’t know if this is going to happen. That was one of those we did not see the route, but it worked out and the Port of Portland is just so lovely to work with. They they financed half of our build and then Craft 3 financed the other half of our build and we made it through. We opened our PDXE location in 2021. CATC got back in touch with us. We opened our Seattle store at the end of 2023, the last week of 2023. So yeah, it’s just been one foot after the other. I think of it like you climb a mountain or you’re walking up a set of stairs and once you get there, then you have a better view to understand the next thing that you need. You’re not even going to know what you need when you’re at the bottom of the flight of stairs, but when you get to the top, you’ll just see it.
13:57 Alice Tang: You explain the journey of an enter entrepreneur. You start with a dream and then you keep walking to get to a better view place. But from then you can see better for yourself and perhaps I’m describing you and your husband were looking at each other and say actually we might be able to do more right from this field and let’s see what resource we have or what help do we have in the community including advis right from the closest entrepreneur that you have and we have you know the Ryan Buchanan we have the zoo embry who is in the support or you belong to EO too. I’m sure that gives you a lot of power up.
14:46 Brianne Mees: I did the I did the accelerator program through EO. So, I’m not in EO proper right now, unfortunately. I don’t know why I should be. I have so many friends that are and it they it’s so valuable. But, we did the accelerator program in 2014 and I absolutely credit that experience as crucial in in hitting that first million dollars that we’re talking about today. And I say that was when I got my street MBA because I majored in psychology. My husband majored in art and English. So I really had no business starting a business. But we learned it on the street. We learned it in real time. And Eio was really helpful. And really, it took me like seven years to realize that I could ask for help, that I could talk to other people who had gone before me, that other people had run retail companies before that I could get advice from. We just really were so excited. We just made up all the systems. We just did it all from scratch. And it was very imperfect. It was very messy at the beginning. But we again, that’s just that story of start somewhere, you know, just start without the need for it to be perfect and then you can fix it later. I really identify with that classic entrepreneurs, jump off the cliff and build the parachute on the way down.
16:05 Alice Tang: That’s really been my experience. And look, you haven’t died.
16:08 Brianne Mees: Didn’t die.
16:09 Alice Tang: And your life insurance company is happy too because they are not paid.
16:15 Brianne Mees: Great.
16:15 Alice Tang: A lot of our audience are women. Of course, this is women’s million-doll conversation.
16:21 Alice Tang: What advice would you give to them if they found themselves wanting to be an entrepreneur like you?
16:27 Brianne Mees: I have so much advice for those folks. But I think it does just go back to I see people frozen so often thinking that they need to know the whole plan or they need to have do things perfectly. I think back to the beginning when we were first starting that we knew we wanted to start a record label. We knew we wanted to open a store and we had all these other bigger visions of it like an event space which we have now and maker spaces etc. And we were like we don’t know how to do that. There’s no way we could just do that. So we just thought of the first viable step. What is the very first step that we could do? And what we could do is Jared could record an album and we could make our first CD. we could burn it on our CD burner and screen print the cover and glue it together and call it a record label. And then from there we were like we can put out the work of another friend. And then from there we were like oh there’s a little off thebeaten path monthto-month tiny little shop that we can do with very little risk and we can try that out. I would just say think of the first viable step, move that move in that direction and then figure out the next step and trust yourself that you’ll be able to figure out the next step once you get there.
17:47 Alice Tang: So in conclusion, just think about the next step although you have your long-term goal in mind as far as execution, focus on what’s next.
17:57 Brianne Mees: Yeah.
17:58 Alice Tang: Instead of being frozen by all the steps between now and 30 years later when I have 30 store in different countries.
18:06 Brianne Mees: You can be frozen. Exactly. That’s debilitating. You don’t need to know that yet when you first start.
18:14 Alice Tang: Very good. How do you use the money to leave a legacy and make an impact to the world now that I’m sure you are financially better off compared to when you’re putting money in your shoe box and you of course have beautiful children that you have great dreams and goals for them.
18:31 Brianne Mees: Yeah. First of all, our entire business model exists to do exactly that. You know, our whole business model wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t about leaving a legacy for this town and supporting the artists and the other small businesses. So, I think we just inherently do that and I feel a real calling to do that. That it’s kind of my life’s work. It is my life’s work. I keep telling people that since the pandemic, I’ve been saying that this is my civic duty. Like running Tender Loving Empire is really my civic duty. That while the world feels crazy, it’s one thing that I can personally affect. My immediate surroundings and the people around me to be able to do what they love for a living. And I think the impact of what we do is not just financial. You know, we’ve been able to give out $20 million to makers, artists, musicians, other small businesses since our founding, all those folks that we set out to support back in the day when we were saving money in the shoe box. But the impact isn’t just financial. It is really cultural. I think that right now it’s a really important time for anybody that’s willing to roll up their sleeves and make sure that the things that we love about Portland stay. And that’s my intention for my little part of it. It’s going to take a lot of us to do this, but my little part of it is keeping the creative community thriving as much as I can through Tender Living Empire.
