Description

Joy Hoover invented a lipstick with a panic button in the base and a drink-testing strip in the cap. She built a national nonprofit from nothing over 12 years that landed in the top 10% in the country. She won Top Tech of the Year in 2024. And when she decided to run for Congress - going up against a 14-year incumbent in a district that hasn’t flipped since 1972 - the people around her told her it would hurt her business, blacklist her, and blow up everything she’d built.

She considered the advice for months. She looked at smaller seats. She tried to talk herself out of it. And then she couldn’t get it out of her gut.

Joy is the founder and CEO of Esōes Cosmetics (SOS), a safety tech company built to fight the epidemic of sexual and domestic violence - a cause she’s been working on for 16 years in her community. In this episode, she talks about what it takes to keep going when the establishment tells you to stay in your lane, why she thinks more founders should run for office, and why she answers yes every morning even when she doesn’t feel like it in the afternoon.

What you’ll learn:

• Why “it will hurt your business” advice - from the political establishment - almost stopped Joy from doing the thing she was most built to do
• What Joy invented, why she invented it, and the investor question that shocked her: “Why does anyone need that lipstick?”
• The mix of passion and delusion that Joy says every founder needs, and why she’s leaning on it now more than ever
• Why she couldn’t get Congress out of her gut, even when the timing was terrible and she was still displaced from a house fire
• What running a congressional campaign has in common with building a company from scratch
• Why she called every one of her 100 angel investors before announcing her run, and the reaction she’ll never forget
• Why Joy believes more founders should run for office, and what the 17% statistic says about who’s wired for it
• Her advice for anyone whose gut is pulling them somewhere people are telling them not to go: know your why, find your people, and ask yourself every morning if it’s still worth it

About Joy Hoover

Joy Hoover is the inventor, founder, and CEO of Esōes Cosmetics (SOS), a safety tech company that makes a first-of-its-kind tech-enabled lipstick, with a panic button that can dispatch authorities and a built-in drink-test strip for detecting drugging. Before SOS, Joy spent 12 years building a national nonprofit focused on anti-trafficking and anti-violence work, growing it to the top 10% in the country. She has zero background in engineering or science. She won Top Tech of the Year in 2024 anyway. She is currently running for US Congress in Nevada’s First District, challenging a 14-year incumbent in a race that hasn’t been won by a challenger since 1972. She launched her campaign while displaced from her home after a house fire. She has 100 angel investors, a husband who came around, and a gut she’s learned to trust.

This episode is for anyone whose next step looks too big, too risky, or too unlikely, and who is trying to figure out whether that’s a reason to stop or a reason to go.

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💄 Learn more about Esōes Cosmetics: esoescosmetics.com