Turning Backlash into Success: Learning from the Celebration Box Media Fallout - Iyia Liu.

we actually got a lot of media backlash because a lot of them arrived not great and then also us trying to explain the reason behind it people they just didn't care they were just like no they're just not good did you manage to keep that going and fix that and move forward from that or how did that did that media backlash hurt or that media backlash definitely hurt but I think because it was so aggressive we had to just quickly suck it up and learn and change really fast if we didn't get that backlash I don't think we would have been so serious about Chang in everything welcome to the podcast thanks for having me all thank you for being on it why don't you

quickly introduce yourself and then we'll get started okay my name is I and I'm an entrepreneur cool awesome um I like that because where I as I said off camera where I wanted to start is you've had a few business ventures you've had some successes and so but I I I wrongly thought celebration box was the first one so take me back to the start like where did this entrepreneurship Journey begin so my journey began I was 21 when I started my first business I think it was I remember in my final year of uni I kind of was not sure what I wanted to do I saw this lady called Sophia amuso do you know her the girl boss lady yeah she loved it

uh and I kind of resonated with their story I was like if you could sell things on eBay and make money and sell clothing on eBay I can Al I've also done that too why can't I do what you do and that really pushed me to just try and uh own business so my first business that actually did well was called waste trainer okay yeah yes uh it is a type of shapewear okay cool kind of random like a corset modern day corset and I kind of thought okay I'm going to import these I think I got like 10 or 20 my sister was like that's really weird no one's going to buy them uh and then we ended up selling I think it was

to over well we ended up selling to over 90 countries around the world we sold we did like 3 and a half mil in the first year holy crap uh for yeah for a 21y old I was like woo it's pretty cool yeah that's amazing how like how how did you get to that number that quick in that first year what was the things that you did uh well back then this was kind of when Instagram was first started starting to kick off what year were we in maybe 2016 okay yeah yeah that's like kind of peak Instagram yeah just the start and a lot of the macro influencers you see today they were also kind of all starting their career wasn't I don't think

it was even called influencer marketing not a not a thing it was just people on Instagram showing off products and yeah so I found the product through seeing somebody on Instagram sharing it so I thought if I'm buying it this way other people are going to buy byy this way so I started reaching out to people offering product and going in exchange can you do me like a review or show it show it off uh really just ramp that up ramp that up uh eventually we started paying macro influences like thousands of dollars per post we end up paying Kylie Jun $300,000 for a post and yeah just really carried on from that that's out R wait before you even go forward how at that

you're still 21 when you offered the 300K how old are you at that point maybe 22 22 okay so how does someone like how do you think to go oh 300K this is a good way to give this to this person like what was that decision tell me about that that's crazy uh yes so uh we were actually so obviously we wanted to keep scaling what we were doing was working so we figured how can we you know take this to the next level I was reaching out to celebrity Talent agents uh trying to find someone and then their agency actually found us okay uh they gave me this whole celebrity sheet of everyone's Priceless like all celebrities you can think of Y and I

went okay Kylie is a good fit negotiated the price I think we did negotiate it down a little bit uh and yeah I just kind of just did it just did it like you just just backed yourself yeah I remember going into the bank to make the money and thinking this better not be a scam this better not be a scam yeah but yeah we did it how did you know it wasn't a scam I researched the company thoroughly yeah I mean you're spending 300 Grand it's probably should I couldn't I don't think we even but you were young so like it wouldn't have been a Miss if you didn't well it still would have but yeah no I know no I know but like

you know what I mean like that's that's crazy yeah I feel like you know when you are younger you've got you don't have a mortgage you don't have kids this is the time where you can go do crazy calculated risks and do stuff like that yeah that was going to be my next thing is like um that's when you can do it exactly because I mean 300 Grand is a lot of to lose any time in life but at least when you're 22 there's a long time to come back from it totally yeah um how did that result for you like what did that have the desired effect with a what what was the results like in terms of of like you don't to give

me hard fact numbers but like how successful was that 300 Grand spend well you can think of success in monetary but there's also non-monetary success so yes we got I think we made all the money back in about a month okay amazing uh yes but then we got tons of PR Global PR shared my then I signed up with a PR agency shared that story and then that circulated globally so that is the I'm like how do you put a value on that you can't uh so yeah that's that was yeah a lot of a lot of things I got from that and then from all that PR stuff I guess more sales and more everything just keep coming through amazing more sales and then

also I guess it was great for my personal brand uh got a lot of speaking gigs and yeah cool and then okay so when keep going with the story so we've done that where we at now we're 22 what's next how what keep keep us going uh so 22 still very fidgety always thinking of new ideas I remember I was overseas and I was like okay well since we've already got this we may as well start another business another brand maybe we could cross promote it with a similar audience so this is when I started the supplement company called Lux Fitness oh yeah cool y yeah that one yeah so with Lux we had I had obviously had a bit more cash that I could

