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!

If someone forwarded you this email you can subscribe here:

Industry News You Should Prob Read 🗞

Asos offers staff flexible work and paid leave during menopause. Mindbody acquires ClassPass in all-stock deal and secures $500 million investment. The dream of empowering girls is happening. Female Beauty Founders Talk Navigating a Male-dominated VC World. Lego to tackle toy gender gap. How fearless women lead. 100 women of impact in 2021. Tala, fintech founded by Shivani Siroya, raises $145M to expand globally and into crypto.

🔑 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 key to successful growth 🔑

EP223: Britta Cox shares her secrets to building AQUIS & selling millions of units each year since 1990.

What has 31 years in the game taught Britta? 

What it all comes back to is relationships and relationship building. Whether it’s with your manufacturer. Your customer. A retailer. Really when you break it down, it’s problem-solving, relentlessly going after what you want, and relationships. That’s it. What should we keep in mind in doing this?

1. Be genuine 😊

You know the old “treat others how you’d like to be treated.” It works the same in business. The common thread is authenticity.

1. Be willing to reciprocate 🔁

Sometimes, your relationships won’t turn a profit or bring immediate benefits. That’s ok. Tit-for-tat is not how this is going to work. Don’t let that stop you from being there for others. Show up for your people! You’ll see. 🌱

2. Keeping the ⚽ rolling

EP224: Contour Cube™’s Sarah Forrai sold 20k worth of product during her launch after her TikTok video went viral amassing more than 6M views.

Sarah’s product just so happened to be a dream for TikTok. It looks great, sounds great, it’s very fun, very upbeat. The first video, simply explaining the product, quickly amassed 20,000 views and already generated sales.

But… They didn’t quite plan for this. It is rare for a biz to plan for such scale in the early days, especially the scale we’re talking about following a viral moment. Or several at that. How do you hold on to this kind of momentum?

Sarah looked to the place that created it in the first place: TikTok 🤳 

Even though they didn’t have the product in their hands, she got in front of the camera and continued to create TikTok’s. Explaining the product. How you use it. The recipes. Packaging. And they just kept popping off. A byproduct of all this traction was followers to their IG account and people signing up to their mailing list. You can imagine the size of this mailing list as momentum just kept continued to build. One video even hit over 6 million views! 👀

All this pent up demand meant that when they *finally* got their hands on the product, they made $20K in the space of two weeks. Wow.

As a woman who made it through TikTok, what’s her advice now-a-days?

• Direct marketing really doesn’t work on the platform: be yourself, be real, and get in front of the camera

• We are in the age of video only, get yourself on TikTok!

• Consider Spark Ads to increase engagement & drive traffic

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: the concept of starting at the end 🔁

Female founders should speak up when it comes to money goals 🤑

There’s this weird thing that prevents women from saying that one of their goals is to sell their business for life-changing money. A taboo in the back of our heads that says we shouldn’t talk about money. It’s total bullshit and so old fashioned.

📢 We should shout it from the rooftops. Female founders are at a point where we should be talking about our money goals loud and clear. Going after it. Now is the time.

Starting where you finish: figure out your end goal 🤔

Many founders don’t start with an end goal in mind. If you set a clear goal of hey I want to sell this business for X amount, you can reverse engineer that plan, and get started on your journey. We had a great ep on this with the Founder of Sacred Serve. On having that north star. ⭐

Understand what the roadmap looks like for where you are, the market that you’re following. Then start to look at building your financial roadmap to getting there. Maybe you iterate along the way, but just having a general idea sets you on a path toward the success of your goals.

Something to keep in mind this week: ask yourself, and spend some time understanding what your goals are. What’s the true end goal of your business?

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.

Larissa Hildebrandt’s (Founder of @henrie) fail fell on familiar ears this week.

Gina was able to chip in with similar issues and a word of encouragement:

A little reminder of the support that can be found in shared difficulties ♥️

*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: Olivia Koennecke from Maison Essentiele - consciously constructed luxury essentials 🤍

THURS: Ashley Selman from Heywell - function-forward sparkling waters 💧

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

Click here to tune in! 🎧

What to Read, What to Listen to 🤔

📚 You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero: the #1 NY Times Bestseller on how to stop doubting your greatness and start living an awesome life.

🎧 Radiolab with WNYC Studios, hosted by Jad Abumrad: a radio show and podcast weaving stories and science into sound and music-rich documentaries.

Job Alert Time! 💼

Check out these cool job listings on our radar:

LA/REMOTE 🌇

• Blavity is a media and tech company for “forward-thinking Black Millenials” that is looking for a bunch of people to strengthen their team.

SYDNEY 🌞

• Élysée Collective, the full-service comms agency specializing in luxury lifestyle, is looking for a PR Senior Account Manager. Apply here.

THE US 🇺🇸

• Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, the delicious ice cream brand, is looking for Ambassadors and Human Resource Managers. Apply here.

MANILA 🇵🇭

• Not Pot, a new cannabis approach company, has a bunch of cool openings such as Account, Finance & QA Manager. Check it out.

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!