#140 Candy Claws: How Maddy & Dylan Jarvis Cracked Meta Ads to Scale a $30M Beauty Brand

Speaker 1 Welcome to the Lazy CEO Podcast. I'm Jane Liu. I escaped the corporate grind at 24 and started my own business show Pro, a global 9 figures online fashion brand. And now I want to share my learnings here with you every Tuesday to join my conversations to the entrepreneurs behind the iconic brands we all know and love. In between interview weeks, you'll find me talking about hot topics that fascinates me be in the world of business and personal development, alternating with help My small business episodes where I deep dive into a small business every month to help them grow. And why the lazy CEO, you ask? Won't give a lazy person a problem. They'll find the simplest way to solve it. Hey buddy fam. This week on the Lazy CEO podcast, we're joined by Maddie and Dylan Jarvis, sibling cofounders of Candy Claws, one of Australia's fastest growing beauty brands. With no prior experience in beauty ecommerce, they launched Salon Quality Press on Nails from Maddie's living room in 2023, scanning from packing orders themselves to generating $20 million in annual revenue. And they're on track to surpass $50 million in total sales this year, all completely bootstrapped. In this episode, we dive into how drop shipping gave them the funds to launch Candy Claws, the growth playbook behind dominating meta ads and breaking through a competitive market, and their advice for budding entrepreneurs on how to scale fast and what they wish they hadn't wasted their time on along the way. All right, let's get into it. Maddie and Dylan, welcome to the podcast. Speaker 2 Thank you for having us. Speaker 3 Yeah, it's good to be here. Speaker 1 So I know this is your first podcast. I feel very honoured. And so I'm going to throw you right into the deep end and ask you for your hotness moment became even more of a hot mess. Speaker 2 Than I already would. Speaker 3 You are a hot mess. Speaker 2 It's a hot mess now. OK, this is a bit of an embarrassing story to tell, but when Dylan and I first started out, before Candy Clothes, we were doing a few other businesses together. And one of those businesses was Amazon. So we were selling to Amazon USA and we were doing some research for products of what we could sell. And at the time, the search trend for weed got like marijuana grinders was like really proving. And obviously in some states weed is legal in the US So we didn't really think much of it. We thought it would be fine and we went and looked at the competition and noticed that there was a huge gap in the market for really well designed marijuana grinders. Speaker 3 They were all like very bland, sort of one colour or not many fun designs. So we thought, oh, like, here's our opportunity. We'll go in and we'll do like a really cool graphic and got like a little marijuana leaf animated and stuck that on the on the front of it. Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. And then we launched it on Amazon and it was doing really well on day one. We were getting like a lot of sales. And then after one day of it being live, they emailed us and they were like, you can't sell paraphernalia on Amazon. And I was like, on support being like, it's not paraphernalia, it's a herb grinder for the kitchen. Yeah. Speaker 3 So the reason that everybody else was doing the bland designs is because they were selling them as herb. Speaker 1 Grinders. Oh, but you put a weed. Speaker 3 Yeah, right on the front of it. Speaker 1 Oh my God. Speaker 2 This was our first ever business that we did together and within 24 hours we had to destroy all of the inventory. Speaker 1 What you couldn't sell it like directly? It's just too expensive to ship. Like the AOV is too low. Speaker 2 Yeah. And we were also pretty clueless because it was the first thing that we had ever done. Yeah. Speaker 1 Are you gonna just go on the streets and just tear them out? Speaker 2 Well, also it was all over in the. It was all the way over in colour. Speaker 3 States yeah. So we had to get it shipped over and then like there's heaps of fees with Amazon as well. So by the time all of that sort of got towards the end, it was a bit expensive. Speaker 1 How much did you lose? Speaker 2 Well, I don't remember the exact amount, but not only did. Speaker 3 We have to. It was probably like a couple of grand, but at that point it was sort of like that. That was our like business investment, so. Speaker 1 Yeah, very short lived success. Speaker 2 Plus we had to pay to get it destroyed as well on top of that. Speaker 3 Yeah, so adding insult to injury. Oh. Speaker 1 My God. OK. And then so you said you meant you've actually done a few businesses, you've tried, you've dabbled again. Take me back to where it all started. Like, how did you guys go? Oh, we're going to be like brother, sister, entrepreneur duo. Speaker 2 Yeah. So I was working at Commbank and yeah, I just wanted to start my own thing. So I kind of dabbled in a few different things and I didn't really know where it would lead, but I was like starting A blog and just, I was like, as long as I just like, I obviously I knew that like a blog wasn't going to take off, but I