Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / How She Transitioned From a Toxic Experience in Modelling to a Successful Tech Entrepreneur, with Kic’s Co-Founder & CEO, Laura Henshaw (Part 1)

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How She Transitioned From a Toxic Experience in Modelling to a Successful Tech Entrepreneur, with Kic’s Co-Founder & CEO, Laura Henshaw (Part 1) · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Laura Henshaw for Female Startup Club.
• 0:13
  and welcome back to the show. It's Dune here, your host and hype girl. If you've just found us, hello, hi, I'm so happy. Every week we're learning from some of the world's most brilliant minds in business, like the co-founder of Kik, which you might've previously known as Keep It Cleaner, which was founded by Laura Henshaw and Steph Clare-Smith.
• 0:36
  Today we're chatting with Laura, who is the CEO of the KICK app, and we're really diving into her mission to help others embrace self-acceptance and make sustainable changes towards a healthier, happier lifestyle. The KICK app is like your best friend in health and wellness, literally in your pocket.
• 0:55
  It helps you with easy, yummy, soul-nourishing food recipes and workout programs that you can literally do from home. And I really love it. It's really easy to use. But I really love this episode because Laura talks us through her journey from turning her experience in a really toxic industry into a life-changing, high-impact company that helps women positively every single day.
• 1:24
  We talk through how she manages running a business as the CEO with her life outside of work. And it's a battle that we all seem to face. So I love this conversation. We also talk about the real costs of developing an app and her tips for getting started if you are someone with an idea. Yeah.
• 1:44
  Before we jump in, a quick reminder on the girl code. You know about the girl code. If you get something out of this episode, please share it, review us, send us to a friend. It all seriously helps and the compound effect over time is huge. You know I love the compound effect.
• 2:03
  I have also been feeling so loved after reading all the beautiful reviews that you've been leaving on the show. So if you're one of those people, thank you so much. I read every single review and it seriously, truly warms my heart and my soul. So thank you.
• 2:20
  Last thing, we're still doing a call out for our loyal listeners to be involved in our new content series where you DM me a voice note or a question about anything you want to talk about, any topic across business or life or relationships to feature on the show.
• 2:37
  We are going to batch record a bunch of the best ones we get in at the end of this week, and we've had some real crackers so far. So I would love to have you slide into our DMs. All you need to do is send us a voice note on DM at Female Startup Club's Instagram, and you will hear yourself being featured on the show in the coming weeks. Okay, let's get into today's episode. This is Laura for Female Startup Club.
• 3:04
  Laura, hi, welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast. Hi, I'm so excited to be here. Me too. I'm so excited to be interviewing you on the show today. I feel like I consume so much of your content on social media specifically that I feel like I already know you. Yeah.
• 3:23
  And I'm so excited to like get into this chat. Oh, thank you. No, I appreciate it so much. I love the pod. Oh, thank you. How's your day going? Do you have any wins or oh shit moments that have happened so far? Good day. I think before we got on, we were chatting off the mic about I've just been in four hours of finance meetings. So I'm very excited to have this podcast to break the day up. And then I also, we had a bit of a headphone conversation.
• 3:51
  malfunction on my side before. And so I've had to use one of our very, very lovely engineers in our team, Glenn. I'm using his headset, which has a microphone built into it, but I've never worn one before. So I'm getting used to it. It's very sexy. I can confirm. Love a developer headset. I want to actually start this episode by lolling about something that you posted a couple of years ago. I just want to...
• 4:20
  laugh about the video of you cutting your husband's haircut, cutting your husband's hair and the haircut you gave him during COVID.
• 4:30
  That was so bad. It's so funny. I was actually looking back at that video the other day and the worst thing is his hair has never grown back. It's like it made him now have thinner hair because we shaved his head off. Everyone listening, I tried to do a cut and then I went way too high at the back and it looked ridiculous like a bowl was just put on his head. Oh, my. And then I kept making it worse and I should have just stopped so we had to shave it off and his hair has never been the same.
• 5:00
  Oh my God. This video really sticks with me. My husband and I laugh about it all the time. It's just like one of those moments that I'm like always remembering that video. I wanted to lol about it. Lol. All right. We love to kick off these episodes by rewinding to life before you started Kik, before you started your company to understand kind of what was getting you thinking about starting a business and where you kind of start your entrepreneurial journey.
• 5:30
  So my entrepreneurial journey started probably, what would I say? I mean, I've had a job since I was 14 and nine months. I was really grateful to grow up in, I mean, at the time it's interesting. I think I was kind of envious of a lot of my friends who didn't have to start working when they were 15 and, you know, got an allowance and all those things. But when we grew up in our household, it was like, if you want it, you have to make money to get it.
• 5:57
  basically, like we're not going to pay for it for you because my parents just weren't able to afford that. But it's been such an, I'm so grateful for it now, even though at the time, like I remember, I think it was in year 10, I went to a Catholic school. So we had our debutante balls, which when I think back, do you know what that is? It's like a, is it like a coming of age?
• 6:18
  Yes, it's literally you're like announced into society. And when I actually think about it, like from my belief system now, I don't need to be announced into society, you know. But anyway, I wanted to do it. You got to wear a white dress. You got to like do the dance lessons with whatever your guy partner, if you wanted to choose a guy.
• 6:37
  But I, at the time, I remember it was like you had to fill a table of people and it was really, really expensive. And mum said to me, like, we can't afford it, but if you want to do it, like you can pay for it. So I remember I saved for my dress and I saved for everything and I had to work a lot to do it. But the lessons that that taught me.
