Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / Dear FSC fangirls: We're entering a new era of Connection, Female Friendship & Joy (you're invited)

Transcript

Dear FSC fangirls: We're entering a new era of Connection, Female Friendship & Joy (you're invited) · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  As my vocal coach would say, do a clearing breath and then do a deep breath.
• 0:13
  Okay, that was saying more to myself than to you.
• 0:18
  There's something really awkward about solo episodes and I'm not used to them, but I want
• 0:24
  to get used to them.
• 0:25
  And so here we are.
• 0:27
  I'm trying and I'm awkward, but that's okay because the cost of success is embarrassment
• 0:36
  and sometimes you've got to do the cringe to get to the other side.
• 0:41
  So solo episode from me.
• 0:44
  Welcome back to the podcast.
• 0:46
  Welcome back to Female Startup Club.
• 0:50
  So today I'm kind of excited to talk to you in this solo new style format episode because
• 1:00
  FSC is evolving.
• 1:01
  We're evolving into FSC 2.0 and I'm actively looking for FSC fangirls, people who have
• 1:11
  been listening with me, you know, on the journey for the last couple of years, people who have
• 1:19
  listened to something, resonated with something, slipped into my DMs, learned something,
• 1:24
  left a review, told someone about the show.
• 1:28
  I'm actively looking for our FSC fangirls because
• 1:35
  we're launching a couple of things.
• 1:37
  First, we're launching our private group chat,
• 1:41
  which you can think of kind of like a book club, but instead it's the podcast club.
• 1:47
  and it's a place for connection and friendship and cheeky chats and
• 1:58
  just a bit of fun you know the chicks just want to have fun so we're launching the group chat
• 2:04
  but we're also launching IRL events for the exact same reasons we want connection we want friendship
• 2:13
  and something that I've noticed that I'm really craving is that kind of deeper connection to
• 2:21
  the listeners like you and to kind of take FSC to this next level or this next era.
• 2:32
  So we're going to get into that.
• 2:33
  That's just the short gist.
• 2:35
  And I'm going to take you on a bit of
• 2:36
  a backstory, give you some context, and then kind of tell you the vision and where we're going.
• 2:43
  And hopefully you want to come on the journey too.
• 2:47
  Housekeeping first, number one, and I forget to do
• 2:50
  this often.
• 2:51
  Well, I forget to do it all the time, but especially when we have a guest on the show,
• 2:56
  but it's really important.
• 2:58
  If you are a fan of the show, you like these episodes,
• 3:04
  it actually makes a really big difference to us and to the algorithm gods.
• 3:09
  If you subscribe or
• 3:11
  follow wherever you're listening to the show, you can go the extra mile and leave a review if you
• 3:17
  like.
• 3:18
  And I mean, that is always like the absolute best thing for me.
• 3:23
  I love reading them.
• 3:25
  I'm so
• 3:25
  grateful.
• 3:26
  I'm even grateful when they're, you know, not the nicer types of reviews.
• 3:31
  I take on the
• 3:31
  feedback.
• 3:33
  I listen.
• 3:33
  And I actually just learned this really, I can't believe I didn't know this
• 3:37
  before, but I actually just found out that on Spotify, if you leave like a comment on the
• 3:44
  podcast, I can actually reply to you.
• 3:46
  And I kind of think that that is so cool.
• 3:48
  So if you're
• 3:49
  listening on Spotify or if you're watching on Spotify, rather drop into the comments,
• 3:54
  leave a comment, let's chat there.
• 3:56
  I, um, I'm really excited about that feature.
• 3:59
  Anyway,
• 4:00
  that's housekeeping number one housekeeping number two the reason why subscribing or following or
• 4:06
  leaving a review matters so much is because it helps I mean first of all it helps is find us
• 4:12
  but it helps brand partners find us too so the reason why we can keep the lights on with the
• 4:19
  podcast is because we have incredible brand partners and brand sponsors so I want to just
• 4:26
  give a quick shout out to OmniSend, especially because in this new era that we're in, we're going
• 4:32
  to be doing a few things differently and we're doing something a little bit differently with
• 4:37
  OmniSend.
