Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / An Update on Ami Bateman’s Pleasant State Equity Crowdfunding Results So Far ($600k raised!)

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An Update on Ami Bateman’s Pleasant State Equity Crowdfunding Results So Far ($600k raised!) · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is part two of Amy Bateman's miniseries on Female Startup Club.
• 0:14
  Hello, welcome back to the show. It's Dune here, your host and hype girl. If you've just found us, we are so grateful and so happy to have you here. Every week, we're learning from some of the world's most brilliant minds in business that happen to be women.
• 0:32
  like Amy Bateman. If you follow the show, you might remember her episode from a few weeks ago where she shared her journey in building Pleasant State and is taking us on the ride with her of her equity crowdfunding campaign that is currently live. You should go and check it out immediately.
• 0:48
  if you haven't done so already. This episode is your front row seat. It's your direct update into how she's doing, what's been going great, and what's been going not so great. So buckle up. There's a lot here to unpack in this episode with Amy. But before we jump into today's episode, shout out to the girl code.
• 1:08
  You know who you are. You know if you've been helping me on this. If you love what we're doing over here and we bring you some value or even just a quick smile, we're asking you to honor the girl code and take a tiny action every time you listen to one of our episodes.
• 1:26
  Whether that's by leaving us a juicy five-star review or sharing this episode with some of your friends or shouting loudly about us on social media, all these tiny actions make a really big difference and keeps the show going. To everyone doing this, I see you. I appreciate you and I'm so grateful to have you as my hype girls. Let's get into today's episode. This is Amy for Female Startup Club.
• 1:56
  Amy, hi. Welcome back to the Female Startup Club podcast. Thanks for having me again. I'm so excited to be doing part two of this episode. For anyone who hasn't listened to part one, you need to go back because this is going to be a deep dive on everything that we kind of covered in the first episode, but in more detail. Exciting. How's your day going? Any wins or oh shit moments? Yeah.
• 2:22
  Well, it took me until I think about 10 o'clock to get out of my pajamas. So I kind of went to my computer, decided to get on top of admin. I think I neglected paying bills, just so much stuff. Sian wanted, Sian, my business partner, wanted to do filming today. And I just remember being in my pajamas and thinking, I can't, like, I've got nothing left in me. I think I went to the shower, probably like, I'm not a crier, but every now and then I feel like crying. Yeah.
• 2:51
  So I go through like the motions of feeling like crying. And then I'm like, just get it together. You've got to keep going. We're a week, like we're literally during this call, we're a week away from closing the equity crowdfunding. So, yeah, I'm just having to dig deep and kind of go to another level every day. And, yeah, at this point, I'm like, I'm quite surprised I'm operating and functioning and at this sort of level, if I'm honest.
• 3:18
  Yeah, gosh. Okay, one week to go. It's not long. You can see the finish line. Yeah.
• 3:24
  I think I'm counting down the seconds. I keep refreshing the website, the virtual website, and being like, oh, how much longer? Like, when is this going to end? This middle bit, because it runs for three weeks, this middle bit is the worst in any campaign because the beginning really takes off. You've primed everyone. They're really excited. Then the middle bit, there's no real sense of urgency. So I feel like it's almost...
• 3:51
  you know, two weeks or one and a half weeks of almost nothing. And then it goes really hard again at the end. And so I've just decided during this middle bit, rather than pushing too hard, kind of take a bit of a breather and then prepare ourselves again to go hard at the end. But we cracked 600k last night. Yeah.
• 4:12
  Oh my gosh, amazing. Congratulations. Thank you from 400 investors. So all things considered, given the environment, we're pretty happy with how it's going and yeah, just so humbled by the support.
• 4:27
  Oh my gosh, that must be just the best feeling. 400 hype girls and guys out there backing you. Where should we start this episode? I feel like maybe just a quick recap in case anyone listening hasn't listened to the part one and then like rewinding to – because we were in the expressions of interest phase, right? You had just opened up the first part of the campaign, right?
