Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / NFT’s, CryptoChicks & the future with some·place Co-Founder Lana Hopkins (previously Mon Purse)

Transcript

NFT’s, CryptoChicks & the future with some·place Co-Founder Lana Hopkins (previously Mon Purse) · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Lana Hopkins for Female Startup Club. Hey, welcome back. This is Dune, your host and hype girl. Today I'm joined by a very special friend of mine, Lana Hopkins, another Aussie. We're on an Aussie streak at the moment if you haven't noticed. Hi.
• 0:26
  Lana spent the last 10 years building consumer-facing brands that blend tech with cool products. She started her first venture, MonPurse, in 2014, when we were just getting used to this new and exciting world of social media platforms like Facebook. And after exiting in 2018, she's now launching her latest venture, Someplace, as the world starts moving towards the metaverse.
• 0:49
  Someplace gives individuals the ability to collect, curate, and select their NFT collections in a social 3D space and in real life via exciting augmented reality interactions. And now I have to say, I'm not entirely versed on all things in the NFT and crypto space, so I'm trying my best in this episode, but I do learn a lot and I hope you learn a lot from Lana too.
• 1:15
  If you do get in touch, let me know. I'd love to hear from you. You can reach me at Dunrosheen on Instagram. This is Lana Hopkins for Female Startup Club. Lana, hi, hello. Welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast.
• 1:31
  Thank you for having me. It's been so long since we caught up in person and it's lovely to see you happy and glowing in London or all the way from London, I should say. I don't know if I'm glowing. I would say I'm grey. But I'm thinking the same. I haven't seen your face since like 2019.
• 1:48
  I think, right? I think you're right because 2020 and 2021 are carnival vital. And so the pandemic has done that to our travel, has it not? Yeah. And we catch up on the phone, but we don't do FaceTime. So it has been quite a while. I'm excited. I'm excited to be talking to you about business and your new venture and all the things going on in your world. I want to give everyone a little bit of context before we jump into your own intro.
• 2:18
  You have been through a decade of building super successful businesses. You were in the DTC e-commerce space in the
• 2:27
  building an accessories brand. You took that all over the world. Now you've kind of transitioned into this new digital world of NFTs. And before we started recording, you were dropping these terms that I don't actually know what they mean. I think you said Dow. We're probably going to have to go through that in a second. But you've got a lot of different learnings and so many things to share with us. So I want to get you to start by giving us a bit of an introduction to who you are
• 2:56
  And then I'd love to jump into your first business and get a bit of a founder story.
• 3:03
  100%. So everything you've said is 100% correct. A DAO actually, for those who don't know, is a decentralized autonomous organization. But more on that later. So you can hold me to that. But long story short, so look, I started my journey, I started my entrepreneurial journey in 2013, 2014.
• 3:26
  just before launching Monthurst with another accessory phone where I got really excited. It was sort of halfway through the web 2 or I guess the web 2 journey when we were learning about Google search and Facebook had just become a thing. I don't know if you guys can remember that, but we were all trying to learn and navigate the
• 3:48
  in denial of the Facebook advertising platform, and how do you really build an amazing brand and drive eyeballs to the site? So that was all of the commotion and all of the things for those of you who can remember what was happening in 2012. In 2015, late 2014 in fairness slash 2015, I started one of the first direct-to-consumer companies
• 4:12
  which specialised specifically in customised accessories called Modverse. And as you rightly pointed out, it was actually an exercise in learning everything that I could about how to build a brand, how to also build a consumer technology platform on WebGL, which at the time, back in 2014, 2015, was pretty novel. And that really was my first foray into the 3D world. So how do you
• 4:42
  automate and provide a 3D tool that allows you to render the bag or accessory of your dreams. And that's kind of what's led me to where I am today. But long story short, my month's journey lasted from 2014 to 2018. I exited the company in 2018 and then spent about a year and a half consulting to Accelerator Venture Funds and also Mid-Tier Private Equity Funds.
• 5:09
  because I'd had quite a bit of experience raising capital during my time at OnePurse. And I wanted to share the perspective of a founder, particularly one from a consumer perspective, whilst I was working out really what to do.
• 5:24
  Now, what led me to start someplace is, as I mentioned previously, I was on this Web3 journey, I guess, three-day journey for such a long time. And my interest and my passions have always been in Web3s.
