Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / 7 Bootstrapped Marketing Ideas for Founders on a Zero Dollar Budget

Transcript

7 Bootstrapped Marketing Ideas for Founders on a Zero Dollar Budget · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:09
  Hello there. Happy Monday. Hey you. Happy Monday. How are you? I'm good. I'm feeling refreshed. Had a good weekend. Definitely feeling the build-up to this Christmas period. I'm ready for it. I'm ready for it. I'm excited.
• 0:24
  What about you? How was your weekend? I am bloody sunburned. Oh, no. Went out in the sun yesterday, forgot to put on sunscreen on my stomach and my legs. Oh, no. Australia. You know how it is. Australia. My God. Bright out here. Bright out there. That UV. That UV light. God damn it. Anyway, it's okay. I'll survive. Aloe vera. Aloe vera is the way. Aloe vera for me. Absolutely.
• 0:49
  What are we talking about today? Do you want to lead us in? Absolutely. So today I thought it could be fun to jump into some kind of pre-launch marketing tactics that are actually relevant for the early stage solo founder that doesn't have this huge budget behind them to push these huge activations out.
• 1:09
  to pump money into something and see what cool is going to come out, but more of the scrappy boots-on-the-ground approaches, some of which we've heard on the show, some of which you've also personally done, and to jump into this kind of thing so people can very easily copy these tactics and give their brand a real good boost with some out-of-the-box ideas.
• 1:33
  Oh my God, I'm so excited. This is just so my cup of tea. I love boots to the ground marketing and it's so not complicated. It's really just thinking outside the box and thinking with like that. I have a zero dollar budget in mind and I don't mean zero as in zero, but I mean scrappy small budget. So I'm excited. I'm excited to hear what you've come with and I'm excited to share what I've come with.
• 1:58
  Do you want to start? Absolutely. How many are we going to do? Maybe five? Maybe seven. Let's see how we go timing wise. Let's aim for seven. So one I wanted to start off with, I thought this was a hilarious one. It's not necessarily a founder that came on the show, but this happened to us personally on our Instagram channel. So it's one that's very much top of mind.
• 2:19
  And a couple of months ago, maybe people listening have seen this video go by because it was so fun. We reposted a video by the Instagram account Girls Get Off, which is a sex positive company. It's founded by Viv Conway and Joe Cummins, two Kiwis that live in Sydney. And they created this video that one of them was dressed up as a huge vagina.
• 2:46
  And she's on, I think it was Bondi Beach, but you know this better than I do in Sydney. It was. It was on Bondi. Yeah. Yeah. On the Esplanade. So good. And she's dancing around, handing out this freebies to anyone that would dance with her, essentially. And someone's filming it. And the final product is all these short snippets, these hilarious kind of interactions with the public.
• 3:09
  a super kind of jammy music on top. There's one girl in particular that gets super into it and it's just a hilarious video. And we reposted it to kind of shout more loudly about it. And it's just such a feel good thing that we wanted to spread that as far as we could. And within a couple of minutes...
• 3:31
  It already started going crazy. And after a few weeks, we had 3 million views, which is just insane on Instagram Reels. And this translated into 8,000 followers. I think there are about 1,500 shares on the post. So it's something that's super shareable. Everyone's to send it to their girlfriends.
• 3:52
  It's really fun. And it's the kind of thing that just stops you in your scroll, you know? One, because of the fun music. And two, because there's someone dressed up as a vagina on your feet suddenly. And the whole crowd's getting involved. And this is the kind of thing that's pretty easy to recreate.
• 4:10
  on a budget level, on a practical level. It's more difficult on a kind of personal get past your ego level. And it might seem like a scary thing in the first place, which it is. But it's just amazing to see how much fun they're having with it and how the crowd gets involved. And I feel like that's something that a lot of different brands can leverage in different ways. You also have that direct contact point with people. Yeah.
• 4:36
  And people have a very kind of positive association with your brand. So I don't know about you, but if I was walking along that promenade, I would have loved it. And you feel this personal connection with them, right?
• 4:47
  And that's also the main thing in the comments. Yeah. People were like, come here. Yeah. I loved this video. And I think that like my kind of examples directly go to TikTok when I'm thinking about kind of unique marketing moments and things that a bootstrapped solo founder can do that is kind of a heavy investment on time and kind of like.
