Doone Roisin - Founder & Host of the Female Startup Club Podcast | Empower & Advance Women-In-Progress

Welcome to Success Story, the most useful podcast in the world. I'm your host, Scott D. Clary. The Success Story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network, as well as the BlueWire podcast network. Now, the HubSpot podcast network has incredible shows like the Martek podcast hosted by Benjamin Shapiro. The Martek podcast is all about maximum value in 30 minutes or less. The Martek podcast shares stories from world-class marketers who use technology to generate growth and achieve business and career success all in your lunch break. If you like any of these topics, you're going to love the Martek podcast. Some of the topics are zeroing in on the ideal product price point, identifying loyalty plays for smart marketers, finding the line between sales and marketing and SaaS, extending the lifetime value of your customer. If these are topics that are interesting to you, go check out the Martek podcast hosted by Ben Shapiro wherever you get your podcast. Today, my guest is Dune Rose and she's a founder, CEO and host of the Female Startup Club. This is one of the fastest growing startup entrepreneurship podcasts. It's also a part of the HubSpot podcast network. Now, before the Female Startup Club, she was a digital marketing expert for the majority of her career. She's worked for global brands such as Snapchat, IMG and the Iconic, which is Australia's largest online retailer. As an entrepreneur, she's launched her own company's previous to even the podcast and the startup Female Startup Club community, including a direct consumer, jewelry brand kinks. And then most recently, of course, she's built out this educational media company, the Female Startup Club, which is grown from just a podcast into podcast community. She's going to be launching a book. There's a couple other things she's working on we're going to talk about in the show. On the show itself, she's interviewed over 160 of the world's most exciting and successful female entrepreneurs in just the past 12 months. So she's grown this show quickly. So we're going to speak about some of the strategies that she used to launch and grow the show. Now, it's become her full-time job. So hopefully, if you take a little bit of inspiration and insight from Dune, it's going to be how to start something like this. And then you can actually turn it into something that can pay the bills. So what do we speak about? We spoke about her origin story. We spoke about impostor syndrome. We spoke about why she chose to build out the Female Startup Club after being in tech, after pivoting from tech to direct a consumer. How she did that gracefully, then ultimately why she decided to build out a Female Startup Club. We spoke about podcasting 101. We spoke about marketing a podcast, growing a podcast using SEO for a podcast. We spoke about finding sponsors for your show from day one. So just a whole bunch of very tactical things. If you want to start a podcast, she's done it quite successfully. And then she just has a ton of marketing experience that she's used and deployed to help her podcast grow. So let's jump right into it. This is Dune Rosen. She's the founder and CEO of the Female Startup Club. I always love to introduce myself by kind of going back to childhood because I think it plays a fundamental part of my story. I was raised by a single mom, and I'm going to paint a bit of a picture for you. I was raised by a single mom. I'm her only child. We lived in the bush, which I think that's more of an Australian term, but like for everyone else in the world, it's like the middle of nowhere with trees everywhere. The outback, I guess you would say in Australia. I mean, it's not not just an Australian term. Well, people think you're born in the forest or something. My husband is like, you can't say bush. Like no one knows what that means. And I'm like, really? Are you sure? Like, I definitely know what it means. So who knows? Anyway, that's what I go with. And so we lived in this like tiny pocket of the world on the side of a mountain by a creek, 90 people ish in the area. Like we're talking pretty small, pretty isolated dirt road, no electricity, no like town water, outdoor toilet, all of it. And so we grew up in this really kind of like unique way where we lived off the land. My mom was really poor. She didn't have any money. So it was a, you know, it was circumstantial. It wasn't by necessarily choice. And so we had this very unique upbringing, which really kind of like was difficult, I would say. It was more about survival than thriving. We ate our own veggies, we ate our own chickens, all that kind of good stuff. I was the only person in my grade for a couple of years at school. So the benefit to that is always being top of the class. And basically just, you know, I had this weird lifestyle and a lot of my life, I feel like I was a bit embarrassed about that part of my story and a bit like I had this weird feeling about it because it seemed like I lived this way when other people didn't live this way. And so as I kind of like, you know, got a bit older, my mom realized that we needed to really move to a small country town so that I could go to a bigger school and kind of get it right and get the proper education that I needed. So I went there and I kind of like didn't really have a lot of, I don't remember having any dreams. I don't really have any aspirations from that time in my life. And then it got until around grade 10 when I was probably about 14 and my paternal grandparents, my dad's grandparents had said to my mom, you know, if Dune would like to go away to a private school, we will give her that opportunity and she can kind of have that further education and higher education. So this is kind of like one of those pivotal moments in my life where I was like, oh, this is going to be really weird, you know, I'm going to a co-ed school, you know, I don't know about stuff, I don't have any ambitions to travel, I don't have any ambitions, I don't know what the word startup means or anything like that. But I will go and do this. And so what happens is I have this moment in my life where I see what education can do for you and what wealth can do for you because I was suddenly surrounded by, you know, a lot of people who are really different to me and how to really different upbringing. And this is where I kind of had this weird shame, you know, around like the way that I'd been brought up to the way that these people had been brought up. But it also showed me what was possible. And then I started to like have all these big ambitions. And I remember like when I was at school, I would have these big posters like on my wall where I'd rip out things from magazines and like stick them up on my like vision board, I guess you would say and be like, oh, one day I want to work for like a magazine and I want to work in fashion and like all these things that I just didn't really have before. And so finished school started to kind of like hustle, I guess, to, you know, find work. I was someone who needed to support myself. Can I have something on that one? Of course. Okay, so you had an incredibly interesting upbringing, obviously very different than myself or probably other people that go into like startup land. But you mentioned one point that was, I thought was interesting. It's like you had the biggest version of imposter syndrome coming from like such a different environment going into this school and then obviously like, you know, fast forward, very successful. But everybody gets imposter syndrome. But I don't think everybody gets it to the same level that probably you had. And I'm making assumptions here about correct me from wrong. But I assume that the imposter syndrome was like it was real. Like it was difficult. Completely changing not from being the one person in your class to to being in like a regular private school system, where you're around all these successful people and you know, you're opening your eyes of the opportunity. So you may be getting to this in a second, but walk me through if you if you're cognizant of how you did it, how you got over that imposter syndrome so that you didn't just stay in this shell. Gosh, I don't know. It was a weird time. Like it was a weird time in life. And I feel like I, you know, for the first six months when I went to that school, I really struggled. It was really hard. I'd never been around all girls. I didn't have any siblings. And this is an all girls private school with like so many rules and like I was just out of place, I would say, not in terms of like the people surrounding me because I was welcomed into the school and I made just so many lifelong incredible friends with so many amazing women. But it was odd. I was definitely I would say struggling. But I don't know. I guess when you're in those weird positions, like you just got to like find your feet and kind of keep moving forward. So did that whole thing went to school, started to feel like I could dream and have ambitions too and started to hustle, but I didn't really have that kind of like, you know, support, I guess from my mom or anything like