Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / Inside Frank Bod, Jess Hatzis-Walker's Guide to creating a $100M cult skincare brand

Transcript

Inside Frank Bod, Jess Hatzis-Walker's Guide to creating a $100M cult skincare brand · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Jess Hatzis-Walker for Female Startup Club. Hello and welcome back to the show. It's Dune here, your host and hype girl sliding into your ears with a new episode on the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're new here...
• 0:24
  Hi, welcome. Every week, we interview some of the world's most exciting and successful founders and entrepreneurs who happen to be women. Like Jess Hatzis-Walker, one of the co-founders behind the iconic skincare brand, FrankBod. FrankBod started about a decade ago, back in 2013, and through their strong original branding and innovative approach to marketing, they grew it from zero to $100 million business.
• 0:54
  In this episode, we're chatting through what really shifted the needle in scaling this brand, how early stage founders should be thinking about their brand and marketing in today's world, and what Jess would do if she was starting everything all over again tomorrow.
• 1:09
  And while I've got you here, if you haven't downloaded our grant document yet, there are so many good ones ready to be applied to this month. Like the Cartier Women's Initiative, where you can access up to $100,000 in funding, and the Fearless Fund in partnership with Tory Burch Grant, where you can access up to $20,000 worth of funding.
• 1:31
  To download the list of every current grant that you can apply to around the world right now, go to femalestartupclub.com forward slash grants. Alrighty, let's jump into today's episode. This is Jess for Female Startup Club. Jess, hi, welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast. Hello, dude. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here today. Oh my God, I am so excited to be here today. I feel like I have been
• 1:59
  following your journey slash a fangirl of the business since like literally the very beginning, like 2013, the brown paper bag, like way back when. So I'm very excited to, yeah, old school fan. I'm very excited to like hear your story and chat about where it all started, how you came up with this.
• 2:24
  concept and like innovative marketing thing that we all love. Where do you like to start your story? My story starts before Frank Body with my other business, my very first baby called Willow and Blake. And I like to tell this story because I think it really sets the tone for how and why we were able to build Frank Body rather than people thinking, oh my God, they just built this thing out of nowhere. So Frank Body,
• 2:48
  came out of a couple of different moving parts. Myself and my co-founder Bree and our other ex-co-founder Erica had launched a branding agency called Willow & Blake back in 2009. And it started as an editorial piece. So we were just using that to write things that we loved because we're all copywriters by trade. And it grew into a freelance copywriting business, which then grew into a copywriting agency, which then over time grew into a full service branding agency.
• 3:16
  Willow & Blake still exists and we do brand identity for clients. We do full marketing campaigns, social media, all the rest of it. We were doing that for our clients at the time and people were coming to us because they felt that we had a fresh perspective on things. We were millennials creating for millennials. We were really engaging with new mediums and we were doing things that were
• 3:39
  Our real focus, and I think what our specialty is and what we took over to Frank was that creation of new and fresh brand identities and specifically voices that hadn't been there before. And with brands are using social media, it's really easy to overlook the importance of voice and messaging, and we felt both.
• 3:59
  If we can do this in a way that's actually really connecting with consumers and treating them as people, not just numbers and potential shoppers, and utilize social media to do that, then we think there's a real recipe for success there. It didn't seem very, you know, it wasn't rocket science to us, it just made sense to treat people like people and give them fresh content that they hadn't seen before.
• 4:20
  So we started doing that for a lot of our clients and people would come to us looking for risky and bold ideas. And then when we put it in front of them, there was a lot of risk adversity is probably the most polite way to put it. And the ideas would get diluted down and their phrases, you know, we've seen what this brand's doing. Can we do something like that?
• 4:40
  And that's where success goes to die. When you try and emulate what another brand is already doing, it's just, it's never, like it can work from time to time, but it's not a long-term brand building strategy. So we decided to put our money where our mouth was. And we thought, well, if we can create something and have complete end-to-end control over a brand, that would be the perfect case study for our clients who were feeling a little bit apprehensive about trying something very different.
• 5:06
  At the same time, our now co-founders, Alex and Steve, Alex was really interested in e-commerce and he was the one of us that really sort of led the charge there with the start of the e-commerce and like small brand, direct to consumers starting to come to light.
