684: She Bet Her House Deposit on Hair Gel - and Built an 8-Figure Brand

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It's head to omnisand.com/founder and that's found without the e to get started. All right, now let's jump in the shot. She had one shot, put the house deposit down or bet it all on a hair gel. She chose the hair gel and sold out 20,000 units in 24 hours. Today's guest is Yasmeena Almacao. She's a founder of Macao, the brand born from postpartum hair frustration that blew through a year's worth of stock on launch night and is now attracted to eight figures in its third year. So if you're an early stage D to C founder, this episode is your blueprint. Yasmeena shares how she turned 90,000 followers into a sold out launch and why a big audience alone won't do it. An exact pre-launch move with her manufacturer that saved the business when everything sold out overnight and the Black Friday disaster that made a year's revenue in one week, then nearly broke her. The house deposit to eight figure trajectory in just three years. All right, let's get to it. Here are the stories. Learn the proven methods and accelerate your growth in future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the founder podcast with Nathan Chan. Hey, have a quick ask. If you're loving these episodes, leaving a quick review is honestly the best way to support us. We're going to grow and means we can keep bringing you the founder stories and insights you tuned in for. Please share it with a friend. Thank you so much. Now let's get into it. Yasmeena, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. You're welcome. I'm excited. I want to find out. So you started your career building your personal brand as a content creator in the beauty space. To tell me how did you build this incredible brand, Macao, how did it all come about? Honestly, it came from a personal frustration of my own. This wasn't something that I was looking to start. I didn't come out one day and go, I want to start a brand of my own. I was looking for a hair gel to solve an issue that I personally had, which was postpartum hair growth and no hairspray and no hair gel being able to hold it back long enough for me to get to the place and to income back home. I looked like I was electrocuted by the time I got back home and I shared that frustration with my community. And I even did a series where I shared that I was trying every slick back product on the market and sharing how long it lasted and not a single product held up. And so when I saw that, I kind of saw that there was a problem that we were all having. And I thought, why not create one of my own? And at the time, if I'm honest with you, I still didn't want to start a business. This was more of a selfish want. But when I saw the frustrations of others come back to me and people messaging me, telling me that they too were searching for the perfect hair gel and to let me know when I found it. When I did go about formulating it, it took over a year and a half, almost two years to get to a formula or as happy with. I was using formula products that I wasn't even 100% with, but they were still better than what was on the market. And so when I got to the final formula that I was happy with, I remember the day I put it in my daughter's hair and she went to school. And I had all these mums asking me, what's in her hair and how does her hair still look like you just did it? Whatever it is, we're sold, like send us the link. And there was no link because I had created it. And so that was where I kind of hit go. And before that, I was really scared because for so long, I had just wanted to buy a house with my partner. And it was something that I, you know, I'm sure many of us can relate to. And there's this expectation that we have as a society that you haven't accomplished nothing until you've purchased a property or, you know, you've got a married or you've had kids as always, a milestone that you got to meet. And for me, that was the one that I wanted to tick off, you know, as married, I had kids, but I didn't have a home. And so we had saved a deposit and I thought it's used the deposit by a home or used the deposit to start a business. And it was a very scary decision to make. And ultimately, in my mind, it was used to buy a home because I'm someone who I don't like gambling. I don't like taking bets, not even on myself, which is horrible to think now. And I spoke to a mentor and we were just chatting and he said, "Yes, I mean, I see more for you." You know, you're working for all these brands. I don't think you know the reach that you have. I think, you know, if you've got something on your mind and you want to do something, you should do it because I see more for you. And he didn't even know I had a business in mind. And so I spoke with my husband and told him about it and he's the biggest entrepreneur and my biggest type man. And he said, "I think we should do it. I really believe in you." Now, to paint you a picture of my husband's bold, knows nothing about hair gel. And he said, "You sure people want to buy hair gel? I just want to make sure that people are going to buy hair gel." And I said, "I think they do." So we pressed go and now we're here. So how long were you creating content for and building your personal brand before you decided to kind of go down this avenue of producing the product and he said it took a year and a half to even formulate? So I had been producing content on social media for about five years. I started when I first felt pregnant and had been on social media for five years and then it took an extra two years to actually start the business. It's a long process. I feel like people think it's just product and straight to market. I think if you know what you want and you want to put your name behind something that you're really proud of, it's going to take time and good things take time. Talk me through that manufacturing process. You said you obviously chose between a deposit on your place or putting it into the business and bring the business to life. Can you share like how much did it cost to do the first run? What were the M.O.Qs? How many variations, iterations did you go through? How did you find the supplier and the formulae? Yeah. So I searched up