before we dive into the show. Today we have some super exciting news as of this month. Female startup club is officially part of the hubspot podcast network. Something we love about the hubspot podcast network is all of the inspiring shows dedicated to helping professionals learn and grow, especially women in business. So if you love female startup club and want to check out other shows like us, we definitely recommend checking out being boss, the gold digger podcast and the shakeup Check out all these shows and more at hubspot dot com slash podcast network. This is episode six with Greta Rose van reel. Mhm Today I'm chatting to Greta Rose Van Real, She's the creator of skinny meaty, the hey influences platform drop bottle the fifth watchers and her latest project. Tomorrow we talk about how she went from $24 in her bank account to make you $1 million in a single day on just one of her businesses, how she approaches solving problems and building businesses and some of her best strategies and tactics for success. This is Greta for female startup club.

So great to talk to me. How did you get started? I started in business in 2012, so It's nearly 2020 right now is which having some nearly eight years ago now, which seems insane. I just finished my degree in media and communications. So there was a bit more marketing focus. I didn't really do much on the media side. I was never interested in becoming a journalist per se, but I did like writing and I got a job at a agency dismiss city in Melbourne where I live and it was in digital marketing and I thought it was like a bit of a dream job right out of uni, like paid well it had a lot of room for growth. I was reporting directly to the ceo of this big company takes the books. So I was, I was pretty pumped about it very early on when I did start there, I didn't necessarily like the corporate structure at all. So I realized or learned very, very quickly that my job was basically making my boss look good, not doing my work.

So I didn't really like the politics side of all of that. And also I've worked really, really hard during uni and I worked really hard during high school and I finished work at five and be like okay cool now what? Exactly. So I was like I need like a hobby outside of work that is still applying what I'm learning at work until I started writing down exactly. I brought sort of writing down all these different ideas and I was like I remember my first ever instagram account where I sold anything wasn't actually my first brand. It was basically I was using it to sell my clothes through instagram, I think it was called shot my wardrobe or something, but I was actually pretty sneaky in the way that I would grow it. So people would go crazy for certain items. So dodgy actually, but I have no problem talking about it. So what I would do is I would like a list like a slain bag or something for example that I did not own and I would like listed hashtag everything tag different accounts and people would go crazy and comment 200 things.

I'd be like, yes, sorry, that sold. So I was building up so I knew that things could easily sell through instagram because I hold these like little options basically like comment options first to comment kind of think of Yeah, exactly, and then I'd be like salt and then I put up my like shitty little item like whatever I was telling some use shoes or something and people would still go crazy because it was like that scarcity and that like exclusivity and I didn't even realize what I was doing. I just knew that that was what worked. I didn't know that that's because, you know, things like the instagram algorithm favors engagement for organic reach. So the more engagement a post gets early on in his life cycle, the more great engagement as well. Exactly. And the reason that that is, is because basically the way that the instagram algorithm works is that it shows your post to 3% of your followers and then how that 3% responds determines how much of the next 3% it will show and so on and so forth. So it's a closed loop, but if there is, once it gets up to maybe 10 or 20% saturation point, if it's performing exceptionally well still, then it will push it through to like more viral reach.

So organic reaches when your followers see your post and viral reaches, when people who are not following your post see it. So places like the explore page or into the Exactly, so that's totally still the case. So basically I had this big list of ideas and one of them was like an app version, thank God I didn't do this one because gosh, so expensive. But one of them was this app version of what I was doing on instagram, maybe it would have been like a deep pop type thing that I'm sure would not have been a deep pop, I would not have known how to executed in that way for a tech company then with the budget that I had, which was like none at the same time, I have been making these like tea blends and I started making them for people around the office and we all had some pretty big weekends altogether, I was 22 by this point and we just then you know, having some large nights. But yes, so we basically, I was making these blends of tea for people around the office and then their friends started wanting them and then their friends did and it got to the point where I was making this like tea for everyone and I was calling it like a T talks and I was like, what?

You were just giving it? I was making it for them. I was just making it they want like they weren't buying it. I found it very awkward to ask them for money. That is how like it's a widely publicized fact that I had $24 in the bank when I first started. The reason I had $24 in the bank where there were two reasons. One was because I had a fortnightly wage as well. It's not like I had $24 in the bank and I was this irresponsible human eye. $24 in the bank. I lived at home with my mom still like I didn't necessarily have high living expenses and I did have my fortnightly wage like, you know, give it like a week and I probably would have more. Okay. So I basically spent everything that I had though on making this team. Yeah. And I was like, this is so awkward. I don't know how to ask people for money, like what do I do? And so then one night in bed I'm like, okay, this is not ideal. And I was like, actually, you know, I've also been playing with ideas of having like a side business hobby sort of thing. Yeah, that's what I kept telling myself for like the first year I was like, this is a hobby and like I didn't even set it up as a real company or anything for the first year.

I did not have a company structure to the extent that I got hit with this 50% tax bill at the end of our first year of trading because I was a sole trader. Oh my God, that's so, oh no, don't say that, please look after years old. And so basically I googled one night and then I was like how to start an online store or like how to create an online store I think it was and Shopify came up and I was like okay well like cool, I can't code, I can't do any of that stuff going on here, I'll create this store, let's see how it goes. So I went on created this store on a sunday, it took me like about eight hours or something. I think I just kind of sat there with my laptop for the day. Yeah it is fun took that. I know but it took the longest was like the info page that was like I basically wrote up this big page of like all the ingredients that were in the T and why I've chosen each ingredient, like what the effect was of that ingredient with that product as a whole. Like once I started really researching it and decided that you know this could be my like business side hobby thing.

I like I went to the Melbourne Uni library and I was like reading up on the effects of herbs on the body. But I took a kind of reverse approach again instead of like the ingredients I want to put in the tea because that's how most people would create like a T. They'd be like okay I want green tea, I want this here, I want this thing. I was like ok I know that I want the team to perform these certain actions. You know, for example if I wanted to be a weight loss tea, I'm going to look up herbs that assist in like the obesity management. Like I would just look up the most like next level like medical case studies and trials of different herbs like that. Or like if you wanted it to be an appetite suppressant, There's a couple of ingredients in the tea that when they're combined, delays, gastric emptying by 50%, which is technically like the amount of added biology in high school two hours pretty into it. You need to and delays how frequently your stomach empties itself into your intestines basically and the food is kept in your stomach for longer, like 50% longer. You feel fuller for longer because your stomach is still sending signals up to your brain being like I'm still full because the food is still just in your stomach as opposed to being digested.

