691: Anastasia's $850K Brand Collapsed To $42K A Month - Then She Tripled It Herself

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Just head to omnisand.com/founder and that's founder without the e to get started. Alright, now let's jump in the show. Welcome to Little Empires brought to you by the team at founder. At founder, our mission is to support the next generation of e-com founders. So while you may know us for interviewing some of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, this series is a little different. Little Empires shines a spotlight on the builders inside our own founder community, the entrepreneurs who are in the trenches taking action, learning and building their businesses in real time. These aren't overnight success stories, these are real journeys, real lessons and real founders creating their own little empires, one step at a time. This podcast is proudly produced by the founder team to give our students a platform to share their experiences, wins, challenges and honest realities of building a business from the ground up. Now, let's dive into today's episode. Anastasia, welcome to the show, super excited to have you with us. For context for everyone, Anastasia is part of our new membership called Founder Operators and it's really a place where we help D to see founders scale. So you have to be doing it least, you know, closer to half a million dollars a year at minimum in revenue. And we have members that are all the way up to 5, 10, 15, there's something to do in 20 million a year in D to see. And we really help you grow and scale through Facebook ads. We've founded your email marketing soon, conversion rate optimization, doing the full funnel. It's an amazing community and Anastasia. We've started this community in March and I distinctly remember this call with Anastasia. Because I do all the enrollments, we're taking it really serious how we grow this community. We're very thoughtful and intentional who we let in. And I remember Anastasia, we had to do a couple calls to really think about it. It was like, oh, I don't know about this. And you know, you've been able to go on a really good run since March. I have, yes, I've been able to turn things around, which I'll like tell you all about. So happy beer. Can we get like a one line like where did you go from where you started with us to weigh on now? Yes, I feel like some context isn't involved. But last year we really started scaling through meta ads. I'm a solo founder, it's just me. And we went through a pretty brutal trademark infringement last year. So I had basically built this meta machine, had an amazing black Friday. And then because of this trademark infringement, I had to legally change my name. We used to be called Lew Drops or Lew, change it to Lewy and overnight turn our ads off and turn them back on with like a new logo, new brand essentially. And it rocked my business. So January was kind of okay and February and March were brutal. So I think when I joined in March, we'd had our lowest revenue month in over a year. So I had to take back control. The person that was helping me run my ads and start running them myself, which I had never really done. And now we're doing at about like 120 a month. And I'm trying to get to like $300,000 a month by December. So we're finally, you know, the first couple months of joining was really trying to understand my meta account and how the structure of it and what I was doing and then start building it up. Yeah, that's amazing. And so when you come to us and when you started in March, you were doing like, there's like 50 grand a month. You lower, I think we got as low as like 42. Yeah, wow. Okay. So we're on a triple, triple, triple run rate in what? Five months. Yeah. So April was, you know, me getting the reins letting go of someone restructuring things and bunch of times. But having a lot of help with with the coaches and finally finding momentum again, which has been like amazing. Yeah, wow. Okay, that's awesome. All right, better than I thought. Awesome. Okay, thanks. This is at least $300,000 a month going. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. So tell me about Louis. Like how did you start it? Like so. And just for context, everyone's listening. These are drops. And it's really for women, right? These are drops for women. Yeah. Men buy them, but not really. Like 95% of our customer bases women. Yeah, we are a modern bathroom brand. Like to say, like we help people move through their most awkward moments and part of that is going number two. So these are pre-poop drops that you put into the toilet. And then they're formulated to drop the odors and just leave amazing sense behind. So they're odor eliminating bathroom drops. And that's what I'm selling. I kind of only have one hero product right now that I've been able to scale with. But yeah, we're in the personal care and the bathroom space. Yeah. And how did you start and when did you start? How did you find the inspiration of this brand? Is this your first e-con brand? Yeah, great question. This is my first brand. Yeah, I've always worked in startups. Like I mentioned earlier, I've worked in tech in the tech world for a number of years. I've worked remotely for 10 years. So I've worked in the startup world for a long time, which to anyone listening just means like wearing a lot of hats and being able to pivot and being resourceful and like flying by the CDR pants. So I've had that experience, but not in the CPG or D to C type of world. And I came with the idea on like any good ideas on the toilet is sitting on the toilet. Actually, I was very lucky because I had these jobs and worked remotely. I was actually able to travel the world like pre-COVID and post-COVID. So I worked for companies that, you know, allowed me to be a digital nomad, if you will. And I really took advantage of that and was able to travel the whole world. And I shared a lot of bathrooms with my boyfriend at the time, who's my boyfriend and my friends. And I came up with the idea because I actually had the competitor, Pooperie. So I was traveling around with it because I was sharing, you know, at the time I think I was in Mexico. I had four female roommates and my boyfriend. We're all sharing an apartment with a couple bathrooms. I had Pooperie. I'm using this product. I'm embarrassed by this product. I'm hiding it. Any chance I can get like out of the way so he couldn't see it. And I just remember having this like, I don't know if it's not really even a piphany, but I was sitting on the toilet thinking like this product sucks. Like it doesn't spray. You have to put your whole hand on the toilet bowl to spray it before. It smells artificial. It says like, "Trap your crap on it." Like nothing about it. I loved except for the fact of like what it