Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / 1 in 3 Single Women Retire into Poverty in Australia. Here’s how Pascale Helyar-Moray is Tackling this Big Issue with Grow My Money (previously Super-Rewards) (Part 1)

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1 in 3 Single Women Retire into Poverty in Australia. Here’s how Pascale Helyar-Moray is Tackling this Big Issue with Grow My Money (previously Super-Rewards) (Part 1) · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Pascale Helia More for Female Startup Club.
• 0:13
  Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. It's Dune here, your host and hype girl. If you missed our last episode, I announced some very exciting news that we've just joined the Acast podcast network. And that means a lot of exciting things.
• 0:31
  Firstly, we're going to start by introducing some different kinds of episodes like strategy breakdowns with industry experts and how-tos for early stage founders and future founders. It also means you're going to start hearing a new voice on the show. You're going to meet my wing woman and one of the best humans I know, Josephine.
• 0:53
  If you've ever messaged us on Instagram or you're part of magic, you'll know just how wonderful Josephine is. And she's going to be joining me in a new series where we talk through insights, questions and what's happening in the world of business. Now, something else I'm really excited about is the comeback of our Facebook group. It's linked in our show notes, and I want you to jump in there and join us as soon as possible or sooner.
• 1:19
  Every Monday, I'll be sharing who I'm interviewing for that week. And this is where you can ask very specific questions that you want answered on the show from that founder or expert. You can also drop your own questions and challenges in there, and we'll be shouting those out too. And it's a great chance to get your brand featured on the podcast. Today on the show, we're chatting with Pascal from Grow My Money, which was previously known as Super Rewards.
• 1:47
  Did you know that in Australia, one in three single women retire into poverty and one in six women overall retire into poverty? Just let that sink in for a second.
• 2:01
  That is high. That's a very scary and a very real statistic that we need to be paying attention to. Now, there's multiple factors that play into that statistic and why that is the way that it is. But one of them has to do with our superannuation. And if you're listening in from outside of Australia, superannuation is kind of like a 401k in America or your state pension in the UK.
• 2:26
  Basically, over the course of your career, your employee puts money into something that you can't touch until you retire. And that money significantly grows over the course of, you know, 20, 30, 40 plus years. So that when you retire, you have a nice chunk of cash to live your days off.
• 2:45
  Simply put. Now, men retire with almost double the superannuation than women do. And with that in mind, Pascal wanted to do something about it. This episode is a real eye-opener about tackling big problems. And I would love to know what you think about it and if we should do more episodes like this. So come and find us in the Facebook group. Ask your questions. Drop your thoughts. I would love to hear them and I would love to chat with you.
• 3:14
  Let's get into today's episode. This is Pascale for Female Startup Club. Pascale, hi, welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast. It's great to be here. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited. Any wins for today? What's been going on on your end? I went to the gym this morning and that is always a win. Oh, I love that for you. Yep. It's not guaranteed. So when it does happen, I'm really pleased. It sets me up. I feel the same.
• 3:43
  I feel the same way. I feel like sometimes I'm like, I know that that would make today great, but am I going to go? No. For me, it's usually about the, can I deposit all the children at their relative bus stop schools, et cetera, et cetera, and then go to the gym and then make it back to my desk in time for the first meeting. That's typically my challenge. So today was a good day.
• 4:08
  Yep. Love that for you. Love that for you. I want to dive straight into today's episode and kind of introduce what you're doing because it's a little bit different to what we kind of usually talk about on the show. This is something we haven't kind of dived right into before. So where do you like to start your entrepreneurial story? I always like to start a
• 4:31
  with the start of my career because I didn't come from entrepreneurial world. I came from corporate world. And I would guess that a lot of your listeners either are in corporate world and looking to get out or they're in entrepreneurial world going, dear God, have I made the right decision? So...
• 4:56
  I'll start my journey there. And my background is 25 years plus in financial services, marketing and brand building and PR. And the theme of my career was really about bringing new products to market or bringing new brands to market. So I was well versed in that.
• 5:17
  And I was really lucky. I worked for some, you know, blue chip companies, both here in Sydney and also in London. But it was at that juncture where I'd had children and that coincided. So my first maternity leave coincided with moving back to Sydney and,
• 5:37
  And after six months of mat leave and doing, I don't know how many loads of washing per day, I was going a little bit crazy. And I thought, you know what, I'm just going to see what the local job market is like here. And so I sailed on into a number of recruitment opportunities.
• 5:56
  you know, agencies and offices and said, Hi, I'm Pascal. I'm back from London. I was working at JP Morgan Asset Management. I've just had children and I would like to work three days a week on the same salary as I was on in London.
• 6:13
  Well, I was laughed out of every single office. But so after remembering that this is 10 plus years ago and, you know, things have iterated a lot in the in the meantime. And we've had COVID where everyone now understands what Flex is. So but back then, very different. So I thought, you know what, I'm I'm going to do something that I want to do so that I can run it from home and work.