that. So I really needed to work to be able to like get places as so many people do. But I was also really aware of like getting work experience because I was like, I'm a nobody. I don't know anything about anything. I need to like get out there and do stuff. And this is where I kind of realized that I had this like hustle built into my body and like built into my jeans. I know this comes from my mom and the upbringing that we had, but I was just like eager to get any experience that I could to get to where I wanted to go. And so for me to be able to work in fashion, I was like, well, I need to like get experience. So I would just door knock on people's door and be like, can I get some experience or like, do you know someone that can help me get experience or. I'll do whatever it takes basically to and we can go into some funny examples of things that I did to get jobs or or to try and get people's attention, but this is where I kind of started to realize, you know, that I had this part of, you know, my soul that had hustle in it. And it wasn't until actually should we should I tell you some stories. Do you want to hear some stories. Let's do stories. I love the hustle stories. I love the weird out of the box, figure it out, hustle stories. They're always good. Let's do it. So okay. So to get some experience, I really wanted to work in a magazine, as I said, and in Brisbane, where I was at the time, there aren't any magazines there, except for this one that was kind of like, it might not even exist anymore, but it was part of the like the newspaper style kind of imprint that would go inside. And so I was like, okay, right. I need to like get the attention of someone there. They don't have any positions, but surely they get make a position for someone who really wants one. So I went to my local nursery and I bought a time herb plant and I went and got a really cute pot, potted it up, like did all these things, stuck my little business card in it, which had my website on there. And I just wrote a quick note that said, could I have a moment of your time. And then I was like, well, I also want to like check out the space, right? Like I want to know what it looks like in the side of a magazine office. So I go and buy what I thought delivery drivers at the time are wearing. I bought this like huge oversized viz shirt, like put on my little Nike's and like rock into the office and I'm like, hey, I have a delivery for the director. Like, oh, yeah, like her office is, you know, just down the hallway, whatever, drop it off. She's not there. Have a little bit of a look around. And then, you know, next day she calls me and she's basically like, look, we don't have any positions. Love the hustle. Let's create something and long story short, we end up doing like a 12 week internship program together and, you know, I learned some stuff about magazines and get what I need to get out of it and it was great. Another time, and this is one that I love a lot. And like, I think these are those kind of moments where like, I know you've interviewed Alex from the door on your show. You know what's funny? I was just thinking about that. I'm like, this is exact. I didn't know if you knew who that was. Well, it's so funny. I mean, I didn't know. Yeah, I didn't know about this kind of thing, but recently someone recommended me that book and I was like, holy shit, like, that's how I've like lived my early life trying to get opportunities is by like trying to stand out when you don't have other things that your disposal. So there was this job advertised and it was at like a graphic design kind of agency and the email address to apply was something like, you check this shit out at laundry creative.com. And so the point was is that you send your resume to that email address, whatever. And I was like, okay, we'll find everyone's going to be doing that. Everyone's going to be sending their resume there. So like, what could I do that's a little different. At the time, I'd worked for a small magazine doing a lot of like layout, copywriting, just a bit of a broad mix of stuff. So it was kind of like a portfolio. So I took it home, like pulled apart this issue that I'd done stuck it up on my wall, like huge screen, kind of like a huge sign, I guess, like, in rows. And I painted you check this shit out. www.duneroshain.com. And then you know, I put like sparkles all over it. I put sequins like I did the whole thing and I text my friend and I was like, hey, do you want to come and deface a building with me at 3 a.m.? And he was like, yes, of course I do. And I was like, hey, great meet me like at my house at 3 and like we'll go down. And so basically I knew because I used to run like along the river around the office where they had their like space and it was all glass. So like when they would come in in the morning is they'd just look out into this glass office along the boardwalk. So I kind of knew that if I went down there and just stuck it up in like a huge way, they would all see it when they come in the morning and like turn on lights, whatever. So we go down there at 3 a.m. We stick it up facing inside the building. I put a little note for security that was just like this is a job application. Don't take it down. Like don't call the cops. You know, like it's all good. Please. And stick it up. And basically the next morning I get a phone call from the CEO. And he was just like, this is amazing. I love it. Like when can you come in? This is really cool. And he like spread of like post about it on those Facebook at the time, Facebook and probably some other places, but kind of like use those things, which I just thought was totally normal by the way. I didn't realize that like not everyone was doing this kind of thing. But using these kind of experiences to get what I needed to get the experience and get the kind of job that would get me further forward in life. And at some point I was doing another internship and this guy was like, oh, I know that there's this company that was starting in Sydney. And this is in 2012 or maybe late 2011 and e-commerce at the time wasn't really a thing in Australia. Australia didn't know how to shop online. Because we kind of knew about ASOS, but like we weren't used to it as a market. And so he was like, there, this fashion store and like you can buy stuff online and like whatever. And so I packed my bags and moved to Sydney within like three weeks and I was like, I'm going to work there. This is my chance to work in fashion. It kind of thing. Go there, get an internship, like hustle, you know, like crazy before work because I was working like an admin job to pay my bills. Before work on my lunch breaks, after work, like all the things to make sure that I was just like so present in anyone's life that was part of the company. It was super small at the time. Now it's called the iconic. They're like a huge funded like massive business. They're the most kind of well known e-commerce store and it's online kind of like retailer in Australia. And this is like the second big pivotal moment of my life because when I'm there, I get this job. They eventually like a few weeks in. They offer me a full time job. The guys like, do you think that you could just read everything on the internet that's to do with social media and like be our social media person. And I was like, yes, I can definitely be that person. I am that person. I think my Facebook, my, my business card said like professional Facebook or something like really cheesy at the time. Anyway, my point being to this whole thing is that it's the second pivotal moment in my life where I start realizing what it means to work in a startup. And it starts to like come together for me that I'm like, wow, I am looking around. I don't want to be my boss. I don't want to be like, you know, someone in another team that's a few steps ahead of me. I want to be the guys that are like running this cool business. They're like these amazing founders. They're just these like dudes making decisions and doing cool stuff and just, you know, making their dreams come true and they're going to make a lot of money from that. And I was like, wow, startup, love it. And this kind of like sets me on the path to, you know, wanting to change my future and like having different dreams and having different aspirations. You never, you, you jumped into startup and, and you were never like, you know, put off by the amount of work, by the amount of, by the amount of risk. Like you just jumped in like head first and then you just started your own thing. So, so after, after you like worked, after you worked at jobs, when let's talk about your own startup journey. So what did you do next? Where, where did female startup club come from? Was that the first iteration of, of you as an entrepreneur, where there are other things that worked, didn't work. Lock me through that. So many things that did so many. I asked because I don't even know you, but I know. I have someone that really believes like you've got to try all the things, you've got to try the things that you don't like to figure out what you do like, especially if you're kind of just like not 100% sure you just have a feeling of like I want to do something. I