How Lizette Espinosa Transformed from Attorney to Entrepreneur with infanttech

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios, it’s time for Women In Motion. Brought to you by WBEC-West. Join forces. Succeed together. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, another episode of Women In Motion and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, WBEC-West. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Women In Motion, we have Lizette Espinosa with Infanttech. Welcome.

Lizette Espinosa: Thank you so much for having me. I actually always like talking about business and women and entrepreneurship, so I’m excited.

Lee Kantor: I am too. Before we get too far into things, tell us about Infanttech. How are you serving folks?

Lizette Espinosa: Well, Infanttech was a company that was founded between me and my husband. We always joke around that it is our third baby because we created a baby monitor for cars called the Zooby. And we wanted to help first time moms, first time parents, and this specifically came into being because of my own experience with parenting and motherhood. And, you know, if someone would have told me we would be here today, I would not have believed it. I transitioned from being an attorney to running this company, but I love how we help first time parents, especially first time moms.

Lizette Espinosa: My personal journey being a first time mom, the first month, it’s like the world closed in on me, where I couldn’t believe how any woman could do anything else besides take care of a baby, because it was such a transitional point in life. And so, to know that we created a product that can help moms make this moment be a little bit easier for them, that actually brings me joy and I’m excited about that.

Lizette Espinosa: And then, also, Infanttech, there’s different pillars that we have in the company when it comes to employees, when it comes to financial contributions, when it comes to vision, so this is how we’re here.

Lee Kantor: So, tell me about kind of the beginning. So, you have a kid and then you have this idea and then you’re like, “Okay. My law practice, I’m going to put it on hold, and I’m going to just kind of be a product innovator in this space.” Like what occurred?

Lizette Espinosa: How did that happen, right? It definitely wasn’t that quickly. It was definitely a transitional journey. But I did have my law practice, I was litigating. And interestingly enough, that is actually a hard thing with the baby of like the start to stop of having my own litigation practice. And what happened when we came up with this idea, you know, my husband is the techie side, and so he created a prototype, and we started getting a lot of good feedback from people. They’re like, “Wow. That’s a great idea. How come that’s not out there yet?” Because we actually did break the market with this. A baby monitor for cars, it didn’t exist.

Lizette Espinosa: And so, we started off at the, you know, typical story of every Mondays at the kitchen table brainstorming and taking actions to get closer to this happening. I think the hardest part was the manufacturing. How do you actually create a product? And neither my husband and I had any experience here. But, eventually, I think when the idea happened to by the time that I transitioned fully into it, maybe it was about three years in and I actually love it now.

Lizette Espinosa: I love the combination of business and law. For me, my career was probably one of my most challenging parts of my life, where I have done different things in my life, and I’ve been trying to answer the question since I was about eight, what am I going to do with myself? And if somebody told me that I would be doing this, I would have said like, “Well, that’s actually interesting.” I wouldn’t have believed it, but I love it now.

Lizette Espinosa: Again, I actually love the combination of business and law. I get to be creative outside of just the legal field when it comes to product development, helping people. I love working with my team. And from the legal side, I actually love that I have this business with the legal background, because of my litigation experience, it’s easy for me to look at contracts. It’s one of those things where I might not be doing the day-to-day things, but I guarantee you that it comes up every single day. So, that’s how I ended up fully transitioning into this role.

Lee Kantor: And so, let’s get into the product, Zooby. You mentioned that it is a monitor of some kind, so how does it work? I’m on the website now, and it looks like it’s a stuffed animal of some kind and it has a video camera somewhere in its nose or its face some way.

Lizette Espinosa: So, actually, it’s a Zooby baby monitor for cars. And I actually have one right there. So, the camera, it’s inside the plush and it sits on the headrest facing a rear facing baby. Because I’m not sure if you’re aware of when you have a newborn, they’ve got to be rear facing for at least two years in the car. So, this makes it hard for the moms to be able to see them and they’re having these things where they need to turn around to look at them, which makes driving dangerous.

Lizette Espinosa: So, with the Zooby, you’ve got the camera facing the baby, and then you have a monitor screen, kind of like a GPS monitor or even like having your cell phone with your navigation system, and you put it on your dashboard, and now the parents can see their baby day or night when they’re driving. So, it took away the mirrors. Especially the night vision, so you can see your baby at night. You have a close up view. And if you’re taking quick glances, it’s just another tool for you to drive safely.