did by eliminating odors. And I remember talking to the bathroom and sitting with my girlfriends and we were joking around. And we really started talking about like, what would this business look like? And it was all kind of a joke. And then this idea just like, warm hold in my brain for like six months. And then I decided to. It was like, why doesn't this exist? Like something that is sleeker and more chic and smells better and isn't toxic artificial and is easier. Has an easier application. Because really there's one product on the market and it hasn't been innovated on like 15 or 20 years. So when I started it was really just for me and my friends. Like I never really thought it would be a business. I didn't think I'd be building a poop empire, but here we are. So you're also based in South Africa, but then moved between South Africa. And is it Canada? No Vancouver Canada. So I'm still I'm not a nomad anymore. Like that life got tiring. I'm too old for it. But I do still split my time between South African Canada. When I started developing the product, like actually developed it out of an Airbnb in Cape Town. I like ordered all these essential oils and chemicals and all this weird stuff to my Airbnb. And I just started mixing batch after batch after batch after batch. And what I would do is like hold it up to like a wine glass with water in it. And then drop it in and then see if it actually created a barrier or not. So once I kind of figured out how to create a formula that actually trapped the odors, then I started giving it to friends. And I made them fill out a poop score card. So I'd give them like here's five samples, one to five. And then they'd get their little card and then say, you know, text me after make notes on the card. It like lived in our bathroom for a couple months until I found something that I thought would work. Wow, there you go. And then when did you launch? I didn't launch for like a year and a half after that. Because I was still had a job that I liked moving around. So I think that was in, I developed it in 2022 and I launched it in 2023. And even 2023, it's kind of a write off. I moved around. I wasn't really home. I think I sold, I don't know, like a few thousand dollars worth. Like 2024 was really my first actual year in business. And even that, I was working full time. But that's when I started to take it more seriously and saw like, okay, there seems to be some traction here. People are buying it. I was starting to get unhappy at my other job and thought, you know, maybe I should give this a go. Yep, got you. And you said, so 2025. So we were recording this of July, 2026. So 2025 was probably the breakout, breakout year. You had a trademark issue. I resonate with that because founder wasn't called. Founder was quite actually called keen to success. Yeah, it was called key to success. And I was, I was sued by success mag. magazine in the first four months of starting founder. So I just got an interview with Richard Branson in the first four months of starting and then this is kind of like one of my arc stories. Yeah but a lot of people don't know because I've been in the game for so far. You're an Ethan from founder. So first four months started founder then got sued by a success magazine and the magazine was called and the brand was called Keeta Success and then yeah I had to change the name. Luckily it was in the first four months. There was not that much change, didn't have that much real estate. What happened with you? Yeah it was it was pretty like brutal. You know it's interesting actually it ended up being an amazing thing for my brand but at the time it didn't feel like that. Like hindsight is 2020 because I called the brand Lou. I don't know anything about business. I was just like oh my god Lou is such a cute name. It's like the English bathroom word and then I was like well it's drop so then people started calling it Lou drop. So it was kind of always confusing because it was called Lou and Lou drops and I hated Lou drop. So whatever I had filed a trademark for Lou it was kind of unlikely it would ever get approved because you can't trademark the common words. Like you can't trademark bathroom so Lou probably wouldn't have got approved but what it did is it flagged it to a company. Another company has a very similar name and even though they have a different product they're in the same category. So they sent me a cease and desist. I was like oh shit I had to drop my trade bark and then was in the middle figured out my new name a couple of months go by. I had a lawyer at this time but like we didn't really respond. They sent me another cease and desist. We started negotiating with them. There's really small brand but they were pretty brutal about it so we had to I had to figure out a rebrand pretty quickly. The shit part is I had just ordered like 30,000 units of packaging with my like I just paid the bill it was like getting it was already in production and we had to negotiate a timeline to like let me continue to sell that product like after the fact of changing. So now I have a Louie I was able to register it we are officially like registered and we're all good in our class but yeah it was like it wasn't even like much of a financial burden it was like the stress of not knowing how to handle it and then the biggest you know the biggest thing we had to overcome was the meta ads like I think I really underestimated what it would be like to restart because when you look at our old brand it looks so similar the logo looks very similar we opened up the extra you or the oh we made it a you we added and I it looks very similar so I was able to like use a lot of my old photos a kind of Photoshop them and step and update them but yeah we 2025 was our biggest year we did like $850,000 which the year before we did 120 like so it felt like a really big year for us I say assets and it's just me a big year for me and then when I turned it off and turned on Louie it kind of all crashed within two months I just couldn't figure it out and you found us something and then I found you guys yeah so yeah I mean it's a lesson to like it it helped me figure out where things were broken like I was so reliant on meta and I saw what happens when that can kind of crash like you know how founders talk about getting locked out of their accounts or things happening like I felt like I experienced that in a different way so kind of showed that that gap in my business but yeah then I found you guys I fired the guy that was running my ads because he was just spending so much money and you know the other lesson is like last year I found a couple winning ads like pre-endromeda and those ads just carried me so I was like wow you just need like three winning ads and like you got a million dollar business and then when