So created this store credit an instagram account for it. I already knew how to grow an instagram account through growing that wardrobe. 11 of the main tactics was honestly like back in the day just then it was just like sitting down and following a whole ton of different people and then I would follow like all of my friends and all of their friends and then all of their friends until I felt I could follow like literally every girl and then I'd be like, who do I know in Sydney? Oh yeah, that girl lives in Sydney now I can go fan out from her followers and I follow all of them. So different pockets. Yeah, so it was just kind of going down that rabbit hole and letting it keep going and because we were growing on instagram once we hit 1000 follower mark, people would see that an account with 1000 followers was following them, which was a huge account instagram at that time. Most people have like 50 followers in 2012 because it's still very much like can I follow my friends and maybe like one celebrity, but they'd be like why did this page? Like 1000 followers following me? How cool! And then follow it back. So we had this really high re follow right as well, we launched and we sold four packs of tea and after last night and I was like cool and there's that profound moment, we're like this thrill is like addictive, I knew that thrill again and again and again and again and again.

Exactly. Like what do I need to do to keep getting that. And at that time for me it was just like the further we grew on instagram, the more sales of meg. So I think because I didn't really have a background in business at all. I've never read a business book, I've never heard of ferris or like eric read any of these people. Like I literally was just like throwing things against the wall and seeing one stuff and if it's stuck, I'd be like, cool, I'm just gonna keep doing that. It was just so obvious to me because that's all I knew. Like it wasn't like, oh, I should try a ceo, I should try email marketing, I should try this channel. I should try Youtube influences, I should try to? T talk influences like so it was so much more simple because I was just like, okay, I'm onto something. I'm just gonna keep repeating that. Like I think that there is this kind of over complication of business as a whole and you do really need to lean in and find the things that are working for your business and just keep doing this until they don't work anymore. So yeah, that's how we started, how you got started. So cool.

Yeah, no, we grew really, really quickly. We were like selling like 20,000 orders a month at one point me, which was crazy holy uh and that's amazing, yeah, so that was like within the first six months of the business, so it's just like exploded and it was just kind of one of those instagram first brands and we won the shop of five business competitions and then I get got to meet the whole town of these mentors who had never heard of, so like tim Ferriss uh eric Reyes was one of my wrote the lean startup, what did you have to do it into that competition? It was like is it a competition? Yeah, it's competition, it was just a really easy entry, like it was on your Shopify dashboard or something, you want to sign up? I was like, yeah, sure, gonna be in it to win it. There was a leader board and we could see that we were like at the top of the leaderboard for the majority, but then they turned the leaderboard off for like the last week so that nobody really knows, I'm like, are we still going to do it? We did. And we got that call and I was in Hong kong at the time and I remember the call so well, it was just so exciting and ran back into the restaurants like guys, guess what?

Oh my gosh! So yeah, holy smokes. And did you have any fears when you first started skinning me? T was there anything that you were worried about? Like I got building a big brand when you were so young and yeah, I just started, I was worried about everything, it was just constantly problem solving, constantly putting out fires, like my biggest fear I guess with her 70 and I've spoken about this a little bit before, but like we would be over as quickly as we began, it felt almost like an overnight success in the way that it happened and I mean four packs of town our first now it was success to me at that time and then it just kept getting relatively bigger and bigger until like my definition of success or like my goal posts for success just kept moving with that and I was always, you know, really worried that something would happen and I have to go back to how everything was before and I was living in Hong kong by this point, it was just like a year after we launched and my life is just so different and I was like so scared that it would all go under and every night I go to bed and be like, okay, you've had a good run, like you've done well up to this point, but after this, like you're done and it took until a good friend of mine in Hong kong who is also like an incredible business person, he worked for like one of the world's largest turnaround companies, so they would basically turn around companies that have been like losing hundreds of millions of dollars back into like making billions of dollars.

So he was like, great, like let's look at this realistically it's thursday night right now, if everything went under tomorrow, which is friday, what would you be doing on monday? And I was like starting again and it was just like the most obvious answer to me, but no one had ever asked me that question. I've never asked my totally, so that's like one of my favorite quotes, like that quote about, you know, if you do need to start over, you won't be starting from scratch, will be starting from a place of experience. And I think that finally kind of relaxed me in that way because I was like, even if the worst happens, like I know what I'm going to be doing now and I have learned so much and what I'm doing is repeatable. So at the end of the day, that's basically what I did, I repeated it, that's amazing and I want to talk a little bit about why you started hey influences your platform, which is so cool, I love the branding so much. So cute, Tell me about why you started hey influences and a little bit about that.

Is that sorry Hey, basically started out of my own need, like I think that a lot of the time, the best products are always out of a pain point that you felt yourself because it kind of makes you an extremely authentic person to be solving that problem. If you felt it yourself of course, even a few times recently I've gotten, this is just the weirdest thing ever. This is just strange to me. But I think he's found to do such a great job with the ads. I've got into a few groups and they'd be like, you're Greta, no way. What? Yes. What? They're always the worst moment to be saying that to room just like dead tired. And I've just been in the office and I'm like, Oh yeah, yes, I am. Well, I've never stressed out like on my way to the airport or something and I've just like been packing and like other drivers lovely. But he was like, what's an idea? What should I do? And I'm like, oh, like that's the one thing I cannot give you. I really think that it's very important to have felt that paying yourself and to do something that of course you're like truly passionate about and utilize your superpower. That's what happened with, hey, I had been running like a lot of different influences campaigns across my brands.

We've worked with over 5000 influences. So I've definitely been On that side of the market from an influence perspective, but also at the same time I'd obviously grown a really large following on Instagram for my brands and across my vertical accounts, we had about 16 million followers on Instagram. I think when high launch, maybe it was about like 12 or 14 or something like that. But a lot of followers on its across different accounts, I've kind of seen it from the other side of the market too. And so I just set out to basically scratch my own itch with hey, which I think is always like a great scenario with the product. I was just like, well if you know if this only works for my brands then so be it and great. Yeah. What was the process like? Yeah, okay, I need to find a developer, I need to find a designer or you like, I know what I wanted to look like just for skinny meaty and we've worked with an agency out of Melbourne and that had gone to like the number one in the app store and health and fitness. I called this guy up Evan who's a friend of mine as well and was like, hey Evan, I've just had this idea of something I want to do, I don't care how much it costs, just make it happen for me in a month.

I want it in a month. Oh my God, like, um no, I don't know if we can do that in a month and also granted it's valentine's day and I have to deal with my wife that was valentine's Day 2014 was when this came up with like overall concept for high influences and at the time that is called niche, if I the biggest difference between like an influencer and like a traditional celebrity is that celebrities have built up their following around like their talent and around, you know, a very broad audience, it's like them, that's the center of everything. But a lot of the time with influences, it's much more niche because they've built up their audience around a certain style of content or a certain skill set or a certain asset that was like the core focus of the platform and also being able to filter by niche and kind of start to get some of those demographic or psychographic filters sort of in there as well, basically we built niche if I and took on a bit of a life of its own and I realized pretty quickly that this was something that I was going to need to offer to other brands as well to make it like financially viable.

