Hi! I’m Doone, your hype girl in business. This is your weekly source of inspiration & information on all things in the e-commerce and CPG space, read by like-minded Entrepreneurs - that happen to be women - like you. If you find value in this content please like & share above, or forward it to someone in your network. I love it when you do that!

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Industry News You Should Prob Read 🗞

The Pitch Deck to Raise $1M in 2 weeks. The state of wholesale e-commerce: Bulletin’s Insights Report. The women leaders making a difference in 2021. Overcoming investors’ resistance as a woman. How to prep for the entrepreneurial rollercoaster. How high is the ceiling for personalized beauty? Tod’s Group CEO Exits, Cattaneo joins as GM. Let’s talk about menopause. The Mom Project (Job Board for mothers) gets $80M to grow.

🔑 Insights From This Week’s Episodes on the Female Startup Club Podcast

Directly from the women building the world’s most exciting businesses in the e-commerce and CPG space.

1. The 3 Biz Fundamentals 📝

EP220: We learned from a woman of many talents, Mimi Ikonn. She bootstrapped her business Luxy Hair through to an exit a few years ago ⁠and has since Founded Intelligent Change, crafting tools to change your life like The Five Minute Journal.

Mimi has a view on business and life that we can all take inspiration from. She was able to share with us her three fundamentals when it comes to building any biz.

1. Provide a kick-ass product 🚀

Not only to our world, but it’s also not good for you. You’re not going to enjoy doing this day-in-day-out. Create something distinct, something useful and something you can be proud of putting out into the world.

1. Solve a problem 💡

This is how the best businesses are created. You feel you’re solving a problem in the world. You can easily tell the story. Make your own marketing.

1. Top notch customer service 🤗

Mimi considers this the most important part of the business. At times, the only touch point. And something that is so grossly undervalued.

Even though the platforms change, these basics are the same. Kick-ass product, kick-ass customer service, and genuinely caring about the problem you solve and the customers that you serve. Ta da! ✨

2. Be Like Water 🌊

EP221: MIKOH is the bikini brainchild of Kalani and Oleema Miller, the California born & bred sister duo with an authentic love for the ocean.

Oleema has learned that when it comes to business, you’ve just got to go with the flow. Be able to be flexible. Or as her acupuncturist says: “sway like a willow tree.”

When the outside world throws things at you that you have no control over (Covid, anybody?), don’t stand there like a brick wall. Be like water. Find the little ways, the tunnels, the ways you can swerve through the hard times.

FSC Mini-Series from the Founder ❤️

In this new mini-series within the FSC podcast, I’m taking you on the journey while I develop my non-alc wine brand and build it in public. I will be sharing what’s happening in real-time, as well as things I’m learning along the way.

This week: building an impactful community in 5 steps (‘21)

with tips from ex-Glossier community lead: Kim Johnson 

I want to share some insights that we learned during a recent Hype Club masterclass that we hosted with Kim Johnson. I think it’s really relevant for anyone building a business - in ‘21 especially. It’s the backbone to everything you do: connectedness, presence & support.

1. 💖 Get to know your people 💖

What do your members think? What do they want? What have they expressed?

First and foremost, focus on getting to know your people. There is no shortcut for having conversations with your members. It will help you not only build a space that’s relevant for them, but a space in partnership with them - it is essential that there is mutual investment and growth taking part.

1. 🤔 Define the value 🤔

What can we uniquely bring to the table? What are the through lines?

Try to understand why each person is there. Providing the value provides a toolkit to what your community is seeking and how they thrive. All communities are a spiderweb are different connection points between different people for different reasons - recognising these points allows you to get intentional.

1. 🤳 Bring people together (IRL & Virtual) 🤳

Can we meet IRL? What are the key connection points? Or experiences?

These reflections allow you to get much more targeted in bringing people together. Aim to create many small touch points over a few larger ones - people will feel more comfortable showing up and being vulnerable. Get an idea of what stage they are. The thing that matters most to them at that time.

1. ⏰ Build Rituals ⏰

Rituals help you grow together. The things you consistently do in your community to inspire connection. Rituals are the binding force. Build a process around your co-creation - identify your most engaged- create consistency.

1. 🎬 Invest in the Behind the Scenes 🎬

Start building the infrastructure today for where you’ll be in the future. Investing in the background will help you foster thoughtful authentic interactions even as your community scales. TAKE YOU TIME! A community isn’t built in a day.

Learned something new? You might be interested in joining the Hype Club. We record all of these masterclasses to they remain accessible for all members, and have plenty more in our agenda fr the coming weeks. All the info is right here.

Biz Wins & Failz 🎢

Here are a few crackers straight from Hype Club.

We’ve got an ongoing Biz Wins & Fails chat going in HC. This is where we can learn what we can hopefully avoid in our own journeys, and what keeps us feeling like we are not in this alone. A lot of us are seeing a lot of highlights, but tbh there are also so many downs and things that go wrong.

RaeDawn Brooks (Founder of @balaeyon) had an exciting win that came pretty close to home this week:

This $$$ will go straight towards paying for a marketing consulting agency to bring their “Dew Revive” to people’s eyes. Sounds like a win for us all! 🤩 Keep your eyes peeled for our future giveaways and this could well be you next month.

*Our pricing is currently $59 per month, cancel anytime. Come join us in Hype Club if you want to build your network and meet other women going through the journey.

What’s on this week? 👀

Let’s see what we have in store for you this week…

TUES: Britta Cox from AQUIS Hair - healthy, strong hair starts here 🧡

THURS: Sarah Forrai from Contour Cube - the ice facial tool for glowing skin ✨

SAT: Doone's back - with a solo episode 🍷

Click here to tune in! 🎧

What to Read, What to Listen to 🤔

📚 The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz: on the NYT bestselling list for almost a decade; a roadmap to enlightenment and freedom.

🎧 Wellness Mama, hosted by Katie Wells: actionable steps improve your family’s health through a weekly podcast series.

Job Alert Time! 💼

Check out these cool job listings on our radar:

REMOTE 🌎

• Diaspora Co. Spices, building a more equitable and delicious spice trade, is looking for an Indian-based Sourcing Manager. More info here.

LDN 🇬🇧🗽

• The Flex company, putting period freedom at the forefront, has a bunch of cool vacancies in brand, growth, product & more. Check them out here.

• Threads Styling, the luxury fashion commerce brand, is looking for a Junior Marketing Manager to strengthen their team. Apply here.

PS:

Did you catch the news that Female Startup Club is now part of the HubSpot Podcast Network? Pretty big deal for me tbh, I’m stoked! Catch us alongside some other badass folks like Jenna Kutcher from Goal Digger and Sam Parr & Shaan Puri from My First Million… 2022 is shaping up to be a cracker!