Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / “1000 pre-orders on an unseen product!!” Girls Get Off co-Founder Viv Conway Shares Launch Strategy (Part 1)

Transcript

“1000 pre-orders on an unseen product!!” Girls Get Off co-Founder Viv Conway Shares Launch Strategy (Part 1) · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  Let's take this show on the road. Imagine a world where gender equality is the norm and women have equal access to the same financial opportunities regardless of our personal circumstances. Hi, I'm Dune, founder of Female Startup Club and your personal hype girl. This is the pod for you. If you're starting a side hustle,
• 0:20
  scaling your biz or looking for inspo. We cover venture capital, personal finance, selling your biz and keeping your mental health in check from entrepreneurs like Refinery29's co-founder Piera Gelati and Ju Ru, who sold Hero Cosmetics for $650 million. Slide into my DMs if there's a question you want answered and let's get into today's episode. So,
• 1:02
  Viv, welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast. Yay, thanks so much for having me on. I'm so excited to be here. Yay, me too. I love this for us. How's your day going? What's going on? My day's so great, although Nextdoor just started drilling about 20 minutes before this podcast came on and I was a bit freaked out for a second, but all is well. I've been down to the post shop getting my photos taken for my Chinese visa. I'm very excited to head off there next month, so it's all go. Yeah.
• 1:29
  Love that for you. Wait, where? China, did you say? China, yeah. Visiting some suppliers and also attending a big sex toy conference, like trade show thing, which I'm excited about. So fun. Have you been to China before? I haven't. Have you?
• 1:46
  Yeah, it's so fucking sick. I'm like, take me back immediately. I can't wait. I've seen photos from people, videos. Where are you going? I'm going to go to Shenzhen and then also Hong Kong. So a couple of different places, but pretty entry-level China trip, I feel. Okay. And talk to me about the sex toy conference. Like, what is the cool shit you're going to see there?
• 2:07
  What's on the cards? Yeah, conference is probably the wrong term, but this is just about hunting out new suppliers, see what the new trends are. I feel like there's a lot of innovation coming out of China at the moment, so it'll be great to go and experience that for myself. Like what? Like what's an example of like something that like the average normal person wouldn't know?
• 2:30
  I.e. me. Yeah, I think, look, I think there's always little iterations of things that we already have. So, for example, you know, our best-selling toy is like a clitoral pulsing toy. It uses lots of like air pressure. And we got sent one the other day from a supplier that was like a travel size. So it's got a little cap on the top of it. So if you take it in your luggage, you don't have to be worried about it turning on or there'll be lots of Bluetooth toys there or lots of app devices.
• 2:54
  related toys. I'm sure there'll be a whole range of things I've never even seen before, which I'm excited about, but it'll just be a matter of trying to, we're always trying to figure out how we can provide the best product for our customers. And part of that is like, what are the, you know, are there any updates to materials? Are there any, is there anyone who's going to offer more than a one year warranty that we can offer our customers? You know, things like that, that yeah, can just make us better all the time.
• 3:21
  I feel like, and maybe you already do this and we're going to get into it, but I feel like there's such a space for kind of the chatbot app sexy story that's linked to the experiential moment. Like, you know, the journey, the journey of listening to something that actually has a physical impact.
• 3:44
  moment involved in it as well like sexy stories plus this is the like we're going to take you on a journey you don't have to it's like hands-free journey you know and you're like it's thrusting for you at the main event in the you know in the smart story saying that's what I'm saying I love the smart story
• 4:05
  Smart is such a hot topic right now. I think often as women, we're so mental and we need to, like, I think from talking to a lot of our customers, I know that for a lot of women, a big issue is being able to get out of their head. When you're reading something, you're just totally preoccupied by what's happening in the story and you can't really think of anything else. And I think that's why...
• 4:26
  Women tend to prefer the smut stories so much so over things like porn. I mean, there's a lot of – I mean, often porn can be very degrading to women and that's also not really a vibe for a lot of people. And, yeah, the smut stories are just – they're just kicking off. Book talk, you know? Yeah, like I've read these –
• 4:47
  books recently, this series, what was it called? Maybe like Mile High or Miles High. And it's like one of those, you know, classic TikTok book recs. And it's like about these like, you know, enemies to lovers or like enemies to friends to lovers, always like in a sporting kind of arena, the guys like the classic, you know, hot sports star that's like too cool for school. And the chick is always like this, you know, disheveled, but...
• 5:13
  underlying beauty that's like doing something random and you know blah blah blah blah but anyway it was like really smutty and I'm like yeah imagine if there was just a little physical component to go with it wouldn't that be fun I couldn't agree more I think it would have to be audio versus like reading it but like listening to someone narrate the story I don't know I don't know anyway I feel like that's what you could experience over there I agree I'm gonna keep my eyes peeled for that it sounds like a great idea
• 5:41
  We'll wait for your smutty series. Lol. Okay. So where am I starting here? You are the queen of orgasms and women's pleasure. I want to go back to the kind of starting story. What led you to sex toys? What led you to this business? Yeah, of course. So I'm co-founder of Girls Get Off. We've got a business partner, Jo. She's based in NZ and I'm over here in Sydney. Yeah.
• 6:07
  This idea came about in lockdown 2020. We'd been looking at different things we could work on together. We both had previous businesses before this. And Jo said to me, why don't we start selling sex toys? You know, we're so open about this topic. We're really comfortable talking about this and always have been. And if you look at the products that are trending at the moment and how people are coming across these products, the reason...
• 6:30
  A, the reason they're finding out about the sex toys that are trending is not because anyone's doing a good job of the marketing. They're finding out about these toys because people have either told them about it, word of mouth, or you've got viral reviews online that are somehow getting some airtime, whether it be on a radio station or a bit of press. So there wasn't actually, you know, when we compared it to every other product that women were being marketed to at the same time, like skincare, for example, no one was just using influencers and making it really normal.
• 6:58
  And then on the flip side of that, if you were the person who said, okay, cool, I'm ready. I'm going to buy my first toy. You've either got to go into the shop down the road, which for many of us was a very like seedy, gross, weird experience. It didn't feel like an act of self-care or you had to go online to which you were often faced with so much choice. So I remember doing more market research and going, okay, cool. Cool.