online, I was looking for suppliers both internationally and here in Australia. I found the suppliers here in Australia for formulation either didn't take you on because you were a startup or were going to cost you so much money that by the time you finally had a formula, you probably couldn't afford to start the business, especially if you're starting with nothing. And so I decided to go internationally. I searched online and found a supplier and we started chatting and we went through quite a few suppliers online at first and my husband said I think this is a lost cause. I don't think we should look at international at all. How can we trust that they're actually going to send us anything if we're sending the money. And we finally came across one who is our current supplier right now. He's amazing. And we were speaking to him and I was saying that this was the idea that I had and I didn't have a benchmark product and that's often what formulators do. They want you to send them a benchmark product even if it's a link to a product and we didn't have one. And he was willing to try and he wanted to make my vision come true and I think that's what made me know that he was the one. He also wanted to understand exactly what I wanted and was okay with the fact that I wasn't happy time and time again. And that's something that I find when you're first starting out is hard to come by. There are a lot of suppliers that will work with you but if you are not happy time and time again, they will want to cut you off for a ask for a lot more money. All up we spent pretty sure it was like almost close to $10,000 in just sampling in a year and a half, which is a lot of money for just a formula. There's no packaging. There's no website. There's no after pay paypal fees and any extra fees that you actually have to run a business. This is just formulating. So that was quite expensive and then we added in another $30,000 to actually get our first batch when we shipped it all over and we made so many errors in that process. Like we had sampling come to us but I think when you make mass production, sometimes the colour is a little bit off, sometimes the text is a little bit off and I'm someone who didn't want to start until it was perfect and that's something that I learnt along the way not to do because I think if you're proud of the first product that you've made, you probably started too late and that's the quota kind of lived by and I was like, "That's okay, this is going to be something I look back on in life." I ordered way less than I probably should have but I don't regret it. I think I was taking a bet on the business and I was scared so I think we did well in that sense but yeah it was a long lengthy process. That was three years ago, right? Yeah. So three years ago you launched the brand? Two years, we were launched. Yeah, this is our third year. Okay, so third year in, multiple seven figures, on track to do eight figures in the next 12 months so the brand is going super fast. Yeah. As I was sharing offline, you graciously said some goodies to me from my fiance, and she was just like so stoked. She was like, oh my god, I was looking at my cow, I was gonna buy this. I was like, this is amazing. - I love that. - She was so excited. So as I was saying, you are doing something right. I'm curious though, what was your kind of following like before you launched? How much traction did you have? How did you build up that momentum quite quickly? - So at the time, I had 90,000 followers on Instagram, and the traction that I had around it, I did take my audience along in the journey of starting eight business and didn't share exactly what. When it came closer to the time of launching, it was maybe a couple of weeks before, I think it was a month before, where I started drip feeding a little bit of information about what I was bringing out, and creating hype around it. I was sharing that I was coming out with the business, and this is something that a lot of us will love, and I was sharing that, this I was solving a problem that a lot of my community was having, so we got people really excited. And when it finally got to time, I was just posting actually every day leading up, which was a month before, 'cause I didn't wanna start off too early. And even then, we had to keep pushing back launch 'cause things were going wrong, and I was stressing that this would make people impatient. So we had our after pay not accept, not accept, it was just delayed at the time. So they weren't getting back to us, and we didn't wanna launch without after pay on our website, because we know there are so many moms that use after pay, so many women in general, some women I know that use after pay, because they don't want their partners to know what exactly they're buying, so they're happy to use that because it comes up as just after pay repayment. So I do confessions on my page, so I knew all of this information, based on how people shop. We wanted to have paypal on there. When we ordered our shipping boxes, they arrived, and we didn't have enough shipping boxes, so that was another panic, but at the time of launching, we thought that's okay, because really stickly, we're not gonna sell all of our stock in one night, but we did. And so we were packing out orders, packing out orders, and then we got to, and upon launch and selling out, honestly, our minds had exploded, we couldn't believe that all of the stock had completely sold out, so we had already previously spoken to our manufacturers that hey, the hype is really real, we think we need to order a little bit more, can we give you a deposit, and can you start production? Now when you're producing overseas, there's a lead time, so it's gonna take them a month to actually make it, and then a further month to actually ship it to you, and so we knew that in two months, that hype might die, and so that was the risk that we had to take, so we said to our manufacturer, we just said, can you start making the products, can we give you a small deposit, and can you start? Not knowing that it was gonna sell out, this is before launch, but we said, can you, 'cause there were just so many people once they found out what the product was, and I started using it in my hair every single day, showing from product