put into this so we immediately I was like I know the strategy we are going to get you know 10 macro influencers in Australia and New Zealand to push this from the get-go run give away an incentives to grow our followers grew to 140k or something really quickly like what a month or something amazing uh and then we did again like two and a half six 2.6 mil in our first year of uh running that business as well amazing yeah great and okay so what so how old are we there 23 23 yeah so literally a year later and you're still running the shapewear as you still got that on yeah so you're doing both now yeah and we kind of cross-promoted with each other

we would like see an advertising to the same audience yeah okay cool cool so you leverage both businesses for each other perfect okay so 23 you now got Lux on the scene what's next so must have been 23 then somebody gave me this idea they thought okay well you could sell your business they're doing they're doing really well this is is it something you've ever looked into and I kind of thought okay well I've never thought about it but it is free to go and get uh your business valued and yeah even just C so I kind of went to a business broker gave me a valuation I thought okay that's pretty good money for my age of being 23 found a buyer and yeah

within I think like three or four months we had just done the transaction got my little payout um and yeah for both or just for for both to the same yeah to the same person to the same person okay cool okay so now you got this big cash injection and probably even itch your feet right I must be that say you've learn a whole lot what do you do uh well I told myself I was going to take a little break which I didn't do what did I do I think I said it's not an entrepreneurs like repertoire to take a break no no you think you are but you don't end up so then I started celebration box okay cool that's when that came

in y yes y uh so celebration box was well is a gift boxing company I got the idea from this Australian company they were creating these really crazy gift boxes with they're actually quite naughty gift boxes a I think I know the ones yeah yeah B in Melbourne yes yeah I know the ones yeah we used them at hotels I know exactly what hotels well cuz we had a lot of EAS as um our sort of direct client contact and so they're very female audience and so it was just funny yeah it was just real funny and and it was a big hit I know exactly what you're talking about I mean you can talk about about them naughty gift boxes so I didn't go

down the naughty rout cuz I don't know I just didn't oh they're pretty outrage yeah yeah so but I did uh kind of replicate the business model within New Zealand kind of I'd say maybe one of the first in New Zealand to do it yeah people might have been doing it but not really advertising it very much yeah more old school business model rather than the new age sort of social style of gift boxing right it was all that corporate gifting first yeah I know yes which is why we went with the Australian company it was always like hotels gave up corporate pouring corporate anyway so no hey no I'm going to send you a John penis in exactly way more laughs yes way more

laughs um so yes anyway brought that to New Zealand set that up with pretty much no money it was just not a lot needed to set that type of business up um started off in a home kitchen yeah I was going to be in charge of doing the marketing and I found a Brier who is now my close friend and we I was like you can be in charge of assembling the gift boxes was that's not my forte uh and so when we launched celebration box we reached out to I don't know maybe like a hundred New Zealand mid tier macro influencers people on radio TV sports stars and basically just said hey can we send you a gift box you don't have to do

anything you if you don't want to but you could put on your story if you want most of them shared on their stories and then in the sixth week we sold 3,000 gift boxes amazing amazing yes that's great yeah it well good but also except for the work except we couldn't actually really fulfill that many okay got it got it yes so learning curve learning curve there yeah so when you say you couldn't fulfill just because Manpower or just because you couldn't get the product and the stock that you needed to do it both yeah a combination so firstly our raw ingredients we would go to our usual wholesalers and they would go we don't have that quantity on stock in in this amount of

lead time uh we didn't have the space to assemble that many gift boxes that they all needed to go out within a certain amount of time and we also didn't have enough Staffing yeah that could do it correctly uh so a combination of issues what would you like I mean you probably thought about it but if that was to happen again what would you have done differently uh I think next time just cap the amount of sales that you could do or yeah just cap the amount and just build hype them we're sold out yeah yes because I feel like we definitely disappointed people uh of the you know of the gift boxes that we couldn't F fulfill correctly yeah and they and I guess

they given them as gifts so they're kind of timely timely thing yes frustrating because we actually got asked why didn't you just refund people and we thought well it's it was for a special occasion if we refund them they don't have another another option yeah uh so yeah what what was the outcome did you manage to fulfill in the end or what what was the yeah what happened the outcome we so the week that we had to fulfill we were there I think we ordered 70 hour weeks that week um trying to get everything out and we actually got a lot of media backlash because a lot of them arrived not great uh and then also us trying to explain the reason behind it people

they just didn't care they were just like no you didn't they're just not good so it's it's one of those things that just people don't give a crap I know which was hard because like we worked so hard that week and we tried really hard but yeah okay so we got to that point you had a bit of a learning curve there then what happened what was next what was next did you manage to keep that going and fix that and move forward from that or how did that that that media backlash hurt or yeah that media backlash definitely hurt uh but I think because it was so aggressive uh we had to just quickly suck it up and learn and change really fast when

