Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / 6 quick questions with Hannah Attalah, Founder of Oceanus (Part 2)

Transcript

6 quick questions with Hannah Attalah, Founder of Oceanus (Part 2) · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  Welcome back. Here are the six quick questions. Question number one, what's your why? Why do you wake up every day and build this brand?
• 0:19
  My why? I would say I just love the idea of designing something so memorable that you will remember it in that night out that, you know, that piece in 10 years down the line. And you remember it because of what you're wearing. Like for me, when I think about just incredible nights from...
• 0:41
  Years ago, I remember specifically the outfit, how it made me feel. And it was like part of why it was so magical, why it was so incredible. And that I would love to do that for others, you know, and have it be that piece in your wardrobe that you look at and you instantly remember that night or special occasion. And it's, yeah, sentimental, really. So that's my why. Why?
• 1:09
  I love that so much. I so relate to that. You know, I always love the birthday dress or the XYZ dress that you kind of wear. And yeah, it's so true in that you're in the business of making memories, actually. You're actually there for every special moment. Yeah. Yeah. That's why we launched recently The Bespoke because even though it's very time consuming, it's just that extra
• 1:39
  personalization and, and, and getting to know like our customers more. I want to be part of their journey. I want to create something with them. And I also want to be able to inspire more people to design and to feel like, oh, if they, if they have a really cool idea, they can come to us and we can make it happen for them. Because I just, I just love getting more people into kind of
• 2:08
  into tapping into their creative side. Oh, I love that. What has been your favorite marketing moment for the duration of the brand? Uh, it was probably the Cassis Zelducky shoot when we launched that or, or it was our first ever shoot. So either one or the other, I think I feel like those campaigns were the strongest that we've done.
• 2:36
  Yeah, I would say launching those. Yeah, there was a video that we did with Nadia Lee Cohen in Beverly Hills that had such amazing traction and everyone just got it. And that was exciting as well. And it was also really nice to work with her in before she had really, really blown up because, I mean, she's so talented. So and I feel like our aesthetics were so aligned. So it was like magic.
• 3:06
  Love. What is your go-to resource? Where are you going to learn if you're thinking about, you know, a book or a newsletter or a podcast? I would say I listened to Stephen Dyer of a CEO. Love that. Just super enlightening. I tend to walk along the beach near where I live and listen to podcasts.
• 3:32
  Yeah, for me, it's really good when you're busy and you're on the run and you can just always learn new information. So yeah, I would say that one. I saw him speak in Australia a couple of weeks ago and I bought the tickets but didn't really look at what the actual subject matter was going to be. And I don't even think I read the title. I just was like, I love his podcast. I'm going to go.
• 3:58
  So I had no expectation of what it was. I didn't know if he was going to be interviewing someone or if he was going to be talking or having a panel or like what. Anyway, it was mind blowing. Like it was so unbelievably good. And he kind of creates this whole, he talks for three hours on his feet, just like straight talks through this huge presentation that he's done about all the lessons in life and business that he's learned. But he ties it back to an analogy of climbing a mountain up and down.
• 4:27
  And then he also kind of mixes in clips from his show, but also just clips that have impacted him from the internet, you know, forever from like amazing people. And the format was just so good. And I think actually it's probably like the lessons that he shares in his book, but it was amazing. He's such a great live speaker. Love him. Great.
• 4:54
  Question number four, how do you win the day? What are your kind of rituals that keep you feeling happy and motivated and successful? Well, I've been trying to implement new rituals. One of the things that I have started implementing is waking up really early and just journaling and sitting by the sea in just
• 5:21
  having my cappuccino and that kind of sets me up for the day for about an hour just with the sea and I haven't done that previously and that's like really important I think but I also I'm really awful like I don't stop working because I just actually recently in a session in a therapy session I realized that part of
• 5:51
  my thing is just, yeah, I just can't stop working. But it's, I think maybe like a coping mechanism for me. I don't know. But I, so I actually have to force myself. Well, now I'm a mum. So spending time with my daughter kind of takes me away from that, which is really important because I can just go from like,
• 6:17
  first thing I wake in the morning until literally going to sleep and just you know not really switch off not stop um and it is unhealthy so I do try and make and sometimes I forget also to make plans as well I would say don't listen to what I do and no one because I don't I do not have this mastered at all it's still something I'm figuring out
• 6:39
  So, but a lot of, luckily, a lot of the people I work with are my friends. So I get that, you know, if we want to switch off and have talk personal stuff, we can. I'm quite easygoing when it comes to being able to just...