sample to finish product, my idea of why I picked the packaging I picked, why I chose the formula that I did, why is it different to everything on the market, why is it solving a problem that maybe you are having personally? My journey in that led me to believe that, do you know what, there's something here, and we need to order, it was just a go instinct, and so when we went live, I thought maybe within a week or two, at best, that's our best case scenario, well, we've sold out within two weeks, but not within 24 hours, so by the next morning 10 AM, we were just shocked that there was nothing left on the website. I was packing all night long from launch up until 5 AM, the next morning, went to our local post office, because I didn't want to call Ospost to come pick up deliveries, because that would cause a delay in my mind. I would personally take him to the post office, drop every single one off, I still have videos of myself, my pregnant sister, all my friends in the garage at the post office, even, just scanning, 'cause she had so many orders, she couldn't scan them on her own, so she got us all in in the back room, and we were just scanning, and she was thanking us for supporting her franchise business, even though it's a Australia post. It was such a wholesome experience, but also one that was extremely stressful. Upon launching, there were so many people that were receiving their orders, and as you know, when something gets shipped, that's glass, sometimes they break. And so we had sold out some customers, there was a small percentage of customers that got product that was broken, but we were sold out with a lead way of two months until the next.com. And so we were stressing because we wanted the customer experience to be incredible. We realized our boxes that were, that Macau came in was actually too thin, and that we needed to make it thicker, because Ospost or any courier really will just pick up the box and show it, just chuck that, there's no fragile with that one. So for the time being, we end up getting stickers of the word fragile, and we just stuck it on every single order. We were still packing for weeks on end, all orders. And as people were receiving theirs, they were trying it in real time on social media. They wanted me to repost. They wanted me to see that they were supporting the brand. These were community members that have grown with me, they've watched me give birth and talk about my birth and cry on my down days and be happy on my good days. And so they felt a part of the journey, which I found so beautiful, because it felt like my friends were supporting me. And so as everyone was sharing Macau at the same time, it created more of a demand and more of a hype. And my stress was that, how can I maintain this hype? Because just because you have a social media presence does not mean that you automatically will have a sellout. People come back and repurchase because of a good product. I never wanted people to purchase, because I am the one behind it. I wanted people to purchase, because this is a genuine product that I would buy from, no matter who created it. And so at the beginning, I was hesitant to keep showing my face. I started paying UGC creators as much as possible, pumped out as many videos as you can. I wanted the feed to be filled with different faces, different ethnicities, different hair textures, different hair types, different walks of life, a woman who's going into the office, a woman who's a mum, postpartum at home. And then I realized that you don't have to hide from it. People don't want to purchase just because it's you. They want to purchase because there's a loyalty there and also a trust there that you are being honest about what you say you're delivering about your product. And so, yeah, I don't know. I've kind of gone on a tangent here. No, it's good. No, no, this is great. And it's funny. You got me thinking, like, it's funny how when you launch a business, because I went through the same thing where you don't want to make it about yourself. Yeah. And so, I even got to the point with founder where I was so obsessed that I didn't want to make it about myself, like, it's really embarrassing. But there was a point in time where I didn't even want to run this podcast anymore. And like, I put like a job ad out who wants my job and had hundreds of thousands of applications. Like, and then I couldn't go through them all. So, it's so embarrassing. I couldn't go through them all. So, I just went, select all how you've been selected for the next round. This is the brief, do a YouTube video on why the best fit. And then there was hundreds of videos. Wow. And I never chose anyone. See. Because I came, I ended up going full circle, like yourself, being like, I needed to choose myself. Yes. I needed to choose me. Exactly. And so, it's funny that you went through that same realization because I think, yeah, you don't, you don't really, when you create a business, you don't want to make it about you. You want to just, it's fun to create things. It's fun to build. And that's how found it started as well, like, yeah. I think it's especially when you believe in it. When you know it's good, you don't want the reason to be because of you, because you know the idea on its own or the project or the podcast or the product is great on its own and you can stand on its own to your feet. And you almost don't want to hinder the success of your own project. And so, sometimes we're getting our own hand, but it's fiction, not fact. So, how many units did you sell out in the first day? We sold out of 20,000 units on the very first day. Wow. We thought we had at least a year's worth. We sold out in one day in 24 hours. OK, so, then did you take pre-orders? Yeah, we took pre-orders right away. Yeah, OK, good. Instantly, the website went on pre-order and when the orders did arrive or were arriving, there was delays. And as any founder does, you put on the pre-order for the date that you think it's going to arrive and you put it in for the date that's two weeks or three weeks later. And people buy and they don't read and they get angry and all that stuff. And I was doing customer service. I was doing everything to be honest with you. We had no team. It was my husband and I. Yep. And I was