those ads turned off I could like never find a winning ad again so I think my perception of ads and selves like the actual creative has like really changed with the help of like joining the group too and just like learning from everybody yeah yeah so it's been awesome to see and watch your growth from afar as I was sharing offline we did a study of like our founding cohort so we took on about 30 members and on average they like we couldn't take on anymore because Nick couldn't yeah and and it was really good I write capacity yeah yeah and and you know and I know we're scaling out the group it's not relying on Nick and yeah all that good stuff but on average a member increased their revenue by 23% from from the month of March March April, May, June right so amazing growth and you know you want to the outliers that's what we're here right like you're one of the one of our great case studies you've doubled if not close to triple your business from you know four or five months which is amazing and I remember our distinct conversations I'm doing every enrollment and I remember our distinct conversation we did a call you know I'm not sure Nathan need to think about it like it sounds great and with another call and there's a lot of hesitation there like I'm like but I knew I could see that like you're an absolute jet like you I needed the help you are on air it but where I'm curious I just love to unpack that hesitation because yeah sometimes founders like you know it's it's a scary thing to join like a you know like what are we like a coaching program mastermind community group yeah so I'd love to hear and then yeah what what were the hesitations those a few things so the first one I think is a business owner like one it feels like people want to take advantage of you like there's so many agencies and people that want us to talk to you all the time and just like a day you think they want to help your business but like they don't and I and that's not you guys obviously that's why I'm still here and we'll be a member for a very long time but I had experienced that with social media agencies with an email with the guy that ran my ads and I think at the time of March like I mean I said nothing was off the table today and like there was a point where I really thought I might have to shut down my business like when I was looking at the unit economics of it I'm just like I sell poop drops I sell a $17 product if people buy one it's expensive to ship it's expensive to run ads it's it's all very expensive like is this the business that is really gonna take me where I want to go and our ad account like I was having such a hard time that I was had convinced myself like no one wants this product even though we already had like tens of thousands of customers I was like I think this is kind of the end so that was where mentally I was in March like probably like the worst I mentally had been within my business to date so I think when I was hesitant to join it can feel so tempting to like find the white night and be like someone saved my business like I remember having calls with people to even do my ads and like do I just fire the guy that's running my ads now and hire someone new and like maybe they'll save my business but like at the end of the day only you can save your business like only you are gonna love your business and run it and be able to save it so my hesitation was spending the money because we were so cash broke and in March it was is this really gonna help and then I think what got me over it like got me to the to finish times one I've been watching your podcast for a long time like I think you're amazing you have amazing founders on so like that was you know you have the credibility but really it was being like making the decision of like I'm gonna do this myself like I'm gonna make the conscious decision I'm not gonna hire someone I'm gonna it's scary and now it's not I love running my ads I love making ads I love running my I made my website is so like do everything on my own once I've never had a developer but I think I had to make that decision like okay like I'm gonna go all in and I'm gonna try this I'm gonna try to bring some experts in because I don't have anyone else on my team and see if it helps and if it doesn't I'm already in a bad headspace anyway so what's the worst you know well look it's it's been amazing to watch you grow and and you know there's no no mistake like you really like you're you're not a lot of the sessions like I got my AI to do a session he's like 22 years old he's an absolute freak at this time yeah I think you went a little bit over people's heads I don't know he did I thought I thought he's great like I was like oh I want to get on a one-on-one with this guy yeah so so I joined that session but and it was it was incredible like but we we got to do more to just really help it was really great level like he built a whole operating system for you guys like which is crazy and we went through landers and creative on how to scale it with AI but I was on that session I saw you there and I and I see the RSVPs and I see who goes to the sessions like we're behind the scenes like myself Maggie the team because we're building out this community you are a super-engaged member like you absolutely milking the sessions and you are trying and like and you're taking action so like all the credit goes to you we're just playing a very small part in your journey like you've got a great product great brand super smart like but I think I think the key thing that I want to kind of pull out there that you described is like I truly hand-on-hand believe if you are a solo founder and this comes from you doing so many successful founders in the D to C space especially if you are a solo founder marketing you need to bring internally you have to build that capability I agree either you or it's your co-founder otherwise you will not win if you're a totally you cannot win like I it's not you can't but it's just the times have changed it is so aggressive right now like some of the stuff that we're teaching you around direct response and landing pages and offers right like you can't just create a great product and just run ads to it like it's the times have changed I actually think that one thank you for that the compliments I was really nice like I I'm driven like I feel like it's a matter of time like I always say I'm like this will work if it's not this it will be something else like I'm never going back to working for anyone again like it is a matter of time of like it's [BLANK_AUDIO] It's like a hit ratio, right? Like I'm just gonna keep showing up because every single call I shared earlier is like I'm always picking up something. Like today I joined Benz. I asked him, I had a couple questions, but even that he was sharing about