• 6:53
  were just huge. So that was up until when I was 18. And then when I was around 19, so I was studying law at University Law and Business, and I was doing some modelling on the side as well as my, I was waitressing and also working at a hospital in admin.
• 7:12
  And I got my first like full day modeling job. Modeling is extremely competitive. And obviously there's like not really when you think about it, it's not in your control. It's like based on if someone thinks you look good enough to be in their campaign or whatever, and you suit exactly, you suit the look. So I really struggled with that because from a modeling perspective, I couldn't, I was so used to, you know, like setting my butt off and then being in control and then getting the marks, you know, to get into the course or whatever.
• 7:40
  But with, and the harder that I have worked, and I also have to want to acknowledge my privilege in being able to say that, because I think there's a lot of people that work, you know, three jobs, work their ass off all of their lives, and they're not able to get out of that pattern. So I have a lot of privilege in saying that, but I did find the harder I worked, the, like, the more I would be, more opportunities that would come, and the better I would do. So with modelling, it was not like that at all. And
• 8:07
  The only thing I could think of to be able to grow in that career, and the reason I wanted to grow it is because it paid so much better than waitressing when I was at uni. So basically it meant that I would have to work less hours and I would be able to study more, which would help me for my career to want to become a lawyer at what I used to want to do.
• 8:28
  And so what I thought is that if I start building a personal brand outside of, you know, these, my, on social media, what that could enable me to do is then for clients to want to book me, not just for the way that I'm looked, but that I look, but also for like my brand and the audience that I reach, et cetera. So I had started thinking about that. And obviously social media was such a
• 8:52
  An amazing opportunity. What year are we talking? Oh, what year? So this was in, I would have been 19. So how old am I? 30, 11 years ago. What's that? 20, 2020. Oh, my God. Don't ask me to do math on the spot. My God, 20, 2011. Yeah, okay. So early days of social media, early days to have also the foresight to understand the importance of having influence and the importance of having a community and an audience back then.
• 9:22
  I mean, at the time, honestly, I was just trying to make enough money to study, right? And it was like, how can I do this? But yeah, I mean, absolutely. I think it's important to look back and give yourself credit where credit's due. But that's kind of what I was thinking. And I had been given an opportunity to go overseas to model for six months to go to Italy. Yeah.
• 9:41
  And I, at the time, to think about, you know, modeling overseas seems like this dream, like, wow, look at how amazing that would be, etc. My face was like, oh, my God, wow, cool. The reality is so different. But anyway, I wanted to, you know, I was given this opportunity and I thought I should take it. And I deferred uni for the semester.
• 10:03
  And I thought, what am I going to do in my spare time? And then as well as the fact that I kind of had on my mind too, how do I start building a personal brand for myself? And so I started a blog, which was called Food Fit and Repeat. Anyway, it's the best I could come up with at the time. And that's kind of what I did to fill my time, my spare time when I wasn't working overseas, which was 95% of the time because it is so damn competitive.
• 10:31
  So I started my blog and the blog I was sharing kind of just recipes that I like to create and just some of my thoughts, I suppose, in blog posts. And health had always been something that I was so passionate about growing. It was interesting when I finished year 12, my original course that I was enrolled in was dietetics. But then I got my ATAR back and I thought with what I got back, I thought my mum would be so proud if I did law. Yeah.
• 10:58
  even though I had no idea about it, but I just never thought it would be an option for me. So that's why I swapped at the last minute. But health and wellness had always been and nutrition had always been my focus and more my passion, I suppose. So I was, I finished my, hang on, where was I going with that? Yeah.
• 11:16
  Oh, yeah. So I went overseas. I had my blog and I started sharing recipes. Through that time, I was also going through a really hard time with my relationship with myself and my body. I'd never really thought about my body a lot.
• 11:32
  until the modelling industry and social media, I think social media just opened up. It opens up this world of comparison, especially for young women, and we are so impressionable when we go in there. And it's interesting, like I did biology in high school, I understand genetics, genetics,
• 11:48
  I'm also, I also live in a size, a body that was accepted by the modeling industry. And I still felt this pressure that I wasn't enough and that my body equaled my worth. And with the modeling industry, like, especially when I was overseas, that was literally the case. It was like, unless you're, you know, get to this size with your body.
• 12:09
  you're not going to get any work. And so that for me was a really tough time to go through. And I think, I mean, so many women and non-binary people go through that. There is so much pressure to look a certain way and there's so much around us that kind of makes us believe that what we look like and what our bodies, like the size of our bodies matter and that, you know, the smaller of space we can take up.
• 12:32
  the more worthy we are as a human, which is so, so, so wrong. So I was navigating that and I came back to Australia and Steph, my now business partner and best friend in Kik, went through a really similar situation in New York. So we both kind of lived those experiences before we came back together. And then before that as well, I'd also...
• 12:54
  It must have been right before I went overseas. I'd started a protein powder business with my personal trainer, actually. At the time, we thought there was a gap in the market for a lifestyle product. Protein was very supplementy. It was either really kind of vegan-y.
• 13:11
  the raw Amazonia had just kind of come out. So that was one area. And then there was also the like super like had like creatine and all of these things that I was – I didn't even know what they meant. But also I found it was really intimidating. And protein is a great way if you want to use protein powder in your diet, not just to like bulk up or – and a lot of the women protein had the word like lean protein, like lose weight by taking this protein. And then you look at the ingredients and it's literally just protein powder. Yeah.
