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 🗞

$5K Hello Alice small biz grants. Black beauty retailer Thirteen Lune closes $3M seed led by Fearless Fund. We’re all looking for recycled packaging: search no more. Women may be better investors than men. How Clearco’s rev-based financing fuels Beauty. The Glossier exec team expands. Female founders smashed funding records in 2021. Babylist raises $40M & expects to hit $250M in annual revenue.

🔑 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. Stay cool, spread like wildfire 🔥

EP232: I chat with Chao Wang, one of the founders behind the kids subscription clothing company Dopple.

Word-of-mouth. The crème de la crème of all marketing forms. And precisely what Chao used to build her 10K waitlist on a 0$ spend. But, it’s no easy feat. She shares her two golden pointers on how to improve your chances:

1. Make some friends in tech 🤖

It turns out that tech companies are next-level word-of-mouth generators. Did you know that? The systems used by Facebook, LinkedIn and the likes have all sorts of forums in which to share recommendations. Just through that Dopple had customers in 49 out of 50 states.

1. When something is cool, it spreads like wildfire 🔥

People are always going to talk about things that make them look cool or that they genuinely love. Dopple was created to be unique. It was a cool concept. A wow experience all around. Focus on giving your product that wow-factor, and people will automatically be drawn to that landing page.

2. Not today, MBA ⛔

EP233: We’re learning from Morgan McLachlan, a Master Distiller and co-founder of AMASS. A great one for those venturing into the alc and non alc space as we talk all the legalities. & we also discuss why you don’t need an MBA to start your brand. Save those dollars and stop using excuses!

Morgan wants to encourage people that don’t have a biz background, but an entrepreneurial idea, to just go for it. It is a lot of work to learn all the principles but you should really be encouraged to just do it. The force functions you to develop a lot of skills. And who knows, it might even become interesting to you.

You’re the one that cares most about the business. Any consultant, no matter how expensive, isn’t going to care the same way. And that means you’re going to do this a better times better.

Building a business = an MBA x a million.

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: 7 useful things in 7 minutes 📝

In between the non-alc wine updates, we’re starting a little new thing. I’ll be giving you a quick breakdown of new opportunities and things that I’m coming across. Things I’m learning about. It’s snappy. It’s value. It’s worth passing on.

What I learned this week…

1. Daily Affirmations (Spotify Link) 🧘Girlboss CEO Lulu Liang sent me her daily affirmations and meditations playlist. I started listening immediately and have had it on repeat ever since. Instant game changer. Get started. Open up, press play & relax.

2. 5 Minutes a Day 📔I was chatting to Alex Ikonn about his product The Five Minute Journal, and it got me thinking about the power of putting 5 minutes aside to positively influence your day. How could you use these 5 minutes? 5 minutes of meditation. 5 minutes of silence. 5 minutes of stretching. I encourage you to think about your own 5 minutes and what you could do to impact your day and impact your soul. Get started with that today.

3. iFundWomen (grants $$$) 🤑IFundWomen offers grants all the time. A wide variety of them are available for female owned and led business’ within a bunch of different categories. Right now, they’re promoting a Universal Grant Application that will also match you with a partner. You can read more & apply here.

4. Get Kreatives 📹If you’re in the e-comm world and need content, at scale, for ads, there’s a company you need to know about. Get Kreatives offer various plans for fixed monthly rates. They work by taking all of the assets that you have and turning them into nifty videos. Or doing a UCG style thing. It’s mindblowing. We’ve been using this for quite a while now, and one of our ads actually got voted top ad by TikTok. Highly, highly recommend!

5. Paste App 💻Paste App is a new, super easy tool by WeTransfer that you can use to build out decks. Media deck. Brand deck. Any kind of deck. They take your messy ideas and notes and design your deck so you don’t have to.

6. Gloria Chou (the Small Business PR Podcast) 🎙️Gloria Chou is an expert at teaching early-stage entrepreneurs how to hack their own PR with her 3-step pitching method. So great for small bootstrapped businesses to get press in big-time publications.She’s hosting a workshop in the Hype Club in the coming weeks, but for now, I highly recommend jumping on her podcast and checking out the episode on holiday gift guides. It’s super actionable to right now.

7. Target Accelerator 🚀The Target Accelerator Program is open and taking applications until Nov 14th. If you are a listener of the show you know how many founders have come through this. It’s gold. They’re looking to be blown away! Apply here.

FSC’s Bulletin Board 📍

We are on the hunt right now for a sustainable packaging vendor that’s also affordable for businesses ♻️💰🌿. Someone that can do customization, printing, all that kind of stuff. If you have something in mind, hit reply and let me know. We are all looking right now! 🔎

Some of the awesome pointers we’ve gotten so far:

• noissue: beautiful & eco-friendly custom packaging 

• Guacamole Airplane: design studio focused on sustainable packaging

• A Better Source: environmentally conscious resources 4 planet-loving biz’s

• PPC Packaging: sustainable packaging solutions

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.

Shenae Rae (Founder of SwearBy Skin) shared her unfortunate fail this week:

Luckily we were all able to breathe a sigh of relief by the end of the week:

Shenae Rae learned a lesson for all us here in the Hype Club this week. It’s crazy how much power tech has, but what can we do except make sure it’s not your only lane of marketing? Let’s all invest a little more in email moving forward ;)

*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 female founders going through the journey.

What’s on this week? 👀

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

TUES: Amy Divaraniya from Oova - modern tech applied to women’s health 💫

THURS: Lulu Liang from Girlboss - CEO, eComm expert, and Forbes 30U30 recipient 🚀

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

Click here to tune in! 🎧

What to Read, What to Listen to 🤔

📚 You are a Badass (at making money) by Jen Sincero: how to stop doubting your greatness and start living an awesome life. A series of fun self-help books.

🎧 Being Boss, hosted by Emily Thompson: for creatives, business owners & entrepreneurs. (And on a little side note… From this week, we can hear FSC ads at the start of her show. All through the HubSpot podcast network. Pinch me!)

Job Alert Time! 💼

Check out these cool job listings on our radar:

NYC/REMOTE 🗽

• Bubble, the gen-Z skincare company, is growing and hiring for many exciting roles in Junior Design, Sales, Influencer Marketing & more. Check out the listing here and/or email your resume directly to Shai to apply.

CANADA/REMOTE 🍁

• The Gist, creating sports content and experiences by women and for women, is looking for some girl-power to strengthen their team. Content Contributors, Graphic Designers, Content Managers… Check it out here.

REMOTE 🌎

• GEM, the vitamin company on a mission to transform human & planetary health, has a bunch of really cool job openings such as Head of Product, Director of Community, and much more. Read all about it here.

USA ONLY 🇺🇸

• Healthy Roots Dolls is a toy company bringing diversity to the toy aisle and they have an opening for a Junior Art Director. Apply here.

That’s all for today folks! See you next week :)