• 4:38
  I can't say what it is just yet, but it's coming soon and it blends into the IRL
• 4:44
  experience of FSC.
• 4:47
  So subscribe, follow, review, do any of those good things, know that I will see it,
• 4:55
  know that I will respond, know that I will send you a digital hug to say thank you.
• 5:02
  And please do join me in a digital hug to OmniSend for making today's episode possible.
• 5:08
  Today's episode is brought to you by our friends at OmniSend.
• 5:12
  If you're an e-com founder,
• 5:13
  you're probably paying premium prices for features you've never even touched.
• 5:18
  But OmniSend gives you
• 5:19
  the same power, email, SMS, segmentation, advanced automation, for up to 35% less than the big names.
• 5:28
  And their customers generate $79 back for every dollar they spend.
• 5:32
  And that's not some standard
• 5:33
  marketing claim, that's their actual data.
• 5:36
  Experts trust it, rookies love it, and if you're switching
• 5:39
  from another platform, their team handles the whole migration process for free.
• 5:44
  Use code FSC
• 5:45
  for 30% off your first three months by going to omnisend.com forward slash FSC or clicking the
• 5:52
  link in the show notes below.
• 5:53
  All right.
• 5:54
  So to give you the vision of FSC 2.0, I think we need
• 5:59
  to go back to the origins, where FSC started, why it started, what the original kind of goal was,
• 6:10
  and the original vision and kind of how that's evolving now into the new direction and where
• 6:17
  I really want to take FSC and hopefully bring you on the ride with me.
• 6:22
  This year marks seven years
• 6:26
  of Female Startup Club, which I actually just can't believe.
• 6:31
  It's so crazy to me that it's
• 6:32
  seven years or nearly seven years.
• 6:34
  We started the show in 2019.
• 6:35
  And, you know, back then,
• 6:40
  and even still today, but back then, the idea of starting a podcast and doing solo episodes,
• 6:47
  interviewing, you know, people that I admired and that I looked up to speaking on stages,
• 6:53
  you know doing those kind of things was like vomit inducing anxiety allergic reaction like
• 7:04
  absolutely not for me absolutely not something that I would have thought I could do and I remember
• 7:12
  when my husband suggested that I start a podcast I was literally like how dare you like you don't
• 7:20
  even know me basically because the thought was just so my reaction was just so no like negative
• 7:29
  but then the deeper underlying feeling of that was but I wish that I could I wish I could have the
• 7:38
  confidence and the skill set or the tool toolkit to be able to interview someone in public or
• 7:47
  interview someone that I don't know or talk to rooms of people or speak on stages.
• 7:52
  And I realized
• 7:54
  actually in that moment that my desire and the wish that I had for myself was stronger and deeper
• 8:02
  than the fear that I had for myself.
• 8:05
  And I often think that goes back to the saying that the cost
• 8:10
  of success is embarrassment and you do need to do the cringe to get to where you're going.
• 8:17
  And I really believe like, I really believe in not letting your fear
• 8:23
  like take the direction of your life or hold you back from the direction of your life
• 8:31
  and the life that you want.
• 8:33
  So seven years ago when my husband suggested it and you know,
• 8:37
  I had these realizations, I was like, fuck it.
• 8:42
  Let's see if I can do this.
• 8:43
  I want that skill set.
• 8:45
  I want to be that person.
• 8:46
  So let's give it a try.
• 8:49
  And if you followed along the journey,
• 8:52
  especially if you've been like OG following along since when I had the jewelry brand kinks,
• 8:57
  and then building the podcast and starting the non-alcoholic brand and trying to find my feet,
• 9:04
  You will know that the reason why I started the podcast was because I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.
• 9:11
  I was trying to figure out my professional pathway because at the time, I mean, where was I?
• 9:18
  I was 29.
• 9:20
  I still felt like I just hadn't found the thing.
• 9:25
  I hadn't found my groove.
• 9:27
  I hadn't found contentment in my professional life.