• 5:41
  I've been interested about what we now have come to speak about in recent times as the metaverse. And I remember, I think, telling you about the metaverse a year and a half ago or a year ago and sort of watching people's faces. And I can't recall if it was your face or somebody else's face. It was probably my face. Yeah.
• 6:00
  What are you talking about exactly? Fast forward to 2022, to this moment in time, and all you seem to hear anywhere you look and go and have a conversation is metaverse this, metaverse that. Long story short, what it really comes down to and what I'm really passionate and excited about is the Web3 economy and how we can mature from Web2 into Web3, what that encapsulates and really impacts
• 6:27
  The path that I'm excited about is decentralisation and the opportunity for artists in particular and people who have been marginalised to really take advantage and take control over how they monetise their experiences. So for me, that's something that I'm particularly interested in and about.
• 6:49
  That's amazing. And I think what's really interesting is, you know, you were saying when you got started with MonPurse, you're at this inflection point of people coming onto Facebook and this new world that we were kind of living with. And then now, you know, we're coming into this new world of metaverse and we're starting to hear about meta and all these kinds of.
• 7:06
  different things that we're trying to navigate. So you've really been like pioneering these spaces for such a long time. Before we jump into your new venture and you can tell me all the things that I don't yet know about, I want to talk a little bit more about the raising capital side of things with your first venture. Obviously you went through that, you raised money with MonPurse, then you went and worked in the industry.
• 7:28
  What are the kinds of things that you learned? What are the best learnings that you can share for other founders who are either thinking about raising capital, like who should raise capital, for example, or who are like trying to navigate the money, like funding paths?
• 7:45
  I think, you know, it's such an interesting question and something that I've thought a lot about over the years, particularly since my exit from Mon Perth. And it's something that I try to share with people from an advisory perspective. I think that there really is such a thing as good capital and bad capital. And that takes shape in many ways and forms. And what I mean by that is...
• 8:08
  In the same way that you select your partner in life, you should also be very, very selective about the people you choose to partner with. I think that particularly in this climate, in this environment, there's more capital going around than we know what to do is. And I think it really comes down to finding the right alignment and having the same North Star, I suppose, because whilst all of us are going to be a part of the world, we're
• 8:33
  all roads lead to Rome, people have different ideas about how to get there. And so I think it's really important to be aligned on what success looks like for you and then having that conversation with your venture partners to actually understand if you're on the same page from the get-go. And if not, it's better to know that upfront as opposed to later down the line.
• 8:57
  So I think you have to be really thoughtful and considerate about your application, so your review application, and you have to DD your investors as much as they DD you. I think that... DD being due diligence, right? Due diligence. I'm sorry. Yeah.
• 9:13
  Yes, due diligence. So thorough due diligence, being as diligent as possible, asking specifically other founders about their experiences with a particular group of investors, doing as much independent research as possible to help them.
• 9:29
  So you can figure out also if these are the sorts of people that you wish to work with. But also having the tough conversations with the investors themselves and trying to understand are your stars aligned? Are you looking for the same things? Are you looking for the same sort of exit?
• 9:46
  It's important to understand if it's a venture fund, what terms they've got, what stage of the fund they're at, so that you can understand if you will get the support as a founder that you need. So due diligence I think is very, very important. Value alignment is also very, very important. And making sure you get along with this individual, making sure this is somebody you really want to spend time with month in, month out. It might be day in, day out hopefully, but it should be every couple of weeks. Yeah.
• 10:15
  So that's something that I've certainly learned through my experience and the process that I went through. I've also been extremely fortunate because some of my buckets from MP, Mon Perth, have actually gone on to back my new venture. And they are some of the most incredible, intelligent and remarkable people that I've ever had the pleasure of working with. So again, choose wisely. Okay.
• 10:39
  Secondly, I think the second part of this is also about really kind of understanding, is your business ripe or suitable for venture capital funding? Is it the sort of business that requires venture capital? Because not all companies do. If you're starting a lifestyle company that plans to generate X amount of revenue,
• 11:03
  Maybe you can figure out if you can bootstrap for as long as you can, prove your point, bring on customers, and get customers to actually fund a part of your journey. I know you've done that in your previous ventures, and that's proven to be extremely successful for you. So I think it's also about identifying what sort of outcome are you looking for? Are you looking to scale something at 10, 20, 30, 100x from a returns perspective?