what what what like this this this is not working we need to fix these things immediately uh whereas if I if we didn't get that backlash I don't think we would have maybe been so serious about changing everything yeah yeah it makes sense Okay cool so now we got celebration box going okay you you've sold the other two you learned from your mistakes then wear two next I feel like I'm kind of kind of forgetting now I'm like what else happened so that negative media was pretty stressful for me I think that was one of the hardest things I have had to do you feel like everyone is like hating on you like I don't know if a lot of people I I don't think

we even new about it or involved but you feel like everyone in New Zealand hates you yeah yeah of course especially when it's in the media I know and they were so aggressive they did I think like four or five articles on it and kept calling me like block like stop calling me um why do you think they made such a big deal about it is it because of the publicity that you had good previously around yeah so one of the um gift in the curse day media oh I know yeah one of the uh what's it called the so the the one of the ladies that was writing the Articles she actually called me one day and was like congratulations you were trending number

one and I was like that's a good thing for you but an awful thing for me but that's like you know that's her job and that's that's why they keept doing it so that's crazy that she congratulated you on that I like stop calling me yeah stop calling me it's one of the reasons why like um why I've said to my team like uh we don't need to be of the media like we can control our own destiny by just keeping it to ourselves so like good and bad stories will keep out of it yes and like if they it's like no like don't need even like Awards anything just like one of our clients won an award this year and we're not talking about

it okay we're just never talking about it and the thing was is that we get to control all our futures on our own socials and it was from watch thank you from watching people like yourself go through this stuff but not just you like you've seen it it happens everywhere right people get ripped through Med media [ __ ] they don't care I mean it's their job like you said it's their job they're not R housel they're just actually she actually did a really fantastic job and got a trending new cycle um but for the people who are the brunt of it it's [ __ ] devastating yeah yeah okay so how did you deal with that uh cuz that's not easy it's not easy and you were young

right what were you at that stage 24 25 24 25 yeah so not easy for 25y old no uh I feel like because I have quite a people I don't think I have like quite a hard personality I'm not super emotional I guess and in business I think you almost do need to have that because if you do get emotional it will really affect you uh at the start of my journey I used to get emotional and if I got backlash from people I would think about it all the time uh and I feel like over time you build this resilience and you have to Y because otherwise you will have a mental breakdown yeah absolutely yeah I found that um so so my my

career started in Hospitality so I used to run hotels for a living before this and I'm so glad I did yes because I mean that's all you do in hospital is get yelled at so so the the thick skin that you get from having that constant like fix this fix this fix that but to your point so you had that early on cuz you were Spotlight for a long for a few years by that stage four years so that you say that helped at that point because you've had a bit of resilience it could have been worse but you're still tough uh yes definitely I think because I was resilient I kind of didn't block it out but I was like hopefully this is going

to get better yeah hopefully hopefully things are going to this is not going to be forever yeah yeah okay and um how did did you rebound from that how did I rebound I think just actually improving celebration box and having building up this database of people that really love the brand um I I had a look on it the other day I think they had like 10 or 15,000 reviews and I know they've done like I think like 100 or 150,000 orders or something aming so I'm like that makes me very proud of the business and I have recovered I recovered from that yeah and that's I I was saying that to a guy yesterday that came in and see us that you just be

so good they can't ignore it like yes you know that's the best way to fix bad publicity right just prove them wrong totally yeah just keep going amazing yeah um so what about Title Here when did that come into play um so that came into play I remember it was when Co happened yeah we were trying to launch the December before the co lockdown on Feb yep and obviously that hled you know hindered hind hindered our progress of launching um so we probably launched properly in as soon as all those lockdowns were over like April or something yeah yeah yeah didn't get much traction until about July uh but we were trying very hard for those first few months so it doesn't matter if it's

a new business I feel like it's still hard to get that traction yeah absolutely and so and it has since obviously and what what did you attribute that to after that lockdown period like how did you get it pushing going yeah I guess always kind of the same strategy an e-commerce base uh and then really focusing on influencer marketing we would do Macro influencers for widespread awareness y uh your micro influencers in Mass for the content creation and also also awareness uh and then we would also run the ugc as advertising as paid ads what else do we do try little bit of Google ads you know just the normal mix um and yeah also tidle got into over 300 retailers and that I think

like a year at the first year to HS of shav shops in Australia um and you know yeah keep going from there amazing and then you also have the agency yes so in that um I also had a marketing agency which I've now sold okay okay yeah yeah yeah uh that is that public too I yeah okay cool Co cool Co yeah I know I saw that in August oh okay okay a little while ago yeah yeah so the agency was this me to be social media digital marketing I only really started it because of people keept asking me if we could do it for them you're doing it so well they wanted you to help so I thought why not yeah also add another

thing to the plate yeah yes um but yeah yeah and so how long had you ran that for uh that would have we only would have picked that up maybe a a year after we okay started title I think only really got into that okay cool so two years am I missing any businesses no that's that's it yeah perfect um so you've had all these you've still got two you still I mean it's on your profile they still the two you run I've just got title oh okay celebration box has gone too Yes sold that as well oh okay okay okay um and that's recent or a while that was uh a little while ago couple years so you're still is it like one of

those I sell out but I've still got to be Associated to it no I or you just keep it on your profil okay Co I was UN sure yes also so right now I'm just launching I've just launched basically a business course it's called make it happen oh perfect so I kind of keep the other businesses up to kind of show that I know what I'm talking about been there I've done that yeah nice and uh so that's live now the course the course yeah we just launched it I think like December like just launched it basically love it is it on the main website it's on my website and my Instagram at the bottom have business course front and I know so this course