So we ended up going and we raised money from Blackbeard for our seed round around was led by Blackbeard and then um healthy capital who one of my like good good friends and mentors Poor Wide is a co founder of the most truce, the other co founder. So they're based out of Melbourne with paul and san Francisco with truth and this was the first time you've done like investment, all my e comprehensive bootstrapped. But yeah, it was quite a learning experience, like I think I found it easier maybe than some in terms of the pitching side because Blackbird are very adamant about backing founders, not necessarily even like, yes, they're interested in the idea that like I already had a bit of a track record as a founder, so and they knew that I was in a good position to be solving this problem as I've been on both sides of the market and I already had a lot of skin in the game because I had invested entirely in the nation by platform up until that point.

So it wasn't too hard necessarily from that side, but it was still really difficult kind of from those early scrappy sort of startup days. It was hard to get everything all your ducks in a row. So due diligence took ages. It dragged on. I found it very, very stressful. I just got into one of those states where every single decision felt like it was a life changing decision and the little list things were stressing me out about making, but we got through that and raise the money and then you're another brand. Well it happens. And now a word from our sponsors, this episode is proudly brought to you by the five minute journal. It's your secret weapon to focus on the good in your life, become more mindful and live with intention with a simple structured format based on positive psychology research, you'll start your day and in your day with gratitude. Thousands of people who use this journal have seen increased happiness, better relationships and have become more optimistic. It's a product that transforms your day and is used by people like tim Ferriss on a daily basis.

I love this product so much and I'm so happy to be partnered with them from the very beginning of this journey, you can check out the five minute journal at intelligent change dot com and search five minute journal in between all of this. Like when I started to buy, we started with the fifth as well, so that was with my co founder, who's also my ex boyfriend sometimes the fifth came about during all of this as well. So I had already started in ASia by wasn't hey influences yet it really became hey influences when we got that back in from Blackbeard because we kind of came to them with a pitch being like, look, this is what we've learned from nature by We also are not happy with our platform, we want to, you know, redeveloping the entire platform and yeah, and we want that to become this new platform. Were even renaming were very branding, We worked with love and money agency who in this office that we're in right now to do all the branding and us sort of design wire frames side of the platform. So that's how all that happened, that the fifth kind of happened in between them as well and the fifth is a really unique brand because it was built on the concept which was different to your other e commerce product in the platform.

Obviously, do you want to talk a little bit about that? And tell us more. The 5th basically came about by accident to be honest, like the brand itself was called the fifth because Alex was in Melbourne and I was in new york and he called me up and we were discussing the brand and we're trying to come up with a name and I just happened to be able to get to Avenue at the time and was like that, you know, the fifth, that's cool. And then we were just playing around with the name a lot and we came up with this like instagram account concept that was called the fifth view, which was all like views from above down. So like this was right when flat lays, drone shots were really coming into popularity. So the entire account was just basically flat lays and drone shots of landscapes and it made sense as well for watches because you know, a lot of the time you're taking that pick from above down the rest of the watch. Yeah, so that was kind of the way that the model came about, We ended up getting the watches on like the third of december and we're like, oh they're called the fifth, wouldn't it be cute if we just launched on the fifth of the month plus, it was my co founder's birthday uh december, Like, what a fun birthday!

That's so cool. So we basically launched on the fifth of december. We've been growing a large audience on instagram, which will go into, I'm sure after this, but we've been growing a large audience, I think we had around 70,000 instagram followers at the time, and we converted a lot of that audience across onto our wait list as well as we had around, I think 8800 emails launched, and we have about 1200 watches to sell more. Like that will last a month if it did incredible, because that's like over $100,000 with watches, like that would be a great first month. We sold that on our first day. It's crazy. So I saw that more like, like there was still another month until watchers arrived again, because we're knowing that you know, we need watches again the following month. So it was another good month until we had more stop coming, and we're like, oh gosh, like how do we make people not hate us right now because they've all been waiting for so long and they're like, when are they coming? When are they coming? Okay, They're here Great, well we did a good job building the high, but it was like, it was too good Because then we're like the other, you know, the 7000 people in our wait list, 7600 people on our wait list that missed out are going to be really angry at us.

That would be ticked off. One of the things that I've learned through skinny meaty a lot was that communication is key. But the interesting part is like communication shapes the reality of a brand as well and if you're able to kind of communicate something differently, creates an entirely different perception off the back of that. So we basically, I was like, okay, let's turn this negative into a positive, what can we do? Let's be strategic, we need to pretend that we meant to this. I started writing this email and it became like the iconic email of the brand. Like we already, we got goose bumps and it was like crazy and I just sat down and I was like, okay, so thank you for joining the waitlist. You're about to find out just how important that was. The thing is at the fifth, we only sell our range of watches on the fifth of each month for five days or until sold out previously. So see you next month on the fifth and that became our entire model. It ended up being like just tired value proposition. It was an entire fluke. We just played with what we had, which was our name the fifth, the fact that we launched on the fifth and we're like, well clearly five days, it was all five we already are first range had five watches in it as well.

So we've already been playing around with the number and so it just it all happened quite organically and we ended up basically reconstructing our entire brand experience around that model. Okay, so you say you redesigned your entire brand experience around your model, can you give us an idea of what this looks like during the month versus actually at the launch? Yeah sorry, during the month our entire brand experience was geared toward sign ups. So you go into our website instead of add to cart, it would be sign up like even on our shop all page could enter your email straight onto the watch, like straight there through the website. So we kind of changed all of the main call to actions which are usually to shop now to be based around that. And so during the month all we wanted to do was like get more sign ups and throw through that because we knew that the more sign ups that we had during the month, the more customers that we had to sell through to at the end of the month. So then at launch basically what we do is would email all the people that have signed up because there are the I PS.

And they got first access to the store, so between midnight and nine a.m. They would get early access and we would lock the entire store down with a password. So they would have had to have signed up during the month to receive the password. So there was such a reason to sign up as well. Like you have to give people a reason to buy or a reason to perform a certain action and that was our strong reason. That's why a lot of, you know, marketing is around seasonality and things like that because even just you know, a black friday sale for example, is a relevant reason to have a sale because people understand that other brands are having that sale and it makes sense like the congressional eyes that so a lot of the time when you are creating a reason to buy, it's all about your consumer being able to rationalize that in their head and be like, okay, I get why that brands going on sale. It's not just like a desperate ploy for more sales and they're like okay, I'm prepared for that day. Like I'm really sorry. So that was very much what it was like with the fifth, we would build up as much hype as possible. We would literally get people to set their alarms.

Our emails like for the five days leading up to launch were very much like okay, we launch Midnight Australian time, that's X time here, that's X time here, that's X Time here all around the world if you need to know, you know what time it is for you. You can email us through and we'll let you know but set your alarm in your phone for that time and go on and shot them because we often sold out like some of the stars would sell out within the first minute for example, which was just like, it was really cool too because like because the model works like it did, it meant that every month all the people buying our watches if we sold out each month and we sold out for like every month for like at least the first six months until we could finally work on getting enough stock. We kept forecasting how much we need and then we end up selling more just snatching through the trying not to live too far outside our means. We're just like reinvesting the money from like we were entirely groups truck so we're reinvesting the money from the company back into the company again and we didn't really want to have to put additional capital in and which is obviously quite an expensive items Yeah per unit.

