Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / Why a 'No' in business doesn't mean 'No' forever with Sapphire Bates, Founder of the membership platform for women, The Coven

Transcript

Why a 'No' in business doesn't mean 'No' forever with Sapphire Bates, Founder of the membership platform for women, The Coven · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Episode 18 with Sapphire Bates.
• 0:13
  Running a business can be really isolating. And when Sapphire Bates went through that sense of loneliness herself while running her first business, she decided to do something about it and start The Coven. It's an online community for female founders and freelancers where you subscribe to a monthly plan that suits your budget and gets you access to workshops, events, online resources, and a highly engaged support network so you don't have to do it alone.
• 0:38
  Right now, she has around 1,000 paying members and another 2,500 on a waiting list to join. She's also just launched an amazing course on how to start and grow a membership-driven platform, and it's full of the good stuff. She has a magazine, she does speaking events, and she's featured all over the internet.
• 0:56
  We chat about what it's been like to build her dream business from the ground up and the importance of community, taking learnings from her previous business to create her new venture and the ins and outs of running a successful platform.
• 1:09
  And while we're on the topic of courses, I want to mention that our very first technical course is live. The Ads MBA by Female Startup Club is a course we've been working on for the last few months to master the technical skills needed to run profitable Facebook and Instagram ads all by yourself.
• 1:26
  We've partnered with leading performance marketing agency Amplifier to create the best online program out there. You'll learn everything you need to know from winning ad creatives to identifying your target KPIs, implementing retargeting funnels and deploying scaling strategies to increase your revenue to upwards of seven figures per year.
• 1:47
  It includes six modules with 30 plus video lessons that will be updated and added to ongoing. And this is just the beginning for us. We have so many big plans of what's to come. But what we're most proud of is that $30 from every sale is donated towards girls secondary education through the Malala Fund.
• 2:06
  a charity that champions every girl's right to 12 years of free, safe, quality education and is working for a world where every girl can learn and lead. To learn more, head to femalestartupclub.com. Let's jump into this ep. This is Sapphire Bates for Female Startup Club. Do you want to tell me how you got started with The Coven and what the idea kind of came from and a bit about your background with the florist business? Yeah.
• 2:34
  Yeah, so I originally had a flower studio before I started The Coven, and I did that for several years. That was like my first business. That was the first sort of exploration into being a business owner. And I purely went into flower arranging and floristry because it's the only thing I really had any skills in. I didn't have any background in anything else. It was the only really option of a business for me. So yeah.
• 3:03
  I did it, but I'd never really loved flowers. I find actually making flowers quite boring. So I got tired very quickly. I loved the business side of things, but just absolutely hated being stuck in the studio making things all day long. I wanted to be at my laptop growing the business. So for quite a long time, I was really aware that I wanted to move on and that I needed to keep a good idea of
• 3:31
  a good sort of list of all of my ideas and keep seeing if any of them were profitable and tangible kind of ideas. So the idea that I kept coming back to was like a pain problem for myself. So whilst I ran this business, I was just incredibly, incredibly lonely. I worked by myself. We had freelancers come in and out, but essentially I was the only member of staff. So I was in the studio all day long by myself. I go home and be by myself.
• 4:01
  alone time. And that was actually quite difficult. Yeah. So I wanted to be able to bring people together. But equally, there's so many events you can go to and so many great things. And although there still is, and there was at the time that I launched, well, come up with the idea for this and started launching it.
• 4:20
  But the problem for me was that I didn't have the time. So, you know, I could understand and appreciate that these events were amazing and that you could connect with loads of great people if you could go. But I was working every single day of the week and I didn't know what time I was going to finish work. And if the work wasn't done, I couldn't leave it to go to some event to meet people. I just didn't have the time. So I wanted something that was virtual and that could bring anybody from anywhere together and you could literally check in.
• 4:46
  whilst you're working or in between work or after work when it's like midnight and you're shattered. And I imagine as well, it's a hard business to scale the flower business compared to what it is for a virtual business, right? Yeah, I mean, it's doable. The first was making money, like good money. Yeah.