• 5:23
  And Steve, who was really the brains behind the first product, so he came up with the original coffee scrub. And all of these elements combined meant we knew we wanted to create a unique brand that was socially led. We knew we wanted to use e-commerce to sell it. And we knew that it was going to be this product based around the coffee scrub that would expand into a bigger health and wellness brand. And they all came together to form Sprank Body. And there was no one sort of telling us, no, you can't do that or that idea is too bold. We just went exactly where our gut and our strategy told us to go.
• 5:53
  And we launched it, you know, absolutely no money, just a lot of grit and a lot of hard work back in 2013. And here we are, we'll turn 10 in six weeks. Oh my gosh. Pretty crazy. A decade. That is insane. 10 years to overnight success. Although I feel like you had overnight success like really quickly. It was like everywhere and everywhere from the beginning. Yeah.
• 6:14
  What I want to understand is like the actual character of Frank. Like how did you, what was the light bulb moment to that being the idea? Is it something that you'd already had in your background, kind of like a little idea that you'd already been playing with for another client or something like that? Or was this like, hey, we're sitting in a room and boom, like here's an idea.
• 6:35
  A little of column A, a little of column B. So we were looking at our first product, which was the coffee scrub. It looked like dirt and it was in a brown paper bag, as you mentioned before. It was so different to anything that was on the market. Body scrubs at the time were like gel and with microbeads and they smelled like a bowl of fruit exploded in your face. It was just so different to what we were putting out there. And the language utilized by beauty brands was different.
• 7:02
  It was a lot of hyperbole. It went in one or two directions. Very scientific, really clinical claims driven, often claims that didn't then follow through and that wasn't the experience that customers had, or very flowery, hyper-feminine. There was nothing just talking to you as a woman who was multifaceted and wanted honesty and embraced her sexuality. It was just...
• 7:28
  It was a bit naff. We really wanted to do something fresh. So thinking about those things and going, well, we want to cut through a lot of the BS that we see in the market. We want to be really upfront and honest with our customers about what this product is, the ingredients in it, and what they can expect it to do for them. So we thought we'd just be very open and very frank about that. And that was where the whole idea of Frank came from.
• 7:52
  We knew we were going to utilize social media and we thought, well, if we're going to be using social, it probably makes sense to turn this concept of let's be frank into a character that's called Frank. And that character can then have one-on-one first-person conversations with people because we're using a platform that at the time wasn't really utilized by brands. It was a peer-to-peer communication channel. And we and a very, you know, a small handful of other brands started to infiltrate it and go, well, we're here, but we're going to try and do it in a way that feels comfortable and suitable for this platform.
• 8:22
  the character of Frank was born and that character's sort of grown and shifted over time and, you know, has no gender, no real identity. It's just,
• 8:32
  a being that sort of encapsulates what's important to us and our customers at the time. Oh my gosh, genius. I love it so much. Such a cool, cool concept to have come up with. I read that in the beginning, and you mentioned just a moment earlier, you kind of had minimal capital to start. I think I read you invested $10,000 collectively, something like that, Australian.
• 8:54
  What did you allocate that towards in the beginning? And also because the world is so different now versus 2013, especially when we think about Instagram and ads and all that kind of stuff. So I'm curious to understand what that $10,000 went towards.
• 9:11
  You're so right. We launched in a very different time to now. So we were super scrappy. We were lucky that we could do a lot of it ourselves. So we did all of the branding, the copywriting, the marketing, the social strategy, because that's what we do. And I wouldn't recommend to founders that if you don't know how to do that well, I would say to try and find an expert. But at least like there's lots that you can learn online.
