Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / 6 quick questions with Jane Lu, Founder of Showpo (Part 2)
Transcript
- 0:00Welcome back. Here are the six quick questions. So question number one is what's your why? Why are you waking up every day and building SHOPO?
- 0:20I am doing it because I just love it. You know, I wanted to create a career for myself that I love. I remember like the first moment that I thought I was successful was when I, this is so stupid, but when I looked...
- 0:36at the business and I was like, if things failed, again, having a big fear of failure, right? I thought if I failed, I could go and get a job working for another retailer. Maybe I could go work at the Iconic. They'll hire me because I'm an entrepreneur and I have experience in retail businesses. Maybe I can go work at a marketing company. I thought that I have now successfully changed my career trajectory from accounting into doing what I love.
- 1:04And I thought for me, that was achieving success. And so now that I every day doing what I love. Yeah, that's what gets me up in the morning. So cool. Amazing. Question number two. This is a fun one. What's been your favorite marketing moment so far in building the business? Oh, favorite marketing moment. Oh, my God. Oh, yeah.
- 1:30I mean, we were one of the earlier brands to go to Coachella, to take people to Coachella and go on these influencer trips and be part of that girl, like take this girl gang to Coachella back in the days. And that was just so impactful and just so fun. Yeah. So fun. Are you still doing that as a...
- 1:54No, I feel like the business has evolved from festival where our customer isn't – our demographic has kind of shifted. And I feel like everyone's doing it now. It's kind of like not having that impact anymore. And so now I'm like –
- 2:08oh, do I really want to pay for everyone else to go to Coachella? Totally. I didn't ask you this before, so I'm going to squeeze it in now. But like, what are the things that you're doing now that are really working as kind of like cool, fun marketing initiatives and moments that are kind of shifting the needle like that?
- 2:25I think just a lot of like content marketing, producing the right content that people want to see. And, you know, you'll see that we're still testing. Like we still have, you've got to constantly test because things fail and things that work work.
- 2:40might die off as well. So it's a constant battle, but it's so fun. It is so fun. Question number three, what is your go-to business resource if you have to think about like a podcast or a newsletter or a book that is worthwhile reading, consuming, talking about? I was going to say chat GPT. No, no, no. No, but that's true. It's so valuable.
- 3:03Oh, honestly, this is probably why I'm loving doing the podcast because I actually don't have time to absorb other content. So I feel like I'm learning by like, you know, before I –
- 3:18interview people for the podcast i'll quickly listen to a couple of their other podcast appearances and that's when i kind of learn a bit and then i'll like learn from them in person so that's i love that my podcast and your podcast let me say that love love
- 3:33Love that for us. Oh, oh, oh, my business course, thelazyco.com. Oh, yeah. Everyone go and check that out immediately. We're also going to link that in the show notes if anyone wants to get on that. Question number four is how do you win the day? What are your AM or PM rituals and habits that keep you feeling happy and successful and motivated? So I like to sleep in. I get up like if I'm working from home, I'll get up at like nine o'clock.
- 3:59And I think not having to wake up early and be like stressed is a great way for me to start the day. My husband takes the kids, which is so good. Love that for you. And then coffee. Honestly, I don't have good routines. I...
- 4:19I'm very – I put in my entire life on my Google Calendar. Like every task is in Google Calendar. That really helps me prioritize things because, you know, I feel like sometimes people can be floundering when like – and you get overwhelmed by how much you have to do. But if you actually just go, okay, you look at your tasks and you go, this can get moved to next week. This doesn't need to get done. Now that I'm running out of time, say something blows out in time, you're like, okay, this –
- 4:46maybe I'll get someone else to do this. I don't need to do it. Having that like visibility of your week and your calendar, I think really helps me like stay organized. And I think also before going to bed, I watch like an hour or so of like really trashy reality TV. And that helps me unwind. Like what are you watching at the moment? Oh my God, it's so bad. I'm watching F-Way Island.