• 9:33
  and I'd tried a lot of different things and I'm a big believer in doing things to figure out what
• 9:39
  you don't like just as much as figuring out what you do like.
• 9:43
  And so, you know, the jewelry brand
• 9:48
  Kinks, it was so fun and so sparkly and brought a lot of joy to my life actually.
• 9:56
  And there was
• 9:56
  so many elements to it that I loved, especially when it came to content and social media and
• 10:05
  IRL activations.
• 10:07
  You know, we did this really cute workshop, like a jewelry workshop with Bumble
• 10:14
  and we did a pop-up in Paris.
• 10:17
  And, you know, there was, there was that element of like
• 10:21
  tangible stuff.
• 10:22
  I'm someone who loves packaging and embellishment and surprise and delight and
• 10:29
  all that kind of stuff.
• 10:30
  So I loved all of that.
• 10:32
  But at the time, I felt like the product wasn't
• 10:38
  right.
• 10:39
  It just it still wasn't like it was like a smidge there, but like it wasn't all the way
• 10:42
  there.
• 10:42
  And I couldn't see myself doing it long term.
• 10:45
  And I wanted to find this thing
• 10:47
  that I felt like other people had, which was like, you love something or you enjoy doing it so much
• 10:54
  that you're able to keep doing it every day, even when it's a crappy day.
• 10:58
  So the goal of the podcast
• 11:00
  was to figure out what I wanted to do, what kind of business I wanted to build and like how,
• 11:07
  how I was going to do it.
• 11:08
  So the entire premise of the show was to interview smart, successful,
• 11:15
  interesting women who I admired and try to understand, you know, how they landed on their
• 11:23
  product idea and their business idea and the playbook that followed, especially in the early
• 11:27
  days.
• 11:28
  And as you know, we've done hundreds of those interviews.
• 11:32
  We've interviewed just the most
• 11:34
  incredible, generous, brilliant, iconic, amazing women to understand their businesses, their
• 11:43
  marketing, their funding strategies.
• 11:49
  It really opened up a world of knowledge and insight that
• 11:56
  has just blown my mind, quite frankly.
• 12:00
  But early on in the piece, I think it was March 2020,
• 12:06
  I already had that inkling about the jewelry business and that that wasn't for me.
• 12:11
  I didn't
• 12:12
  know what was next.
• 12:13
  But then the pandemic hit and obviously the pandemic changed everything.
• 12:18
  We didn't know how long it was going to last for.
• 12:22
  We just didn't know.
• 12:24
  It felt like a time of limbo.
• 12:26
  And so that was kind of the accelerated moment for me to rip the bandaid off and close down the
• 12:35
  jewelry business and take the podcast more seriously.
• 12:38
  At that point, I think we only had
• 12:40
  you know, four episodes or six episodes or something.
• 12:44
  And I wanted to give myself a goal
• 12:47
  to post a hundred episodes that year.
• 12:50
  And once I hit a hundred episodes, then to figure out whether,
• 12:53
  you know, we keep doing it or, or what the vibe was, whether it was a thing or not.
• 12:59
  And then really quickly and early on in the piece, I landed the first deal for FSC.
• 13:07
  And the deal was
• 13:08
  for $25,000 USD, which is a lot of money for a 29 year old who, you know, hadn't made a lot of
• 13:19
  money myself.
• 13:19
  I'd always worked in fashion and content and all these kinds of things.
• 13:23
  And if you do the math on like the jewelry that I was selling at the time, which was like
• 13:29
  $29 to $69, you have to sell a lot of products to hit 25K US.
• 13:36
  So for me, I had this moment of like,
• 13:39
  whoa, maybe this could be a business.
• 13:43
  Maybe this could be an online business.
• 13:44
  And I could take all
• 13:45
  the things that I loved from Kinks over to FSC and turn it into something.
• 13:52
  But it wasn't kind of
• 13:54
  cemented at that time.
• 13:56
  That was just one of the thoughts floating around in my head.
• 13:58
  I was still
• 13:58
  pretty set on having an e-com brand or a consumer brand and a physical product.