So the coolest part was that like every customer that did get one was like our braving fan like it was the person and set their alarm waited up and purchased within like they're gonna shut the lightest about exactly their friends and yeah posted on social, great word. Amazing. People felt like very special for the fact that they were able to get one. So like the way that that model worked as a whole was basically like the limited availability of the watchers and the scarcity of the watchers created more demand and more hype around the brand. While at the same time the exclusivity for the fact that there were only so many and you know, you couldn't get them all throughout the month, you could only get them at that time created obviously a highly increased perceived value because a waiting for something and we want everything yesterday morning consumer. But when you're told to wait, it does become that bit more special. It's delayed gratification basically there's like this brand that I was reading about the other day called Lowell surprise toys.

It's the dumbest game ever hilarious. But they're like In two years or something like that. Then I think they valued at $4 billion dollars And it's basically this toy for kids where the packaging is basically the product so horrible for the environment. There's like unboxing videos of these on YouTube with like a million views and stuff. The unboxing is the entire product. So it's like this tiny toy that's wrapped in this giant box of wrapping and you have to keep unwrapping unwrapping unwrapping and it takes like 20 minutes to unwrap this toy and then by the time you get down to it, you're like here's the toy that because you know, everything is so instant we live in. You know, such a push button, instant gratification society where people just expect something the second that they've done it now. That delayed gratification does really increase the same value. And I think like the coolest part with the fifth was that traditionally in the fashion industry as a whole especially and jewelry and kind of all designer items.

Exclusivity has been Created by price. So like the more expensive something was the more exclusive it was because not everybody could have it because it's a $5,000 diamond ring. You're not, everyone can afford that, which is completely fair. The cool part of the fifth is we're bringing that exclusivity that was usually associated with that high price tag to the masses because we could have them an accessible price. So whereby most items were exclusive because they're expensive. We were exclusive by time, not by price. So good. And so let's talk about like obviously the model clearly worked and we know the story but what were the actual results? Like what are the actual numbers that you have that you can Share as you know, day one we did around $100,000 in revenue, which was just like my co founders best birthday ever. Remember. We were just in shock to be honest with you in the office, we went in this office. No, we didn't have an office yet. Like it was just us basically and his younger brother who was doing customer service and then we hired his cousin who was doing growth for us.

We hired another one of my really, really close friends, Davey fogarty who is definitely an entrepreneur to watch, he's doing incredible things. Founder of calming blankets. Yeah, nobody has just some incredible brands that he's building. Like he is such an up and coming little star, He's like 24 link this in the show notes so we can check him out, you can have a stork, he'll hate that he doesn't want a bit, sorry Davey, you're logged in. So it was very much like kept quiet within the family at our friendship circle to begin with. So we didn't have an office space. We were doing it out of my house in Pran at this stage and we used a lot of the members like of course of my like SMT team as well, so our graphic designer did all of the like initial branding and the Shopify website and stuff and al um I like to I C and everything that I do organize like all of the company documents and she set everything up tax wise and she said everything up like right from the start.

Finally this time as opposed to all the mistakes. Already knew it. I've made well mostly bright, it was right enough right Enough and I think I read somewhere that you did a crazy number, like $1 million dollars in a single day. What the heck. Yeah, so we did have on our first birthday, which was five December, we did a million dollars revenue in that day and the craziest part was about a quarter of that was in the first minute. Oh my God, which was insane. That's insane. Holy smokes in one year. That's just like, it was a big one. It's like a drug, that drug, that brand that will, then we go Freudian slip. It was like a drug, like you'll never get such a hit. You know what it's like, like sales coming in, you're kind of like, cool, cool. And when you do a big launcher then or a sale or whatever and like more coming in, you're like, cool. That was just like the highest scale. It was just insane. And have you done anything to tweak your strategy in the lead up to that day, or was it the same like building the email list for the 25 days of the month and then like all about building the email list.

Email was everything for us because it was our main way of notifying people. A launch was happening. So like an email list with an alarm in their phone and I think that is underutilized. We just did that for a drop bottle relaunch as well and got people to set alarms and in their phone and you can see writers that goes onto that time, like an influx of sales people instantly because they're like, okay, here's the reminder, I brought my thing. Exactly. Cool. Um and because they've already done that, it feels like they've already maybe committed to themselves as a consumer, the consumer is committed to potentially making that sale and they're more likely to make that because they've already made that small commitment to your brand. So it's like That kind of progress effect where they're like, okay, well I've done half of it, I may as well just follow through and actually make the sale now halfway there. It was very much what it was like 52 because once they get to our website, wake up, set their alarm, get across to it at some ridiculous time, like midnight or seven a.m. Or five a.m. Or wherever they were in the world when they would do that, they'd be like, okay, well, you know, I've come this far, I'm gonna buy a watch now, I'm here.

Like I'm, I'm here to do it, I'm here to get this watch. Yeah, wow. Yeah, that's really true commitment. It's just unbelievable that just shocks me. And so can we be a little bit more specific about how you got the emails and what the actual strategy was. Yeah, instagram and building those leads. Yeah, because obviously, like I say email was like an end result, but obviously we have to keep doing different things to drive that email and by that point we had plugged in a bit of paid. It was mostly very targeting. So most of the awareness stage was still coming through instagram and then we re target in more. So maybe the consideration stage, they would get their email and convert them through there. So that was kind of our funnel, like social media awareness, like retargeting the consideration and then basically conversion via email, the three main ways and I always do this, I love like my three, some things like I have three hours to find an influence and we might go into those later, like I have like, so these were like my three eyes for the fifth, so they were basically instagram influences and incentives.

Okay, cool, this is gonna get Confusing because with the three eyes I think for like every single one, I have another three. So with instagram I always talk about the three C's of community. Okay and so their content, collaboration and consistency. So I guess we'll do a quick little tip under H one because it is one Yeah, because we've asked so content was, I always, I'm all for just giving the people what they want, like identifying your top performing content. So going through, if you have a business account on instagram or if you have a creator account for example, you can go through and you can see your top performing posts and just taking a look at those, seeing what the sort of trends are on one of our accounts, which is called the fit foods for example, which is just like a big foodie account, like strawberries always kill it again and again and again. Don't ask me why. I just like the color pop and I don't know how followers are just obsessed with strawberries.

It's like they just obsessed with strawberries. It's such an obvious tip that I think that just going back to basics, repeating it's working exactly. And that was very much the same with me. Like I'd always lent away from really growing like a bit of a personal brand instagram accounts. I was always like, no, I'm just focused on my brands. But when I started, hey, it started to make a lot more sense from kind of more like a business to business growth perspective. So I did start really focusing on my personal brand and then I launched my course with founder um and then it made more and more sense to still be focusing on personal brand. So I went through my instructor and I usually just posted stuff about my life, just like the highlight reel as we all kind of do a lot of time and then I posted like a couple of quotes over time and they just like Outperformed all the rest of my content by far and I just realized that it's because like the people there that are following me are there for like an entrepreneurial tips and hacks and like the actual actionable value. So I was like, well but I haven't even really thought about it.