don't know what that is yet, but you need to like try and iterate. So I worked at that company for a number of years, got like some amazing experience, decided I wanted to move overseas. Fast forward to me working in this job that I wasn't loving, it was corporate, it was the first time I'd worked in a corporate job. And I meet this guy and I'm like telling him how I'm just not a fan like whatever and he's this really cool young guy like building a tech startup, like doing, you know, just making his dreams come true out there hustling. And he was like, you know, I really need to build a content arm of the agency to fund the tech development. Do you want to do it? Like I'll give you equity in the business, you can do whatever you want. Like you seem smart. Let's do it. And I was like, okay, cool, promptly quit my job and started working on that and totally different story that guys now my husband love him. That's good. That's awesome. Yes, still part of that tech journey, like on the side of here. But basically start working with him, you know, working a lot on the tech business. And I have this like moment one day, I'm on stage talking on a tech panel about like in the UK, this is thing called the SIS scheme and talking about the tax benefits from moving from Australia to the UK and like data, and I'm sitting there being like. Tech, this right now is not my strength. I don't know if I'm loving this. I don't know if this is what I should be doing. And so this kind of like sets me on this journey of, okay, what could I do? I love e-commerce. I come from any comments background. I'm pretty good at social media. I'm pretty good at storytelling. You know, maybe I should try and sell some physical products and I just start really small selling jewelry like from a bedroom floor. It seems to be a theme for me. I start a lot of things from the bedroom floor. This started from the bedroom floor, my podcast. And basically, you know, start building this director consumer brand called Kings, which was so much fun. I, you know, used it to really learn hands-on experience when it comes to e-commerce. And it was one of those kind of things like from the outside, I would say the brand looked really cool. It took me to China. We moved to Indonesia for six months, Thailand, Paris Fashion Week. You know, it was worn by influencers. It was in Vogue. It was in all the places. But like, for me, I just found that I loved e-commerce, but I'd chosen the wrong product. Like, for me, it felt like I wasn't solving enough of a problem. And I wanted to tackle that like, you know, that marketing where it's like, because you're solving a problem and you're helping people on their journey and fashion and accessories is a different journey and a different kettle of fish. And the other problem with jewelry is that you're not like stacking marketing on top of the other because you're constantly having to refresh. It's all about newness. It's all about new collections. It's all about trends. It's all about this kind of stuff. So you're constantly creating new collections and like, I just found like it wasn't really right for me, but I loved everything about e-commerce. So I'm kind of going through this feeling of like, you know, feeling I'm not sure. And I'm starting to like ask my girlfriends like for advice. And at the same time, I start reading this book. And I'm sure you've read it. I'm sure it's on your bookshelf behind you. It's called Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss. You obviously know it. And I love the book. It's like what I've been missing in my life when it comes to, you know, direct no bullshit advice. Very masculine energy when it comes to business habits. It's just so tactical. I really enjoyed it. But as I'm reading, I'm like, yeah, this is great, billionaire, great, billionaire, great all dudes, all of them. And I'm pretty sure there's like either 10% of the book or like 10 women in the book. I went through and counted and the book is like, as you know, so big. And I was like, I want to hear this same vibe, but from women. I want less of the like, believe in yourself stuff, which is important. But like, I want more of the tactical like here's how you actually get from A to B if you're building a business kind of stuff. So I'm starting to like talk to my girlfriends about what they're doing, how they're building their businesses, whether it's tech, whether it's e-commerce, you know, whatever it is. And at some point, my husband's like to me, maybe you could like start recording these. Maybe you could start putting them out online. And I'm like, yeah, that's pretty cool. I'll put them on Instagram. So I start doing that. But like, I don't know, watching a 20 minute Instagram video is like pretty hardcore. Don't love it. So it was like, maybe you should turn it into a podcast. And like, I say this now. I am literally the most terrified public speaker. Like, I can't believe I have a podcast. I can't believe I go in the public. I was going to ask you why you chose podcasting as the medium of like the core of your persona and your brand and everything. But it's just literally, I couldn't tell you why I do not know. It doesn't make any sense for me as a person. But I think because when he said it, I was like, oh my god, no, never a podcast. Like, absolutely not. I'm terrified of that. And like being on camera and things like that. But then I realized like how scared I was like the feeling. I was like, oh, maybe I should lean into it and like use this as a challenge to get a bit better because I know how important it is to be able to talk and share message and that kind of thing. And I know how impactful podcasts can be, you know, I really love listening to shows like I just get so much value from people. It's such an intimate experience. So a few months before I'd like gone on this random like small side note here, I'd gone on this random like buying spree of domains. And I'd bought like I realized that everything was available from like send friend startup club dot com Brisbane startup club dot com LA startup club dot com. So I'd bought like 25 domains in that kind of space. And I was like, maybe one day I'll do something with those. And I just so happened to also buy female startup club. So I was like, well, you know, I'll put it under that as a as a name that sounds pretty good. Like let's let's do that. And truly the podcast was like it was I had no big ambitions for it. It was just to do something to learn more from like brilliant women who were happy to share their strategies and advice with me so that I could figure out what I wanted to do with the jewelry business. And like started it on the bedroom floor, just kind of like having some fun. And then I think that was like 2019 when I posted my first episode and I was taking it like really casually recording in person. But come like May or like April May 2020 when the pandemic hits. I was like, hmm, like everything's kind of pivoting. I'm really wanting to shut the jewelry business down. I wonder if I could like turn this into a thing. And so I set myself a casual goal of posting a hundred episodes before the year is up. And it's like May at this point. It's like, you know, well into the year. And just seeing what happens. So like I just start recording like crazy. I am just hustling like talking about the show here there and everywhere as much as I can. And that's kind of the early beginnings of female startup club. And it's kind of crazy for me when I look back now because you know, we have 270 episodes. I think I spend a lot of time on the calls just learning from like the most smartest brilliant women who are building e-commerce brands. We have a private network. I have a book coming out. All this cool shit going on that I'm like, wow, this is so bizarre how it, you know, I didn't really know what it was going to be. I just went with it and kind of landed here. That's the early story. You do, it's an awesome story. You are a great storyteller. And I'm happy that I'm happy that you chose to do this because you're an incredible storyteller. So it's even. I don't even know if you knew that it fit you when you first started. It sounds like you were a little bit apprehensive about it when you started, but like you definitely like good for you for leaning in because like I think the world's benefiting in a big way. So. Thank you. It's interesting though that when you lean into stuff like all these incredible opportunities happen. Like and you obviously never expected. Like, at least when I started my show, I never expected like the growth, like the audience, the random opportunities, like you have a book. I don't have a book yet, but I want to do a book sometime like all this stuff. Yeah, that's awesome. So, okay, so let's talk about like how the show evolved. Let's talk about like podcasting lessons that you've, oh my god, there's a lot of ways you can go with it. We can go with this show. We can do podcasting lessons. We can do like D to C lessons from all these incredible entrepreneurs that you speak with. I'm also curious about your book. Like, why do you call your book your height girl? Like, what, like what's the premise of that and why, like, why