• 6:40
  be around for the children. So that was really my first foray into my own startup. So I had an e-commerce startup and that led to, you know, being a female startup founder, you know,
• 6:56
  over a decade ago was still very unusual and particularly because I was in the tech space. So that, I guess, generated a certain amount of profile, which led to other startup roles as, you know, consultant or mentor or advisor. And one of those other roles was for a not for profit.
• 7:17
  the Australian Gender Equality Council, which is NFP dedicated to looking at and researching the state of gender equality, or should I say inequality, within Australia. And my role there was as Director of Communications. So I helped...
• 7:33
  launch AJEC, which is the shorthand for the council. And that was like a full-scale communications and PR campaign. And we did really well. We, you know, we secured lots of media coverage and we were on the news and, you know, on the radio, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
• 7:51
  And was that working towards one very specific kind of campaign to chip away at or was it just like across the board create awareness for gender equality? Across the board create awareness for gender equality, but the way that we did that is we would effectively, working in conjunction with the University of Queensland, we'd produce a piece of research and then create a campaign about that and then we'd do another piece of research and then create a campaign about that.
• 8:17
  But in the beginning, it was about just launching the council and, you know, helping people understand who we were, what we were doing, how we worked, all those sorts of things. And so it was really in my time with AJEC, I was conscious that because we were working with government and corporates and the everyday user, I became really conscious of some of the key challenges facing Australian women when it comes to gender equality.
• 8:46
  So you may be aware of the stat that, for example, one in five women in Australia over the age of 18 is a victim of sexual assault. I am aware of that stat. Yes. Terrible stat. Which is a terrible stat. But you may not be aware of the fact that as a country, we pay our daughters 27% less in pocket money than we pay our sons.
• 9:13
  Do we? Yes. I am not aware of that. Yes. What's the difference? Do we know? Well, it's because we just asked little Jane to just empty the dishwasher and
• 9:26
  But we'll pay little Johnny a dollar figure. To do the lawn. To do the lawn. That's right. My God, you're so right. Yeah. I also think about that when I see little boys doing like the kind of like, you know, like out on the street doing like a drink stand or something like that. And I feel like...
• 9:48
  boys are more encouraged to do that. And maybe there's also kind of that feeling of like safety or something. I don't know. I'm not speaking from experience. I don't have young kids, but like kind of you're more protective of a daughter perhaps that's quite young. I'm not sure. I don't know. But I feel like it's boys doing the lemonade stand and I'm like, where are the girls? Where are the girls out there selling their lemonade, you know?
• 10:15
  On the sidebar, my daughter ran a lemonade stand last school holidays. Love that for her. She made over $1,000. Shut up, no way. No. She did it with her friend, the two girls. Okay. And every time they got better, they got better. They were like, okay, we'll buy cheaper lemons and we'll, you know.
• 10:40
  Like they were really into maximizing yield and their full profit. And I was so proud. Oh, my God. I'm so proud. $1,000 is a lot of money. But, I mean, look, they did, I don't know, like five or six. And that was just her profit share. You know, her friend also earned over $1,000. Like they were just machines, the two of them. They had a down pat. I was so proud. Oh, I love that. I love it.
• 11:08
  oh so cool okay okay i'm sorry i feel like i got you off track there was i no no where were we okay so little girls versus little boys in the pocket money oh right so less pocket money so that's at the beginning of you know a female's life we're paying unconsciously we're paying our daughters 27 less pocket money than we pay our sons but also um women at the other end of of the life stage women are retiring with roughly half as much superannuation as men
• 11:39
  because of things like taking time out of the workforce to have children, during which, you know, you're typically not paid superannuation, because when after having children, women typically return to work in a part-time capacity rather than full-time. So therefore they're being paid fractionally into their super. And so what that, what we call superannuation, gender gap, translates into,
• 12:06
  to materially is that women in Australia are typically retiring with only enough superannuation for five or six years, but then they live another 14 years on average.
• 12:22
  after that. So if you retire at 65, the typical age of death for an Australian female is 85, so that's 20 years with which they need funding, but they only have enough for six years in their super pot. That is the gap. And what is the equivalent for men?
• 12:43
  they've got roughly 10 years worth of superannuation. So it's not like they have too much because I have too much super said no one ever. But because they're not taking time out of the workforce, because they don't have the work-life patterns that we do, this is a real issue. And so... God, that's scary. It is scary. And the stats that I like to share...
• 13:08
  not for shock value, but just simply because people don't know, is that one in three single women will retire into poverty.
• 13:20
  Oh, God, that's awful. We all hope that we get to, you know, our retirement with partners, but stuff happens, right? And so for single women, there is a one in three chance that they will retire into poverty. And so when we extrapolate out across the broader female population, that number is, you know, single and married. That number is one in six.