this app called Tribe, which I've tried before and didn't have success. And he's like, oh, I would actually try it this way, try this, and it's like, oh, every single call there is value, right? So, and then the second point is I think I'm a founder because I didn't plan to start a business. I started everything very bootstrapped. Like I don't come from this world. So like I made Mount Formula. I ordered my bottles off Alibaba. Like I poured hand poured my first 50,000 units in my mom's garage with my mom and my cousins and like anyone who's fucking helped me. But shipped out every order from the garage. So I built my own website and this isn't like a meany me, but I think doing it all yourself, you'll be able to then know what you're hiring for or like what you need help. Like you'll know your strengths and your weaknesses. And like I've learned, like I really do love ads. Like I'm like, I should have been doing this year. Like it's so fun. I love the creative, I like Phoenix's sessions are my favorite. I just love the creative part. And when it comes to organic posting, horrible at it hate it hate social media. When it comes to making ads or like video editing, like my partner is like a professional. He's a creative director at a company and he's like an actual video editor. And I'm like, wow, look at me. I'm like taking your job. Like I'm a video editor now. (laughs) So like I'm really loving it. And I would just encourage like every founder, like it's not that scary. And just like you should be doing kind of all of it yourself unless your experience or you have capital to deploy, which I don't. - And even then, like if you have capital to deploy, it's far better to get an up, to hold somebody accountable, to know how it should work, because so many people are going to tell you one thing. And it's hard to hold them to account if you don't truly know it yourself. And I think founders that are, you know, anywhere between, you know, let's just say $10,000, $5,000. All the way from starting, you've got, and you've got product market fit. All the way up to even half a million dollars, even a million dollars a month, you should be running your ads yourself and understanding it. - Yeah, yeah, I think that's interesting. I would agree with that. There's also like, if you're reliant on ads for a big portion of your revenue and acquisition, you should be in control of that. And I think that's what I saw last year. Like, while the guy I had, I actually really liked him as a person. And he was able to scale me. Like, it just felt like, wow, to the moon. And it's almost like when things got bad at the beginning of this year, I realized like, actually he's really distracted. I'm, and now I know what to look for in my ad account where it was before I was kind of blind to it. I was like, sales are great. And I'm like, wait, why is he spending money on something that has like a.5 ROS and spending thousands of dollars? Like, I could see all of it and understand it. And eventually was like, I just need to, I need to take this in house. I had no control, like I felt on Black Friday, I couldn't get a hold of him during Black Friday. Three days, the biggest weekend of the year. So shit like that, where I was like in the account, but I was like scared to make any changes because I wasn't managing my own account, which is crazy. Where now it's like that would just like never fly. That, you know, and it would never happen. And in fact, if anything now, I have someone who helps me with the creative strategy. I think I get kind of stuck on like the creative ideas in between Phoenix and the girl that I have part time. Like I feel like the ideas are kind of endless. And that was my biggest roadblock, not actually running out, which I thought was my biggest roadblock. It's really not. - Yeah, I think you've really nailed it. Like when you're at the scaling stages of your business, outsourcing that part of your growth is somewhat risky. And you're allowing someone to control. - Yes. - And there's been a lot of money. Like a large part of your P&L expense. - Yes. - Like, you know, 20, 30% of your revenue, all they're going to be ads. And, you know, this person, usually if it's an 80 or freelance or whatever, that you are one of five, one of 10, one of 15. And they're just not going to care as much as you do. They're just not going to know your brand. They're not going to know your customer. They're not going to know what moves the needle. Like they're not going to know your customer's objections as well as you do. Like all these different things, right? And then they're not going full funnel, which is what we do. - Yes. - We are very, very big in operators, found operators around going full funnel. We look at Leolanda, we look at your offer, while we look at your CR, your conversion rate. We look at your margins, your economics, right? To make sure that we can scale this thing. - Yes. And that's been so helpful. Like there was a time where like the ads was my biggest difficulty when I first came in. And once that got fixed, then it's like, okay, ads are fixed, stop spending time on ads. Now it's like, it's offer, it's website. You got a shit PDP, let's fix that. And you know, you have Owen, who he, like there's a CRO, and he did a full audit of my website. And then came back and I had all these changes. And like now I look at my website, even last week I've made some more changes. And I was like, wow, looks amazing compared to where it was. And even now I know in six months, I'm like, that was such a shit website. But that really came from your team, like Nick kind of challenging me on like testing different offers and moving things around. And having someone tell me like, your site kind of sucks. It converted well, but it didn't look great. And yeah, being able to make the changes. So yeah, it is full, it's been full funnel. It's been really helpful. - Something that I found really interesting. So Nick and I have been wanting to build founder operators for a while. We've been doing something together for a couple of years. He taught, so we have the founder plus platform, which is like a course learning platform per quarter programs. And he was our Facebook ads instructor, quote-unquote instructor. And we've been talking about doing something for a while. And it was taking too long. I think I've told you this, it's just taking too long. So I flew him to Australia at the start of this year. - Yeah, you told me that he's like lived with you for like a month. - Yeah, like a month is crazy. And it was so much fun. Like that, like we knew each other, we were buddies, but like real, we really know each other. - Yeah, now you're in it. You know each other's morning routines. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a very clean man. - Yeah, I could see that. Love these powers, better. Anyway, look very short. I took him to go see Koalas. And he was like, oh, I got a duck out for a little bit. So I went to the zoo. And he's like, I've got this, you know, one-on-one offshoot client that he's working with that would pay, like probably I assume. I don't even know, like tens of thousands of dollars a month for the Nick to help. And Nick was like, man, I'm a little bit stressed for my client because he's just cracked an offer. And he's gonna scale to $300,000 a day. And I'm worried he's gonna run out of stock. And he's like, I've been there. I've been there and I don't want him to fuck up like I have. And I, and I was like, and then like you didn't do the call, you come back and I was like, dude, like, how can you build a brand like how's that even possible? Like, what does it take to do that? And he said to me, he said, man, once you crack an offer, it's like, it's crazy what is possible. And like, I don't know about you, but I've never met anyone that spent $300,000 in US dollars. - No. - A day on average. - No, that's, that's like my dream month of making a revenue and I've been spending. - Yeah, so it founder the most that we've picked at is about $40,000 a day, Australian. - Wow, that's great, still. - That's great. - Yeah, but still like $300,000 in US dollars. - Yeah, that's nuts. - Yeah, I'm catching up with dinner with some guys. The young kids, they're 23, we're doing dinner and they run a big branch. They're doing a few million a month and they're, and they're spending about the same is same, they're 40,000 Australian and these guys are really strong. But like, I've never met anyone that spent $300,000 in US. And he says it's like casually. So like he's truly one of the best I've ever met. Like I've met a lot of people like nerds, his stuff. - You know what though, which I appreciate too? There's no ego with anyone in the group or any of the coaches, like if someone is spending that kind of money and making that money, he doesn't, he still treats our business. Like, I don't know, he still respects our business even though like, I'm like, wow, I had our biggest, like our biggest day has been like 11 grand and that was during Black Friday. And I was like, I can't believe something like, we made that much revenue, you know? And I think he's been really great at like putting, he doesn't make us feel small. I guess is what I'm getting at, like ever, you know? If anything someone is, he's like, been spending a little bit more, you can bump this up here. Like, and I think he's been, yeah, just really good at working with us like individually and still making it feel like my business isn't small and it can actually be one of those businesses that does really well. If I crack the offer, have a better PDP, it's all like steps to get there, right? - Yeah, so let's talk about some of these steps. So he came in, you're at your, some of your lowest months. What was the first thing we, you obviously, you took back control? What was some of the things that we did with you and you learned from a step change, gross perspective that others listening to this right now could learn? What was some of the things that really moved the needle to get this thing rocking and rolling? - I mentioned ads a lot because truly that was like, our biggest thing. I had a good grasp on my unit economics, like I love numbers and spreadsheets and like what my cogs were in my expenses, et cetera. But the first thing we did was restructure my actual ad account so like moved my campaigns. Like it was kind of set up in a very like old school type of way of like look alike audiences and multiple campaigns. It wasn't consolidated very well. So it was hard to manage. Like I think that's why it always felt intimidating for me because there was like, if we had one winning ad, it might be in multiple ads that's multiple campaigns. It lived in all these different places, I didn't quite get that. So we restructured my campaign and that actually didn't go well at first. So then I remember that I don't know yet because it took a lot in a good month I remember it was only April thing started cranking. Yeah, yeah, which is you know Which I think was a few members too like I was like okay I'm gonna move over here and then you know this Phoenix I was like, you know what? I think we're gonna move to this kind of campaign So then we moved it to like a B.O. testing She really taught me how to like consolidate down and then my one-on-one with Nick I remember had a one-on-one with Nick when I first joined it was supposed to be 15 minutes He gave me an hour of his time which is incredible and like so generous and He went through my specifically my account and my business and we figured out what is my CAC like where should I be killing ads? Like what are my limits? How much should I be spending and what do I want to see before I kill them? So like I think a lot of people look at Roas Whereas I feel like I look at it more holistically. So like Nick started Helping me figure out like okay, how much should my add to cart be I'd never even looked at my add to cart Like I didn't know what that was supposed to be like what is my the cost for purchase my frequency the hook rates Like I learned all of that through Nick specifically on that one-to-one and like once I knew my threshold I still use that threshold today. So like I'm constantly testing Thanks to Phoenix. She's always coming up with amazing ideas until I was working or not And I'm pretty quick to like make the ads and if it doesn't hit that or it overspends I know when to kill it whereas before I never would have known that so the biggest thing was a restructure The second was like understanding my number specifically in meta and what I could afford to spend you mentioned Phoenix So just for context for everyone Phoenix is our creative coach. She is amazing. She's so wonderful She worked behind the scenes of a brand leading the creative that grew I don't know if I can share the number publicly, but from zero to tens and tens and tens of millions of dollars in just one year She was running the creative she was running the creative machine there and she's incredible some of our frameworks So we're just starting to You'll see soon or all of our frameworks and SOPs will be up throughout the platform So people can hit the ground running faster and you can refer to those frameworks faster But some of the ways that she looks at creative iteration velocity and scale and and how to find winners is amazing Yeah, and like I said like I kind of mentioned that all the coaches will take you Like one to one during a call is like they'll be like like she'll literally sort of calls and go How can I help you like who wants to go you know close mouths don't get fed is what she'll say Which is why