is that important? The title of a book says so much. Everybody has a very, very particular reasons to why they chose it. So I want to take it. Well, I'll answer that first and then you can take it. I'm happy to do all and any of the above. So I am someone that loves to like support my friends, love to be the cheerleader, love to just like my community, everyone, like if I can help you or like cheer you on or just give you that little bit of like, you know, umph that you need to get going. That's someone who I am just in my day to day life. And so just through the show and through the conversations that I started having with people like people would just be like, oh, thank you so much. Like I was really needed that like you inspired me or you motivated me to do something. So I just out of the blue started saying like at the beginning of every episode. So hey, it's June, your host and hype girl, like here to like, you know, hype you up, like whatever. And it just kind of like evolved that that's what I said. And then I literally had the book finished and I couldn't think of a title and I was like, what am I going to call this damn thing? Like I have no clue. And I just had to put something in like a filler text for something and I was like, I'm just going to put in your hype girl and I was like, this kind of looks pretty cool. Like it's totally sums up what I'm about. I'm always wanting to impact other people, other women in business. I love impacting my friends. If they're starting something my husband, whoever it is, like I really want to cheer people on and like lift them up and empower them to like be the best that they can be. And so I just ran with it. I feel like there wasn't a lot of strategy there. I can show you the cover though. I haven't seen it. It's pretty cool. It's super cool. It's super, it's super vibrant. It's super like it's like it's just lively. It's a lively ask cover. Um, what are you, what are you actually going to in the book? So the book is very take away. Yeah. Take away is it's 51 women from the show 51 female founders who are sharing their kind of like most impactful learnings tactics. It's very similar format to tools of Titans like so inspired by Tim and everything that he does. It's the kind of book where you can open it at any part. You get a dose of like a founder story. You get some key takeaways and learnings, but it's not so tactical that like you can't that anyone can't read it. Like this is a book that is for an entrepreneur currently a future entrepreneur. It's for someone who doesn't even want to be an entrepreneur, but it's just interested in the stories behind the brands that they're buying and using and loving. And yeah, it's just kind of like a bit of a Bible. I would say a Bible for the future. I was actually a huge fan of tools of Titans. So I'm going to definitely I'm going to actually check it out. I mean, it's such a good book. Everyone should read tools of that and also an orange rate. You'll have to go. I was going to say, yeah, you can you can like you can hype yourself up a little bit. You can promote your own book. Tim Ferris is doing just fine. He's doing just fine. He's honored. Okay, let's talk about let's talk about well, then let's segue. That's a great segue into like great lessons that you've learned from people. So obviously you pick like really meaningful lessons and and obviously everybody you spoke to is probably incredible, but you picked these for a reason. So what are some awesome lessons? Actually, I hate doing two part questions. So first I'm curious from your perspective, just because it's I'm living this right now. I'm going to ask you, what was your biggest learning from switching from tech into CP or DTC and then I'm also curious about some of the lessons that that you've learned from all the great people that you've had and that you put in your book. So I'm just curious about your pivot. What was your biggest learning from from tech to to consumer goods? I would say like for me, what I really realized about myself is that there are some things like the podcast where you can feel challenged and throw yourself into it's like that good fear where you're like, yeah, but I can still make this work like I can still do this. Whereas tech for me, I just always felt like a bit like out of place and just like head underwater kind of feeling like I just didn't feel really comfortable, whereas like direct to consumer like coming from that. I just knew that that was a skill set that I had or like maybe I didn't have it fully formed, but I I just felt more comfortable there. And it was something that I was really happy to like lean into, whereas tech I just never felt that. So I would say like still figure out what your strengths are figure out where you're strong and where you're not. And like sometimes where you're not like, you know, I wasn't strong in public speaking like I wanted to improve that, but I feel like for me with tech, I just I don't even know if I wanted to improve that. And it sounds kind of like I don't know, probably a bit lame and you know, whatever, but I really know it's not it's not a lot more joy from direct to consumer. And I really like physical products like that's something and you know, that's a big part of why I did the book because I wanted female startup club, which is strictly digital to also come into the physical space. So I would say like figure out like the things that you enjoy what lights you up where you get joy from and like lean into that versus like trying to push through something that maybe you just not loving. I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode HubSpot. Now the new year might have you thinking ahead to what you want out of your career. So when you think about your success story, what do you actually picture? Is it retiring early with a beautiful view of the skyline? Is it leaving a legacy with your name on it or maybe it's helping influence and change some of the world's most pressing issues? Whatever it is, writing your success story starts by working smart because when you work smart, your success story writes itself. A HubSpot CRM platform helps your marketing campaigns work harder and smarter with intuitive visual workflows and bot builders. You can create scalable automated campaigns across email, social media, web and chat so your customers hear your messages loud and clear. Are you tired of your content not adapting to mobile, making it difficult for your customers to absorb your message? A HubSpot CRM platform optimizes your content for multiple devices so that you can reach your customers wherever they are, which is just smart. Learn more about how you can transform your customer experience with a HubSpot CRM at HubSpot.com. Awesome, that's a good advice. I forget the second part of the question. The second part of the question was lessons that you've learned from incredible women founders, female founders that you pick some that you put in the book. It doesn't matter. One of the key themes that I just feel like maybe people forget when they're building a brand is like, and it's so obvious, like it's crazy. You have to have a good product that's actually worth talking about. You need to make sure that when you're developing a brand, you would tell your girlfriend about it in a WhatsApp chat, and if a WhatsApp chat, gosh, that's a tongue twister. Because if you're not building something that people truly care about and that is truly unique or worth shouting about, you're really lost because you need to have word of mouth inherently built into everything that you do. And so if you're just like building a brand and you're just trying to like acquire every customer instead of trying to like acquire and then sustain that customer over the course of their lifetime. You just can't build a brand. It's just not sustainable. I mean, yes, you could keep pumping money, keep pumping money and eventually maybe it'll work, but if you have a shit product and people won't buy it that second time, you've lost. It's not something that like, it's so obvious, but I feel like people really need to hear it again and again and again because the brands that succeed, they truly have something special. They truly have something remarkable, whether it is, you know, if it's the serum in a beauty product, or whether it's like incredibly different packaging from, you know, something else, like it's, it's got to have something that makes people be like, wow, I loved that. I'm going to buy that again. So I would say that's like one of the main things that it's just like such a common theme with everyone that I speak to, but I feel like it's overlooked with a lot of brands like sometimes I'll buy a brand. I'll buy something from a brand and the experience is so bad or the product is so bad that I'm like, I'm not ever going to tell anyone about this like this, you've lost me. I think people overlook it, people overlook it because they're so committed to what they, what they think is good and they've, they've sort of over invested in it. And then they, I guess the question is, how do you, how do you figure that out early on? What's the, what's the process? What's that, that feedback loop that allows you to