• 7:21
  toys for her on one of the larger retailers and it's got like 800 results. I'm like, I don't know what I want. Like if I'm new to this game, I don't know. Yep. I love ClitStim or yep. I'd like a really direct vibration there or yep. I like internal stimulation. You just don't know what you don't know. And it can be really overwhelming for those who are just new to the space. So the reason we started Girls Get Off was that we wanted to
• 7:46
  create a fun, simple, positive buying experience for women. And I think that then feeds into the bigger picture, which is how can we help women own their pleasure and feel really confident in themselves and know what gets themselves off so that they can then share that with partners, should they wish, and just help them have the best sex lives of their life. I mean, amen, sister. I feel like
• 8:10
  You've described like what my experience was in that I was someone who was never exposed to the marketing moment or anything. And it was through word of mouth and a girlfriend being like, just so you know, this is what you should be doing right now. And me being like, oh.
• 8:26
  no, like, what? What do you mean? And then being, oh, I think maybe she even just bought it for me. She just, like, ordered it to my house. And I was like, oh, okay. Well, times have changed. Everyone has one of those friends, Hayden. I've got the leader of the friend group demanding everyone gets the vibrators. Oh, it's happened. It's happened. I'm like, I've convinced everyone who doesn't have one that they absolutely need to have one because, I mean, otherwise you're missing out in life.
• 8:56
  Okay, so you land on sex toys, you land on girls get off. It's also a vice industry, right? Like when we consider like advertising, like you can't just like put this on Facebook ads and be like, yo, buy this vibrator, you'll have a great orgasm.
• 9:14
  It's like a difficult to market in certain ways industry. Yeah, look, it is. And we are against the terms of service in terms of paid advertising for platforms like Meta and TikTok as well. So it's been a real struggle. Look, we haven't done any paid advertising. We've just started a little bit now because we have a libido supplement. So we're allowed to advertise that.
• 9:36
  Oh, cool. But it's been interesting to see that the restrictions have extended past things like Meta. So I think when we, you know, we're such a social media first brand and when I think, when we think of that space, that's who initially springs to mind. But there have been so many other random roadblocks for us, like, you know, billboards where there was a conservative landowner so they said, oh, you can't put it up there. Or when we've had...
• 10:05
  texting, SMS marketing, you know, I've got to jump through all these hoops. We only just got SMS marketing in Australia and then for New Zealand at the moment, we're having to like show evidence of everything and how we're going to market everything. So yeah, there's been like a lot of random hoops to jump through, but I think what makes that, you know, it's a double-edged sword,
• 10:23
  that makes it really difficult. But then when you do get in front of people, it's so much more impactful because people aren't used to seeing this content about this industry talked about in a way that is like fun, positive, easygoing, you know, just makes people feel really comfortable about the topic. So I think it also, you know,
• 10:42
  Sex sells still. So we've got, you know, it is really, everyone understands pleasure, you know, so we don't have to really sell the benefits to people as such. And they understand that it's more about if we can get in front of them, maybe help shake off any of those uncomfortable feelings they have about the topic. I think even though it can be hard to market, it can also be a lot more impactful when we do get in front of people.
• 11:07
  Totally. And it's a fun space to play in and do kind of like the out of the box thinking. And I think as well, when I speak to people who operate in any kind of, you know, what is considered vice, according to Meta and TikTok, I think, you know, I think it's a good thing.
• 11:23
  My perspective and take is that that just forces you to have so much more fun in business because you have to get scrappy and like find the alternative route kind of thing. And I'm going to get more into social later. I want to kind of stick around the beginnings of the brand and kind of jump into like the launch, I guess. I read that you'd kind of pre-sold some stuff. You were already getting the word out there. So let's break down that early kind of couple months and like in the lead up to launching and what you were doing.
• 11:51
  So when we first started, I will also preface this by saying we were so nervous about how this was going to go. You know, I think it's like anyone launching a business, you're like, oh, are people actually going to buy it? You can do as much market research as you want. You can try and figure it all out, but you're ultimately never going to know how it's going to be received until people actually bring out their wallets and pay for stuff.
• 12:15
  Actually, question before this, before we jump into this, how did you feel, you know, telling your grandma and like, you know, your boyfriend's dad or like, how did you feel about the people around you that weren't the kind of people who you knew would be your cheerleaders and maybe your grandma and your boyfriend's dad was? Yeah.
• 12:31
  You know what I mean? The people that you were like, oh, like that person is known to be a bit prudish or like judgmental or something. Yeah. Look, I think so before this, I had a social media agency and we were back in the day, we were like very Instagram specific. So when I was telling people in 2017, I'm like,
• 12:54
  I'm going to quit my job and do Instagram or I'm going to do Instagram. I had probably a lot more like questions around that. I for sure had a lot more people saying, what are you going to do when Instagram dies? Like people were just so confused at the idea of someone throwing in their full-time job to go and do that. That by the time...
• 13:12
  it came to sex toys. Like even people say, what did your parents say? I'm like, my parents had more to say about me quitting my job for Instagram, which they didn't even understand what I was doing, running accounts for people. When I said, yeah, Jo and I are going to start selling sex toys. They were like, oh, that's great, darling. Oh, yeah, great. They're just so past the point of life. Very nice. Very nice. Please make sure to send them here too. Yeah.
• 13:36
  Ship the beta versions, please. Exactly. And then look, you know, I had a really close mentor to me at the time. I said, you know, we're going to go and do sex toys. And she's like, why would you want to do that? That's like, that's such a weird thing to do. And I'm like, perfect. I'm like, because that's the reaction that most people have to this topic. And we're going to do the opposite. I'm like, that's exactly the reaction that I want in this situation. Because there's so much to prove that it's such a normal thing. Whitespace.
• 14:01
  Yeah, and I think other than that, people were probably just too scared to say anything. You know, I think like, you know, women's empowerment is getting their time in the spotlight at the moment. So people are probably just a little bit nervous. And I think when people have seen you do something before, then there's like the back you, you know what I mean? So I think that...
• 14:20
  We were a bit nervous, like, oh, my gosh, okay, if we just have 1,000 vibrators in Joe's garage, we'll just have to give them away to our friends. And then also I think, yeah, when people have seen you do one thing, they're like, okay, cool, they can get behind you and do something else. So in terms of to my face, I honestly had more people say, oh, my God, what are you doing that for about managing people's Instagram accounts?
• 14:40
  Wow. Well, I mean, great. Love that. Love that for you. Okay, cool. Let's talk about the launch and how you were kind of spreading the word and getting those pre-sales. So for launch, we wanted to build a lot of hype. I guess we leveraged other people's audiences. Yeah.
• 15:00
  to get that initial snowball effect. So I think initially we posted out to friends, family, that we were doing pre-sales. And again, I think the click-baity nature of Girls Get Off certainly makes people click and also the hype around it that people then purchased from us. So we had pretty good pre-sales. I think we had like 20 or 30, which we thought was amazing at the time. We were just like, that never happens for just friends, family, whatever. We were pumped by that.