was like, if I just get like, like dip my feet in, it'll lead me somewhere. And then one day was this, this was COVID year, so. Speaker 1 20, that's not that long ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK. Speaker 2 Yeah, I just wanted to start something and then I saw an ad like one of those like founder course ads and then I just got the idea of e-commerce from that. And then I then started. So I quit my job and I started like a business selling journals and I did that for a little while and just did it through influencer marketing. Speaker 1 Wait, so you didn't like have a backup You you did? Did you test that your journals would sell? Speaker 2 No, I was just like, I really wanted to get out of my corporate job, so. Speaker 1 I I also wanted to, I also kind of quit. Speaker 2 I was really miserable in like living in Sydney and working at the bank and I didn't really have many friends up in Sydney either. So I was just like so desperate to get out and yeah, so I started that and then. Speaker 1 Well, how did you get your journals? So you used influenza marketing to get journals to sell? Speaker 2 Yeah. So I was just, yeah, just gifting and then. Speaker 1 And what made your journal so like everyone has a journal business. I was just. Speaker 2 I was really into like positive psychology, so I just wrote the questions like I did it. So they were like all like prompted and it was like really focused around like gratitude and flow state and all are. Speaker 1 They all like that, like like now that's amazing that you can make it. Speaker 2 Yeah, Work, I think now they're like that back then, not really, yeah. But anyway, I obviously like I knew that that wasn't really a long term plan. So then I think Dylan and I were chatting and you also hating working at your corporate job and. Speaker 1 What were you doing? Speaker 3 So I did finance at uni, I did a little bit of accounting at Bosch and then moved on to financial planning. But I always sort of wanted to do something else outside of a nine to five. Like I really valued like a little bit more flexibility and yeah, earning capacity as well. So I was trying to do trading, stock trading and cryptocurrency trading for a couple of years and that was working doing well, but it just sort of like I had a little bit of a realisation that it was going to be really hard to scale it up to the level that I needed it be to be to fully replace my job. So I started looking into Amazon FBA and then that's when Maddie and I had a bit of a discussion and we were like, oh, why don't we like join forces and like do something together? We didn't really know what, so we pretty much just started learning online. Speaker 1 And so growing up, you never kind of talked about no wanting to start businesses together. You did you guys. You didn't have the lemonade stand like going selling like cookies. Speaker 3 Yeah, I was always a little bit entrepreneurial. Like when we were younger we'd come home from work and I'd charge Maddie to black cook them food like siblings food and they'd like just use the coins out of mum and dads. Speaker 1 Ohh, great. It's the change. It's the embezzlement. Yeah, yeah. Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah. But other than that, not a whole heap. Speaker 1 Wow. And then you just got to talking. Speaker 2 Yeah, I can't. Yeah, I think we just had a conversation and then Dylan just said, well, do you wanna do it together? And I said okay, and then yeah, so, so while I was working at my job, I was learning how to do e-commerce and then I ordered the stock and then I quit. And then I was doing the journals for a little bit. And then once Dylan and I decided to start working together, that's when we did the grinders. And then once that failed, we then moved into drop shipping and then we'll. Speaker 1 Be drop shipping. Speaker 3 Everything, whatever, whatever we could sell, we tried. Speaker 1 Where did you is it? Did you go with this website to find like trends and stuff? Speaker 2 Yeah, like. Speaker 3 Sometime talk and yeah, Aliexpress, yeah, we had. Speaker 2 The most success when we thought of like our own idea, that wasn't like a trend. Speaker 1 Only done. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaker 2 So we sold bikinis online and we just did a really good deal and it was like buy one, get 2 free. And so that like exploded on TikTok. Wow. And then the money that we made from that, we then decided that we wanted to start a proper brand, which is when we. So we had that in the back of our mind. And then I had kind of thought a few months prior that I wanted to do press ONS because we were selling jewelry and I got chemist press ONS and I would like really bad quality. So I had the thought of like, what if you could make press on nails were like as convenient as this, but actually looked salon done and lasted like a salon done manicure. So I'd had that idea a few months prior. And then the bikinis took off and we got the funds to be able to invest in a brand because we'd lost a lot of those funds through the Amazon stuff because there was also like another Amazon product as well that we had a bit of trouble with. But yeah, so the yeah. So then we started Candy Claws from there. Speaker 3 I feel like it was really good though, because it was a bit of a crash course for like a year. It was pretty much like going to E Comm uni, just doing drop shipping, learning how to, well, Maddie was learning how to do the websites and stuff like that. And we're both doing the ads and then everything that goes into needing to run an E Comm brand. So by the time we started Candy Claws, it was like pretty much hitting the ground running. Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, I love that. I mean, this is what I say. Like like the best crash course in business you can possibly have is just starting a business. And if it fails, you actually learn probably so much more from when it fails. Speaker 3 Yeah, exactly. Like we probably tested like I, I'm gonna say 30 to 40 different products drop shipping and like wow, majority of those failed. But then when when it came to Candy Claws, like we were probably doing $1000 a day within two months, Three months? Speaker 1 Wow. And that's the thing. I think sometimes people don't value their time. They're like, they have this business and they're not taking enough risks and they're just slowly, like doing small, small tests with ads, small runs with product. And it's just like slowly, just, yeah, time is just slipping by and nothing is. Speaker 3 Happening whereas like we did the bulk order for the nails and they're on the way and they're going to take a couple of months and we're like, all right, we need to get this sorted, this sorted like e-mail flows, like what ads are we going to test? What's the best like angles to test personas, everything like that, just like had it all mapped out and then by the time the product came, I think we got some samples sent in the meantime and we were able to like. Speaker 2 The other thing as well is we originally, because we're, so we were a little bit more risk averse because of the Amazon failure. Yeah. So we only ordered 100 of the nails to start with. And then we ran those through Facebook ads. And then once we'd sold maybe like 70% of them is when we did our bulk order. Yeah. So we still we're like pretty strategic. Speaker 1 About No, I do love that. It's like a test. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaker 3 Even the bulk order, it was like because with nails it's like fairly fairly similar to fashion. You need to have a bit of a range. Like everybody likes different things. So we had to have at least probably 20 to start with. So we were only able to buy 50 of each. And then that made it hard too because when we started, some were selling way quicker than what others were. So like some were selling out within like. Speaker 1 A that's the best way to find out what actually sells. We were, I mean when I started Sharper we were on consignment so I didn't hold the stock. So only getting it after it sold and then after I made enough money, I was buying 7 units at a time. Until then I can like I was like, oh, maybe I'll do 3 packs of seven, so 21, you know, so but yeah, yeah. But then as you build it's still quicker than like. Speaker 2 Exactly, Yeah, we just took it really slow and then like like like I took it slow as in like from the the money that we made from it, we like reinvested it and then doubled down on what styles will. Speaker 1 Work exactly. Speaker 3 Yeah. But then once like we sort of figured out what was working and then what's working, we sort of put the like put our foot on the gas and just went all for it pretty much. Speaker 1 Yeah, amazing. And so how did you find the pro? Like so like OK, the chemist quality, Chemist products are not great quality. How did you find something that was good quality? Speaker 2 Yeah, I just tested products from multiple different suppliers, maybe like 15 suppliers I ordered press ONS from and they. Speaker 1 Just have like on every nail you had like a different one. Speaker 2 Well, I just even tell by some of them just by like bending them. And then originally we just went with the, we did find a supplier that they were like much thicker. They had a gel coating on top. They were like really high quality. But then what we did from there is like like make it our own. And we changed the material from being ABS plastic to soft acrylic once we could do our own custom designs. And then we, we. Speaker 3 Changed the catalog a lot as well. Yeah, Found our niche and found what worked just through trial and error, looking at all the analytics in terms of what was working. And then like say we at the start, we had like a very diverse range and then like these, this category was working. So we're like, OK, we'll do more of those. We ordered more of those and then that lifted performance. So we're like, OK, this is what's working. We'll just continue doing that and. Speaker 2 Like we, like I designed the range around the ones that we knew were already working. So just like, yeah, pretty much just doubling down, yeah. Speaker 1 And then so how did you get scale like because you, so basically you guys went you sold $1,000,000 in your first year and now it's year 3 and you're 20 million. Speaker 3 30 if she. Speaker 1 Is 30 Jesus Christ OK? How did you do that? Speaker 2 