I always join these calls because I'm like I want to get fed I want to know and I'll share my actual ad like raw ad that I just edited together and she'll like too slow I'd clip that this parts great and make that the hook like she'll help me rethink through the actual like add Some self-to to be launching and she's also just fun and knowledgeable and really in this game And so she's had some crazy ideas of ads like I think I recently just did a skit ad I mean I talk about poop on the internet all day like I had to take my ego side and be like okay Like everyone I know and have ever known is gonna see me on the internet talking about poop and smelling whatever But we ran a skit ad recently and she's like yeah these skits are going crazy So this is a skit. I'm in the bathroom talking about stings I play both roles and like I made it and overnight it just started printing money and I was like wow I never would have done that ever if it wasn't in one of these calls and been encouraged to so there's something like that Happen in every day. That's awesome. So I'm curious So when when it comes to creative Founder-led ads are you still finding they are the strongest and what advice would you have to founders when it comes to Making your own ads because for some Their product builder thrown through the thought of being on camera creating your own ads is very scary Yeah, I think if you're not creative editing actually I Really like the editing process. So like I found that I'm quite Good at it or getting quite good at it So I enjoy that I find like a couple hours a day or like a couple hours every week I enjoy that I kind of script things out. So I'll get on these calls usually think it skits a lot of ideas I also have this creative strategist that helps you put a board together of different ideas Every two weeks and we have a call and then I basically take those and then I have one day of filming usually a Friday And I'll change my outfit and I'll film a bunch of different things and then I'll kind of spend some time editing If you're not good at editing, I don't think there's any shame in hiring an editor because I think shitty editing Like no one's gonna watch the video like that's just the truth right like if it doesn't catch you they're gone and it's like I think a 20% if that hit rate on your ads you have to make a lot of them When I will say for the shy people is Once you realize it works you get on the camera pretty quickly like my first ad Oh my god when I got into ads when I first started my business I just thought like you make an amazing product and like customers just come which is like not Oh my god products great like where are all the customers and like I post organically my like 100 followers at the time Like where are the customers and I had a girlfriend and she's like you should run some ads and she filmed this one of me And I remember being mortified I think we spent 20 bucks a day 40 bucks and I remember the time I was like I can't I can't believe I was spending 40 dollars a day on these ads and I should have filmed me it was awful and it Started just selling and I was like oh my god. This is how my business is gonna grow You know and not nugget and then very quickly I got comfortable on camera because You realize that it those ads do the best in my business the founder at I think in our group a lot of people They're found ads and I think the other part of it is I didn't have money to hire someone like I don't love getting on camera Like talking about I'll talk about my business, but I pretend to be like a customer in a lot of my ads And like I don't love talking about like literally being like my bathroom stings like that's embarrassing. That's just whatever But I couldn't afford to hire creators like creators are really expensive and there was a time where I was hiring a bunch of creators Like UGC creators to make ads I'd clip all together, but like none of them converted like it really just It's like I didn't want to be the face of it and ultimately I had to be because my ads by videos were the only ones that were really Converting and I think also like I'm talking a lot about ads, but I think also there's something to be said about showing behind the scenes So like I started in my garage I hand poured all of them I shipped all my orders like I filmed so much behind the scenes not really knowing what I'd ever do with it And now I'm able to put that together and I think it's it's cool for the customer to see like how it's starting It's a real like person behind it, you know like people want to buy from good people and I'm not just some big unilever corporation like I'm a one woman who started this with a passion My mom's garage and you know, I'm still doing it all so I think like filming behind the scenes is also like incredibly valuable Even if you don't use it right away. Yeah, I I couldn't agree more and you know, we are seeing this as well Right like found a lead content like it's it's one of the formats that It just hits and I I'm the exact same like I you know I never thought that I'd be interviewing people I never wanted I never Yeah, I want to interview founders. That's what I want to do. It just kind of came out that way when I started this magazine, right Or who's going to do the interviews? I'm the other person right? Yeah, it's me involved and I was same as you just absolutely like not good on camera and not strong What so ever what's it's intimidating? Yeah, and I think I think the hack that nobody ever knows is you can just script it and use a teleprompter like the teleprompter app in the biggest game changer ever So you could record you can you know get madness or chord or any of these tools are just like rip and you go to your competitors or like any Like you're even not competitors, right and get it to come up with some stuff script it And then just use the teleprompter app and like yeah, it's like but like you just get better and better and better at it You get more comfortable I will say too like one of the ways like pre-joining founder like some ways to find good videos And I still do this like there's so many amazing creators and founders that make Usually they're their founders and they're showing both their brand like they'll do voiceover or they'll talk about like Why I started it and I can see like wow that got Half a million views and lots of shares and I'll just look at that and then rescript it for Louis like you know It might be a completely different product. It's not in like trying to rip them off It's more like they clearly have a winning formula like what are they saying you know and like how can I Have the catchy hook and then oh they started with like talking about the competitors and why they suck and then their solution So like I'll take that framework from other videos I see