• 11:29
  Or are you looking at a stable income from a lifestyle business? Neither is right or wrong. Both are incredible. It just really depends on what is the objective of your capital raise. And the third and final thing that I sort of say to everybody, and this has come from my own experience, is...
• 11:47
  be very, very free with the capital that you raise. We, for my new venture, for our new venture, we raised a small round of capital late last year and we're still sitting comfortable from that position. And so try to incentivise team members as much as possible through ESOP. Make sure that you've got an ESOP star employee auction scheme. So I should clarify what I'm talking about here.
• 12:16
  Um, but, um, I think what you want again, as we talk about North Star and value alignment, if you've got people who believe in the business and who are working, willing to work with you to build the business for future upside, that is always a really, really good way of, um, I suppose, validating the demands for what you're building. So there's many, many different ways to, I suppose, think about funding.
• 12:42
  One is through bootstrapping and self-funding. Another way is through venture. Then you've also got things like accelerators potentially or customer funding, funding through your supply chain partners or in addition to that, literally building an MVP as far as you can with the support of other team members who are just as vested as you are for equity in the business. Yeah, absolutely. And I think also what, you know,
• 13:11
  your experience has been building essentially two businesses that heavily rely on the tech piece of the puzzle. And tech is so expensive. So that's something that probably you do need to gravitate towards having access to more capital versus another kind of business where maybe you're able to buy, you know, limited pieces of stock and that kind of thing as you go and kind of build up from there.
• 13:31
  Let's talk about someplace. Let's talk about the new venture. Let's talk about where you got the idea from. What kind of got you interested in this space in general? Yeah.
• 13:43
  100%. So, and I could talk about this all day. Sadly, we haven't got all day. But as I mentioned, so when I was starting MP, I was thinking a lot about the 3D space. And when you think about what someplace is, someplace is what some of our friends of the company have described as the most spectacular metaverse. Now, a little bit about that and why that particular statement matters.
• 14:10
  We are trying to build a different narrative, particularly one that is friendly and, I guess, accessible to women and mainstream communities who feel potentially marginalized by some of the experiences they've seen from an NFT or crypto or blockchain perspective. I don't know, Dune, when was the last time that you tried to set up your MetaMask or your crypto wallet or Bitcoin?
• 14:36
  anything like that and was that a painful experience for you have you gone on this journey yet am I going to take you on this journey you're gonna take me on the journey Lana my my husband's super into it so we I can say we have a crypto portfolio I can tell you that we have NFTs but truly it's not being led by me at all it's very much all him he's super into it he's in all the communities you know
• 15:00
  all the things, but it's, it goes a little bit over my head. I mean, I understand it. I have like a basic understanding of everything I guess you would say, because I listened to what he's listening to and he tells me about it and that kind of thing, but I haven't embarked on the journey at all of setting up my own crypto wallets. I haven't gone down that pathway. And I don't know if any of my girlfriends have either to be quite frank. And I already see that as a problem. I know it's a problem.
• 15:26
  And I'm like, but why? And I guess maybe because for me, my why is like, well, he's doing it. So maybe I don't need to, which is silly. But besides that, I'm like, yeah, why isn't it more accessible to women? And why aren't more women? And I'm not saying like generally, because maybe so many women listening are like, oh, yeah, I'm all over it. Like I'm 100% into it. But like in my circles, I'm like, yeah, I don't really have any friends who could like sit down and tell me how to do that at all. And I wonder why.
• 15:57
  And neither did we, neither did my co-founder Juliana and I. When we first started to speak about what this all meant in terms of why are we starting someplace and what are we doing? Let's go back to the top level vision and how we're thinking about everything. We initially wanted to start someplace as a space which had a narrative that allowed you to meet and connect with like-minded others. Think about how we used to originally meet people.