• 14:07
  But in hindsight,
• 14:09
  you know, when I think back now, it was really early on that I had already identified that I
• 14:14
  loved FSC.
• 14:16
  I loved having these interesting conversations.
• 14:19
  I loved learning.
• 14:21
  I loved kind
• 14:22
  of going on the personal growth journey of becoming more confident in myself.
• 14:32
  And that's, yeah, that's really, I guess, what FSC started out as.
• 14:36
  And so then if we think about
• 14:39
  the last however many years, we've had a lot of those conversations around business,
• 14:46
  but there's also kind of been a lot of different seasons.
• 14:50
  You probably have heard me talk about
• 14:52
  my health journey, being diagnosed with ADHD, then, you know, the impact of kind of the pandemic
• 15:00
  that kept us in the UK for so much longer than planned.
• 15:05
  We weren't able to move back to Australia
• 15:08
  until the end of 2022, because my husband is from Switzerland.
• 15:11
  He couldn't get into the country.
• 15:12
  And
• 15:12
  then we had a dog and it was, you know, a whole big thing.
• 15:15
  But in that kind of seven years of the
• 15:19
  podcast and the different seasons of the podcast, my personal life with moving back to the country,
• 15:26
  moving back to the country, moving back to this country, to Australia, the health issues,
• 15:33
  being diagnosed with ADHD, having a major friendship breakup, a major best friend breakup,
• 15:39
  I should say, you know, potentially moving back to Dubai at some point that was on the cards,
• 15:46
  getting into Techstars, which is a really intensive full-time three-month program,
• 15:52
  like a business accelerator, buying a house, renovating a house, traveling a lot.
• 15:57
  There's just a lot that was going on in the last couple of years, personally and professionally.
• 16:03
  And I think that if I reflect on the last two years, I got into Techstars.
• 16:12
  I tried to build
• 16:13
  the tech platform for Groupie.
• 16:15
  I pivoted to the network.
• 16:17
  I was trying all these different things
• 16:19
  and I kind of had the podcast on the back foot.
• 16:23
  And I was kind of thinking like,
• 16:26
  you know, not too sure what to do about the podcast.
• 16:29
  And then this year, I really felt like,
• 16:35
  oh, we need to bring the podcast back.
• 16:37
  And I really wanted to bring to life the studio.
• 16:40
  And,
• 16:41
  you know, now it's just my dream studio.
• 16:44
  If you're watching this, it is hot pink on hot pink with hot
• 16:47
  pink neon lights.
• 16:49
  And it is just like my favorite room, but I wanted to bring kind of the focus
• 16:54
  back onto the podcast.
• 16:55
  And I kind of realized that the podcast, you know, the podcast is really the
• 17:01
  center of everything that I've done.
• 17:04
  And whilst I love the conversations and the people that I'm
• 17:09
  getting to meet, I had evolved from having the business conversation and it was the subject
• 17:16
  matter that I think I was kind of not leaning into anymore.
• 17:23
  I still love to have business chats
• 17:25
  and business conversations, but I realized that I wanted to evolve FSC from strictly business and
• 17:34
  practical how-to conversations to an evolution of all the different topics that I'm interested in
• 17:43
  when it comes to women's health, brain, relationship, just life, business and life.
• 17:52
  I wanted to talk about different things and I wanted to have different conversations.
• 17:56
  so when I kind of had that thought earlier this year that's when we started interviewing doctors
• 18:04
  and Olympians and scientists and that kind of like sparked my
• 18:10
  well sparked the energy back into FSC and what I was excited about
• 18:18
  and then I guess something that was kind of like bothering me was the name female startup club
• 18:25
  You know, startup is such an exclusive kind of word.
• 18:28
  And it really, I feel like it's one of those words that people either identify with or don't because they're like, I'm not a startup.
• 18:36
  That's not for me.
• 18:37
  So I've been toying with the idea of changing the name and doing this and like kind of going all over the shop.
• 18:44
  And I just realized I need to stop doing that.
• 18:47
  And the name can stay as it is for now.
• 18:51
  It doesn't need to be a hurdle in my mind.
• 18:53
  I can call it FSC instead of Female Startup Club.
