Jen Donovan: As a rural person myself, all my life, I get a little bit tired about how the media only really talks about rural Australia. When there's a bushfire, when there's a drought, when there's a mouse plague. You know, there's so much talent out here. It just grew so quickly and it grew because Nathan hopped in there and then Nathan invited all his friends and then his friends invited their friends and their friends invited their friends. Like it was basically the community aspect of it. We want to be a household name. Nathan. Basically everyone knows who Amazon is. I want everyone to know who Spend with Us is welcome to Add to
[Voiceover]: Cart, Australia's leading e commerce podcast that express delivers all you need to know in the fast moving world of online retail. Every week, Nathan Bush from E Suite and an e commerce industry expert will share the news, research and insights that you need to know to keep you at the top of your game. And of course, keep your customers adding to cartoon.
Nathan Bush: Hello and welcome to Add to Cart. My name is Nathan Bush, host of Add to Cart and director at E commerce talent agency E Suite. Now, just over a quarter of Aussies live in a rural area, but it's what's going on in our cities that is often talked about. Until that is something goes wrong, our bush and we hear about the devastating effects events like fires and droughts can have. My guests today are on a mission to readdress this balance and lift up small businesses in rural communities. Jen and Sarah are co founders of Spend with Us. It's an online shopping marketplace and directory for rural and regional small businesses of Australia who may have taken a hit from bushfires, drought and coronavirus. What a combo. Sarah is a web designer and she's built a website to help bush businesses and as they struggled with adversity. Meanwhile, Jen, with her marketing background was growing a community with her Facebook group called Buy from a Bush Business. They both joined forces and Spend with Us was born. The marketplace showcases a rich crop of talents that operate in the bush with over a thousand businesses listed selling everything from fashion to art to food to drink. You can even book accommodation. In this chat, Jen and Sarah share how they keep on top of both sets of ux, both from their sellers and their customers. They also give us the ingredients that go into a super successful Facebook group. We're talking 340,000 people and how all they want is to be as much of a household name as Amazon. It's a little ambitious goal.
Nathan Bush: I like it.
Nathan Bush: All right, so thanks to our partners Shopify plus and Signet here's our conversation with Jen Donovan and Sarah Britz from Spend with us.
Nathan Bush: Jen and Sarah, welcome to add to Cart.
Jen Donovan: Thank you. This is exciting.
Nathan Bush: It is exciting. Jen, I'm a bit envious of your podcast setup. You are running three podcasts at the moment. I'm running one. How do you do it?
Jen Donovan: I'm a bit insane, I think, to be totally honest with you, Nathan. Look, two of them are seasonal. One is twice a week. So really there's not three every week. There's just really one every week. And the other two are seasonal. So, yeah, works well. I get to talk to the most amazing people just like you do.
Nathan Bush: Isn't it great? I love it. I love it for that reason. I started this up when I took a long contract when I was consulting and I was like, what's the best way to stay in touch with the best people in e commerce? I was like, start a podcast. You get to speak to new people every week. It's fantastic.
Jen Donovan: Yeah, it's brilliant. Well done.
Nathan Bush: All right, guys, we are here to
Nathan Bush: talk about spend with us.
Nathan Bush: Can you give us the background on
Nathan Bush: what you've created and how you came up with the idea?
Sarah Britz: So I came up with the idea back in January 2020 when the bushfires were happening. I realized that there was a real need for these small businesses in these bushfire affected towns to be able to get online and sell their products when people couldn't get to them because roads were closed and they had to shut up shop. So some of that started out just as a market, online marketplace where these small businesses from these bushfire affected towns could go online really easily because none of them had very good technical experience. And they could create a website store within five minutes, sell their products, and, you know, people from across Australia could find their products and their business and support them. And then it's grown since then. I connected with a psychologist, Lauren Hateley, when bushfires were on because she was supporting a lot of Victorian small businesses at the time. And then we connected with Jen, who had started the Biofish business Facebook group. And we now support over, I think 1200 small businesses on our marketplace and businesses from all over regional Australia. And the Facebook group's got 340,000 members plus in it. So, yeah, you said that quick.
Jen Donovan: 340,000 members.
Nathan Bush: Just brush over that little fact
Nathan Bush: now, obviously, the bushfires, they feel like such a long time ago. We've been through a few things since
Nathan Bush: then, but what's changed for you guys
Nathan Bush: since then has the purpose and the mission stayed the same since starting it up in response to the bushfires.