• 9:36
  We Googled everything. So if you look back at our search history, it's pretty hilarious to see what we were trying to figure out how to do at the time. But the capital allocation went to the raw materials for the product, which we then made by hand ourselves. It went to setting up legal entities, bank accounts, a web developer who just finished our website for us. It was really, really no frills. If you look back and use Time Machine to see the very first version of frankbody.com,
• 10:04
  Oh my God, it's hilarious. Because it was really just proof of concept and getting it out there. And I think that there's something to be learned from doing that. It's a different time. I think launching a brand back then, you could be really scrappy. Launching a brand now, there's an expectation that even a homegrown founder-led brand feels a little bit more finished and polished. So there are slightly more hurdles to get through if you're a founder now, but I don't think it's impossible to take
• 10:34
  set to market. How did you go to market? Like what was your strategy to getting eyeballs on this brand? What were you doing? It was a lot of blood, sweat and tears, if I'm perfectly honest. So we, because we had no capital, all we could do was utilize free channels. So that meant using social media. So it was myself, Bree and Aerie, 24 hours a day, building up a social presence
• 11:04
  Don't launch a product into the ether and just hope that people find it. Build a community online of people interested in the type of content that you are going to keep sharing with them once you launch the brand and then launch the product to them. So we did that. We spent about six months building up the Instagram and Facebook page at the time because Facebook pages were still a thing back then.
• 11:25
  And the strategy still really works when you think about any channel. You can take that strategy and apply it to TikTok now. If you're a founder launching and you're like, I don't have any money, but I've got a phone, I've got my face and I've got ideas. You can put that together and do it yourself. Just dedication and a lot of hard work. So we spent six months building that up. And a big part of our brand is the belief in marketing.
• 11:48
  you know, the beauty of a woman's body or a beauty of anyone's body. And you have to be naked when you use our product. So there was that cheek and innuendo always sort of peppered through the brand from the beginning. But apparently Instagram signs boobs and butts offensive and our first page got shut down about a week before we were launching. Oh, no. So whenever anyone asks, that's why we're Frank Bod and not Frank Body, because Frank Body got shut down and we could never get it back.
• 12:14
  So we went, oh my God, what do we do? We just started again. We launched a new page, Frank Bod, and we did exactly the same thing. So we'd had about 10,000 followers on that first page, lost them all, had to start from scratch and, you know, just worked over time trying to build that page up. Then once we got ready to launch, we emailed everyone we could possibly find, we were emailing bloggers and it was just the start of like the Instagram influencer.
• 12:43
  And just gave everybody a product. So it was just emailing, I kid you not, thousands of people. You don't email like six people and hope that you get a return because you've got to assume a like one in 100 strike rate when you're doing this. So it's a real volume game, but also looking at how you can build
• 13:02
  a story with that person that's actually going to connect with them. So it wasn't just about copy pasting the same email template out to a thousand people. It was about finding a unique angle for each and every one of them and asking them to try the product and if they felt comfortable sharing it.
• 13:16
  The third prong was with our UGC strategy. So once we did launch to market, we had our social community that we already built. We had influencers and press going live, and that was just us reaching out to all of them. And then we had our UGC strategy. So every time someone purchased, a flyer came with the packaging, directing them to Instagram to take the Frank Effect selfie.
• 13:39
  Social's changed a lot over the time, but at that point in time, people were really interested in just sharing like the strangest, most intimate taboo moments of their life. Like we all just took photos of our coffee. We took photos of our feet everywhere we went. The weird filters. The weird filters. Like everything is very steepier. If I was doing it again now, because we're still a brand operating now, that strategy doesn't work anymore. But at the time, that was a really relevant launch strategy for us. And so it was those three things. All of it was free. It was just...
• 14:07
  woman power basically to get it out there in the world. And you can use that as the basis of a strategy now, but look at how you tweak it. So if I was looking at creating UGC now, I wouldn't be asking her to take a selfie on Instagram. I'd be looking at
• 14:22
  like what's a trending theme on TikTok and how could she organically integrate our brand into that so it might be like the everything shower for example and how does she potentially integrate Frank Body into her routine that she's already going to be creating and posting on there anyway so there's things yeah like there's things to learn and you can take you know learn from what's been what's been done in the past but tweak it for 2023.
• 14:47
  Yeah, for the modern day social media landscape, absolutely. Not the vintage landscape that I did. Lol, that we all grew up with. I know. When you think back to that time, you know, from the outside perspective, of course, it looks like overnight success, everything's just happening. But, you know, there's some serious like grit and perseverance and hustle going in behind the scenes to get this brand out there. Yeah.