I've actually had it for four years but we never really promoted it so I'm like this is now my focus okay so this is where you're heading moving forward yes this is the next steps and why this why why at this stage I mean you're still pretty young you still got lots of other businesses than you I can imagine why coaching now why courses now well I have had this for four years I feel like I like this business model I'm following other people on social that are selling courses and they're selling millions of dollars with a course of the Year from I think the main thing for me is I've just had two young kids I've got got it a 9month old and a

threeyear olds and I want to just be a little more flexible while they're young uh and I think change Pace yeah I'll probably get back into it once they're older yeah yeah exactly and so tell me how's it gone so far where is it at I mean it's so fresh right a month in is that what you just said so the course the course is a bit older but you've been properly pushing for a month prop properly pushing it for yeah a few weeks few weeks few weeks few weeks um we've got 1,200 students from the last four years but uh from now I would just be really focusing on Advertising this okay cool tell me a little bit about this because this is like

this is one of those ones this sort of business model that like lots of creators or lots of people like a this is the easy one to do I person don't think it's the easy one to do but what are your thoughts like like how how do you go about doing something like this and creating something like this a course and selling knowledge like how for you does it think or does it work out sorry for the course itself uh within the course it's basically is explaining my step by step how to start a business grow a business pretty much everything that I've done um for me I think it is a little bit easier because I have so much Social proof from my own

results from the business uh and also a few of my students they've actually gone on to have really successful buses which is cool that's the best promotion totally I know so uh I never actually reached out to them they reached out to me and was like you can use the screenshots of my sales to sell your course because it's done so well um so that's cool but the good thing about the course is that I can just St from home yeah um I don't need a lot of Team don't need huge overheads which was one thing I found frustrating with agency yeah lot of stff a lot of heaps of them yeah I know so um when I was pregnant and on maternity leave that's

I found it difficult to manage uh without me being there physically um do you find it like you know cuz you you started um entrepreneurial Journey pretty early and which means that like you didn't like you learned on the job right 100% learn on the job how did you go about that like leadership journey through that because that's like the hardest thing of business when you start getting stuff as the leadership side of it I was quite fortunate cuz my career came through hotels um and so I got a lot of training with it and so when I started this business like the leaders I found that the leadership side was actually but I loved the most but for a lot of business like entrepreneurs

that's not how they start out they start out just like no I'm really good at doing the thing so for you as you like went through this process like how challenging was that for you to start going finding the right people getting to do what you needed to do and then also like being have to lead those teams like did you find that challenging throughout the period and if so like how did you manage to get through it it definitely is challenging I think when you start to scale particularly with your team yeah uh I've been very lucky with my team I think you can always tell when someone's very hardworking and uh you know just really enjoys the job and I've pretty much mostly

had those types of people in my teams yeah uh and I think also if you are a very good go role model to them in terms of like you also work hard and you put in the hours they see that and they replicate it and you got the same Vibe versus if you didn't do that they like why should they do that yeah exactly yeah and from that perspective like so have did you have any was there any challenging times throughout that leadership process that you know like I mean realistically like you had to teach yourself leadership right like you didn't really have that from anywhere else like were there moments in that time that you found real challenging that like you didn't know how

to get through like especially when the media was doing stuff like how does that all play into that you know other people you're paying their mortgages essentially right yeah I guess I've not really thought about that but yes I guess so I don't I don't know if I'm a great leader I don't actually know yeah yeah yeah um it's a hard question to ask like who can really answer that right like yeah I I don't necessarily think I am the best leader in terms of you know being a leader but I I feel like I'm good at delegating and making sure that everything is working in the in the business um but yeah I'm not sure communication wise if I could say I'm the best

leader so then how do you have the confidence to like as a as a when did you hire you first person 21 okay yeah so as a 21 year before you give away 300K to college you know how do you have that confidence to start hiring people when you've never done that you've never had that ability to learn to be a leader like where did you get that confidence from did you just go I need this thing done so I just get someone like what was the process that went through your head I think it's more like I cannot manage everything and I need somebody to assist me to help me uh and then you've got to make sure that the numbers all work out

and that's that's pretty much it I think just making sure it's going to be a cash flow positive ultimately yeah uh that you can afford to have this person and that they're going to bring value to your team so that you can focus on other growth aspects of your business so for you it was a pretty bit of a no-brainer like this stuff needs to happen we can afford it bring them in into it definitely so the reason I asked that is cuz like I'd say like 80% 90% of people are listening like that's not how they think like I have people all the time I I think the way this is why I thought you thought the same way I do and hence why