• 15:28
  And then in terms of getting things off the ground, I mean, look, we were very well-versed in influencer marketing at the time. The spanner was how many people really want to speak about sex toys on their Instagram account. So I think I reached out to like 70 different people
• 15:43
  four of them said yes, two of them we'd already worked with before. So it was very much a grind at the beginning to get in front of people. But once we did, and once we locked in a couple of the, like Simone Anderson was really good for us in New Zealand, bit of a macro influencer in that space. And so once we got this sort of ball rolling and people could see that, oh, she's posting about it, oh, she's posting about it, they could come over to our account and say, oh, this is actually kind of funny, oh, I really like their Sunday confessions, and it was more of like a community feel.
• 16:13
  they kind of got what the brand was about and therefore they were sort of a bit more open to posting about it. With that said...
• 16:20
  We still had issues with trying to get in front of people or trying to get people to post about us. And we would find that if you did get someone to post about you and they actually weren't 100% invested in it or they didn't, it wasn't like very authentic to them, then it wouldn't work. So we would have these influencers who would say, this is the best orgasm I've had in my whole life.
• 16:45
  sell heaps, you know, just, you know, 40,000 followers. If I had someone with 200,000 followers that we'd spent $2,000 on or probably more, double, and they're saying...
• 16:56
  This is this vibrator. It's waterproof. It's got 10 different settings. Here are the features. Here are the benefits. Sales nothing. So we really had to align with people who were like, they actually genuinely were very comfortable talking about the topic. They were the girl who bought you your sex toy. They were that girl. You know, they were that girl in the friend group who was happy to talk about it. She didn't care. She's like, whatever. I don't care if my board member's following me on Instagram, whatever. This is my page. You know, that's who we needed.
• 17:25
  And that's what made it relatable and like approachable for people. So, yeah, at the beginning, look, we used, you know, pushed it out to friends. You needed like the best friend influencer, basically, who's like, listen, I'm just going to fucking tell you I've had the best orgasm of my life. A hundred percent. Like, you just need to trust me and just do this for yourself, please. I'll even order it for you.
• 17:44
  Literally, yeah, we had, yeah, it was great. And when we, you know, when we found those people that we really, we gelled with and the brand like really connected with, that's when we saw the best sales. And it's still true to this day. We still have people who are like really niche people. They might be, you know, and they've got audiences and communities built around.
• 18:01
  following them because of sex toys or because of something, you know, it's just authentic to them. It always works better than someone who's just like got the biggest audience. That's for us anyway. Maybe it's different for different niches, but when it comes to sex toys, that tends to be true.
• 18:17
  And yeah, so initially it was like, all right, use our own audience in terms of friends, family. You know, your friends are like getting behind you, so maybe they share it. And that led to our pre-sales. And it was how can we leverage other people's audiences? So it was going out to those influencers. It was also how can we run giveaways that are going to attract our target customer? We always have tried. I think part of the reason...
• 18:42
  of realising, okay, no one's going to post about us, we then had to say quite early on, all right, we're going to have to be our own influencer. We're going to have to create an account that's so valuable that people want to share our content. So where there were other brands in the market who were quite woo-woo or quite like education-based,
• 19:00
  love those approaches, but for us, we were like, what's authentic to us? What can we do that's going to be really shareable? And so that's where we landed on sort of this like tongue-in-cheek, humour take, really valuable in terms of... Vagina costumes. Yeah, exactly.
• 19:15
  We're like, okay, someone is less likely to share an anatomy of a vulva. But if we, yeah, dress up in the vulva costume, I go down to the promenade at Bondi and hand out free vibrators in exchange for people showing me their sexy dance, people are going to share that, you know? And so we, from the very beginning, for example, we have done Sunday confessions. So we post a question box every Sunday, people write in anonymously what they've been up to over the weekend, and then we share those with the audience. Yeah.
• 19:39
  And we can tell that people are writing, like we can tell that people are getting inspiration from this because the next, you know, someone's having sex in the kitchen one week, the next week three other people are writing in about the sex that they had in the kitchen. And we've surveyed our audience. We know that they're watching this with their partners. Like it just, the flow on effect from that is so good. And it just creates a page where people want to like
• 19:57
  stop scrolling, have a little stalk, like get invested in what you've got to offer so that when they buy from us, they're not just buying a sex toy, like they're part of that community and it just means so much more. And when we're competing against the big dogs who've been around for 20 years, it's like, we're never going to be able to compete on price. We can make sure that we've got like an excellent product. It's, you know, it does all the right things and it's amazing, but there's actually more to it for us.
• 20:21
  Yeah, totally. I want to kind of like just take a quick second to talk about your name because that just like came to me when you were saying, you know, if there's a headline and it says girls get off, it's very different to say like a made up word that kind of has no meaning attached to it that's going in a headline. So like, was that strategic or did you just accidentally realize in hindsight how beneficial it is to have it a...
• 20:45
  I don't know the right terminology, what I'm about to say, but, like, it's kind of like a term. Like, it's like a one-liner versus, like, you know, bottle as a brand name, you know? Yeah. I just looked at my water bottle. That's why I said it. But, like, you know, like, object. Yeah, look, honestly, when it comes to names, full credit to Jo for that one because when it –
• 21:05
  When it comes to names, I've had so many different like little businesses in the past and I'm always just like, I just want to be the person who gets out there and like sells it, you know, or just like meets the people and like, what are we going to do next? So when it comes to the name or the logo, I'm just like, oh, hurry up. Let's just like, I want it to be good.
• 21:21
  I want it to be good, but I don't spend too much of my time like trying to figure it out. Whereas Jo, that's her strength. She's like, all right, we've got to have a good name. I'm like, perfect. I'll leave you to it. And I just, nothing happens in my brain. I just wait for her to like come up with something. And when she said, you know, we had these different little ideas. I can't even remember what they were. And it was, you just know when it's not right. And then when she came up with Girls Get Off, we were like...
• 21:42
  done that's so that is so it and we could see from the click throughs the profile visits and the click throughs from the influences that we were using it was such a winning name in terms of like peaking that curiosity i was just at the post shop and had to give them my email address and i'm
• 21:59
  I wonder what the person at the post shop thinks my email address is, you know, is related to. So it's such a thumb stopper, which is what we wanted. A thumb stopper. I like that. Were you able to trademark it? Because it is kind of, because, you know, for me with Female Saddle Club, in hindsight, the name served me so well because it was a,
• 22:20
  what people were searching. And so I didn't realize it at the time. I just accidentally bought the URL like a really long time before, but it actually had, you know, key search terms in it. And then that basically led to like discoverability across the podcast, TikTok, SEO, like all of that just worked so well in our favor by accident. But at the same time, it was something that really early on the legal advice was like, yeah, you're not going to be able to trademark this until maybe in the future when you're distinguishable. And like now, sure,
• 22:50
  I don't know, those kind of groups of words that are like harder to trademark kind of thing? Yeah, we have so many trademarks. I feel like it either is or GGO is. I can't remember, but one of them or both of them is trademarked. Oh, there's always so many. Yeah.