Jen Donovan: Yeah, it really has. And I guess, you know, wind the clock back just a little bit, like, buy from a bush business came out of a drought. I'm a farmer's wife or a farmer. We knew what drought looked like and it was the same sort of principle as Sarah wanted to support people. But, you know, you look at the crops now and it's a little bit hard to believe that two Christmases ago we were so drought stricken. But it has. Our principles have stayed the same. Who we want to support stays the same. At the end of the day, I guess, you know, as a rural person myself, all my life, I get a little bit tired about how the media only really talks about rural Australia when there's a bushfire, when there's a drought, when there's a mouse plague, you know, and it's just like, there's so much talent out here.
Sarah Britz: There's so much.
Jen Donovan: So many amazing small business owners that just weren't getting the recognition, couldn't get the traction online. So that's kind of our mission and has always been our mission. And. And it has. We've had a lot of. Not a lot. We have had pushback, Nathan, from people going, but all small businesses are hurting because of the C word. And, you know, why can't you open it up to everybody? But it's like, well, we would love to, but we can't. These are our philosophies, these are our business values. So we've stuck to them. But at times, Sarah and I have had that conversation of, can we. Could we start another thing that, you know, was like, no, no, we can't. No, simply because we are two of us and there we both have separate businesses. This is our side hustle that's taken over our life type of thing. But, yeah, we have really tried to stay in that rural and regional people that live there, live and business there.
Nathan Bush: Literally talking to someone this morning, a founder who started a side hustle and now has three businesses that has gone from side hustles to three businesses and taken over their life. It's funny how they do that.
Sarah Britz: Yeah, yeah.
Jen Donovan: Side hustles are the.
Nathan Bush: That's right, exactly.
Nathan Bush: So can you tell us, Sarah, from
Nathan Bush: your point of view, have you always had that connection to the bush as well or to rural, rural Australia?
Sarah Britz: Yeah, absolutely. Like, I live on a rural property on the central coast in New South Wales, so when the bushfires were happening, it was happening all around me as well. So that's what made me want to do something to give back and try and help. Small businesses I saw were really suffering at the time.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: And Jen, you mentioned there that you are staying true to the rural Australia purpose. What qualifies someone as rural Australia? How do you put the boundaries around it?
Jen Donovan: Yeah, look, the boundaries are really hard to put around it and it's something we have struggled with. I struggled with when I started the Facebook group when we joined together to become the business we are today. It's kind of something we have been struggling with but we've come up with, you know, you have to be somewhere that's under 100,000 in population. You've got to have under 20 employees because that's what the law classifies as a small business. Then there is the exceptions of people who have been drought affected. So you know, some of the bigger towns around New South Wales and Queensland were, you know, stricken by drought. So we've kind of, you know, bent the rules a little bit for them. And 50 kilometers away from a city and it's not a CBD because these cities are very big these days and rather sprawled. So 50Ks away from basically from being able to access the things that rural people can't.
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Nathan Bush: So if we're talking about e commerce in particular for regional Australian businesses, you mentioned some of the technical limitations that you've come up against. What are some of the other differentiators for rural or regional businesses trying to go online versus more metro?
Jen Donovan: Yeah, because we don't deal with metro businesses. I don't think we know the exact answer to this, but what Sarah and I both found me, you know, starting a Facebook group dealing with drought affected businesses. Sarah, you know, starting an online marketplace for bushfire affected businesses is these people weren't online. At the end of the day, a lot of rural businesses weren't online. They were really still relying on that foot traffic and especially the tourism traffic as well. Some of the most successful businesses I still know now in my small town still aren't online. They are still a pure bricks and mortar business. They use social media, but not actually an e commerce store. So that was probably the biggest thing we've come up against is how to make it simple, which is Sarah's point. Sarah's the tech girl, so I'll let her continue. But it is about how can we make this simple for people to get online.
Sarah Britz: Yeah, I think, you know, just helping them to understand and to adapt to online selling, you know, it's such a big new thing for them and, you know. Yeah, they have no clue. Most of them, you know, just. Just have no idea. So, you know, I think that was one of the biggest challenges as well of starting this marketplace. The support that we had to give to a lot of these sellers and we still are giving, you know, to help them set up their stores properly and to help them, you know, get online sales.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, it's interesting because pretty much all the information that you need to set up an online store can be accessed online, which should be available to everyone.
Nathan Bush: Is it because there has been a
Nathan Bush: reliance on community and a sense of loyalty in the community from a physical sense that there's never been this rush to go online?