• 13:44
  That's a crazy stat. It is a crazy stat. I mean, that's a lot of crazy stats that you've just shared. I feel like when I see stats like that,
• 13:52
  It just feels so overwhelming. Right. Like when you see the stats, you know, it's also the statistics around, you know, the money that goes to male founders versus female founders and these things that they don't ever seem to get any better. We just feel overwhelmed and then just like, how do you change this? Like it's systemically broken. What do we do when we think about government policy and we think about
• 14:21
  childcare or in the career kind of setting. Like there are so many things that need to change for those stats to change in a hugely impactful way. When you were working at the Australian Gender Equality Council, did you feel overwhelmed all the time? I did actually. That's a really good question. I don't think anyone's asked me that before. But I did because I just felt overwhelmed.
• 14:47
  hopelessness of it all. And the other thing that became blindingly obvious to me was that, you know, there are all these frightening facts and figures, and yet government wasn't doing anything. Corporates weren't doing anything. And even, you know, because I was managing the socials at the time, you know, the number of trolls who would jump on Twitter and go,
• 15:17
  super gap or even the gender pay gap. Like you women just need to work harder. Like it was, it was quite remarkable. And it was, it was a bit of a downer, you know, some days, but, but it was actually that inertia from government and corporate and et cetera, et cetera, that prompted me
• 15:41
  to really come up with a solution, which became super awards, right? So I'm sitting there. I'm feeling quite depressed on a daily basis by, you know, the state of inequality in Australia and the fact that no one's doing anything. And it wasn't for lack of...
• 16:00
  understanding either. You know, government had been at this, you know, had been presented with a paper to Treasury 20 years earlier saying women are stuffed when it comes to their superannuation because of their work-life patterns. Had anything changed since then? No. So I was looking at the ABS stats
• 16:21
  And if we think about the proportion of women aged 18 to 64, so in that accumulation, retirement, you know, superannuation accumulation phase of their lives, 40%, 40% are not in the workforce. Not one four, but four zero. Now, note that this number for men is closer to 24%.
• 16:48
  And note that this number is actually far higher than it is for other countries. So I thought, well, this trope, right, that government and super funds like to trot out, like, hey, women, just add more to your super. How? How?
• 17:09
  Show me the money tree and I'll show you a liar. So I thought, look, this is not so. Like we have to find a solution for women where they can add to their super, where we can leverage what they're doing, right?
• 17:26
  They're looking after the kids. They're looking after the elderly. They're looking, you know, doing domestic duties, et cetera, et cetera. None of that is going to change anytime soon, right? The value of unpaid work in Australia every year, if we put a dollar value on every hour of childcare and domestic duties, et cetera, et cetera, we'd add another 2.2 trillion, trillion with a T, dollars every year to the Australian economy. So I thought, well...
• 17:55
  okay, women are doing all these things. They've got lots of responsibility. You know, nothing's about to change. You know, like clearly policy is not changing anytime soon. How can we effectively monetize their responsibility in a way that contributes to their super? And so that was the genesis of Super Awards, which is a cashback platform where every time you spend with the, you know, 1,500 retailers,
• 18:24
  that retailer pays a portion of your spend into your superannuation account.
• 18:30
  That's so amazing. I love that. Before we kind of get into all the questions I have about starting and how you actually got started, I want to understand, you know, you started really with the problem first. And someone was, I was talking to an investor recently and they were like, you know, we look for founders who were just really passionate about the problem and they're not too caught up in the solution and the product that's on the back end because it's the problem that needs to drive the founder forward. Yeah.
• 19:00
  Was there other iterations of this idea before you got to, you know, what the app is now? Or was it kind of like that was the idea that came to you straight away, monetizing through a cashback kind of model? It was the idea that came to me straight away. But the reason that it did come to me straight away was because of my previous e-commerce experience.
• 19:24
  where I had been a retailer, like on the other side. And so I knew about affiliate marketing. And so I knew that this was a thing. A lot of people don't know it's a thing. Therefore, I was really drawing on the threads of my career, i.e. financial services and e-commerce and gender equality and fusing all those things together to create super awards.
• 19:51
  Oh my gosh, I love that. Love it. I love it how it's also like it's this culmination of a career. It's not just something that's come out of thin air. It's really this 25 years of learning that has then culminated in like your life's work now kind of thing. It really is. And, you know, when I started off my career in asset management, I was literally writing the brochures about
• 20:19
  you know, writing about salary sacrifice, et cetera, et cetera. And I thought, you know, I better drink the Kool-Aid. I better do this. So I started Sal Sacrifice at, I don't know, 26 or 27 or something and continued, continued, continued. And so now without putting numbers or ages on me, I am delighted to say that even though I've been out of corporate world for, what, 13 years or something now,
• 20:49
  I only just this year has my husband, who earns significantly more than me, has and has worked full time all the way through, only this year has the value of his superannuation overtaken mine. And it's because of all the salary sacrifice I did early on in the piece.