• 18:56
  And we can evolve the show instead of starting a
• 18:58
  new show.
• 18:59
  We can move from strictly business to conversations around health and wealth and
• 19:06
  collected wisdom.
• 19:07
  So the kind of FSC 2.0 tagline, all this to say, is that we've evolved into the
• 19:16
  show for modern women, just like you and just like me, who are creating a life that is super rich
• 19:24
  in health, wealth, and collected wisdom.
• 19:27
  And it's kind of reignited the spark in me.
• 19:31
  And I'm so
• 19:31
  excited.
• 19:32
  I'm so excited to have different conversations.
• 19:36
  I'm so excited to share kind of
• 19:39
  the different things that are on my mind that are maybe on your mind too.
• 19:43
  But I'm really excited to
• 19:45
  kind of take the FSC 2.0 era into connection and community.
• 19:54
  And I guess like the podcast has felt
• 20:00
  a little bit like one-sided.
• 20:02
  It's me like talking to you and not knowing you back.
• 20:05
  And I really
• 20:06
  want to have that two-way connection.
• 20:09
  So we've wanted to do this for such a long time, but it
• 20:12
  always kind of blended into business and practical and we're kind of scrapping that, putting that out
• 20:18
  the window and focusing just more on friendship, female friendship in your thirties, connection,
• 20:26
  soft socializing, everything doesn't have to be about business and productivity and networking
• 20:32
  and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 20:34
  So number one, the group chat, our private podcast discussion
• 20:40
  group, which sounds kind of lame, but I am excited.
• 20:45
  I'm excited for cheeky chats, just, you know,
• 20:48
  chicks in the group chat.
• 20:50
  I want to know what you're up to.
• 20:52
  I want to be more connected to you.
• 20:54
  I want to hear your stories, hear what's going on in your life.
• 20:59
  I want to meet you in person.
• 21:01
  Something that people often say to me, if I run into someone in the street or if someone comes
• 21:06
  up to me on the street, you know, or slides into my DMs, people often say, you know, I feel like I
• 21:11
  know you, but I don't feel like I know you back.
• 21:15
  And so this new era is about knowing you back
• 21:20
  and female friendship and kind of just doing some fun stuff.
• 21:25
  Everything feels so serious right now.
• 21:27
  The world feels absolutely fucking crazy.
• 21:32
  Everything feels like it starts with AI when
• 21:34
  actually we should be starting with what we think and like what's on our mind and like our perspective
• 21:41
  outside of all the other intrusive things that are coming through our screens and are coming from
• 21:50
  AI and I'm not going to go on too much of a tangent about this because
• 21:54
  I have another episode planned for you but
• 21:57
  But yeah, I just kind of wanted to jump on and talk about FSC 2.0, the show for women who want it all.
• 22:10
  And kind of, yeah, kind of introduce this new phase and this new era that we're in.
• 22:17
  And look for my fangirls.
• 22:19
  girls.
• 22:20
  I want to know FSC fan girls, wherever you are in the world, come and join the group chat,
• 22:29
  come chat with me, come join our discussion groups, come join our IRL events.
• 22:37
  You know,
• 22:37
  our FSC fan girls are going to be the people who determine essentially where we host our events,
• 22:44
  what cities we're going to do these in, and kind of the topics that we're going to discuss.
• 22:53
  And yeah, that's kind of, that's where we're at.
• 22:57
  I feel like I had more notes on here.
• 22:59
  I feel like I had more to say, but maybe that's where we're going to leave it.
• 23:05
  If you are an FSC
• 23:07
  fangirl, click the link in the show notes below, come and join the group chat.
• 23:12
  It is totally free.
• 23:14
  You just need to give me a smidge of proof that you are a fangirl.
• 23:21
  I have made the cutest merch.
• 23:24
  I'm going to be sending you fan mail.
• 23:26
  I'm going to be your fangirl right back.
• 23:28
  And yeah, come on the journey with me.
• 23:32
  Sorry if I've rambled.
• 23:34
  Solo episodes.
• 23:36
  They're bloody tricky.