• 4:53
  So I kind of feel like we need to go back to that time. Let's do a quick recap. Okay, amazing. So that was probably, what, five weeks ago, I'd say. Yes, so Pleasant State is doing an equity crowdfunding campaign
• 5:08
  So we're calling on people to invest in Pleasant State for as little as $250. They'll become owners in our business and help us build a people-powered brand that's helping us change the way that we clean our homes for good.
• 5:24
  We did extensive kind of, I guess, campaign in the lead up to this. So probably let our community know a good three months in advance that it was coming. But we've been planning for it for a really long time. You know, that included a whole lot of marketing campaigns to build our database and then just giving people the hint that it's coming so they could get prepared. And then, yes, about five weeks. I can't even remember the date. Where are we? We're mid-June.
• 5:51
  Oh, my gosh. So four weeks ago, 16 of May, we launched the expression of interest phase. And so, you know, we had a whole lot of data around the number of interests that we should get before, you know, ideally before we kind of launch because we had an idea of conversion rates. You know, we had a really good idea of how much we should spend per expression of interest. So we had really clear budgets. Yeah.
• 6:17
  you know been trying to execute against that plan really happy to talk about how we've kind of gone against that yeah and then I think two weeks ago we launched the actual offer and that's where we're at now two weeks in one week to go
• 6:35
  Oh my gosh. I can't believe it's been four weeks already. That's so crazy. I have a few like paint the picture questions so that we can kind of all be on the same page before we talk a little bit more about the EOI phase, expressions of interest phase. What was your initial goal that you were kind of aiming for in that expressions of interest phase?
• 6:54
  Yeah, so before we embarked on the campaign, we had a bit of an idea about a maximum raise of sort of 1.6 million from our equity crowdfunding campaign. That was really driven by us thinking about how much of the company we were willing to give up in this round. So combined with like an early investment where we had people...
• 7:18
  on safe notes, that would get us to about a $2 million raise maximum, post-money valuation of about $10 million. So we were looking to give up a maximum of 20%. Noting though that the whole virtual expression of interest campaign would really determine what our minimum and maximum targets would look like. So if we were aiming for a $1.6 million raise, what we were really looking to achieve was about 4,000 expressions of interest. So,
• 7:45
  at about $30 per conversion. We were kind of aiming for, I think Sian's original goal was sort of 30% paid expression of interest. So about a thousand we were hoping to pay for. That's not cheap, right? So if you do the maths on that, I'm not going to do it on the spot. Do you mean, sorry, just to confirm, to clarify rather, do you mean like you were going to spend $30 to acquire a thousand people and then the rest would be kind of like word of mouth, organic from your community?
• 8:15
  Yes, correct. So 30% was going to be paid at $30 per lead. Right. So it was like a 3K budget to get you to...
• 8:24
  Oh, my God, $30,000. Oh, right. It's 30 times $1,000. Yes. Okay, got it. $30,000. Oh, wow. Okay. Right. Go on. Sorry. No, no, no, not at all. Not an insignificant investment, right? So $30 a lead, $1,000 paid leads, $30,000 just in the expression of interest phase. And then we were hoping or thought that 70% would come from organic. It was very clear really early on that it wasn't going to play out that way. Yeah.
• 8:53
  And in fact, we had to shift the amount that we were going to acquire through paid leads. And so I think we shifted to a goal of sort of 50% paid, 50% organic. We're kind of angling for that. By the end, you know, the leads did creep up. So we probably landed at about $36 or so a lead on average.
• 9:17
  But we only hit, it's still like really amazing. We got 2,000 expressions of interest. So we achieved half of what we were hoping for. And in the end, a lot of them were actually paid. But again, you've got to think that even though these were people that we probably had in our database, they were seeing us all over social media, ads, emails, et cetera. So there's probably a lot of them were coming, were already in our database that came through ads.
• 9:47
  But there were benefits to that too in terms of sales. So, you know, we had really huge sales during that period. And while Facebook isn't necessarily attributing those leads to conversions, it all was really making a difference. There's lots of noise and lots of awareness.
• 10:05
  So we, yeah, we had a really good month. Those last two weeks we were doing, I think, about $4,000 average daily sales, which if you think back to Feb, where we're about $1,200 average daily sales, that's a really significant increase. So there's definite benefits from that. That's amazing. Yeah, really cool. So what else? Yeah, so we achieved half of what we were really aiming for.