• 21:12
  Wow, that's so interesting. It works, ladies. It works. I also remember, I don't know if it's a thing anymore, I remember the government used to do salary sacrificing, like matching, like it was incentivised. Like 10 years ago, that's when I was aware of it. I don't know if that's still a thing today. Do they still do that? Yes, called the government co-contribution. So if you, I think the threshold is, um,
• 21:40
  $1,500 per year. So if you contribute $1,000 of your own money, your post-tax dollars into your superannuation, and you earn below a certain threshold, right? So if you contribute $1,000, then the government will tip in an additional $500. Or if you tip in $800, they tip in $400. Right.
• 21:59
  It's really amazing because if you think again for someone in their 20s that starts taking advantage of that now, you're getting free money that you're going to get back compounded over the next 30 years, which could be really a significant amount of money. I don't know what the simple math is and I'm not going to do it now. No, no, no. Let's not try to compound interest on the fly. Yeah. But I feel like it could be a big number. Exactly.
• 22:19
  Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And it is, I mean, there are a number of these government incentives. So that's the government co-contribution. There's another one called the LISTO for short. So the low income superannuation tax offset, which is another scheme. And then you've got spousal co-contributions as well. So there are actually a number of things the government has done. But the problem is,
• 22:49
  A, no one knows about them and B, no one cares about super. Yeah, I totally get it. But if you're interested and you're listening, please go and research them because they are, as you say, very beneficial and can make a huge difference in the long term.
• 23:05
  Yeah, I mean, for me, it just, I remember thinking like, this is a no-brainer. Like, of course, you want the money and that kind of thing, especially when you're, you know, kind of not earning a lot and you're in your early 20s. But free money from the government. Yes. Hello. Okay, so you have this idea for super rewards. What happens next? Like, how do you actually go from idea to, okay, I'm actively building this. I'm putting money towards this. I'm taking the steps needed to...
• 23:32
  whatever they are, find a technical co-founder, I don't know. So this wasn't my first rodeo. So I already knew potential investors. I already knew of a good technical team because I'm not tech. I know enough to be dangerous, but I'm not a coder. And so I knew a good technical team as a result of having been advisor on another startup.
• 24:03
  And so really the pieces for me were to do market research, which I did. And what does that look like? What did market research look like for you? It involved putting together a, you know, I don't know, like a 10-question survey or something, like quite detailed, and then finding 100 women who were,
• 24:29
  to respond to it. So it was a meaningful sample size. And it was asking them about, you know, how much super do you have? If there were a program where you could earn, you know, into your superannuation, would you use it? Yes, no. Where would you expect to find out about it? You know, all these sorts of questions. So that research combined with some qualitative research as well, really formed the backbone of the business plan. Mm-hmm.
• 24:58
  Meanwhile, I was getting quotes and talking extensively to this technical team around, okay, so if we, you know, what does this look like? How long would it take to build? Let's define a bit of a scope and so on and so forth. And then effectively presenting the pitching, right, to the investors saying, here's the vision.
• 25:28
  Here's the size of the problem, here's the solution. There aren't any competitors. This is what we think the metrics will look like and securing funding. And so from, I think, idea...
• 25:47
  No, from receiving funding. So remembering I'd been working on the business plan for three or four months at this stage and doing the research, et cetera, et cetera. I think from the time of funding through to Go Alive was about nine months.
• 26:01
  Okay. And is this, this is like 2019 from memory on the timeline. And so for you, when you kind of were in that stage of fundraising and you kind of, you know, you had some doors that were already like able to be opened and you kind of had a strong business plan, you had a really strong idea. What was the fundraising experience like for you, especially being like in Australia, it's a less mature market than someone like somewhere like the US, for example. What was your experience like?
• 26:32
  It was about who you know and people who can make intros and so on. So we had some yeses, which was obviously great, but we also had quite a lot of no's. And, you know, in the end it was relatively...
• 26:50
  simple, compared to other raises I've done subsequently. But on the face of it, you know, all the investors were like, well, yep, we can see the problem. Yes, we can see the solution. That's, you know, and you're the person to solve it. Yeah, you've got the financial experience, you've got the gender equality component. And you've, you know, obviously, you've got a demonstrated track record in building product and launching to market. So
• 27:18
  And so how much did you raise in that first round to kind of get the build done and get to market?
• 27:24
  That is a great question. And I want to say something like $550,000, $600,000, something like that. Okay, cool. AUD? AUD. Great. Okay. And so you get the funding, you start building the product. What's the actual business model? How do you monetize on your side? Yeah. So for every transaction that someone makes through the platform, we take a cut.
• 27:53
  Right. Okay. So for example,
• 27:56
  to simplify it for myself, someone is spending $1,000 on a laptop or a TV or something like that. They are going to contribute 3% or something into their super fund, and then you'll also take a percent or a small percentage at the same time. Correct. The retailer pays this gross. So if, in our example, let's say the gross commission is 3%. So that is $30.00.