• 16:26
  we went to the same school, we both studied at the same university, or perhaps we did the same boot camp together, maybe we stalked each other on Instagram, maybe Facebook, and that was how we interacted and connected in Web 2, right? Fast forward to Web 3, and you've got the ability to build something that is immersive, real-time, and far more engaging. And we'll talk about the
• 16:52
  3D world versus AR, because I think that's another conversation that's really worth having. But then when you really start to conjure about what is this Web3 business and what does it all really mean? And ultimately, it's centered around
• 17:07
  how we're redefining what it means to socialise, to interact, and also what does it mean in the context of the shift in capitalism. And I touched on decentralisation earlier because that's such an important part of, you know, when you think about
• 17:23
  Web2 and you think about all of the things and everything is really centralized with Facebook, Amazon, et cetera, right? So there's a lot of control around how we do, what we do, there's censorship. There's so much that we're now sort of saying, is this okay? We're starting to question the paradigms and the principles of how things happened and continue to happen within Web2. And the internet in its purest form,
• 17:51
  was supposed to be this, I suppose, paradigm where we had much more control over our creative freedoms. And that's not how it turned out. And so first it was really about saying the bigger picture vision is about ultimately creating a space where you can connect with like-minded others. How do you make that connection happen? Well, how is it currently happening?
• 18:16
  People who belong to certain NFT communities, if I'm part of CryptoChic, for example, you have to definitely join. I will connect you with the group. They are amazing. Their roadmap is insane. We are looking at how we can work together with them at some pace. But other people are members of BoardAge. Somebody else is a member of CryptoPunk, et cetera. Everybody that I know has a particular affiliation to a certain DAO or community, NFT community.
• 18:46
  And that is where they congregate on Discord. As you mentioned, your husband spends a lot of time on Discord. Why? Because this is where he connects and shares ideas with like-minded others. So NFT communities really have two purposes. One is to trade. Some people are in there purely for financial gains and financial upsides. But others gravitate towards a common goal, a common thing, and the desire to belong to a certain group.
• 19:14
  And so what we realised, coming back to narrative doom, what we realised pretty early on is we couldn't come out with an app or a product or a platform or a DAO that was –
• 19:27
  seemingly like Second Life or Decentralange or something that you may have heard of on the fringes of conversations but probably do not venture out into. What we realise is we have to treat this like as if we're baking a cake. Now, do you bake cakes? Do you like baking cakes? Sometimes? Not so much? Maybe. I don't see you. Yeah.
• 19:51
  So if you were baking a cake and you had a couple of friends coming over for dinner, chances are that you would probably incorporate a lot of ingredients that people were familiar with. You wouldn't add 10 completely foreign ingredients because even though it looks like a cake, it doesn't taste like a cake. So in the case of someplace, we realized that in order to make this a success with mainstream audiences, we had to focus on three core things.
• 20:21
  in terms of how we speak and how we engage with our audience. Thinking about every single touch point from a UX, user experience perspective, how do we streamline and simplify this experience? How do we not make it scary, daunting and overwhelming? So we focus on the words that we use. We normalise those words.
• 20:42
  We focused on the overall aesthetic and experience. And thirdly, and something that we're hearing all the time, which comes back to this comment around this is the most beautiful and spectacular metaverse I have ever seen, is really about elevating the aesthetic beauty of our spaces so that there's a sense of warmth and familiarity
• 21:04
  And for those of your viewers who are familiar with the beginning of the direct-to-consumer era, you can probably remember a time way back when, before we had the direct-to-consumer brands, there were a lot of questions.
• 21:20
  more brands. There were a lot of, you know, sort of supermarket brands or large box retail brands. And they also did not have strong commands over narrative, over storytelling, and over genuine engagement and connection with their audience. This is where we know we're at right now.
• 21:39
  We're trying to make people see the beauty of Web3 and the abilities that exist within the Web3 paradigm. How do you do that? By breaking down the barriers. So back to the cake. I'm baking the cake. You're baking the cake. We're baking the cake together. And so what's happening in that context is we are basically coming out of the gate with an opportunity for people to do three things. Those three things are trade,
• 22:08
  Collect and flex. Now what that means specifically is when you enter the app, you select your avatar, you enter an absolutely gorgeous personal space and you start to collect various NFT collections
• 22:25
  from various collaborations and jobs that we have lined up. We have a really long roster of interesting brands. We're working with a lot of female-led brands and also female artists to create a different type of 3D NFT, which is in and of itself a different offering.