• 13:41
  And protein is just a macronutrient that we need in our bodies. And so when people are struggling to get it or they want to add a little bit more into their diet, a protein powder is a great way. But for women, the whole industry was just so intimidating. And so we wanted to create a lifestyle product, which I ended up
• 13:58
  exiting from that business. But now we have protein in the grocery range of the business. So that kind of came through 60, which was great. Are you drinking it right now? Well, I was drinking it this morning. Thank you. Thank you so much. But yeah, it's interesting when I think back to the early days, I mean, especially like with that protein brand, we were learning, we had no idea what we were doing. And I remember thinking to myself, oh, Coles are going to come to us. Oh,
• 14:25
  Woolworths is going to come to us. And it's just, it's so funny when you start, like there's so much naivety, but I also think the naivety is the magic because that makes you believe that you can do anything.
• 14:36
  Oh my gosh, that is so true. Naivety is a real advantage, especially in the early days. I'm wondering how you went from kind of, you know, coming back to Australia, potentially going back into uni, kind of relinking back up with Steph and having this light bulb moment that you could start kind of building something together, whether that was already kind of a vision as a business or whether it was just like, hey, let's have some fun and do things on the side and what that kind of
• 15:06
  Yeah, so Steph actually had a dream, which is just so funny to reflect back on. But I had my blog at the time. And even to start that blog took so much confidence. I should have mentioned that before. I kind of thought, and I think we so often do it, like who would want to hear from me? Like who would want to read my recipes? Like who would care? Like who do I think I am? Like what are my friends going to think of me because this isn't what I've done before?
• 15:31
  we kind of put ourselves in these boxes. And for me, I was like, I'm a law student, so I should be doing that. And if I do anything outside of that, like, who do I think I am? Obviously, it took me a while to kind of be able to work through that and start the blog, which I am so grateful that I did because it was really how Steph and I connected. And I think how for Steph, Steph was growing. So Steph had grown to...
• 15:54
  I don't know how much, she had a big following. She was one of the first people to really grow her following through Instagram and really grow her personal brand, which was just amazing. And then Seff had also just come back from New York and been through kind of a similar, different journey, but similar in the pressure that she was putting on herself to look a certain way in the industry. And she actually had a dream that we made an e-book together.
• 16:19
  And so that was in 2015. So back then, now if I say e-book, people are like, well, some people might be like, what even is that? Or any Gen Zs listening. But I suppose it was kind of like, we kind of went from like blogs are really big and then e-books are really big and then podcasts. Back then there wasn't really podcasts. There's kind of, but e-books were the thing.
• 16:41
  And so I thought my first reaction was, oh my God, no, I can't even believe people are paying, like, sorry, coming onto my blog and getting the recipes for free, like, let alone wanting to pay for them. But Steph said, no, no, no, like, I think we should do this. And what we wanted to do, because we'd both kind of gone through our own relationships, as I said, with kind of rebuilding that relationship with ourselves, was,
• 17:04
  was to take it back to like really healthy, simple, like healthy eating being simple. And that's what it is because at the time there was this very big focus on kind of like calorie counting and all of these diets. And then the other side of it was this super like in quotation marks wellness approach. But that was very much the Gwyneth Paltrow approach. So if you wanted to make like a healthy in quotation marks slice, it could cost like $400 and you have to go to the health food store and get all these random ingredients and,
• 17:32
  that you'd never heard of before. And it took like five hours to make it. And then it tasted like beetroot. And that's, you know, that's not, no, that's not enjoyable. Food needs to be enjoyable. And so we wanted to just really, really strip it back to basics. So I think that's the biggest thing when it comes to the health and wellness industry. So many people have made so much money on selling like secrets in quotation marks, like this is a secret to like getting the body you want or whatever. There is literally no secrets. It's like,
• 17:58
  strip it back to basics, move your body, eat well and rest and look after your mind. Like there's obviously more components of health now, which is great that we've discussed, but there's this whole industry that's made so much money out of like telling people that, you know, if you do this, you'll, you know, you'll look like this.
• 18:16
  And we really wanted to strip it back to basics. So we started with the e-book and then from there we sold around 7,500 copies of the e-book, which at the start was, well, I couldn't believe that, you know. How much were you selling it for at the time? For $20. $20 at the time. So that for us was, first of all, from a business perspective, like the most money we'd ever made.
• 18:37
  What's the math on that? Seven and a half thousand times $20, $150,000. Okay, cool. Wow. Amazing. Yes, exactly. Very positive signal. Exactly. And before we started that, we actually, we weren't sure on how it was going to go. So we brought sponsors on board because what was great with us and in launching is that we both started to build, especially Steph, these really strong personal brands with audiences and a community that we're able to speak to. So...
• 19:05
  We had a feeling there was this gap and we identified it, but then when we were able to sell through that many copies, it was like, well, hang on, people do want this type of content from us. And so from there, we then started a subscription, a very basic subscription website in which people, I think it was $7.95 a month.
• 19:24
  And you got three recipes and one workout per month. The workouts were filmed in, it was so, when I look back on it now and it's like I always, I think such good advice that people give is like don't wait till it's perfect. I die looking back at the quality that we released then.
• 19:41
  Like that we literally shot workouts in the back of the gym on an iPhone with a different personal trainer every time. So there was no consistency. People didn't know what they were going to get. Like it was so different, like just a bit random, but that's okay. We didn't have a brand book and all the things that we have now, but if we had have waited to have all of those things, I don't think we would have ever done it. So we started with that and we did that for about a year and it grew. It was slowly, slowly growing.
