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:

Bulletin 📌

Something ✨ is cooking.

BIG NEWS!! There is a little sparkly something I've been working on for a good while now, and I wanted you to be the first in the know when I'm allowed to shout about it. What I can tell you is that there is a waitlist, I'd love for you to be a part of it, and it's coming in hot. ❤️‍🔥

Industry News You Should Prob Read 🗞

Eh, Fenty Beauty and Ketchup are doing a collab? Twitter is in hot water (again) over poor security allegations. Social shopping solutions biz LiSa raises €2.7M in funding. Companies are actually cutting back on maternity and paternity leave. The digital nomad is here to stay, please. Snapchat launched subscription model. Focusing on social commerce as part of your ecommerce strategy. Have you checked out this US Female Founders dashboard? It's v cool. NACO reports 50% increase in Women Angel Investing in Canada. Dymo label printers remain one of the best for small businesses.

🔑 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. Smile for the camera 📸

EP402: From a print studio to bootstrapping your way to $10M selling notebooks and pyjamas, this is Amy Voloshin's story of Printfresh.

Amy took a couple of important learnings with her when she evolved from running a print studio to a flourishing CPG brand. She put her success in bootstrapping to $10M down to a singular key aspect that's easy for each of us to implement: great pics!

This is something we haven't come across before on the podcast but is such an important aspect of building a successful e-commerce brand. When you don't initially have a chance for the customer enjoy your CPG product IRL, great photography becomes crucial to making sure your brand is properly represented.

There are three points to keep in mind:

• Focus on representing your key products that boasts the best quality

• Make sure to select products that naturally photograph well

• Spend that bit extra to produce high-quality imagery, it's worth it! (quality of images is the most important factor in an online sale for 90% of users)

FSC Mini-Series from the Founder ❤️

In my ongoing mini-series within the FSC podcast, you’ll hear directly from me, your Host & Hype Girl about all the goings-on with the Female Startup Club. Whether you’ve been listening to the show for a while, or if you’ve been listening to the show just recently, you’ll know for a fact that I’m all. About. Tiktok. I can’t stop telling everyone and anyone that I meet to grab this chance and give this a really good go. I’ve personally been putting so much effort into my channel and the results are just mindblowing (have a peek at what we're up to!) And all of this because of the guests that come on the show and share their wisdom with us. I have them to thank - literally. So today I’ll talk you through six of the best pieces of advice I’ve heard over the last year.

1. Pick a style that's easy to produce 🦚

Fiona Chan from Youthforia shared that if you’re going to create lots of content (which you should) you should pick a content style that’s very easy for you to produce. Pick something that you can create easily and consistently. By leaning into what you’re able to commit to, you’re going to keep your content as authentic and close to the core as possible, and you’ll be much more likely to have fun with it. And that’s exactly what people are looking for on this platform.

2. Put intent behind what you’re creating ☁️

It may seem like the platform is totally random, and many people have come to preach that it’s purely a numbers game. That you just have to put as many videos up as possible and soon enough one of them will go viral. But, Inoki Bathouse's Helen Yin has found a video to perform much better when people can respond in an emotional way to it. And that a video with low value, that evokes no emotional reaction, doesn’t do very well. So, it’s time to put your storytelling skills to use, get intentional with your message, and aim to reach the right audience this way.

3. There are no rules 💚

According to Lisa Guerrera from Experiment, there’s no right or wrong way to curate your content, as long as it fits your brand essence. Don’t just whack any old thing up there, but you can be broad. Above all, keep in mind that you don’t need to be a subject matter expert to do well on TikTok. Show the behind-the-scenes, random things throughout your day, and give people access to a world they don’t know about.

4. Just start 🚀

Lynda Truong from Love & Pebble shared her primary tip to having a viral moment, which is to just quit talking and start creating. You don’t have to do anything fancy. Tell a story, stay authentic, and be organic. The power of Tiktok is crazy. Not leveraging that right now is a missed opportunity.

5. Have fun with it 👻

I remember a conversation with Sarah Forrai from Contour Cube being a real turning point for me in how I viewed TikTok and the future of organic marketing. Sarah’s key piece of advice to entrepreneurs is to remember that direct marketing doesn’t really work on TikTok. Be yourself, be real and get in front of the camera. This is a fun platform. People want upbeat content, and to scroll with a smile on their faces. Give them a reason to.

6. If it's not performing, it's not engaging 🎭

If something is not performing on your channel, it means it’s not engaging. It seems so logical, but you should make sure to always change your strategy rather than wait on the algorithm for people to engage. Nadya Okamoto from August time and time again sees content creators put out content based on what they think will do well, but doesn't perform. If that's the case, mix things up. Get creative.

Biz Wins & Failz 🎢

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 alone in celebrating those highs.

This week, Winden's founder shared her rollercoaster with us:

Having a video go viral is such a huge win! But we totally agree with Becca, TikTok is not our friend RN. Time to implement some of the tips from our latest solo ep.

*The doors to Hype Club are open, now’s the time to join our community of uplifting entrepreneurs building the future CPG companies! It doesn't need to be lonely.

What to Read, What to Listen to 🤔

📚 The War of Art by Steven Pressfield: breaking through the blocks in your mind to win your inner creative battles and start that project.

🎧 Masters of Scale hosted by Reid Hoffman: explore how great companies scale up from zero to a gazillion, testing theories with legendary leaders.

Job Alert Time! 💼

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

REMOTE 🌎

• First live-collaboration 3D platform Womp is looking for a remote Marketing and Social Media Director to join the team. Read more here.

• E-commerce social media agency Blossom Media is hiring a part-time Marketing Strategist for their next stage of growth. More info here.

Baltimore 🇺🇸

• Leading minority-led period care startup Femly is looking for a rockstar Chief of Staff to join their mission. Something for you?

NYC 🗽

• Underwear & bralettes brand Parade is seeking a Brand Graphic Designer to join their team in the big apple. More information here.

• Bubble, the skincare brand for Gen Z, is currently looking for some incredible talent for their PR and Influencer team. More info here.

• Emerald is seeking a General Manager to oversee and manage the Bulletin team (the fun modern wholesale marketplace). More here.

& whilst I have you here...

I'd love for you to meet Norby. It's the link-in-bio tool that we've been using to connect with you (our community ✨), launch marketing initiatives (your Hype-Girl Hotline 📞) and keep track of all of our own data (the magic sauce of '22 🧚). Go say hello and check them out with a month trial freebie using the code FSC at checkout.

(Annnnddd remember to sign up for the hotline! We send cute motivational messages every Monday morning to give you some extra sparkle to start your day.)

If you resonate with something in this week’s newsletter we’d love to know! Share it with us on Instagram tagging @femalestartupclub & @dooneroisin ✨