• 15:11
  What are the moments or is there a specific moment that you were like, holy shit, we're onto something. We've proven the concept now. We are gaining traction. Like it's kind of on the up. There was a whole bunch of smaller moments along the way. So like the very first night that we launched, we were naive. We put everything up for sale. It's like, it's there. Go shop it. We went to the pub and we were just looking at Shopify on our phone and
• 15:38
  And then it said that we were out of infantry. I'm like, oh, it wasn't a huge amount. It was like a couple of hundred units. But that was still, we thought that would last like a month because we had no idea what was going to come in. And so we hightailed it over to our warehouse and started making more product that very night.
• 15:54
  that philosophy only continued. And we started to see orders come in from all these different parts of the world, which is the beauty of digital and social. And when we started to see people requesting it in certain areas of the world and we saw a really quick following gain in the US, we thought, oh, you know what? Maybe there's actually something here. Press started picking it up.
• 16:18
  the sharks, as I call them, started circling from like private equity in BC going, hey, we want to chat. And we were just young kids. We had no idea what we were doing. But you started to realise that, oh, okay, there's something in this idea that we've created. So let's take this a little bit more seriously. And I think that's a lot of people.
• 16:36
  When you have these kind of people coming to you, like you've got the press happening, you've got sales happening, velocity is booming, and then you start having people coming to you to raise and things like that. What was your mindset at that time around the capital piece? Were you thinking at the time bootstrapped always or were you thinking, oh, we're going to entertain this idea? Or were you like, yep, let's go and get to the next level?
• 16:58
  I'd love to say that we were a group of founders that sat down and had a really elegant business plan from day one and knew when we wanted to take capital. We didn't have any of that. We had a really good idea. We had a really good strategy about how to take that idea to market. Everything beyond that was learn as we go and make decisions as we go. And I'm really glad that we did because I don't think we could have ever anticipated what was going to happen with the company. But I also think that there's
• 17:24
  a time and place for planning. And you can really only plan so far in the type of environment that we are living in now. Things change just so frequently. But when it came to capital, the emails started coming to us and honestly, we weren't prepared for them. We just started having exploratory conversations with these people to sort of
• 17:45
  learn. We knew nothing about this space, but we thought it was really intriguing. So we had dozens and dozens of conversations. And as we had those conversations, that helped us firm up what we would want from a capital partner. And it became not about just taking money. It became about finding a strategic partner that was experienced within the space and could really
• 18:07
  guide us, help us identify mistakes before they happened, build knowledge and expertise into the director's team. And that's exactly what we ended up doing. But it took us years and years to get there and to find that partner. So we continued to bootstrap for the first, oh, my timeline's wonky, but at least the first three or four years.
• 18:28
  I read that you've done a raise a couple of years back, maybe a Series B raise for $15 million along those lines. When you think about your experience now being multiple raises in, what are your kind of key learnings, key tips for a successful raise knowing that you've repeated the blueprints?
• 18:51
  You have to know why you're trying to raise capital. It might sound really silly, but I've met founders and they don't know why they're trying to raise money. They just think that they're supposed to. Don't give equity away if you don't need to. For us, we were chasing really aggressive global expansion into omnichannel. So that meant there was a huge CapEx crisis.
• 19:15
  capital expenditure behind the retail distribution in particular. So moving into retail channels, you're building all of your shelving and point of sale from scratch. It's really, really expensive. You're producing a lot of inventory 12 months before you're going to realise any sales. You need a huge amount of capital up front to be able to do that. If you're running a dot-com business that you can self-fund, I really wouldn't be looking at taking a lot of capital and giving away equity. It might be more so looking for equity partners that bring
• 19:44
  skills to the table that you don't have. But it was that identifying why you need capital was the biggest problem. And looking at whether there are other ways that you can do it. It might be a debt facility, it might be a friends and family round. So that's my biggest piece of advice.
• 20:02
  Yeah, great advice. I think that we often see, you know, people jumping to raise capital also too early where it's like, you need to get out there, prove what you're doing, get traction. So you have leverage to get more out of the deal versus being so early on in that ideas phase. Yeah. Try and raise from a position of strength as well. You know, it might sound silly, but
• 20:27
  we often also see founders go to market to raise capital at their worst points. So they're coming out of those deals very unfavourably. So having the foresight when you're in a good position to be looking forward over the next three to five years and identifying when you might not be and trying to raise capital at that good time. Absolutely. Not out of a place of desperation to keep going.