• 23:08
  Look, it also backfires on us a little bit because, like you say, the term girls get off is quite suggestive. So when it comes to things like, I think we've had issues with, like, Google Shopping and we've had issues with, like, when we have tried to set up Facebook ads just for the libido, didn't like them. So it's like it can go two ways, but it's served us well so far in terms of – and it also, like, sticks in people's minds as well. And I think it does reflect a community aspect.
• 23:35
  Yeah, it comes across more as like a media kind of like, you know, the cool, you know, puberty style media accounts versus like well thought out constructed bottle, you know, like it just works in this like unique backdoor way somehow. Yeah.
• 23:55
  But I don't know like the way to articulate it properly. And I'm like very clever. I understand what you're saying. Yeah. It's just when Joe said it, it was like, yeah, that's it. There's no question about it. I'll know it when I hear it. And yeah, we were both like that. That's the one.
• 24:09
  Got it. Okay. So I want to understand from those early days, you know, you're really focusing on the things like influencers and gifting and finding those partnerships. What do you think the core strategy was or the core playbook that got you to your first 100k in revenue? Influencers for sure. Yep.
• 24:29
  So can you give us like an example of like just like breaking down like the impact of like hitting a good one kind of thing? Sure. So when we – I'll tell you about the best collab that we ever did. We worked with Simone. She's still a great converting influencer. And we worked with her and –
• 24:49
  we figured out quite early on that we were getting more conversions from stories over posts. So where posts would cost more money, stories were better because A, they were cheaper, and B, you had the links that people could click directly to. So that was a great win for us because it meant we didn't have to spend as much. And it also meant that sometimes you could negotiate on posts
• 25:13
  Okay, they want this much for three stories. How about, you know, if they won't negotiate on price, what if we just do two frames? So there was like a little bit of wiggle room there too. Okay.
• 25:23
  We would also make sure that there was like a discount code of some sort. So it might be Simone 15 or whatever that looked like. And we would just get her to, you know, try the product and then talk about her experience with the product and promote the code. We did 180 sales with her within the first 24 hours or something, which was mental. Wow. What's that?
• 25:51
  That's like 180. Yeah, that's like nearly 40 grand in sales. Yeah, the price point of the toy was probably more like 90 at the time with the discount in that specific toy. But yeah, it was mental. But still, just crazy. Like, you've just started. You've hit a winner. You're like, holy shit. Like, that's a lot. Yeah, and look, like we had...
• 26:14
  the background knowledge, knowing that Simone was a good converting influencer. Like I think anyone who's used influencers before will know that it's like it's very hit and miss. So you've got to be prepared that they're going to – like there were times where we spent three or four grand and got no sales. So it was just – it's just such a juggling game and figuring out this influencer might work for you. This influencer doesn't work for you. You don't have a high enough average order value, so that doesn't convert well for you. So I think the main things that we learned were –
• 26:43
  Getting the influencer to speak about it authentically from their experience. Getting the influencer to speak about it, like not for too long. Like it doesn't need to be a whole story. It's more just like showing the product. This is why I love it. Link. Done. Keep it nice and short and sweet. I will say that that was Simone's best ever performing collab. I think people don't get marketed sex toys very often. So I think that would be very different if you had a skincare brand and you're trying to change people's skincare regime.
• 27:13
  And then it was just about figuring out the things that worked for us. And it was just over time, like just always learning from those collaborations. For us, we knew that we needed to make like four times on whatever we spent the rate of the influencer because we don't have the luxury of then being able to like retarget them, for example, on Meta at the time. So if that traffic comes to our website, unless they sign up and get into our email flows, great. But unless they purchase at the time, we don't really have another way to
• 27:42
  get back to them. It's not like we're going to hammer them with ads like a lot of other brands can. And it's not like we were selling protein powder. So we could take the hit on not making that money straight away because we knew that they were going to buy every month. We also only had one product at the time. So it's not like we could sell them 10 other things.
• 28:01
  And then over time we learned things like for us, honestly for us it all comes back to really authentic influencers. That's not a very descriptive word. We found that influencers that looked like us, sounded like us, worked really well. Polished influencers for us.
• 28:18
  never really hit the mark and they still don't really. I think there's, we're a very, we like to keep it scrappy at Girls Get Off, you know, and that's reflected in what works well with the influencers that we work with. So we've got that like, that category of people that work really well for us. And that will be so different depending on different people. I think it's just a matter of trying to figure out how you can test that for as little money as possible and always negotiate. I think that was one of the biggest learnings as well is that, yeah.
• 28:47
  Influencers rates, you can always try and negotiate and get a better deal. It's a really good opportunity for people wanting to use influencers at the moment because the market has changed. When we were starting Girls Get Off and probably a year into it, we started trying to work with a lot more Aussie influencers and the rates were incredible. We couldn't believe how much people were charging just because so many people were spending money on marketing. E-commerce was kicking off.
• 29:15
  Oh, incredible as in like it was expensive. Yeah, sorry. So expensive. But now we, I think the tables have turned and the brands favored now where like we're getting emails from agents saying, hey, do you want to work with blah, blah, blah again? And I think that's the biggest, it just means there's a huge opportunity right now for you to test using different influences and partnerships and also means you can probably negotiate a bit more. So that's probably a hot takeaway for that.
• 29:42
  anyone who is trying to work in that space. And also not discounting people who are smaller, like micro-influencers, who might be really specific to your category. I'm always a fan of them too, because people are following them for a specific reason, and it just means it's really targeted and often cheaper.
• 30:02
  When you were thinking about this big collaboration, and I imagine this person, obviously, Simone has a big following or she did, you know, even when you were starting to work with her in that early kind of phase. How were you thinking about your budget, knowing that you were kind of like a new brand getting started? You're trying to be bootstrapped and scrappy. Was there like a formula that you were applying or you were more like, okay, you tell me your rates and we can either do it or we can't and we negotiate or we can't?
• 30:29
  The point that I'm trying to get to is like for anyone listening who's in that early phase and wanting to test out influencers, how should they be thinking about that test budget? And like how much should they be paying? And I know it's like not a one size fits all answer, but...