• 10:30
  So knowing that probably 30% of the EOIs would convert, it just was what it was. Like there wasn't much more that we could push. We weren't going to push that budget too much more. In fact, we sort of went from about $30,000 investment to about $50,000. I think we spent about $50,000, $55,000 just through the expression of interest phase on ads. Yeah.
• 10:51
  Again, we'd planned to invest quite heavily in this campaign, which is why we did the early raise, because we know to get money, you've really got to invest in those campaigns. It's definitely not as easy or as cheap as it was two, three years ago. We're in quite interesting times with
• 11:09
  inflation and interest rate rises and people really concerned about the cost of living. So getting people to, I guess, part with their money and be interested in investing at this time comes with its own sets of challenges. But we're really fortunate that we've built a really awesome brand with a really engaged community and a real purpose behind what we're doing. And that's really seeing us through definitely as we're in this offer phase.
• 11:35
  So, yeah, I think that touches on the EOI and how, like, our success measures. In the end, we set our minimum at $350,000. So while we're during that EOI phase, the virtual platform is using all of its data to really assess the cost.
• 11:53
  where they think you're going to land. So they have a ballpark figure. So depending on the number of people and the amount that they're looking to invest, they have pretty good data now that tells them the likelihood of that conversion at different sort of, I guess, investment amounts. Yeah.
• 12:09
  And their data is pretty good now. They've done a number of those. So we did rely on that quite a bit to actually set our minimum. So their advice was sort of $50,000 odd below sort of their minimum ballpark. We were going to send it at 400, but sort of last minute just decided, let's just go a bit lower so we can hit that minimum and get really good momentum. So that's a really important aspect.
• 12:34
  They talk about momentum in terms of psychology, which is get to it quickly. So it feels like the ball's rolling. The second is scarcity. So when thinking about your maximum, you want people to feel like that they might miss the opportunity. You don't want the gap between sort of where you're sitting after that two-day private period ends and you move into the public period, which opens up to everyone. You don't want the gap between where you're at and your maximum to be too great because otherwise that feeling of scarcity isn't there.
• 13:04
  We kind of overlaid the data we had in virtual with conversations that we'd been having with our community. So obviously I've talked about the ads, that was one component, but combined Sian and I had over 60 calls. I think I probably did 40, 45 of those. So just so everyone knows, I'm actually...
• 13:23
  I think as I get older, I'm a bit more introverted. On the Myers-Briggs, I was slightly extroverted when I was younger, but I definitely feel introverted these days. So in terms of energy output for me, that's been a really energy-consuming exercise. So I've had to push myself to places that are really difficult for me, even though mostly those 45 people,
• 13:50
  my mates, they're my network, they're former people I've worked with, they're our customers, they're people who just love our brand. So I'm on these calls and, you know, getting really amazing reinforcement and positive feedback, but still that, you know, having to call that many people on top of still running a business and running a campaign and
• 14:10
  doing podcasts and media was like a really huge undertaking. And yes, there's been a few breaking points throughout. So combining that data with people telling me what they were going to invest, we kind of treated it like you would in BD with a pipeline.
• 14:28
  So I'd kind of say this person's really high chance of conversion at this number because I'd ask them directly. And then we'd have sort of the moderate where I knew what they had said through virtual, but they still had to negotiate something with their partner or work out their finances or set their structure up. So they'd be sort of more a moderate low. And so kind of weighted that, overlaid that with the virtual data and
• 14:53
  kind of formed our own opinion about our maximum. So we ended up setting our maximum at 1.1 million. Right. So minimum 350, maximum 1.1. You're currently at 600 and you're in that, like, you're about to come out of the valley of death and you're going to be in the like high intensity final week. Yes.
• 15:17
  I know that it's been a rollercoaster for you. We've obviously spoken a lot on Instagram and message and things like that. And you've had like these breaking points, which I want to ask you about. I also imagine that you've had some truly heartfelt, beautiful moments in these conversations with your friends and customers. And I just wondered if there's anything that really comes to mind that you would want to share or shout out.