Jen Donovan: Yeah, I think so, yeah. Yeah. And also the demographics of who owns stores in the bush, you know, there isn't. Well, they certainly, in my towns that I look at now, there's a very small percentage of people who were born in technology, as opposed to people of our generation that had technology happen to them. So it's whether or not they've been forthcoming in learning that sort of thing. But it's. Yeah, it's kind of. They've opened their doors. They know how to work a bricks and mortar store. But, you know, one of the biggest challenges we find come up against is searching. So having people understand how people use search boxes or Google searches or searches on our actual platform. You know, if you put a product up and it says platypus. Well, unless someone searches the word platypus, you're not going to come up. So what is it that. That visual thing of, you know, if they were in a store, they could pick it up, but they can't. So explain to me what the picture is. Pretend the picture's not there. Like that sort of real granular. This is how you need to be found online.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that makes sense. A lot of things we just take for granted. Right. Can you give us a bit of an insight into some of your retailers? Obviously you can't play favorites, but to give our listeners an idea of the types of products and sellers that you'll find on the Spend with Us page. Who are some of the retailers and products that have stood out for you so far?
Sarah Britz: That's a really hard one. There's so many. There's so many unique and different products that I've never come across before as well. A lot of our sellers have diversified their product ranges as well due to the droughts and coronavirus. One of them that stands out for me is, I think, Amy. She runs a business called Ann Paperarts and she has an alpaca farm. And during the drought she was doing well before the draft she used to do paper making and then she couldn't do that based on the drought just stops every day. So she diversified and she now has this whole range of products made from the alpaca fiber from the alpacas on her farm. She makes alpaca flowers and alpaca felt in soaps. Just these most amazing, beautiful products.
Nathan Bush: That's very cool.
Jen Donovan: Yeah, she is so cool. I love her business. I guess one of the things we wanted to probably highlight of what our platform isn't, and it isn't an Australian made platform, we are supporting rural and regional businesses despite the fact that they may not make their products, they might buy them from somewhere else just like a normal retailer does. Because I guess for me, if I look at my local town, if I took out every business that didn't make their own products, I've got a ghost town. So it was a really important value of ours to go. We want to support all rural and regional small businesses who fit our criteria, not just the ones that hand make. There's certainly some amazing soap makers and amazing jewelry makers. You know, I love Robin Dale creation. She farms. Is that the right word? Mines. Mines the opal and then creates jewelry out of the opal. Like I just think she's got such an amazing story. But there's also some really cool people who, you know, do great hampers and things like that as well. So they don't make all of those products, but they certainly collect from their rural area and you know, create hampers that, you know, highlight the entire area that they do and.
Nathan Bush: Nice. And have you found out anything about your shoppers that is interesting in terms of any different shopping behavior that you notice on the Spend With Us platform? Like is there a more focus on buying from local retailers or going towards different product categories that's really surprised you?
Sarah Britz: No, not really. I don't think I've noticed anything like that. I think, you know, we get sales from all different types of Products and we have people purchasing from all over Australia and yeah, people that want to support small, want to shop with these small businesses that have gone through, you know, being impacted by different events. So yeah, one of the really cool
Jen Donovan: things that I think that our shoppers love and we see often is our site wide gift cards. So you can buy a gift card for like $50 but you can spend it in any store, just like going to Amazon or something like that. You're sort of only checking out once. You can buy, buy from anyone that you want. So it's just not. You buy a gift vouch from this person, you have to spend it with that person. So we've had some great corporates come on board and do that as gifts for their staff or for their customers and clients and things like that. But that, that's interesting to watch. How many people kind of think, oh, I could buy a gift voucher just for this store or I could buy a gift voucher for the whole platform and then my recipient gets to choose. So that's been one of the good things that I think that we've done is, you know, allow that to happen or invent that I guess because the whole thing's been invented as we've gone along, as we've learned what people want.
Nathan Bush: It's a great idea. And one of the things that I love too, and it's similar to what we had welcome to country on a couple of months ago, is that it's not just physical products, but you're also selling experiences in there as well.
Sarah Britz: Yeah, yeah, there's experiences and accommodation activities. We even have like a pay it Forward section on the website where people can purchase vouchers that then get passed on to locals that are in need in those areas.
Nathan Bush: So yeah, I love the pay Forward concept. Can you tell our listeners a little bit more around how you came up with that and how it works?
Sarah Britz: So yeah, I came up with it. That was one of the first things that we started when the bushfires were on and when the marketplace first launched because a lot of the small businesses at the time, they couldn't afford to pay their staff, they couldn't afford to pay rent, all sorts of different things. So they needed to have a way where they could get some virtual donations, I guess. So a lot of them at the time, they did things like you could buy a virtual coffee or a virtual meal, or you could pay for a virtual staff's wages as well, things like that. And then we had other businesses that came on and you were selling Vouchers that people could purchase could then be passed on to locals to use for things like tires or other essential items in the Chicago stricken areas. So, yeah, it's basically just an expression of an act of kindness that people can do if they're looking for a nice gift or a way to support a small business community.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, nice.