• 20:54
  I want to get your thoughts about, you know, the state of the landscape on funding before I circle back to marketing, because I feel like that's really your like total zone of genius that I want to dig into. But when we read about the stats, you know, I think SBE Australia launched something last year, you know, 0.7% of funding went to sole female founders, female founded companies rather. Yeah.
• 21:15
  I think about this so much and I obviously don't know the answer. I'm just like, why? And like, what needs to change? How do you think things need to change? And what do you see happening? Oh, God, we could have several podcasts, like a mini-series talking about this. We should. There is an institutional and systemic problem that is going to take a really long time to change.
• 21:46
  many men who are a couple of decades my senior and there's it is so obvious how I am perceived in that room versus my very lovely capable and intelligent male counterparts who are brilliant that's why I'm in business with them but I can see that I'm not treated with the same level of respect from everything that you know might be
• 22:10
  the eye contact, they'll be asking me a question looking at my co-founder or they'll direct a question that should be clearly coming to me to my co-founder or I'll be called, hi girls, how are you going? I'm 37, I haven't been a girl for about 25 years so stop calling me that. There's just layers and layers of misogyny in this space
• 22:32
  That said, I have met some really brilliant people and there's some amazing women doing great work in this space, very actively trying to level the playing field. They've got their work cut out for them and we all have to sort of get involved. I think, I don't think it's on the women trying to raise capital to change. It's not an us problem, it's a them problem. All we can do is be as knowledgeable as,
• 22:56
  as possible going into these scenarios, which is what you would expect of anyone going in to try and raise capital. You have to know your numbers. You have to know your business inside out. You have to know why you need the money and how you can spend it. And maybe find partners, definitely find partners that are aligned with you value-wise. Find a broker or find a banker that is, doesn't necessarily need to be a woman, but just a feminist who's actually going to really support you in your goals. And stand up for yourself. Negotiate well.
• 23:26
  firm and friendly. I'm really lucky. I've been surrounded by incredible co-founders, really great advisors, and we have fantastic investors. We obviously chose people that are value aligned with us. And if your gut is telling you that they're not, listen to your gut and
• 23:50
  And so just use that tool to your advantage as well. So many great tips. I went on my little tangent there, but yes, I'm very, very passionate about this point. I love a tangent. I think there's interesting things happening in this space as well. Like at Willow and Blake, we have been really softly launching Willow and Blake Ventures, which is an arm of our business that isn't fundraising, but is basically like a sweat equity arrangement with clients who, and particularly a lot of women who are trying to grow their business, but don't necessarily have the capital to invest
• 24:20
  in brand marketing. And I think there's a lot of these interesting arrangements out there that might mean you do really get the opportunity to work with experts who are value aligned to you rather than just people who throw money in and then can't actually bring a lot to the table, which is what you see in a lot of private equity in these things.
• 24:42
  So I think explore all of those different options as well. Oh, my gosh. I love that. For anyone listening who's like, wow, I want to talk more about that, I want to be considered, who are you looking for specifically and how can people kind of connect with you on the ventures front?
• 24:58
  Yeah, we are really looking at early stage consumer brands. We know consumer at the back of our hand. We've created and built over a billion dollars worth of household name brands. If you want to get in touch with us, email willow at willowandblake.com. Look at my plug in the middle of this. I love it. I love it. I'm going to tell everyone. Well, thanks. I mean, we want to work with people like your audience, you know, sort of people listening
• 25:25
  you're clearly driven because that's why you're here trying to absorb information. You know, that's the type of people that we love to work with, people who are going to work really hard and who are passionate about what they're doing. So just go through the process with us. It's not something that we can do with every client. It's really, really selective because it has to work for both parties. But where we can, we really love to do it. Oof, love it. Love that. Encouraging everyone to reach out and check in and go on your website and look at all the amazing work you've done, my gosh, and the brands that you work with.
• 25:53
  I want to circle back just a little bit more into the marketing side of things because I, you know, I'm just obsessed. I want to understand kind of the key pivotal moments over the last couple of years and how you've approached your innovative marketing campaigns and kind of kept it feeling fresh and exciting and kind of moving with the times. Well, that's a really good question. It's really easy over time to just sort of get set in your ways and rinse and repeat things.