• 20:06
  We had a small base of people on that and then we got approached by a company that ran quite a few programs for different people. We worked with them for a year and we had a program that was called Kick Girls. We then decided and it was the biggest risk we probably still to this date that we've ever taken on our business journey.
• 20:28
  But when we were working with the other company, like they were fantastic. We had a great partnership. But what it meant was that we weren't running the business. We didn't have a full team because they worked on multiple programs. And we felt like for what we wanted to achieve with Kik and with our mission and what we were trying to do
• 20:46
  we had a ceiling on what we could achieve. And so we wanted to go out on our own and do it. We also only had a website. We wanted an app. There was lots of things that we wanted to do because with Kik now, and what we've always done, such an important part of helping people on their health journey is making it easier because the more barriers there are, the harder it is. So having an app was very important to that because it makes our product more accessible. So we took the biggest risk and,
• 21:13
  We went out on our own. We had about a three-month period where basically to build an app, build a product, build a team. Just to quickly jump in here, how many, just to paint the picture, I love to paint the picture, how many members did you have with the Kik Girls program people that you were working with at that point? And what year are we talking?
• 21:33
  So this was in year, we launched the app in 2018. So we worked with the other company between 2017 and 2018. We don't, we haven't publicly said the number of people, but it was thousands of people. So we'd built a base, but we were losing everything. We were losing the subscription, the whole subscription base, all of the content, everything. We just, we owned the Instagram page. So we kept that. And so it was a huge risk. Yeah. It puts you in a tricky position. Yeah.
• 22:02
  Exactly. But it was our choice to make that risk. Like it was, we knew getting into everything that that's what it was. And what it showed us when we rebuild and we relaunch, which was the scariest thing ever, really. And I think for Steph and I too, something that, I mean, it's got its cons and positives and negatives about it, but...
• 22:21
  Pros and cons. Steph and I are not from a tech background. A lot of tech businesses are founded by tech founders. That's not us. So for us, it was a very, very hard time to navigate. But again, naivety was the most amazing thing for us during that time because we didn't know what we were in for and we just thought we are going to make this work.
• 22:44
  I'd love to stick here for a point because obviously, you know, you're non-technical, but you are a tech founder. That is who you are for sure. And I'd love to kind of understand a little bit more about, you know, what kind of money you needed to invest at this point to build an app. What does it look like to build an app as a non-technical founder? Because I can imagine anyone listening who might have an idea might be like, how do I actually do that? What does it
• 23:14
  an app, who do you turn to? It's such a good question. It's something too that I get a lot of messages about. And I think people think like, I've got an idea, I want to make it into an app, but that's amazing. But apps are, as you kind of alluded to, extremely expensive to build. I mean, right now at Kik, we've got a team of about 10 engineers and product people, and that is growing quite quickly, that work full-time on our product. And our product roadmap is so long.
• 23:42
  Like there's so much that we still have to do. And so for us, when we first left the other company and went out on our own, we partnered with an agency. That for us was the best thing for us to do because that agency had all of the knowledge and the insights and the experience in how to build an app. I think for Steph and I, we now have all of our tech in-house. So we parted ways with the agency and brought it in-house in 2021.
• 24:10
  which was really important to have all of our tech in-house as a tech company and an app company. But before that, I think if we had tried to do that in 2018, we would have shot ourselves in the foot because we just weren't ready. We didn't have the knowledge. And I think what it would have meant is we were able to put a lot of trust in the agency, which was great. But I think if we were trying to build the team out differently
• 24:33
  it would have been really difficult to do that in such a short period. My biggest advice to people with apps and how much they cost, they can cost, you know, between, it really depends, like $50,000 to $1 million, like it's such a big kind of depends on what type of, if you're reusing code that's already out there or you're building your own, if you have a native app or React Native, et cetera.
• 24:55
  But what is really important to remember for anyone that might be going out and working with an agency in particular, and we're really lucky, we had a fantastic relationship with our agency and they were great. But what I also know happens a lot is that people get quotes for an app, but that doesn't cover the ongoing costs, like just the BAU and maintenance of an app.
• 25:18
  So someone might say, okay, it's going to cost $200,000 to build this app and they build it. But then if iOS updates something, you have to change the things within your app to make sure it complies with that. If there's bugs, all of these things, which are, it is impossible to launch an app without a bug or a problem. Yeah.
• 25:36
  And so it's really important to make sure that if you are wanting to build an app that you have got plans, like within your forecast, your finance and your budget, you have money allocated to being able to maintain that app and then also build on it. Because when you go to market, you might have your product market fit straight away, but it also takes time to work out like what do your users actually want from your product? Because you might go out there and think, oh, we're going to be...
• 26:00
  You know, for us at Kik, we have got quite an even spread on all of the use of our three pillars in movement, mindfulness and meals, so recipes. However, you might go out there and think,
• 26:12
  we've got this amazing recipe app, but then people might actually love your shopping list function or your meal plan option function or whatever that might be. And you won't know that until people have navigated your product and used it. I think that's something as founders, a mistake or something that we get because so much about it is gut instinct when you start. And it's very important to be able to tune into that. But as you grow, you know,
• 26:37
  you have to make data-informed decisions and that's really, really important. And you also can't make assumptions on how you think people are going to use your product. Like you have to wait and see and have time to be able to iterate to that. And so I think that's probably something that's quite a big mistake. And I think too, especially for, there's not a lot of women in tech. I think that's another problem. So it's very likely if you're a female founder, you won't have a tech background and you might be going to a tech agency that's predominantly male.