• 15:44
  Yeah, definitely. Some really good ones. So, yeah, just so many messages of support.
• 15:51
  like even people who have, you know, not necessarily been biggest supporters, they're often like weirdly, I'm not going to name them, but close family members who have potentially not seen value in this, typically not women, just, you know, message on us constantly being like, oh my gosh, you're at your minimum. And then the next day it's like, wow, you've got this, like keep going and just
• 16:17
  Really like realizing that there's huge potential and can see now like things that they didn't see before because our community is so behind us. And for someone like both Sian and I, people who, if we're doubted, we just love proving people wrong. So for me, like that's super rewarding. Yeah, finally.
• 16:36
  Um, now you were surprised. Told you. Yeah. Just converting the disbelievers, even when it comes to customers, right? Those ones that are really upset with you over something. If you convert them, they become your biggest champions and there's something so rewarding in that.
• 16:53
  Um, uh, I don't like to talk about them too much cause I'll get emotional, but let's like, let's see if I can do this without getting emotional. Um, people have to like separate it from myself. So, um, those that will say it's an investment in humanity, you know, that's why they're doing it or, um, you know, they're investing in me personally. Um, yeah.
• 17:11
  because, you know, they've worked with me. This is one that I've got a lot in my life, which is if, you know, if anyone can do it, it's Amy. And so that hearing those stories again is just really encouraging. I don't like, honestly, I don't know where this comes from. It's often been a lot of pressure, but in moments, you know, when I'm feeling like I don't have the energy or I'm not
• 17:35
  That one, like if anyone can do it as Amy. And so just really drawing on that energy from my community is really important. Honestly, we're asking women who are typically not invested before and 77% of our investors at this stage are women.
• 17:53
  Oh, my God. I love that. Yeah, it's like it's crazy. 70 percent of women. And I would say the majority of those have never invested before in an asset like this. And they're investing at a time where, you know, times are really tough.
• 18:10
  Like, you know, they're probably wondering about their mortgages and stuff. And yet they're still taking a gamble. Like, I shouldn't say gamble, but they care enough that they're like, yes, this is the kind of future that I want. This is the kind of world that we need to build. And for me, that's probably the best thing out of all of this because...
• 18:30
  you know, I'm sure you believe this too, I really do feel having seen all the businesses, women that are building, that we're really going to change the world and we're going to build the right kind of world. And for that, we need women investing in those types of businesses. So to see that happening when times are really tough and we're having to make choices about our money is super humbling.
• 18:53
  I mean, 100%. Like you're part of the change of statistics, which is just so cool and exciting and special. Love that for you. Love to be involved. Yeah.
• 19:08
  So just quickly before we kind of go into more of that 48-hour period where people started to convert from an EOI to an actual confirmed, this is the amount that I'm going to invest, how much is the average kind of investment? I know that you said originally, you know, you could start from anywhere from $250 and up. And I know from our conversations, you had, you know, smaller investments like that. You also had larger investments and kind of bigger angels coming in. What did it land at on average? Yeah.
• 19:39
  Yeah, so during the expression of interest phase, it was sort of just shy of $1,300. And virtual thought that was a little bit low relative to other campaigns. What we're seeing at the moment is we're just over $600K and that's just from over 400 investors. So we're just shy of $1,500, which...
• 20:01
  again, they're really happy with, we're really happy with, again, at a time when it's a little bit tough. That's, you know, people are putting in like really amazing money and that's, you know, we've had a couple, like a few bigger ones. So one at sort of 45,000, one at 40. Yeah. And then some at 10 and some at five, but on the whole, you know, while people are definitely coming in at $250 and that's amazing. The average at $1,500 is still a really good result.
• 20:32
  Yeah, that's amazing. And overall for this whole campaign, what is the kind of budget slash what you will actually spend on bringing this campaign to life? Oh, yeah, really great question. I wish you'd have sent any of these in advance. I'm just kind of riffing here, though. Yeah, amazing. How about, I would love if we come back to this question at the end because there's some follow-up expenses there.
