Mullan, Waddy and Sarkar on Products That Actually Sell

Boa host0:00
Our mission at BOA is to make quality networking, the type of networking that you actually look forward to going to, something that's accessible to entrepreneurs and business owners, not just at every stage of business, but also in every location, which is a big reason why we're doing a lot of digital events and we're doing, and of course, our local networking chapters, which I keep talking about, which everybody should be part of. So if you're not part of your local networking chapter, just get a part of it. Join it, and if there's not one close enough to your area, just tell us because we'll launch it, we'll fill it, and then we'll officially launch it. Um, now today, um, is very special because we're going to have the opportunity to learn, um, and meet 3 incredible business owners. The topic of the, um, of the session is creating, marketing, and selling products that customers can't get enough of. So basically, how to make something that people love. And all three of these guys are experts at it. They were just teaching me a few things in, in the office out there. So I'm going to start by asking them a few questions that we've prepared, but like all Bower events, it is going to be an open conversation. So there is going to be like an extensive Q&A section, and ask questions that are relevant to you and your, to you and your business. And because, you know, if it's, if it's something valuable to you, it's probably going to be valuable to someone else here as well. And that's what BOA is all about. It's a community of business owners here to help each other and support each other, because as we all know, the entrepreneur, entrepreneurial journey is not an easy one, and it's even harder when you're on it alone. So hopefully no one ever is again with BOA. Um, guys, could we actually— I'll do a short introduction first. First, we have Anita at the end. Anita is the CEO and co-founder of Hero Packaging, and she's the best-selling author of How to Sell Anything Online. I literally can't not fly without seeing that book. I don't know how you got it. Every airport in Australia, you've got your book front centre stage. I actually don't even know how to do it.

Anaita Sarkar1:58
I actually put my book in places that it's not meant to be, just if you want to know.

Boa host2:04
I swear, amazing placement. Dylan is Happy Skin Co. He's the CEO of Happy Skin Co. and he's also the host of an incredible podcast called Life, Money and Love. And there's one episode in particular, it's exceptional. I'm the guest.

Paul Waddy2:24
You should listen to it, it's a good episode.

Boa host2:26
And of course, Paul Waddy. Paul is one of Australia's leading e-commerce advisors and a best-selling author himself. I actually have his book because he gave it to me, but unfortunately, Paul, I left it out back, but it's an exceptional book and I'm sure they'll see it. So guys, I just want to start today. Obviously that was a very high-level introduction of you, but Dylan, do you want to go first? Just do like a 30-second elevator pitch. Of course.

Dylan Mullan2:49
Yeah. So I got into e-commerce probably 7 or 8 years ago. We had probably the dream e-com startup success story. Put $10,000 in, was started with a business partner. We put $10,000 in each. By the time I did that, I had less than $1,000 in my bank account, but it was like all in on the dream. We saw other success storeys like the highest miles of the world, you know, build businesses. And they were one of our first real inspirations. So we did that, we launched, we put all our hopes and dreams on it, and it worked out. We did $1 million in the first 3 and a half months, $10 mil the first year, $12.5 the second, and then expanded into retail and stuff. So had a really good product-to-market fit, which I think will be a theme that we speak about a lot today. And then, yeah, off the back of that, had a lot of cool opportunities—podcasting, mentoring, that sort of stuff. That's how I sort of got started in e-com. So fair, fair little—

Boa host3:39
Fair to say you're relevant to this particular event. And Paul?

Paul Waddy3:46
I remember sitting on a panel with Dylan a long time ago, hearing the storey and I was like, damn, that's— and hearing it again is like, man, well done. So I'm probably older than my other two panellists here. So I started in e-com Well, I'll take you back to when I started in wholesale. So I started a men's footwear brand in 2005 and I was a trade union official at the time. And I was telling the guys I was selling all over Sydney, like David Jones and ASOS in the UK and everywhere. And I was like, my friends were like, oh, you must be loaded. I'm like, I've got no money. I literally couldn't take my girlfriend, now my wife, out for dinner. So I thought what I'll do is I'll open stores and man, was that a mistake. I went into 5 stores. I had a store here in Westfield paying $4,000 a week and I was like, man, what's the catch here? Like it just wasn't working for me. So I went into e-com, sold that business, found my home in e-com, was selling online for 2007, joined a company called Showpo, which I'm sure most people will know and had a great time building that business with Jane and the team. And such a good time. First was introduced to the CEB Club at that time as well, which is good. We used to do our board meetings there, and after that I started coaching and consulting. These days I coach brands, some of them in this room, from startup right up to $200 million brands like Baby Boo and Budgie Smuggler and Maison de Sabré, wherever your bag is. Bag's in there, yeah. And I also co-founded ecomNation, which is a marketing agency. We do performance media, we do email marketing, we do Google Ads for brands like Who Is Elijah and G'dup and Bungee Smuggler as well. And fortunate enough to write two books, Selling Online for Dummies and Shopify for Dummies, and fortunate enough to be the dad of three girls aged 6, 5, and 3.

Boa host5:56
And so your target audience was dummies?

Paul Waddy5:59
Well, I mean, you know, the dummy writes the dummy's book. Makes one and no one.

Boa host6:07
I've bought both. And you're the chair of something.

Paul Waddy6:09
Oh, and I'm the chair of the National Online Retail Association, and I'm the chair of Australia Post's Customer Advisory Group. And Anita reminds me of that because the last time I did an event, they said, tell us about yourself, and I forgot everything. I'm like, who am I? Thanks, Anita.