and then and then script them my own and then film them It doesn't come naturally. It's like time and effort Yeah, of course. So it's really gonna look I I really resonate with what you're saying and and we're not saying this is easy for everyone But it is it's really powerful. So one thing I'd love to hear from you Is how you structure your day because sometimes people like oh This all sounds great Yeah, I want to do this stuff, but I don't have time and like you're coming to all the calls Like you're obviously working on your business like ice you eight hours ten hours a day Yeah, definitely like so how do you structure your day like how because you go to most calls like and we run like 10 calls away Well, I do now because I'm not in keep down They were like one in the morning and I was like saying it for some of them But I'd feel like I was like hung over something next day just could be so tired, but um I do try but again I don't have a team so I I can go to two hours of meetings a day because I get value out of them and In a long day of work like it's kind of a nice break to chat with people and jump on like I genuinely like enjoy going to them So that's one why I like to join like I always learn something. How do I structure my day? Um, I usually do it by week. I figure like what are my big rocks that I have to move Every week I think it's so easy as a founder doing everything to get lost in the weeds like I find myself sometimes like Not wanting to do work and I'll get busy work like all spent hours in the spreadsheet because I like spreadsheets or even video editing And it's like that's not really It might not be moving the needle so I try try to structure my week in terms of like on Monday I think like what are the three really big things I need to do this week. Maybe that week is making a lot of ads. Maybe it's finalizing like samples for a new manufacturer that I'm going to work with for like a new product. Maybe it's retail. Like we also sell in over 300 retail stores which has been another arm of our business that has been growing. So maybe it's focusing a bit on like retail outreach. Once I figure those out I kind of try to get through those each day and then I don't know the rest is how do I like blocking in my calendar too or like make big blocks if I have four hours of something. My aunt once told me this is like saying it's like swallowed the toad it's like get through the shitty stuff first and I really always do that like and as soon as it's done like the day feels easy. So like every day it's like oh fuck I gotta do this and sometimes it is admin like sometimes it is like shitty stuff and you just swallowed the toad and then then I'll block out the rest of the day. But I'm not perfect at it. I still find myself keeping busy in some tasks of like I spend too much time on and you could feel like always you know I play with AI for like three hours and I'm like did that help your business? What are you doing? Go down like if people don't talk about enough it all these AI creators they invoke so much anxiety because you feel so far behind like you see people with all these AI employees and all this stuff and yeah I try not to get overwhelmed by it I use it as like a tool. Yeah it's it's one of these things that I was on a call with a guy that's like a big time AI creator and I I was I'm always networking I love to network so I'm always meeting people and as I shared we brought on like my AI coach to members and I'm probably going to give them do more stuff like weekly builds and it'll be more kind of hack one stuff like so so it's more kind of hey what do you want to do then just break it down build it what do you want to do break I think that will be better you guys but because there's so many things happening right but I was speaking to this like big time AI creator yesterday and I really kind of wanted to understand his process and by the end of breaking it all down I realized that like a lot of the stuff that he was talking about like he's just throwing things against the wall seeing what sticks a lot of it's he's not using he's got so many quote unquote agents but they're not some of them aren't even acting like it's it's yeah it's one of these things where I was like I walked away going you know what I can actually do all of these different things and there's like a massive time suck that I just like I've got my stuff in place I could do better don't get me wrong but like I'm not as far behind someone like him that I thought and he's someone hundreds and hundreds of thousands of followers true I'm not but a good realization yeah right it was great I was like okay wow yeah like I was like yes and same like I don't I use cloud every day you know what I use I saw these cloud people like what's your tech sack I'm like it does my customer service I don't have time to respond to like here's your tracking here's your order like it helps me with emails and I mean that that session last week was really helpful because I was doing it all wrong and I've set up the code and out like really gets my business I feel like it ended I can ask it for questions but yeah last week like I spent like last week one of my big rocks was fixing my website and new pdp images and I'm not a designer I'm not going to hire a designer so I'm going to figure it out and you know figuring out what I think I use like runway and mid journey which I'd never really use and made these like great images because we sell cents you have to like sell the scent and that was kind of nix advice he was kind of helping me figure out like what I should put on some of the images and fixing some of like the pdp's in general but that was like a great use of time you know like I spent one day making them all the next day kind of fresh eyes fixing them up and then spending more time like making them live and deploying them and then and then that site now the site will live like that for a couple of months so that's kind of how I use AI like as a tool as support but it's easy to just spend hours kind of lost in the way get lost I agree yeah okay and then I'm like roll you got a real job to do what are we doing here you have money to make and this isn't it are you doing it you're doing great so all right so one last question which I think people will find helpful because a big part of it and we talked about it and this is kind of our whole methodology with founder operators is is full funnel unit economics offer creative and traffic how many creative angles are you aiming to launch per week new fresh angles or per month and just to give kind of people a bit of a baseline of what it takes and I think you said you you know you do a couple of hours of scripting with you and you work it out with the creative strategies and then you have one Friday every Friday for three