Lizette Espinosa: So, I’m so excited about what it does bring to moms and peace of mind. Because what happens to moms, and particularly the biological changes for moms, it’s like all of a sudden they were downloaded a program of got to keep this baby safe. So, their instincts to do things to keep their baby alive, sometimes you’re going to have those dangerous moments of that turnaround. Even though you know you’re not supposed to do it, you can’t help yourself. So, the Zooby here allows them to be able to focus on the road and still have their peace of mind that they’re safe and their baby is safe.

Lee Kantor: So, why was it important to put the monitor inside a plush animal?

Lizette Espinosa: You know, actually when we were creating it, it was out of how easily can we get it in the car. So, it became a function of ease of use, taking it in and taking it out. It allowed us to have the portability. And the good news about it is that it actually helps the baby. So, we get a lot of comments from moms that it soothes them. The baby smile at it. It’s one of those where it becomes a little buddy. And we just came up with different plush designs to help them. But it really was functionality at first.

Lee Kantor: And then, can it transform like into a nanny cam of some kind like if you brought it in the house?

Lizette Espinosa: So, you actually can still monitor in the house. It’s not a WiFi version, because it’s radio frequency, and that’s another conversation for another day. But it really does serve as a monitor where you can use it at home. So, if you have it in the nursery, then you can take the monitor screen inside. Even if you’re visiting grandma’s house, you’d still be able to use your Zooby. Or even if you’re traveling, you go to a hotel and sometimes baby has to sleep in a different room, you can still have your monitor. So, it is multifunctional.

Lee Kantor: So, when you had the idea and you brought it to market, how did kind of the initial launch of it go? Were you getting good traction right from go?

Lizette Espinosa: Actually, we did not. It was one of those where we needed to do some education because we did break the market into a baby monitor for cars. This didn’t exist before. At the beginning, I’d say all of the baby monitors, 99 percent are hardwired. Just have a wire and they stay in the nursery and that’s it. There really wasn’t anything for the car. So, at the beginning that was the head turner, it’s like, “What? For cars?”

Lizette Espinosa: And so, once we got the education part, like, yes, it’s for cars. Here’s what you get to do. I think some of our biggest challenges at the beginning was we broke out, we went to a trade show and we sold it to other vendors, and then they all put it on the Amazon market.

Lizette Espinosa: And we realized, “Oh. They’re like saturating the market.” So, we had to learn from that experience to bring it back, so that actually right now we control our Amazon market and we’re the brand ambassadors to our product. And, you know, after a few years, though, it definitely has taken off. And there’s been other products that had come out since, so I’m excited that now people do recognize that you can have a baby monitor for cars.

Lee Kantor: So then, what was it like kind of building that initial partner network? Had you ever done anything like that before?

Lizette Espinosa: Which part?

Lee Kantor: Well, when you said that there were several people that you were partnering with that were reselling the monitors.

Lizette Espinosa: Oh, those were the vendors. So, it’s interesting, we changed our business model. At the beginning, we started out selling to other vendors, so it was probably sold wholesale. And then, we realized it’s actually easier to sell directly to consumers. So, right now we’re an e-commerce brand. You’ll find us on our Shopify site and we sell on Amazon, Walmart, about to get into Macy’s.

Lizette Espinosa: And I actually appreciate this model better from a business perspective because I have direct contact with the consumers and the customers, so I get to know what they need and the feedback out there. So, I prefer the direct to consumer. So, we had to switch. Originally, I think when we dealt with vendors, it was harder also to control, like you would have price points all over the place.

Lee Kantor: Right. Well, that’s part of the learning curve of being an entrepreneur, right? You try things and then you adjust.

Lizette Espinosa: Yes. [Inaudible] you’ve got to do all along.

Lee Kantor: What is it like when you’re in the entrepreneur, you know, where you’re wearing the entrepreneur hat as opposed to the the lawyer hat in terms of kind of managing? How do you kind of grow this business? Because in this world, like you said, you were breaking a market, so you had to educate the market where being a lawyer, you know, that has its own set of challenges, but there was a path for being a lawyer.

Lizette Espinosa: You know, that question resonates with me when it comes to my experience in business. So, even though I had formal training in the law, I didn’t have a formal business background, even though I think a lot of things were transferable. So, I started taking just entrepreneurial courses, leadership courses, business development in a sense that it allowed me to learn more, like especially marketing efforts for new market, how do you reach this out to other consumers.