Anaita Sarkar6:27
Yeah, you're welcome. Okay, so I'm Anita. I have a sustainable packaging company called Hero Packaging. So if you get a compostable mailer on your doorstep, that is 70% of the time, that's us. And we started that 7 years ago. But if we're going to go back in history like Paul did, I was an accountant, a really shit accountant, and I worked at KPMG for 6 years as an auditor. And then I tried my hand at all these different jobs, like I did Everything. Like, I walked into businesses and I was like, can I try this job? Can I try this job? And within 3 to 10 months, I just quit everything because I liked everything about the job, but there was something in me that I was like, I'm not happy, and I couldn't put my finger on it. But I, when I was working those jobs at night, I was running an eBay store and I was selling handbags online. And, um, Maison de Sable were my competitor at the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and so yeah, I ran an eBay store and I was selling like one handbag a week but I loved it. Like, you know, after hours I would go home and I would write emails or like eBay DMs to customers and I would do product listings and I was like, this is my life. But I couldn't tell my parents because they're Indian. And so I just decided that when I quit my last job, I was going to go all in on this, this brand. And I created a brand out of it and it was a personalised leather goods brand. So if you guys know I didn't do this, but the Daily Edited. Do you guys remember that brand? It was like personalised leather stuff. So I just, I just copied them basically. I just took some of their pricing strategy, made it better. I looked at their reviews, saw the bad ones, and I was like, I'll just improve on what they're bad at. And I did that by myself and it was an incredible business. And I grew that for 4 years. And I did sell that business, but also I was pregnant with my third child at that time. I also have 3 girls. And I saw a lot of plastic in the business and basically that was the start of my idea for Hero Packaging, and it took about 9 months of prototyping things and trying to figure out what it looks like to not have plastic in the shipping process. And then that's basically it. So it's been 7 years, and we've, we've made some pretty amazing impact in Australia with e-com too.

Boa host8:43
Oh, and I wrote a book.

Anaita Sarkar8:46
Oh, sorry. So that book is there. I've got 3 of them, and that's to encourage you guys to ask questions at the end. So the first 3 people can you can get it.

Boa host8:53
Okay, love that. Um, and actually that's a like very simple but effective way of either improving, either finding the weakness of your competitors or improving or innovating in industries. Read the reviews of, you know, even the biggest player in your market. Yeah. And see what the negatives are and improve on that. I really like that. I'm going to ask my first question to Dylan. Now you had a lot of success with your product. So what makes a product truly irresistible to customers? And in particular, what made your product truly irresistible to customers?

Dylan Mullan9:31
Specifically my product, like again, we speak about, you hear a lot in e-com circles that it's a bit of a buzz phrase, product to market fit. But I think like as much of a home run as you can have in product to market fit is what we had with Happy Skin Co. Now, I mentioned one brand that we, you know, kind of like what Anita was saying as well, you model what works a lot in e-commerce. You can seek inspiration from brands in different or similar industries from you and take a lot from them. So two brands that really inspired us was HiSmile and was Bondi Sands. Now, if you wanted to get teeth whitening done traditionally before the whole at-home teeth whitening craze, you'd have to book an appointment at your dentist. It was expensive, it was painful, you'd get sensitivity. So they thought of a way to take what was traditionally done in more of a service-based setting into a DIY product. You can do it at home, get similar results. We saw that also done with Bondi Sands. Any of the women in the audience might remember back in the day, if you wanted a fake tan, it was you get your friend to come over, they put up that tent thing, they get the gun out and they spray you. And then lots of brands have popped up since then. You do it at home, a nice little self-tan. We saw the trend of taking something that was traditionally a service and putting into a DIY product. So we knew that was going to work. And then in terms of Happy Skin Co, we did a lot of, we did a lot of customer research. Now, I worked at a gym at the time in Western Sydney. I'm originally from Prestons, which is like Liverpool area. If you go into Liverpool Westfield, on every corner there's a laser hair removal clinic. So we would ask everyone at the gym, anyone in our life. We probably asked 200, 300, 400 women. About their experience with laser hair removal. Sounds random coming from a couple of guys in their mid-20s at the time, but we did it. And we found that honestly, like 95% of women were either currently doing it or had done it in the past. But there was a lot of different, you know, coming, like thinking about reading the reviews and looking for opportunities. It was expensive, it was inconvenient. They had to book, it was painful. There'd be strangers all up in their bits. So there was a real opportunity to create a product to fix a lot of those problems. So we launched it expecting that it would take a while to take off because it was a really new technology at the time. We didn't invent the technology, it existed. Braun had them, Philips had them on the bottom shelf of shaver shops, so no one really knew they existed. No one had marketed them the way we market brands in social media now, so everyone thought we invented it. But I think for us, what we did really well is we solved a genuine problem that people were experiencing. And it was a problem that was affecting them emotionally, sometimes in ways that was conscious, sometimes was unconscious. And if you can create marketing off the back of a product that solves a problem and you can tap into that emotion and pull on the heartstrings in some way, shape, or form, I think you stand a really good opportunity at doing well. And I think if you want that really quick uptake, there's a lot of saturation in the e-commerce world now. If you can be an early mover in an industry, um, I think it helps when a customer sees a solution to one of their problems packaged in a way that they haven't seen as many times before. If it's something that's completely saturated in a really established industry, of course you can still be successful there. Might take a little bit longer to communicate some of the USPs and things like that. But I think that's why we had such a strong launch and were so successful so quickly. Solving a real-life problem, tapping into the emotional side of that problem, and then having that really quick, like, scaling mentality as soon as we tested something, whether it be a type of influencer, a type of content, or a type of ad that really worked, we doubled down, tripled down, just went as hard as we could until it fatigued or it didn't work. And then we were always testing and trying new things. So we'd always find new opportunities to find the next, you know, 6-figure, 7-figure ad or style of content, whatever it may be.