We've honestly just kept scaling the Facebook ads. Yeah. And then ordering more stock. Speaker 3 Lots of creative testing like at the start, once we had our e-mail flow set up, Maddie was doing the customer service and the packing and stuff like that. So obviously that needed to be handled. But then on top of that, we're both doing ads. So pretty much all I was doing and she was doing on top of like the day-to-day things that the business needed to actually survive. We'll just making ads like testing everything and like I'd fly up to Brisbane. So I'm in Melbourne and Maddie's in Brisbane and I, this is when I was still working full time. So I'd take like the Friday off and I'd fly up to Brisbane Friday morning. And then all weekend we'd just go to the house that Maddie was living at and all the boxes were everywhere in the lounge room. And we just film ads and wow, get them up, edit, edit them ourselves. We edited our own ads for the probably the first 18 months I think. Speaker 2 Yeah. And then we didn't really UGC creators either. Yeah, yeah, it was all just stuff we did in house. Speaker 3 Yeah. And then in terms of like scaling up inventory, it was I, I look back at it now like I'm a lot more because I, I do the operational side like inventory forecasting and cash flow forecasting and all that sort of stuff. And like right now I'm like way more conservative than what I was then. Like I look back and I'm like, how did we go from like, what was it probably like $10,000 worth of stock to like like nearly $1,000,000 worth of stock now? And it's like we were just really flying by the seat of our pants, like not even having enough money to pay for the next order, like when we placed it and just like not praying, but relying on the fact that like. Speaker 1 Sales will come in. Speaker 3 Yeah. That it was going to continue going the way it was and we were going to be able to scale up a little bit more. And then obviously had some decent payment terms where we're not paying for the full amount, like we're putting a deposit down and then paying for it once it's ready. So that helped. But just, yeah, really relying on the success of the ads sticking continue to be able to actually pay for it started getting a little bit scary as well. Like at the start it was like, like, I don't know, twenty $30,000 POS. And that was like, oh, well, if it goes wrong, like it's going to be bad, but it's still going to be the end of the world. But then when we started putting in like 200 three, $100,000 POS, it's like wow, like if this. Speaker 1 It's like if this. Speaker 3 Guy is wrong. Like we're screwed. Speaker 1 You're screwed. Yeah. OK. Well then OK, going back to the ads, because we have this like help my small business segment. And I think a lot of times that's a big question people ask. And then I also, and a lot of people don't even like really have ads running like I'll go to, I'm like, well, I've gone to Facebook library and I kind of find your ads and you guys have like over 400, which is amazing. Had a little stock. What would be your #1 tip for someone who's starting out on how to use Meta ads to grow their business? Speaker 3 Personally, I would find a similar competitor on say Amazon or something like that and just go through every single review that's on there, like download, there's tools that you can use to export the reviews. And just like what we did was probably a little bit easier now with AI, but back then what we did was literally read through. I reckon I've read read through about 1000 press on now reviews and just figured out why people are buying them. What what they don't like about them. Like read it. Yeah, the stories of like what made them purchase it, everything that that goes into why they're buying the product and then use that to formulate your ads. And then I also feel that like hooks are super important. Like we have like a core foundation of our ads is that the hooks are probably what we put 80% of the effort of the ad into. And then we sort of go from there because at the end of the day, you need people to stop scrolling. And like if you can stop 50% of people that see the ads versus 10% of the people like you had, you only need to convert them at like face of the percentage of what you do. Speaker 1 Yeah, wow, that's completely right. Speaker 2 And also, I would say if you're just starting out, you obviously have a very limited budget and it's so expensive to use UTC creators. So if you have the capacity to be the person doing the content, you should even if you don't like being behind the camera. Because I I even now, I hate being behind the camera. It's like my least favorite part of running this business. But you just have to do, yeah. Speaker 1 Yeah, it's like, do you like, do you hate spending money more or do you hate being in the face more? You got to pick one. You you have to choose what? Otherwise you won't grow exactly. Speaker 3 And I feel that the key to success in ads is volume as well. So you need to find a way to whether it's like what Maddie said, the way you, you're you the founder are getting in front of the camera, but you need a or a friend is doing it. But you need to find some sort of way to produce cheap