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 🗞

E-comm trends, growth marketing predictions. Little Otter announces $22M Series A in child and family mental health. Vogue Japan appoints new head of editorial content. The first steps for your 2022 business idea. First Lady of Iceland advocates for Gender Equality. How CDFIs will help women entrepreneurs thrive despite the pandemic. Advice for CEOs going into 2022.

Worth Shouting About 📢

If you’re a small biz owner, you’re probably aware that over 70% of all US online spending goes directly into the pockets of 15 mega-retailers (you know which ones). Meanwhile 2.1 million small businesses (selling those same products) end up on page 10 of your search results. There’s something to be done here.

At the end of the the year we had an episode go live that’s a little different to our usual ecomm founder stories. I came across a post on LinkedIn by Cara Oppenheimer announcing her new business (goodbuy) and realised straight away that we have a lot of synergies in the missions that we have between goodbuy and Female Startup Club. What is goodbuy? 

👉 Goodbuy is the easy button for conscious shopping. The way it works is that once you add it to your browser it automatically intercepts all your online shopping searches (think mega-retailers like Amazon and Target), and diverts you to the same products from over 183,000 small businesses. AND ALSO it helps you shop based on your values. Interested in shopping women owned? Tick. Interested in black owned? Tick. Interested in sustainability. You betcha. You can choose your values and it pops up with new online stores to spend your $$$ with. How cool is that?!

We chatted about what it takes to build something like this as a non-tech Founder, how to build trust whilst monetizing, and how goodbuy sent $17K to small business in just two weeks of operation. For some feel good shopping, install goodbuy. If you’re a small biz owner, join their community for free and be part of something awesome. I’ve been using it since and it puts a smile on my face every time I spend money with a small business I wouldn’t have known about otherwise. Let’s bring the humans behind businesses forward.

If you download it, drop me an email to let me know :)

🔑 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. This week, we’ll be pulling out key insights from our Fave FSC Hits of the last year. The best of the bunch. Pens at the ready!

1. 5 Secrets to Killing your Kickstarter 🚀

EP254: Chatting to Jing Gao about her 8-figure revenue business, the premium Chinese food company Fly by Jing.

Jing talks us through a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign (surpassing her $25k goal with $250k(!!!) invested) to launch the core of her first products.

Kickstarter: a funding platform for creative projects - every project creator sets their project's funding goal and deadline, and if people like the project, they can pledge money to make it happen.

Here’s all the know-hows of her self-professed “best way to launch a business”:

1. 🔁 Use Case 🔁 Thousands of new Kickstarters are launched every. single. day - filter to see which ones have done best and really study those cases

2. 📚 Tell a Story 📚Kickstarter is a really effective way to tell stories: ensure the product tells a story, which enables you to tell a ripple story behind it

3. 🤖 Algorithms 🤖Hit your goal on the first day for your page to snowball: Kickstarter will show you to more people the more traffic your page is getting

4. 🦠 Virality 🦠 The product should be inherently viral in its unique aspects

5. 📧 Mailing List 📧You will automatically gain access to the emails of all your supporters, use that to build that rapport, and begin building your community 🤗

2. The sign you were looking for 🌟

EP255: Poppi’s Allison Ellsworth dives into the origins of her super inspiration startup story, from not taking stupid money to partnering with JLO.

That excuse you were telling yourself not to get started? Forget it. It’s always possible. Allison delves into convincing her hubby to quit his job to take the leap into entrepreneurship, and appearing on Shark Tank whilst 9-months pregnant.

It’s all about getting started. Doing something is better than doing nothing - just get that ball rolling. Live your life, have some balance, and love that journey.

I’ve come off this episode feeling so inspired and charged for my own journey. This is the kind of thing that really lights me on fire so I hope you love it too!

3. Yo business, yo problem ✌️

EP256: I still often think about this chat I had with The Nue Co’s Jules Miller. She’s truly awesome. She created this company with her Grandpa, with a mission to interconnect all aspects of our health under one eco-system.

The key insight that stuck with me: as an entrepreneur you should always remember that it is your business and that you are actually in control.

Once investors enter the picture, it can become easy to blur these lines and lose a sense of control or ownership. But it doesn’t need to be this way.

Nobody really knows your business as well as you do. Have true conviction in what you do, and this will continue to reflect in the success of the company.

Biz Wins & Failz 🎢

Here’s a cracker 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.

Megan Broderick (Co-Founder of a|dash) shared her rollercoaster recently:

Thankfully, Megan was quick on the ball to arrange a re-order:

Back on track they ensured the stock would take them through the holiday as planned. Though they might have lost out on some potential revenue in the gap, it provided strong proof of concept for the next stage of growth. Kudos! 👏

*We’ll be opening our doors to Hype Club again soon, so if you’re looking forward to joining the next round of intakes keep your eyes peeled for our memo!

What’s on this week? 👀

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

TUES: Julissa Prado from Rizos Curls - clean hair care for curls, coils & waves 💖

THURS: Allison Moss from type:A - natural deodorant that actually works 🌟

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

Click here to tune in! 🎧

What to Read, What to Listen to 🤔

📚 Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain: the book that began the quiet movement on how we undervalue introverts.

🎧 Invest Like The Best, hosted by Patrick O’Shaughnessy: ideas, methods, and stories of people that will help you better invest your time and money.

Job Alert Time! 💼

Check out these cool women-owned job listings on our radar:

REMOTE (USA) 🌎

• Rent the Runway, the world’s first Closet in the Cloud, is looking for a passionate HR Manager to support their team. Apply here.

• Tala, the tech company building the most accessible financial services, is hiring a Senior Engineering Manager. Read all about it here.

NYC 🇺🇸

• Glossier, the new approach to beauty company, is looking for a Senior Direction in Brand Marketing. Super cool opportunity. More here.

• Malala Fund, working for a world where all girls can learn and lead, is seeking an experienced Editor for a 6-month period. Apply here.

Ciao ciao, keep shining bright ✨