Boa host13:16
So it sounds like the key to maybe not creating Well, I guess the key to creating a product or service people love is finding product-market fit. So, I guess, Paul or Anita, do either of you have any great advice on how to find product-market fit or a storey of how you found it for a product or your company?

Anaita Sarkar13:42
Yeah, I'll tell you the storey about how I did it for Hero Packaging and how that started. But before I do that, I actually think that if you want a product that works, There is no real industry right now that isn't saturated. So the idea of getting into an industry, it's not just about the packaging anymore. I think Dylan started at a really good time, but now it's everything is saturated. How are you going to stand out, right? You need a moat, and I think we will talk about that. But products that do really well, and take note, okay, products that make you hotter, products that make you smarter, and products that make you more organised will always do well. And they're also very safe in a recession too, right? Like we've got that lipstick theory, and I think— what was that? Hotter, smarter, more organized. I love that. And I, I really, I truly believe that. Like, as a girl, I— any product that promises me to look hotter or have a glow up, right, I will buy it. So I'm just letting you know, if you've got a product like that, that's going to work. Um, for Hero Packaging, the way we tested it, Hero Packaging doesn't make anyone hotter, um, but it— what it does is it brings convenience and it makes sustainability easy. And also, I'm B2B, so it's really different to a D2C brand. The way we figured this out was we just built a landing page and we gave away free samples to see whether there is demand for sustainable packaging or if people are happy to just pay full price for plastic. And so we created a landing page, and that landing page was an image of a mailer that we didn't actually— we hadn't even ordered yet. I just Photoshopped it. And then it was, you know, shipping address, email address, and the business name. And it said, do you want a free compostable mailer? And I ran a Google ad for that. So the Google ad was anyone typing in sustainable packaging, possible packaging, eco packaging, green packaging, whatever— anyone typing that in, $20 a day would come to the landing page. You could get a free mailer. And I thought if we got like 20 to 30 signups for that, that would be amazing, and it would become a business in itself. And I thought we would have people that are interested in it. And it was 7 days and we had 1,000 signups. And so then I was like, this is a I was like, business, like this is it. But my husband said no, because they're all getting free stuff. It's, you know, it's not a business yet. So we basically gave away these free samples, which cost me a lot of money because free samples are not free, 'cause it's $7 per package. And we gave away these 1,000 samples and we had to wait about a month or 2 months to get returning customers to actually pay for their first order. And luckily 70% of them came back. So we had our first 700 paying customers, but that's kind of how we started the business and we tested. Whether it had good product market fit. Basically, we just tested demand.

Boa host16:16
Yeah, I think that is the big lesson there. It's about before you go and spend a fortune building an app or ordering clothes or whatever it is, that you actually test that what you're doing is definitely, is definitely wanted by a specific market. And, you know, a lot of businesses, you know, my full-time job is basically talking to business owners and I can tell you a lot of businesses don't end up where you think they're gonna end up, you know, so from where you start to where you finish is very different. So you wanna make sure though where you start is something that is gonna work. So I think that's a great example. I had one for you, Paul, sorry, Anita mentioned something is how to make a product stand out, right? So you've got this product, you've tested it, The market likes it. Now, like Dylan said, it's about marketing correctly. Paul, you've sold that much, you've been behind so many big e-commerce brands. How can you make a product you know people want and love, how can you make that product stand out in the marketing? And Dylan, I'd love to hear from you.

Paul Waddy17:22
You guys make really good points, right? It starts actually with what Dylan said, product-market fit. I'm so happy to hear you say that, you know, PMF. We talk about it all the time and it's like, You see so many brands start up who just don't have it and just don't care because they're like, I'll just start and what I'll do is I'll run some ads and then the rest should kind of work out. And product-market fit is finding a way to meet the needs of your, your audience, right? And so maybe some of you here have ideas. Why would your business be different? Like, most businesses fail, right? That's the reality. Why, why will yours work? And that's the question we've got to ask. So if I think about some of the brands that have really made it, your Baby Boos, your Showpo's, they've all got something. Yeah, they've all got something. Jane Lu is the something. She's the something in her work. Baby Boo is a transpotter. I think how to make it stand out— G'd Up's a really good example. Does anyone know G'd Up? It's a men's streetwear brand. Western Sydney, you'll know all about it.

Dylan Mullan18:21
They're around the corner from us actually in Alexandria.

Paul Waddy18:24
Yeah, that's right. Look, that's a brand that doesn't spend a dollar on ads, right? And you think like, that's not for everyone. Like, I own an agency, I want people to spend on ads, but they don't have it, they don't spend a dollar, not like, not $1, and they'll do $2 million in a day. Yeah. Oh my gosh.

Anaita Sarkar18:39
So they do product drops, right?

Paul Waddy18:41
Like they do. Yeah, so they'll do $2 million a day and then they'll snooze for the rest of the month.