• 20:59
  that will come out of this. Like, again, in some cases we've negotiated with, say, our lawyer. Well, actually, he offered this just because he, really incredible, delayed payment on certain things. Or, you know, I've got some invoices and, like, I'm kind of asking about hours and stuff because that's something I often do if I feel like it's not necessarily reasonable. So where we land, I would love to come back and I can give you an accurate figure at the end. Yeah, great.
• 21:25
  Yeah, yeah. Let's do that in part three of this mini series. Okay. So I want to dive in a little bit deeper to your marketing because obviously we've touched on the kinds of things you were doing. You know, you did some ads, you were doing lots of calls, this kind of thing. But can we just go a few layers deeper in what you've been doing on a daily basis? And what are the things that have like really worked? And what are the things that have been like a bit of a waste of time?
• 21:51
  Yeah, really great question. So we made a decision to invest quite heavily into PR. So PR is a really important aspect of this campaign. So we engaged someone who was having a lot of success in the crowdfunding space and made a $15,000 investment into the PR. Yeah.
• 22:08
  And that, you know, he's working really hard for us. So we got Channel 7 up in Queensland really early on. We just had an interview with Forbes magazine. Oh, my God. Cool. Yeah, yesterday. So fingers crossed that comes out in time. But even still, like after the fact, just something like that's amazing. And that's really a story about female founders. And the follow-on story will be...
• 22:32
  of females investing in female founders and what's happening kind of in the Australian space. So that's a really cool story to come out of that. So yeah, quite a few PR opportunities, a couple of radio interviews, which has been a bit fun. So yeah, PR is always a really important element because you get to get in front of a lot of people.
• 22:53
  Obviously, paid advertising, paid media has been really critical and that's been our biggest investment. So I mentioned at the end of the expression of interest, we were about 55,000.
• 23:05
  I believe we've got about $15,000 reserved just for this period. So again, we went, that's over budget, but we've recognised it's really important. From what I can tell, the return on investment at the moment, Sian told me this morning through this, this offer phase is about 6.5, meaning that
• 23:26
  for every dollar being spent, the investment amount is 6.5 times more than the cost to actually acquire that lead. So that's worth it, right? So we'll continue to invest knowing that we're getting that sort of return. So we're always assessing that. And is that factoring in the new customer acquisition you've also received in that process? Or is that like a whole other bucket of, and there's also this ROI that we haven't really factored in yet, but down the track once the campaign is over, you'll be able to look more closely at that.
• 23:56
  Yeah, definitely. So the conversion ads for actual sales are performing really well. We're getting massive traffic. We're still converting. I think our conversion rate is sitting between 4% to 5% on our website for conversion. But the 6.5% is purely dollar spend to acquire a dollar of investment. So for every dollar we're spending, we're getting 6.5% investment on that.
• 24:25
  Um, yes. And so there's that. I'm doing lots of podcasts. Sean's on a podcast. I'm attending lots of events. So I've been to three or so events so far during this time. And then the biggest one is hitting the phone. So calling everyone we spoke to before who said they were going to invest, contacting them and making sure that they're investing or understanding if they're not, if they're willing to share that with us. Um.
• 24:55
  And so in the remaining days, that's a really big focus. So next week, between sort of Monday to Thursday, Sian and I will be on the phones having face-to-face conversations. The other day we had, yeah, one of our investors had committed a $5,000 investment. We saw that she had cancelled the investment. Sian gave her a call. And during that call, Sian was understanding what was going on in her life and she had a lot of things going on in her life.
• 25:25
  around health and finances and relationships and, you know, decided that it was a bit hard and she needed to sort some stuff out. And then at the end of the call, this lovely woman said to Sean, I'll check your number again. And literally on the call, she made that $5,000 investment. So this is a bit that people are a bit afraid to go to because particularly if you're e-commerce, right?
• 25:46
  You often are not speaking directly with your customers. You can do that through the computer. So to get on the phone and do this is a really important aspect of the campaign. And then LinkedIn, so we do frequent updates obviously across our Instagram and Facebook. But LinkedIn, because I've got a really big network there, that's a really big one. And yeah, people are popping out of the woodworks. A girl I went to uni with got an email the other day. She's like, oh my god.