So now basically every second post I do like a tweet that's been repurposed to instagram and all like a quote. You're really good at sharing strategic like tips and tactics. It's amazing. I think I learned that well through found it like because we had to sit down and just still like what I've done across all these different e commerce brands so that we could then say, okay here's like my formula or my framework for other brands to be able to do that as well and like are starting scale course. I got good at being like okay, like why did we do that? Like how do we do that? Like what's away? Okay, so if I want to put up like a quote that's like a bit fluffy or aspirational or like how do you then create action ability at about as well. So yeah, the extra value. Yeah, so that's been like my big change in my personal brand account and my engagement had been seriously like dwindling because my account is so old now to like it takes more and more to keep engagement up over time for older instagram account.

So because I've had my have my personal instagram account since 2000 and 10, like I used to just use it to filter photos, 2010, I was like cool photo filtering up and then I saw that people could like see your photos that were trying to turn it into a social network. And I was like how creepy. I don't want people to like see my filtered photos. My original Yeah. Program. I don't want people seeing my like private filtered photos. So I put my account rabbit at that time I didn't start posting on it until like 2012. So that's content. Then the next one is collaboration. Which is like collaboration is your biggest group lever. So collaboration could be influences, it could be collaborating with other brands. Like to host like a loop giveaway or that cool tactic that you were talking at earlier. You want to share that one quickly. Yeah. So we were talking earlier about this tactic that I was listening to on a video. I can't remember the name of the channel, but I'm going to find a link in the show notes. Credit anybody. Well credit who you are, but I can't remember for the life of me. But basically this guy was talking about this strategy that he has to build an email list from scratch when he has no money and no starting point and no social media.

And so what he does is he picks a niche. So for example, I'm just going to use fishing because that's what he did it in. And he goes to like three different brands that complement each other in the space. And he's like, yeah, I'm gonna set up this loop giveaway. Are you interested in being involved data and he gets them to donate some product and all they need to do is like include a link to the competition in their newsletter. And so it's linking to an opt in page where you just opt in with your email and then you're in the chance to win. There's some really cool platforms that you can use to do that. Like we just use there's one called Gleam, Like G E Am or there's one called Viper, the Y. P. R. We can create like incentivized to give away. So they're really cool and I think you Viper one for our drop bottle relaunch. We did like you gave away 10 bottles um and just you know, generated like a few 1000 extra emails and more social followers off the back of that as well. Yeah, really, really cool. So he goes and pictures the same idea to like three brands for example and put together this really amazing prize pack that obviously everyone wants to enter and then the brands talk about it in the newsletter and get people to opt in through subscribing.

And then he basically comes away with a huge database of like he's the example that he gave, he managed to get 10,000 emails and then he shares that with the brands. So of course they've got their existing audience that already entered but then they've got audiences that are relevant to them from the other brands and he starts his strategy, his email strategy like that. Yeah, so that is like the perfect example of like a co marketing technique. So under collaboration, yeah, be collaborating with brands like brand to brand. So more like brands that you would see as like collaborators rather than competition. So like brands that would be within your niche but not directly competitive to your brand. You know, my drink bottle brand, do one with another drink bottle brand, but we might do it with, you know, like Baraka or something like a hydration blend brand so that you have so that's your biggest growth lever because basically you're leveraging other people's pre existing audiences to grow your own. So that's collaboration. So we've got content, find your top performing content and post more of it.

Who would have known? We've got collaboration leveraging people's pre existing audiences, and then there's just the final c which is consistency. So not only does consistency help like established front of mind positioning through your brand through repetition, but it also is favored by the algorithm for example, So like if you post and you can imagine like even not from an algorithmic perspective, just from a reach perspective, say you post seven times a week and your post gets 100 people seeing it, so a breach of 100 if you post seven times a week, you're overall weekly rate is 700. So if you post one time a week it's just 100. So like by posting daily, you're already increasing the amount of people that say it and even if it's the same 100 people again and again and again, I'm just giving 100 as an example, it will probably be a little more than that. 1000. Could be more than that 10,000 if the same 10,000 people and then seeing that post again and again, that's not necessarily a bad thing either because you're like building a relationship with and you're getting your brand in front of them at multiple different touchpoints.

So and it takes, you know, a few times for a consumer to see your brand a lot of the time to then follow through makeup purchase, definitely on social, I think seven times. Yeah, like the average average. Yeah, because social media is not really a direct response platforms like instagram, you can tap through and just buy straight from there, but advertising is traditionally a lot more direct response because you can tap through straight to, you know, like the facebook ads straight through to a landing page that is structured exactly for you know, that targeted audience. So consistency. Good one. And so when you're talking about collaboration in the seas, you obviously have built a whole company centered around collaboration, which is the hey influences platform and if there's one word that describes like the power of hey influences what would that be for you influencer marketing as a whole, I would say that the world would have to be relationships, like influencer marketing is all about relationships, so whether that is the relationship that your brand has with an influencer, which is really important to build like a personal professional relationship with your influences, but also the relationship that influence has with their audience and the way that they are able to leverage that audience, that pre existing relationship and audience on a brand's behalf, because at the end of the day, the power of influences doesn't lie in their breach.

Like you can get reached through paid advertising, what it lies in is the relationship with their audience and fundamentally trust. And traditionally it's taken brands years to build trust to build consumer trust and now you have access to people who can leverage trust on your brand's behalf instantly, so it's kind of an unprecedented opportunity for brand building in that way because they don't really have the audiences attention, they also have their trust. That is why we basically structured how influences in the way that we have as well, because it's a relationship management platform, basically we call it like an I. R. S Sorry, influence a relationship management platform, like a crm. So, and that's why we structured it like a dating app because there are a lot of marketplace platforms out there and I don't think that the marketplace mechanic works necessarily when it comes to human beings, like they're not a commodity in the same way, like a relationship cannot solely be a transaction, it works really well for like Airbnb and for cars and houses, but they're things, they're not people and at the end of the day you can't make a transaction out of relationships.

So that's why we went for a dating app mechanic because basically that is the fastest building relationship technology available right now, utilize that and leveraging, like a platform that you already know that mechanic work. So like, just basically adapting it to your business. Yeah, like it makes it that bit more interesting for our influences and brands as well because like that dating app mechanic is like, it's kind of gamer fights rewards trick, so it's fun. Yeah, so it makes it like a bit more exciting to be on an app that is ultimately quite work base. Yeah, and when you're looking for influences for your brands in particular, what kind of factors do you look at? I use the three R's formula, which is reach, relevancy and relationships. So reach, I guess is one of the most prioritized aspects for influencer marketing for a little brands, Like they'll look at someone like kylie Jenner be like, look at that, look at all those eyeballs on, but she's not always going to make the most sense for every brand obviously.