Anaita Sarkar18:44
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Waddy18:45
He literally will take the rest of the month off. Yeah. He's done $4 million in 6 hours and it's like, and I've just been there for a couple of years, I'm like, What's this guy got? And what it is, it's a sense of belonging. So it's essentially he started a club that happens to sell clothes. And it's like if you wear the product around the place, people kind of like, you know, they'll— it's like you're wearing a football jersey. Now what's interesting with G'd Up is if they release a t-shirt or a hoodie that has a small logo, it could be beautiful, it won't sell. You give a big motherfucker over the top of it, it's sold out in 2 hours. And that's the thing. Yeah, of course we do clothing.

Dylan Mullan19:22
And then resale is 2, 3 times the price.

Paul Waddy19:24
And that's part of it, right? And so that resale market is actually controlled. It's like, how do we— we're all in the business of supply and demand. We can all supply, that's fine, but how do we manufacture demand? Now sometimes the demand's there, but it is saturated now. So how do you like find a product that's in demand, but it's not— there's not an oversupply. There's tools, Google Trends and SimilarWeb, and Uber, whatever, Uber suggests, you can find what people are Googling, you can. But then how do you do it before it's saturated? Or how do you do a clothing brand like Zimmermann that gets valued at a billion dollars in the most competitive space in the world? Well, what did Zimmermann do? Zimmermann fused resort wear with fashion. It's like, oh, that's interesting. And it's like, I think what both the guys said, you don't have to necessarily reinvent the wheel. You can do better on a product that's already out there. Koala Mattresses did, Eucalyptus, those guys make a living out of doing that. Spot fast-growing US businesses and bring them here quickly because we're 5 years behind. Find your own way to make money. But in the instance of G'd Up, it's all about their community. They invest in the grassroots because that's their thing. We're all about community. We don't just say it, we do it. We sponsor every local boxer you can think about, think of. We put money into local gyms. We put money back into the community and the community pays you back. The problem with most brands is we say, oh, our value proposition, and maybe we'll talk about value proposition today, but our value proposition is we do XYZ. We do, like my one when I started shoes, we do better quality shoes at a cheaper price. It was nonsense. It was just fluff. And it's like people are not hard enough on themselves, right? I'll launch my brand and I reckon people will buy it. Take a step back and ask yourself, why would people buy it? Really, why would people buy from you? And if you can't answer it, you'll fail.

Anaita Sarkar21:15
I think also you need to look around the brands and figure out what their thing is too, because sometimes it's hard to tell. Like, Jane Lu is the thing for Showpo. I would say if you look at like HiSmile, one of the things that they did really well above everyone else was Facebook ads and influencers. They seeded thousands of influencers when they launched, right? If you look at something like TBH Skincare, their thing is through retail distribution. They're getting into all of the stores and optimising that more than all their competitors. So it's like, what is the thing? Like, how are you making yourself better than everybody else? If you sell skincare and I ask you, what is your thing? And you say to me, my products actually work, um, and when people try it, they, they love it, I'll say that's not your thing because all the skincare brands that are starting now say the same thing. So you've got to figure it out for yourself. What is it? Is it your personal brand that's going to drive it? So So for me, for Hero Packaging, and I think these two will also talk about it because they've got incredible personal brands, but for me, for Hero, especially in the time where we weren't doing so well, the thing that brought us out of that was my personal brand, and I think that I've just kind of leaned into that as well, understanding that people follow me and trust me and therefore my business will do well, and I've just kind of figured out over time that's what it is. But if you look at another thing, like this is straight from Paul's point, but the thing of the oodie, You know, with Davie Fogarty, what was his thing? His thing is the licencing agreements that his competitors couldn't do. He licenced Disney, Nickelodeon, and all those things. That was his thing, and other people couldn't get in there fast enough. So you've got to figure it out.

Boa host22:48
What is it for you? Yeah, it's— I mean, a lot of these references are towards these companies' strategies, you know, creating a strategy that puts you in a unique position that perhaps your competitors can't get themselves into. And in a small, you know, if you're a new business, often you're part of that strategy. You know, that changes as the business grows. I mean, in Jane's case, it didn't. Jane is just authentic. It's that she is the living embodiment of the person that purchases her product. Yeah. And so authenticity is a big thing there. I did want to come back to something Paul mentioned. It was proud to be part of something. You know, people are proud to be part of the company's called G'dup and are proud to be part of that. And Anita, this one's for you because, you know, you've got a company that has a lot of value behind, like values behind it, as you're doing like environmentally friendly packaging, something very important to everybody right now. So I guess how can, like, what advice do you have to to everybody here on how to make your company or your brand something people, you know, align with or feel proud to be part of? Um, or how did you do it for your company?

Anaita Sarkar24:05
Yeah, good question. So mine is that we took a stand and we created an enemy really quickly. So I think that if you want to build a cult brand in a space where a lot of brands are in, and we've got a lot of competitors now, we take a stand. We don't think that our compostable mailer is the best compostable mailer. All the compostable mailers are great if they're, you know, they're manufactured in the right way. So everything in this world now is commoditized. All bloody products are the same looking thing. Your consumers don't know the difference. So for us, we're a sustainable packaging company, but there are other companies who aren't sustainable who, who I still think should stand for something. So I think if you have a brand, you need to create an enemy. That is the one thing you need to do. And the enemy doesn't have to be a person. I mean, it could be if you wanted it to be, but a concept or a thing that you're standing against, like The Patagonias of the world, you know, standing against the dirty denim trade, or Nike, who, you know, when Adidas was going after the athletes, Nike went, I'm going to go after the everyday person and the personal best of that person, um, and standing for something. So G'd Up, the way they started, I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think he was— he came out of jail, um, and he was kind of right. He was pretty G'd Up.