there's a team full of people out there CU there's work to do I don't want to do the work High people bring them in I mean I'll do it if I have to but like I'm better doing other things that's that's not my specialty right but like just yesterday we had a CLI and we're trying to help them with like scalability like their content's going really well everything's going good but they're like but I can't like it's just me and I'm like you need to hire people like you need more people like the guy's turning over 800k and on his own and I'm like you need to hire people but he's too scared to do it and he's just like what if this happens what

if that happens what if you know they don't deliver right and I'm like you fix it like you get in you do the thing you work it out and like I think I think something else is that they'll never be you can never expect them to be you you can just like set an example of what you do and hopefully they can do the best to their ability right totally but that's like I I think it's a real interesting point because a lot of like especially creators that I meet they're solos for Life MH and but then they go oh I want to like they'll see people like you or they'll see be doing stuff and they'll be like oh I want to do what

you're doing I'm like you need people like you can't do it on your own you can't even if it's like I think for efficiency you need people and everyone just does what they're good at yeah even like even the course like you say it's pretty lean is it just you well my some of my team members are here today and we work together to I guess you know make sure everything's good they they see things I don't and I see things they don't and it works really well with multiple people and that's what I was thinking right CU I and I knew that so like even something like this where a lot of people think oh I just do a course it be easy I

make an e course and I can just sell it that's not even how works there you even it's better and more efficient if team are around right absolutely you have some people on board definitely um okay well maybe we should probably also address the TV side of things okay so tell me about that Journey how did that like just tell me the whole journey as if I don't know anything about it okay so tell me where it started how do you got into it your feelings about it let's we'll just go deep dive into it so when I was in my very depressed stage because of Celebration box and I thought everybody hated me uh luckily was that the stage of and I did not

know okay okay let's go so luckily the the positive out of that was I actually because I was so popular in the media for all this negative trending negative media I actually got approached by Warner Brothers and they just reached out to me and said hey we'd like to make a TV show we don't really know what about yet but we want you to be in it maybe we can bounce some ideas um so they kind of came to me with a loose IDE idea that it would be business related Y and then we went in there did a couple of I think like not interviews but just chats with the team yeah got a contract and we got a TV series called boss bace

uh which is started off airing on tvnz on demand it was for their on demand platform to push that platform for them but then it also actually got picked up by hey you UK hey you Australia uh yeah which was cool that's amaz yeah that was awesome tell me about that experience like that's a I mean one it's a quite a cool concept to if you're going to do um reality TV um it's quite a cool way to get into it especially kin you're an entrepreneur and I self-identify it that way but like what was that experience like like that's you've just gone from and I didn't realized that was the time that it started you just gone from trending negatively to going you know

what let's double down on this and do more like how did that play out tell me about that like there must have been more to that story like you're now full front and center and all the media everywhere how did it affect the negative stuff and then also did it swap uh swap the positive things uh that definitely helped turn things more positive I think because the show was received really well and people actually ended up liking it and we tried to make it a bit funny uh and I think within that show too you could see my personality that I'm not some evil mean businesswoman that I'm just like a normal person um so I think that that definitely changed it to my publicity

to overall be more positive yeah okay and what was the experience of just like being in the spotlight all the time like how did that you know because that is a bit different from just like social media Spotlight right and get some news articles it's a very different thing to be like here's my my life on TV how did that feel like what was that like to have that happen to you and what was some of the I guess like ramifications from public perception of you like what what changed did anything change or for you was it like it seems like the reaction of your face is going nothing change I'm just a weapon and I just went on doing awesome [ __ ] oh okay which

is cool cuz that can be the story is that what it was like you just like this is just another thing I think I did think this is just another thing this might sound weird but when I was younger I think like 15 or something you know when you manifest things and you're a teenager and you're manifesting your life and I kind of was like oh it would be cool one day to you know be on a TV show or and have house and have this and this and I never actually thought it would happen but when it came to I was like oh you actually thought about this once upon a time and you cannot pass up this opportunity because not everybody gets this

opportunity and I'm not an opportunity passor raer I always take it 100% even if it freaks me out um so that first episode we were so bad yeah so so bad yeah uh it was really a different experience I remember we when we were getting miked up everyone's got their own mic that first episode we were like having some sort of big party yeah and we were just so nervous we just kept making mistakes but you learn from that and then you get better uh and then by the third season it's like oh just put the mic on just here do the thing do the get it done yeah the reason I asked that question those question and I've I've asked you a few times

of these sort of things about like things that I can see that you're just like what do you mean like you just do it it's just part of it cuz I I feel the same way as you like that's how I would approach it if someone's like you want to be on TV I'm like you pain it yep let's [ __ ] do this but um the reason I ask them is I can hear one my partner half my staff like people I know just going but how like but how and that's always the question I get but like but how do you do that but how do you do it it's like I don't know you just do it like I'm going to be on TV