• 5:09
  Not as much as the coven makes, but it could have got there. But it's a much slower progress and it needs much more investment. So essentially the point that I'd got to was that really I needed to invest about 50 grand into it to take it to the next stage. Because we had all the people there. I had so many inquiries for the following years. I was turning work away, but I didn't have the capacity or the space whatsoever.
• 5:34
  or the staff to fulfill it. And what I really needed was a cash injections that we could get a bigger space straight away, we could get staff, get them trained, and then move forward and work out I could take on like a studio manager, I could sort of move everything forward and work on scaling it. So it's
• 5:53
  I don't know that it's harder to scale, but it's just a totally different ballgame. It takes a lot more cash to scale it. And that wasn't something because I didn't love it and I didn't like doing it. It wasn't something I necessarily wanted to throw that money into. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah. So then I just decided I'd give the company a go. I did it at the same time as I had the florist. So that was like a very stressful eight months. I worked every single day and I'd literally finish in the studio at like 10 p.m. at night.
• 6:22
  and then go and work on the coven and try and get that off the ground. Yeah. And then I ended up just doing the coven full time. And so in the early days when you started the coven, how did you sort of garner your initial kind of audience and your initial community really? And like did you know these women already that you kind of brought in or did you just start talking about it on Instagram? Yeah.
• 6:48
  Yeah, I started with nothing. I think a lot of people presume because I had about 12,000 followers on our flower studio account, that I'd just be able to shift people over. But that's not unfortunately how it works, because it's a totally different industry. So I also naively in the beginning, the first kind of month or two, when I got the idea, I was thinking, oh, like, maybe I can just shift people over. But then in actual fact, these are all people that want wedding and event flowers. They don't.
• 7:12
  You know, they're getting married. They don't have any interest in starting a business and they don't want to follow this venture. And even if they followed across and followed, they're not going to purchase because they don't have a business. They don't want a business. That's not what they do. So I essentially started from scratch. I think I had about 800,000 followers go over from the 12,000 and the rest was built through just hard graft on Instagram.
• 7:35
  lots of connecting with people. So I had so many honest, genuine conversations with people, almost like what people use bots for now. I was genuinely doing day to day through the night, trying to meet people and chat with them, go for coffee, help them, get to know them and build up these kind of relationships with people so that when I launched, I had these people that not necessarily going to buy the product but cared and wanted to support it and engage with it and tell other people about it.
• 8:03
  Yeah, and really like shout about it to their friends and pass on that word of mouth, which is obviously key to launching a business as well. And when you were in that sort of early days, did you have to invest any money into growing it or were you just kind of like doing the flower business, seeing how this would grow and then kind of waiting until it was big enough to take the jump out of the flower business? Yeah.
• 8:26
  No, I, yeah, I was investing money. Any money that I made from the flower studio that I didn't need to put towards eating or paying my bills went into the coven. So it's self-funded, which is month by month, whatever I could put in, I put in to grow it. And that went into everything, building the platform, creating a brand, advertising, everything, all just sort of bit by bit with what I could, which was essentially my wages and the extra profit that the flower business made.
• 8:54
  And then from then, when you kind of started the business with growing the community on a smaller scale, at what point were you like, oh, I'm going to, did you always have the idea that you would launch the membership site or did that kind of like evolve as you went along in the process? That was from day one. So day one, we launched as a membership platform. So in the lead up, I had a free Facebook group that people could join. But even since the eight months before that I created it, it says in the intro, I'm
• 9:22
  This is going to be a paid part of a paid membership very soon. You're welcome to use this as much as you want up until that point. But just so that we're totally transparent and everyone's totally aware, this isn't going to remain free forever. This is part of a platform that I'm physically building elsewhere.
• 9:37
  but I want people to be able to use it whilst, whilst I do the other stuff. So that was always the plan. I am very business minded. So I wasn't, I don't, I think, I think it's fine if you, depends what you want from a business. I wanted that business to support me and to grow and be,
• 9:54
  profitable and for me to have an income from so I went into that knowing that when I came up with the idea I did a business plan I did all my financial forecasting I spent a lot of time doing all the market research and really planning everything out I took everything that I'd learned from my first business and used that to make really knowledgeable decisions and kind of really thought through it's always a risk but kind of very thought through risks so that that
• 10:21
  was always going to hopefully be something that worked. I mean, it could still, you know, things can still fail, but I went into it with as much planning and foresight as possible. And around the launch period, when you first started, how many people came on to you as like a paying member in the beginning? Yeah.