Nathan Bush: And what I really like about the way that you've put it up on the website is that it's obviously the product that you can buy, but you connect it into the retailer and also the community it's going into.
Sarah Britz: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I know, you know, so many of the small businesses that utilize the pay it forward section, you know, we're really grateful and it's made a big difference in a lot of those communities.
Jen Donovan: And as a marketer, of course, storytelling is just so important to really engage that person, to sort of get them to know a little bit about the business, maybe a little bit of about the town, how business started, how important their donation is, or just buying the product. That's a really important part of what we're trying to build because, yeah, we have a marketplace and yes, we want people to come and buy from the marketplace, but we want to build a community as well. So that's really important. Part of that community building is that storytelling.
Nathan Bush: And I can imagine there's a bunch of education that you need to do not only on the technology side, but also in the storytelling side when selling online that you can't do in person that a lot of your retailers would be used to. You're both consultants in the digital and marketing space. What tips do you give to your retailers to present their story and their products in the best light online?
Jen Donovan: I guess from a marketing point of view, it's showing your face. There are so many small business owners that hide behind their products, that hide behind their logos. So for me, it's kind of like let's, you know, start showing up, show your face. Whether it's on our platform or on social media, really give people that opportunity to know like, and trust someone.
Sarah Britz: Yeah, I'd say the same. And you know, to make it personal and tell the story and also use keywords within your product listings and your store descriptions that people are searching for so people can actually find your products and know what your business is all about.
Jen Donovan: Because there's been a real change of what we've seen since we started this. But also, you know, as both rural people, there's been a real change of how people want to support small businesses and small, rural Businesses and that storytelling, you know, can really pull at the heartstrings to get the sale, I guess, and to let people into that community as such. But we've seen a real, like they no longer just want to donate to a charity. They now know that if they spend with the actual person, it actually goes to them. They don't have to wait for a charity to make a distribution of all the money that they've raised or something like that. So I really feel that Australia has shifted its values that way.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that's right. People want to feel good when they're buying it. It's not just about the product that they receive. There's an interesting one that you brought up around faces. I had a client that we were working with last week actually, and they're a motorbike client and they sell a lot of helmets, motorcycle gear, motorbikes, the whole lot online. But the challenge for them is that everyone that was featured on the website had a big motorcycle helmet over their face. So you literally could go through the website and not see one pair of eyes coming back to you. And it makes such a difference. Like it sounds like a silly thing to go, you need to have eyes on your website. But people actually do make a real connection to that face. Connection.
Jen Donovan: Yeah, absolutely. You can have some fun with that. I could think of some really cool videos to do with that.
Nathan Bush: It's not as fun when you ask people to ride around without motorcycle helmets. It doesn't translate well.
Jen Donovan: No, don't do that.
Nathan Bush: Now, Sarah, I'd love to hear from you from a technical perspective. What was your approach when setting up the foundations of this market?
Sarah Britz: So as I'm a web designer and developer by trade, when I decided to make it, it took me about seven days, I think, day and night basically to try and get this marketplace up. The first version of it. I knew that something needs to be up quickly because these small businesses that were contacting me needed online space really fast. So, yeah, the first version of the marketplace was. And so on, but it worked. And we've just been working on introducing new features and we've got so many more things to bring to it in the coming days and weeks.
Nathan Bush: And did you develop it from scratch or did you buy technology off the shelf and start integration?
Sarah Britz: So I developed it from scratch, but I did use a multi vendor marketplace software as my backend to build around. Because developing that completely from scratch would have taken more than seven days. Yeah, but it was my first time building a multi vendor marketplace. Like I've got A lot of e commerce sites before, but building a multi vendor was a bit different. And you know, even now I'm still learning lots of new tricks on how everything works and how it should work and what we do. Yeah, right.
Jen Donovan: And of course the more we earn, like the more members we get on, the more we can invest in these sorts of things. Like we have a wish list, list of things that we would like to do with the marketplace that we just have to, you know, I guess as volunteers for this somewhat when it first started we needed to wait till there was a little bit of income, then reinvest a little bit more. Reinvest. So our chat group is often filled up with, you know, colorful language of things that isn't quite working the way we want it to do. And how are we going to hack that?
Nathan Bush: What, what have been some of the biggest learnings from a technical or UX perspective so far?
Sarah Britz: I guess lots of different things we didn't realize. There's lots of different options for shipping, trying to get that set up and to make it easy for sellers to use as well. And I think shipping is one of the things, it's a huge challenge. Just lots of different things that once the site's out there that we want to do to make things easier for searches for sellers to be able to promote their products as well. So yeah, it's just been, it's a constant learning curve.