show what do you mean you're going to be on a TV show like yeah and then but always get this but how I think you just commit and you're kind of like stuck like I've already agreed to do this do you know how many people listening are probably getting anxiety just hearing you say that just do it like just just commit and then you'll figure it out but that is true though right it is what it is you just roll the punches yeah I remember like also when I started public speaking in front of like you know hundreds of people I remember the I think it was like the third time I got on stage 700 people at this conference I had had two glasses

of wine to calm my nerves tipped me over I couldn't hear anything qu the um interviewer was asking me on stage luckily it was a panel so I I don't even coming off I was I don't even know what he said the whole time I don't know how I answered no one even tell me cuz I never want to think of you know remember this minute yeah that's so good yeah but then by the end like the 30th you know talk you've done you're so confident so it's really just putting yourself in that zone and and uh you'll get better you'll just get better right you just put on the Reps that's as I always say I I I say the same like cuz I

yeah I've obviously done a lot of speaking gigs and stuff like that you talk to you know hundreds couple thousand people and stuff and like my partner's always like how do you just do that and I was like a like especially the first times I was like I just got up and do it and my best mate from school like we since we're about seven we've known each other he lives in London at the moment he's come back and he hasn't really been back since uh before the pandemic started and he's obviously seen our business grow and all the stuff and me and me starting to put myself out there a lot more and he's like when did this happen like you would never have

done this I was like I only did it cuz I've got a business I've got to bring business into so that's why I did it he's like but you're up on stage talking to all these people like how did you do it I was like oh like I just put one foot in front of the other and walked on stage and then just started speaking about the things that I know but the reason I bring that was like that like I even Lee I can see him nodding his head there going how the [ __ ] because it's not normal and like I I've always struggled to then say to other people my my answer's always been oh just just give it a go just do it

and then I've had plenty of stuff going St you can't just tell me just do it like it's not the answer like you can't just be like just do the thing um so I'm I'm assuming from your perspective it's probably similar like you're not really sure how to tell people any other way but just give it a go yeah just I feel like you just have to learn by doing it and then maybe sucking and then improving yeah how does that feel to like to suck at stuff when you first do like how so you told me like I don't talk to me about this first go but like do you just go yeah it sucked next time I'm going to be better or do

you does that dwell on you for much time yeah I think again because I don't like turning down opportunities if I'm offered it again I'm like well I have to do it again and I need to be better because I don't want to do I don't want to make that same mistake and suck again yeah uh so as a result and as of practice and consistency you just get better yeah have you had to like in that um speaking world let's say um did you end up doing any like formal training for after that or did you just practice practice practice no formal training I feel like I probably should do some formal training yeah uh but no just do more of it right yeah

yes that's kind of why I bring that up because like a lot of people go like they'll message me and they'll say is there any courses I can do to do this and stuff and I'm like I mean there's Toast Masters like I mean I've done some Toast Masters more from a networking perspective than anything but there is no um substitute from just giving [ __ ] a go right just just being out there doing it yeah and I feel like also um sometimes watching other you know other things and then learning from them and going oh they inted with this or they did this how can I learn from that yeah is a great way to learn yeah absolutely um okay so now we're at course

stage of career and life um what what do you see this doing like is this like a buy your time or is this like a big thing you're going to scale like how do you what do you see this business becoming or doing uh I feel like like the course itself so people buy the course but then I don't have a like a repeat thing so I thought of things like subscription um and also doing things like workshops or more events there are diff there's always ways to expand but also I'm like the reason I did this is for the flexibility of me being able to work at home no overheads no staff while I um have these young kids so for me I don't

know I might do this for a little bit and when I have the opportunity to I might you know do things that are more extensive or yeah a little bit more okay yeah um what like without giving away any your secrets for the future have you got any ideas of like businesses you really want to go tackle afterwards like when you've got a bit more time have you got some things up your sleeve or you don't want to share uh no I'm happy to share because sometimes people are like to me oh they want to keep it so secret I'm like do you know how many people are in the world how many consumers are in the world you're not going to you know every

business can make money yeah exactly yeah yeah the same way I think yeah I know yeah how many agencies out there in the world why would you start an agency yeah yeah and people always like oh you're entering this saturated Market but I'm like I know how to do good marketing so I'm going to beat everyone else exactly yeah um yes so I now that I've had kids I have realized that people will spend money on kids stuff even if they have very limited disposable income because I've had to keep buying stuff for the babies and the kids even when I you know I'm trying not to spend money yep yep uh so kids people still get married you know even when there's a recession

that's still happen I know and then also things like rental like maybe like event uh higher rental or any rental I don't know just I'm like just lots of ideas just lots of ideas to be honest you can make any business work uh as long as you I don't know as long wellow as long as you find a way to beat the like well at least carve your part of the market out right yeah carve your part out it was the same with us like I knew when we started this business that I was never going to be able to take on social media management agencies I was never going to be able to do Performance Marketing because I couldn't be bother looking at data

