Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / Fave Hits: 6 Quick Questions with Ju Rhyu, Founder of Hero Cosmetics (part 2)

Transcript

Fave Hits: 6 Quick Questions with Ju Rhyu, Founder of Hero Cosmetics (part 2) · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  Hey, it's Dune here. This is just a quick message to let you know that for the next two weeks, we're bringing you a roundup of our favorite episodes that you might have missed the first time around. Episodes from women like Leslie Carls, the founder of Midday Squares, Ju Ru, the founder of Hero Cosmetics, and Michelle Grant, the founder of Lively. I hope you enjoy these episodes as much as I did recording them. And if you learned something, please do shout about it by posting it to your Instagram stories.
• 0:30
  Welcome back. Here are the six quick questions. Question number one is, what's your why? My why is...
• 0:50
  I just, for me, I love to create. I love to, like, I love to bake and I love to cook, for example, because I love making things. And so for me, my why is I just love the art of creation and,
• 1:06
  And starting a company is like, it's such a great example of that. Like starting from nothing and then creating this, you know, 15 to 20 person company with a product that sells every 15 seconds. I think I just get a lot of satisfaction from that. Totally. Question number two is what's been the number one marketing moment that's made your business pop? Yeah.
• 1:32
  Ooh, that's a good question. I mean, I think one of the key pivotal times was when early on, we had just launched, and I was emailing editors and people in the press, and the first publication that we got was in Into the Gloss. And that drove our sales pretty significantly on Amazon, and that was a good question.
• 2:00
  Also, I started getting a lot of inbound requests from people like, oh, I read about your product into the gloss. Like I'm interested in carrying it or, oh, I read about your product. Can I, you know, can you send me samples because I have this article coming up? And so I think that was definitely a pivotal moment for us. Good one.
• 2:23
  Question number three is where do you hang out to get smarter? And that's around what you're listening to, what you're reading, where you're hanging out on the internet. I read the Wall Street Journal every morning. I also, my favorite podcast is Pivot by Kara Swisher and Professor Scott Galloway.
• 2:45
  Those are probably the two biggest things that I do. I read, I mean, I read a lot. I like subscribe to almost, you know, a ton of trade emails or publications. Like there's a Morning Brew and Lean Lux. I read...
• 3:01
  2pm. I read the glossy beauty independent. Like I, I read, I read a lot of things, but I think it makes me a better marketer and a better business person. I really love lean looks. I'm like always on them to be like, can I come in the Slack group yet? Because I know you guys have a big wait list, but I've been reading this for a really long time. Yeah. It's such a good one.
• 3:26
  Question number four is how do you win the day? And that's around your AM and PM rituals that keep you feeling happy and motivated and successful.
• 3:36
  I try to take a daily walk. So we're, you know, I live in Paris and we are also in our second lockdown, but we're allowed to have one hour of exercise. So I usually take like 40 minutes of that and I go for a walk. And that's when I put my AirPods on. I listen to my podcast. I get fresh air. I get some sun if we're lucky, you know, if it's a sunny day.
• 4:00
  And so that's really important to me. I mean, I think it's probably like the most important thing that I do. I know there are some people who do like meditation or they do the journal. I haven't really gotten into that, but but yeah, that daily walk is really important to me. It's key. Question number five is if you only had a thousand dollars left in your business bank account, where would you spend it? Oh, that's a good question.
• 4:31
  I would spend it on, I mean, I'm a big believer in press and earned media. So I would spend, I would probably spend half of it on sending out product to certain creators or influencers like Instagrammers or TikTokers, probably TikTok because at this point, I think my dollars would go further. Totally. Yeah, I would spend the other half on sending products to press and trying to land, um,
• 5:01
  another like big article maybe in Buzzfeed or New York times or wall street journal or something like that. Totally. I'm going to break from format for a second. What's your experience with TikTok been like? Oh, it's, uh,
• 5:18
  Amongst social channels, it's in the top two in terms of most important. So both Instagram and TikTok are extremely important for us. We get sometimes better results with the creators on TikTok because their videos can go viral faster.
• 5:36
  Um, and then also like we started a year ago and a year ago, TikTok wasn't as known, uh, and the rates were so much cheaper. Like we paid a creator, I don't know, $200 and had a million followers because they had, because the market wasn't as mature on TikTok as it was on Instagram. So...
• 5:56
  And we still get creators on TikTok who convert so well for us. I think we're lucky because it's the right audience, the right age group, the right type of content.
• 6:07
  And, yeah, it's always, you know, we have like a post-purchase checkout survey that I'll read. Because then the question is, how did you hear about us? And it toggles between TikTok and Instagram, like back and forth in terms of number one and number two responses. So for us, like that's how they discover us, actually. That's really interesting to put that in the how did you hear about us and to actually, you know, drive further into those channels that people are telling you they're coming from. That's really cool. Yeah.
• 6:37
  And last question, question number six, how do you deal with failure? You know, I'm not really afraid of failure. I think I think of it not really as failure, but as like a learning opportunity and not everything is going to work out. I think people have different ways of coping for me. I like to share and talk.
• 6:59
  things out with people. So if something doesn't work, I'll usually, maybe I'm talking to a friend or my husband or my co-founders or something like that. Why did this work? What went wrong? What can we learn from it? How can we change things for the future? And so I like to process things verbally. And yeah, I don't think failure is that big of a deal. It's just part of the process. Part of the process. Part of the growth.
• 7:27
  Thank you so much for joining me today on the Female Startup Club podcast. I have loved all the advice you've shared and the learnings that you've had along the way. So thank you so much. Yeah, thanks for having me. I was happy to join.
• 7:43
  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.
• 8:08
  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.
• 8:30
  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. Thank you.
• 8:46
  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.
• 9:11
  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.
• 9:34
  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.