• 22:47
  Most NFTs to date have been PFPs, which is profile picture NFTs. They tend to be JPEGs. We are turning everything into a 3D dimension in a real-time engine with much more utility, with much more application, and the ability to actually see what it's like to be in that space and to interact with things that matter to you. Then you've got the other component, which is Flex. Flex.
• 23:16
  well, hang on a second, if I've got beautiful collections, digital collections, let's call them digital collections, not an achieve, that might disarm the conversation a little bit. If I've got beautiful collections that are really meaningful and really special to me,
• 23:30
  Well, what do I want to do? I want to share them with you. I want to share them with other people. So I'm flexing that and I'm showing that to people through what? Through Instagram, through Twitter. I'm talking about the collection that I have. I'm showing you what I have. Right now, if you want to share your collection with me or your joint portfolio with your husband, you would send me a link to your OpenSea account and I get a static page with a couple of NFT pictures.
• 23:55
  We're flipping that on its head and we're saying, no, no, no, come into this gorgeous space and be able to interact and engage with what you want. But in addition to that, we've also got an AR component. And I'll tell you why. We're bridging the gap between IRL and URL.
• 24:14
  And what that means is if you own one of our beautiful NFTs, let's say the Vaz, which is dropping in early February, if you're an owner of one of those, not only can you interact with that in the 3D space, but you can actually also have that as an AR component
• 24:33
  anywhere within your home. And that is something that for people has been pretty, pretty special. It's no longer just a JPEG off the internet. It's now an item that you can literally have in your house on top of your Peloton. I've got a Peloton there, you can't see it. Very handy by the way, for those of you working from home. But,
• 24:54
  Why is that important, Jean? It's important because there's two schools of thought for the metaverse. One school of thought belongs to that of Microsoft and Facebook, where they really focused on the 3D world and what it's going to be like to exist within those 3D worlds, which is quite often linked to gaming, right? So a lot of games operate in that way.
• 25:15
  which is why there's been such a strong correlation between gang-like environments and the metaverse. The second school of thought actually belongs to the Niantic cohort, which is another major technology organisation. And they talk about the fact that they say, absolutely no way are we going to go down this 3D rabbit hole. What should be happening is people need to be getting out and about more.
• 25:41
  and the AR component needs to be present all around us. Think of it like Pokemon Go. You're going about your day and the Pokemon's running around you. Guess what we're saying? And I'm going to use a DGC analogy here that I think everybody will understand. It's not books and order or online. It's both. It's whatever the customer needs and wants. And so throughout this entire journey, we've said we are bridging IRL with URL,
• 26:07
  And we're creating a deep connection and elevating what it means to have utility in a sense of digital ownership. And so that leads us to our longer term goal, which is, OK, here's my collection. Here's what I've got. I'm talking about it. I'm flexing it. I'm having an amazing time celebrating all of this. And now I'm actually able to engage and connect online.
• 26:32
  with my community, with my crypto chicks. The crypto chicks might have a fashion show or an event in the space. All of the other crypto chicks will come along to that and be a part of it, for example. And so all of a sudden these communities are starting to form and congregate together.
• 26:48
  in beautifully curated spaces where we're celebrating the ability to connect with people in different ways. We're doing that on Discord already, but imagine if you were able to do that in a highly engaged, personalised, curated and immersive space. So that's really what the short and the long-term vision is about. Obviously, as you can imagine, we couldn't come out of the gate with the whole proposition, so we've had to take baby steps.
• 27:19
  Yeah. And I mean, I love the sound of it. It all sounds so exciting. And obviously where, where the future is going. I'm interested to hear about like your launch plan and how you actually find women like me, like you, like people who are maybe on the fringe of knowing about it, but not so much about it where you will need to have that strong education piece, as well as the kind of enter this new world. What's your launch plan? Yeah.
• 27:49
  100%. Great question. So interestingly, initially, we were thinking about this sort of proposition appearing just to mainstream consumers, and we'll talk about that in a second. What has happened over the past couple of weeks is the existing NFT communities and ours, such as the ones that I've mentioned already, are getting really excited about what we can offer.