• 10:39
  250. Holy shit, that's so cool. Wow, amazing. And I've been reading some things like about you in the press, like with your article on Forbes and I saw that on your website you've had press with brands like the Huffington Post and that kind of thing. And was that all from you just going through and reaching out and getting to know people or were people coming and knocking on your door straightaway being like, hey, I saw your platform on Instagram? Yeah.
• 11:06
  or Facebook? About 80% of all of our press is natural. So they come to us. 20% is outreach. So initially I did it myself.
• 11:19
  Then I took on a PR manager and gave that to somebody's role to do that. And then they have since moved on to focus on their business full time. And it's kind of back in my hands again. And that's basically reaching out and pitching to people. So knowing how to write a good pitch, how to write a good press release and using that is not something that I would spend all of my time on, but I might spend an hour a week nurturing those relationships that might get me press and doing like a little bit of outreach to editors and what have you.
• 11:49
  Mm, so cool. And do you think press is a big contributor to you getting the new community members coming in and joining up to the membership now or it's word of mouth? What do you think the biggest driver of fluke? Because I know you have now a thousand members, but you have a huge wait list. How do you think the people are coming to you? Marketing. Marketing.
• 12:10
  Just word of mouth? Good being clever. No, I don't think quite. I think it's planned marketing. So it's having a really good marketing plan and strategies in place that bring people to you. So press doesn't get you the coverage you think it's going to. I think you imagine that when you get mentioned on Forbes, for example, that that's going to bring thousands of people in front of you or hundreds of thousands of people. That doesn't happen. I think from any of the press we've had, the most we've ever picked up is about 100 followers. And usually it's way less.
• 12:40
  you know, we might get five or six followers from, say, the Forbes piece. It raises awareness. So, if those people come across you again and see maybe like a paid advertisement or they see an influencer talking about you and your brand, then they might be like, oh yeah, I think I read about them in Forbes. Then you've kind of already warmed them towards your product, but
• 13:03
  It doesn't essentially bring people to you, especially if it's print, like if it's print press. So if you're in things like magazines and national newspapers, most people don't take enough interest to read about you, say, on the train and then actually go and look you up on their phones. They more need to bump into you again and then be like, oh, yeah, I know who these people are.
• 13:27
  It's kind of like kudos. Yeah. I think they say it's like six, you need six touch points before someone can like buy your product. And so what is the biggest driver for your new subscribers then? Is it through like paid advertising on Instagram or is it through an email database? How do you think you find the new audience members?
• 13:46
  Mainly through social media. But that's about we, everything is strategic, everything that we do. I say we do, it's like me and my assistant, but everything is planned. You know, we, everything that we post, everything that I talk about on there, you know, all the time that is spent on there is spent strategically with a marketing plan.
• 14:08
  everything has been thought out in order to get people wanting to sign up. And just talking about what we do, like I talk about what the membership is and I post content that people want
• 14:21
  engage with and want to read or watch or listen to. And that brings people, but it's essentially social media as our main driver. We don't do a whole lot of paid advertising because I don't like to put a lot of money in it. It's quite expensive per person to convert, but we do a little bit of that just so that we know that we're bringing in a little bit of a new audience with that and just extending our reach a little bit. But most of it is natural engagement through social media.
• 14:49
  Yeah, such a cool like community that you've got that it's really easy for it to kind of be nurtured. Well, not easy, sorry, but it's easy for people to come in and be like instantly engaged and want to stick around. And with the podcast, did you launch that in the beginning or was that kind of a bit later on that you added that into the mix? We launched that last
• 15:14
  April or May, I think. So just under a year after we launched that. And again, that for us is another marketing stream and another revenue stream through podcast sponsorship. So it just seemed like a good natural progression. It's something that I like doing and thought would be quite fun, which is always quite important to me. I don't want to be too tired to doing things that I don't like if I don't have to. So it's just sort of a natural kind of progression.