• 28:25
  if I'm not mistaken, on a $3,000 spend. So as a company, we receive $30 and then we share that $30 with the user. Got it, got it, got it. And so for the company, what's their incentive to be on the platform? I know you said you had 1,500 retailers. Or maybe that's a stupid question.
• 28:46
  No, no, we're helping drive incremental sales. So if you're that laptop manufacturer's digital marketing team, you've got a budget and you can say, right, are we going to spend our marketing budget in PPC? Are we going to spend it in TikTok? Are we going to spend it on Meta?
• 29:05
  Or are we going to spend it in affiliate marketing? And increasingly, the affiliate market, because it is so trackable, because there is, you know, good attribution and so on, and the reporting's, you know, fairly streamlined, there's a really clear path to ROI for the retailer. Yeah.
• 29:25
  Okay, got it. And last question kind of in this same space, you know, when you were kind of, you're building, you've got the app side of thing kind of going along, I think you said nine months to launch from the idea, you've got kind of like the business model worked out. Are you during that same time already kind of like going door to door and knocking on these 1,500 retailers' doors? Yes, yes. So when we launched, we launched with 100 retailers, which was amazing.
• 29:54
  remarkable given that we weren't live. And we had some fantastic brand names when we launched. We had Apple, we had Luxury Escapes, we had eBay, we had Woolies because Woolies were doing cashback online at that time.
• 30:11
  And we just launched with this amazing retailer set. And it was just, it was fantastic. And it was because, as you say, I had been going to the retailers and saying, hi, I'm Pascal. Here's the dire state of gender inequality in Australia. And here's how we're going to solve it. And they were like, ooh. Because for them, they understood that it's women who make 80% of household purchasing decisions.
• 30:36
  Yes, absolutely. So your, you know, those retailers, they clearly understand they're like, yes, women have the kind of spending power. Yeah, exactly. How were you actually getting those meetings? Like just to dive one layer deeper, like, did you already have those connections? Are you literally just sending an email or a contact form or something to get a meeting? Or like, were you asking people for introductions? Like, I just want to understand, like, how do you actually get a hundred retailers on board? All of the above.
• 31:03
  It was cold emailing, stalking people on LinkedIn, using mutual connections. Yeah. Yeah.
• 31:14
  Got it. Okay. Let's talk about kind of like launch, go to market strategy and like marketing, because you've obviously, there's two sides to this puzzle. You've got the retailers who you've now got a hundred on board for launch, and now you need to go to market and find these people who want to have cash back into their super. So how do you do that?
• 31:36
  Yeah, so here is a really, really fascinating learning, or I hope it will be as fascinating for others as it was for me. So Super Awards was effectively designed for women, right? Open to any gender, I do need to clarify that, but effectively designed to help women resolve the gender super gap. So we spent months, and I do mean months,
• 32:04
  approaching what we thought were, you know, organisations or communities that would benefit from knowing about superannuation. So we were speaking to, I don't know, Single Mothers Australia or Unpaid Carers Australia or also, you know, groups like these where they were actually genuinely challenged by the lack of superannuation. Now what we have discovered is that those groups just do not care about superannuation.
• 32:34
  The reason being, firstly, because we were also engaging with a lot of NFPs, not-for-profits,
• 32:41
  They can be terribly political and there can also be a fair amount of inertia. But more broadly, the topic of super just isn't galvanising enough, right? There's no urgency. You know, these groups, they're looking to next month, to the next three months. You know, they can't see. And it's hard for all of us to see 10, 20, 30 years into the future.
• 33:08
  So what we discovered, so we had to kind of pivot in our marketing strategy because we were just, it was like crickets from these groups. Now, we were very fortunate at launch that we had, you know, like a good PR campaign on, you know, Channel 7 News and, you know, a bunch of other media outlets. And that started.
• 33:31
  got us our first wave of publicity and then we were able to, you know, take that and use that and play off it, et cetera. But kind of the game-changing moment for us was when we started talking to the super funds.
• 33:45
  Oh. Oh. Because it was the super, and I think within about nine months of launch, we had started a pilot partnership with one of the big super funds. And that was incredible because we found that the power of recommendation when it comes to super was transformative.
• 34:13
  So do you mean like a pilot program, like what does that actually look like? Do you mean like them emailing their users being like, hey, got it, okay. Do you remember, here's how you earn free super. Ah, okay. And what got them interested in saying yes, just, you know, just being like on board we support the cause?
• 34:34
  On board, we support the cause. By now, COVID had hit and their membership was really focused in that health and education demographic. So it was like, we know you're doing it tough right now and here's how we want to say thank you and so on.
• 34:52
  So, we did that and then we've done a number of other super fund partnerships since. So, I think we've done partnerships with six super funds or related industry since then. But then we hit a bit of turbulence on the marketing front. So, we had all these notches in our belt and then all the fallout from the Royal Commission started.
• 35:20
  I've only recently moved back to Australia, so you have to tell me as if I have no clue. Well, so the Royal Commission, which was, you know, 2018, 2019, found a number of things, particularly with superannuation, but...