Paul Waddy25:15
Yeah, yeah. He likes to keep that quiet.

Anaita Sarkar25:18
No, no, it's probably true.

Dylan Mullan25:20
We're gonna have to delete that from the final cut.

Paul Waddy25:23
Yes, he was a naughty boy.

Anaita Sarkar25:24
He was in a motorcycle club. Exactly, yeah, okay. Basically, it's like he's kind of— I can't even, I can't. Well, isn't he putting money towards like people, like non-rehab?

Paul Waddy25:33
Yeah, like Homeshit Pathways, like yeah.

Anaita Sarkar25:35
Yes. So it's the concept of what he stands for and where he came from that everyone backs, not the clothing. And I think the community is in what they stand for. The enemy or a charismatic leader, that's really the ultimate thing of any brand. You want a cult brand, you've got to have one of those three things. And so for me, obviously there's a charismatic leader, but also I think the fact that we, other than all our competitors who only talk about the product benefits and features, which is so bloody boring and no one cares, I'm showing up and actually going against things that I know small businesses are against. Unfortunately, I have done some video content on Australia Post, which they have not been happy about. I'm not employed by Australia Post. Okay, so, but you know, when Australia Post, when I hear that our small businesses are sus suffering for—

Paul Waddy26:19
I watched it actually, it was really good.

Anaita Sarkar26:23
Yeah, then the CEO called me. Yeah, um, anyway, that's besides the point. So what I'm trying to— I don't know what now, I don't know what I'm saying.

Dylan Mullan26:34
I'll give a really good example because I know it's sometimes you hear a concept like that, you're like, make an enemy, and you're like, what does that really mean? Sometimes I'll give you a really good example. My favourite brand that executes organic content, they're actually out of the US, they're a chocolate bar brand called Midday Squares. Go on their TikTok, look at their most like their, their first pinned post and it's all about them in the US. Every, the 4 chocolate companies take up like 90+ percent market share. Any time a business grows too big, they're eaten up and acquired by one of these. These guys are taking a stand against that and they're building their business out of spite and they take you on that journey. David vs. Goliath. Go look at that video and it'll clearly articulate what Anita's talking about. And I just love their content so much. You'll get a lot out of studying them as well.

Boa host27:16
I think even just knowing what your brand is not. It's like what you don't want to be. Like, you don't necessarily need to pick a fight. And although I will say that the advice I have been given was to pick a fight, and, you know, my business partner Mark Woods told me that, um, and, and actually another business partner of mine and also another great friend and mentor, John Simon— does everyone know Aussie John? Like, Aussie will save you. He literally picked a fight with, um, um, with the banks. That was his, that was his enemy, saying the banks are ripping us all off as Australians, and Aussie will save you, you know. And like, it just worked perfectly. So you definitely can take that route. But I even just think, um, and we did it with the traditional members clubs in this country as well, although the media kind of did that for us. But, um, but I think even just knowing what you're not is like a really important first step, because picking a fight's big enough. I've got other things to worry about sometimes that, you know, I'd rather do. But, but even just knowing I don't want to be like that, this is who I want to be and this is why I want to be it, I think it's a really, um, I think it's a really important question to ask yourself and, and to actually place yourself in the market. Like, who is in my market? Who do I not want to be? And where do I sit? Where does my company's position sit in that, in that layout? And I think these are all really, really great things. Now, brand equity is something very important. And it's something that actually does take time to, for example, Hero wasn't Hero when you started, you know, and same with Happy Skin. What are the things that you did you feel are important to the brands you have now actually holding strong equity with your customers? So how do you start building brand equity at the beginning?

Dylan Mullan29:03
Dylan? I think for us, um, that was really important. It wasn't so much brand equity, um, it was more brand trust for us, which I think was the, the biggest barrier we had to overcome in order to sell so strongly. It was a new technology. No one, well, for one, knew if it worked. No one, two, knew if it was safe. No one knew anything about it. So I think building brand trust was something that was extremely important to us. Now, like Anita has explained, which what happened to her brand, like I'd say we launched, within a year after we launched, there were 100, literally 100 copycat brands that from the outside looking in, if you don't understand what's behind the outer shell of a product, you might think it's the same thing or looks the same. And they were taking a lot of shortcuts in terms of pricing, going for the cheaper parts. For us, you know, there's probably 3 or 4 brands from maybe 5, 6 years ago that were competing with us maximum that still exist. So I think when you, like, when you see you're in a market with a lot of competition, particularly if you're like a leader in the space or wanting to be a leader in the space, I think you need to ignore what the others are doing and stay true to what's important to you. Because for us, if we turned into one of those brands and we reacted, we had people selling products for half the price of ours. And we thought, look, if we want to play this price point game, we're going to be a race to the bottom with the rest of them. So I think for us, making decisions that you felt was right for your business and not following the crowd was really important for us. And then I think obsession over the customer experience. As your business grows, you know, when we start, we're all replying to the customer inquiries, replying to the emails ourselves. As we start to grow, there becomes layers and people in between that. And I think it's really important when you get off the tools, as I say, and you're not on the messaging or on your Gorgeous or on the emails yourself, making sure you've set up structures and reporting processes where The most common inquiries or problems are fed back upstream so you can stay in touch with that, so you can course correct and evolve and make sure you're doing better in the future. But for us, it was around the brand trust and making sure if you're in a position to offer things like guarantees and things like that, I think money-back guarantee for a saturated space and your competitors aren't doing it, look, I think it's something that you need to do nowadays in e-commerce just because of the saturation, but you need to have a quality product to stand behind. To do that as well. So those are some of the things that I think really helped us differentiate ourselves from the waves and waves of competitors that popped up. Thank you.

