Lessons - How I Built a Digital Empire from My Phone | Ciera Rogers - Fashion Designer & Founder of BABES

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transforms challenges into valuable opportunities so when you started you are super heavy on instagram if you started in 2024 you could no longer build this company on instagram nope i'd have to i'd have to maybe tiktok right when it first came out i'd have to find my way in and it wouldn't even be me visually i would use someone else why is that because i don't think i think what from what i've studied i think that the more different you look or if you have you know what i mean like something i know you know what i mean yeah like it's like it's it's like not like the the the stereotypical model looking person that kills it on these platforms anymore you need to be different in some kind of way so i would literally like hire someone that is not me to do my brand if i were to be launching today but that's just my mindset because i'm like but you see you study content you see what you see what's going viral you see what's today people looking and i like do i want to watch this or do i want to see another like regular looking growl sells you know it's so strange though i i've thought about this because i've seen i've seen accounts with people that aren't classically good looking massive audiences right and then i wonder like well all those people that were buying products from models five or ten years ago they still exist so where did that like section of the market go where are they buying their products now which brands are they looking at as as representations of themselves because like the whole concept of a model is it's what you wish you could look like that was the whole traditional concept of a model i wish i could look at this birth it's very aspirational i want to i remember uh in high school uh like for as a guy it was all abracrombian fish and then like all the all the guys were like jacked playing football it was like a little bit little bit questionable some of the ads but whatever um but now if i if i if i look at brands i mean i have my brands that i buy from but i don't really pay attention to the models anymore that's not like these are aspirational so that's just my personal opinion but obviously there's a lot more of me and there's a lot more of you and there's a lot more people to feel maybe not represented in in marketing so where do these people go or how do you tap into these groups because they still have money they still buy product i think they either started their own brands everyone's a view in entrepreneur literally like in 2020 one i feel like so many businesses were started most of my models now have brands are most to really customers have brands because that i mean we're all in this entrepreneur state of mind like no everyone knows that now like i mean we we can create ads on our phones so we're now we're like hiring less graphic designers everyone feels like they can do everything so it's people are starting their own stuff and i think people are just tired of being sold to by the same like i'm over it like i wasn't thing to do um we we were we're used to the models selling us and hey it's just like we're scrolling past it's it we're overstimulated and we want something different so how do you capture so as as somebody who's building a company what is your what is your advice for capturing attention it in regardless of whether or not it's using people or or different types of creative because the goal is to capture attention so all the models that you work at the start of their own brands they're trying to capture attention all the all the customers that are starting their own brand and i do believe i mean like barriers to entry for entrepreneurship or have no time low hey baby i know you have all these awesome tools you can spin up something overnight with not too much money and you don't even have to be technical anymore so you can you can go ahead and do it but how do you capture attention it depends on the product depends on what you're doing you have to just study it from there like it i mean you you either want to fix a problem you want to find a pain point so like i'm selling i'm not selling clothes i'm selling confidence i'm selling like a woman's feeling good about her body so you have to find that and then you that is your foundation it really depends i can't say this is how you do it if i don't know what probably if i'm selling toilet tissue i'm selling like how does your bum fill you know what i mean like no okay so take your example take your example so how do you sell i feel confident i've how do you sell i feel confident with i have a woman so i know it makes me feel snatched i know it makes me feel good like women we have we don't like to blow we don't like to feel more overweight than we are like it we even if you're embracing like whatever way to are you don't want to feel like you know what like today i'm just like extroverted so i sell personally i sell the snatch i sell like you can put these leggings on and your body will be snatched i don't care what it looks like it's going to look good that's my version of selling often i love it i love it so you have to find a way to translate that pain point and make it so real for people and i think that also people i think that you did a really good job of figuring out what an actual pain point is as opposed to just assuming what somebody cares about or doesn't care about i think too many entrepreneurs it may be have a little bit of an ego and they think they come up with a great pain point and then nobody in the market gives a shit it helps so that's your own that's my own that's something i struggle it so i know i'm like uh yeah