• 26:15
  I knew you were going to do amazing things. I just invested and reminded me of environmental projects we were involved in together many, many years ago. I don't want to give away my age. But yes, LinkedIn has been really effective for me engaging my community.
• 26:32
  Gosh, it sounds like a lot to also be running a business day to day and doing this campaign. You said that you had 2000 EOIs and you had 400 to date investment like confirmed. So for that drop off,
• 26:50
  Do you think you will, like based on what Birchall has told you, do you think those, you know, 1600 remaining investors are likely to convert? Or is that just the nature of the game that, you know, they drop off and that's it?
• 27:04
  Yeah, so if you think we were looking at sort of a 30% conversion, expression of interest, which is why it was kind of let's get four, you know, we assumed we might have to have 1,000 investors if we were going to hit that 1.6 million, which was the max we were willing to go to in terms of not giving up more than 20% of the company. So we've been factoring in sort of a 30% conversion. So if you think...
• 27:31
  On 2000, you want roughly, you know, 60 odd investors. And so we're sitting at 400. Some of those have come through during the actual offer phase. When we looked at the numbers this morning, 20% of our EOIs, expression of interest, people had actually converted. So we've still got a week to go. So it looks like we're tracking to that 30%.
• 27:56
  Again, the data says that that's the case. First, previous raises, and that's one conversation that's important to have this conversation
• 28:05
  your expectation versus reality and really managing that because I'm finding that it's the gap between the two that really causes discomfort and frustration or unhappiness. And so it's really easy to look back at campaigns two, three years ago when crowdfunding was new and there was lots of money and, you know, there are campaigns where, you know,
• 28:29
  they were sometimes converting 50%. I think there was one that converted 80% of AEOIs. So I'm glad we kind of stuck with the 30% because otherwise that gap would be very disappointing. But...
• 28:41
  You know, I think for us, it's just such an unknown, like sometimes it really feels like gambling when you do crowdfunding because you really don't know what's going to happen. You don't know what's going on in people's lives. You know, I've definitely had people who looked like they were going to, they were high conversions, tell me one number and it will halve. And I think that's really an indication of the time. So one of the things Sian and I talk a lot about is saying, well, yes, we like maybe we want to,
• 29:10
  1.1 which is where we set the max in the end because we we had to definitely drop that and while it's not there and it might not be moving as fast if we just kind of get remove this gap between expectation reality and just say be present you know back to sort of buddhist principles this is it this is the reality oh my gosh 400 people have invested in us we we have 600 000 more than we did two weeks ago which is
• 29:35
  For a business that was running... There's a lot of money. Like for a business that was running at sort of, you know, $10,000 was where the bank would often be, sometimes less. That like, that is so much money. And it might, you know, we might not be able to achieve the retail and the global growth plan that we aimed for if we were to.
• 29:55
  kind of achieve the 1.1 to 1.6 but oh my gosh we're going to be able to do so much with that it'll be a different it'll be a slightly different plan but we're still going to execute a really good plan and we have all these new people who are owners in Pleasant State who will benefit and mostly women and hopefully they will benefit right everyone knows this is really risky and need to read the risk warnings but
• 30:20
  That's really huge. So I'm applying a lot of my Buddhist practice. I'm not really I'm not necessarily Buddhist, but I have been practicing a lot of the philosophies for about six years now. So it's often like, yep, this is what it is. Be really present, practice gratitude, really appreciate what's happening, particularly in a really interesting, challenging time and keep going.
• 30:43
  I freaking love that. And I would also say, like, it's not just $600,000. You have so many more customers, so many more eyeballs have seen your brand. So maybe they want a customer today, but then next month or in six months time, they are then touched by your brand again and then become customers. It's just amazing what this campaign has drawn to you. And I also think that you've leveled up with your content.
• 31:10
  Like I was looking at your reels today and I was like, damn, this is a really great reel. I feel like I've shared so many to my stories. And I feel like you guys have just gotten really good at the reel thing.