Boa host31:29
I love what you said, focus on yourself, not your competition. Something I hear a lot from, from very successful people. And Paul, did you have any—

Paul Waddy31:36
Yeah, brand equity. So what is brand equity, right? So it's how people feel about your brand, right? It's the goodwill that your brand has, and it flows on nicely from the previous question, and the guys have both nailed it. So Anita said pick a fight, stand for something, because if you're trying to be the same as everybody else, all the copycats, they won't last. If we all have the same strategy and the same idea, will it all work? It won't. So I've got a saying, which is zig when they zag. Like, my version of picking a fight is when every other e-commerce coach tells you to hammer 25% on Facebook ads, I just go, that's bullshit. That is, you'll never make any money with your margins 60-70%. So I go out on a limb with experience and I shoot straight down the line. Now I've had people on a call come to me and say, but that's just not right. I'm like, yeah, I'm always right. It is right. 100% it's right. And I've had people say, I don't agree with you. And I'm like, I don't give a shit because I don't want you to agree with me. You're not for me. I haven't— you only need $20,000 customers, right, to make a $10 million business, probably, right? You don't need to talk to everybody. Jake at G'd Up always says, mate, I judge my business based on how many pissed-off customers I have, because he wants people to miss out and feed that desire. So I think it's really— that's part of building the brand equity, is just not— is standing out. If I'm the same as every other e-commerce coach around, I'll just churn and they'll go through the So I've got to do something different that shocks them. And my wife was— and that's how I do it in my personal business. Trust. You mentioned trust. It's all about trust. Why trust me? And my wife will say to me, sometimes she overhears me on a call, particularly with, you know, business, and I'll just be like, hey, your business ain't going to work. Now I could take the money for sure and string them along for 3 or 4 months. And I've done it to my friends. If it's a Paul, I want to start an online business. Paul, go easy on it. And I'll be like, what do you want to do, cheetah print shoes? That's a shit idea. That's never going to work. What are the margins? And she'll be like, Paul, don't be mean. And I'm like, I'm not being mean, but my job is to make these people money, and it starts with day one. And guess what? That's what I become known for. That's building brand equity, is, you know, great customer service, honesty, integrity, standing out. That's my thing. What's your thing? You've all got to find your thing. And it's not like all of you, if you've got a brand, personal brand or a bio, go read, or a business, go read your Instagram bio and read it back and tell me if someone would really buy into that. Like it's, they're all the fucking same. Everyone's got the same. We're making women feel good and look good. Oh my God, you're not. Everyone's saying that. Do something different. Go all in.

Dylan Mullan34:23
I think just a short thing to add on to Paul's point, Don't be afraid to be, to honour what that truth is for you because you will attract your crowd and someone who does it different will attract theirs. And that's the way it should be.

Boa host34:34
That's fine. I think that's a great way. Anita, you've done, you've built a huge personal brand and you mentioned before the benefit. It's happened already for your business. Yeah. In, in the B2C space in particularly and e-commerce space. A personal brand is very powerful. What tips do you have to create the right content and create content that engages your customers?

Anaita Sarkar35:01
One is stop being boring as shit because I'll be honest, the thing is that not every single person can have a personal brand and that's the truth. So if you really want to have one—

Boa host35:13
So make sure you're the right person to have a personal brand first.

Anaita Sarkar35:16
Well, what I mean by that is if you really want to do do it, then one is you've got to have really thick skin because it's going to take you some time to figure out what you're going to create that personal brand in and what people listen to you for. I think that sometimes they're like, I want a personal brand and I'm going to do everything. I'm going to do it on fitness, on travel, on fashion, and I'm going to also do it on business, and I'm also going to do founder content, and I'm also going to do this. And then you have an audience that doesn't understand what you actually are talking about. So you've got to figure out that, and that takes time. Um, when I say I've built personal brand. I started that 6 years ago before a personal brand was a thing in my previous business. And when Instagram first came out, which is like, you know, a few years after school or something, I don't know, but I just remember thinking, I want to do businessy content. Like, I'm doing eBay stuff, I'm gonna like talk about business. And I realised that people started to listen to me for that. And then I wrote a book and I wanted to sell that book, and I thought, I don't want to do it on Instagram, that's embarrassing. Because no one knows, none of my friends know that I've written a book. I'll do it on TikTok instead. And every day, you know, I was telling you, I've been trying every day. I did like 4 videos. Yeah. And I, I just thought, I'm just gonna do business content, business content, business content, tips, tips, tips, you know, 3 ways to optimise your website, 3 ways to do SEO, 3 ways to do Facebook ads. I just kept on doing it over and over and over again. Even when the kids were bloody crying next to me, I was doing that content. I did that for 4 years. And that is, that's how I built up a following, and that's the truth of it.

Boa host36:41
But it sounds like the key messaging you're saying is that you will be the right person to have a personal brand if you're willing to commit to being consistent in delivering non-boring content.