• 15:44
  And I saw you just started a new podcast as well. Yeah, so that's just something I'm doing with my friend, which is just quite nice to do. It's sort of the only thing. I do a bit of writing on the side for people like Courier Magazine. And then this is just something else that I get to do that is non-coven related. That's just quite fun. Yeah, for pleasure.
• 16:03
  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I love that. And I guess as well, like as the audience picks up there, they'll be interested in you as a person and what else it is that you're doing and you're working on, which is also quite nice. We were talking the last time on email about your magazine that you just launched. That's so cool. Do you want to talk a little bit about that and how that came about and then how you go about producing a magazine? Sure.
• 16:29
  So I decided in January this year that I wanted to do a magazine. It's something that had come up in kind of November, December time last year as a potential idea in one of our sort of staff meetings. And it kind of stuck with me and I really liked the idea. But I knew that print magazines are notoriously difficult to make profit from and it can be quite tricky. And it's something that I was toying with because, to be honest, normally in the business,
• 17:00
  That isn't going to be profitable. Everything we do is normally really fought through. And the idea is that everything we add will only add that extra work and that extra effort if that's going to bring the return to the business. Otherwise, we could just focus on the things we do already that make profit.
• 17:16
  But it's something that I really wanted to do. Like, as I just said, like earlier, I love writing anyway. And this would mean that I got to play editor, which is something I've never done before. And basically couldn't stop thinking about it. So one day in January, before I'd even like really told any of the team or anything, I
• 17:31
  I just put it on Instagram that we were going to do a magazine, um, chose the name of it and kind of went with it. So yeah, we decided to do it. Um, we did it in yeah, like just under like three months, I think it come out or two and a half months. We did it from like idea to print arriving at my house. Um, so it was very, very quick. It was like a very stressful few months. It's,
• 17:57
  a lot more complicated to launch a magazine than I potentially initially expected, but it was fun. We did make a profit from it. I mean, we didn't make much of a profit from it because obviously we're in a global pandemic and that's massively affected what sales I expected. So I am currently in my flat and there are honestly so many magazines here. But yeah, it's been a really
• 18:27
  notoriously difficult to make money from and kind of try and examine it. So a lot of what I was doing in the weeks when we came up with it was working out all of the numbers and thinking, okay, because print is just so expensive. And then looking at all and just being like, okay, how, how can we do this? Like, how can we make this an affordable product? And how can we do it? The main aim that we decided we would be happy with is if we cover costs. So if we cover all of our costs,
• 18:55
  in producing it, and that includes paying writers, paying my editorial assistant, designer, everything included in that that possibly could be included as a cost covered, then we'd be happy. Yeah, because essentially that's,
• 19:12
  for us another marketing avenue so it's another way that we get in front of potentially a wider audience is something that people can enjoy and consume whether or not they want to sign up to the membership um but it's also spreading the word about what we do and getting people aware of our brand as a whole which is obviously one of the things we constantly want to be doing is reaching new people and wider audiences so yeah it was it was really interesting it's yeah it was quite tricky yeah
• 19:39
  What were the challenges that you hadn't kind of foreseen with producing the magazine? Um. Or the unforeseen costs that you hadn't really factored in and then you were like, shit, more expensive than I thought. I think when it's things like the pure cost of having something printed is very expensive. So that cost us thousands of pounds. Yeah.
• 20:04
  It adds up staff costs too, you know, like I can't do everything myself. So I've had a designer designing everything. I had an editorial assistant who would help me with proofreading everything. We'd be fact checking everything. We'd be editing everybody's articles and submissions and et cetera, et cetera. So make sure that everything was perfect. That really adds up. So again, it was thousands of pounds on staff costs.
• 20:29
  And just the amount of time, I think it takes, everything's got to be checked and checked and checked again and fact-checked and proofread by numerous people because you can literally, you'll be going, like the night before we went to print, we noticed one of the pictures, which was only a small square on one of the pages, was upside down and nobody had noticed it. And like four of us had been through it so many times. And I just happened to be going through it again before I went to bed. And I was like, fuck, this picture's the wrong way around.
• 20:58
  How has no one noticed this? And it all has to happen in quite, that stressful bit all happens in a really short period of time once your writers are given their deadline, once they come back, and hopefully have come back on time of the deadline, but most people don't.