• 35:36
  The subsequent legislation, which was handed down by APRA to the funds to implement, involved new legislation like stapling, so that idea of taking your superannuation fund from one job to another, right, so that you didn't end up with multiple super accounts. So there was this stapling had to be introduced. There was members' best financial interests where the,
• 36:02
  It wasn't a new concept, but now the scrutiny was, you know, held to where the super funds, every decision was like, okay, is this in a member's best financial interest, et cetera, et cetera. So basically the whole industry just got tied up in regulation. And the focus of that was it was all about performance and ops. And so anything that was member engagement or innovation or whatever came a distant second.
• 36:31
  Does that mean all the pilot programs that you were working on, those are the things that get dropped in that time? Got it. Okay, right. Shit. Yeah. But by now we had figured out this truth, which is that people who need super the most, like the unpaid carers, et cetera, they care about it the least. But conversely, those who need super the least care about it the most.
• 37:01
  So who needs it the least? The wealthy. And so we started doing partnerships with like financial advice platforms and...
• 37:12
  Like health insurance companies, like things like that? No, more like. Or do they have their own? They have different programs. But it was more about, you know, like a financial well-being or financial management platform or financial advice type platform, right? Right, okay. That's so interesting. Yeah. So, yeah. And besides which, you know, the super funds move with all the pace of a startled snail. Absolutely.
• 37:41
  Oh, my God. I'm banking that. That's coming up again. It is. And they work on timescales that are just not compatible with startup world.
• 37:52
  Right. And so then for a financial services company, let's say, what's the advantage to them? Is it offering something great? Yes. So enhancing their proposition. So let's say they're focused in this, you know, about financial wellbeing or DigiAdvice or whatever. This is another tool, another feature set in their offering. Got it. So it's very much like, even though it's
• 38:20
  to consumer and it is B2C, it's still very B2B built around these partnerships where they're able to offer their users something. So there's kind of like two models going on. I love that. And so how many people are using the app today? Is that public information?
• 38:37
  Yeah, we've got 26,000 signups, which we've not really done any, we've only ever done B2B marketing, like through the super funds and so on. And I will correct you that when we launched, we didn't have an app. We had a platform and it's only as soon as we went live, users said two things to us. When are you going to go in-store and when are you going to build an app?
• 39:04
  So it was only earlier this year that we built the app and we also have in-store now, right? So at long last we have what I would call a complete product. So in-store, do you mean like point of sale, marketing? No, no, no, no, no. So now currently you can purchase, you know, from eBay or, I don't know, the good guys or Pet Barn or whoever. Yeah.
• 39:35
  by coming to our platform and choosing a retailer through there or through our app or through linking your card online and going to one of the card-linked retailers. But when it comes to purchasing in-store, all you need to do is, well, if you've already linked your card on the platform, your credit or debit card, great, all you do is you go in-store to, I don't know, Pablo and Rusty's Cafe or whatever,
• 40:02
  you know chemist day and night chemist in crows it's wherever and all you do is you pay with your linked card so it's very like automated it's basically once it's set up it's great okay amazing and so what's the main driver that shifts the needle on downloads like how do you get a down like a thousand downloads in a day kind of thing is that through those partnerships where someone's just like blasting out their huge network and that's where you see a major spike
• 40:27
  Yes. So it's where a fund promotes us or like one of our partners promotes us or it's PR, you know, being on TV always helps or whatever it may be. But this sort of leads me into the next product announcement if we're ready to go there. Yes. Lead us in. Tell us. Lead us in. Okay. So I think I touched on it briefly before.
• 40:57
  which is the biggest, one of the biggest challenges with superannuation is the timescales involved. We just, it's so hard to know, you know, what we want in 10, 20, 30 years. The topic of superannuation is just so complex, right, right?
• 41:17
  And as a result, we find that the people who sign up to us currently, they're already quite superannuation literate because they know what super is, they know it's important, and they know they need more. So it's a very self-selecting audience member who comes to us. But back on super, the thing about super is you can't see or touch or feel it. It's like it's often the ether, right?
• 41:44
  And the number of conversations or questions I've answered is from presentations where people say, oh, is my superannuation mine? The answer is yes. So, you know, there is just so much financial illiteracy generally, but specifically on superannuation. So, but the biggest challenge, the biggest challenge.
• 42:07
  facing a user or facing even super funds and the people who work there and are supposed to be working for your betterment and your financial future is just the lack of urgency. If I don't contribute to my super today, what's going to happen? If I don't contribute this year, what's going to happen? But even if I do contribute, where's the pat on the back? Where's the well done for doing the right thing? It just doesn't exist.
• 42:37
  Yeah, and also maybe the, I think like that feeling of like, okay, well, if I'm to contribute, let's say I'm in my, I mean, I'm in my 30s, but let's say I'm in my early 20s. And it's like, cool, well, if I'm going to contribute $1,000, this, you know, $500 this month, whatever, what could that look like?