• 5:08
  effort and energy, but low in terms of cost. I feel like that is absolutely where if it was me, I would be spending a lot of my time kind of creating those viral opportunities to get top of funnel mass awareness. I've actually seen the one that I want or one of the ones that I want to share is I've seen this series a couple of times and she's a creator. Like I've seen this one specific creator does it, but I've seen like a few other people do different versions of it.
• 5:36
  And what she does is she goes around. Her name's Elle, but I've forgotten her handle. Damn, what is it? It's the chick who was on that morning show with Piers Morgan, and we posted a video of her. She's like an OnlyFans creator. I'm thinking Elle Woods, but that's just my legally blonde brain. Yeah, like Elle Dumbledore or something like that. I think she is on Instagram. Anyway, so what she does...
• 5:59
  She goes around and she has someone filming her and she has this mystery bag and she goes up to strangers and she's like, hey, would you prefer the mystery bag or would you prefer $5? And so, of course, you're watching this video, you're instantly intrigued. You're like, ooh. And then you're asking yourself, what would I choose? I don't know. Anyway, so sometimes people will be like, I want the $5. And she's like, okay, safe bet. And sometimes they'll open the mystery bag and it'll be like...
• 6:25
  window cleaner or something really random and it's so funny and so lol sometimes it's like a really cool prize but it's a mix of prizes and I think that like these
• 6:37
  quick, out-of-the-box, scrappy, doesn't-need-to-be-polished ideas where you can generate mass awareness for your brand. You could just have one of your products in the mystery bag, or you could have a group of 10 or whatever it might be. But you're creating this content that people are engaged with and want to see the reaction and want to see what people choose. And it's that kind of stuff that I'm like...
• 6:59
  that's where we need to be hanging as bootstrap founders. So fun. So fun. And especially if you're a CPG brand or a consumer packaged good, you've got a product-based business, a physical product-based business that you can show in those quirky, fun ways. And especially if you have like a fun brand, a fun tone of voice, I'm just like chef's kiss. That's where we need to be spending time. Absolutely. I think there's creating these activations from the ground up. And then there's also this idea of,
• 7:28
  being able to piggyback off something that's already going out there, a moment that's already out there, and just forcing your narrative on that and going along with that ride and going along and rolling on that. And I think we think about that a lot in our Instagram strategy, that you...
• 7:44
  know what trends are going on, you know what's going on in the world, and you can stay very on the pulse with the kind of content that you put out, the memes that you put out. And this came up recently on the show with Rachel Wilde, TBH Skincare, which we can't have an episode like this without mentioning them because they are just the holy grail of guerrilla marketing, organic marketing, super scrappy, low budget.
• 8:10
  Yes, she's amazing. And they have so much fun with it. And what she highlighted is that something in their business is every day they spend a lot of time on the internet seeing what they can piggyback off, seeing what's already having a moment, what's already got momentum that they can jump on and just catch that wave. And the most kind of famous example of this is when they impersonated Margot when she came to Sydney for the Barbie tour. Yes.
• 8:39
  They were sat around the table in the morning discussing what to do, and they knew that Margot would be in Sydney around the office. And I won't go into too much detail because it was chatted about on the show recently, but what it came down to is Rachel impersonating Margot, Raj, one of their team members, becoming a bodyguard, and...
• 8:58
  other girls from the team acting as hype girls running behind them. Oh my God, I love the Raj moment. It's so good. And they film all of this. They put it up straight after. This is also key to jump on these trends as soon as possible, because this wouldn't have worked a day later or two days later. And we can spend so much time overthinking these things and trying to perfect them. But by just going out there, having fun, putting it together super quickly, it's
• 9:26
  They spent zero dollars. She used a dress that she already had. And within, again, a couple of hours, a couple of days, they had two million views. Everyone's talking about this brand PR pieces picked it up. And I think even Margot saw it herself. So
• 9:43
  She did. She saw it. I was at dinner with Rachel when someone was like, I'm friends with Margot and I know that she saw it. And I was like, that is amazing. It's amazing. And what an opportunity now with TikTok and the speed with which you can put this message out there and these things can spread. It's just really cool to jump on board for zero dollars. I know. And I feel like it's the answer that no one wants to hear. Everyone wants these kind of like,
• 10:12
  secret sauce recipes to cracking the code of organic marketing or bootstrap marketing. But I'm like, it is TikTok, people. TikTok is where it's at. TikTok is still absolutely where it's at. Oh, my gosh. I can't, like, say it enough, but...