responding back to emails. I was so genuinely heartbroken when people were upset that it was on pre-order or they weren't getting their order on time. I was sending out emails apologizing. And at one stage, I stopped using my name to sign off. I started using fictional-- Alias. Alias. Yeah. And I made it a mail. And I was like, do you know what? These women are going to be more enticed to speak nicer to a male than they are to a female, which scientifically, there's got to be some sort of research behind that because it works. And so I started signing off because people were writing to customer service, like they were talking to me on Instagram. Hey babe, I've been waiting for your hair gel. I'm so disappointed. It said it was going to be shipped on this day, and it's not shipped yet. And I started to get sick of the fact that it was treated as if it was so small of a business, even though it was. But in my head, I had a vision for it. And I thought, I need to really put in boundaries here. And I need to show that this is a actual business and established business. And there has to be something there, even if I don't have employees here, I'm manifesting that one day. There will be someone on a customer service. And I won't be doing this all on my own. So between packing, shipping, and then doing customer service, I was exhausted mentally, physically, emotionally. It was tiring. You don't even get to enjoy the fruits of the Yuleba because you're on the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. You're fixing errors. I ordered at one stage shipping bags because I realized that Osprey's does pre-paid shipping bags. That's what I was using. And so I started thinking about getting the printer and just printing them off and sticking them on our own bags. And I wanted to use compostable bags because I thought it was the perfect way to go. And so I ordered, and at one stage, I ordered bags at 30,000 bags instead of 3,000 bags. And so this pallet arrived to my house. And it was to my garage. There's no warehouse. It's just my house. And I'm like, what's this? I like delivery for you as me and I'm like, OK. And he puts it down. I thought maybe some stock had arrived early. This is incredible. My supply is a gun. He knows how stressed I am. And I open it up and it's from Australia. And it's the shipping bags. And I just-- I remember just sitting there on the floor, just crying, thinking I'm not going to get a refund. This is the worst-- I've now spent profit on these bags and who knows how long. What if the next shipment comes of pre-order and we don't sell that? This is launched. Launch is always known to be the best night that you're going to have in your business. And that-- How much of those all those bags cost? A lot of money. Clearly, I was so sleep deprived. I didn't see how much. Because when we started out business, and one thing I can really, if there's a founder listening, someone that's starting out, is I never mixed my personal account with my personal bank account, with my business bank account. Business was always separate and it stayed that way. And it never took a single dollar out of the business account. It was always reinvested back in. And so when money was coming out of the business account, I wasn't monitoring it because I knew everything was spent on exactly what it needed to be spent on. And so the fact that that check didn't bounce, I'm shocked. That didn't get declined. But somehow it didn't. And they arrived. And luckily, I called them crying. And I said, I'm so sorry. I fact suddenly ordered a pallet worth. And I needed only 3,000. And the lady laughed and she said, I know exactly who you are because we were shocked to get an order for 3,000 for a brand we've never heard of. And we actually Googled you. Like, good on you, you're doing so well. But I guess we'll take them back. And so we sent them back, which was good. But yeah, definitely some, a learning experience. I'll never forget that one. That's for sure. So there's been growing pains. A lot. Yeah. You said before you came on today on one of your stories that you have a lot that you want to share. What is it that you wanted to share today? I think what I wish I knew more so. This is the type of podcast. And I want to always be that person that shares my knowledge. And so if it helps avoid someone else going through this mistake, I think so often people think creating a business means that you create an extra stream of income in your life. And while that's definitely true, it's an investment. It's the same as buying a property that you want to get investment money from. You have to build on it and you have to knock it down and start again and that costs money. And so when you're starting a business, you're constantly investing and you're not only investing money, you're investing your time. There are sacrifices to be made, sacrifices that go unseen. I miss so much of my kids' lives not so much now, but there was a stage where I missed so much of them growing up and just the little things whether I'd be in a water school or whether I'd be being able to sit down and just freely play without being stressed and having my mind be elsewhere. You miss out. You don't get to go like I missed a cousin's wedding recently, which was overseas last year because it was such a pivotal point of our business and I had to be here for our growth, really. So what I wanted to say was that when starting a business, don't know going in that it's not going to be a return on investment straight away, that it's going to take hard work and a lot of times, a lot of long nights and a lot of tears, but it's going to be worth it. I think what I wanted to share was that my advice to you is continue to reinvest into the business. What I found personally is, and what I think we've done really well, is treated as a business that's not our own. We have the same love for it that we would, if it were our own, which it is, but we don't treat it as if it's our own. We don't take money from our business. We kind of let it grow and I treat it as if I'm working for someone else. I really strict boss that's going to be really upset if I don't get my work done. And I think that's a good way to look at it because I think when we treat it as our own, it's similar to a