• 27:05
  You just don't have that knowledge and so it's really easy to be taken advantage of. And we definitely weren't. We were really lucky but I know so, I've heard so many horror stories of people that have put all of their budget into building an app and then they haven't thought about how am I going to maintain this or the product wasn't what it needs to be. And then they don't have that kind of wriggle room to be able to iterate from there so that's really important.
• 27:28
  Yeah, absolutely. It's something that I also see and hear all the time is founders being like, yes, my idea is great, but they haven't done customer market research. They haven't done the focus groups. They haven't just built an MVP and figured out the simplified version to test it before going all in. And I think that's something that
• 27:47
  you know, anyone listening who has an idea, you really need to start from a place of being scrappy, of understanding what people are going to pay for. Do people actually want what you're solving? What is the problem that you're actually solving for? Versus, you know, just the idea of having this really cool app and this thing that isn't going to happen overnight, but you kind of put yourself in a position of overnight success almost. And you need to go back and just really focus on...
• 28:15
  proving out your concept, MVP, starting small. I think that is such good advice and it's so true. And I think for us at Kik too, what's important to acknowledge is we purposely had built a community before we really had a product for them. So Steph and I, we'd done it personally to start with to then sell the e-book, but the e-book was a low-risk investment.
• 28:37
  Because the cost of creating an e-book versus an app is so different. So we then were able to build up a group of people that were really connecting and a community of people with what we were doing to then take the next step to go to the subscription website and then kind of build up slowly to the app. And by the time we got to an app, we had identified a need of what people were looking for in terms of the whole health and wellness, a lot of the health and fitness space in terms of apps. Yeah.
• 29:05
  they make a lot of their money on the fact that people hate their bodies and they take advantage of it. So it's like because they promise that they'll be able to change it for you if you can enter your before and after photo and your weight and it will help you lose that weight. So then you get to that after photo, which is meant to be better, which is absolutely like it's everything that we're against at Kik and at Kik we're here to help people take care of their bodies not because they love them, not because they hate them and that's so important to us.
• 29:33
  And it's been incredible. We've been able to identify that need, but we identified the need and kind of had a very, it's interesting that some people might see a kick and think we've been an overnight success, but it has been such a long journey in kind of building up to where we are now. 10 years to reach overnight success, as they say. Yeah.
• 29:52
  In the beginning, actually, I don't know this. I was trying to look at this online. Did you raise any capital? Have you raised any capital to date? Or how were you funding the development, especially in the beginning?
• 30:03
  So we're bootstrapped to this point and what we've done is, and this is really important too if you are founding a business with a co-founder, one of the things that you have to make sure is that you're aligned in terms of where you want to take the business and your values but then also your personal values. So your money values, for example, and that's something that Steph and I did.
• 30:24
  are both very aligned on and we're very aligned on being able to invest back into the business. That was the number one core thing. We also were both working other jobs while we were starting to grow. Kick at the start now, it's our full-time job, but we did have that.
• 30:39
  So it wasn't our soul. And I know that we were lucky to be able to have that because for some founders, they might, you know, go out and they have to make that product work because it's their only kind of way to make a living. But for us, what we had, we had our, I don't know a lot of people, it's really hard because it's like we didn't have nine to fives, but I know for a lot of people, they're kind of doing their nine to five. And then they're like, when I was listening to the episode you did with Jess from Frank Body, I mean, that's such a great example of they were working all night out.
• 31:07
  and then going to work on their full-time job during the day because you can't expect the businesses is going to make money for you and pay you a salary in the first few years. Very, very rarely would founders get that. And so for us, we were very aligned on the way we were going to save and reinvest back into the business. So because we had had the e-book, then we also had the subscription website and then had worked with that other company to that point. We were in a financial position where we could fund the development of the app, but...
• 31:35
  but it took us time to be able to be there, to get there. If we didn't have that, we wouldn't have been able to do it without putting like quite a bit of capital in.
• 31:44
  Totally, totally. You were in a really great position to be able to take that next step, like you said. I want to talk about kind of the early, you know, this is in 2018, you launched the app, right? Yeah. 2018. Kind of what that first year or two was like, getting people, you know, on the subscription, on the app, what was marketing like? Was it as easy as, you know, it's our community, we were launching, we were just organically growing, or were there other things at play
• 32:14
  You have like 300,000 people or something, some crazy number I saw online. I don't know. Maybe that was your community numbers. I can't remember. But, you know, how do you actually attract and get people onto your app? What was your marketing approach?
• 32:29
  So we've had over 250,000 people that have been a part of the KIT community throughout our journey. That's where that number would have come from. But it's so interesting to start off with in our first when I reflect back on, you know, the team size that we had. Our team was...
• 32:44
  one third or maybe even one, yeah, probably one third of the size when we first launched compared to where it is now. We also didn't have a paid media budget. So I think it was, when I reflect on our first kind of year or couple of years, it's a reminder of what, it's how we've, I always want to stay true to this in our core and stick to this. And as you grow, it does get harder.
• 33:10
  But we, because we didn't have the budget, we made it work. And we had to think of ways outside of, because for us, like we could have, you know, gone and we didn't have the money to do it. But if we had have, we could have essentially just put that money into Facebook and ran Facebook ads. And at the time they were working really well for health and wellness apps. Yeah.
• 33:28
  and kind of got all these people on our platform. But we didn't have, well, first of all, we didn't have the expertise to be able to do that and we didn't have the resources in terms of money to be able to do that. So we had to think outside the box. And so what that has meant is that we have got such a strong organic brand and brand value, which is so hard to build. And you can't get that through just spending money in paid advertising. So to start off with, we did have that community that we'd grown organically and we knew that
• 33:56
  the product that we were producing for them, they were wanting and needing. For a lot of them, like for example, when we left the other company in the transition period, there was about a 30-day period where we had to let people know that their subscription would be cancelled obviously because the company was being wound down, the partnership.