20:09 Alice Tang: And in doing so, like you have said, it’s not only financial. Of course, we nobody lives without money, right? We’re not like right one of those people who said, well, nothing, no money. But from getting the pay out of the work that they do, the artists, I would imagine that it boost their confidence.
20:31 Brianne Mees: Yeah. and believing in what they do is an important part of the community and giving people some joy cuz when I look at art I’m not an art person that’s all the art you can see I’m not an art person at all but when I go to a gallery for example I would just feel that you know I feel calm and I love to sing and my husband keeps saying keep my daytime job So Jared and I when we meet, he will have fun because otherwise she can’t even hit the key.
21:08 Brianne Mees: It turns out that despite the way I’m living my life, not all of your hobbies have to turn into your jobs.
18:14 Alice Tang: Very good. How do you use the money to leave a legacy and make an impact to the world now that I’m sure you are financially better off compared to when you’re putting money in your shoe box and you of course have beautiful children that you have great dreams and goals for them.
18:31 Brianne Mees: Yeah. First of all, our entire business model exists to do exactly that. You know, our whole business model wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t about leaving a legacy for this town and supporting the artists and the other small businesses. So, I think we just inherently do that and I feel a real calling to do that. That it’s kind of my life’s work. It is my life’s work. I keep telling people that since the pandemic, I’ve been saying that this is my civic duty. Like running Tender Loving Empire is really my civic duty. That while the world feels crazy, it’s one thing that I can personally affect. My immediate surroundings and the people around me to be able to do what they love for a living. And I think the impact of what we do is not just financial. You know, we’ve been able to give out $20 million to makers, artists, musicians, other small businesses since our founding, all those folks that we set out to support back in the day when we were saving money in the shoe box. But the impact isn’t just financial. It is really cultural. I think that right now it’s a really important time for anybody that’s willing to roll up their sleeves and make sure that the things that we love about Portland stay. And that’s my intention for my little part of it. It’s going to take a lot of us to do this, but my little part of it is keeping the creative community thriving as much as I can through Tender Living Empire.
20:09 Alice Tang: And in doing so, like you have said, it’s not only financial. Of course, we nobody lives without money, right? We’re not like right one of those people who said, well, nothing, no money. But from getting the pay out of the work that they do, the artists, I would imagine that it boost their confidence.
20:31 Brianne Mees: Yeah. and believing in what they do is an important part of the community and giving people some joy cuz when I look at art I’m not an art person that’s all the art you can see I’m not an art person at all but when I go to a gallery for example I would just feel that you know I feel calm and I love to sing and my husband keeps saying keep my daytime job So Jared and I when we meet, he will have fun because otherwise she can’t even hit the key.
21:08 Brianne Mees: It turns out that despite the way I’m living my life, not all of your hobbies have to turn into your jobs.
21:14 Alice Tang: I know. I know. I know. I know. What are you grateful for?
21:20 Brianne Mees: Oh my gosh, so much. I am immensely grateful for my team of employees since the beginning that have helped this dream come to life. We didn’t have it figured out and there’s so many people that we’ve hired over the years that have really dug in and committed to building this with us. So, we couldn’t have done it without them. I’m really grateful for my team and I’m grateful for just Portland in general. Even though, you know, it’s chewed me up and spit me out a couple times. It’s been a it’s been a roller coaster here in town for the last few years, but I’m just grateful that this community of people do care about small business. I often say I’m from Los Angeles originally. I’ve lived here for 20 years now, but it wouldn’t have felt possible um in every city, but in Portland, it is so small businessoriented that it made it feel achievable in a different way. So, I’m really grateful that the community has come continually shown up and we paid the people $20 million, but it really was a collective effort of everybody who shops small and that comes in and shops at Ter Living Empire. They’re the ones that actually paid the $20 million. So, I’m really grateful for them, for people who get that.
22:44 Alice Tang: We’re grateful for you. Thank you so much for investing time to this interview at Women’s Million Dollar Conversation. Thank you so very much.
22:55 Brianne Mees: Thank you, Alice. I’ve had so much fun talking to you. It’s been so fun to get to know you, and I’m excited to see where our friendship goes from here.
23:04 Alice Tang: Yes, I’m excited, too. You seem like a old friend. Thank you.
23:08 Brianne Mees: Thank you.
23:13 Brianne Mees: [Music]
Brianne Mees is an entrepreneur, arts enthusiast and mother living in beautiful Portland, Oregon. Brianne has devoted the last 14 years to creating and growing Tender Loving Empire from a small mom and pop retail operation and hobby record label into a company with 7 locations that has been able to pay $20 million and counting back into our community of makers and artists. She has been involved in shaping almost every aspect of TLE, including buying, visual merchandising, operations management, bookkeeping, branding, product development, HR/hiring, administration, marketing and growth. Prior to founding TLE in 2007, with her husband Jared, she earned a BA in Psychology in California and spent the early years of her career working with children and families in the social work field.