Anaita Sarkar36:51
Yes, and you have, so something really interesting happened to me the other day. I have a content creator, she's 20 years old, and she's living in a world where social media is the thing. Like, there's no— they don't even have proper relationships in real life. They just have social media relationships. That's the truth. So she came to me and I said, you're doing a great job. And she said to me— she burst into tears. And I said, why are you crying? She said, I'm not getting the likes that I told you I would get for you. And I said, I don't actually care. I just want to show up all the time. Like, I want to be showing up, and that's how we're going to be remembered as a brand. I said, no sustainable packaging company is going to go viral. Uh, and she was like, I'm just not doing it. And then also my boyfriend's ex-girlfriend is getting more likes than me. And like, she went on— That is a problem. I was consoling her for about 1.5 hours on the fact that she's not getting enough likes. When I talk about building a personal brand, I mean, you've got to get over it. Like, I think that we are strong enough and old enough and more resilient than that. And I think that you've got to pick what you want. Figure out what it is that people are listening to you about. You know, it might be business, but it might also be— if you're selling a fashion brand, what is it about your fashion brand that people would listen to you for? Is it that you do plus-size, plus-sizes, and you know content around that? Or is it the fact that you have been to China and you've been to Vietnam and you've been to all these places where they manufacture, and you know the intricacies of that fashion brand? Or if it's skincare, what is it about it? You Have you spoken to other founders? Can you talk about that? Really think about what you have knowledge on and niche down as much as possible.

Boa host38:26
We are gonna move to Q&A very soon. Just a couple more questions I wanted to do. Dylan, I wanted to ask you about organic marketing. So a lot of people don't have a lot of funds to spend in all the ads and do all that type of thing. So I guess, what are some tips towards strategies for marketing that is done organically without having have a large budget?

Dylan Mullan38:47
I think the biggest thing was this, and I hear it all the time. I'm sure Paul does as well. I'm sure you've probably— some people in the room have used this excuse for yourselves. Look at Anita, what she's done with organic content with her brand. There's hundreds, thousands of examples of brands that have absolutely crushed it with organic content. I've got brands that I've worked with that are $100,000 per month consistently, not running ads, right? But the excuse— and this is only probably talking to a percentage of the audience, but I think it's really important for for those of you to hear it, but I'm an introvert, I don't want to be on camera is such a limiting belief. It's not only limiting you mentally in your own personal growth, but it's like saying, sure, there's a lot of ways to grow a business and you don't have to focus on organic content, but it's probably throwing away the biggest, most effective tool for startup founders to use. 2025, it was 2024, back into 2023. It's like fighting with one hand tied behind your back. So I think that mindset I wouldn't cop it. If you're in that mindset where you don't feel comfortable, one, there is more than one way to produce organic content. Now, there's product-based focus, there's founder-led focus. The best brands, in my opinion, do a mixture of both. Um, but I think the excuse that some people give to themselves, I'm not an extrovert, I shouldn't build a personal brand— it's a limiting belief. I think, um, once you try it, you have to really give yourself permission to suck. And that's where most people get stuck. They don't want to There's the fear of judgment, but there's more than that. It's the fear of, like, failing publicly, right? If you don't give yourself permission to suck, then you'll never earn the right to be okay. Then if you don't earn the right to be okay, you'll never be good. And then if you never give yourself the time and the space to be good, you won't be great. And then once you're great, if you don't keep executing, you don't keep looking back at the data that you had— what did I do that worked really well? What didn't work well? How can I take those learnings into the next month and improve the content I create? As well as analysing your own content— what worked, what didn't. Find 10 to 20 aspirational creators and businesses that do really well on organic content. Look at what they're doing. Look at the content that performs best for them and take their ideas and do it in your own way. Um, same thing, look at the trends. Okay, if they post, say, once a month for— once a day, um, for 30 days, there's 30 pieces of content. Analyze what are the 3 best performing pieces of content they posted and what are the— what is the common denominators between them? Is it a certain style? Is it a location? Is it a trend-based? Is it ASMR? Like, there's so many different styles of organic content. It doesn't need to be you talking and speaking like an authority figure. It can be a day in the life where it's just a little voiceover and you're doing your thing. There is a million ways to do organic content.

Anaita Sarkar41:20
I do think that we do come from a place of privilege though, in that we have built up businesses and now we can create personal brands based off our experiences. I think that sometimes when people are just starting their business, it's scary because they don't have the founder— the, like, the founder experience. So I mean, I'm just trying to think of what you can create. There's so much you can do, obviously, with organic content.

Dylan Mullan41:42
But the honesty in that, like, hey, come along with me as I build my first brand. I've put all my savings into this. This might fail. I don't know if I'm going to be good. I might be— like, either watch me succeed or watch me fail, but I'm going to figure this out in front of you guys. Do you want to come on that journey? Yeah, everyone can relate to that dream that they're chasing. You know what, everyone cheers on the underdog.

Paul Waddy41:58
Something you got to remember is people watch Gogglebox. Well, I'm definitely better than that.

Dylan Mullan42:05
Yeah, that's a really good point.

Paul Waddy42:07
But you make a good point as well, is like people say, I'm just not comfortable in front of the camera. Like, cool, you comfortable failing? It's 2025, can we agree that you need to be on social media in some capacity? So just work that out.

Boa host42:20
I think that's the question. Are you comfortable Also, are you more scared of— like, are you more fearful of trying or of failing? Yeah, you know, you want to be more fearful of failing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and, and I, I want to highlight someone who actually does an exception— exceptional job, Candice. Um, who, um, I think she— were you here at the panel with Raquel? Yes. And is Raquel that told you what— what— she was the— literally Raquel Boris from Whose Elijah?