• 34:15
  And there were people that were like, we got these emails, like how could you take this away from me? Like this has been the only thing that's ever like, which is so special, like got me out of bed and helped me on my health journey and got me moving and meant that I actually enjoy exercise for the first time in my life and being able to enable me to find balance and actually think that I can sustain this long term. And that's obviously what we're all about and we're like, don't worry, we're not going anywhere. But we couldn't say that at the time. But...
• 34:44
  I think for us, we've created a product that people, for a lot of people in their lives, because of the pressure, especially as I've said on like young women and non-binary people to look a certain way and that they have to feel like to be able to, you know, lead a healthier in quotation marks lifestyle, you have to overhaul your whole life. Like that is not sustainable for anyone.
• 35:03
  And at Kik, we call ourselves the anti-diet club because fad diets, I think the stat is 95% of them fail. And then what it means, because Steph and I have been there, is that you live in your head. What you eat and exercise and all of that stuff controls your whole life. And that's no way to live. It's not sustainable. And so...
• 35:23
  We've been able to connect with this community that need and also so word of mouth has been huge for us because people, they really connect with what they do and then they tell all of their friends. It's really special. We often will see people at events and they'll say, oh, my God, my best friend. She's like, I love Kik now. But at the start, I didn't really know what it was, but my friend would not shut up. She's like, every time I got up with her, she spoke for 10 minutes about Kik. So I was like, I'm going to sign up. So you stop talking about it. Yeah.
• 35:48
  And then our community will say, like, now I'm the person that tells all of my other friends. So that's been really special, word of mouth. And then outside of community and word of mouth, the other way we've been able to grow, which again is building that organic brand, is we started with YouTube. So we have a very, very strong social media presence through Instagram. And then we were doing longer form content through YouTube. Yeah.
• 36:12
  In 20, I mean, YouTube is still very big. I don't watch, consume as much YouTube content as I used to. I now consume more podcasts. But then podcasts weren't, there weren't many podcasts. They were very much just starting. But YouTube was very, very big. Not that it's not now. It's just a little bit different.
• 36:28
  So what we'd identified was if people are going to sit through a 20-minute YouTube video watching someone go through their daily life, like literally go to the supermarket, you know, all the things that you watch in vlogs, they are very engaged with that person and it's very likely they would buy into what they're doing or be influenced by them.
• 36:51
  obviously it's extremely important to take that influence seriously, but you really connect with people. If you're watching someone for 20 minutes, like you are connecting with them. And so we wanted to, so YouTube we started with and that was, because you can't do that, it's a bit harder through Instagram and, you know, now TikTok because it's not long form content. So with YouTube we did that. We found that for us, for Steph and I, to film our whole day,
• 37:15
  it didn't come as naturally to us as it does a lot of other YouTubers. So we built the channel up. I think we built up to about 50,000 subscribers on YouTube, but it was really hard. And whenever you feel like you have to force something as it's just never going to be as successful as it could be. So we ended up, it was in, I believe it was the, was it 20, must've been 2019. We launched our podcast and,
• 37:38
  because a podcast is another way to connect with people through longer form content, but it's not in that video. Obviously we have video snippets, but it's not filming your whole life. And so from there, that felt much more natural to us and like a better way for us to deliver that content and connect with our audience and grow our audience. And so we took, because you can't just, you know, do YouTube and then do podcasting on top of it and keep adding things, like you have to take things away. And so we decided to
• 38:06
  slow down on the YouTube content and then really focus on the podcast output. And we have had a fantastic growth through the podcast, especially over the past few months in terms of the UK as the next market we really, really want to go into for Kik.
• 38:21
  And we had last month 20% month-on-month unique audience growth within the UK. So that was really exciting. Wow. And it's really back to, which is amazing. Yeah, thank you. Amazing. It's really kind of going back to our roots of how did, when we first started, we've never been a business that, you know, pays for all of our users. It's just not going to work. Like we build brands and people connect with brands and that's, and when you start and you don't have a big budget, it's so easy to look at like, like,
• 38:47
  I know I've said we used an agency for our app, which definitely was the best decision at the time, but what I see a lot of...
• 38:55
  Sometimes a lot of founders make the mistake of going and giving an agency or getting multiple agencies and just getting them to solve everything for them, like do my marketing, do all of these things. And it's very unlikely that you're going to be able to kind of outsource everything and your business to be able to grow. And it's so expensive to do that as well. I think agencies are fantastic as you start to develop, but I think it is a big risk if you put all of them.
• 39:23
  all of kind of your eggs in baskets of just getting agencies to do all of your marketing work for you because you know your brand best. And I think the work that you can do and the growth that you can get when you are forced to think outside of the box and not just going through traditional, because I think if you just want to go to an agency and say, okay, I need you to get me 5,000 new users, you
• 39:44
  Why would they be able to do that if you can't? Like obviously through paid maybe because they're more technical. But I always, for me, like especially in hiring and stuff, I get this kind of red flag if I ever hear people say like, oh, just get an agency to solve that. It's like, no, you have to help them solve it. You have to do it together. And I think...
• 40:01
  it makes you a little bit sometimes I think it can make you a bit lazy too because you're like, oh, just get them to do it. But it's like you have to solve it yourself, especially when you start you don't have a lot of resources. And so it's really, really important to make sure that don't think like for anyone listening like when we started we didn't have a big budget. We did have a social platform though and that helped a lot.