hours half a day you're filming yeah like it's usually like every second Friday now I'll spend like half the day because you by then I think most of my like work quote-unquote is done so Fridays that's like that's usually when when I'll film I'd say I'm to I'm launching probably 20 to 40 ads every month maybe 20 to 30 new ads so it's not overwhelming but it depends I think there was a heavy emphasis on me finding that winner ad which I mentioned I found that in May like I've made a bunch of variations of an ad that is doing amazing right now but it's supplemented by other kind of middle funnel funnel funnel funnel funnel funnel ad sorry so like this week I think I've launched already at least 10 to 12 new ads but majority of them are static so trying really new different like variations like new angles some of them look like Instagram ads some of them look like proper ads some of them are different offers and then once I find kind of some winners then I'll start iterating on those ones so right now I think this is like a test week I was gone for a couple weeks and you know enjoying our sale on 4th of July with some friends and taking a bit of a break and now this week has been like okay start putting more out there and and it's interesting though because I will say I didn't do this in the past and the more ads I put in the ads that start to fatigue then start to do better again so it's like continuing to feed the machine I think has been really good for the account overall which I didn't do last year and it's exhausting sometimes but sometimes it's fun yeah and look I think that's that's the reason why we build these online businesses because while you go through intense seasons of building and rebuilding like you did right you do you do have the freedom and flexibility which is amazing to be able to take like a week off or just keep an eye on things right yeah I don't do it enough but yeah I'm sure you don't either but everyone's in a while I'm like you know what I need a break you're in a phase that I'm somewhat jealous of if I'm going to be real because from that I reckon for me from kind of like that couple hundred to sub one to 1.5 a year mark that was when I only had freelancers no full-time staff yeah I used to just be able to wake up with no alarm no I have to be anywhere and all I would do is just create and it was just so much fun no having to worry about teams KPIs management leadership I know it's like I love working with people I used to work so cross-functionally that when I started working alone like I do joke that I was like a golden retriever that like needed to go to the dog park like I needed that's how I go to a co-organ space most days because I'm like I just need to like put like sit down and be around people and stuff and I so I miss that but I agree like not like I have some freelancers and I can do everything on my own and there's like a real beauty that I mean I do be very disciplined and like started my day at not so many but there's like a beauty to that and I'm not managing people but I'm jealous of you because I want to get to like 20 million dollar mark and I got a long way to go yeah look it's look it's always grizzly screen on the other side but yeah no it's it's different it's different seasons different seasons I think so that's what we've nailed so well look and it says you we'll work towards wrapping up the last question I have for you is what advice would you give to founders that would be listening to this podcast that have product market fit that growth is somewhat of a challenge things are just not clicking and you really want to get things working what advice would you give well I've been there and I've felt that I feel weird to be advice of like join founder operator but truly like I think having an outside perspective and not falling into the trap of hiring the white knight or hiring someone to save your business because I said it before but I don't after March like hitting that real low like no one's coming to save you if you feel stuck like there are programs like this there are experts I mean there's people that just do consulting you know like someone's just getting a fresh perspective and having someone come into whether it's your ad or maybe it's like your site like I'm lucky my site converts very highly but there's a lot of people their site converts really poorly like bring someone in to do an audit like I still have people that do audits on my email oh and did one on my CRO like I think having those outside experts come in they might be able to see something that you're not seeing right and talking to people that have been in the game longer than you and that could just be other founders like I don't have a massive founder community but I've really tried to prioritize it like because I live in Cape Town I found some really cool founders out there that are in e-commerce and like we meet and co-work together we share knowledge and resources and I think that's been like incredibly valuable like finding people on your level that you can chat with yeah no I agree I think one of the greatest hacks in the life is finding people that have already done it and just - Oh yeah, that's fun, like oh my God. One of my best friends, she does email marketing for big brands like she used to work for Graza and Clevver and she's in more of the food and beverage space. But we were together in Wisconsin where I was just away. All we did is talk about business and CPT and brands and building and it's like once you find proper friends in the space, man, it's so fun. People tell us like, okay guys, we need to stop. - She tried, right? This is what we live in Breeze, so awesome. - Well, I look forward to seeing and watching your journey from afar and for us to support you along the way and participate very, very tiny part to help you guys grow and or not you guys, but you grow. You grow this incredible brand. Congratulations on all your success thus far. - Thanks Nathan. - And yeah, thank you again for taking the time. - Thank you for having me and thanks for building this awesome program. I'm excited to like vote for you guys and keep growing and like yeah, the coaches and founders have been awesome and I'm sad I want me you in August, but I'll meet you at the next one. - Hey founder fam, thank you so much for tuning in today and if you enjoyed this episode, please take the time to leave us a review and let us know what you think. This podcast is 100% free. We work so hard to go out and find the most successful entrepreneurs and founders in the world. Your feedback helps us grow, improve and even bring on more incredible guests and insights. So if you have a second, please take a moment, leave us a review, it really makes a difference. Thanks again for listening and I'll catch you on the next show.