Nathan Bush: I could imagine that the UX would be very tricky because you're kind of dealing with two different UX mindsets. You've got the UX of the customer who's shopping the site, but probably more importantly is the UX of the retailer who's using online for the first time. Trying to upload and manage a store.
Sarah Britz: Yeah, no, absolutely. And trying to. We've created a lot of instruction guides, so it's hopefully easy. And we have a store wizard that as soon as they get online and register for their store, they go through the store wizard that helps them to set up their logo, create their store descriptions and everything. But yeah, adding the products and doing the settings for tax, for shipping, for all those kind of things. It's a big learning curve for a lot of them to learn how to do it and how to set it up properly.
Jen Donovan: Yeah, like one of the little issues we come up against a couple of months ago that we kind of discovered was that people could put products on the site and not have their shipping set up. So from a UX point of view, someone could come. I really like that, you know Fluffy teddy bear put it in their cart and all of a sudden they couldn't check out because the person hadn't set their shipping. So there was like a matter of Sarah introducing some code to say you can't have your store live until you've set up your shipping and then going back and finding out all the people that hadn't got shipping and contacting them and then archiving their products or fix it. Like there's those things that until they happen, you know, being two people that haven't really done this before, we don't know until we know type of thing. And then it's a matter of, okay, how can we fix that? And at the moment, you know, we're trying to write some code or we. There's no such word as we. Sarah. Sarah is trying to, you know, they're doing an integration so that we can integrate with other e commerce platforms so that the user only has one inventory then that they have to manage rather than managing it with us and managing it with them.
Sarah Britz: And.
Jen Donovan: And you know, for me it's just like, why is this taking so long? Like, seriously. But you know, I'm no coder, so you know, it'll happen.
Nathan Bush: And Sarah, with there's obviously platforms out there like Marketplace and there's Shopify apps and that can do forms of marketplaces. Was there a reason that you went down the custom coding path?
Sarah Britz: I'm a WordPress designer and developer. That's what I. And that's what my specialty is. And so I'm, I know how to change things, how to fix things using WordPress. So that was what I wanted to say with. And I wanted to have control over the different functionalities and features that I knew would be useful for our vendors and customers. So by staying with WooCommerce and WordPress, you know, that was, that was my aim.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. And obviously trying to do it as leanly as possible at the start to build up the profile and it'll turn into an asset for you that can differentiate you as well, right?
Sarah Britz: Hopefully, yes.
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Nathan Bush: Now the pricing model for this I was a little surprised by. So as a retailer the top tier listing is very accessible. You've made this very, from a financial perspective, easy for regional businesses to get on board. $250 a year with no transaction fees as the top tier seems like a pretty good deal to me. How did you land on that price point?
Sarah Britz: I guess we wanted to make it affordable for smaller micro businesses to get online and to have a store that can bring in traffic and sales. And that was probably one of the reasons that we have kept our prices low compared to other, other platforms. The whole reason we started this platform and community was to help and support small businesses that were going through difficult times. So we didn't want to out price those. Jen, have you got.
Jen Donovan: I think you've hit the nail on the head. It was really like if we want to really stick to our values of why we started this, then yes, it needs to start generating some income. A, so eventually Sarah and I can take a wage from it. But B, because we need to reinvest in these things because you know, there are things that we want to do and I guess we're bootstrapping it as much as we possibly can. But it needs to sort of become a self sustaining model and a profitable model of course. So we didn't want to out price ourselves in the marketplace where it wasn't accessible to that micro small business owner that we know so many of because we live out here in, you know, in the country.
Nathan Bush: Yep.
Nathan Bush: And it's probably not going to be the only cost for them. Right. If they're going online for the first time, there's probably product photography, content, the whole lot that will go in behind it as well.
Jen Donovan: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you know, hopefully as our platform grows then, you know, I guess, you know, we know how many we want and you know, when we worked out the equation of okay, so at 247, how many do we need? At 147, how many do we need, you know, to reach the financial goals that we've set for the business. So we were comfortable with that. And yeah, it's nice to hear a different opinion from someone who perhaps, you know, is looking at it for the first time as to its accessibility, because I guess that's exactly the reason why we made it what we made it.
Nathan Bush: Do you get feedback that it is
Sarah Britz: too expensive for some of our sellers?
Jen Donovan: Yeah, but there's a lot of, a
Sarah Britz: lot of people, I guess you kind of expect a lot of things for free these days. You know, there's a whole premium mindset. But, you know, most of our sellers really feel that they're getting so much value from what we're getting. So we've had lots of sellers because we do have a free plan as well. So a lot of them, you know, we have people that sign up on the free plan and then within, within a month or so, you know, they've upgraded to the premium plan because you see the benefits.