• 10:28
  Yeah, TikTok is where the opportunity is to kind of create this huge top of funnel awareness, virality around your brand. And we're seeing new creators jump on this platform every other day and win at it. Absolutely not too late for you to start today. Absolutely.
• 10:46
  I'm going to change threads here because I have another one that kind of falls into that like video short form content, but I'm going to break it up because I know that my last one was that. So I heard this on the show a couple of times over the last few years and I've
• 11:00
  I actually forget which brands specifically did it, but maybe we can just try and remember like afterwards. But essentially what they did was they created this buzz and campaign around giving away products for free. It's essentially kind of like doing a micro-influencer campaign, but at scale.
• 11:19
  So what you essentially do is you start by allocating like how many units you have to give away for free. So it might be like a thousand or I think someone on the show did 10,000. It was just crazy. But, oh, actually, you know who it was? There was the founder of Noody, which was a soap brand. There was...
• 11:38
  Hickey, the deodorant brand. And then there was, I think it was Sisto with Kaylee. I think she did it too. But basically what you do is it's so simple. You put it on the website and you say this is going to be free, but with shipping, you just pay shipping. So it's free, you pay shipping. Sometimes they were marking it up, like maybe adding like an extra dollar onto shipping or something like that. And they were putting like ad spend behind it, but also just like organic content at scale, creating this kind of awareness of like,
• 12:09
  oh my God, we have a thousand units. We want to give them away to as many people as possible because we want so many people to try this new product that we have. It's fantastic. We just want everyone's feedback. And then of course, you can imagine you post that on Instagram or you post that on TikTok and you're saying like, I'm giving away a thousand products if you just have to pay shipping. So-
• 12:29
  People are tagging their friends, sending it to other people. And at the same time, so you, first of all, get an email. So you've built your, if you're going to give away 10,000 units, then you get 10,000 emails that you can retarget, follow up, nurture with an automated email sequence, which again is free. And of course, that's not free. You're paying for the product that you're sending, but gifting, especially in the CPG space, obviously you need to do that.
• 12:55
  So you get the 10,000 emails and you then get like potentially the PR moment and that buzz online. You could be growing your followers. And essentially the main thing, you're getting your product into the hands of 10,000 potential customers. Wow. So those 10,000 people, if you're able to nurture them and get them to come back to your website and buy the product again. And it's critical that you stand by your product because of course it has to be a product so good that they want to buy it a second time.
• 13:22
  This is just like, to me, such an interesting campaign. And I've seen it executed multiple times. I know that it works from the show. I've spoken to founders who have done it. And you can also add in a twist. Like, I think I saw Greta...
• 13:37
  I think it might have been Greta or someone in that space of online kind of digital space doing this, but they had a twist on why they were giving it away. I can't remember what the plot twist was, but you could add in a plot twist. This crazy thing happened, so we're going to give this away because of X or something negative happened. So in response, we're just going to give it away for free. Whatever you can add in that makes it even a bit more of a hook or a plot twist, even better. But yeah, it's basically like running a major gift campaign.
• 14:07
  for micro-influencers and you win by getting your product into the hand of new customers, build your email database, and you are also just then able to nurture and retarget them. Oh, that's great. I think you're also tapping into this customer that's going to be way more inclined to pass on that word-of-mouth marketing because they're so excited to be part of a campaign like this. If I would think of myself, if you come across something like this, you feel like you've
• 14:37
  caught some gold. But if you're an influencer that gets X amount of packages, there's a bit of influencer fatigue at the moment. Yes. You've so hit it on the nail of the head because the other thing is that you've started this relationship with a customer who has extremely high brand loyalty to you. You've just shipped someone something for free. Like,
• 15:01
  And you've started the relationship on a high. They're going to be like, oh, my God, this is so amazing. Thank you so much. I love that you did this. I can't wait to buy from you again. Exactly. And telling their friends about it. It's strong. It's super good. It's super strong. And I think there's definitely something to be had for this kind of creating this feeling that someone's been personally targeted.
• 15:21
  And feeling like you're in this lucky moment or feeling special. And that can also come through in a couple of different ways. It's come up on the show a few times.