partner over time. You get used to them and all of a sudden you find yourself. After a hard day, you kind of let it all out or your kid, when they let it out after coming back from school, that's how you end up treating your business after a while because there are long days and long nights. And so I think treating it as though it's not your own for a little while is quite healthy. So I think that's what I wanted to share. Top my head so far, but I'm sure something else will come to mind. When it comes to kind of sacrifices, what is being one of the hardest times that you've had to go through in these past couple of years, building Macau? Single-handedly, the memory that I have that comes straight to my mind. When you say that is our first ever Black Friday sale, we'd never been on sale. So Macau had always been full price all year round. And so we decided to do our first ever Black Friday sale. And it was our biggest sale of the year. Our only sale of the year. And we weren't anticipating how many people had their eye on the product, but we're holding off on purchasing until that time. People wait. People wait. And we didn't know that. And so everyone who did try it was purchasing. People who didn't try it were purchasing. People were purchasing it for a gift for Christmas. A gift for the end of year teachers, teacher gifts, whatever it was. And so we made what we made in the whole year in the first week of our Black Friday sale. And so stock-wise, we were OK, because we had purchased stock that was meant to last us the next eight months. And so we were nearing the end of that. So we straight away ordered, air-fraided, as much stock as possible here. Stock was delayed. What was meant to come to Melbourne? Got to Melbourne, rerouted to Brisbane, rerouted to Sydney, rerouted to Melbourne, rerouted back to Sydney, and then back to Melbourne. My warehouse, my 3-PL warehouse, and I still talk about this till this day, the stress on my face every day, showing up to the 3-PL warehouse, waiting for trucks to come down the driveway. And every single day, there was a single truck that was coming for Macau. We had this grand-sword customers that were upset that their friends and family were going to get their Christmas gift on time. We had a customer service, regor our customer service guy, he's absolutely incredible. He was working overtime and still wasn't getting to the emails that needed to get done. I was stressed out of my mind and I think I took it very personally. I didn't want to disappoint anyone. We'd offered everyone the opportunity to cancel their order and get a refund, but the problem was no one wanted a refund. Everyone wanted their hair gel. And that put even more stress on my mind, because I thought this is their first experience for a lot of them using Macau. And their first experience is a let down and I hated that. And it destroyed me and I was really struggling with it. I couldn't eat and I couldn't sleep and I remember talking to my cousin about it. And she said, "Why are you on your emails?" And the Macau socials right now, if you have people who are in charge of this, they are being dealt with. Why is it that you're checking in on a place that you don't need to be? You need to be working on your business and not in your business. Turn off those email notifications, the more you see it, the more anxious you're going to get. And so I turned them off and it was the greatest advice I'd ever gotten. I turned them off. I showed up on social media every single day. I showed face. I spoke face to the problem head on, made a laugh about it and said, "You guys are crazy. We've offered you guys the opportunity to cancel your order and the fact that you don't want it, honestly, is a blessing to me. And I'm so grateful for that support. But you guys are crazy. It's hair gel and it's coming." And so at that time, as soon as I had dealt with that, that was when our stock had arrived. And so I think it was a learning experience for me, not to take it personally, and not to internalise the business struggles and the growing pains. This is something we had invest our investors on board at that time and they said, "You need to relax." This is a great problem to have. How incredible that you've sold so much that you can't keep up. Like give yourself a pat on the back for a moment. these numbers we haven't seen in a very long time in any business with work with. So this is incredible. And I stopped and I thought these people are too experienced for me. Like, you got to remember, I'm still small time. I've never done these before. My community means a lot to me and I don't want to disappoint them. And they said the reality is that there are going to be people disappointed even if you do everything right, even if they got it on time. And so you need to cut yourself some slack. And that's exactly what I did. And I think I'll never forget that lesson. Tell me about your investors. So why did you bring on investors? Was it because of cash flow constraints of ordering so much product? Or was it you never done this before? You said your husband's quite entrepreneurial. Has he built businesses before? Tell me about that part. So I actually wasn't looking for investors. Never was. We started Macau. And within the 24 hours of selling out about a week later, I kept getting counted with an email. It was from this girl. And she claimed that she was interested. Her and her team were interested in investing in Macau. And I thought this is such a scam. Like, there's no way I'm listening to these deleted the email over in a weekend. I kept popping back up. And one day I was telling my husband about it and they said, there's this email that's been coming through about an investment. And he's like, that's so cool. And I was like, you are such a fool. You are the type person that would fall into Facebook scams. Like, this is not real. No one's investing in a brand that's just started. And one day my husband came home from work and he said, my mate called me. And he said, he knows the girl that's been emailing you. She's been trying to get in touch. He knows her from school. And this is actually legit. They have a company called Capital Influence. And they were actually investors that influence and influence the brands. And I