• 28:11
  their existing community members. Some of them are women. The Crypto Chicks, for example, is a women's NFT, right? Some are not. So that's where the interesting thing has come about. What we're doing, though, is by creating those spaces which are so beautiful, we have had women like you
• 28:31
  women like Jasmine, who is a great friend of yours, and obviously supports the branch, and other women who are super interested in this space and want to learn more about it. They are excited by the narrative. And what I mean by that is,
• 28:46
  the fact that we have been so thoughtful in our aesthetic and in our language, this is something that even when people don't fully understand it 100%, they are excited and motivated to have a conversation and find out more. The response that we have had on Twitter was,
• 29:04
  from various female artists, communities, you name it, has just been so heartwarming to say the least, absolutely heartwarming. And I think what we love hearing from them, and I wrote this down the other day, we spoke to somebody who basically said, and still some players kind of came along,
• 29:22
  so many conversations at the moment that I have to like write it down but until some players came along they said there was absolutely nothing out there that was built um for a consumer like me there was absolutely nothing out there that allowed me to honor my creative integrity and
• 29:42
  And there was absolutely nothing out there that felt like it was designed by someone like me. So again, it really comes down to the fact that when we think about building technology and consumer product, it's also really important to remember who is at that table driving that conversation. So to answer your initial question, what's our launch plan? We've been deeply engaged with some major entities and our communities.
• 30:07
  and we're working in partnership with them as well as artists and brands to actually put together amazing partnerships at the end of January slash early February to the date date's a little bit secret we will be dropping 10,000 N2s which will be the beautiful bottles that you may have seen on our sites that you may have seen on Instagram etc and they will be what we call the access path and that
• 30:34
  access path then allowed the first 10,000 people to enter our beta platform on the iOS app. So we're launching on iOS only initially, no other platform. That was also probably the most difficult decision ever. It would have been much easier to build this platform on desktop or VR, but we knew that
• 30:56
  the women you are reaching and the communities you are reaching are all spending time on this little guy, not on desktop or anywhere else. And so we've been quite fortunate in the sense that we've had some really organic conversations and we've been supporting female artists. And that is how the word is getting out there. And that's how we're hoping to build and harness that community. Because for us, really, it's about people falling in love with the proposition and they are
• 31:23
  indeed falling in love with what we're about, which is very exciting and heartwarming. I'm so excited for you. This is so amazing. I love it all. Are there any brands that you can mention publicly who the upcoming partnerships and collabs are with?
• 31:40
  we will be able to announce that towards the end of next week. So you will just have to stand up and watch this space. I will have my blinkers on. I will be keeping my eyes peeled. What is your key piece of advice for entrepreneurs coming into 2022?
• 32:03
  Gosh, well, I presume the pandemic will continue. Wear your mask and wash your hands. But no, that aside, hopefully that is all coming to an end and that will seem to be behind us. I think the biggest piece of advice that I can give to anybody is really build an incredible team.
• 32:27
  around you and build an incredible network of supporters around you. I have been extremely, extremely fortunate in that I have found an amazing co-founder who is both talented, brilliant, passionate and highly intelligent to go on this journey with. But it's not just the two of us. There's a team behind us as well. One should stay alongside us. No one is ever behind you. And so I think.
• 32:56
  We all work very, very hard together and we work three things together and we have done so for the past year and a bit. And so I always say it really comes down to picking your team wisely, whether that's your investment partners or whether that's your partners in business or in life.
• 33:13
  Secondly, I think be very open to the possibilities of Web3 because I think what is happening right now is exactly what was, I have not been this excited doing since like,
• 33:28
  2005 or 2006 and I was probably too young to know what was actually happening around me. But we are at a really interesting sort of point in history and point in time where things are changing all around us and it's important to take notes and pay attention. So I think approach it with a very open mind and a very open heart and try to learn as much as possible. If something scares you, probably a really good reason to attack it and learn more about it.
• 33:57
  Oh, amen. Absolutely. I'm going to be holding you to helping me set up my wallets and step me through that process, as well as the introduction to Crypto Chicks. That sounds super cool. We usually wrap up every episode with a quick fire round of six questions, some of which we might have covered, some of which we might not have, but I ask them all the same. So question number one, what's your why? Why are you doing what you're doing?
• 34:25
  I think that when you get out of bed every morning, your heart has to skip a beat. Your mind has to want to know more and your soul has to want more every day. Being an entrepreneur is something that is challenging at the best of times. And so I think you have to have this unbelievable passion for learning and for knowledge. For me, I feel like I'm learning something new every day. My brain is constantly stimulated and that is and has always been my way.