• 21:14
  you've then only got a limited amount of time to get that edited, get any changes back to them that you need edited again, proofread, checked by numerous people over to the designer. So the designer can create the layout and the page and make sure it all fits. Then it might come back to you or your editorial assistant to cut it again.
• 21:32
  If it doesn't fit the layout that you wanted or adding to it, which then has to go back to the writer if you need more. It just goes on and on. Then finding the right pictures. Sometimes the pictures that you're supplied with aren't good enough. They're not high res. They're not a good enough quality. And you've got to go and find more. So then it's like, do we use a stock image or have we got time to go and shoot something? It's all quite a lot of stuff that happens in a very small amount of time.
• 21:59
  And yeah, it's just quite stressful. I think the initial period as well, where your money is really going to come from a magazine is through advertising. That's what's going to bring you in the money. The magazine, we sell it for £5 and over 50% of that is our cost. So we make very little per issue, which is quite normal. So your money comes from advertising. But when you're just starting out and you don't know how many you're going to sell,
• 22:28
  getting people to pay the money that you need for the advertising is like the tricky bit. And that's kind of where your profit like could lie or not. And do you think, are you going to keep doing the magazine? Do you think you'll do another issue? Yeah, I think we're going to do it again. We really liked it. I love doing it. It was well received despite the current climate. So I think we definitely want to try again when things are on more solid ground and see how that works and
• 22:58
  Yeah, it's a good one. Essentially for us, we're just going to go with it for as long as we cover our costs. Cover the costs. So as long as we're sort of easily covering costs in the sense that it's not this panic, every single issue that we haven't made enough and that I'm going to have to sub thousands to cover it from the business, then I'm happy to keep going with it. It doesn't need to be a huge moneymaker, but it's just something that we like doing. And again, it's part of that marketing plan and that sort of overall strategy.
• 23:28
  Mm. So I'm just trying to think about all the different revenue streams that you have going on in the business. You have the membership site, you've got the podcast, you've got the magazine now, you've got coaching as well. You do one-to-ones. Yeah. You also host events. Do you get money through the events as well with sponsors? Yeah. That's amazing. So many different avenues. What else have you got going on? So yeah, so sponsors with the events as well, it's like sponsorship and
• 23:55
  tickets so the events aren't free, they're discounted for cover members and higher price for the public.
• 24:01
  but they still bring in money and then yeah, any sponsors that we get as well. And then we do a lot of advertising as well. So we do a lot of B2B. So obviously our membership, well, our membership technically is B2B because it's other business owners or startups, but essentially we look at our membership members as our B2C. And then we do a lot of advertising with other companies and brands that want to either advertise to our members or they want us to advertise to like
• 24:31
  That can look like event sponsorship. That can look like advertising in our newsletter that's like private and goes out to our members. That can be like social media campaigns and kind of more influencer advertising. There's quite a lot that goes on within advertising that brings us in. I mean, it doesn't currently because nobody's spending money on advertising. But usually, pandemic aside, that's a large proportion of our revenue.
• 24:59
  Do you think is the membership site the primary source of the revenue or is it the sponsorship? At the moment, the membership is the main one. But that, if you look at projections, is likely to change. It could very much be that as we grow, they kind of feed each other. The bigger the membership gets or the more well-known it gets, even if you don't necessarily aren't taking on loads more members, the bigger the advertising will
• 25:26
  revenue streams from that will grow because the more brands will pay and the more that they want to advertise to your audiences and work with you. So I would imagine in the future that that will grow to equal a similar amount to what we make from the membership. But at the moment, the membership is the leading revenue stream. But obviously having multiple is a really sensible thing in a business.
• 25:50
  Do you think for anyone listening and also myself included, do you think in the beginning when you're sort of like just starting out and you have sort of a smaller audience, how would you go about pitching to get brands partnershiping, partnershiping, partnering with you either from a marketing perspective or like through like a monetary perspective?
• 26:12
  funds perspective. Do you have any advice on kind of the steps you would go about? Is it just out just general outreach and putting yourself out there? Or do you have any advice you can share? It's learning to pitch and learning to pitch well. Quite often, a pitch can make or break an opportunity. If you write a really terrible pitch, a brand will write you off before you
• 26:40
  and a really good pitch can get you much further than you think it can. You know, you might get that conversation, whereas if they just looked at your figures alone, that conversation might not have happened. I do think in the beginning, in the beginning we didn't have that much advertising. It wasn't a huge revenue stream for us, and it wasn't my focus. I kind of think you need to really nail...
