Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / 6 quick questions with Anna Ross, Founder of Kester Black (part 2)

Transcript

6 quick questions with Anna Ross, Founder of Kester Black (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. So question number one is, what's your why? Why are you doing what you're doing?
• 0:17
  I think my answer to that is why not? You know, I don't know. I don't know if I believe in this purpose and why. I think that you can express yourself and Kester Black is definitely an expression of me and my interests. And I.
• 0:36
  The main barrier for people starting their own businesses is that they think too much about it. Just get going. Why not do it? Otherwise, I'd just have another full-time job and I wouldn't be making any kind of impact on the world. 100%. Amen. Number two is what's been the number one marketing moment so far?
• 0:57
  I think it was actually, it's like a broader, but when we started Facebook advertising in-house, that's just when stuff really started to change and it really was fast growth. Love that. Love that for you.
• 1:13
  Question number three is what's your go-to business resource? Could be book, podcast, or newsletter. I have so many. Okay. Gorgeous. It's G-O-R-G-I-A-S. It's like a customer service management platform. It's the best. These guys are the best. It's cheap. It's awesome. The same with... As in they manage your, they do your customer service? No, no, you do it. But it's a platform that manages all of your, all different emails. Yeah.
• 1:41
  All of your Instagram, all of your Facebook messages, and it pulls it all into one. And then you've got templates pre-written because pre-written response because often we get the same questions. So why not automate that a little bit more? It also loops into Shopify and pulls out all of the order history. So just within the one screen, you can see how many orders they've made, what orders they've made. And then it says, you know, there's all this like pre-filled stuff that you can customize and it's one of the best.
• 2:11
  The other one is Akendo. Of course, I'm sure most of your listeners will know that reviews are one of the most important proof points for customers, especially these days. What do other real people think about your product? So Akendo is this incredible reviews plug-in for Shopify that's a lot like Yotpo. There's another one called Yotpo. But I was looking at Yotpo and it was 4,000 USD.
• 2:40
  a year and I think a kendo is like 400 AUD a year or just some way cheaper and the guys there are so nice and so helpful and they do all the customization and implementation on your website and it's one of been one of the best things I've ever done in my business. Love both of those thank you so much can't wait to check them out and spread the good word to everyone who will listen.
• 3:05
  Question number four is how do you win the day? What are your AM or PM rituals and habits that keep you feeling happy and successful? I meditate every day between one and two hours. And it sounds like a lot of time, but...
• 3:20
  since I started meditating, my business has grown. My relationships in regards to business and with staff and other suppliers has become a lot stronger and I don't get so stressed out. And it's probably been one of the main things that I've needed to do to manage this chronic fatigue issue. Not that it's as bad as it was in 2016, but I reckon I'm about 80% recovered through meditation. Yeah.
• 3:48
  Wow. How did you, like, where do you go to learn? What are the kind of resources that you started looking at?
• 3:56
  I started with TM meditation, which I wouldn't recommend because it's just, because it's thought, it's using thought, which I think is not the point of meditation. Meditation is to not worry about thought. It's not not to think, but it's not to use thought to get into a state, a heightened state. So I actually use an app called Undo app and it's,
• 4:21
  I also go on the undo retreats, which run once or twice a year. And so the first time I truly learned how to meditate was I went on a two and a half week meditation retreat in Perth. And it was one of the most wild experiences of my life. So it was silent. You weren't allowed to talk to anybody, but there's no religious or spiritual experience
• 4:47
  concepts in this meditation it's literally the point of meditation is to just sit there and be still and don't stress yourself out and then your body just heals itself and that's it that's what meditation i think is supposed to be i have it really high up on my list of things to do a silent meditation retreat i think i would really enjoy it i can't wait i'll have to get the recommendation from you i'm going to one in three weeks so i will send you data
• 5:16
  Where at? It's actually being run in Estonia and you can find the details on the website Quiet Retreats. So that is the retreat side of the business to the app, Undo app. Got it. I'm going to check it out. Thanks. Question number five is for you right now, where is the most important spend of a dollar within the business? Oh, that's such a trick question. So...
• 5:42
  If we've got stock, it's on marketing. But if we don't have stock, it's on stock. Because last year we had supply chain issues and we were sold out of the top six best-selling colors, products, sorry. And I reckon it affected our revenue by 40%. So we were marketing, but then people were coming to our website and trying to buy and we didn't have the stock to buy. So it's always a catch-22, marketing or stock.
• 6:10
  That's a tough one. Holy moly. And question number six, what has been a major fail that you can share and how did you deal with it? I have a real doozy.
• 6:24
  Oh, my God, I love a doozy. Please give us a doozy. It's not a quick fire question, though. How much time do we have? I'll give you the short version. Oh, my God, no. Give us the long version. I started a second business in skincare about three years ago with a woman that I met at a conference.
• 6:45
  she was very successful and had had a business previously but had sold it and wanted to come and do something in the skincare realm. So we started working on this beautiful brand together. We were 50-50 shareholders and what I didn't do at the time was get everything in writing.
• 7:09
  And so we had all these agreements, or I did have quite a lot in writing actually, you know, how much I was going to get paid,
• 7:17
  you know, that I was an employee and also a shareholder. So we were business partners and I was working for the business for a wage. There was an understanding that I wouldn't get paid until the business was turning a profit, which was fine because you've got to work hard at the start of a business to like make any money. So I did all the branding, all the website, all the formulations, essentially all of the work.