• 26:22
  One of the sayings that we have across both Willow and Blake and Frank is that the only thing scarier than a new idea is an old one. It really guides a lot of our decision making. The absolute best campaigns we've come up with are the ones that have been done on a shoestring budget. I often think that a lot of money makes people lazy and it makes them stupid. There's a lot of...
• 26:45
  creative solutions that come out of like being scrappy. Like the Frank team last year for wanted to do, men aren't our target market. They haven't been, they love using the product, but they don't buy it. We wanted to do a cool little campaign for Father's Day. So we created this sort of spoof campaign. It was like dad bod by Frank bod and a couple of the guys in the office sort of stripped off down to their jocks. And there was a, a,
• 27:11
  sheep thrown over a ladder they all posed in front of it and that was you know it was basically shot in an iphone for a slab of beer for each of them um and it was one of the best campaigns that i've seen produced in a long time got picked up by all this press and you know i think that went back to the root of who we are as a brand we didn't launch with a lot of money and a lot of resources but we launched with a lot of smarts and humor and sort of keeping that
• 27:37
  DNA of the brand, no matter what your version of it is for your company, I think is the best way to evolve a marketing strategy. So change it for the time, change it for the platform, but don't change who you are at the core of the brand. It's a really long-winded answer. Do you want me to elaborate on anything? Oh my gosh. I love that. That is so fun. And I think that's, it's actually something I hear often is like when people are getting started, they're like, oh, well, I need to like invest money over here and I need to pour money into an agency to do my ads and I need to do all this kind
• 28:08
  I'm like, wait, wait, wait, do things that you can do on your phone. Like have fun with social media, like use social media to your advantage. TikTok especially is just like the absolute place to be and enjoying the journey before you get into all that other stuff, before you get into, you know, potentially wasting lots of money on ads if you haven't got the right foundation set up.
• 28:31
  1000%. I am... Performance marketing has its place in the mix. It's really important, but it shouldn't be your go-to from the moment that you launch. I'm biased because I'm a brand specialist, but I believe so firmly in building a brand first and...
• 28:49
  And you don't always need to pay a lot of money to do that. Like sometimes, yep, you will need to work with experts like the Long Lake and a million other great design and branding agencies that are out there. But there's so much that you can do yourself and you are the best person as the founder to work
• 29:05
  really articulate what it is that the brand needs to stand for. And then when you need to call in experts, go for it. But you can throw a lot of money at performance marketing and you don't build loyalty with that type of customer if that's your go-to-market approach. But you build loyal customers and you get really sticky customers if you take a brand-first approach. And that's how you create a business with longevity.
• 29:27
  rather than a flash in the pan product and you can that really informed our strategy over time because we knew if we didn't continue to invest in brand and when I say invest it was time we would be this brand that would be having a conversation about going oh do you remember when Frank Boddy that coffee scrub 10 years ago yeah that was fun what happened to that rather than oh this is one
• 29:52
  Like it's really strategic decisions that lead you to that point. So there's a lot of foresight required by founders to grow a brand successfully. What is your kind of key piece of advice that you like to give small business owners and founders who are in that early stage of building a business besides the shoestring budget approach?
• 30:18
  Honestly, people are going to hate this, but it's just like, if you think you're working hard, you're going to have to work harder. I meet a lot of founders and I talk to them about what they're doing and they're doing the absolute bare minimum and expecting the biggest results back because we don't always see under the hood of what is required to grow a brand. And I talk to people, I like to be really honest about what it took to grow Frank Bodies,
• 30:43
  help manage the expectations of other founders out there when they're thinking about how they get their business off the ground. We had nine to fives at the time. It was, you know, waking up first thing in the morning and working. It was working all night to get it done. It was working well into the early hours of the morning. It's not glamorous at all. It's a lot of hard work. And I'm sure so many of the people listening are doing that right now.