• 31:24
  Yeah, amazing. Well, that's all credit to definitely Sian and Natasha, our graphic designer. I know in advance when we were doing our crowdfunding video, Tash, our graphic designer, super junior but super talented and like a massive learner. We asked her if she wanted to do the animations for the crowdfunding video.
• 31:45
  And she said yes. And, you know, on offering back on her weekends, like an out of hours, she was teaching herself animation so that she could animate and do illustrations in our video. And so I think as a result of that, a lot of that is starting to come through, too. So, yes, she's amazing. I'm like, we're just so happy with how the team has really committed to this process.
• 32:09
  I love that. That's so cool. Go her. Tash, was it? Shout out to Tash. Yeah, exactly. Love that for her and you. In hindsight, from where you are today, so I know that you're like in the midst of it, you're still kind of like deep in the weeds. So you haven't had time to kind of like really step back and zoom out from the whole process. But from where you are today, is there anything that you would have done differently so far?
• 32:34
  No, I don't think I would have done anything differently at all. The only thing that I wish was different was the external environment. And I can't change that. So the only things I can change are things that we can control and just manage my reactions and response to the environment. And again, as the leader, it's important that I'm not too nervous and stuff about it or too down because I definitely set the tone. So I'm just being realistic about it.
• 33:03
  No, one thing I'm super proud about actually is we did a lot of work on our valuation. So engaged an economist, we looked, I think I may have shared it in part one. And so people can go back and have a bit of a listen to that process. But
• 33:19
  And then I tested that valuation with a number of, you know, I guess experts in the market who are familiar with investing on that valuation. That was so important to me that when we did crowdfunding that we went out with a valuation that was really fair. Yeah.
• 33:36
  And so that in future as we grew, that people who had investors who had invested or investors could benefit in that growth. If we went out with a valuation that was inflated, that potential for upside obviously is reduced. And it's a concern that I had with equity crowdfunding when it first started. The multiples were too high.
• 33:59
  And so I just had an ethical dilemma with that. I just really felt that wasn't fair. It's really important for me that our community investors share
• 34:08
  in our growth if and when we do grow. So we've had zero pushback at all on the valuation, not from a single person throughout this process. And I really do think that that's also part of the reason that we're really doing well and succeeding because there are other businesses doing crowdfunding at the same time that are just not getting there, to be honest.
• 34:32
  And that's a combination of the environment, but also making sure that you're offering like real value to these people who are looking to invest in your business and you're genuinely interested in building and sharing wealth.
• 34:47
  as you build and share wealth in your business. And so that's another thing that I'm just really proud of. And I would encourage people not to look at equity crowdfunding as a way to get inflated valuations, because at the end of the day, you're basically, in my view, cheating investors and potentially taking advantage of the fact that they're not as, and I do this in quotation marks, sophisticated, because that's just a technical investor term.
• 35:16
  They're not as experienced or educated in this and they're often not able to necessarily looking at the numbers. So 100% onus is on the business to set a fair valuation. So that's something. Yeah, we haven't got pushback, haven't got a single question on it. It means that we priced it properly and I'm really happy about that.
• 35:36
  That is such an interesting insight and an interesting point. Thank you so much for sharing. Last kind of thing I want to touch on just before we wrap up for today in this episode is burnout. I've been asking founders about this a lot recently. I mean, you and I speak quite often, you know that I'm someone who's struggling with this feeling at the moment myself. How are you dealing with everything that's going on? How's your mental health? I know that
• 36:07
  What's the 101? What I'd say is Sian and I are probably just managing that line really carefully. So we watch out for the signs of genuine burnout and just as we're like getting there, we're like, all right, we need to slow down, we need to have a break, whatever that is. So like the honest answer is we're basically borderline burnt out. Yeah.
• 36:34
  And that is not, this is not something that I think you should be proud about as founders. It's definitely not something that I'm proud about. Like, I wish it wasn't the case, but it just really is a reality. So we knew...
• 36:49
  The irony is I walked into this year after taking my first couple of weeks break thinking, that's it, we're going to have work-life balance. I'm not working like I have the last three years again. That's unsustainable. Let's aim for a four-day work week. I've honestly never worked harder in my life and I come from professional services like Ernst & Young. So that's a massive statement. Yeah.