• 7:42
  for three years. And then I didn't understand the difference between having a company in New Zealand and having a company in Australia. And I thought that the responsibilities of directors were essentially the same, but they're not. They're slightly different. So I really only understood the Australian law. And then what happened was that partner, my boss, business partner,
• 8:07
  diluted my shares from 50% down to 0.02% and said that she didn't owe me any money. And essentially I have no stake in the business anymore. And I have no oversight of the business and I haven't been paid
• 8:22
  And this is all these things. It's just this ongoing drama. So we've been going through. Holy shit, that's crazy. That it's around $330,000 of unpaid, just wages, right? That's not even accounting for any kind of brand value or anything like that.
• 8:42
  And so we've been through this consistent legal battle where we've just filed with the Employment Relations Agency in New Zealand. And one of the most amazing things that I've learned through this process, it's been really interesting to go through a full court process because often it's a really terrifying thing for people who don't, you're only really afraid of the unknown. And what I've learned is even if you win,
• 9:11
  and you get positive rulings and you're in the right and the money is owed to you, there's absolutely nothing you can do to ensure that the company or the person pays the money to you and there are no repercussions for that. So the legal system. What? After we paid. That's crazy. You know, and we've paid legal. I've personally paid legal fees up to I'm sitting at around $40,000. I've paid a lawyer or different lawyers to try and recover this money.
• 9:40
  I've just kissed all that money goodbye and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it isn't that wild how do you deal with that like mentally and like how do you like come to peace with her doing that to you and do you have any contact with her like that's just so mind-blowing we were so close and I think the reason why I didn't get anything in writing was because I truly trusted her and she was a very close friend and an incredible mentor and we spoke to each
• 10:10
  So we were like inseparable almost. But what I learned through the process is that she set it up from the start. It wasn't just like there wasn't anything that fell apart. We didn't have a fight. There wasn't really I think it just got to this point where she didn't need me anymore because I'd done all the work. And then she just sort of started playing a game. And it has been very upsetting. Yeah.
• 10:36
  It's taken a lot of energy out of me. That's three years of 20 hours a week that I could have been focusing fully on Kester Black that I wasn't. So there's not just the loss of wages that I haven't been paid. There's a massive opportunity cost as well for my actual business. Opportunity cost is crazy. I hate that for you on so many levels. I meditate a lot and I've like had to do a lot of work.
• 11:00
  Because the feeling is, why does this person hate me so much? I haven't done anything wrong. How could she do that? And I'm just wondering what's fear. Not even what's fear. Because fear would be, you know, share of the business or something like that. But just what's fear.
• 11:21
  Minimum, minimum, I guess is what I'm asking for. So it has been really difficult. And like, just, I'd always thought this, I've heard so many other entrepreneurs have stories like this, where they get an investor, or this is the whole reason why we didn't do an investment round for such a long time, because I was terrified of them, of investors, because I didn't want anybody having control of my business or shares in the business or
• 11:48
  I was worried about going to court if I spent $2 on a coffee that wasn't a business expense, and then I would be embezzling from the company. You know, there's all these risks around becoming, A, being a company director, and B, having shareholders to report to. But...
• 12:04
  Look, I've learned a lot. I don't think I've fully resolved it yet. I'm still hurt. And but it's been a fantastic growth opportunity for me because initially I would have been really aggressive and reactionary. And now I get an email from my lawyer saying, P.S. And if we even win, we might not be able to recover the costs anyway. And then I just get upset for about half an hour and I think, oh, my God, what have I
• 12:31
  wasted all this time for and I think the thing is I just would never ever have I don't know a 50 50 business with anybody else and when we did the capital raise I only sold 10% of the shares of the company so I still maintain major control and of course we went through virtual so it's not like having a single solo investor there are um
• 12:57
  Yeah, restrictions, I guess, that apply in capital raise, public capital raise offers like through Birchall, for example.
• 13:07
  So it's been really hard. And I probably would have had heaps more energy to have grown my business. It's a real tough one. My God. Well, thank you so much for sharing that with us. That's obviously something that everyone can learn from is to really, yeah, I mean, I don't even know how you would avoid that. That's just truly like a tough one.
• 13:37
  If you're a brand and you get a graphic designer to build your brand, you need legal paperwork called a deed of IP or a deed of release
• 13:48
  To say that you, as the brand owner who's paid money for that, owns it. Because actually, in regards to IP and legals, we probably tried to spend not very much money on legals initially. And that's probably the best spend of money ever. So I had heard of a friend of mine. She started a brand. Her graphic designer did the entire brand. She spent heaps of money on it. And then she doesn't actually even own that.
• 14:13
  the graphic designer still owned it. So she'd spent all this money building a brand. I've heard of that too. It's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. It's really crazy. It's something that you've got to check upfront when you start working with the designers. Yeah. And to get working files, because often designers only give you PDFs and that's like almost irrelevant to a brand. I think we always get our graphic designers to send us
• 14:38
  you know, the InDesign files or the Photoshop files all set up and established so that if we need to change one bit of copy, we can. It's not a problem.
• 14:45
  Yeah, I'm exactly the same because especially like, especially if you're able, if you have the skill set where you can just whip something up, you don't need to go back to your designer and be like, oh, can you just shuffle this a little bit to the left or like just change this word? It's so key to have the working documents 100%. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, Anna, this was absolute gold. You have just shared so many cool things in this episode. Thank you so much for coming on the show and for making the time and...
• 15:15
  Yeah. Thank you so much. It's been like the highlight of my week. So thank you so much for having me. And I hope that we can hang out soon at a meditation retreat. Oh, my God. I would love that. Yes, please. Cool. Thanks so much.
• 15:35
  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.
• 15:59
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 16:22
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that. Thank you.
• 16:38
  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.
• 17:03
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 17:25
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.