Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / Part 6. I’m giving away a $1000 Small Business Grant (in cash) every month

Transcript

Part 6. I’m giving away a $1000 Small Business Grant (in cash) every month · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  Hello, everyone. It's me, Dune, your host and hype girl. It's been a while since I've graced your ears, but thanks for sticking with me on this one. Today, I'm here to chat through something that I am so unbelievably excited and proud about, as well as some quick updates on the Non-Alk brand.
• 0:23
  If you aren't tuned in with us already on Instagram, you can find us at Female Startup Club or at Doon Roisin. Let's get stuck into this episode. This is me for Female Startup Club. Hello, everyone. Oh, my gosh. It's been a couple of weeks or maybe more since I did a solo episode.
• 0:46
  Now, if you've been following along with me on Instagram, you will probably know that this past month has been the worst of my life. Basically,
• 0:59
  To keep it short, not only did I lose my beautiful grandma, who I love so much and has been a huge, big love of my life, but just two weeks later, we also lost my husband's dad and my father-in-law. So it's been pretty rough, to say the least. I took a few weeks off recording, which you might have noticed with the greatest hits,
• 1:27
  But I'm slowly getting back into the swing of things and I have some stuff that makes me really, really happy. So I thought I'd pop in to share with you a solo episode and also give you some updates on the Non-Alk Wine brand while I'm also here.
• 1:44
  So let's start with the good stuff because obviously if you listen to every episode, you will very likely know that at the end of every episode, I ask our entrepreneurs and guests what they would do if they were given a thousand dollars of no strings attached money.
• 2:05
  Now, we all agree $1,000 isn't life-changing. It is far from it, but it does allow for creative thinking and it does inspire us to think, where is the most important spend of a dollar in our business?
• 2:19
  It allows you to think outside the box and see whether $1,000 might make a bit of a difference in your biz. So for example, we often hear things like treating the team, a team bonding experience, testing out TikTok ads, investing in a bigger influencer collaboration that you know will work, buying into more stock, developing a new limited edition item,
• 2:48
  So many things. And when I asked our crew in Hype Club recently, I also got some crackers.
• 2:56
  Sylvia said she would invest in a trademark attorney for her US application. Julie said she'd buy raw materials in advance of the holiday season when cash flow is tighter than usual. Kim said she'd put it towards her formulation costs. Amy said it would help her with packaging. Emily said she'd use it entirely to ship out gifting to influencers.
• 3:20
  And basically it showed me that $1,000 can be seriously helpful for a small business owner. And I would know because this all started when I was just asking myself what I would do with $1,000 and what difference that would make for me.
• 3:37
  And besides from how you actually spend it, I also think that the act of receiving $1,000 would feel pretty good. Like that's something that will put a smile on your face. It will change your mood for a moment. Maybe it'll make your day. Maybe it'll make your month. So then I was thinking to myself, wouldn't it be cool to give that away to another small business owner?
• 4:04
  What if I could create some excitement around Female Startup Club and at the same time positively impact women? What if instead of putting $1,000 a month into ads to try and grow Female Startup Club's reach and presence, what if I just started giving that money away and seeing what happens?
• 4:29
  And, you know, my mission with Female Startup Club has always been to positively impact women in business, people like you and me who are hustling every single day and still just trying to figure things out. And so if I can make someone's day or month by giving away $1,000 in cash again and again and again on repeat, well, wouldn't that be cool?
• 4:55
  I think it is so, so cool. So that is the good news. That's the good stuff. By the time you hear this, the first giveaway will be in full swing. It'll be in motion, which means you need to take action ASAP. We teamed up with Flowium. They're a leading email marketing agency specifically for e-commerce brands to give away the cash.
• 5:21
  And to enter, you need to go to femalestartupclub.com forward slash one zero zero zero hyphen cash hyphen giveaway, or find the link in my bio, find it in FSC's bio or the show notes, whatever, just get to the website and find it on there and follow the prompts. But here's the thing about this giveaway, and I'm going to give you a really hot tip. So I want you to listen carefully.
• 5:51
  You can put in 10 times the effort of everyone else to give yourself the best chance of winning. You can give yourself an advantage and you can give yourself an edge. The more people you refer to Female Startup Club's email list, the more you exponentially increase your chances of winning. So don't rush and do this when you have two seconds. Wait until you have 20 minutes.
• 6:19
  Sit at your desk, open up your email, open up your WhatsApp, open up your Instagram, open up every channel where you know other business owners and start referring the people in your network who would benefit from winning $1,000.