- 5:11I haven't seen that yet. I've seen it on social though. It's so bad that it's good. And I'm like, you know. I'm into Selling Sunset. Love it. Oh, yeah. I don't know. It's not bitchy enough. I like Van Pump rules and maths. I've only just moved back to Australia, so I feel like I need to get into like the Australian reality TV scene. I'm not there yet. I'm not there, but I need to be. Question number five is what's been your worst money mistake in the business and how much did it cost you? Oh, yeah.
- 5:39This isn't the worst, but it's a funny story. Love a funny story. We gave away – this company came to us and they have – it's like one of those – it's like a luxe version of Groupon almost. They had these like deals and they had this package that was fly you on a private jet to go to the Melbourne Cup VIP birdcage event.
- 6:02area. And so it was worth worth like $13,000 or something for two people. And so we were going to give that away with them. And I was like, Oh my God, this is so cool. This is when like influencers were like just posting private jet. It was like, so in, I was like, this is sick. And I'm like, I've never been in a private jet myself, you know? And then, so I'm,
- 6:25We gave it away, but there was some kind of miscommunication with who was going to announce it. And so that company announced a winner. And at that time, their founder was going on a plane to Miami for a buck. So it was like the longest plane ride from Sydney possible. I don't know. And then we both announced winners.
- 6:49Oh, like separate winners. Yes. So then I was like, we need to honor this. And I had to buy an extra...
- 6:58$13,000 of this thing with this company. Oh, shit. And I was like, for absolutely no reason. That's... Oh, my God. So much money. And then the worst part is, then we looked on the Insta stories of the people that went. They didn't care about the private jet. All they posted was the actual, like, the birdcage of the Melbourne Cup. So we could have been like...
- 7:23If we don't give you a private jet, what if we gave you like $500, $1,000? They would have taken it. Oh, I can't have a think about this. I'm crying. Damn, that one sucks. That's a good story. I mean, it's a shit story, but it's a good one. Last one. You've already shared a couple, but maybe you've got another one in the bank. What is just a crazy story, good or bad, from your journey building, Chopo?
- 7:49So this is a while ago, but this is like, it's a, it's a, um, we did this prank for April fools that we launched, um, show bro, which is like, cause people are always like, why do you do a menswear range? We're like, all right, we'll launch it. We launched show bro. And the website, like it was, it didn't even like, you couldn't even check out on it.
- 8:09And I had like, it was so funny, something like when we launched it, we had a male model and a male influencer and it looked, so it looked really legit. It looked exactly like the ShowPro website. We had things like all the products had names as well, like how ShowPro, but the like a boss shirt, you know, like.
- 8:28And then I had some of my businessy friends message me to tell me like, oh, this is a bit broken in the UX. This is wrong with the website. I'm like, yeah, thanks. And then we got Business Insider to actually announce that it was a hoax. Yeah.
- 8:45So that was, I thought that was pretty cool. Did you get like a lot of traffic? Did it make you be like, should we actually launch this? Yeah. Well, I mean, no, definitely. I'm never going to do menswear because I think what we're good at besides making great clothes, but it's also the fact that we know how to market to women.
- 9:01As opposed to like, so I'd rather sell a different product to women than ever do menswear. I love that as an idea. Do you do pranks every year? We do a lot of work. Oh, here's another one. When I was pregnant, I actually pretended that my water broke at work. Oh, my God, I saw that video. And sent everyone to a frenzy. And only the girl who filmed it knew. Even my husband thought it was – he wasn't in on it.
- 9:31Oh my God. I love that. That's so lol. Jane, this was so fun. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Loved chatting with you. Love your story. Love everything that you do. I'm such a hype girl. Thanks for coming on the show. Yes. I love that. Thank you, dude.
- 9:52Hey, 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.
- 10:17And 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.
- 10:39As 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.
- 10:55Hey, 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.
- 11:19And 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.
- 11:42As 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.