• 37:13
  But we, you know, for months, like I reckon Sian and I have been running sprints, but in marathon format since February this year. That is, that's not healthy. That's not sustainable. But it's been necessary in order to like, sorry, and we're in mid-June, right? That's a really long time.
• 37:31
  This for us is we've got to make sure that this business survives. Like we're really committed to it. We knew we had to do this crowdfunding and we're doing it at a time where our business is growing massively. So we had 90% growth in the last 90 days on the last, the prior 90 day period.
• 37:47
  So we're kind of managing that at the same time. So how are we doing it? Yeah, we just talk honestly about it with each other. On the weekend, I think on Friday, I just messaged the other kind of management team and said, Sian and I...
• 38:02
  we're not available this weekend. Don't, like unless it's really urgent, don't even message us about the campaign. Like don't share anything. We just need to really turn off, like no communication about the business at all. And, you know, being really strict and not, you know, trying as best as I could not to look at the campaign results, not trying to look at our sales and just saying no, stop. And I, you know, forcing myself to go to the beach and read books
• 38:29
  But I like I was really emotional on the weekend. It was really strange. I think we'd been working for so long to get to this point and we were we pushed ourselves to levels we didn't think were possible. And it almost feels like every day is like, OK, go to the next level.
• 38:45
  I've got to go to the next level and like we've had to dig really deep so when it got to the weekend when I could pause because we're in this like valley of death so I just decided I'm not pushing it too much let's just have a bit of a breather um I was reading this really beautiful book called Love Stories by Trent Dalton who wrote um did I tell you about this too? Yeah I he's um Boys Fallers Universe is one of my favorite books I love it
• 39:09
  And so what was beautiful about that is I could like cry at the end of every chapter, but not like feel really bad about it because they were just really lovely stories. Oh, yeah. I forgot my my grandma who I like not super close with, but still like deaths in the family, like they cause a bit of trauma. Right. She passed away just the weekend as we were about to launch. Yeah.
• 39:32
  our campaign and so I'd had to put sorry oh thank you I'd had to like just put that sort of in a bucket right and be like I know that's happened and I had to support my dad a bit but I just kind of had to put it like over here and not really deal with it so I think like on the weekend I could process that a little bit more so
• 39:51
  Yeah, like you do things to get through and then we're just really mindful of it and really honest and authentic about it and, you know, tell our team, don't get out of your PJs until late. The other day I'm like, Sean, don't even come into the office, just do a little bit from home and then work it out. So we're just trying to work around our energy, but like it's real and I'm not, there's nothing to be proud about, but it's just a reality.
• 40:18
  Yeah, dealing with like the business, the campaign, then everything that's happening in your real life. I know Sian also just got engaged. It's just there's a lot going on in your world right now. Oh, my gosh. Congratulations, Sian, though. We're so excited for you.
• 40:36
  I feel like this is probably a good point to wrap this episode up. I feel like we've covered all of the update part of where you're at. You still have a week of the campaign left for everyone who is interested in Pleasant State or wants to learn more. Go to any of your channels. There's information everywhere. Is there anything else you want to end with?
• 41:00
  No, just thank you again for having me. It's really exciting to share this journey. And yeah, I think I asked you before, have you ever spoken to someone like in the middle of it? Because it's so easy to forget the really challenging things. I think we have a tendency to...
• 41:16
  like focus on the good. So you're kind of getting the warts and all where like I've admitted this morning, I could barely get out of my pajamas. So that's really cool, like to be able to share authentically what this process is really like. And thanks to everyone for tuning in and especially to those who have invested in Pleasant State and, you know, really putting their money to building a better working world. So thank you so much.
• 41:40
  Yeah, let's keep changing the world. And you in particular, Dune, I know you invested too, like at a time where you're going through some things. So it just means so much. Thank you. Happy to be invested in your business. I'm happy to be your hype girl. I'm so excited to be part of your journey. Thank you so much. Loved this.
• 42:05
  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.
• 42:30
  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.
• 42:52
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.
• 43:08
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 43:32
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 43:55
  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.