But the thing is that I think that where a lot of brands trip up when it comes to reach is not just over prioritizing breach, but also looking at reach as a static figure, so if you look at an influencer and they have 100,000 followers but they're dropping 5000 followers a month, then they're clearly not, maybe going to have the same influence as somebody who is growing through 3000 or growing 1000 influences a month. Yeah, so if you can lock and influence it, a high growth influencer into maybe like a three month contract, that's what we're really successful at doing at the fifth, we locked in some like super successful influences like J Alvarez and like this rent when they were like super high growth and we locked them in at their kind of current rate, even though by after three months the rate has significantly changed something Princess would even come back and be like, look this is my right now and we'll be like sorry, we already paid in advance. So that is like a really good tactic to kind of lock influences in for a longer term if they're really high growth or lock them in for like multiple posts or for a longer term to kind of get the price per collaboration down because it's like a bundle, I think it's better to work with influences that way versus like a one off, just random thing where it feels a bit picky Yeah, totally, like they don't really truly love the brand, no.

Yeah, it feels like they are obviously just pushing it for the cash money. Exactly, exactly, and what's one mistake that you see brands making again and again, when it comes to influencer marketing, I would say that one of the big ones is just basically not optimizing their social media profiles. The conversions, like you need to remember that if you're running an instagram influencer collaboration and that profile isn't optimized for like conversions, that, that instagram account is like your landing page for that campaign. So when an influencer posts on your brand, the next action in that sequence will be that they tapped through to your handle, which is in the influences caption and they'll land on your profile if they get to your profile and they can't tell what your brand does, they don't know what the next quarter action is. The aesthetic of your account is entirely different to the types of influences they're working with and it makes no sense, then obviously they're going to be far less likely to convert in different ways.

So like one of the ways obviously to convert would be to follow your brand and you can kind of build a relationship from there. So if the aesthetic is really different than going to be less likely to follow your brand, another conversion would be if they tap through to your website from your bio, but if there's nothing, you know, describing what your brand is or why there's a reason to tap through right now. Like putting like a little bit of urgency around that or creating a great reason for them to tap through, being like tap through for a free gift with purchase, for example, I would say that optimizing your social profile, so making sure that your link in your buyer is working as hard as possible, that is really obvious, like what your brand is and what makes it different. So having basically like the U. S. U. V. P. Or U. S. P. In your bio, making it obvious for people that have just landed on your page and I've never seen you before and also making sure that you're collaborating with people whose content matches your own as much as possible, the style and the aesthetic of the brand.

Even if you know that a big influence of collaboration is going to go live, you can repost one of their old photos to your feed. Like if you don't have their content yet, and also I don't want to ruin the surprise. You could just repost one of their lifestyle shots and then when the followers going there, they're like, look, they post about this person that I follow or I'm obsessed with as well. Is there any kind of like influence a kind of campaign that you're loving at the moment? Like what your favorite kind of influencer. Yeah, I can't like to work on a really underutilized one is the facebook ads takeover. Okay, I feel like you're very soon future husband would be really into uh, it's not like an ads genius. So it's basically whereby and I'm sure you've seen it happened before, but like I think a lot of brands aren't taking enough advantage of it whereby for example, founder will run ads through my own personal facebook account. So for example, this agency that one of my good friends, Nick Shackleford used to work for, he's just gone off and started his own, he's incredible.

Anyone that's interested in facebook ads should check him out for sure. He's on his stuff. Next Shackleton, he worked for an agency called common thread collective and they basically worked with the same influencer who was one of the big, big big names. They're not allowed to say exactly who she has 70 million followers on instagram at the time. We can imagine who she probably is. So basically they ran one Paid campaign that was like a $500,000 budget to post. Like basically just yeah, through to her instagram and that converted like well enough it was fine. But then they ran another campaign through taking over her facebook ads to getting advertisers access to her facebook ads And that absolutely killed the other campaign. So basically it cost $250,000 to get her to create the content for the brown, which was like, I think like a product review video and then they boosted that through her at account and the good thing is she's also really big on Facebook as well.

So they could advertise to her facebook followers, they could advertise to her facebook engages, they could advertise to her instagram followers as well through there. And the cool part is there a us based brand and half of her followers outside of the US. So they could target through that as well and just get us based followers in the next like they could stack her audience with their own, they could add all look alike. Yeah, it was just like, I feel like every brand should be giving that a go right now, obviously have to be anywhere near that scale, but it could just be in terms of an input that you're already working with has already created great content. They may not even have that large. Like they don't need to really have a facebook following per se does work a little bit better when they are verified. Facebook profile founder got my page migrated page on facebook verified and it does help just that kind of like tick of verification there. So that's a really interesting. I'm definitely going to give that a try. I feel like I need to start doing a few things like that with my king's influences because we have so many girls that love the brand and I'm sure that by kind of taking the partnership to the next level could be like a really interesting thing to start testing, definitely see what kind of results it brings.

And let's just quickly talk about the last point we were speaking about a bit earlier which is the incentives and what you recommend around that Incentives basically just implies rewarded action. So it's giving somebody like a strong incentive or a strong reason to click through to make a purchase or like perform a certain action on behalf of your brand. It might be review our product in return for 10% off or it might be click through from our instagram via this link and you'll get a free gift with purchase purchase or something like that. Yeah, I really like the whole free gift with purchase thing. Same. I'm always like give it, give it to me, give me the gift. I have to find the Shopify app for you guys. But there's this app that we use that automatically applies the gift with purchase to your cart as well. So it will add it in and it will add the value of the gift and then have it marked out like crossed out and be zero. So say it's like a pearl ring or something with kinks, it'll be like, well this ring is usually like 50 or $100 and it's crossed out now zero for you.

So that's like a cool thing because they can automatically see them and they cut and then then that obviously increases conversion rate. Yeah it kind of goes through. Its any kind of incentive that you can offer, that's going to help get that person through to the next level. It might be signing up to your email list, so it might be those on site pop ups that come up and say like into your email to unlock this discount code or this free piece of content, a guide or recipe or something like that. Do you do recipes with a bottle? We do do restaurants. Yeah. That Has been quite successful in the past. A lot of the time we do find that like just the generic discount code works even better than a recipe just like $5 off, 5% off for $10 off for 10% off if you are able to offer dollars off because you have like basically a relatively single skew product that's always going to be the most successful because people automatically understand that's $10 like 10%. They may not know what your prices yet and you don't haven't worked that out.

Like it's not an instant understanding $10 it's just that kind of static figure that you're like. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. So I would always recommend offering like dollars off if you can just for me with a dollar off versus a discount I think as well like People don't care about 10%,, They care about $10. Yeah, it's the exact same. It's the psychology I guess behind the buying like yeah, people don't have time to work things out. Like just making your user experience and customer experience as frictionless as possible. Like the two main things that I always think people do not have the time and people don't care to be honest. Like people really don't care about like they care to an extent you said that on our website, whatever, but they don't necessarily care that much about our brand. For example, like when I'm doing an email, I was at like a summary kind of banner at the top of the email. Like we try to get to the point as quickly as possible for the people that are just skim reading and then for the people that do really care, they can breathe down.