• 27:02
  The main thing that you're doing initially, so before you try and split off into all these different revenue streams, make sure you're really nailing each one. It's far better to do one really well than six kind of half-heartedly. So that might look like really growing that product, really working and spending a long time on your marketing to ensure that that grows. Definitely the first three quarters of the first year, but obviously we've grown significantly.
• 27:28
  quite quickly. We haven't yet. It's been like quite a big growth for us. So it's happened quite quickly. But the first three quarters of the year, that first year, there was definitely no advertising and no sort of revenue streams outside of events and the membership. And what do you think when you go into, when you were ready to start pitching brands, what do you think went into a good pitch versus something that you felt, oh, maybe that wasn't, it didn't work?
• 27:57
  Short and sweet. The best pitch is like, obviously, I've also been on both sides of this. So I have people pitching to me to be in our magazine and I pitch to work with brands and I pitch to other magazines and newspapers and stuff to write for them. So a good pitch is short and sweet. It's to the point. Always presume that the person that you're pitching to doesn't have very much time.
• 28:20
  And they don't want to give you very much their time because they don't know if you're worth it yet. So you always want to say the most in the least amount of words. A pitch really should be about what you can do for somebody else as opposed to about you. People can get very sidetracked by giving people the whole breakdown of their business and, you know, all this bit of information. This is our story. This is our founder. This is the founder's story. This is where we're at now. This is all the great stuff we do. And you've already taken up so much of the email.
• 28:49
  It's almost like your elevator pitch, your really short, snappy, this is what we are. The Coven is a worldwide online membership platform for female founders and freelancers.
• 28:59
  So it's like really short, snappy who we are. It's what I'm asking really, really openly what I want from you. That's usually in my title. So it might be like podcast sponsorship, question mark. It might be social media advertising, question mark. It's to the point. You don't sometimes people don't want to say it because you don't want to put people off and you don't want to be like, oh, I don't want to be too brash. But actually.
• 29:24
  I'm very much, I mean, I'm a very blunt person anyway. So my pitches tend to be quite blunt as well. I'm very to the point, like this is what it is. You obviously want to be convincing. And also importantly is building relationships with the people you're pitching to. So getting in front of the right person in the first place and understanding that person that you're pitching to, whether that's the individual or the brand. So who are the brand? What do they usually do? Who have they worked with previously?
• 29:51
  All these different things can help you to know how to pitch and how to angle it. I think just practice, like not being afraid of saying no.
• 29:58
  And remembering that the brands that say no initially could say yes in the future. It's all about maintaining that relationship. If they say no, you can ask for feedback and you can ask to stay in touch with them. That doesn't mean emailing them every month, but it might mean that in a year's time, you go back to them with a fresh pitch that is, you know, that you've learned from all these other pitches and all these successful pitches and you try again and you might then be the person that actually they want to work with. Yeah, absolutely.
• 30:25
  I want to talk a little bit about obviously what's going on now with the current climate. And we spoke a little bit about this before we got started, but kind of how it's impacted your business, what you've sort of noticed in the community, especially. And if you've had to innovate and come up with new ideas to keep bringing money in, basically. It's obviously a very shit time. We...
• 30:51
  have definitely seen an impact. We've lost thousands of pounds. I've cut people's hours down. I've had to cut back on our expenditure, but ultimately we will survive this. I mean, touch wood.
• 31:07
  But as far as as things currently look, we should come out the other side. But we are obviously having to do damage control on that. And it's ultimately just something that I've had to accept that we're not going to make that much money over the next couple of months. But what we do need to do is keep our heads above the water.
• 31:24
  And the main thing for us right now is to be as useful as possible to those members that are able to afford to stay and want to remain. We just need to be helping them as much as we can because that's really what they need. So going above and beyond, there's lots of things we've added for free as extras over the next few months, purely just to help those people and to try and.