um but what I did know at the beginning is I knew LinkedIn really well and I'd used it in hotels and I realized that very little people were actually building brands on LinkedIn like it just wasn't happening but I realized like how much money we making in hotel by doing it like the EAS that I talked about I I buil all those relationships through Linkedin with them as a hotel GM and I mean they would spend Millions with us in the hotel every year and so that was like I'm not going to be able to beat all the agencies I'm not going to be able to do that but there's like this little bit of things that the only um people serving the market were

like the LinkedIn lead generation gurus like going hey do you want us to get your inbox full of leads so I was like how do I do this differently what did I do to do it mine was to build my own brand on LinkedIn and then that's where it was so it's the same thing right it's like how many courses are there out there but what can your which Niche can your course fit in and what's your why would people trust your brand over others right definitely um okay so you got a few ideas few things in the pipeline but for now it's about like take it take a kick back raise the kids do that thing um how do you see that playing out

like with kids like CU how that's obviously your life's obvious changed like you've gone from this highflying business entrepreneur woman to like still that but with kids on the scene how's life change now what what's different outside of the obvious obviously but what what's different for you personally how do you feel and change what what did kids do to you uh I'm absolutely exhausted so that's the number one um but also I've had to turn down things like last year I think I turned down a couple of things I was offered to uh to be flown to Aussie twice one for a speaking gig with like the Culture Kings founder and like all these I was like no I don't want to I don't want

to like pass that up but I also have a young baby so yeah I have to yeah um and then yeah also there was someone offered me an opportunity in Australia while I was very nauseous um during pregnancy so I'm just going to pass on that um so that's it's annoying you have to you have to give things up yeah uh I think if you had help maybe from your partner and if they didn't have a very full-on role it might be different but my partner also has a full-on role so I've had to just uh you know cut my amount of work yeah and even now you know previously I I might be working you know 12 hours a day for fun because I'm

like what else have I got to do uh but now I can't do that so I'm lucky if I can get in seven hours a day and then sometimes maybe have a couple hours when they're asleep at night yeah yeah yeah so that that is also frustrating that is the funniest thing I can only get in 7 hours a day plus maybe another one or two that's like I can only do one full-time job not two I love that that's I mean that's me I laugh because that's me but like that is still hilarious a I feel like when you love it it's it really isn't work it's like it's actually kind of fun yeah it's not and then people just don't don't get that

right yeah did you have that a lot in life like people go and slow down like you're 24 like be young like did you have that sort of like from friends and family going mate you're trying too much uh I've definitely had people say you've done in a short amount of period what people are doing their lifetime I've had people say that to me uh but I don't know why I just love doing so many things yeah so you've just you've just like you haven't had a lot of people like so I I'll give you an example like I've got a I always have coning people going you work too much you need to take a break and I'm like if I take a break

all that's going to happen is I'm going to think up 10 new business ideas and want to start them right so like actually it's probably more healthy for me to just stick to this one and do one really well um because I just have too many in my head and I want to do too much but you don't get a lot of people like saying hey you're going to burn out if you keep going like this so you going to stop did you ever get much people or everyone's just kind of like look at this Wonder Woman doing all the things she's doing um I think they just they do let me just do it but there I've definitely been burnt out in multiple points

of my career yeah I think that's sometimes the Tipping Point for why I want to sell a business okay okay got it and then I sell it okay let's do this again yeah yeah yeah how like so tell me about those points like like when you when you burn out what does that mean to you like what do burn out for you uh I cuz it's slightly different for everyone because everyone experiences things their own way so for you like at those moments what did it look like I think it's just like when it's overwhelming and you're not excited to be working on your business all the time uh you kind of know like this is probably a little bit too much yeah yeah yeah

I think that's a really interesting point you're not excited yeah yeah CL CLA my partner always says that like if I ever if a hint of like thinking I'm bored or not excited by it she's like oh [ __ ] he's going to burn it down he's going to sit it on fire you know like cuz um throughout my career in hotels that's kind of what it was like I had 12 jobs in 11 years because I'd like do it fix the hotel cuz that was my job in hotels is like stand go in this hotel's [ __ ] go fix it and then I'd fix it and i' be like okay board now and then I do dumb [ __ ] and then my bosses would be like okay we

need to move you you're about to you're about to do some really dumb [ __ ] in this place we need to put you to the next challenge um so yeah I've uh I think that's a real interesting point for entrepreneurs type people that they should know about because I don't think I knew that a few years ago I think CLA was the one who had to point it out to me to be like it's when you get bored and you're not excited that you start doing dumb stuff and you're actually even more exhausted and tired because you're like trying to get up every morning to do something and then you take it out in other ways totally yeah Lose Your Love lose for it yeah I'm