• 42:56
  Like what does that look like compounded? Like what's an idea that I can try to visualize whether that matters or not? Because $500 or $50, whatever it is, that definitely, you're not thinking about that. You'd rather probably it today than, you know, 40 years time. But if you were like that $40 or that $50 could actually equal if you're consistently investing, this could look like this and it's a big number, then you're like, oh, that's sexy.
• 43:26
  Yes, yes, but also tied into that, to what you just said, is the $40 on what? Because none of us know, none of us, how much we need for retirement. Are we talking $40 in $400,000? $40,000? $4 million? Just don't know.
• 43:53
  So it's so nebulous, right? But just mostly it's just not urgent. And I have seen this as I sit here and we're chatting. If I had a dollar for every time someone said, oh, my gosh, super awards, so amazing, I'm going to sign up straight away, and then they don't, I would be richer than Mark Zuckerberg.
• 44:16
  Like, honestly, it's just, and it's because it's not urgent. It's not on today's to-do list. So how do you create urgency? How do you create it onto today's to-do list? Tell us. Okay, so I'm going to give you an analogy. And this comes as a, you know, mother of three. Superannuation and promoting and talking about it is like a broccoli.
• 44:44
  Terribly good for us. I love broccoli. Okay. What do you? Brussels sprouts? I'm a veggie girl. But, yeah, I'm with you. Brussels sprouts. Brussels sprouts. Let's go for Brussels sprouts. Terribly good. Long, healthy life, right? But most people, doing accepted, will never make Brussels sprouts their first food of choice. So how do you get people eating Brussels sprouts? Brussels sprouts.
• 45:11
  Garlic butter. You smuggle it into the lasagna. Oh, yeah, even better. Because everyone loves lasagna. It's tasty, it's delicious. You know, there's never any arguments when there's lasagna on the table.
• 45:26
  So then your question to me would quite rightly be, okay, can you stop talking about food and just tell me what you mean? So how do we, what is the asset equivalent of lasagna? What do we all enjoy discussing? What are we all comfortable with? What's something that we think about, you know, certainly every week, if not every day? And the answer is mortgages. So now...
• 45:57
  We have rebranded and we are calling ourselves Grow My Money because with Grow My Money, you can make contributions through your earned cash back to your mortgage repayments or your superannuation or both. Oh, wow. That's clever. I love that. That's so interesting.
• 46:25
  You know what we haven't touched on? And I'm just going to quickly sidestep here. How does this all work from like, do you have to go through regulatory bodies and things like that to get this kind of thing approved? Or was it fairly straightforward? Oh, no, no, no. We had quite a few conversations with a number of peeps. So we operate as a corporate authorized rep under an Australian financial services license.
• 46:51
  Okay, got it, got it, got it. And just from a, I guess, a hygiene factor, probably your listeners would want to know that any cash back that, I don't know, the good guys or Pet Barn pays us is paid into an escrow account, which is monitored and operated by our AFSL provider.
• 47:10
  okay and that we as a business only get paid when all the ledgers reconcile etc etc because fundamentally pet bomb wants to know that the you know 30 dollars it's handing across the table isn't going to be refunded correct or is actually going to reach its destination yeah right and and that that dune is is going to earn her portion of this so um that's a yeah that's a big one
• 47:35
  Okay. Wow. Okay. So rebrand, Grow My Money. Grow My Money. The Grow My Money app. How does this launch into the wild? What's the new kind of like splashy, get it to market approach? A lot.
• 47:54
  Look, it's a combination of PR, a big digital marketing campaign, working with partners, you know, with our existing clients and prospect clients, working with our colleagues and so on, and really just going heavy on marketing.
• 48:16
  Focusing on those segments who are really struggling. So this year alone, and this was something I discovered in the research around this, there were roughly 880,000 mortgages that hit the mortgage cliff.
• 48:35
  which I don't know if... So basically what happened was during COVID, a lot of people refinanced and moved on to fixed rate, which rolled off this year, right? But COVID was different because we all had, you know, there was more disposable money, broadly speaking. We weren't going out, la, la, la. And it wasn't an issue. But now...
• 48:57
  The 2% loan has jumped to 6% or whatever it may be, and people are really, really struggling. So the economic conditions for us to launch this product are terrific. Yeah, a real sense of urgency. Yeah.
• 49:14
  A real sense of urgency because it's not just like there is what I call the mortgage monotony. Every month, every month, every month you're thinking about the mortgage. And, you know, if you can find, you know, and to be clear, like this is month to earn the cash back, you're going to be spending this money anyway. It's not just about discretionary spend. It's about...
• 49:37
  you know, buying the dog food. Joey needs new sneakers. You know, I have to organize a flight for my family member to go, you know, from Sydney to Brisbane, whatever it is, right? So you're spending this money anyway, but now you're just making your cash back go the distance. And it's helping contribute to next month's mortgage repayment.