But I always just think like get to the point no one cares. That's a good one. Get to the point. Yeah, great motivational, aspirational thought to finish on, okay, you've been listening to us for a while now but stick with us at the end of every episode. I asked the same six quick questions to get more tactical advice directly from the founders. If you want to see the filmed interviews, you can find them on my instagram at doing routine where can people find you, where people directed to Yeah, the best place is going to be instagram if you have it because all of my different links and then in my bio there, So that runs through, like, my linked in it links to all my different brands. It links to my courses, founder links to my free course with Shopify. So my instinct is really pretty simple. It's just great to G R E T T A path and we will link it in the show notes. All right, thank you so much. Amazing. Thank you. Hi, now we're doing this excuse.

So, Greta, what's your wife? What's the purpose of what you're doing? I think it's taken me a while to establish now, I always kind of wondered what motivated me and I did this, like, I think it was like a psychometric test or something with Blackbeard when they were looking to invest in my platform hey, influences and it basically covers a lot of the commonalities of successful founders and you don't know obviously what you're going to get as a result for that test. Um, but everything came back really good always well, except that it's one thing, they were like, we're a little concerned that you don't seem to care about money. And I was like, uh, which I totally get that's a valid concern when someone's giving you money, you're like, uh, do you care that were, you know, do you care on what you're going to spend it on, like, it seems concerning to us, but I think just ultimately I've realized over time, like obviously, like money comes and goes and that's a great thing and it's more than fine.

But what really, really excites me every day is ideas and solving big problems. So like I think my earlier startups, yes, they've always been like quite problem and solution focused. But I think as I progress as a founder now, I'm going to kind of be able to get into solving like bigger and bigger problems. So with drop bottle, you know, it's a large problem, like hydration is a huge problem and being able to kind of create a product that doesn't only kind of look good that does good as well for the world and kind of leave the world in a better place than we found it. So like our goal with drop bottle is kind of true fold leave the world in a better place than we found it and leave people in a better place than when they found before they found us. I'm sorry. That's really nice. So I think if I just keep that as a goal across my brands from now on and just work on solving larger and larger problems. Um, the next problem I'm really, really interested in as a space is like sleep and mental health.

So, and the connection between sleep and mental health. Um, and it's all about that. I need all of that look, give me I need all the mental health I needed to give me the tablet. Yeah, Well that's a really cool like inside and I guess like what you're building, having that impact is something that like gets you out of bed in the morning gives you like the drive to and I think that is part of it too. And the other part is with people that I love. Like I think a really great quote is if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far go together. So I really love that as well. So I think it's just for me it's about solving big problems, getting to like do the fun stuff that I love every day, like come up with like lots of fun ideas and work with like amazing people that I am get excited to go into the office every day to see your inspired by them and like what the exact what they're doing in their own right kind of thing, totally. That's really nice. Um Okay, so question number two um as per the format is what's the thing that made your business pop And so obviously you have multiple businesses or you can choose wherever you want to go with that one.

and yeah, what was the main thing, I think collaboration has always been the central key with my business is I think like you could say social media but behind the social media again, like behind instagram, the way that we've always grown on instagram has been through collaboration. So leveraging that someone's pre existing audience to build your own. So whether that's how we spoke about in the podcast with leveraging that to build your email list or it could be you know via instagram influences to build your instant following or it could be collaborating with another brand on instagram that's like not a competitive brand but more a collaborative brand because basically that is your growth lever in business. So that is the number one way to kind of mutually engaged with each other to unlock like free opportunities. Business head inbounds versus like small kind of increments. Exactly and there was a pretty big collaboration that you were telling me about earlier that you had um with drop bottle talk about.

Yeah well this is the big one um this song came about basically by accident so we have grown a lot of social and um Oprah came across out so crazy and their team ended up picking us as one of their favorite things and that was on the front page of amazon for a week which is absolutely exploded. Our brand especially in the U. S. Market. So even still today we have more us based customers in Australia now for example even though we're in Australian brand um so that kind of really pushed us out there in the U. S. But I think like again it's like leveraging every opportunity as far as you possibly can. So like the way that we're still able to kind of you know include in our social proof videos and like on our website saying like the bottle loved by Oprah or like including her kind of um quote about the product like yeah it's a handy little thing to have.

So like it's not just about like when these things happen like it being you know like things pick up it's about kind of the longevity of that as well. Like how long can you keep this up for you Can you can keep that for a long time. Yeah that one's not going anyway. Hello? Oh my gosh. Um Question number three is about how do you win the day? And this is all centered around the mindset and the rituals that you like incorporate for yourself to help you succeed in like your businesses and in your life and yeah I think there's like a lot of different things that we can all talk about here. That like my number one number one number one tip is breathwork. Like basically we all have within us the capacity to instantly change the way that we feel uh through the power of breath And if you are feeling stressed or anxious or if you're you're kind of in that like fight or flight mode which a lot of us are in day to day within business. It's just about being more mindful, slowing down.

Doing a breathing exercise can be as simple as like one of my favorite exercises is called box breathing, where basically it forms a box as well. So you breathe in for five, then you hold for five, then you breathe out the five and then you hold on baby hold for five. And how many times a day would you do that? I will and then you repeat that four times. So that one I do a couple of times throughout the day, ideally. But tell me we were talking about earlier. Yeah, my partner does, his strategy is also around breathing. It's just one conscious breath a day and he does it multiple times a day. But he thinks like he just takes a moment, takes one conscious breath and wishes happiness and kindness on two complete strangers. And by doing that, he just takes a moment to pause and reflect and you know, be grateful for himself and his life. And it's a nice feeling to be wishing good things to other people. Yeah, I love that. I forget to do it. But I'm gonna start really gonna start like this is calling, hey luke.

Hey luke can't coming on alcohol. Sorry, hi leave. I love you. Um, Number four is where do you hang out to get smarter a lot of places, but my favorite one right now would have to be this newsletter that I subscribe to. It's called lean lux. I'm sure we can link. It looks like it. It's basically a newsletter on all things direct to consumer. So kind of breaking down and summarizing a lot of that was like a lot of links through. So it's a newsletter that then links out to like a whole ton of different publications, definitely not just their own, they're basically like they curate the information and then provided to you in like a really, really great, really thought provoking way as well. And the cool part of lean lux is a really cool tactic that I haven't seen many brands do before either is I spoke we've spoken out podcast about rewarded actions and incentivized actions. And basically with lean lux, if you've had over, I think it's like over maybe is it 50 or 80% open rate over the first three months that you've been subscribed, then you have the ability to apply to join their private slack community, which is like a group of founders that are all talking at these topics and more detail networking.