• 31:11
  So that's my biggest piece of advice. It's gonna take a lot of work. That's how an overnight success happens because the person behind it has been hustling their ass off trying to get it out there in the world. And it's the 10 years of cumulative experience that they have that has led them to the point where they're able to create something that can grow. And I think you need to be doing things for the right reasons. I see a lot of people launch businesses because they're really in it to make a quick buck.
• 31:40
  I don't think you're ever going to build a brand that people can be passionate about. If that's your reasoning to do it. Money is fantastic. It's really nice to be rewarded for your hard work, but it can't be the reason that you're creating something. And I think you ultimately see the businesses and the brands that are built from the heart go on to be the most successful ones. Oh, I love that. Couldn't agree more.
• 32:08
  What's going on in your world that you want to shout about? What's happening over at Frank Bod that is exciting or coming up or something new in the mix?
• 32:18
  Oh my God, there's so many things going on right now. We just launched a fantastic range called Everyday by Frank Body into Priceline stores nationally throughout Australia. Thank you. It was Bree, my co-founder's baby. She came back from her real life baby and built this from scratch with our team. And it's a series. The whole idea behind it is about reimagining personal care.
• 32:43
  We do body care so well and we've taken what we know as body care into the personal care landscape and creating benefit-driven SKUs that are either focusing on body acne or hyperpigmentation and taking it into a channel and a format that customers haven't seen before. It's really exciting. So that's available everywhere now. And we just launched Walmart in the US, which is huge. So that's been several years in the making. Yeah.
• 33:11
  And yeah, we're really, really excited about it. And there's new products coming out soon. There's just so much going on. We turned 10. There's really exciting stuff happening for our 10th birthday. I could talk to you for hours about what's happening. But yeah, I'm really proud of our team. They've done such incredible work. That is so amazing. Congratulations. I'm excited to see how you celebrate 10 years. That sounds fun.
• 33:32
  We are up to the six quick questions part of the episode. Some of it we might have covered, some of it we might not have, but I asked them all the same. So question number one is what's your why? Why do you wake up every day and work on building FrankBot? My why has changed over the course of my life. My why now is creating flexibility and freedom, not just for myself but for my family. Absolutely. Love that.
• 34:01
  Question number two is what's been your favourite marketing moment over the last almost decade? There have been a lot. I'd say, to be honest, going right back to our roots and the social strategy that we launched with and the consumer engagement we had around that, like tens of thousands of people taking the selfies that we asked them to take, that was amazing.
• 34:31
  momentous. Like that was just absolutely incredible. And I feel like because it's been 10 years, it's really easy to forget about it. But that gave me so much satisfaction to not only see that our strategy came to life, but just see how much people loved the product and the brand. Yeah, for sure. Question number three is what's your go-to business resource if you have to think about a podcast or a book or a newsletter or something that you consume and find value in?
• 35:00
  Oh, I listen to so many. I go through phases. I am really enjoying a whole bunch of different podcasts at the moment. So I've been listening to To Be Magnetic, Expanded. I'm really interested in the whole manifestation space. I really like,
• 35:19
  practical things with outcomes. So I've been listening to things like my millennial investor and my millennial money. And I think Victoria's doing an incredible job with She's on the Money. I think no matter how much you know, even if it feels like you're going back to basics, there's still something to be learned there. So I try and listen to the full spectrum of things on topics that I'm particularly interested in at the time. I've been listening to some really interesting interviews on The Mentor.
• 35:49
  with by Mark Boris as well. So yeah, there's just so many amazing free resources out there right now. I think it's such an incredible time. Like we didn't really have this medium when I was launching. There was no stories from other female founders out there. It was just like, hello, do you exist? Where are you? 100%. I also think the school of YouTube is just so powerful. Like if you want to be knowledgeable on something,
• 36:14
  Set yourself a goal of 10 hours or 20 hours on that subject, back to back on YouTube. You are going to learn so much. Could not agree more. You can Google and YouTube your way to anything that you need to know. And chat GPT. It's like my best friend these days. 100%. Oh my gosh. Question number four is how do you win the day? What are your AM and PM rituals and habits that keep you feeling happy and motivated?