• 34:56
  I love that. I love this. Get out of bed and have your heart skip a beat every morning. Gosh, so poetic, Lana. Jesus. Question number two is this can be from potentially MonPurse because the new business hasn't officially launched yet, but maybe there is a moment that we can talk about, but what's the number one marketing moment that you've had in either business that kind of made the business pop?
• 35:22
  Well, I think it's actually really funny, doing it. I couldn't make this up if I tried. But I texted somebody on the team today to say we had a really big day. We've had a lot of commotion with unbelievable excitement from literally some of the best streetwear brands in the world. My co-founder met with this unbelievable, unbelievable group of people and she came running back.
• 35:48
  So excited. She just could not contain herself. But it was just seeing that joy and that passion was just unbelievable today. We've had the same with a couple of meetings that we've had over the past few days with NFT communities, etc. People are just getting so excited about this and that's why you do it. And so...
• 36:07
  What I texted one of our team members today is I said, is there a parallel between what's happening today and what was happening in the very, very early days of MP when everything just seemed to be happening and working and moving in the right direction? And this person said, absolutely, yes, amen to that. And so I think when I think about marketing at its core, and this is not to take away from, you know, the perspective
• 36:33
  performance marketing and digital activities and whatnot that we all need and have to do but it's something that's authentic and organic and just happens and I think things just happen when people fall in love with what you're talking about um
• 36:48
  For us, that's the biggest validation of the fact that we're onto something, watching other people get excited, smiling, wanting to talk about it, wanting to promote it, wanting to partner with you. That's also the hardest thing potentially sometimes because it takes the most time and you have to be so, so patient for that to happen. But I think if you can hit that eureka moment, then you actually know you're onto something that has longevity.
• 37:15
  Question number three is where do you hang out to get smarter? What are you reading or listening to or subscribing to that other founders should know about? Well, I've actually bought this book. It's a really interesting book called The Happiest Man on Earth. It's by this wonderful, wonderful gentleman who passed away not long ago. He was over 100. His name is Eddie Jakku.
• 37:39
  And he was a Holocaust survivor. And throughout all of the terrible, terrible moments that took place in his life, he always maintained a sense of integrity and dignity and kindness. And I think we all have moments. We all have bad moments. We all have moments when we sort of think bad things, feel bad things, et cetera. And this man just never did for one reason or another. Yeah.
• 38:04
  And I think I kind of have that book lying opposite me as a little reminder every day that no matter how tough things get, tomorrow is always a better day. And this is no comparison to what,
• 38:15
  you know, took place during that terrible moment in time, which is a personal thing for me as well. But it's something that I think is a constant reminder of what's important and what matters in life, and that's human dignity. I've also got, this is very weird, this is not like educational books, but I thought it would be fun and great. The holidays are coming up, and it's really all about arty parties. So, again, it's a bit of a reminder of how to bake more cakes, how to cook exciting things, and how do we...
• 38:45
  Take joy in the simple pleasures of life. Jokes are starting from a business perspective. I'm a big leader. I think you know this. We are bouncing podcasts, articles, all sorts of things, back and forth all the time. I think it's really important to be well-read in terms of the things that matter to you but also the things that are societally and economically important. I try to read a broad range, everything from education
• 39:13
  the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. I try to cover major European papers in terms of staying up to date on economics, foreign politics, domestic politics here in Australia as well, to have a sense of what's happening. And I also subscribe to very specific sub-stacks and things like business sub-stacks as well as crypto sub-stacks, which I will not bore people with today.
• 39:40
  not to mention platforms such as Lean Lux, which we've also discussed, which really is a very lighthearted community that talks about the direct-to-consumer space. I'm interested in a number of different things, and that ranges from politics to art to economics, et cetera.
• 39:59
  But throughout all of that, the two things that I happen to have at my table are related to a personal story of a beautiful man and how to have more fun and bake more cake. So maybe this is telling us that I need to get out there and eat more cake. I don't know. Maybe. Oh, my gosh. You just gave us so many great recommendations. I'm going to link them all in the show notes for anyone who is listening. And if you do want to send me a list of your questions,
• 40:21
  go-to sub stacks, I will subscribe. I would love to check them out. Thank you so much. Question number four is how do you win the day? What are your AM and PM rituals that keep you feeling happy and successful and motivated?