• 30:44
  where, I don't know, like what the train of thought is, I guess. I think just do the numbers in terms of, okay, if I pay this influencer $1,000, how many units do I have to sell to make sure that I get a return on that, which is not going to be $1,000. It's going to be more because you've got the cost of the product to take into account.
• 31:03
  So figure out what that looks like for you. Again, this could be different if your lifetime, you know, if the lifetime value of a customer is a lot higher and you just need to get a few in the door and then, you know, so there's like a lot of different factors. So just consider those things. If it's a rough estimate, that's fine. And then in my experience, you will find the more people you can email and get rates from, the better you'll get a gauge on –
• 31:25
  what's like market sort of rates. So you'll find that some agencies will charge the influencers out at like a ridiculous amount. And then you'll find other agencies that are really reasonable. And so you'll just find from trial and error and just talking to a lot of people that you'll then sort of get a gauge on like how much things cost. You follow those influencers and
• 31:49
  And understand, okay, are they really taking me behind the scenes of their life or are they just more of like a catalogue, which would be great for fashion because people follow them for fashion advice. If it's something as personal as a sex toy and they're not someone who really opens up
• 32:05
  you know, takes people behind the scenes of their life, then for us that just meant it wasn't going to work. It's like a personality fit to it almost. A hundred percent, yeah. And so just accept that there's also going to be some, like, ups and downs. You're never going to get it all right, but...
• 32:22
  Yeah, figuring out what that looks like for you. And look, I know other people who've done a lot of different things to get in front of influencers, whether that be sending really clever PR packs and just hoping that they post them. You know, there's been a lot of – we did a press release – or sorry, a PR send out for Valentine's Day one year, and it meant we got on the stories of people that, you know, had previously said no to us or it's because we did it with another brand. So it was sort of like they're not just talking about sex toys. So there's other ways that you can kind of get in front of people.
• 32:51
  I just saw today that a friend of mine, their hydration business has been posted by Sarah's Day. And that's obviously because they've sent some stuff to her. Like you just never know as well in terms of gifting what people are going to post. Other people have had, you know, been posted by Anna Paul because they've sent like big personalized, you know, cool photos. And then it's like they're really like shooting their shot kind of thing. Like I'm going all in.
• 33:16
  to just like hope for the best here. Hope for the best. But it's like the risk versus reward type thing. It's like, yeah, maybe this cost me, you know, $1,000 or something. But like the reward is just so exponential that it's like worth going the 100 extra miles to kind of like make it happen. A hundred percent. And so like when there's no budget, I think you just have to get a little bit more creative. And there's always different little opportunities that you can get.
• 33:42
  Leverage? Yeah, I think it's part of the challenge. Obviously, it's the challenge of being in a really early stage startup, but it just makes you so creative. It forces you to be. How much money did you have to invest to get that first launch? You know, first amount of units, website kind of development and just like...
• 34:04
  bring in in sales? Well, Jo and I had like no money. So we did like Shopify, simple website ourselves. We paid a designer, we probably paid a designer maybe one and a half.
• 34:19
  two grand to just sort like some branding out for us. We pay – we've had to pay the copywriter some money. So, like, we had all the copywriting, like, we wanted – like, it's always been very much experience-based from the start. So, we had little, you know – The tone of voice is like – Yeah. Yeah. So, we had lots of – Yeah, we invested money in the copywriting. Yeah. And we also – look, I'd have to – I reckon we probably – I remember having –
• 34:49
  I reckon we would have done like eight grand each maybe initially. And then I reckon we had to do another five as a loan each. And then maybe we paid that back to ourselves after a little while. But yeah, it was something like that. I genuinely remember having no money left. Like no more savings. I mean, I had the other business at the time, so that was fine. But yeah, we were all in on that one. Yeah.
• 35:12
  And that was including like inventory. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we initially had to order for the changes that we wanted to the toy, we had to order 1,000 units, which our preference was like we wanted just to get 500, but it was like, oh, if we want to make this actually really different and cool, then, yeah, we'll just have to go with 1,000. And then we had to get boxes and stuff too.
• 35:33
  Yeah, I think those are the main costs, but you can do it so cheap. And like, to be honest, you don't even need to pay a designer. You know, if you're really just doing a minimum viable product and like just seeing what's actually going to work, designer, probably not necessarily. Do it yourself on Canva. Canva all the way. Canva all the way.
• 35:52
  So copywriting, not necessarily. You've got ChatGPT now. It's so good. Like if you can just, you know, you can be really smart about that now. But, yeah, we already had people that we knew were our favorites. So we just had that advantage. But it's not necessarily crucial. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
• 36:11
  Love ChatGPT. Not for the final bit of it, but like for the ideation and like helping me formulate a good thought process and like the human touch on the end. But I wrote something like on, or I didn't write it. I posted some video the other day and I was talking about ChatGPT and someone commented back on my TikTok video, like, this is the most sad, pathetic take. And I was like, fuck, savage. But also like, it's true. I like I use ChatGPT for a lot as
• 36:41
  Come on. Like, what the hell?
• 36:45
  It was so savage. Oh, honestly, it cracks me up that, you know, like TikTok used to be the only platform that had that, like, savagery in the comments. And then now it's filtered over to Instagram. I posted a video the other day, like a reel, and the comments just, like, kicked off. I had, like, censored the way that I was saying cock ring. So I had been like, and I kind of opened my mouth and then ring. And people were like, why are you just not talking like a normal person? You know, like, just, like, just, like, just...
• 37:13
  endless comments. I've stopped reading them now. I'm like, it's just mental, but I'm like, I'll take the engagement. Thank you. But yeah. Thank you very much. People were really triggered by the way I said that. I'm like, guys. Oh man. I posted a screenshot the other day. I just can't even believe it. But like I posted something and it was like from a Reddit group. I saw this chick in like a feminist, you know, Reddit, subreddit with her, like it was a tweet,
• 37:43
  And like my thinking when I posted it was like, oh yeah, like the same experience happened to me. And the experience that she was talking about was she didn't see anything about like the Trump case in terms of the like sexual assault and like what that was going through. But she saw a lot about the debate and like –
• 38:00
  It was my experience too. But because it was political, oh man, like, you know, people are then going in, like giving me the lessons on like the past presidents and their sexual assault. And I'm like, bro, like I just had the same experience. I didn't see anything about that. And I saw a lot about the debate. And I'm like, just anyone who assaults anyone. Yeah.