Anaita Sarkar42:47
Told me that I should start to create content by myself rather than rely on somebody else and just like documenting my things and the journey. Yeah, the journey. Yeah, like what I learned through the days. Even it's just a fail, it's okay to share with everyone.

Boa host43:04
And amazing content, you know, it's taking you on the story, on the journey of running a business, and you kind of cheer. Yeah, like, you know, and that's what you want to build. Now guys, I do want to move to the Q&A, and so please, if you've got questions, make sure they're written down. And I swear you'll be first now.

Dylan Mullan43:20
One more question to go, I promise you're number one.

Boa host43:23
Um, I just wanted to finish with, um, um, the most important thing to each of you, the most important thing to creating a product people love is— and each of you, and take time to think about it. Because to be honest, in the back I said, guys, did you get the questions that the team sent you? They're like, yes, yes, but they told me that, you know, you might not ask those questions. I said, I promise 100% I'll ask them. I've read them. I did not ask one, one question.

Paul Waddy43:55
We also didn't read them.

Boa host43:56
The first one was from the list. The first one from the list, but then we got going. I felt good, so I was going. But please, now I just bought you some time. So what was the question again? The most important thing. Towards building a product or a service that people absolutely love.

Dylan Mullan44:13
Look, I could say something else that we haven't spoken about tonight, but I genuinely think what I spoke about at the start, product to market fit, are you solving a real problem that people are experiencing today? If you are, that's a really good start. It's not all you'll need, but it's that first box that you need to tick because some of the product ideas that you see, it's like, in what world do people need this? Like, be really real and be like, the really easy filter to run this through is would you genuinely buy this yourself if you saw that?

Boa host44:38
And is there a particular resource that you read or heard earlier in your journey that made an impact on you?

Dylan Mullan44:46
The biggest, the biggest resource was, again, it's such a cliché book. I watched it on Netflix and then I read it and it, you know, it's a bit of a cliché. It's The Secret. But it's not that, it's not that book or that movie on Netflix. It's the tool of visualisation for me. Was the number one thing that accelerated my growth, both personally and in a business sense. I'm obsessed. I obsess about my goals, what I want to achieve in life, and moments along the way that are going to get me there. And when I visualize, I don't just close my eyes, visualize. I'm— I explain the way I visualise like I'm time traveling. I am living those moments in detail. Each moment I visualize, it's not a 5 or 10 minute exercise. It's 30 minutes to an hour. I'm living it and I'm feeling the emotions. As if they were happening today. If you can get to that point, that is where the true power is. And that's the biggest resource or book that changed my life, The Secret, which was just my entry-level drug into the law of attraction visualization. But I'm going to like leave one little caveat at the end. Visualizing without action, it won't get you anywhere.

Paul Waddy45:47
I'm pumped up. Someone's got me pumped up. Let's go do some stuff.

Boa host45:52
Yeah, I love it. Paul, the most important thing towards creating a viral product or service, something that goes wild.

Paul Waddy46:02
You know, most— I'm so happy we're talking about things like brand equity and product-market fit. Most entrepreneurs don't know what product-market fit is. And I just say, like, I probably maybe speak to more e-commerce founders maybe than anyone else in the country, right? Probably. I still take my— the calls of all the brands, most of the brands that want to work together, and Most of them are just in a hurry to get a product, they just want to launch a product. Now just because it's easy to start an online business doesn't mean you should. So you got to hold the mirror up to yourself and just ask yourself again, would people part with their hard-earned money on this product? In Australia over the last 12 months, average order values have gone down $10. Price is the number one factor. Now none of you can compete on price with Temu, Shein, So how will you compete? So I think it's, again, the correlation, the brands that I've seen go bananas, they found a way to serve the needs of their customers. Good modern example, Naiki Hammocks. An old problem, and we talked a little bit about this today, like it doesn't have to be you're inventing, you know, you're Elon Musk, you're inventing something. Old problem, hammock, been around since Robinson Crusoe. They just made them sustainable and have made Squillions. They're making so much money. Squillions of dollars on hammocks. But again, really good content. Like, watch how many kilos of cement my hammock holds. Like, showing the strength of the product in a really funny way.

Anaita Sarkar47:26
They also spend a lot on Facebook ads.

Paul Waddy47:28
7th highest spender in Australia.

Anaita Sarkar47:29
Right.

Paul Waddy47:30
Yeah, they sell a lot of hammocks. And the reason that they can spend on Facebook is because they fulfil everything from their shed at the back of their house. So that's the exception to the rule. I say You shouldn't be spending too much on Meta. Those guys pump it because they spend fuck all on everything else.

Boa host47:46
But can we also, for your resource, can we focus on your book just briefly? What will people learn from reading your book, or what's kind of the most important lesson from it?

Paul Waddy47:55
I was debating whether to say the best resource is my book. I helped you out there. Yeah, you did. Yeah, well, look, look, Selling Online for Dummies will help you get started. Shopify for Dummies will help you build Shopify. But practically speaking, look, that does help you, and we Follow me on Instagram and my pillar on Instagram is I never sell, I only give free content. That's my thing and it will pay me back and it has paid me back. I'm doing just fine. But what I would also say is finding that product, sorry mate, finding that product, just don't be in a hurry. Like challenge yourself to find that product that's going to