said, OK. And he said, do you want to just hear them out? And I said, not really, because I'm not interested in giving up any control of the company. I'm not interested in having investors in any way. We're doing really well. We can keep bootstrapping. And I believe in it, especially when it's doing so well. And you're selling out. Why not? And then he kept pushing. And my husband was like, let's just hear them out. We don't have to say yes. Maybe it's a learning experience. And even if we say no, when you do come around to a point where you do need investors, you'll know what to say. And so we had the meeting. And I realized in that meeting, I think we both did. A, we had a gut feeling that this is meant to be. But also B, there were things that they were able to help with. That were things that I wasn't great at. I think for so long, I was the smartest person in the room based on my business. And I didn't want to be the smartest person in the room. I wanted to have people around me that were smarter than me, that knew more than me, that had been more experienced than me. So I could learn and grow and not hinder the success of my own business. And I think upon chatting to them, I realized that they could aid in experience. It wasn't so much the funds that we were really needing. It was experience. It was knowledge. It was opening doors to connections that maybe we would have got in a lot longer of time. While being on social media, I'm great at advertising. I'm great at showing face. I'm great at showing up online. But when it comes to the logistics of a business, I mean, I was still packing orders in my garage, even though I could have got into a 3PL warehouse in a heartbeat, but I didn't know that. I didn't know what a 3PL warehouse was. Yeah, I got an ID, why didn't you have a 3PL? No, I would say my garage. I was like, "All good, I've got this. Calling in everyone and anyone getting no sleep at night. My kids would come home from school and we're in the garage. Sit with your iPad and watch mum pack orders until dad gets home and dad's going to pack orders and mum's going to give you a bath time." So these were things that they were able to teach us before even investing. They were offering advice before even knowing any numbers, no reassurance of the fact that we would take on investors. And there was something that they said at the end when we did sign contracts, which really I think I will always remember was, they said, "When you were a great entrepreneur when upon talking about your business, you not only had so much passion, but there was never a mention of an exit. You never once spoke about an exit plan. You have so much passion for these business and we can see it and we think it's going to do really well just as it has. And we think we can help you. And we want to kind of sit on the sidelines and you ask us what you need from us. We want you to have full control business-wise. And I loved that. And it's been single-handedly the best decision that we've made for the business. So while it was very scary to give up that control, it was definitely something that was needed and appreciated. And I think we just got lucky. I think sometimes when these kinds of opportunities come around and you ask so early in your business and it is doing well, you think to yourself, "Well, what am I giving up in terms of future state, in terms of valuation?" Somebody, I've never even talked about this publicly, but in the first 12 months of starting Founder, somebody wanted to buy it off me. Wow. And he actually owned the original, like the actual Founder domain. Like I bought it off him eventually a couple years later. It cost about 75 grand. Wow. But because Founder was sued and it used to be called key to success in the first four months of starting, then I was like, "I'm changing the name to Founder." And I could see that somebody owned the domain with our spelling, but I could see they didn't have the trademark. So I was like, "Oh, I'll just make it Founder Mag." And the guy was sitting on that domain for like 15 years, because like five letter domains are pretty valuable. And anyways, yeah, he approached me and he was like, "Oh, we're going to do something with it." But now I see your building looks awesome. I'd like to buy it off of you. I interested in selling. Wow. And I didn't. And the offer was ridiculous. Like it was just not even meaningful. Like life changing meaningful. But I think you must have gone through that thought of like, "It's got to be too early. I could wait. I could get way better valuations as the business grows and matures. I haven't even been to our full calendar year of sales to justify." What is your thoughts now, like 12 or 24 months later? Yeah. So I did go through that. And initially, I had said in one of the meetings, I had said, "We need to think about this." And we had walked away thinking it's probably going to be a no, even though we loved the investors and we loved what they had to offer. It was almost like a fear of, do you want 100% of the cake or do you want a percentage of a way bigger cake? And that was the idea that I was tossing up. And it's not that I didn't believe that we could get there on our own. It was more of, could we get there without the errors or as many errors as we could potentially be making? I mean, just going into this with ordering and all of this, it felt like they had brought so much value at the beginning before even signing any contracts. They were the one who'd said, "I can't believe you're packing orders in your garage still. Let me send you the number of a 3PL warehouse that's not far from you. They're great guys and they run a tight ship. And we think you do really well with them." And we had gone in and we got Macau in instantly. I think they said, "You need 500 orders per month, right?" And at the time we were doing far more than that. And I remember, I didn't realize just how much, how many orders we were doing and I looked at my husband and I said, "Oh, I don't think we're going to be able to get in." And he goes, "What?" And I said, "500 orders per month. What if we get to month three?" And we're not making 500 orders anymore. They're going to kick us out. And he goes, "This is growing like this. You need to stop believing in it. This