• 6:32
  it's probably important for me to highlight that those people need to subscribe for it to count. So it's not like just referring any old email. That person needs to also take an action for it to count. But essentially, if you're referring the right kind of people who would benefit from $1,000 and who would benefit from Female Startup Club, you can really increase your chances.
• 6:58
  And there's not just one prize that we're winning. There's actually nine other prizes that you can win. We wanted to make this really good and we wanted to make the first one in particular really attractive so that there wasn't just one person coming away.
• 7:13
  We're also giving away a few annual memberships to Hype Club, which is valued at $4.99 for the year. We've got some of our courses to give away, and we've also got some of our soon-to-be-released merch that literally no one has yet. Not even me. You will be able to be the first to rock it.
• 7:32
  Actually, I'll probably have it by then. But aside from me, you'll be the first to rock it. So there's 10 prizes in total. And the whole thing is about $3,000 worth of value. This is our first big giveaway in partnership with a really cool business. And I'm so excited to be bringing this to you. So I hope you love it. I love this for you. And I love this for me. And I'm excited to see what comes from this. So that's one of the things.
• 8:01
  Now, if you're wondering about the non-alc brand, well, things are less exciting on that front. Everything is moving so slowly, so, so slowly. And, you know, everyone I've spoken to, of course, says things move slowly. But once you're actually in it and you realize how slow it is, it's a little frustrating. Yeah.
• 8:24
  We are getting closer to having a name, which is obviously a huge deal for us. And I can't wait to share it with you once it's actually finalized and what the process has been like, because it's been a real eye opener for me, especially because typically I would just choose a name and not think too much about it. Whereas this has been really, really in depth.
• 8:45
  But for now, all I can say is that I have been having so much fun and I'm so super excited to get to the final name that I can share it with you. And, you know, also we're being super careful about sharing anything because we want to make sure it's a hundred percent trademarkable. And I just don't want to get ahead of myself. I feel like I don't want to fall in love with something and share it and then be like, oh heck, that's it. We can't actually use that anymore.
• 9:13
  That's that. On the production side of things, it's also kind of slow, to be honest. We were meant to finalize the product this month at the beginning of September, but obviously life kind of slapped us straight in the face. And we had to postpone everything until later in October. But we've started talking to the bottle supplier today.
• 9:35
  So there is a little bit of progress, but nothing really worth a full update on or no kind of key learnings or insights that are worth sharing at this point. So last few things I want to talk about. Obviously, any chance to shout about Hype Club, I will.
• 9:53
  It's been so amazing seeing our crew of entrepreneurs really getting to know each other, hopping on calls, making new connections, learning new stuff together. It's been just amazing.
• 10:07
  Really, really cool. We had a modern mentor session with Alexandra from Kusama Rum answering all the questions around her approach to money and finance, working with producers, branding, distribution, all the good stuff, which was super cool for us who are in the Bev industry, be it alcoholic or non-alcoholic.
• 10:30
  We also had an Ask Me Anything session with Lindsay from Kira Moon, giving her brain power to our entrepreneurs here in the beauty industry. And she did a real deep dive into how she's been approaching her retail distribution and landing these really, really cool retailers like the likes of ASOS, et cetera.
• 10:53
  We've also had a workshop on how to use pre-orders to validate, pre-sell, and build hype. Also in the books is Kim Johnson. She is currently the head of community at Geneva, and her focus... And Geneva, by the way, is the app that the community is living on, the Hype Club community. And so her focus is on building authentic digital-first community experiences that
• 11:18
  but she was previously at Glossier where she led the community for five years. So her masterclass is all around what impactful community actually looks like in 2021, how to inspire your members to be your partners and advocates, and the relationship between RAL and virtual community.
• 11:40
  So all of that to say, if any of that sounds interesting to you, there's a whole lot more of where it came from and more. And we have new stuff scheduled every single week. So all these live sessions are actually recorded and added to our private library where you can sign up and access the content on demand. So don't worry, you haven't missed out. If you want to join us, head to the website and sign up. It's femalestartupclub.com forward slash hype club.
• 12:10
  Really quick episode for me today. I think I'm looking at the screen at 13, 14 minutes here. If you want to stay connected with me, find me on Instagram, TikTok or Twitter at DunRosheen, which is D-O-N-E-R-O-I.
• 12:25
  S-I-N. I would love to meet you and hear about what you're working on. So feel free to slide into my DMs anytime. I would also really love some feedback on these episodes and what mini episodes you'd like me to add into the schedule. I'd actually really like that. So please do. That is all for today. I'm going to catch you next time. See you around. Make sure you sign up for the competition and speak soon. Bye.
• 13:11
  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.
• 13:36
  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.
• 13:58
  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.