figure out if it's just something that you think is greater, if it's actually resonating with the community? You can buy customers. You can pay a lot and you can buy customers and you can be a great marketer and you can optimize for conversions and you can figure out everything along, you know, from when the customer discovers you all the way through to when they convert, but you can't buy more to mouth, right? So how do you, yeah, you can't buy like stickiness like you've got to like make sure that you have something that's sticky. So I would say you definitely need to like make sure that you test, make sure whether that's just, you know, starting with your friends around a kitchen table, but you need to get outside of your like direct group of friends, you need to find people, whether that's if you've got a, you know, a pet food product going to the dog park and like giving out your samples and and chatting with people and seeing what their initial reaction is, whether that's going to the farmer's market and taking your drinks and being like there every weekend and asking people for feedback, but you really need to like make sure that you have something before you go all in, because I think like it's easy to be like, you know what, like I'm going to spend 100k and just go for it, but like you haven't actually figured out if you haven't spoken to your potential customer or like your, your want to be customer to figure out if they actually like it or what the improvements should be and like iterate from there. And I think another thing that like I learned, which is more like personal to me is so I was kind of building female startup club with the idea of like I'm going to launch my own ecommerce product, I'm learning from hundreds of women who are super smart, super successful to get their blueprint, to get their advice, to get their learnings and then I'm going to do my own thing. And so last year I actually spent most of the year in R&D for a non-alcoholic wine company and you know I was following the blueprint that like I'd you know heard over and over again from all these women, it was amazing, I got so much out of the experience, but in the end at the end of last year I actually decided to not pursue it any longer and to stop creating it. And so a few things happen and this is a learning that I took away from the show is like just because you're building something doesn't mean you need to actually like bring it into the world like if it's not good enough, maybe it's better to cut it. And so for me a few different things happen so we developed brand, we developed a really great product, but one we couldn't get the numbers to work. It was too expensive for the end consumer and we couldn't get out cost down and so for us having this complex project of non-alcoholic wine you need so many different layers and obviously wine is just like the whole other thing it gets harvested once a year like all these kinds of problems. And so if you're someone who owns a winery and you want to like add in non-alcoholic and you revenue stream amazing great you've already got that base wine there like you've already got bottling and logistics and supply chain sorted out great if you're someone who has access to millions and millions of dollars to like build a business where you have economies of scale and you can get your cost down amazing. But for me and my like business partners that wasn't the case and we were starting small and our first order was I think it was going to be 6000 units and we just couldn't get the numbers to work for the consumer for it to make sense and I started being like I wouldn't buy this. And if I wouldn't buy this and tell someone about it like off the shelf then I've lost and so we had to have like some hard decisions because yes we'd spend about 20k in development and trying to get the branding done and all that kind of stuff but I was like it's getting to the point where we needed to drop 50k to get our first order of 6000 units done. And we needed about 50k for marketing spend in that early kind of phase but that was like a we didn't have any that was the smallest round we could get that was essentially like our sample round. And so I was like you know what it's better to like lose 20k then lose 120k or potentially have like friends and family like looped in to do a friends and family round. I think the thing that I learned is like just because you've gone down that journey doesn't mean that you need to keep going down that journey like I needed to reach realization where I was like it's it was a tough decision but I was like I don't think this is it. I don't think this product is like yes if you know circumstances were different and you know we had more money or we were able to get the cost down like maybe it would be different but for the circumstances that we had. That's how we had to kind of like move forward and so you know from the show I really learned like from other women who have gone through like failed businesses before they launched their successful business you know a you've got to know your numbers inside and out they've got to be it's got to work financially and be sometimes it's not sometimes you shouldn't pursue it. It's it's funny because everybody if you listen to like startup advice it's just like always just ship to ship it to ship it you know like if you've shipped your product when you're not embarrassed about it then you shipped it too late and it's like almost like this is the other side of the other side of it right it's well sometimes you have to and I think it's even more difficult with a director consumer product because it's so expensive to launch. I think it's so incredibly expensive to launch and think about. Is there a way to do this? Think about shipping glass bottles like it's heavy it's expensive and also. Should that influence how are you going to that. Yes I think it should I think you should be really clear on like if it depends what your goals are if you're really passionate about that as a space. And I think passion actually does play a big part in it I think for me I didn't love it enough to go down the journey I was like you know what do I really love it that much like or am I just looking for an idea. And so if you have like this dream product that is like truly changing lives you know it's some I'm just using beauty as an example because you can obviously find beauty products that change your skin and whatever. You've got some acne product that changes people's lives and you're so passionate about it like maybe it does make sense to just keep pushing and just get it out there and like do it at all costs but if it's like me where I was looking for a business any commerce well and it's not like that that was this thing that changes lives. And I didn't have that like deep deep passion for it well maybe I should look at something that is easier to ship and like that's definitely something that you should consider. Yeah that's smart and I think that funny enough like if you if you don't have passion for going into it and it's already and the category is already a difficult category to get off the ground especially if you don't have investment. If there's so many there's so many easier things you can go into especially as a like I would consider you an experienced entrepreneur just because of the fact that you've built stuff you have exposure to incredible people like most people going into something probably don't even have the level of knowledge that you would have right. So I think that it's even something to be aware of like maybe like start start small than expand with easier categories and if you have that revenue from like those easier categories and you can sort of maybe reinvest it but if you had like a million dollars coming in from like a like a shirt store something like that and it's like you know like a print order shirt store like that's something that you could take that and you can play around with all these different things. But if not then it's just very difficult. It is very difficult and I think like I don't know if I actually summed this up or not but like one of the other things I learned through the show and like through all the women that I speak to is that like you do have to really care about the thing that you're bringing into the world and like. People say like you need to have passion and it can't just be about like making money or whatever and you know for me I was like I want to build this brand I'm going to document it publicly through to exit like I'm going to be very like transparent about the money piece especially because like especially I feel like women just don't talk about money enough like I was going to be really like upfront about all the things. But then I was like like truly I just don't have that like I'm not it's not something that I've like made in my kitchen and I'm like super excited about like it has to be in the world and so then I was like yeah you really do need this like. Deep love for what you're doing and you need to have that love for like the next 10 years or else you're probably going to be like yeah. And you know you mentioned a point though like you know you can build in public and I think