• 40:35
  The one and only thing that I absolutely try to do, even though it has been near on impossible the past month, we have had a dreadful case of La Nina here in beautiful Sydney, is go for a walk. And I'm fortunate that I do the Bondi to Bronte walk every morning, which I know you love very much as well. And I'm sure you're missing this terribly right about now. I'm missing it so bad.
• 41:00
  I can hear it in your voice. So I try to do that every morning either with my husband so we have quality time together whilst taking a business call or whilst listening to a podcast. So heaven, my God. If I don't do it, my day just doesn't have the same ring to it. Please bring that to some place. Please replicate Bondi to Bronte so that we can all join it in the metaverse.
• 41:28
  When we're living in London, which is grey and bleak. I will pass that on to Juliana. Yes, please pass it on. Question number five is if you were given $1,000 of no strings attached grant money, where would you spend that in a business? And that's to highlight your most important spend of a dollar. I know it's not a lot of money in general.
• 41:48
  We honestly, and I've thought about this long and hard when you first sort of showed me what your questions were, and it really comes down to the communities that we're affiliated with and the communities that we support. Just today, actually, Juliana, my co-founder, creative director, and I, we picked out two of our favourite pieces of art, and we posted about them on the Sunplace Twitter, which I think everybody should follow. It's Sun.Place at Twitter. And so...
• 42:15
  Both of them happen to be unbelievably talented female artists. And so because Some Place really is about supporting and fostering the arts community, for us it really would be about purchasing the NFTs and the artwork of up-and-coming female artists.
• 42:34
  Why does that matter? It matters because that's the lifeblood. That's the soul of our community. That's the soul of what we do. That's the spirit of what we do. So absolutely, we would invest in the artists that we support. I feel like today or tomorrow, CJ Hendry is dropping her NFT collection. Did you see that? Yeah.
• 42:56
  Which one? Who? Do you know who's CJ Hendry? CJ Hendry? I will check it out. The Brisbane artist. She's based in New York. She's, I mean, if you don't know her, you're going to absolutely love her. But she drops the collection tonight or tomorrow. I think she has 10 different styles going up. Anyway, it's really, really cool. It's all around this, like, collection around blonde wigs. And she's, like, absolutely mind-blowing. So you should definitely check it out.
• 43:27
  Yes, I'm writing it down as we speak. I'll send you the email with the link and all that kind of stuff. Last question. I know I've asked you a lot today, but last question. How do you deal with failure? What's your mindset and approach when things inevitably don't go to plan?
• 43:44
  Failure is a part of life. I think failure is something that I've experienced myself personally and it's something that I've had to learn from, adapt and live with. I think that when you think of the trajectory and the pattern of life, it's always like this.
• 44:01
  It's never always constantly going up or hopefully not constantly going down. I think a lot of it comes down to mindset and it comes down to how quickly can I pick myself up and how quickly can I say this is where my shortcoming was, this is what I can do better next time and improve from that. I try not to sit on something for a long time because that affects me mentally and emotionally. I try to sort of give myself time to breathe, to cope, to deal with it.
• 44:30
  but then also figure out where I went wrong and how I can do it better next time so that I can continue to grow and evolve as an individual, but also so that I can continue to both take and have fun because what would be the fun in, you know, reliving that terrible moment? And trust me, I have had plenty of those. Lana?
• 44:55
  Thank you so much for taking the time to hop on this call with me today. I've loved learning about someplace and I'm so excited for it to launch and to get in there and experience it and do all the things, have my first NFTs, my own NFTs, I should say.
• 45:12
  Well, I just wanted to say thank you, not on behalf of myself, but on behalf of my amazing co-founder, Juliana, and the rest of the team. We're so grateful to have the opportunity to share our story with you. And I cannot wait to see you back in Sydney so we can go for that walk in Bondi. Please come back. Same, same. I think the last time I saw you was a walk in the park and it was so lovely. I can't wait. Me too.
• 45:40
  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.
• 46:05
  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.
• 46:27
  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.
• 46:44
  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.
• 47:09
  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.
• 47:31
  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.