Jen Donovan: And we did. And that's probably why, you know, in July this year we introduced our monthly plans. So they can pay $20 a month or $30 a month because 247 might be a lot for someone to pull out straight away, but they feel that $20 a month, which at the end is going to cost them more money or $30 a month. But they feel that, that that's how they can, you know, better off with their budgets and their cash flow. So, you know, we are listening to our audience. We are trying to do what's right for them, but also, you know, suit the financial model that we need to make, you know, this marketplace continue to grow.
Nathan Bush: That makes total sense. And talking about listening to your audience, you've got the. Was it 360,000 Facebook group?
Jen Donovan: Ah, 340.
Sarah Britz: Come on.
Nathan Bush: Well, in my notes here, I've got 300. So you've already taken up 40,000. Did the Facebook group come before the marketplace?
Jen Donovan: It did, it did. So I started that in October 2019. So basically buy from the bush was a trending hashtag at the time. But what I knew of my clients being a social media and marketing person in rural Australia is that no one really knew Instagram and didn't really understand what hashtag was or how to use it or how to get traction from it. So the thought just sort of come to me of, well, everyone knows how to use Facebook and a Facebook group. So that's how that came about. So it was a couple of months, I guess, you know, that was pre Christmas and what Sarah did was just after Christmas, of course, as the bushfires really raged.
Nathan Bush: Great. We recently had Bryony from Adorned Beauty and they've got, they've had great success with private Facebook group as well. They're at 5,000, but they've got some really like passionate people in there around their beauty brand. And she gave the recommendation that it is one of their best marketing tools in getting to know their customers. What have you found out about your customers through those groups? Through that group, Sorry.
Jen Donovan: That they need things to be easy. That they, you know, both from our customer's point of view and their customers point of view. Also that people are starting to distrust is the really bad word. I don't know what word I need to use here, but this whole DM me just isn't flying anymore. People want to secure checkout, so people want to be able to click to a website or a marketplace like ours, check out where it says, you know, this is secure and you know, do their transactions that way. Rather than that more Facebook marketplace where it's, you know, you DM the person and do the transaction and you know, hand over the cash or, you know, do it or something like that. So we're finding that that's a real trend. So people want it to be easy, but they also want it to be secure.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Nice. I love your tips. How do you grow a Facebook group to that level? Like how much input do you need and how much fuel do you need to put on the fire to get that group really communicating?
Jen Donovan: Well, look, I have a couple of Facebook groups and this is the exception, not the rule. I have to say that the timing of this particular Facebook group was perfect. People were really hurting. People really wanted to support the people who were hurting. And you know, I remember, you know, the days where it was like 5,000 members. Woohoo. 10,000 members. We're awesome.
Nathan Bush: 100,000 members.
Jen Donovan: Okay. You know, it just grew so quickly. And it grew because Nathan hopped in there and then Nathan invited all his friends and then his friends invited their friends and their friends invited their friends. Like it was basically the community aspect of it. And because we've always being quite harsh in that it's a safe space. So we're really quite harsh on people who get in there and do nasty comments or try and tear down a small business owner. You don't get many chances. And some people have come back at us that, that it's like, oh, you know, I didn't really mean it that way. It's like, well, no, sorry. This is a safe space for people who have really been through the ringer and back again. So yeah. And I think that has created that real community feel as well. That people feel it is a space they can go sell Their because a lot of them that we've seen didn't even have a business. They were making beautiful products that mum or sister or auntie might have brought, but now the Australia wants to buy them. So they've kind of had to play catch up with this business that they have was a hobby and now all of a sudden is a business. So, yeah, I think it's the exception, not the rule. Like I've got other Facebook groups that are much, much, much less than that, but still just as engaged and beautiful as far as a community goes. So I think it's that that community aspect that really helped.
Sarah Britz: I think, you know, it's been quite inspirational as well to see there's been a lot of sellers that have joined the group and seen other sellers selling and then decided they could do the same thing. So they started businesses based off of, you know, seeing other sellers thinking they can do something as well to bring money into their community.
Nathan Bush: So, yeah, absolutely. From an admin perspective, is it harder managing a really big group like this or is it harder managing a smaller group like does as a group gets bigger, does it kind of self moderate at all or is that a dream?
Jen Donovan: That's a dream. I have gray hair because of that group. I have to say that personally, I have seen the best and the worst of humanity through one Facebook group. There are some amazing people out there and there are some downright horrible people out there. But it is like I, as an admin group, we approve probably two to 300 posts a day. We're monitoring comments certainly as we go through because sometimes we do let people in that aren't there for the spirit of the group. So it is. It's a moving beast. And as of today, Facebook changed all the rules on us, so we are playing catch up again.