that's I always admire founders that build in public and I think it's it's a really tough thing to do. But like ultimately if you fail in public at the end of the day nobody really gives a shit anyway like really nobody cares like if you try something and you fail like like no one's really going to remember it. No, and it's better to try and to fail that to not fail at all because I think or to not try it all become not try it all yeah it's all part of the journey and I think as well like. If you don't love your day to day and like you love the journey on the way to whatever you're trying to reach then you actually really have lost because like it's going to be really hard it's going to be like all over the place it's going to be ups and downs and. You kind of need to just like know that there is failure in what you're doing this failure and everything. And I can guarantee you all the women you spoke to all the all the successful entrepreneurs they probably have like 10 stories just like that before they had that product that actually had. Oh my god yeah successful 100%. Yeah a failed business or like a really solid pivot like you know it's such a journey and everyone says like you know it takes 10 years to reach overnight success like it takes such a long time everyone just thinks oh my god they've popped like out of the blue they're like killing it and then they're like hey it took me 10 years to get here took me 10 years of hustle to get to where I am. So okay so then let's talk about let's talk about the podcast because obviously that was that was successful that was something that you you did build up so a lot of probably a lot of lessons there and I'm going to like take notes for myself. So like how did you so you started doing these podcasts sort of ad hoc just for fun just to speak to all these incredible women entrepreneurs and it started to take off how did you refine it how did you get the best content what were the biggest you know items that you did that led to the growth or was it just organic just to set expectations for somebody who wants to start a podcast is. God knows there's a lot of people that are starting podcasts oh my gosh yeah there's so many yeah okay so I obviously didn't have any experience in podcasting I was just figuring things out as I went I was trying to ask people for advice all that kind of stuff but I think actually again to bring up Tim Ferris I think he says something on his show like when he talks about building a podcast is like wait until you get like a certain number of downloads and then go and look for a sponsor but I was like no I'm going to get a sponsor like from day one because. Like I need accountability and like I need to get paid so I can hire an editor to be able to do what I'm doing because we had decided to do 100 episodes and at the beginning my husband was like yeah I'll edit the show and you know it's just like it was painful it was really painful so I was like I need to get a sponsor so the first thing that I would say is like you don't need to like wait until you're at a certain point or whatever you can start trying to get a sponsor before you even launch a show you can go out there knock on doors and be like hey here's my vision here's what I'm doing here's the niche audience that I'm going to target here's what's like here's why it's valuable to you and here's why you should be involved and so I did that I landed my dream first sponsor Clavio who I love shout out to them and they were like I think I emailed them like on their contact form on their website I wrote a list of 10 sponsors who would be like my dream sponsors just did a bit of an outreach told them the vision and Clavio was on a contact form on their website and I had someone reply to me really quickly about getting on a call and we got on a call and I was just rattling off all the things that I wanted to do with the male startup club what my vision was where I was going and she was like look it's just like the the perfect audience that we want to target like let's do something so I managed to get a sponsor at the beginning and then basically I was like okay now I've got accountability I actually am like a blind to like do these hundred episodes so I organized I worked with an editor straight away to be able to streamline my processes basically figured out my whole workflow and just got started I didn't really have like a huge marketing planner anything like that my thought was like well everyone who comes on the show will share it in their own networks whether it's on LinkedIn or Instagram or whatever and like that's my distribution plan and to this day that's still the plan like I say we've grown really organically the book is actually the first thing that is like our first marketing push officially where it has like you know I guess that's our first expense that's our first marketing budget is to produce the book so that was definitely the distribution plan I would say in hindsight the things that have really helped me was I started asking people like how they found me and so I could obviously double down on that and make sure that I was kind of optimizing that and so when I started doing some customer research interviews and this is also like whether you have a product or whether you have a podcast or whether you want to have a podcast you need to go out and speak to potential customers you need to go out and speak to the people who you want to target or who are like already in your network so I was like I put a call out on the show being like hey I'd love to like speak to some people who listen to the show like research interviews so I can get some more information and so either through like DMs all those like actual interviews I was asking people how they found us and nine times out of ten people like oh I found you on a Google search or I found you on the podcast like searching you got recommended to me by like whatever show and I was like it's so interesting like I haven't put any effort into SEO and what I realized was my name has helped me like a million percent because it's female startup club people were googling female startups or female entrepreneurs and so what was happening is when they were searching on Google like episode with xyz founder would just pop up and they'd be like oh cool you know like the show and start listening and so my advice to people when they're starting a podcast is like which goes against what you've done you've called it your name but you're I'm sure you like had some credibility in the space if you're someone like me who didn't have any credibility who was kind of like you know a nobody starting a podcast I didn't call my name I didn't call my name it's like it's like it's like by me but it's not my name okay right right right I see what you're saying no no okay so it's yeah but I mean like it's not I'm not like Tim Ferris where it's like the Tim Ferris show it's like that's a very very much isn't it yeah no I got I got you understand but okay so by the way I'm not the perfect use I'm not the perfect example because I'm still learning I didn't I didn't do this and figure it like I didn't like hit a home run day one like so I mean I mean neither obviously neither yeah but for me I I always tell people don't go and call it like you know Dune show or like yeah yeah like unless you're someone who exactly no one goes you miss out on the movie but that's about it but yeah yeah I haven't actually watched it spelled differently spelled differently but like choose a name that has some of your keywords in it like give yourself the chance to be discovered because when you call it or if you call it something super random like people just aren't gonna find you through that and so that was something that I really realized and then I started leaning into like SEO and really like building out even simple things like I was holding off posting my transcripts because I kept thinking like oh I need to make it like super like perfect to be able to post the transcript and someone gave me a piece of advice I think it was actually will barren from the salesman podcast he was like just post it like don't even don't even tweak it just post it and so I did a backlog of like 200 episodes and immediately like our growth was just like well you know within once too much on a website on a web what did you post it yeah okay on your website like my website's built on works by the way super easy super straightforward did it myself well my husband kind of did it with me just started a blog started posting the episodes like would loop in my YouTube video would loop in the episode and like literally just you know my VA does it she just like post the transcript doesn't tweak anything doesn't craft it and that like contributed to our growth literally within like one to two months we saw like a huge increase and so that was something that again like you shouldn't be crippled by perfection just because you're like oh it needs to be perfect like I shouldn't do that just do what you can like whatever you're able to do just do that done is better than perfect like 100 percent so SEO was really important my name was really important what else can I ask you one other thing about you mentioned