• 31:44
  you know, get people through the situation. I can't really speak for other businesses. I know that people are struggling, but whilst people are struggling, there are businesses that are thriving. And I think that's the way in any kind of situation, anything like this, there's always going to be clever people that are able to profit through things in a way that hopefully works and is nice, which is always good to see. I think it's important that we keep spending money where we can.
• 32:12
  to keep obviously the economy sort of moving. But yes, it's a pretty crap time. We aren't pivoting as such, but things like our issue two of the magazine that we would have been working on now has been delayed into a time when it's a little bit financially safe for us to throw thousands at it. And yeah, just things like luckily, a lot of my team are really lovely and understanding and are happy to have their hours cut a little bit, which means I can keep everybody and ensure that nobody has to be let go.
• 32:41
  But there's not, yeah, we're not pivoting as such. I've got new things coming very soon. I don't, when does this podcast go out? You can go out whenever you want. So you can talk about it and then I can post it after the fact if you want. I don't know when it will be launching. We'll come back to that. Okay. There's new things happening which have been in the pipeline for ages anyway. And it's just given me the headspace and the time to,
• 33:08
  to focus on getting them done. Normally I'm running around like a headless chicken, trying to keep up with everything. And I'm trying to embrace everything being a little bit slower, um, to do these new things that we talked about for ages, but haven't been able to make happen. Yeah.
• 33:25
  Yeah, I think when I speak to people, that's like the recurring theme that I'm hearing from everyone and including myself as well. I've found it's quite nice to just slow down a bit and take the pace to a different level. And I think for me, my actual inner introvert is really thriving, not having to be super social and busy and doing all of the things and the pressure to do all of the things. So, yeah, I've found it's been quite nice, actually, in that regard.
• 33:55
  Yeah, I agree. And I imagine like there's obviously people who would be listening who are in the opposite boat where they're really struggling to be for sure alone and inside and not being able to be in touch with friends and family as much as they would usually be. But, yeah, for me it's been quite actually nice. It's really difficult. I mean like I am starting to struggle a little bit. Like I'm isolating by myself. So I've been on my own for nearly a month.
• 34:24
  And that's quite a long time to not have sort of, let's say physical connection, but like to not just, you know, physically met anybody or seen anybody or chatted to anybody in person feels like a really long time. But so I totally know if anyone's like listening and they're like, oh my God, I'm struggling. And I know that a lot of people are struggling in many other ways, like mental health can be playing up. It can just be struggle financially right now for a lot of people, which just puts
• 34:52
  a really horrible strain on things and lots of people that might be ill. So yeah, it's, it's, it's basically a really crap time. But I think that as individuals, we just have to, like you said, you know, if you can find the good in your own personal situation, whatever that might be, however small that might be, then that's quite important to just kind of lean into that and embrace. So like I'm slowing down, I'm trying to watch lots of TV and things like that, which is stuff I don't normally get time to do.
• 35:21
  And kind of, yeah, sort of see that as a positive and what is overall a pretty shit situation. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I usually ask every woman that I speak to six quick questions. It's like a quick fire round. But before I start that, I just want to ask if you have any advice you'd like to share for other women who might be wanting to start a new project or a new brand, especially focusing on the community and that side of things.
• 35:50
  Okay, so I think preparation is key in starting anything. You want to take risks. You have to take risks as an entrepreneur, but you want to take really calculated risks. So this is like doing all of the boring things
• 36:02
  prep work, which is things like your business plan. Nobody has to read the business plan. You don't have to take it anywhere, but you need to do it so that you personally really understand how your business is going to make money, how long that could take, what the costs are going to look like. So that if it doesn't start making that money, you know what the money you're going to have to cover is going to be. What just every part of your business is going to look like, what your brand is going to be like, because that's so important. And then.
• 36:31
  Other really important prep things like market research. I did so much market research and marketing.
• 36:38
  people kind of shy away from market research. People have a bad habit of believing in their own idea, which is great, but it's so important to check that other people care because you can really imagine, especially if you solve a pain point for yourself. So like with me feeling lonely with the coven and thinking, oh my God, this is something someone else might want. It was so key for me to make sure that that actually was something else that people wanted
• 37:03
  as opposed to just presuming putting all the money into it, putting my heart and soul into the branding that I wanted and not checking that any of this aligned with the people that I wanted to sell to. So that was super important. And I think the prep is actually the most important bit. I'm really understanding what you're going to be doing and,
• 37:22
  As you're going along, doing all of the boring stuff. So after you launch, always keeping an eye on your figures. How much money have we made? How much do we spend? Because you'll always spend more than you think you will. You know, what's our marketing plan? Is that working? What's been the return on me spending all this time on X platform? Or what was the return on investing in paid advertising? Always really watching the.