this doesn't feel good so let me do it so it starts with me all of my products are really selfish like it starts with me like i want this and we'll after that that i'm like will someone else buy this is this relatable like let me ask my friends like have you ever does this work for you um and then it comes that it starts with you it helps and it starts so start with you figure out the pain point um you were capturing attention on social but obviously you have to find a way to do that in 2024 what are you you didn't raise money for this company at all this was all boots trapped right so this is all due you just like scrappiest shit yeah i remember 10s of 50 50 to 100 100 to 500 i remember like staying the numbers because i was trying to hold on to it and i'm like one day i will save 500 and then once i save 500 dollars i was like hey i will save a hundred thousand dollars i will save ten thousand dollars very much like a huge shout out to bank on yourself for supporting today's episode entrepreneurs here's the retirement secret that wall street doesn't want you to know while you are pouring everything into growing your business they want you gambling your future in their 401k casino with no guarantees as a business owner you already take enough risks why gamble with your retirement too it is time to discover the financial strategy smart 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report that's bank on yourself dot com slash Scott bank on yourself dot com slash Scott do you think that that is an issue that entrepreneurs have they they want to see this huge fifty million hundred million dollar exit and they lose track of what actually matters at the beginning yes start small small goals get you to bigger goals in their less they're better on your ego and i like that you know i like i like goals and i like but i like a accomplishable goals as well so it's like all right i can see myself saying 50 dollars and once i say that i'm proud of myself and then i can move on small goals they feel better and plus i think that you have to celebrate wins i think that's one thing that people forget a lot how many times they win in their life in their career in their business and i i was thinking about this like what so i have i have a belief i believe that if you have product market fit that's that's the first assumption but i believe that if you stick with something long enough you'll find a way to make it work if you have that product market fit and if you track the kpi's removing the right direction but i was always trying to figure out why is it so hard for people to stay on this path for so long and i think it's because they start with motivation and then they set these audacious goals and then they something doesn't work and then they focus on the negative and they don't realize if one ten thousand times already yeah 100% and you're going to fill usually the entrepreneurship is not it's like up and down up and down up and down like even now me 12 years later like it's going i'm there's some some days that aren't going to be good it's not going to just be like a it's when people expect this and this doesn't have life i don't know it everything's up into the right everything's working out all the time i've never but i've never like seen it um so let's stop expecting it and just realize that this is a failure we've learned from it we know not to do that okay let's not and let's keep moving what was your biggest i want to say failure but not failure like shit hitting the fan moment that is like traumatize you from building your business when i experienced success after so Kim Kardashian posted me back in 2008 i think and i was excited but then i was embarrassed of how my business looked because i felt like it wasn't like professional looking enough i felt like because i a lot of the models i used were my customers a lot of the pictures were all over the place it just didn't i was insecure with the attention that i was getting at that time so i changed my business at that time dumb the dumbest thing i've ever done because i i could have i didn't realize what built me was that and and when i got all of that attention i wasn't even looking like myself and yeah i could have done better than it that's so interesting how did you change your business like what was the the the date i used model i used like models i wouldn't traditionally use i stopped posting as many customers because it wasn't the aesthetic because you know you want to be aesthetic on your page yeah and now i'm like fucked the aesthetic it's about if because mostly we don't go to the regret anyway they're on the timeline we go to our grid more than most people i mean maybe upon an introduction of your page right after that i'm dealt with your game i'm on my timeline so that's right um yeah i switched everything up and i shouldn't did that hurt like does it hurt your revenue too yeah 100% significantly when you did that and then how long did you recover after that did take long because i switched it my back that's so fun that's so funny that's such a like literally like no if something's not going well i'm like well i need to have a meeting meeting just me i need to have a meeting something's wrong with what i'm doing it's not the i never blame the other people like oh they just don't get it i'm like wait a minute hold on something's off because it was working now it's not working as something that either something changed with me something changed within something changed somewhere thanks for tuning in if you found this valuable don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode and if you want to dive deeper into this conversation check out the links in the description to watch the full episode see you in the next one