Lizette Espinosa: And it was a learning curve, but I love it. I love the part of now understanding, you know, everybody asks, What’s your value proposition? What is it that you’re offering to your consumers? What are their pain points? So, if that’s something from the business side of learning the business languages to have your business grow.

Lee Kantor: And then, especially when you’re talking directly to the consumer, you have to have a clear message that it resonates with them at emotional level. And I think your product really checks those boxes in terms of this is a point where when you’re a new parent, you literally can’t see your child for a period of time. And that’s a big source of anxiety. So, if you solve that problem, that’s a big emotional problem to solve for parents.

Lizette Espinosa: Yeah. It is. And like I said, this is something that I do resonate with. I don’t think enough people talk about how this moment in life, when you become a parent, it’s like your life will never be the same again. And it comes with some amazing joys and amazing rewards. But at the same time, it’s like you’re going through a growth stage personally for yourself of this new way of living. So, now when you get out of the house, it takes a little bit longer. You’re always trying to figure out something new.

Lizette Espinosa: I was sharing with other moms the other day that you’re kind of always flying off the seat of your pants, because there’s always these first time moments for you as a parent. And, again, with this particular pain point, it was the anxiety. It was the fact that mom is nervous. You would even have moms that might not drive during the day and they’re waiting for their partner to get home so that they can go somewhere because they’re afraid of the fact that they’re not going to be able to see their babies when they’re driving or this nervousness. So, now this Zooby actually allows them to be able to have that freedom, to be able to see, and, again, to calm their nerves a little bit to relax.

Lizette Espinosa: I think when it comes to even product development at Infanttech, we’re actually in the process of creating something new. And my point for that is it has to be easy to use, and it has to make parenting easier. If it doesn’t do those things, then it’s not something that we’re going to create.

Lee Kantor: Now, why was it important for you to become part of the WBEC-West community?

Lizette Espinosa: You know, actually in part of my journey for learning more about entrepreneurship and business, I obviously built a network. I did a lot of programs that were women-led women organizations, so I have a lot of women entrepreneur friends. And so, WBENC came in and it made sense, too, because I was proud of the fact that we’re a women-owned business. And the more I was in it, I realized there were some amazing resources in there that there’s something about business. You cannot do it alone and there are so many resources out there to try to help you to build.

Lizette Espinosa: So, for WBENC, there are all these different seminars. There’s networking events. You meet amazing women. Last week, actually, I just joined the Pitch Academy session, and it was amazing. It was a session to get realigned with my why, with my product proposition, and the tool was so invaluable that I even afterwards was sharing with my other network friends. I’m like, “Hey, are you part of WBEC yet? If you’re not, I think you should join. There’s amazing resources.” And so, there’s so much value.

Lizette Espinosa: And it’s also an opportunity to give back. I also appreciate supporting other women business owners. It’s one of my passions. I know what it is to be at the beginning of starting the business, and there’s always a challenge that you have to solve. So, if there is something that I can do to help another woman take another step forward in reaching her vision, then I’m really happy to do that. So, this organization allows me to do that as well.

Lee Kantor: So, what’s next for Infanttech? Are you looking to grow? Are you continuing your growth? Are you looking to raise money? Are you building a team? What’s on the horizon?

Lizette Espinosa: All of those things. We’re definitely in a scaling phase right now. I think that is one of my biggest pieces right now is building a bigger team in the sense of from the strategic side. For example, right now it’s like I’m expanding my marketing efforts, my marketing team, and even product development. I’m very excited of some new products that are coming in line. We’re going to be launching something very soon in the breathing space.

Lizette Espinosa: And I’m just excited about that because I think the vision of what Infanttech can be of really using tech in a way where it’s intuitive, it’s simple to use, but we can make a difference for parents and moms. Then, you know, the ideas are there. We also, even for the Zooby, there’s a possibility to get into automotive partnerships. So, that’s something that we’re looking into as well. And everything is really like, how do we get to the next level?

Lee Kantor: So, if somebody wants to learn more about Zooby and the other products, what’s the website?

Lizette Espinosa: infanttech.com, so that’s with two T’s.

Lee Kantor: So, just spelled out I-N-F-A-N-T-T-E-C-H.com?

Lizette Espinosa: Yes.

Lee Kantor: Well, Lizette, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Lizette Espinosa: Thank you so much, Lee. I really appreciate you having me.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Women In Motion.