Like it's an incredible director, consumer founders and yeah, I think that is like a really, really cool added bonus of that. And I think like that's thought provoking too, because like how could you leverage something like that on your brand's behalf? Like maybe, you know, if they had a 50% open rate, you know, you could give them some other kind of incentive, could work really well for a start up. It could really work quite well. I might start up clips, like channel, I'm 100% now there's two of us in this like channel so anyone else, anyone want to get on our slack channel, open our emails, open the emails. Um and there was another one you were telling me about, which I'm also just like about to download. Yeah, one other gym of information. Um so basically like we all have like the biggest reading list, I'm sure like there's so many books you're like, I need to read, you know the new Ben Horowitz book um like the one about culture, uh what we've become or whatever we become what we do or whatever it's called. Sorry then.

Um but so we all have like a really large reading list all the time and only so many hours in the day. Um I use this app called blink kissed. So um we'll link through so I always felt everything out because I just assumed that it's confusing to understand what people are saying, especially if maybe you're not from Australia and my accent is really confusing to you. Um So blinking basically summarizes books into really actionable bite sized pieces so it summarizes it into 15 minutes of reading or you can listen to it via audio and what I do is I do breathe at the same time because then I'm listening out loud and I'm taking it in from that component. I'm also reading it at the same time, a lot of the time I pause it and the reason that I love this is because you can read an entire like business book, but because it is long and there's a lot to get through, you don't really stop at every point to action that So basically was blink is at the end of each blink they called a blink. Like each section of the book at the end of each blink, I write down three different ways that I can action that blink across my business.

So it's about like intentional reading, like you're reading that with the intent to action it because obviously at the end of the day ideas and learning it all very well, but like if you don't take it on exactly like we don't execute it, nothing. Like if you didn't track it, you didn't do it. I'm so into it, I'm gonna download it today because I'm going to use it on the flight home and I will keep you guys a bit of a snapshot of some of the books that I'm reading is a great screenshots of the books that you've got in your blinker start, which I love. I often ask people like just yeah, what's on there. I put their recommendations into my notes and who recommended it. So when I read it I can go back to them and be like, oh I just finished the book that you recommended totally. And I, if there's like one book that I think that everyone should read that's in marketing about like persuasion is influenced by robert Mardini which is like a classic and it's like the psychology of persuasion. He basically has seven different principles including like obviously like things like scarcity or things like unity or things like likeness.

Um and I read a really good Shopify article that breaks that down really really well and links it back to a calm as well and how to like use reciprocity within your business with like a free gift with purchase or use scarcity with countdown timers and things like that. So I will link that as well and we can put that in the notes, the video in this life. Oh yeah, it's a nasty, it's like that's black that you're going to join. Yeah. Um # five is around the concept of failure and when you do fail, do you have a specific approach that you're kind of like, okay, this is what I need to do to move forward or is there a specific example that you can share of what happened and what you learn from it? I think like my number one thought when it comes to failure is that like to mitigate failing overall it's about failing as fast as you can in the micro to not fail in the macro. So like the faster like fail fast is like one of my favorite quotes to live by. So like the quicker that you can admit that you made a mistake that something's gone wrong without an ego without placing blame because there's no use of placing blame because as a founder of the solution like the problem to be solved falls on you, you need to solve that and you know if it was one of your team members ultimately still that's your fault um you should have managed the matter or that the letter, so I just know that like I need to not blame anyone else, just understand that something has gone wrong and now it's time to fix it.

Of course I need to grieve the loss like I will cry that I'm really great like once I have a cry about something, it's like this like I think like resilience is like got, it has to be, if you can't handle stress, you're never going to be able to handle success because success is extremely stressful because obviously you're adequate comfort zone a lot, you're having to constantly without fires, push yourself, solving problems prepared to fail. Exactly. Um so I would say that that would be kind of my number one tip when it comes to failure just fail fast, like grieve your loss that once you're over it like find a solution. Yeah, so it's like actually if you look at the definition of resilience, it's like the speed at which we can only overcome adversities and like that speed is the most important part because as a founder every single day that's going to be problems is going to be losses. But if you can't get over them quickly and you keep getting stuck on ones in the past and can't move past those and move forward from there.

Like that's why I love to be decisive because then you have that closure and it's just done as opposed to those things that linger on that out of your control, that you know, there are always the worst things in life. Um great. And last question, number six, it's more of a gimmicky question. It's around if you had only $1,000 left in your business bank account, where would you spend it? And it's kind of referring to like what your main sales drivers are and where you place the most important in your business budget. Yeah, it's a hard one of course, because across our business, like every channel works in tandem with all the other channels. It's very hard to have a standalone channel, like even facebook ads, which is what I'm going to answer. Even facebook ads, you don't understand the interplay between or like a lot of founders don't, or like even we don't a lot of the time because you can't attribute everything, but you don't always understand that kind of interplay between, you know, social media, driving the top end of your funnel or email marketing, driving, you know, the consideration stage of the funnel emails a little easier to attract sometimes in social, especially instagram or you know, influencer collaborations driving the top end to wear this stage.

So I am going to have to say facebook ads because it is still kind of the most plug and play marketing channel, it's still the most direct response marketing channel. People are most used to using facebook as a platform to shop through that. It is quite a direct response channel, so I think I would invest that there because it is so easy to attribute as well. You can see, you can start with like 5 $10 budgets and then start scaling it up from there and you can pull the money the second that you know, it's not profitable, but a lot of the time, you know, you'll be seeing like at least three plus return on ad spend on a successful campaign where a lot of the time, I mean it's hard to determine a successful campaign if you go on about this for a long time that like it's a combination of obviously like your creative assets, your copy the ad structuring itself. So like what your partner does from a structural perspective like placing the ads layering audiences, choosing targeting all of that sort of side and then the final one would be like your offer ultimately to the strength of your offer and it's always balancing the strength of your offer or the size of your offer with what your cost per acquisition is really.

So say you have a $30 cost per acquisition for a product, um but you want to offer $10 off, then you can only really have a $20 cost per acquisition to still be profitable because you've offered that $10 off, but you actually might find that because you do have that offer and that reason or incentive to buy That, you are able to achieve like a $20 cost per acquisition because the offer is stronger. So it's always balancing all of those things. It's like, so your content, you're so like your creative and content, you're the copy for the ad, like the copyrighting what you've written, the caption of the ad or whatever we call that uh then your offer and also the actual placement and targeting at the ad itself. So it's getting all of those things right together. But which sounds complicated. That sounds complicated when there are a lot of different variables. It's kind of a good thing because if you just keep putting them together in different ways and testing and testing and testing, you will come across the wedding result.

Just scale that, scale it, grow that brand. Mhm Yeah. Hey, it's just me here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the female startup club podcast. If you want to hear more, head to my instagram at Dune rasheen to see my filmed interviews with incredible female founders like Erica from fluffy beauty Greta from drop bottle and Sammy Leo from breeze bomb. And if you like what we're doing here, visit our website and sign up to female startup club dot com to get all of the good stuff delivered straight to your inbox, and lastly, subscribe to the female startup Club podcast. Mhm.