Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / GEMS: Focus on Your Hires with Glamnetic founder Ann McFerran

Transcript

GEMS: Focus on Your Hires with Glamnetic founder Ann McFerran · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:08
  I'm so curious to really understand what you think is what you think was driving that significant growth, because, of course, the DMs would have started to get that early kind of traction and people buying. But obviously, at some point, something else kicks in and something else is working in a really great way for you. What do you attribute that success to?
• 0:30
  Yeah, so we dialed in on like just marketing and in all sorts of ways. So a lot of it was like influencer marketing. We started really like having a lot of deals be like huge converters for us. I think the first deal we did, oh my God, this one YouTuber, she did like,
• 0:48
  it was like 30X what we paid her. And I didn't expect that from influencer marketing. But I think it's definitely dependent on like who you pick and who's the right audience for you. It just depends on who your niche market is. And we sort of really figured out like who our audience was and basically the messaging behind the product. And then that's when we also started running ads. And I was like, it was like a founder first sort of ad where it's like, I am the one...
• 1:16
  talking about my own product, you know, like there's not a lot of founders that go on and just say like, Hey, I'm the founder and this is my product. And like, this is why it works. And like, this is what, this is why you need it. Like, I think just me being super transparent from the beginning, even on all of our socials, like I'm like on stories every single day, like doing a tutorial on the, on the lash. Um,
• 1:40
  I'm talking to the customers like every day because I used to do the customer service. So I understood the customer really well. I would even text some of them because I was like, oh, like, sorry, like I'm trying to get I'm trying to like correspond with you faster. Here's my phone number, like text me. And.
• 1:55
  I think just being like really transparent and like casual about the whole thing. And like, uh, cause we were small, it allowed us to really understand the customer and like really hone in on the messaging in a big way. And, and that's when it allowed all of our marketing channels to thrive. Like emails was like emails is a huge revenue drive for us SMS. Like,
• 2:16
  The ads, huge, and also like influencer marketing. But we definitely didn't just use one channel. It was like literally every single channel that we could find. We started finding... It basically was just like a gradual steps in like maximizing it and like optimizing it so that you can get max ROI and revenue from it.
• 2:40
  And I feel like I've also like, because I'm like, just that's my personality is like very obsessed with optimization. So that, I mean, that's the reason why I was like into the product in the first place was like, I want to optimize my life. Like I love efficiency. I just love,
• 2:57
  Yeah, I just I love being efficient. I feel like that's that's one of my things. I like to work smarter, not harder. And I like to tell my team that like think about the relative amount of work to relative amount of reward that you get. And in the beginning, I think my team also wasn't able to think like strategically about anything because they were just busy and like learning and just doing. A lot of the girls that came in, actually, it was their first job.
• 3:25
  real job in like anything marketing related. And I sort of taught them from the ground up. So like one of the girls, Kelly, she had worked at like a travel agency. And then she came in and I was like, you're going to do social. She was my second employee. And I think she had a hard time in the beginning, like understanding like what to do.
• 3:46
  And then sort of just like being like really like patient and being like really like working with her like very closely and monitoring everything that she does in the beginning, making sure she doesn't make mistakes and like catching all those mistakes if she makes it. It was like super important in her growth and learning. And now she's like killing it at social media.
• 4:05
  Like in the beginning, it was like really rough. And I was like, and now she's like doing social media. Now she's doing email marketing and she's also helping with ads. So it's like now she's doing multiple things. So I feel like if you really focus on
• 4:18
  on, you know, the people that work for you and like help them grow, like they're, they're going to help you grow, you know? Yeah. I just feel like when you get really big though, especially as a CEO, you don't, you're, you're not that hands-on with your employees anymore, but I feel like that's super, super important for their growth. Like even like she's never had any experience coming in. And I just, I didn't even interview her. I literally was just like, Hey, do you have another friend? I asked him to do that.
• 4:45
  I asked Vanya if she had her look back at us. She's like, oh yeah, Kelly's looking for a job. So I was like, okay, cool. She's hired. I didn't even really interview her. I was just like, okay, let's just join.
• 4:54
  And that's kind of like the mindset. I was like, I'm just going to work with her because I believe in her. You know, like if you believe in people from the beginning, they're going to help you out. And I feel like all of our employees now have just helped us really scale. Like having this many people was actually really important. And I'm glad like I hired that many people because they all really helped us scale. I wouldn't be able to do it by myself. The amount of content that's necessary. Yeah.
• 5:21
  I mean, just on social is absolutely insane. Like, I feel like you have to be so good at content. And I feel like we've gotten so good at content. Like, it's just like the psychology behind all of the posts that we post, the ads that we post, like everything is all like A-B tested. And we try like hundreds of content like every week. It's crazy, isn't it? The amount that you have to produce and output content
• 5:47
  And I also think there's something to be said about hiring young talent who are like really hungry to like actually get into something and who haven't been like molded yet. And, you know, like disheartened by working in like some corporate job that they hated. And, you know, they learned these rules six years ago and they're still following those practices. Yeah, exactly.
• 6:12
  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.
• 6:36
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• 6:59
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