ads because at the end of the day we, we like test probably 50 to 100 ads a week sometimes and that is going to really add up. Speaker 2 Also like filming your own B roll and like, just like everything, yeah, to do yourself in the early days. Speaker 3 Yeah. Well, that's another thing. The B roll was like probably the key we like sort of just focused on like having a big library of that to the other. Speaker 1 Yeah, of course. My gods. You know, like fresh, like filming new things every time and then. Speaker 2 No, exactly. And then yeah. And then you can just make scripts and put it over B roll and then you can get a high volume of ads going out. Speaker 1 Yes, amazing. Guys write this shit down. This is so good. Hey poddy fam, For those of you dreamers out there ready to start building your own online business, the Lazy CEO Business course is for you. It's 10 modules packed with visuals, live examples covering everything from sourcing product to marketing and scaling. You can go at your own pace, revisit lessons whenever you need and actually see results. If you've been stuck wondering where to start or what to do next, this course gives you the step by step guide to finally make it happen. And because you're part of the party fam, grab 20% off with the Code Podcast 20, head to the lazyceo.com and start building your business your way. So from your failed businesses, what do you think is the biggest thing that you've learnt that's helped you grow? Kenny Hua. Speaker 2 I would say one of them is probably just like having tunnel vision and focusing on what's working and not listening to outside noise and like, say, for example, trying to move on to other platforms or like Meta was working for us. So we just went all in on Meta and our creative strategy was working for us. So we doubled down on the kinds of ads that were working. As we said, we doubled down on the kind of designs that were working and just like honing in and like not diluting your focus. I think that's been a key part of our growth. And then, yeah, I guess like just overall. Role would be like the what we keep saying, which is the creative testing. Yeah, that's been the key to our success. Speaker 3 I think everybody's got advice and like that advice may have worked for them, but everybody's business is different and if you go and find follow someone's advice blindly just because they've had success, I don't feel that it's necessarily 100% going to come and work for you. Speaker 2 Yeah. We've been given advice from people who have done like extremely well in the industry that if we'd taken it, it would have been like detrimental for our business or. Speaker 1 Yeah, absolutely. Because I feel like even for me, like the advice that I might be giving now compared to the advice I'm giving three years ago will be different. So it's like almost like it's the part that you're asking me for advice on my journey. It's going to, that's not going to translate directly for your business. Yeah, exactly right. So yes, everyone listening, take everything with a grain of salt, but yeah, no, 100%, I totally agree. And So what do you think? You're kind of like, you know, everyone has something that makes them a great entrepreneur. What do you think? Yours. Speaker 3 Is like for us together? I think our differences are what make us like such a powerful duo. Like, for example, Maddie does a lot in the business that I couldn't even imagine having to do. And like wouldn't do very well at all. And I can't speak for her, but I think that she would maybe feel the same way about some of the stuff that I do. And then in terms of what works, we're able to come together and both what is really important to do, we both come together and work on it together. Speaker 2 Yeah. I honestly think our partnership is like 97% of our success because as Dylan said, we work really well together. And then also, like even in those early days when we had to film our own content and I would dread it, it would make it so much better that Dylan was flying up to do it with me. It would. Speaker 1 Make it a lot more. Speaker 2 Fun. And then yeah, I just think like it's really fun working together. It's really fun to share the wins. It makes it, it's super enjoyable. I'm never really that stressed. Speaker 1 So this is what's I also really interesting like, you know, I, we don't often see brothers, sisters working together and working together so well. And also you, the business is in Brisbane and you, you like Dylan, you live in Melbourne. Speaker 3 Yeah, it's probably what makes it work. Speaker 1 Yeah, just, yeah, just keeps the hard, hard point. But and then also what's quite incredible is for $30 million business you have or full time staff and Bizzle. Speaker 2 They're not all full time. We have we have two full time and then we have a part time social media. Speaker 1 Guy and. Speaker 2 Then everyone and then we have part time customer service. They're kind of like edging up to full time now. Yeah. So that's like a team of customer service people who are part time, edging up to full time. And then we have VA and editor and then everyone else's agency or freelancer. Speaker 1 That's incredible. Yeah. So who manages all the