• 15:31
  where people put posters around New York or posters in kind of little hidden places that if you're in a certain bar and you go to the bathroom and you see this QR code or you see this poster, the more creative you can get with that, the better. You kind of feel personally targeted by that, especially if you have the right copy on there, if you have the right branding where you feel personally spoken to. There was also a case on the show with, I think it was Rosalind McClarty from The Gist,
• 15:57
  And in the early days when they were trying to reach a lot of Gen Z customers, I mean, we're not condoning any defacing of buildings or anything like that. Any illegal activities. But...
• 16:10
  They woke up at 5 a.m. and spray painted their website domain all around the city. And so they would get in touch with those Gen Z customers. And then you create this moment and this buzz the next day of, oh, have you seen this? Have you seen this new thing? And you want to be a part of that conversation.
• 16:29
  You want to be someone who's also seen that. Oh, I also spotted that. And you create this buzz that sends people to your website. It sends them straight to their domain. They built up a crazy newsletter following. And they said this is one of the biggest things that kind of kicked them up in the first place. And this reminded me of a story about you.
• 16:52
  And I think you used this tactic to get a job once back in the day, right? Am I right? Yeah, I did. I did use that tactic to get a job. So I feel like I told this story recently, but maybe it wasn't on the show. So I back like way back when, when was this such a long time ago? My God, like 15 years ago.
• 17:12
  I wanted this job. There was an advertisement kind of somewhere, like wherever, like on Seek or something, and it was, yo, check this shit out at laundrycreative.com. And I was like, cool, great, amazing. It was a creative role. I'd just come out of Visual Communications College, and I think the ad said kind of like send your resume or your portfolio to yo, check this shit out at laundrycreative.com. And I was like, cool, everyone's going to be doing that, right? Let's like try and do something different
• 17:42
  everyone's going to be doing the same thing. So I knew where their office was because I used to run along the river and I would go past their building and I knew that their building was all glass and on the boardwalk. So like I just kind of had that in my mind. And then at the same time, I had been doing some kind of
• 18:03
  work or internship for this magazine. And it was an indie magazine that I'd been doing layout and copy and all sorts of different aspects and design in this magazine. And so I pulled apart the magazine, I stuck it up in my bedroom, like across the mirror. So it kind of looked like three lines of like
• 18:25
  spreads, I guess you would say, of the magazine. And I painted on it, yo, check this shit out, www.doonrosheen.com, which was my website at the time. And then I like decorated it with sequins and I painted it and I made it really fun.
• 18:39
  And I text my friend and I was like, yo, do you want to come and deface a building with me at 3am? And he was like, sure. These are the friends you need. These are the friends you need. Actually, it's so funny. He's my friend now, but it was my boyfriend at the time. Oh, it wasn't even, he wasn't my boyfriend at the time. It was our first date. It was the first time we were catching up. And I was like, yeah, it was so funny.
• 19:05
  So what happens? We meet up. We go down there at 3 in the morning and we stick up on the outside of the glass box, like of this building, we stick up this thing so that it's facing inwards. So when they come in in the morning and they look up at the window, they have this huge sign essentially that says, yo, check this shit out at doonarushin.com, www.doonarushin.com.
• 19:28
  And then I put this little note for security being like, hey, like this is a job application. Please don't tear it down. And whatever, went to bed. Then the next day I got a call from the CEO at nine in the morning being like, this is amazing. Like, when can you come in? When can we meet you? Like, love this. And, you know, posted about it on Facebook. And I think the lesson is if you want something, think about how to get it.
• 19:54
  by doing something that's not the same way that everyone else is going to do it. Because it's in those moments that you obviously create a unique experience that you can leverage in some way. So, yeah, love that vibe. Absolutely. I love this story so much. And it reminds me a little bit, I mean, it's a different kind of, this one doesn't involve any defacing of any buildings, but it reminds me a little bit of the Belly Welly billboard, which was also spoken about on the show a little while ago.
• 20:24
  Because it's also this kind of like super fun, big moment. It makes people look twice. And it was just like this kind of crazy moment. Let me paint the picture. So Belly Welly is a gut-friendly snack alternative. And I think the first...
• 20:40
  name that they came up with was something like IBS snacks or IB snacks or something along those lines. And they quickly realized that they were going to come up against this education piece of people not wanting to be associated with an IBS brand. So something surrounding IBS, especially at the time, maybe now it's different because they've done a great job at this.