• 40:20
  But it's kind of thinking about how can you do this outside of the box? Because if it was as simple as, you know, if there was still, everyone's always looking for the silver bullet in marketing, like what's the thing that's going to, you know, grow my business 10 or 20 times. If we knew what that was, if every agency knew what that was for every business, every single business would have like 10 times or whatever year on year growth. And that isn't the case. So I think that's really important to remember.
• 40:46
  For you now, we haven't really touched on the product side of your business. Is that still, you know, like, is that where your focus is? Or do you partner with someone on the products? Like, how does the, you know, the protein, the bars, the all of your product-based side of the business, how does that fit into the picture?
• 41:02
  So we founded that part of the business. We had two other business partners. It's a completely separate business to kick the app and kick. That business was founded in 2017, at the end of 2017, with two other business partners that had experience in the FMCG space. It is, I mean, every type of business is complicated, but...
• 41:24
  especially in FMCG, having existing relationships with the retailers. And that's why I laugh about when I started my protein business, I thought Cosmo Wars would come to me. I'm sure with unicorns it happens sometimes, but it's very unlikely and it's all about relationships and having that experience in that industry. So that's who our two business partners had that. That business was acquired by a business called Open Way Food Company
• 41:50
  Co in, when was it, the year before? So 2021, June 30, that was acquired. Got it, got it, got it. I want to switch gears a little bit because I know we're pressed on time and talk more a little bit about, you know, you...
• 42:05
  personally, your life, what you're doing kind of outside of work, because something that you and Steph do really well is share a lot about your personal life, your relationship, your sex life, like all this stuff that's real. And, you know, we're all going through it, especially as founders who are busy and have lots going on. And then also social media and all these things that you're kind of meant to be keeping up with.
• 42:28
  As a busy person, CEO, creator, all the things, how do you keep your life, your relationship, your personal life, like spicy? How do you maintain like intimacy with your husband, Dalton?
• 42:42
  It's so hard. And I think it's probably something that as we continue to grow as a business, it's going to become harder and harder to navigate. Like, as you said, like my role in the business is CEO. That's my primary role. However, balancing that with content and growing out, like all of the content that we do, the podcast, etc., that's all so important to the business.
• 43:02
  And so balancing all of that is really difficult. I think too with TikTok now, it does make it harder because it's another platform that I know at the start I said, you know, we dropped, we kind of put YouTube on the burner and went on to podcast, but TikTok has, nothing's given with TikTok. It's just on top of, it's just more content to create. And obviously you can't put the same content out of TikTok and Instagram because it's different platforms, different audience, et cetera.
• 43:25
  So I think in terms of relationship, it's probably the hardest, the biggest argument that Dalton and I have is around the amount of time I spend creating content because content I don't have time to do during the week. So I only do it kind of at night and on the weekends. And that's like our time.
• 43:41
  So I think that it is difficult. And so I don't want to sit here and say like, oh, I've got this perfect balance and everything's so happy. Like it's definitely difficult. And it's something that I find communication is the most important thing. Dalt also runs his own business. And so for both of us, what's really important is communication.
• 43:58
  to communicate so I actually saw Brené Brown talking about this on a podcast and I think it's such amazing advice we go home and we kind of say how are you feeling and what Brené does with her husband is they say what percentage they are out of 100 and if one's really high like 80 and the other one's 20 then they're like okay cool like the 80% person will carry the 20% person in support but if you come home and you're both 20
• 44:22
  You have to work out how you're going to navigate that because otherwise you're just going to treat each other like shit, really, because you both need support and you can't give it because you have nothing. And so over communicating is so important. Making sure we find time that we're not talking about work is also very, very, very important. And having time where you don't take, I find that it's something we do at Kik too. I really, we're not curing cancer at Kik. We are making a really big impact of the world on that. It's so important. And it's why we do what we do.
• 44:52
  But it's so important as well to remember to take the pressure off and that's like in all elements of life and have fun with it and not take everything too seriously. So I try and make sure that I do that with DOLT as well. But it's just about trying to find the time when you can and when you can't, making sure you communicate it because otherwise you can...
• 45:09
  leave your partner you know feeling like unloved and like you really care about work and it's hard when work is such a big part of your identity like as it is for me um and I think too the thing with business is you can't control when so we go through times at work where like everything's amazing and then you go through a period where everything's so hard um
• 45:31
  And then you kind of come out of it, but you have peaks and troughs. But because we both run our own businesses or, you know, for anyone that has a partner that has a job, like they're going to have peaks and troughs in their job and they never align. And that's hard because you want to come out of this high and be like, yes, let's go do all this stuff. And then your partner might be like, no, I'm in a trough. Like I can't do anything right now, et cetera. So it's just like why that communication is so important.
• 45:55
  Yeah, I almost wonder if it's like we need to take the pressure off ourselves of always trying to find such good balance. Because maybe it's not about finding such good balance and it's just about taking it day by day and kind of communicating like you say versus like putting that extra pressure to have balance.