one point that I was interesting and I did it differently so I'm curious about your thoughts on this so somebody starting a podcast you got a you got a sponsor before the podcast started like four episodes in early episodes okay so early early on but how did you manage because podcasts take a while to grow so how did you manage the stress of of having a sponsor before the reach was there because now you're taking someone's money and where they were they happy were they cool where they just they made so much money didn't give a shit because that's also great but like yeah that's stressful I mean I was really up front with where I was I think like we had had like four episodes live we'd had barely any downloads like literally like single digits kind of thing and like literally I think we had like a few thousand like nothing kind of thing still I mean I guess that's still something but like it was really early days and I was really transparent about that I was selling them on the vision of the future and like what I wanted to do and it wasn't about downloads it was about like them being able to reach female entrepreneurs in the e-commerce space which was highly relevant for them and that's what they were wanting to focus on I would definitely say that like everything in like life and business is a mix of like planning strategy but also luck like maybe it was the right time that I just like approach them when they were looking for that or something like that I don't know but that's the approach that I took and I just think like why not go out and try at least try maybe you don't get a sponsor but like even try to find whether it's a sponsor or even a distribution partner so find someone who can help you distribute the podcast because they don't have one maybe you could team up and you know find a brand that's relevant to you and be like their audio partner and you know you put their ads in the show and they distribute you in their newsletter list or whatever it might be like I definitely tried doing that with multiple people as well and got a lot of notes definitely asked Sam par from the hustle definitely go to know I think we have to by the way by the way just I think we have to shout out just so everybody knows we're all we're all in the HubSpot podcast network so this is this is how we all got hooked up and together and whatnot so this is got an awesome group of people that are trying to build their show so I'm sure we're all trying to figure it out at the same time Sam par is killing it too Sam is killing it also killing it yeah they're all doing it so check it out for sure yeah and you know that's another thing is like I asked a lot of people for things and like got a lot of notes I originally like when I first spoke to the HubSpot podcast network I got a no but like that didn't stop me I just kept trying like I feel like a no doesn't mean a no forever and you've just got to like you know keep trying and keep going and like check back in with people couple months down the track when you have news to share or you know whatever it might be what else can I tell you I've kind of lost track of what we were talking about we were okay so I'm sorry that was my bad that was totally my fault okay so what are we what we're talking about we're talking about the podcast the podcast growth and then I tried to side track you and figure out how you figure it land a clavio when you're starting out but then you're just talking about the SEO and you know publishing stuff before it's perfect kind of like transcripts and that group that grew the show yeah so what else did I do I really made sure that my systems and processes with down part so that my workflow was really easy for me to just like go like all systems like all steam ahead or whatever that saying is you know like having your whatever your flow is making sure that you like understand like how it should be set up so that you can just like move through really quickly so like I had like a really simple Google doc I was like working through that Excel spreadsheet I was outreaching to people at scale just kind of like getting that set up then had my VA set up in a way where she handled all of the kind of posting and scheduling so that really all I needed to do was my own outreach and my own research and then show up for the episode but everything else was taken care of and if your audience is like interested I wrote like a blueprint post about it on my LinkedIn which everyone can go and find I list like all the software that I use all that kind of thing I would say when you're studying out as well like you know I emailed every tool or like every tech platform software whatever that I was using I would email them and just explain you know like I'm in the education space we like champion women building ecommerce brands like it's just me right now is there any like you know one person discount or whatever that you can give and like a lot of the times you know buzz sprout and um squad cast and websites like that they're actually they have things set up to be able to wave fees for certain people in certain like niches so if you don't ask you don't know I got a lot of like nice like offers in the beginning that I was able to use before I kind of like got that deal with Clavio and I was just trying to set myself up and trying to do it like on a budget um I would also say my other advice to like anyone wanting to start a podcast is like it doesn't need to be fancy I started recording in my bedroom I mean I'm still in my house right like this isn't some fancy studio like I'm just sitting here at my desk with a ring light um but like I started initially recording on my phone then I moved to a roads like interview might kit I think it costs like $170 now I use the sure mic which is like still you know a few hundred dollars like nothing's fancy I would say like just get started and you find your feet as you go and you upgrade in slow increments you don't need to be like crippled by oh I need all this fancy equipment or like I need to have xynz actually don't need a lot to get started if you're passionate about podcasting um it's all about like auditing yourself figuring out a posting schedule that works for you and like that you can work in with your own schedule figuring out like I didn't do this at the beginning but in hindsight kind of like figuring out what the goal is like is it to drive clients to your business is it for you to network and for you to meet people doesn't need to make money if it does how is it going to make money um you know kind of like giving yourself a bit of a roadmap and a bit of a plan so that you have that north style you can keep working towards smart very smart um okay let's uh I want to I want to last sort of last part is I want to go into some rapid fire stuff but before before I pivot any any last thoughts anything that you didn't touch on um you know florist yours but then also uh where do people connect with you all the socials website all that I feel like I've just talked a whole lot I don't know if I missed anything I've got nothing else to do I appreciate it um what can I where can people find me I mean well let's see the book comes out on the 28th of February so whenever you're listening as a listening you can just hop on to my website females out at club.com sign up to our newsletter and either keep in the loop or the book will be there if it's after the 28th of February my handle on all the channels is dune roshin dw and e r o i s i n and anyone can send me a message slide into my DMs I love to chat I love to help tell me what you're up to um always keen to connect uh to anyone so you can find me on LinkedIn Twitter Instagram TikTok you know all the usual places and then females out of club is the same females out of club in all the slices good all right let's do a couple rapid fire uh biggest challenge that you've overcome in your own personal or professional life what was it had you overcome it biggest challenge I would say like I don't know if I fully overcome it but I would say like the money piece of like my life is still something that I like battle with you know like I didn't have money for a real long time now I'm hustling to like reach certain like financial goals for myself and it's something that is a challenge um that I'm like trying to work through and trying to like become what I want to become but of course it's difficult there's mental stuff there there's a lot of like just the way that you know you develop as a child there's there's stuff you know it's sticky do you have give problems do you have problems um like feeling okay setting like milestones that you know you have to hit is that it like is it a psychological like like like I have this feeling of like like it's never going to be different like I'm never going to get like I have this like feeling that I even though I'm such a I'm really good at setting goals like I can set a goal like you know 2020 was get 100 episodes 2021 was get the book out this year it's more focused around money so that I can try and like move into this space where I feel more comfortable like financially with myself and more secure for myself even though like I think I've achieved a lot and I