• 38:19
  Like, it's just bad. Like, I'm not from America. I don't have the ins and outs of the political scene here. Like, be whatever you want to be. But, like, it was so, you know, it's like a trigger point. You just can't talk about it. You can't do nothing about that. I know. It's so hectic. It's so hectic. But, look, we'll take the engagement, you know? Comment on my post. I'll take it. Yeah, yeah. I'm like, we've missed the point here. And the point is more just like the media covered this and not that. So, anyway, whatever. Yeah.
• 38:49
  Okay, I want to talk about the... I read something online where you launched another product, you sold, you pre-sold a thousand units and people had not even seen what it was. And I kind of want to understand like, what was the strategy for like this moment? Like, how did you release these details? How did you garner that interest and that kind of like...
• 39:12
  You know, all the juicy stuff. Oh, I'm so glad you've asked about this. I haven't talked about this in so long. Great. So this would have been in year two because we had had the same toy for 18 months. Well, we launched our second toy, TIFF, 18 months after our first one where we started. So if there's one thing that we are good at at Girls Get Off, it is idea generation and going off in different directions. You know, that is such a productivity killer, but it also ends up with very creative ideas.
• 39:42
  things in marketing and do you have adhd or add like either of you oh i like it's been look it's been an ongoing joke with people around me growing up my whole life i have adhd and i just go in so many different directions at all times but it's such a superpower that i'm like yeah like oh yeah i love this and i definitely leverage it to my advantage and it definitely also drives me insane oh my god yeah some yeah anyway that's a whole different topic
• 40:08
  But so one of the things, like leveraging other people's audiences is just such an advantage. And because we've struggled with that so much, we thought, hey, we've already got an audience. Like we've already got like 13,000 people that have bought from us.
• 40:25
  Let's use them. Let's create, like, we've got, you know, this is our second ever toy. People have been, like, nagging us for, like, six months. Like, when are you bringing out a new toy? We need to make a big deal out of this. So what we did was we got the address data of all the people that have bought from us because you can do that on Shopify. And we did a...
• 40:45
  a physical mail out to everyone who'd previously bought from us. So we also were like, okay, people do not want to get a pink envelope in the mail from like, girls, get off. So we were like, we need to make it look like a bank statement. So it's got like, it's got, you know, our customers care so much about being discreet and it can't have any sender details on it. So it was literally a...
• 41:05
  You know, like if you had a brochure and it was just one panel of the brochure, DL, DL sized, and it was in an envelope and it just had their name and address and we sent it off to them. And it said, this is your access to our secret presale. You're a VIP because you've purchased from us before. We didn't talk about this on social media at all. We only...
• 41:24
  mailed out to people and they scanned the QR code and it sent them to a link and it gave them 20% off the new product. Now we'd taken a photo of Tiff, but we'd blurred it out. So it was like, you get access to the new product, but you don't even know what it is yet. You've just got to trust us. So it was like this fun little secret launch.
• 41:42
  I love it. Yeah, and I think a couple of days before we launched the toy because we were then having like a launch party in the Gold Coast, we then opened that up to everyone and like posted on socials, like you can go here and buy the, you know, you get first access to the secret toy, limited numbers. Yeah, and that went great. I think we ended up, I reckon we must have done, I reckon we must have done, I want to estimate 45K on that launch before...
• 42:12
  we had actually put it up for sale. So like from all those secret things. And yeah, like it was like, look, we did get the odd person who was like, my PA just opened this and this has been really embarrassing. And I'm like, oh, I'm sorry.
• 42:27
  And even on the card, we were still pretty discreet about what we said on the card just in case someone's kids had opened it for this situation. But, yeah, I really – yeah, obviously not enough for some people. I'm like, oh, God. But, yeah, look, it was overall –
• 42:45
  Great success from that point of view. And then it meant that we could leverage that with press as well because to have almost 1,000 presales of people who hadn't even seen the tour yet, that was very exciting for headlines, which was very good. But yeah, I think it's just something different. We're always just trying to – and that was the other thing. People were posting it to their stories as well because they were like, ooh –
• 43:07
  I'm exciting. Oh, I can't wait for my new toy. So, yeah, it was just something really different, really different. And to be fair, that mail-out thing, so easy. Like, so easy. People, there's whole companies for that. You just give them all your addresses. I can't even remember how to do it, but it wasn't very difficult. And it was pretty good value for money by the time we made those sales as a result. Totally. And I also think, like, you know, we can often just forget and, like, kind of,
• 43:37
  you know, it's underrated, like doing something in a physical way. Like we're all so, I guess, used to advertising online, advertising through social, advertising through PR, influencers, whatever. And it's like actually when you send a customer something physical,
• 43:52
  maybe that they're not usually used to receiving, it's like, oh, this is a little nice surprise and delight moment, which we love. A hundred percent. And if you compare it to other marketing activity, like when we did the Valentine's Day sender, I reckon we spent, we were like, yeah, it's going to have a game in it. It's going to have these custom boxes and it's going to have their like custom name. Again, we're off on a tangent doing these like great things. How much money did we get back from like the $15,000 that it cost us by the time we sent them all out and stuff? Yeah.
• 44:21
  Probably zero. Like next to nothing. You know, oh, great branding exercise, all well and good. But like at the end of the day, you're a business, you need to make money. So when you compare the two, it's like actually, yeah, I know which one I'd choose in the future.
• 44:34
  Got it. Got it. So interesting. I love that. I love the scrappy vibes. Yeah, we can get caught up in like so many times before we've had to bring everything back and be like, but is this going to generate us web traffic? We are an e-commerce business. Everything we do has to ultimately come back to web traffic. Yeah, you can do billboards and stuff and that, you know, it's like a bit of a branding exercise and all good. But at the end of the day, you can't just like
• 44:58
  go out there and spend all your money on billboards and random things that actually aren't going to get you web traffic because otherwise you're not going to last.
• 45:07
  I mean, amen. I also just feel like it's so easy to blow money and it's so easy to get swept up in it and be like, oh my God, this is going to be amazing. But actually thinking about like, wait a second, what is going to get me the sale for sure? Because yeah, it's easy to, it's easy to spend cash. Do you think that your strategy changed from that kind of like zero to a hundred K versus like the hundred to a million, you know, your first million in sales?
• 45:36
  And if so, what was the kind of shift to getting to that milestone? The shift was more content. Like I reckon when we started, we were just doing, you know, a little bit here and there. It's different now because everyone's putting out heaps of content. But at the time it was like, you know, we might be doing like Sunday confessions and like not really like, yeah, posting about the product. Like we weren't really doing heaps. We were doing – look, we were doing –
• 46:05
  More than other people, but we weren't doing heaps. Like what? Like how many posts a week or? Yeah, maybe we were doing like a post every day or every second day, which like this is the 2021 Instagram strategy, not like 2024.