is growing and it's going to be big." And so at that time, it was a great move to go for it. And I think that really made us believe in what they had to offer. And now that it's been over a year with having our investors, they have brought in so much value, so much knowledge, so much care and consideration. I think when you bring in investors and something that I didn't know, I think you often, you work with them so closely, you know them on a different level, and you know people when they're stressed, they know you when you're stressed, they know you when you're upset about something or whether something personal is going on. And that day you just can't simply communicate like you usually would, and they've handled everything with such grace and such care and such appreciation. And it's been amazing, honestly. It's been awesome. It sounds like it's been an invaluable experience thus far. So one thing that has come up on your journey and you are quite open around your journey is copycats. So when I launched my e-commerce brand, and I didn't really care about it that much, it was like a life strategically launched as a lifestyle business, and I didn't want to make it this massive thing. I strategically built it. So it was highly profitable with ideally the least amount of work to maintain it, grow it, all of that good stuff. And I remember friends said to me, he's like, man, that's going to be copied everywhere. He's like, he's really successful in e-commerce. That's going to be copied everywhere. Once that starts spreading around the factories, I was laughed, I said, I don't need to give you shit. Yeah. And he was right. He's copied everywhere. So many different variations, all that kind of thing. Because I used it as a case study for founder. Like we have a big education arm and coaching arm of the business. So I could use it as a case study. I built this seven figure brand. Like our process. - Yeah, exactly. - It was not only me talking and people seeing it out there, but me talking about it in ads. So people ripped it, right? You've experienced the same thing. You guys have copycats. How have you dealt with that? That is a common fear for people. And it's a common pain for brands that are growing. - I got a message in our group chat one day and someone had put in a photo with a company that was almost like putting down Macao to lift their business up and they were another competing brand, right? And my response to that message was, oh my goodness, we need to celebrate guys. We've made it. If you've got something good enough to copy, this is incredible. It just means that you're worth copying. And I don't see anything wrong with it. I think if you think you can copy it, go for it. I think there's space in the industry for everyone. No one's ever going to be you 'cause when they're copying, you're already on to you like your next thing and your next thing. I'm someone who's very supportive of all, of everyone really, especially female and founders if I'm honest with you. And so I think there's room for success for everyone around and I stay in my lane. I'm so focused and headstrong on what's coming next to Macao that thinking about what someone else is doing is never on my to do list to be honest with you. I'm far too much on my plate to be thinking about what the next person's copying or thinking of the brand negatively. So honestly, go for it. I have no Nathanal process for it. I celebrate those wins. That's a win. Well, they can copy a product, they can't copy you or your marketing. No, 100%. And I think that's where you're doing a fantastic job and the community that you're building. Like I, we connected a few months ago and I've been following each other and I can see this really kind of really engaged, loyal relationship that you have with your community. And that's very, very, very hard to copy and replicate and you've been building that with care for the past five, six, seven years now, right? My community means the world to me. I think people assume social media influence a brand. They assume, of course, you're going to launch a product and sell it to everyone, but I think what people lack to see is that when I see community, I don't, when I see my followers, I don't see them as who I can sell to. I think of loyalty and community and trust. And that's a trust that I've built over such a long time. They know that I don't share anything, that I don't put my hands all behind, even if it's someone else's product. I will come up genuinely and say, I don't like their sore. I do love their sore. You know, I love just this one product from the range. I wouldn't shop anything else from this brand's range because I do come up as authentic because that's exactly what I am. And they value that. And so I wouldn't want to lose that trust over anything. And so naturally, when I started a brand, it was more to solve a problem that we were all having rather than seeing my followers as a number because they were never just a number to me. There are women that come up that I remember their name. I remember their story because maybe once upon a time they shared it, I know who's got a divorce and who's now seeing a new person and they're so much happier. I know the mum going through some postpartum depression and sometimes if she comes up and responds to a story, I'll remember to check in on her and see how she's going from a month ago when she had shared that she was going through it. So I think that community is not only hard to replicate, but it's also hard to build. And so you'd never want to lose that to begin with. And so yeah, that they mean a lot to me. - So look, we have to work towards wrapping up. I have to ask you a couple of questions. I think a really valuable to anyone watching this that has a DDC brand. And that's around your use of bundling and raising average order value. Can you tell me more about that and what you guys are doing strategically there? - So we began Micka with just offering our flex hair gel and our ball bristle brush. And we found that a lot of people wanted to bundle because they were buying with their sister or their brother or whoever they were buying for and they wanted more and more. And as time went on, the bundles, we couldn't put enough bundles on the website. And so we