• 36:44
  I want to keep it real. I have a two year old, so there's no such thing as a beautiful morning routine in my house anymore. It just doesn't exist. I think that's really nice for other founders who either have kids or are thinking about having kids to hear, because you hear a lot about these. I wake up at five and I meditate and I drink my lemon water and I go to the yoga. I'm like,
• 37:05
  That sounds nice. That does not happen over here. It's just like pure chaos. In my morning, sort of, my husband and I take it in turns, but I like to be able to spend the morning with my daughter before I then start my day at work. So I don't usually use it to do other things. So that's my morning routine. I soak her up. Sometimes I'll sit there reading a book. I've got my book sitting on the couch right here now. So I'll read with her while she's eating her breakfast, and I find that that gives me some comfort.
• 37:34
  personal satisfaction like I've accomplished something before the day is even really started even though I'm currently taking care of my child I try and fit exercise into just wherever it can during the day so it might be sometimes I sit on the bike in the office while I'm on a call love that sometimes I squeeze in a 20 minute walk um it you know I like to be really realistic about this it's the juggle of motherhood and running two businesses we don't have
• 38:02
  People think like, she's got a cleaner, she's got money and all these bits and pieces. We don't have any of that. We just have us. My parents work full time. So, you know, it's really just the chaos of every other household. Elbow grease. Elbow grease. In the evening, I collapse and I watch TV. I'm not going to spin lies for you about this amazing wellness routine because it just doesn't exist right now. I love that. Keeping it real. I'm all for it.
• 38:28
  Question number five is what's been your worst money mistake and how much did it cost you? Oh, I was really young and dumb with credit cards, like back in my late teens and early 20s. I feel as though my formal education really set me up for failure there. That's why I talk a lot about
• 38:50
  financial literacy and the type of podcast that I mentioned before, especially for younger listeners, because it's so easy to go, oh my God, that's so boring. I don't want to do it. Oh man, if you just learn the ABCs of that and do things properly from the very start, you will be leaps and bounds ahead of where I am now at 37 because I made so many dumb mistakes when I was young. So that's probably the biggest financial mistake I've made. And I wish I'd learned
• 39:20
  Absolutely. I really agree with that. Resonates with me. Question number six, last question. What is just a crazy story, good or bad, that you can share from your journey in building Frank Bod? Oh, the one that's coming to mind is when all of a sudden Ariana Grande started telling everybody how much she loved Frank. And we have no idea how she got her hands on it.
• 39:50
  it was pretty incredible. Like there's, it's still around in like different beauty articles and some YouTube clips with her on interviews. And we thought, my God, this is amazing. Like, and then all of a sudden about two or three months later, she launched her own copycat, like a coffee scrub by Ariana Grande and launched it into older. And we're like, excuse me, it's not very supportive. It's not where I saw this going. It's just like, it's a, it's a moment that's coming to my head for, um,
• 40:20
  You know, I mean, good on her. She saw an opportunity. But, yeah, it really stood out to me as just a perfect example of how there could have been so much opportunity to collaborate and build something really beautiful and successful together. But not everyone sees things that way, I guess.
• 40:42
  Yeah, I feel like the copycat discussion is, again, a whole other episode. And I'm sure you have plenty of examples of seeing this happen, either for your own brands or for the brands that you've worked on and been part of. I guess we were just having a chat about it actually inside Magic, which is our network for founders. And we were talking about how it is inevitable, but it still sucks.
• 41:06
  Yeah, you have to, it's like water if it ducks back for me now. I just don't even think about it. At the time when we were younger and launching, it felt hyper-personal. And I think that's probably why it comes to mind because it did trigger a different response in me at the time. Now I just laugh about it. But, you know, it's hard at the time when you're building something and you're spending so much time and energy and probably money to have someone just come and rip off your idea. That hurts. But if you're in that position...
• 41:36
  as a founder, see the flattering side and use it as your, what's the word I'm looking for? I guess the catalyst for looking at what's going to be next for your brand doesn't mean changing your brand, but always staying one step ahead and future-proofing your own business. Yes, I know the feeling.
• 41:53
  Thank you very much for saying that. That's a great tip and a piece of advice to leave us with. This was so fun. Jess, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your journey with Frank Bud and all the cool stuff that you've been up to for the last decade. Loved it. Thank you so much for having me. It was really lovely to chat.
• 42:15
  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.
• 42:40
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• 43:02
  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.