• 37:45
  and observing the results of everything that you do is really key. And I just think don't shy away from the boring stuff, even if you're not that confident with it, just sort of get stuck into it and yeah, give it a go. I mean,
• 37:59
  I don't obviously, I don't know when the podcast is coming out, but I do have, if you're someone who's looking to launch a membership platform, then I do have a new program coming. I can't say that much about it yet because it hasn't been announced anywhere. This is probably the most I've said. But if you keep an eye out on our Instagram or our website, I do have something specifically, which is taking everything that I've learned and kind of expanding on basically what I've spoken about in this podcast. Um...
• 38:24
  How we've made money, how we made six figures in a year, how all of this stuff has happened. We've kind of taken or I've taken that and I've put that into a new kind of I'm calling it a program because it's kind of a nice mix of coaching and learning and things. But that's coming out soon. So that might be a picture. Sounds fab. We'll bookmark it in the diary. Thank you. OK, so six quick questions. Number one is what's your why? Why?
• 38:53
  To help people grow profitable and scalable businesses. Number two is what's the number one marketing moment or strategy that made your business really pop and kind of drove bulk revenue, bulk customers, whatever you'd like to? I think knowing our branding, so knowing exactly what that looks like in terms of the words that we use, the colors that we use, absolutely everything.
• 39:19
  We are very strict on that and that makes a huge difference. And then secondly, showing up on our social media and our marketing channels. I'm not afraid to show my face. I'm not afraid to talk and be honest and connect with people. And that makes a huge difference. Number three is where do you hang out to get smarter? Oh, all over the place. Head in a lot of books.
• 39:43
  I have a business coach. I have a life coach. I go to kind of classes and courses and all different things that I can when I can fit it in. Essentially, I run with the idea that I never know, you know, I'm never going to know everything and I can always learn more. And just knowing that anybody that you meet can always have the opportunity to teach you something good.
• 40:05
  Number four is how do you win the day? And that's around your AM and your PM rituals to keep productive, feel successful, feel happy. Oh, I don't know. Get stuff done, I guess. The key is never to have a too long to-do list. If you put too much on your to-do list, you're kind of screwing yourself over before you even start. I will never put more than I can complete in a day on a to-do list. And I always start the day nice and slowly, a podcast and some nice breakfast.
• 40:37
  Number five is if you only had $1,000 left in your business bank account, how would you spend it or allocate the resources? On my staff so that they got something. But we'd be screwed. They might get a little something. And last but not least, how do you deal with failure? And it can be either like personal experience or just general mindset and approach.
• 41:00
  My approach in life to failure is just to get back up and carry on. I've failed more times than I can possibly explain to you. And it's just the way I've always been. As a kid, my parents tell me stories of being like a really young kid and always wanting friends to play with. You know, anywhere we go, I'd walk up to any kids I could find and ask to play with them. And there were many times those kids would say no. And I would go away for 10 minutes.
• 41:27
  and then feel a little bit sad and then get back up and go back and go, no, but guys, really, I really think you'd, you'd love it if you let me play with you, you know, like that idea of just not quitting, just carrying on. I've made so many failures and I've learned from all of them. And,
• 41:42
  you've got to understand that if you want to be successful, that success might mean different things to different people. But if you want to be successful in business, you're going to fail. And you kind of have to take both. You can't have one without the other. So just kind of like embracing that. Amazing. Well, thank you so much. For anyone that's listening, where can they find you on your personal channel and also the business?
• 42:07
  So on Instagram, I'm at Sapphire J Bates and the coven is at the Coven Girl Gang. Or you can go on our website, which has all of those details, which is www.thecovengirlgang.com. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.
• 42:26
  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.
• 42:51
  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.
• 43:13
  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.
• 43:30
  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.
• 43:54
  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.
• 44:17
  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.