agencies, Freelancers and? Speaker 2 Dylan does a lot of the agency managing and then I work with the girls in Brisbane, so they're sort of my employment I guess. Speaker 3 Maddie manages the e-mail agency. That's goes back to what I was saying before in terms of like, yeah, it's not my strong suit design and all that sort of stuff. So she's that really good handling that whereas like conversion rate optimization and like I handle that agency and then like the ads we sort of both work together on because Maddie's in a lot of the ads. So yeah, they have a. Speaker 1 You've been able to keep it so lean. That's so good. That's like, I feel like, you know, half the time when people go, what's the worst part about business? They're like, oh, people problems and it's like. Speaker 2 Well, I also think we're able to keep it lean because we have an amazing team. Like everyone that works for us is so good at their job. I love it. Speaker 1 In this room, I can hear you. Speaker 2 Honestly. But I'm like obsessed with team. Speaker 1 Yeah, that's so good. Speaker 3 Everybody works so hard as well. Like it's no, by no means an expectation, but like the girls over in the Philippines, for example, like multiple times I'll get messages from them and I'll like check the time conversion of what time it was when they sent the message. And it's like 3:00 AM in the morning. Like I'm like go to sleep. Speaker 1 Yeah, that's so good. I mean, yeah, I remember like even when I started the business, like it was just me and AV8 working. And it's like so nice that like to know that I'm like, they're working at like 11:00 PM doing product uploads and she's there like helping me edit the products. It increases sound like some like this is like nice to be like having someone alongside. Yeah. Speaker 3 Exactly, buy in is definitely important. Speaker 1 Yeah. OK. So what do you think lots of entrepreneurs we talked about focus earlier. What do you think of early stage entrepreneurs waste their time on? Speaker 2 Honestly, brand, like I know everyone says that brand is so important, but that is something that we've just had on the back burner since day one. We don't really care at all about like our branding. It's only very recently that we've like invested in. It has changed recently, but in the early days, yeah, like our packaging was constantly changing. Yeah, we didn't. Speaker 3 Even have we didn't have time to post on Instagram. Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, exactly. We now have a. Speaker 3 Social three or four months between every post. Speaker 2 Yeah, not much organic going on. It was we were just focusing on what kept the lights on, which was the create like making ads. Yeah. And yeah. So we hardly ever posted on organic. We didn't really like our social media following was growing because the business was growing, but we weren't really putting in any effort to grow it through like a Reels or TikTok or anything. And yeah, and then like as I said, like our, we only just very recently invested in a creative strategy, a creative agency. Sorry to do our colours and fonts. Speaker 1 Yeah. Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. But it just felt like you don't really need to focus on the aesthetics early on in just. Speaker 1 Validate the business, Yeah. Validate the business first, yeah. Speaker 2 Yeah, take more of an analytical approach to it rather than like a, yeah, I guess like a brand approach. Speaker 1 Yeah, no, I mean, I think about do like the show pro old logo, we had like a horse on it. Someone edited someone made that for us for 50 bucks because because I have no editing skills. And then we didn't even like trademark the name properly. It's just like, it's just like kind of like flying the plane. No building the plane while flying it, right. Yeah. Speaker 3 Exactly. Speaker 2 Even the name Candy Clothes, I think I thought of it in like 3 minutes on a walk one morning, which I don't love the name now, but it's like he didn't put any effort into it. We just wanted to test the product and so, yeah. Speaker 1 Oh my God, that's incredible. Speaker 3 I think that people do too much with too little at the start as well, like especially if it's just you, the founder, like you can't be doing e-mail marketing ads, organic TikTok, TikTok ads, affiliate like you. You can't just do that. It's like impossible to do it. Neither alone do it well. So I've. Speaker 1 Had some startups being like oh we need content. I'm like you need to do more tik toks. Just do more content so you can and then get ad creative. And then they're like, oh, I want to do I want to start a podcast. I can get content like, no, who's taught the podcast? Do you know how much work a podcast is? And then you need to then make don't think podcast, the podcast content is going to drive people to your website. You're you need to then make content for the podcast to get people to listen to the podcast. And then you're already not making enough content for your ads. Yeah. So it's like, yeah, people get instructed seeing what? Yeah. Speaker 3 Yeah, With personal brands, I feel these days as well, like people sort of get hot like this. Obviously it's different with you because