I'm lucky of this business like I've been really lucky that the business has naturally evolved a lot um as we've grown and done new things and done more exciting stuff I mean my staff for listening to touch what I'm not bored yet guys I'm not going to burn it down um but what I what I like about this business and where we're at now is like um it's going to be it's it's a machine now that when I and I am at this stage which I'm nowhere near actually but if I am at the stage of like I need to do something new I've got the machine to push it through kind of like yours was the opposite you could do the thing but then

you build the agency because You' done it mine's more like I've got the agency now I've got the platform to do the other things that we might need to do um so interesting that's cool okay well look we're like 40 50 minutes in now 50 minutes in so what I wanted to go into is like a few little things I I wanted to ask you some questions like in New Zealand of all places in the world with businesses what do you think what's like top three top one top three mistakes you see businesses doing right now mistakes uh I think the first one is when they are not utilizing social media Avenues and digital marketing Avenues within their business where they just don't want to

do it because maybe they don't understand I'm like you were missing out on the platform that people are on every single day yeah yeah massive that's huge yeah especially in New Zealand yeah it's just like that I was like ah I'm fine I Know Jack down the road he'll be my client I know sometimes like when we had the agency I would have meetings with businesses and I'd tell them the benefits of everything they'd be like I don't want to do it yeah why did you come to me why did you why we speaking Yeah so no so not enough leveraging the tools that social media and digital marketing allow us to do and scale with yeah what else yeah um what why what are

the things people aren't doing that they should be learning from this course like why what are those mistakes all things they're not doing well that's definitely one of them I think the the main thing with business is marketing if you could have a okay product and as long as you can Market it really really well you're going to beat the next person yeah uh it's not even necessarily about having a better product it's just like how can I communicate that this product is good is great yeah um so yeah marketing yeah it's huge yeah not putting enough budget to marketing maybe yeah and where are you uh like from a split of brand versus performance like how do you sort of see that argument um

do you put like do you have a split in budget or do you uh have I'm only doing brand or only doing performance like what's your split there how do you look at it what do you mean performance oh so like any AD based stuff any paid media based stuff versus organic content push organ I always say do organic for trust building and social proof uh and then always supplement it with paid ads because paid ads is Les less labor intensive so you could you know scale up so much faster um but I think they work hand in hand I don't think if if you just run paid ads people don't trust your paid ads if you just do influencers it takes way too much

labor so do you have a like a sort of like if if I was a business and I sort of wanted a rough guideline of like percentage split of my marketing spin what would you say percentage to paid things and organic stuff I would probably would put more into oh I don't know let's say it's an e-commerce let's say it's e-commerce it's probably very different to a service based business as well so yeah an e-commerce style fmcg product I previously I probably would have said split but I feel like paid it's been funny in the last couple of years with all of the changes um so I probably still say half yeah and then scale up based on what's working I always tell people like

do not set a budget because your budget is going to limit you if something's working just push it up put more money on it yeah put money into it it was that old thing of like does this give you a 3 to1 return like oh yeah but nah I just I don't want to put any more into I know that's your budget I'm like no that's limiting you in hotels we I found it real funny so like you would get these numbers from digital marketing agencies and as GM like there's only so much you can do as a GM you got to go to the owner and be like hey I need more budget for this but I'd say like I'm literally printing your money

right now like give me more money to give me 100 Grand like you'll get 300 back yes you know whatever it might be um but they don't get it and don't do it um tell me in your thoughts like if you think about social and uh just Marketing in general what do you think is the biggest opportunity coming for people 2024 what what should people be really looking at focusing on focusing on uh well your organic content strategy having really value based content stuff that's likely to Trend so you think like what are people going to send to their friends what are people going to save any content like that yeah uh obviously your influencer marketing is just going to keep going always do the

influencers we do macro influencers and then try do Mass micros so we'll contact like 100 micro influencers to try cool give product out to like every you know every day every couple of days um and then your paid advertising always you just need it always on in the background just have to yeah yeah and do you look at that as like that's the conversion piece the paid stuff or just part of the puzzle part of the puzzle uh they all work hand in hand yeah yeah of course um anything else you want to say anything else you want to push that I haven't brought up no I think I have girls in business oh girls in business there we go see this is why you

bring your team because they keep you on track I for tell me about girls in business forgot about one of the businesses okay girls in business is I guess we we've got a group of like 50,000 women in austral Asia and we put on a conference every year yeah sometimes twice a year really fun this year the conference is for 700 people really cool lineup T will come out soon so yeah see you the event is in August in August cool what date do you know have you got a date yet 31st 31st Vu vent Center August 31st BYU Vin Center this is why we bring our team this is why we got teams this is why you and I need teams yeah I'm the

same don't you worry details are not my thing I'll just turn up and make it awesome yeah okay um why should people come with day you haven't seen it before it's a really fun day so every year we have a lineup of businesswomen or people that are just good at what they good at what they do uh come and get inspired you meet he of people so you're going to meet 700 other people this year it's just fun is it for business owners only like who's the demographic that you want there uh you could be a business owner but you could just want to learn more about marketing could just want to be inspired or just for the networking aspect cool so it's anyone is

just interested in that world of business marketing things like that their career career yes awesome all right anything else that she's missed are you sure yeah let's make sure we got it awesome thank you so much for coming on it was really great to speak to you and meet you properly and uh we'll see you next time thank you very fun awesome see you