• 21:04
  But it's not a sexy, cool thing. So a big part of their challenge was it wasn't a sexy, cool thing. However, I venture that maybe now it is. And they created this campaign called Hot Girls Have IBS. So it was a bit of a moment on TikTok. It was starting up anyway. They jumped aboard that trend and they looked at ways that they could get this message out as far as possible. Yeah.
• 21:32
  and attached our brand to it. And they started looking into billboards. So a super kind of, it's out the box marketing. It's not the first thing that would come to mind for me at all. And you would think it's something that a lot of the big brands are able to afford that this is just kind of in another bucket. And I mean, granted, this isn't a $0 marketing strategy by any means. But
• 21:57
  They ended up finding a billboard spot on the outskirts of L.A. for, I think it was around $7,000. They put this huge billboard in there. Hot Girls Have IBS 2. Super sparkly, fun, pink.
• 22:13
  And it turned into this huge moment where people would travel to this billboard just to take selfies with it. There would be queues on the highway because people were trying to get a picture with this billboard, which is so fun. And you would never think of that. And it's about standing out in a space that...
• 22:33
  doesn't yet have that fun marketing and those fun moments. So the billboard space at the time, it's probably like super boring, high kind of ticketed items or services or not fun in any way. And if you can jump on something like that, a more of a traditional marketing moment and come in there with your fun perspective, it's always going to stand out. And this campaign ended up driving a
• 22:57
  They've estimated it's hard to tell directly, but around 40,000 K in sales. They reached 2.8 million people on Instagram and 12,000 people on Twitter. So it just, it completely blew up. And I love this story and their whole mentality behind Belly Welly, but this story in particular.
• 23:18
  Yeah, I love that. And I feel like the numbers are probably higher than that because if you considered like all the people who actually posted on their socials, the reach would just be like insane. But of course, you can't attribute it, which is tricky. But I love that one. That's such a fun one. Obviously, more expensive. But again, thinking outside the box, creating this moment that works on social media, obviously key for people.
• 23:39
  That kind of like virality effect, which we want. Absolutely we want. Okay, I've got one more. I'm going to wrap up with one more. And this is, again, I feel like no one wants me to do this short form content thing again, but it is short form content again.
• 23:56
  It's so simple. It's a daily challenge. So when we had Monica Groney on the show, she was telling us her story. She started this year in January with 3,000 followers.
• 24:10
  on her personal account. And now she has, I think I looked the other day, it was like 250,000 followers or something like that. So she basically was just like her new year, new you kind of thing was I'm going to celebritize myself for my brand. And like, I can't afford to work with influencers. I can't afford to do that, but I can invest my own time and do it to myself. So what she started doing was she started with a 30 day challenge and it was 30 days of eating 30 grams of protein in every meal.
• 24:39
  So I think she had like some kind of lingo at the start where she would say something like, this is me. Day one, you and I are going to put 30 grams of protein into every meal. And she would basically stitch together these really scrappy videos from her kitchen, not fancy things, not polished, picture-perfect food, just like actual relatable recipes that you're like, oh, I could make those scrambled egg tacos. Like, that's really easy.
• 25:06
  And she would do it all kind of around this messaging of hormonal health for women because her product, her brand is a supplement for hormonal health. So she would record all these videos during the day just of what she was already making at home, kind of like always with the 30 grams of protein. And then here and there, like not even in every video, here and there, she would just talk about her product as well or like slip it into the video as part of her daily routine. And
• 25:35
  She was just relentless slash religious at posting one video a day. She would record them, then stitch them together with a voiceover at night on the couch in front of the TV. She did it for 30 days. Her account went crazy. And then she did it again a couple months later. And again, it just went absolutely crazy. And now she's at 250,000 in followers, but her sales just
• 25:57
  shoot through the roof. She just constantly has these spikes when certain videos go viral. And I think if you can create a really relatable challenge that is super
• 26:09
  interesting edutainment style for your customer, like your ideal customer. Obviously, that one really worked because it was a direct tie into her product. I just feel like that's the place to be hanging out. Daily challenges and consistency, getting real about that every day.