• 50:03
  Yeah, and I can see that doing so well on kind of organic social, you know, like telling, like showing these numbers and what it looks like, even if it's compounded over a year on like the X, Y, Z terms of that mortgage. Like I just feel like that's very like. That's right. Like has the legs for virality and talking topics. Yes. Wow, that's interesting. Because with the mortgage, you're saving interest, right? But you're also saving time, like you're shaving. Yeah.
• 50:31
  days, months, whatever it might be, off your mortgage. Wow, that's crazy. I love that. Huge congratulations. Wow. What an innovative solution. I love it. Very cool. With broccoli and lasagna. With broccoli and lasagna. Love some veggies thrown in the mix. When you think about, you know, you as a tech founder, well, you know, you're non-technical but you're a tech founder, you're a woman in tech, what?
• 50:57
  And you've obviously seen lots of other businesses, different models, different companies. What do you think it is that makes an app or a product sticky? Like is it one kind of one specific feature or is it the overall problem that it solves? Like how does something become sticky that people are like, yes, I need this? Firstly, I think it has to be frictionless from a user experience perspective.
• 51:26
  And by that I mean both from a technical, but also user signposting and, okay, here's what you need to do now, et cetera. But I also think apart from the tech component, I think it really needs to be solving a problem. An app that I'm always using is Spriggy, which is pocket money for kids. Now, this is a problem for me because...
• 51:55
  If I don't use Spriggy, then my children, I have to drive to the shop with my child to get the thing, right? So by them having Spriggy cards, which I make sure I keep topped up, then they are able to get the thing. So it's giving me...
• 52:19
  Independence. It gives me time back in my working day. It means that I'm saving time. There's less frustration. There's fewer text messages and phone calls and so on and so on and so on.
• 52:37
  And I, yeah, I really love the Spriggy app. And it's very, but I think the other secret sauce I think in an app is, you know, do I feel good using it? Right. So Spriggy, like it's just so, A, it's so intuitive, but B, I feel good because I'm empowering my children to be independent,
• 53:04
  Another app that I love and I'm always using is my AIA Vitality app. It's basically a wellness app. So the more steps I take, the more exercise I do, the more sleep I get, et cetera, et cetera. I get points. And then when I reach points thresholds, then I get both a weekly reward, which is a weekly
• 53:29
  which I, you know, that I can convert into, I don't know, $5 at Woolies or $5 at Uber or whatever. But as I move through the status levels of the program, then I get a shopping reward, which I can spend on Amazon, I can spend at Meijer, I can spend at Woolies or what have you. So I'm always logging my steps here.
• 53:53
  And I'm always, you know, but this morning I got my COVID booster and I was prompted to do that because my Vitality app said you can get another thousand points if you go and get your COVID booster. I'm like, oh, yes, because then I can claim, you know, my $200 shopping reward. OK. And so off I went.
• 54:14
  Oh, wow, that's so interesting. Yeah, both really great points and great apps that I don't know. I'm definitely going to look into them. I love that. If you were to start a new app tomorrow, something totally different, you know, you were bootstrapping and you wanted to kind of get to 1,000 users or 1,000 true fans as fast as possible, how would you get there? What would you do to get those 1,000 true fans?
• 54:41
  I would not build an app first off. I mean, because let me tell you that proper app build is freaking expensive.
• 54:53
  And there's a lot of people out there going, oh, I can, you know, build you something in four weeks and blah. No, no. A proper at build is in the vicinity. Obviously it depends on your product and your sector, et cetera, et cetera, but a proper at build is with good people who know what they're doing and have, you know, have the chops, et cetera, is in the vicinity of $150,000. Let us be clear. Okay.
• 55:25
  So you've got to know that you are going to have customers on the other side. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. So if I wanted to hack my way to 1,000 users without spending 150 grand, which I think is a very fair question, how would I do it? I would build some Envision screens, right, which mimic an app
• 55:51
  And I just didn't, you know, react native to understand where users fall out, where users get stuck. Do they take the actions that I wanted them to take? And then as a measure, this is absolutely what I would do. As a measure of whether I thought I could commercialize this, I would get people to pay.
• 56:22
  something, anything, $5, whether it's $10 or like on a monthly basis or as a one, it doesn't matter. The hardest thing is to get people to hand money over. But if they love your product and if they understand the value that it is going to add, bring to their lives, then they will pay money.
• 56:47
  I love that. That is such a great piece of advice. MVP it, minimum viable product, pre-sell it, see if people will give you their credit card details. It's one thing for people to say, yeah, I love that. I'd use it. And then another thing for people to say, here's $5 or $50 or whatever it is. 100% agree with you. Love that. And don't ask your friends. And don't ask your friends. Needs to be the outer network. Exactly. These needs to be not your best cheerleaders and supporters.
• 57:16
  Oh my God, I love that. That was such great advice.
• 57:23
  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.
• 57:48
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• 58:10
  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.