like the business stage is a lot more mature, but starting founders, they get hooked on the adrenaline and dopamine of what they get from the personal brand. So they start doing too much effort into that and it's like you really should be focusing on your business first. Speaker 1 But I think that's the thing, it's like it's one of these things like I definitely think if you don't have a business, building a personal brand is so great for opening doors for you. But then building a business, it's like, if you actually, I mean, it's good because building a brand, personal brand compounds. And so obviously it's great that you guys are here and like kind of like studying. Well, not, I don't know, you know, starting that journey, you know, being on this podcast first. But I also think it's like it's so much in the same way that starting a personal brand opens doors for you. Starting a business that's successful then helps you ease more way more easily create a personal brand. So do the business first, make that successful. So then you can like, relax into it and then build the personal brand, yeah. Speaker 3 Yeah, exactly. So true. Speaker 1 But the earlier you start with the personal brand, I feel like it does, yeah, compound in time. Speaker 3 Super helpful. Like that's one thing that we don't have, but like, I feel a little bit envious of people that I see on Twitter and they're able to like just go to their Twitter following and hire like the best of the best and stuff. Speaker 2 Like that, I think that's where it would be the most handy in hiring. Speaker 1 I mean, I think you guys are fine to a third year of business, you're $30 million business. I think if you want to grow a personal brand, you can do that super quickly as well. So I had no doubt. And so circling back to brand, like are you guys doing more brand now as a bigger business like influence the staff? Speaker 2 Yeah. I think now we need to focus on like reaching more people. And obviously Australia is a limited market, so we are expanding internationally. But within Australia to reach more people, we do need to start to focus on that side of things now that we've like got a bit of runway. So, for example, like moving into retail, we needed to focus on our branding more and make sure that our packaging was going to stand out in retail. And like we wanted to start working with influencers to unlock like another marketing channel. And to do that, we wanted everything to be super aesthetic. We wanted the feed to look really nice so it would match the influences aesthetic as well, which is why we hired a social media girl. So we are focusing more on that now. But I just don't think it was necessary to get to say like the $20 million mark. Yeah, yeah. Speaker 3 Yeah, I agree. I feel that brand is like super important to go from 20 to 100, but it's it's still important, but a lot less important to go from zero to 20 or yeah. Speaker 1 Yeah. Speaker 3 Like I feel you need to find what works and just like nail nail that and. Speaker 2 Exactly. And especially with ads as well, like doing ads that are super, like, aesthetic. Yeah. Just like face to camera, like trying to like model bigger brands. Yeah. It just doesn't. I don't, it doesn't work. Like our ads were so ugly and messy. Yeah. And like, maybe even a little bit controversial, but that's why they worked and why we were able to cut through all the other people selling press. Speaker 3 On it, yeah. And it's like, no offence, but like no matter how aesthetic your like ads are, at $5,000,000 you don't have a brand. Nike is a brand. You don't. Speaker 1 Have a brand Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love it No, I actually love this. This is so refreshing here. I absolutely love you guys are saying this because I guess so many people asking for advice, like what do you think? Like I need to do for my business and they want the secret sauce. And it's like, whilst it's no like silver bullet for every business, but I'm like, well, yeah, just make ads work, make metal ads work. And no one, nobody wants a hero. They they want some other kind of like special, you know, silver bullet. But that's literally, yeah, exactly it. Yeah. Speaker 3 100%, yeah. I feel that you can get a brand. So $50 million a year, just three Meta ads without touching like TikTok organic or anything like that, especially if you go over into the States, Yeah. Speaker 1 So, and it's amazing there's, there are definitely businesses that have been able to just even grow organically without it. But trust me, I think that's more work, yeah, as it's like way less work, way more scalable, yeah, way quicker, like. Speaker 2 I think it's like a a bigger barrier to entry though, because people are intimidated by the platform and like intimidated by the analytics. Speaker 3 And the skill set behind it. Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly. And it's more diminished. Speaker 1 Think of it like a giant poker machine that you can control. Yeah. You know, and like the odds are like not stacked against you. Yeah. And you can actually that, you know, you can beat the house. So you can actually. Speaker 2 Yeah. Speaker 1 Like play more as creatives and improve it and increase your odds, yeah. Speaker 3 Yeah, there's definitely like a plausible route with organic content and there's a way that you can build a big business from that. But the way that I look at it is you're only as good as your last video with organic, whereas I can make an ad two years ago and it still might be spending and bringing in sales today. Speaker 1 Exactly. It's Evergreen, yeah. And So what do you think is the biggest game changing decision you've made to help your business grow? Speaker 3 Yeah, for sure. Like I had to go back to it, but like at the start we did a bit of TikTok ads and we were because we had a lot of issues when we were dropped shipping, we got banned off Facebook. Speaker 2 Still banned to this day. Tried to get unbanned the other day. Speaker 3 Yeah, not for anything malicious, but just like fine terms of their TOS and stuff like that. So we both weren't able to run ads from our personal accounts, so we were running ticket cards when we're doing drop shipping. So we're doing that with Candy Claws, and the biggest change was when we swapped to Meta, we found a way to be able to get back on Meta and run ads through there, and then that's where the business sort of started going up. Speaker 2 And then on top of that, just doubling down on what was working with the designs as well and like shifting our focus. Speaker 3 Yeah, exactly. Listening to customers too, I feel. Speaker 2 Improving. Speaker 3 Super important, like everything that the customers say, like just try and survey your customers and get as much information out of them as you possibly can and then use that to drive the business forward as well as like through product and ads and everything. Speaker 2 I don't know if it was one thing as more of just like approach of being, sorry, more of an approach of being super analytical and like looking at the data and then focusing on that. And yeah, as I said, like doubling down on what's working. Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, I love that. OK. Oh my God, guys, this is honestly, you guys have been so amazing sharing so candidly. What's helped you go from 0 to $30 million in three years like that is like, you guys should give yourself such a big pat in the back. Like that's incredible. There's so many takeaways for people who are listening. So yeah, I will do give you one final question to leave us on. And that's the best piece of advice that you've ever received. Speaker 2 So I think the best piece of advice we've been given is to be careful what advice you take. As we were saying before, it's really important to keep your blinders up and just focus on what's working for you. But then I think on top of that as well is a lot of advice that you get given as a female in the business space is advice that wouldn't have worked for us. So like focusing on branding, focusing on aesthetics, a lot of the people giving advice in the female space, that influences, well, influences as well. So they're building brands off the back of an existing audience. Whereas for us, what's worked is taking more of an analytical approach and just focusing on the data and like diving into Facebook ads, like not trying to create a perfect feed and I guess doing more of those like feminine approaches to business. So for me, that would be the best piece of advice I would give would just be to like really focus on the analytical side of things, focus on the data and don't be scared to delve into meta and like inventory forecasting and all of that. Speaker 1 As yes, I love it Make data sexy again. Yeah, that's honestly so refreshing here and I completely agree. Speaker 3 Mine's a bit technical. So I do the media buying for the business and when we started Facebook was like in a transitional period in terms of the best practice in and how to run the account. Like it was to begin with in sort of 2022 and prior everybody was doing look alike audiences and like really specific targeting through their Facebook cards and trying to tell Facebook where to spend the money. And it was just changing over to one campaign broad settings, target everybody and let your creative do the targeting. And we sort of knuckled down on that and went ahead with that. And then that has developed over the three years since then to be like by far the best like standard approach to Facebook. So it just was keep it simple from the start and let the creative do all the heavy lifting rather than the buttons in the ad account and telling like Facebook, I want to target these people or that people. Speaker 1 Yes, Oh my God, that's what Weldy says all the time. Let let yeah that algorithm do it's work. Speaker 3 Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Speaker 1 Yeah, amazing. Thank you guys so much. This has been such a great chat. Speaker 2 Yeah, this was fun. Speaker 3 Yeah, it was good. Enjoy myself. Speaker 1 OK, that's it from me for now. Thanks for listening. If you're loving the podcast, don't forget to follow and I would love it if you can do me a favour and leave us a review. And if you want more, join the conversation on a podcast Instagram at the Lazy CEO under score Podcast. All links in the show notes catch you next Tuesday.