Nathan Bush: What rules changed today?
Jen Donovan: All public groups moved to an admin assist version. So basically triggers and that that we had set up, now we have to reset up. Basically, people don't ask to join a group anymore. They are automatic members or what did they call them?
Sarah Britz: They're people now, not members.
Jen Donovan: Yeah.
Sarah Britz: And they can post and comment without being a member of the group. So yeah, it's a very good thing.
Nathan Bush: What's their reasoning behind that? What are they trying to do here?
Jen Donovan: Are we off air or on air?
Nathan Bush: We're on air for the moment, but if it's really good, we might take it off.
Jen Donovan: My theory is that Facebook wants to push everyone into private groups and then charge for them.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Okay, makes sense.
Jen Donovan: Turn it here first. That's my theory. So. Because if you went private, you didn't lose any of the function that we've lost as a public group.
Sarah Britz: And you can't change that to a public group.
Jen Donovan: No. Once you're in, you're in.
Nathan Bush: Gotcha. It makes sense because they haven't really monetized.
Jen Donovan: No, they haven't. No. It's like herding cattle. But anyway.
Nathan Bush: Bloody hell. And here we were. Maybe the whole metaverse was just a distraction for what they're doing with private groups. It's just a ploy.
Jen Donovan: It's just to get back at Jenny Donovan and Sarah Britz, I'm sure.
Nathan Bush: Well, you know what they're really talking about now. You've kind of touched on it before, but is there any personal stories that have stood out to you, people you've spoken to, whether that's retailers or communities or customers around the impact that you're making with Spend with us.
Jen Donovan: For me, I probably two stories that come to mind really quickly is one lady who was selling a CWA cookbook and she sold so many copies of that cookbook through Spend With Us Buy from Bush Business Marketplace that they got a new playground for their town. Like the CWA were able to donate, you know, all that money for a new playground like that. That's the essence of what we're doing. We're trying to build a community, trying to make a difference in communities. And so that was kind of like, ah, that.
Sarah Britz: That's it.
Jen Donovan: That's exactly what we are trying to do for sure. And the other one that really stands out, which probably is a bit more of a heart tug, was a lady who lost her husband in a farming accident and she just really felt like she found a community of like minded people who knew what it was like and that were able to support her and, you know, comment on her posts and push it further and get some really good sales and, you know, just understand, you know, some of the setbacks of what living in rural Australia is. So they're two stories that I'll never forget those conversations that I've had.
Nathan Bush: Oh, that's beautiful.
Sarah Britz: Yeah. I mean, there's so many stories. We get so many sellers that have gone through so many difficult situations. I was trying to think of one. One that always comes to my mind is someone called Cosmo. He started a business called Soaps by Cosmo. His family farm was hit by the bushfires, I think in Barnsdale in East Gippsland. And he's got. Cosmo actually has down syndrome. And after he was getting rejected when Applying for jobs. He just decided he wanted to start his own soap business to make him feel part of the Australian workforce and to give him a chance of financial independence, especially after the bushfires had happened. And he set up his online store through Spend with Us and it's just amazing. He's now got his products I think in some local supermarkets and he's just doing great. And you see from his photos how happy he is that he's actually making these beautiful safes. I have some of them, they're just fantastic. So yeah, that's made me feel. And that's really one of my feel good stories.
Nathan Bush: How good? How good? Okay, so we've got to wrap up what's next for yourselves? Apart from your big technical wish list, what's next for yourselves and Spend With Us?
Sarah Britz: Well, yeah, we just want to see Spend With Us grow. That's my big aim. I'm spending a lot of time, we're working on some new features and functionalities for it. So, you know, hopefully in the new year there'll be a lot more amazing things coming via Spend With Us. What about you, Jan? What do you we want to be
Jen Donovan: a household name, Nathan. Basically we want everyone knows who Amazon is. I want everyone to know who Spend With Us is. We want to get so big that we have to employ coders full time to build a platform just for us that nobody else has. We just want to be a household name because you know, just those three stories alone that we told, that's the impact that we're having. So imagine the impact that we could have if we could just become known more and more out there and have more and more people come to our marketplace and spend their money, especially coming into Christmas time, would love more corporate support where people could buy site wide vouchers for their staff or for their customers and clients. But it's really just brand awareness of what our message is and what we're
Nathan Bush: trying to do makes sense now. We've got a lot of talented E Commerce people listening to this show. If they're hearing this and loving your mission and what you guys are doing, what kind of support are you looking for? You mentioned corporate support in terms of gifting, but is there any other support that you're looking for that you'd love people to reach out with if it's available?
