Build the relationship, then the machine 🤖; Curiosity made the cat a CEO 🐱; Bouncin' Back 🏀

Where women in ecommerce come to get their key insights, tips and tactics

October 04, 2021

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 🗞

CaJE launches to Support Black Female Founders. Gen Z’s Parade underwear valued at $140M in latest deal. The world’s first vegan hard-boiled egg. NY Teen launches platform for Girls in STEM. Alloy (co-founded by Laura Spiekerman) raises $100M at a $1.35 valuation. The women making millions through crypto. What community means in the modern world of startups. WW CEO to step down. Medtech raises $7.6M for premature infants feeding tech.

🔑 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. Build the relationship, then build the machine 🤖

EP217: Michelle Cordeiro Grant is an absolute queen at building community. We’re talking about an ambassador network of 150,000+ members, and 130K emails in the database before the launch of LIVELY. Let’s learn from her…

“The secret is to build a brand, with the world. Not to build a brand and try and sell it to the world. Let’s build this thing together.”

That was two-fold. Building a community digitally, and also bringing women in physically. Build the relationship, and then build the machine. They didn’t build the machine (LIVELY) until 1.5 years after the community was founded.

  • Build Digitally 🤳

“We looked at brands that we felt were similar in mind and scanned their followers. We found people that didn’t have a lot of followers, but great content. And said these are the people.”

Getting people on board that know how to take content, and are passionate about showing their personal brand, and simply reaching out to them.

“We were very human about it. We DMed. This is what it looks like, this is what it stands for, we’d love you to be a part of it.”

(& now, they have 150,000 people in their network.)

  • Build Physically 👋 

“We were having focus groups of women, 12 at a time, helping us choose images, styles, and taglines.”

This creates invaluable data. Physical focus groups help you understand whether this is the image, this is the focus, this is the tagline. It does take time. But when you know all your focus women are on board, you have the confidence that this content is going

With this two-fold method, you’re building a brand with your customers. Not simply selling to them. Build the relationship, and then build the machine.

2. Curiosity made the cat a CEO 🐱

EP218: Vanessa Pham is half of the sister-duo that Founded Omsom, the food brand bringing proud, loud Asian flavors into your home kitchen.

We got chatting about some of the pressures that come with entrepreneurship and founding a company. There is a level of expectation that as a Founder, you should be the person with all the answers - no matter the problem.

Reality check: what makes a founder good at what they do is not having all the answers at all, but simply asking the right questions.

Penny. Dropped. 🤯

“Looking back I should have been less concerned about knowing the answers. It’s nice to have that, but if you don’t it’s not an issue. “

Solve problems. Get the right people brought in early on. Sell. Talk to everyone. And most importantly, ask the right questions. Stay curious. This curiosity will see your biz make leaps beyond what any perfect answer will.

3. Success? Get familiar with bouncing back 🏀

EP219: I had Alyssa Wasko on the show to chat about her fashion brand DONNI, and what it takes to survive in this notoriously gruelling industry.

What it comes down to? You have to be resilient. Whilst especially true for fashion, this really goes for any business. There are a lot of things that will knock you down.

“It’s the resilience, persistence, and passion to know that you should keep going instead of giving up because it is so easy to give up.”

This quote came to mind: “eighty percent of success is showing up.” Consistency and persistence, you’ve got this. Some handy pointers to practice?

✨ Hope for the upside, plan for the downside

✨ Let go when your gut tells you to

✨ Every closing door is a new one opening

✨ Most things in business aren’t personal

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.

Jenna Rodrigues (founder of The Cure•ist®) shared her epic fail this week:

“I’ve been working towards getting ready to pitch to retailers with an account manager. Designed and prototyped many iterations of retail packaging for my bath bombs. Finally received the packaging and when we started chatting about margins it was determined very quickly that this route is not going to work at this moment.”

It was awesome to see Megan (founder of a|dash) quickly offer some reassuring advice: 

“So sorry for your fail! SO many startups get in trouble with retail margins, but many when it is far too late and they've already committed to fulfilling POs. Building for retail margins is certainly something that is not talked about widely enough. While I know this will be a massive disappointment for you, I am glad you found out before you went too far down that road and were losing money! Excited to see you continue to grow on D2C. 💪”

Talking about lifting each other up… 🤗

*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: Mimi Ikonn from Love Hair - natural hair care for the modern muse 🖤

THURS: Oleema Miller from MIKOH - femininity, strength & beauty through swimwear 👙

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

Click here to tune in! 🎧

What to Read, What to Listen to 🤔

📚 Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future: named one of the best books of the year.

🎧 Invest like the Best, hosted by Patrick O’Shaughnessy: exploring the ideas, methods, and stories of people that will help you better invest.

Job Alert Time! 💼

Check out these cool job listings on our radar:

New York 🗽

  • Haven’s Kitchen is on the lookout for a Director of Sales who can help scale the biz. DM Alison Cayne here for more info.

REMOTE

  • Topicals has a bunch of roles when it comes to Community, People & Culture and Supply Chain. Check them out here.

HK 🌞

  • Everyday Humans is hiring for a Hong Kong based Digital Marketing Lead to own the growth of the company. Sounds fun! 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!

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