• 46:21
  So we're doing like posts, we're playing like what's in your box, you know, like we were doing fun giveaways, we were doing fun guessing games with the audience and that was all good and that was working. But then when NZ went into, New Zealand went into their second lockdown in September.
• 46:37
  We leveraged that like you have never seen anyone leverage that before. I was on a – I'd just gotten off a plane in Queenstown and for a holiday and then an hour later they were like, you're going into lockdown. We were like, all right. And I was on the phone to Jo and we were both like –
• 46:54
  We know what happened last lockdown, aka everyone just at home on their phones. We know that not everyone is going to be across this, so let's absolutely go for it. We're like, we'll say initially it was, what, a three-day lockdown or something. So we were like, let's do a giveaway a day. Well, how long did the lockdown end up being? Like two weeks. And I tell you, by the, I think day 10 we stopped it, but day nine and 10 we were like, what are we going to give away today? What were you giving away? Oh, we were just...
• 47:19
  Our thing with giveaways is we're like, they've got to be, you've got to attract the audience. You've got to attract your target audience. So you've got to attract them because it's something that they really want. It doesn't have to be your product. And it's also going to be visually very appealing. So we were giving away...
• 47:36
  First day, which is one of our best ones, we just did lockdown giveaway. So we did like toilet paper. We did like I got my sister to go to the supermarket and get all the like pink lollies and everything. I'm like, drop them off at Jo's house. You know, she's got kids. She can't go to the supermarket. So, you know, drop them off and she'll take a picture. And so we did lockdown giveaway. We did like a Gucci handbag one day. We did like Dyson vacuum cleaners. And we just got our designer to put them all together.
• 48:00
  all the products on the tile and then we just bought them and shipped them straight to the winners. So yeah, we were just like, Oh, what are we going to do? Oh, we'll do another Dyson. Oh, we'll do a $500 came out voucher. Like we were just doing these giveaways to just build this audience. But at the same time we were doing content every single day. I was like, I'll do a quiz. I'll do, you know, what's your sex toy fails. I'll do what's your non-sexual turn ons. And so we were just doing content every day. And it was at such a rate that we'd never done before. And the,
• 48:30
  The sales that we were getting as a result of just doing so much content and doing it at that time that was so different to what anyone else was doing, we were seeing the sales more than pay for those giveaways. It was just great.
• 48:44
  And do you mean like, you know, this is like you talking to camera style video because you're obviously inside, right? You're in lockdown. So it's not kind of like the street style guerrilla marketing. It's like you've got to be creating this either on Canva or just like you doing the content. What was the actual like, is it a picture or was it a video or like what was the content you were doing?
• 49:04
  Most of it was just question boxes. And this is like no one else at the time was really doing this. This was like very early days. So we were doing like quizzes. Would you rather? The only time we were, were we even really, I don't even really know that we were talking to camera. I reckon we were just, if anything, doing our reactions, you know, to Sunday confessions or something. It wasn't as like face to camera as it is now. And yeah, we just hammered it. But after that initial period where we saw how much,
• 49:33
  that impacted people feeling a part of the community. Like, we were like, this doesn't have to stop just because it's lockdown. So from there, we just were so always focused on our content. And if you go to our Instagram account at Girls Get Off and you scroll back through the highlights, you can see when we had like a warehouse, all the different things that we were doing, playing games in the office. Like we're doing like...
• 49:55
  okay, we're going to do like who can make the best vulva today out of Play-Doh or like, you know, just like random stuff to just entertain people. And we just kept that up a lot and there was always stuff happening, like whether it was different like pranks or, you know, the cleaner. Yeah.
• 50:11
  TK, like he'd come in and we'd do funny stuff with him. Like, God, it was so off task, but like it was just. TK became a main character in the story. If you scroll back and find the video, the reel that TK did of like pretending to clean the office and finding all these different toys around. So funny. Yeah.
• 50:28
  But yeah, so it was just that content. It was just, again, it was so different from other people. And at the end of the day, I think it's always, it doesn't matter what the format of content is. I think it always just comes back to how you can be as attention-seeking as possible. So regardless of if you are talking to camera, regardless of if you are doing question boxes, or if you are doing, you know, whatever format that is, it ultimately comes back to being as attention-seeking as possible. And if you look at all the accounts that you love to follow or...
• 50:55
  you know, you see them growing or you get a lot of value from. It's because attention seeking isn't necessarily a negative thing. It's more about, you know, oh my gosh, they're sharing so much and I'm so curious, you know, or, oh, that looks so fun. I want to work there. I want to, I want to be a part of their friend group.
• 51:11
  or you know i just love their style like that's just so cool i've never seen anyone do that before so it's just about like how can you create attention because as a brand you are literally competing for attention and eyeballs you're it's a level playing field you're competing against everyone doesn't matter if it's um nike doesn't matter if it's the favorite influencer from down the road like you've got to pick up your game and be your own content channel if you want that to be a major driver of web traffic to your store
• 51:38
  Totally. And I think it's like, you know, you're either going to invest time or money. And if you're going to invest just money, you still have to invest in the content. If it's not you creating it, like content is so important to have that engine to be even able to run ads. So it's like, where are you going to sit? And if you're bootstrapped, it's usually time. Usually.
• 51:59
  Okay, so that's kind of like how you were like really, you know, explosive starting. I mean, you already had a following at that point, but like that kind of like kicked it all off. What's the kind of stuff that's working for you today? Like what is the Instagram strategy that anyone listening needs to know?
• 52:20
  Well, for us, the best thing I've done lately is get our account unblocked. Oh, shit. What happened? Well, we've been doing like lots of reels. And for a while, I was like, nah, there's no way we're not like shadow banned. Like there's no way. And so if you go into your settings, scroll down to account status, and then you can see there should be like four or five green dots. Oh, sorry, green ticks. And if like us, you had some content that's been flagged, it shows like an exclamation mark. So I think I'd...
• 52:47
  deleted like 12 reels and posts that Instagram didn't like, which like, again, we've had so many good reels and stuff in the past and it pains me inside how many we've had to delete. Like, I've been like, oh, they've got such good engagement. But if we're showing like- It's a good press line though, no? Being like, Instagram made us delete this content. So true. The devil.
• 53:10
  Yeah, and now it's, you know, when you look at the content that's been deleted, it's like, oh, it's because I held up a butt plug. Like, that's the only reason I can figure, you know, we censor the words. Like, I'm like, God, that image recognition software is getting really smart. So, yeah, we've just had to be a lot smarter about it. I think if I look across...
• 53:29
  All the Instagram accounts that are growing well, doesn't matter if they're a podcast, doesn't matter if they're educating, doesn't matter if they are a personality. It's those people who are using Reels really well.