Sarah Britz: We were always interested in collaborations and partnerships and sponsorships, anything like that. So we'd love to speak to any other E Commerce or corporate businesses that would be interested in supporting our mission and seeing what we could do just
Jen Donovan: anyone who might have any ideas for us, like if they're in E commerce, that might be like, I've seen this work really well. We are so open to ideas of how we can grow our platform and make it better. Like you said, we've got two user experiences happening here. So if we could talk to some like minded people who kind of can throw ideas around with this, like we know where we would like, we know what our wish list looks like. But you know, if anyone else has any ideas of what should be on the wish list. Yeah, we'd love to chat to people like Sarah. You know, this is our first opportunity to do a multi vendor marketplace. Even though Sarah's built many custom built e commerce sites. But yeah, just reach out, have a chat to us. We are always open to chatting to people that you know, might have some great advice for us.
Nathan Bush: Be careful you wish for. I know we've got a lot of people with a lot of ideas, so
Jen Donovan: hopefully it's got to go on the list though.
Nathan Bush: All right, what's the best way for people to get in touch?
Jen Donovan: Probably through our Support email, so supportpendwithus.com au or through our Facebook or Instagram pages. Send us a dm. That way if you head to our marketplace, you can find all our contact details or fill in a form there. And yeah, we love Zooms. Like, Sarah and I actually live about seven hours from each other. We've only ever met once and that was in March earlier this year. But other than that, you know, we sort of started our partnership with people we didn't know. So we, you know, we love Zoom. We're on it all the time.
Nathan Bush: You are, you excel at remote work.
Jen Donovan: That's it.
Nathan Bush: Jen and Sarah, thank you so much for sharing what you're doing at Spend with us. We love what you're doing and supporting the remote regional and rural communities in Australia. It's obviously needed. And some of those stories you share with us today show how important the work is that you're doing.
Nathan Bush: So thank you for sharing your story
Nathan Bush: on Add to cart.
Sarah Britz: Thank you for having us.
Jen Donovan: Thanks so much, Nathan, for having us. It's been great.
Nathan Bush: There you go. I love how the two talents of someone owns a massive Facebook marketplace. Someone's a great designer and developer. They both have a shared passion about helping rural businesses come together and launch
Nathan Bush: something as incredible as this.
Nathan Bush: Well done to Sarah and Jen. All right, here are the three takeaways that I took away from this chat. Number one, stay true and stay focused as you heard from Jen There were so many opportunities to expand their marketplace beyond rural businesses. However, they've said no to a lot of things for two reasons. Reasons they're a small team and they're on a mission. I always talk about opening boxes. Be careful of the boxes that you open because they all require work. These guys know what their mission is
Nathan Bush: and they're going after it.
Nathan Bush: Number two Faces Create Connections now whether you are a founder who is the face of the business, you have partnerships with influencers, or you just like showing people enjoying your product, showing real people with with real eyeballs alongside your products immediately increases the connection and conversion you have with your audience. Do not underestimate the power of online eye contact. Number three don't assume While building their marketplace software from scratch, Sarah assumed that retailers would be able to easily understand
Nathan Bush: and implement their shipping options.
Nathan Bush: Only they were doing this for the first time time they didn't understand the shipping options so she created prompts and instructions on how to do it. When introducing new functionality, don't just assume
Nathan Bush: your audience will know how to use it.
Nathan Bush: Think about where they're coming from and
Nathan Bush: plan for the worst case scenario.
Nathan Bush: To finish up, I have three resources for you. Firstly, if you're a first time listener about to cut and you want to stay up to date with new episodes, head over to add addtocart.com and you can sign up for our weekly newsletter.
Nathan Bush: We'll let you know every time a
Nathan Bush: new episode drops as well as giving you my three takeaways from each episode and a link to the transcripts so you can know that this is an episode that you want to dive straight into. Secondly, if you want a weekly roundup of the best e commerce case studies, tools and research, sign up to the High 5 Friday newsletter letter which is delivered to inboxes at 8am every Friday morning. I read all the e commerce news and send you the bits that I think you can take action from. Sign up at 12 high 12h I g h.comau forward/high five and the last thing if you are looking to explore your next e commerce opportunity, head over to esweettalent.com au we are a dedicated e commerce talent agency connecting the best e commerce talent with the fastest growing brands. Check it out. Sign up to the email and get in touch with me if you want
Nathan Bush: to discuss your next move.
Nathan Bush: Until next time. Thanks for listening and keep those customers adding to cartoon.