recognize that I still have certain fear that just stems from like life my upbringing I would say um and I really want to change that you know I really want to um change my future I want to be able to create generational wealth for my children I want to be able to sell a business I want to go down that pathway but like I still have a lot of struggles of feeling like some days I feel really confident and then some days I feel really like it's never going to happen and like why why wouldn't it happen for me like all these weird feelings and I don't know if it's like just because of me or if it's really common with lots of people or you know whatever it is but I just have like money stuff and that's a challenge that I am like trying to overcome it's like I think that scarcity mindset sometimes instead of like an abundance mindset and like like a lot of people definitely it takes a lot of reprogramming it takes a ton of reprogramming to fix that and it's very important that you do I mean I did not grow up in the bush but I definitely grew up with a family that was not entrepreneurial and like very like like government workers and whatnot and very you know like safe and low risk and what so that that also you know messes with you when you put like when you when you invest in anything that you know you have to do like entrepreneurship is obviously super risky and all the activities you take on a daily are generally high risk activities like especially when it comes to finance is right like if you put $10,000 into ads like that is like a that's a risk but like you know you have to get over that and like after after you do it for a while it becomes second nature but like anything it's like a learned to learn to activity to be able to do that and and understand that you're thinking long term versus short term like always having those long term goals while sort of dealing with those like short term issues and problems that you're that always pop up in the business but you have to always like keep that that long term vision and like that's what that's what allows you to reprogram yourself so that you're comfortable because like obviously if you're making all these decisions that are risky and you're like in a very stressed place you're probably not going to be making great decisions either so you have to be making risky decisions while not being stressed which is a difficult thing to do but that's what makes like somebody successful they can do that repeatedly right so yeah I don't know it's an interesting I think a lot of people do have that so I don't think you're and I think you're on your own by any any means okay a person there's obviously been many but pick one person who's had an incredible impact on your life who was it and what did they teach you oh my gosh you know it's so like cheesy to say like someone in your family but my grandma passed away last year so I reflected a lot about her and so she was my dad's mom and her and my grandpa were just like those you know Australian hardworking people who I didn't know this until later in life but they bought a like a commercial cleaning products company from the newspaper like back in the day they like looked up the trading like classifieds and like we're like that sounds like something we could do let's buy this business and like she taught me a lot of like stability she was someone who taught me a lot about like just hard work like she was also someone who just you know grew up in the outback and raised a family and was just a really top 10 out of 10 person who hustled really hard like her whole life and yeah I guess like she's someone who I really admire as a woman and she was a mom of you know five boys raising raising boys in the outback and been building a business with my grandfather and I think she's so amazing a book or podcast are audible it can't be your own and now it also can't be tools to tighten so another book or podcast are audible that you'd recommend well I mean third door by Alex was like amazing what else do I recommend hmm give me a second here trying to give me another podcast too you give me another podcast here it does not have to be a but to be honest I'm less about books I'm more of audibles in podcasts now so you get you actually you actually I'm not being fair you gave good recommendations you gave tools I've got I've got one I've got one you know again it's it's like another it's it's men I listen to a lot of like masculine masculine shows it's not there's just a lot of there's a lot of content out there this which is why it's good that you're doing what you're doing I don't think it's I don't don't think you're like choosing it like there's a lot of guys who put up business books and business content yeah yeah I would say I do too many but yeah well that's another that's another conversation um I get so much value from what Sam and Sean put out with my first million I don't know how I discovered them in the very beginning I think I discovered their Facebook page or something like that um but they just their show is like dudes doing like unsexy businesses that are like massive and like business ideas and they are just like all sorts of interesting they always share lots of tips it's super tactical um so I get a lot out of that and then they have their private well Sam has the private community they're called trends and it's something that you know they put out these like um newsletters signals features all these kind of thing like again showing kind of like where new business ideas kind of like can come from and a lot of people in their start businesses based on their research which I find really interesting but where the true gold of it lies is their Facebook community because in that group there are so many people like willing to share their strategy like literally like step by step here's how I do X and I just learned so much I've connected with so many cool people in there that have told me like you know what feels like I should be paying thousands of dollars for you know this service yet someone's just telling me over zoom and like an example of that is I teamed up with it well I met this guy called Ben in the group and he um you know it's kind of like a consultant that helps you with like how to create an Amazon bestseller and like all these kinds of things and he's just like laid out for me a blueprint that I'm able to be like check check check check check and like I've just learned so much about this process of like professionally self publishing a book and yeah you just meet these like brilliant people who are so happy to help I hope you remember if you're not a member you're gonna have to sign up I'm actually I'm actually not a member no I know I know well I know I know Sam and Sean and I know I know they have a great Facebook meet I know all about the hustle but I'm not a member yet so now you're gonna oh my god it's worth it convert me best three hundred thousand you'll spend that's a pretty strong endorsement okay I'll check it I'll check it that's no I didn't I didn't even their contents great I can only imagine that it's worth it um okay if you had to or if you could sorry tell yourself that you're 20 year old self one thing what would it be hmm I feel like from a lot of my 20s I struggled with feeling content I was always like chasing this thing and it's only kind of like now that I've started just really truly appreciating the day-to-day and being like happy with where I am in the journey and knowing that like you know yes I'm gonna get to these goals that I have for myself um but it's okay to just like love the journey and just chill just chill it's not like you know I feel like you're always in a race with yourself to be like going faster doing everything doing more like achieving more but like really you've just got to enjoy the journey and enjoy the day-to-day good advice and then last question what is success mean to you what does success mean to me I feel like it probably blends into the last question success for me like used to feel like it was like I needed to reach something or it was like some kind of money goal or it was like you know status or whatever but really right now like success is like impacting other people it's like making a difference it's enjoying the day-to-day and like being kind to yourself and just knowing that like if the day is good like you're winning you're successful and so it's less about this like future thing that could never happen like who knows like not everyone is successful financially um it's about just like making sure that you're you're enjoying what you're doing every day and like you know if I look at my day-to-day I was like packing all my advanced copies and writing notes in the books last night and then this morning I was out shipping them off and then creating some content and like all of that stuff is just so fun like I love my day-to-day female startup club just brings me so much joy and that's where like earlier I was saying like it is important to have passion and like be excited about what you're doing on a daily basis and like if it is about creating something that's mission driven and impactful like you know just doing that and having fun with it um that's success