• 6:57
  stop and have fun with my friends as well as working but I'm not routined which is odd because I think a lot of videos but that was a big part of why I wanted to because I just rejected completely even though routine can be really healthy I'm not going to be a good thing but
• 7:17
  I don't like the idea of having every day being exactly the same. I do do certain things that, you know, get my coffee and things like that. But I do like deciding, OK, I'll go to my factory or, oh, I've just someone messaged me and he's in town and I can, you know, I want that. I like spontaneous things and I leave a bit of room for that to happen because that's how life feels more exciting then.
• 7:46
  Yeah, my word for this year was variety because I love, again, like going somewhere new and different things in the calendar and all that kind of thing. Question number five is what's been your worst money mistake and how much did it cost you?
• 8:03
  Yeah, we invested into a new website a few years ago. And it was like they were supposed to put the agency was doing it for us. We're supposed to be doing all the creatives. But in the end, it ended up being I had a really amazing graphic designer at the time.
• 8:19
  He actually now works for Vivian Westwood. But because they weren't really grasping what we wanted, I had to get my graphic designer to build out. But because he didn't have the technical know-how of the customer journey and certain things like, for example, it's going to...
• 8:37
  lower the it's the speed of the website is going to be so much slower if we do all these things like cool icons and stuff like that it was a little bit of a disaster and it didn't scar me because it was super creative and everyone was like oh your website's amazing but it was so slow so actually our
• 8:57
  revenue, we were doing really well at this point. And then we switched on to this website, Super Creative, and our revenue went down, not up. And for like months, I was like, oh my God. And because it was a really big investment. But it was because of the load speed. It was because of, well, yeah, the images not being compressed. Like so many things like that. And we had to go back and spend even more to just...
• 9:24
  dilute the website wasn't actually coded very well either. So that after that experience, I just decided that I'm going to play it very safe when it comes to websites and just basic and get rid of all these extra kind of like cool stuff.
• 9:40
  things that we had because so and strip it all back and it was the more stripped back and basic the better because I just don't think it's like although like I try and make things super creative everywhere else where it comes to websites I it didn't work for me so um that experience has now put me off doing anything mega creative when it comes to websites but it also could have been that I didn't have the right agency
• 10:07
  And it wasn't, it could have been a lot of factors. But I do think that sometimes when you work with kind of tech coders and stuff like that, if you're not experienced in it, it's very difficult. You almost need to have someone who's internal, who can look things over because you can get really overcharged and end up with something that isn't actually, it isn't beneficial. Yeah.
• 10:34
  Totally. And I think such a trap, especially for early stage founders who are kind of new in the journey is wanting something to be creative and cool and different, but actually a Shopify theme proven over billions of data points is going to be your best bet. And it's obviously a lot cheaper than anything custom, especially in the beginning. And it's easy to kind of
• 11:04
  you know, for conversion Shopify theme might be. Yeah, 100%. 100%. So I would recommend not, if you can save, save on that basically. Just go with the, because it's not really something that I don't go on someone's website and like get put off by the fact that they've got a normal website. I mean, that's, yeah, that doesn't bother me. Totally. You want a great experience. You want to be able to click to check out easily.
• 11:34
  Question number six, last question. What is just a crazy story, good or bad, from your journey in building the brand? I would say...
• 11:46
  What was really interesting for me is opening my shop in Bali. I opened it last July and I noticed a lot of really like fashion girls came into the shop from Dubai and they're like, oh, I know the brand from, you know, Bloomingdale's Dubai. And although I know we've been around for quite a few years, whenever people...
• 12:10
  say I know it, I'm always get like, oh, you know it. But like, you know, it's, it's, I think it's that point of when you realize that most people that you're meeting know your brand, that's a bit of a mind blowing experience because in the first few years, it's kind of the people in the know, or, you know, maybe people,
• 12:29
  people from your hometown or, you know, and then once you start realizing it, you're in different countries and everyone else, everyone knows the brand. Then for me, it was, it still blows my mind because so much of it was of us blowing up happened during lockdown. And because we didn't ever have a shop, it was, you know, we're mostly online.
• 12:52
  it I you I just didn't have that experience as much like it wasn't so obvious until obviously now we have a shop and every you know and people like oh yeah I know it that is so cool so it's like wow the actual the digital ads did work yeah money well spent
• 13:11
  Oh my gosh. I love that for you. Well, I am such a fangirl. I absolutely know the brand. It's so speaks to my soul. I'm a sparkle lover and I'm so grateful to have had you on the show today. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much for everything. Yeah. It's been a blast. Thank you.
• 13:37
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 14:01
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• 14:24
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