started to create, create your own bundle. So as you added them to your car, that would create a bundle for you. And that way you would get a discount automatically from adding whatever product you wanted from the website together. And it made the customers life easier. And it also made our life easier. So we weren't getting those emails in. And our order values always, of course, went up because people were able to create their own. You go on a website and you don't find what you want, you're oftentimes just exit because maybe when you tell all the products together and the bundles that you do want, the prices are matching to what you want. Whereas when you're creating your own bundle, it's just an over-engining. People were enjoying that and loving that. And it's been a great success. One thing that we're finding with our members in one of our communities found to operate is, if you're trying to scale on ads, there is a natural cack that your brand or kind of product that you sell. It will cost you to acquire a customer. So if you know that to be true, then only naturally you should try and increase and stretch your average order value because the higher the basket size, then the more you can spend to acquire a customer, the more you can spend to acquire a customer with the higher the basket size, the more margin you have. So then in turn, the more you can spend, the more you can scale. So at these stages, we find that if you don't have an average order value of at least, this is in US dollars, at least 60 US dollars, unless you have extreme volume, and it's a subscription based product, you don't have an average order value of at least 60 US dollars. It's actually very, very difficult to scale on Facebook ads. Has paid advertising been a big traction channel? Has paid advertising been a big traction channel for you guys? - I understand matter ads is something that has been a great value to the brand, but I think needs to be supported with a large social presence. We have a social media coordinator who's posting daily, they all go hand in hand with social media, with my own personal influencing page, with people who are being gifted on social media, and they end up naturally organically sharing. That supports the ads, and that just builds trust with the potential customer. When they've seen it in three, four, five different touch points of the internet, we find that the ads work even better. Put matter ads on their own. Yes, they'll work to a certain degree, degree, but if you want to increase those rowers, you want to be able to get every touch point that the customers coming across, whether that be their email marketing that they get sent, the text message they get sent after they leave their basket, whether it's their favorite social media influencer that they follow or a micro influencer that they follow that is now received Macao, they're eventually going to hit goal on that purchase because there's a sense of trust there. - So when it comes to customers, your biggest customer base I assume is Australia? - Yes. - And then America, do you sell worldwide? - Yeah, we do. We've got also the Middle East as well. We've got a few customers from there as well, but US would be right up there after Australia, but our biggest customers are in Australia. We've only now started testing matter ads in the US. We weren't prior. We were just doing focusing on Australia, but as Australia's kind of exploded, naturally we've gotten to the US side of people being curious and asking why shipping is so expensive together. So yeah, we're just stabbling into that now. Our main concern right now is Australia. - Concern. - Not concern, but that's the wrong word. Priority, yeah. - Interesting. So we have to work towards wrapping up. I just want to ask you one last question, and you kind of covered it, but were there any final words of wisdom that you would like to share with our community of mature, D to C founders or early stage D to C founders that watch this show, that are looking to scale their brand? - I think if you're looking to scale your brand, don't underestimate the power of social media, and I don't mean just a matter ad or showing up yourself on social media, and I know that's really hard for a lot of founders to put faith to brand as I shared prior, I myself struggle with it sometimes. But don't underestimate the power of sending your product out to as many people as possible, and creating a sense of community with your audience. I think people buy from people that don't just buy from product, and there has to be a sense of that, and the only way to be able to get there is by showing up every day and showing face, and I think that can take you a very long way. Another piece of advice that I would give is trust your gut. A lot of the time you probably know the information before it happens, there's been a lot of instances where great trust your gut moments, you know, high as when I've hired people, and I've just known that we're gonna be great. When I've gone into certain meetings with manufacturers that I just know are not gonna be listening to me because I'm a woman who's a founder, and that's been quite a few times. So trust your gut and who you go with, and I think the last thing I wanna leave you with, especially if you are just starting out is believing yourself. I think that's so underrated. I think so many of us care so much about what other people think. And showing up online can be really scary or starting something new that you've never started before. It's so scary, but take the risk 'cause you're worth the risk. If you told me, you know, two, three years ago that starting this, it would turn into what it's turned into. I probably would laugh. So definitely chase your dream. - Incredible. We'll look, congratulations on all of your success thus far. I look forward to continue watching your journey. And thank you again for coming on. - I appreciate it. Thanks so much. - 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 founders and entrepreneurs all around the globe. So 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 and leave us a review. It really means a lot to me and the founder team and makes so much of a difference. Thank you again for listening and I'll catch you on the next episode.