• 26:27
  And the same thing, actually, not that I was selling anything, so it was a missed opportunity there. But when I did the daily challenge, sorry, it wasn't a daily challenge. It was the series, the content series on removing my freckles, people just didn't
• 26:42
  people got on board. I still get so many comments about it, so many messages, so many DMs. Like people want to watch the journey. So if you can take people on a journey, again, you can do that for limited budget. Monica Groney spent a whole of $0 on that campaign besides probably a giveaway here or there.
• 27:01
  Absolutely. That is crazy to me. Absolutely possible for anyone. I remember that with your freckle journey, people would be posting on your video of yesterday, I'm dying for tomorrow's video. And I mean, I was the same. I would wake up and be like, oh, I wonder what's going on in the freckle journey today. And Monica was able to create this journey as well because of consistency. And if you post that every single day and people can start to rely on you,
• 27:27
  The algorithm picks that up and it loves it and it puts it out to more people. And it's a spiral of great things. Absolute spiral of great things.
• 27:38
  Do you have any left in your list? I do not. Those are all of mine. That's all of yours. Amazing. I loved this. This was fun. For everyone listening, we had a bunch of people in the Facebook group when they joined ask about pre-launch marketing tactics or unique ways for marketing exposure or guerrilla marketing tips. So if you have a question, jump in and join us in the Facebook group. Jump in there and ask. We're hanging out in there. So we can do an episode on the show about it. Yeah.
• 28:08
  This was super fun. I wanted to wrap up with another set of six quick questions. Are you ready? Love the six quickies. Yep, let's do it. Awesome. So question number one, it's one that I've heard you asked a few times on the show over the years. What's your superpower?
• 28:26
  Oh, I love this question and I know mine very easily. Mine is connecting dots. My brain, the way that it works, is when I meet someone and I'm just like I get all that like excitement,
• 28:40
  Oh, I just love what you're doing and this is so cool. My brain immediately is like, I wonder who I could introduce you to that would be like really useful for you to know or always thinking about like two people who would be mutually beneficial to connect each other. And it's just something that I do so naturally all the time. And I've been told by people like how great a connection can be when it is like a powerful and spot on connection. So that's mine for sure. What's yours? Oh, gosh. Yeah.
• 29:09
  I think it would 100% come down to people and reading situations and feeling situations, sometimes to a detriment. It can be a little bit exhausting sometimes, but I just love...
• 29:24
  People talking about people. No, not talking about people. Talking with people. Talking with people, gauging different social circumstances, helping people out in particular. Yeah, definitely a social butterfly superpower. Oh, I love that. It's kind of like connecting dots and connection. Yeah, connection. Connection is a biggie.
• 29:50
  Question number two, quick one, super quick question, night or morning person? Neither. No, if I had to choose one and it's not by choice, I guess I would probably say I'm a night person because I spend a lot of time having to like wind down. I spend a lot more time like kind of staying up late because of that. Wish I was a morning person.
• 30:18
  Yeah, they both have their benefits. I'm definitely a morning person and I wish I was a night owl sometimes. Well, what we can't have. Absolutely. Yeah. Question number three. What's your go-to tip for building a network or connection? I have a few.
• 30:34
  I guess the first one, it's just a really simple one. If you are just starting out and you don't know anyone yet, you don't have a network, I would say the best thing to build your network and to build that connection is just to say yes to absolutely everything. So go to every single event, go to every single meetup, seek out things, ask people for invitations to things, just go to
• 30:56
  everything that you can, say yes to every opportunity and talk to people. Make sure that you leave that event having met five people. Set yourself a goal and make sure that you meet five people. Like start being in those rooms where you become –
• 31:13
  someone that's seeing familiar faces because you keep going to all the things. So you start kind of like getting your reps in. And then I would say as you get more established, start asking for introductions to other people that you want to meet, and this is critical, who are in the similar stage of business to you. So start meeting people who are at the same level or at the same stage of business. So...
• 31:36
  When you get those warm introductions, you can provide mutual value. And as you progress with your business and in your career, you then have people who have come like from where you were over the next five years or over the next 10 years. Because when you build that network of people who are kind of like at the same stage as you and you keep going, you're really, it's easy to help each other. It's easy to grow together. It's easy to kind of like collaborate with each other versus reaching out where there's a different dynamic to someone who...