• 53:42
  In terms of engaging your audience and helping them understand who you are, stories are so good. And we will notice that if we don't show up on stories, it will have like, it's not that if we show up, we get an instant spike in traffic, but it's that showing up all the time that leads to consistent sales. And then I think in terms of growth, it's around those how you are leveraging reels well. If I think about anyone who's growing at the moment, it's because they're doing a really good job of reels. Would you agree? Yeah.
• 54:11
  Yeah, I agree. I think like the only thing that I wonder though, actually, is I'm like, what about these accounts, like meme accounts, you know, the like betches of the world. And they're more focused on still that it's because it's still obviously really shareable. Right. And like, it's relatable. You're tagging your girlfriends or you're sending it in the DMs. But those accounts, I'm like, it feels like the Reels thing is,
• 54:37
  isn't as important as it is for everyone else. That's so true. I think probably you make a good point. I reckon I see, I don't know if it's because I don't, I mute a lot of people so I don't get too distracted. Hasn't worked recently. But when I'm scrolling through my actual feed, not the Reels feed, I do get content that's suggested to me. I don't know if that's just because I don't like look at enough people's content or because, you know,
• 55:01
  just like reels where they're showing you content they think that you'll like versus just your followers, who you're following content. I think I would say that because they're getting so many shares, they're probably being suggested to people. I reckon that's probably what it is. So yeah, you make a good point. If you can do static images that are going to be shared by people, that also helps.
• 55:20
  Yeah, I do think, though, I mean, obviously, today's world is like reels. It's video. It's like that's what's being pushed and that's what's leading to, like, growth. And I think as well you have to be like, cool, if I want to stand out, I need to be spicy in some direction kind of thing. I need to, like, create controversy or I need to tap into, like,
• 55:42
  nostalgia or like relatability for X niche because otherwise it's like, well, like someone needs to share that content. It can't be boring. People are like less into following brands, you know? Yeah. Look, I've seen people who are like accountants. I've seen people who are like financial literacy, like topics where you would think, oh, this is a little bit boring. I still see them doing really well because the content is so like value-based. So yeah,
• 56:08
  again, back to like how you can attract attention. Yeah, there's probably ways you can snip up your content and make sure you've got really good hooks at the beginning of your video to draw people in. But I think there's a way for 99% of industries that they can leverage getting in front of people with good content.
• 56:26
  100%. Is Instagram your main channel or is TikTok becoming a main channel? Instagram's our main channel. We've got followers on TikTok, but TikTok for us has never turned into sales. It didn't pop the same way. Yeah. And even when we do get more followers or we have a video that goes viral, it's never...
• 56:47
  turned into sales. And I think that probably is, you know, there's so many, I know people who've done millions of dollars on TikTok or are like crushing it on TikTok shop. It's not to say people aren't buying on there. I think it's probably just that we haven't worked out that platform because we don't put any energy into it.
• 57:03
  in terms of creating sales. And we have a slightly older target customer, which isn't really on TikTok yet as much as the Gen Zs are. So for us, it's going to be a channel for us in the future. And look, when TikTok Shop gets to Australia and New Zealand, we'll be
• 57:20
  all into that. But at the moment, it's not a huge focus for us. I think we, in the past, we've been like, I've got to do it. We've got to, we've got to do it. But it's just like anything. You just, it's better to put your focus on what you're really good at and just like nail it. Yeah, I agree. And what do you think about like giveaways now? Because I remember in that May, like algorithm update for Instagram, they were like, you know, absolute red flag,
• 57:51
  I don't know, other stuff that I haven't really seen change. So what's your take on that? Are you still doing these crazy giveaways? We don't do them very often. The last thing we gave away were Taylor Swift tickets, which we got in trouble for. Did you? Yeah. Why? Oh, you're not supposed to because the promoters obviously, like, pay big money for their sponsors to be able to give away tickets. Yeah.
• 58:12
  You know, sometimes you just have to ask for forgiveness over permission. I was going to give away Taylor Swift tickets, but then in the end I was like, you know what, I fucking want to go. And I, you know, spent like 30 hours trying to get these bad boys. So like, I'm just going to go. I know. It was a day. We actually just launched a giveaway the other day. And we probably got like a few thousand followers from it. We did a, what do we do? A robot vacuum cleaner and a coffee machine and something else. Thermomix.
• 58:41
  things that we know our target audience will love and that they probably wouldn't buy themselves. That's the other thing that helps sometimes too. Yeah, I mean, it's gone all good. It's maybe like 3,000 followers, say. But that said, the real I posted the other day, we got almost 1,000 followers from that. So take from that what you will. Like it's new people into our pipeline and that will –
• 59:04
  reflect into sales over time but it's it's not like it used to be yeah by any stretch of the imagination I think though with things like giveaways you have to figure that out for yourself because if I was like a very new brand then absolutely I'd be trying to like team up with people like pay influences for that like just trying to again leverage other people's audiences and and get in front of as many people but when it comes to yeah when it comes to
• 59:31
  giveaways now, absolutely not as effective as they were, but every now and then if you've got a really good offering, I think there's a place for them. Yeah. Agreed. Where do we want to wrap this up? What do you think your like key piece of advice is if someone's listening and they're in that early phase, like, you know, what should they be doing or not doing at the moment?
• 59:56
  Great question. And this is even more. I've actually been talking with a friend recently who's just been starting a new business. And it's so funny because I've been in that position so many times before. And I think, do you know what? I think the number one thing to remember is to just stop overthinking it and just start selling it. Like I think we take too long figuring out
• 1:00:18
  what the brand's going to look like. I want all these like flash things. And yes, that's important. But at the end of the day, you just need to start creating content, like we said, for free on social media, start creating content, start selling stuff to figure out if it's going to work, because there's only so much like colored tissue paper that's actually going to make a difference for your sales. Like at the end of the day, you actually need to figure out if this works and you can like figure the rest out later. You know, like all of the
• 1:00:43
  you know, accounting stuff. And, you know, that can be nice to have tidy from the start, but also it's a future you problem. Like the main thing right now is just to make sales and figure the rest out later. And then that, therefore, is a good problem to have. I think that's probably the biggest thing I see in people starting out. And look, we even...
• 1:01:00
  still have that when we have big projects and we've never done it before and we're not really sure how to go about it I think sometimes we can overthink things and complicate it sometimes for the sake of procrastination but other times because we're just building up to be way bigger than it is in our heads whereas really it's just like you just got to get started and and not overthink it yeah I love that great advice
• 1:01:29
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• 1:02:16
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