• 46:13
  everything be balanced and perfect and a great day every day. And I imagine especially for you, you know, we were just talking about your relationship with your husband, but you also have your business partner as your best friend. You need to also manage your relationship with Steph and make sure that you guys are also keeping your relationship outside of work, you know, prioritizing the other side of the relationship and not always reverting to business and work and these things that we're kind of like striving for as young, ambitious people
• 46:42
  professionals trying to get to that next level. Exactly. It is hard though. God, I definitely don't get it right all the time. Oh my gosh. It is really hard. My husband and I used to work together. He has a software company and now we just work very closely together, but
• 47:02
  balance. And we talk about it all the time. And we often wonder like how other couples manage and other couples do it, because of course, you're wanting to strive, you know, and achieve the goals that you are. And for me personally, we haven't had a baby yet, but we want to, but then, you know, managing both being kind of building our own businesses and also then bringing a kid into the mix, like it just seems so overwhelming.
• 47:23
  That is literally my brain right now. And I'm just like, I just, it's kind of, kids is something that we speak about a lot. And I, right now, it just feels so overwhelming to even think about it. But it's just, it is such a scary thing with kids because, sorry, not scary, but how we have biological clocks and, yeah.
• 47:41
  I think for me, I just, like I love Kik so much. And as I said, work is such a big part of my identity and my being. And I think too, I'm on, obviously with Kik, we have this mission to change the way that people feel about their bodies, their relationship with wellness and their relationship with themselves. But then on top of that as well, I really feel...
• 48:01
  the gap for women fund like female founders getting funding is just so big and I want to I feel like this huge it's not responsibility but I I want to show that we can do it and I'm and so there's that there's that too and it's like how do you you know change the world and also like like have a home life I don't know I mean I don't know if someone knows the answer you come and tell us I know
• 48:25
  My gosh. What is your key piece of advice that you have for small business owners, female founders, entrepreneurs who are building businesses in 2023? So I think, I mean, I mean, there's so much. And I, for me, I, maybe I'll give the advice that I think would have been the most helpful for me. And I think that a lot of female founders in particular struggle with, and it's around confidence and.
• 48:50
  I think what I've actually got in because we're currently starting investment conversations for Kik and with some of our advisors, the biggest advice they keep giving to us is like you have built something that, you know, everyone tries to build and maybe only 5% of people, especially with Kik because we're profitable and...
• 49:10
  as a tech company, there's not many businesses that have kind of done what we have bootstrapped to this point. But it is so easy to forget that. It is so easy to kind of forget what you have done or what you're capable of and just kind of get bogged down in all the next part and like the, you know, the problems that come up in business. You have to solve them, right?
• 49:30
  And so I think my biggest advice would be, and I think too, it's, I mean, the gap for women and male and women and men in funding, it's like systematic. There's so many, there's so much to talk about in that. But I think one of the biggest reasons too, is that I think sometimes as women, we feel like we have to have every single thing solved. And we're so realistic with everything that
• 49:54
  We don't ever, like I know when I've watched a few men pitch, it's so different the way that they do it in terms of like, I'm like, have you done all those calculations? Like, have you done, it's like, no, no, no, but this is where we're going to get to. And the confidence that they have is so big. And you have to have that because.
• 50:11
  There's a gap for a reason and there's obviously lots of other reasons that that gap exists. But I think as women, we so often put ourselves down and we also sometimes rely on others to be able to kind of instill that confidence with us inside of us. But when it comes to your business, I always kind of relate it to a job interview. Someone comes in and I interview them for a job at Kik. If they don't believe they're good enough to do the job, how am I going to believe it? I've never met them before. Yeah.
• 50:36
  And it's the same thing with your business. You have to believe in what you can do because no one is going to believe in that for you. And it sounds, I know like sometimes people might think like, oh, it's so wishy-washy, but truly I think for female founders, confidence and self-belief is one of the biggest issues. And I think we all think that we have to have an answer for everything. And if we don't, we're not good enough and we feel like an imposter, but it's not, no one has the answers to everything. Like everyone is working out as they go.
• 51:05
  work in as they go and you have to remember that. Yeah, I love that. Thank you for sharing that with us. I totally agree. I'm actually very kind of on this journey in the space of investment and women founders and investment. I'm talking to a couple of VCs at the moment,
• 51:24
  about doing women's only projects around angel investing, educating the market on what that means, both as someone who wants to invest in other businesses, but also as founders who might not know where to start in having those conversations, what they need, especially in Australia. There's such a big disconnect in what VCs invest in and what women are building. And so, yeah,
• 51:45
  It's been interesting kind of moving into this space and trying to kind of understand how we can make changes because it is, you're right, it is so systemic. It's from the Lemonade State age right through to school, college, life now. I mean, oh, my gosh.
• 52:05
  We don't have time for it today, but we should talk about it again. A hundred percent. Oh, there's so much. Even networking, I think that's the other thing, like, in terms of advice, that's another thing I've really, really acknowledged and kind of seen in the difference of the way that women and men work in more of the corporate world. Men are very, in terms of their network, like, here, I'll connect you with this person, I'll connect you with this person, I'll connect you with this person. Women, as women, we're very conscious of being a burden on people. So I think we're less...
• 52:33
  We're less likely to, you know, try and go after, like try and connect with someone because we're like, oh, we don't want to be a burden to them or whatever. And then we're also less likely, I feel, to connect people because we don't want to be a burden on that person. And what I have identified, like what I've seen with guys, like they don't even think about that. They don't have that thought. And network is power. Like especially in terms of investment, it's like someone could connect you with the right person and you can get your investment in a week.
• 52:59
  I mean, after this, I feel like I can connect you to a lot of people. Yeah. Do you know, but that's so, I don't know, that's another thing that I've, it's really interesting. We're very different in terms of our thinking and everything. So true.
• 53:15
  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.
• 53:40
  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.
• 54:02
  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.
• 54:18
  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.
• 54:43
  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.
• 55:05
  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.