• 32:05
  you know, might be 10 steps ahead or 50 steps ahead. And of course, it's less kind of mutual. So yeah, I would say that's the next phase. And then the third thing to deepen connections, and I guess to wrap it up is I love to send thank you cards with a handwritten note, or like something like a copy of my book or a gift. Because if someone takes an action for you,
• 32:36
  put a nice little bow on it and like create a small surprise and delight moment. I think that can be really powerful in sticking in someone's mind. I know for me, it sticks in my mind. So I have always loved the handwritten note. Oh, I love that. So yeah, that would be my three for network and connection. Staying top of mind. Yes. Question number four, what's your go-to book?
• 33:01
  So this isn't a go-to book of life, but I would say that something I'm reading at the moment is a book, and I think I've mentioned it on the show before, Mother of Invention. And it's how good ideas get ignored in a world built for men. And it's a fascinating kind of history, like breakdown of how gender has influenced innovation over the last hundreds of years. And it's just so interesting. It's actually incredibly sad, obviously, for women.
• 33:31
  But I'm like, why isn't this critical reading in school? Everyone should be reading this. We should all be very aware of how this has played out over history. So yeah, Mother of Invention. It's by a Swedish journalist and it's just mind-blowing. It's so fascinating. 100%. We'll link that on the show notes so you have quick access to that one. Yes. Question number five, what's one skill that you would love to have to help you in entrepreneurship if you could pick up one thing overnight?
• 34:02
  it would be to adopt the mindset of being scrappy and operating on this mindset of like, I can do it with zero dollars. And I think this really sums up nicely, like everything we've been talking about today, where if you can just figure things out without falling back on, oh, I can just invest a lot of money and it'll work out. If you can be scrappy and slowly build from there, I think that's just such
• 34:25
  an incredible talent to have because it means that you'll always be able to pull yourself out from whatever situation you're in. And I wanted to tell this story because, and it's super quick, I know we're on the six quick questions, but I wanted to give you another example of the story I was telling you before.
• 34:41
  Another example of what I did when I was younger, when I wanted something, and it's not directly related to business, but you can take from it the fact of being scrappy and creating your own opportunities, is I wanted this internship at the only magazine that was created in Brisbane. So for me at that time, like 15 years ago, there was no like cool, sexy companies that you could intern for, like these cool startups that I knew about, but I knew there was one, maybe there is one.
• 35:10
  I'm not talking about now, but back in the day. And there was this one magazine place and I really wanted an internship there, but there was no internship available. There was nothing advertised. And I was like, I wonder if like I could get in front of someone important, like a decision maker.
• 35:25
  Maybe I could create my own opportunity. And so I went to my local nursery and I bought a thyme herb and I put in a little card that said, could I please have a moment of your time to like the woman director. And then I dressed up in a delivery driver outfit. So like this oversized high viz shirt and these little Nikes and just strolled into the office was like, I'm here to drop off a delivery for...
• 35:55
  director and they were like yes right this way and I also wanted to like have a little sneaky peek in the office I'm a sticky beak and so go in there she's actually at lunch so just left it on her desk and again long story short
• 36:09
  Through this, through being scrappy, through thinking outside the box, I got a 12-week internship and worked at that magazine, which was critical in part of the journey. And so I think if you're able to adopt a new mindset of how can I do this, how can I create interest, how can I create intrigue, how can I do this?
• 36:31
  By doing something differently. I just love that stuff. That would be mine for sure. Be weird, be scrappy, do things differently. And create those moments for yourself. Yeah, create your own opportunities. Absolutely. Love that. Sixth and last question, what's the most used app on your phone?
• 36:50
  Oh, surely. Surely. Oh, I was going to say WhatsApp, but actually it's probably Kindle because I do read on my phone sometimes. I'm going to look. I'm a really big texter. I do a lot of things on WhatsApp. Damn, I want to see like where my time is spent. I reckon it's WhatsApp. I reckon it's under screen time. Let's have a look. Mine's Instagram. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
• 37:15
  Oh, yeah. Yep. WhatsApp. And then Instagram. WhatsApp. Yep. Love it. Well, amazing. Loved this. Love our new episodes. Yeah, I love this chat. Absolutely. That's the pod. That's it. Super nice. And also, a good reminder that if you would like any topic in particular covered or if there's something that you've been dying to know about, please come and chat to us in the Facebook group and we might cover it in a future episode.
• 37:44
  See you next week. See you next week. Bye.
• 37:50
  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.
• 38:14
  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.
• 38:37
  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.