In this episode of Add To Cart, we are joined by Lisa Jones, founder of SHE-com.
As well as SHE-com, a community for connecting and mentoring female founders in ecommerce, Lisa was also the co-founder of Ecooriginals which was sold to a private equity investor in 2020. In this chat we learn about Lisa’s hip tattoo – yep, that’s another Add To Cart first. We’re getting real personal here. But it says “Stay humble. Choose kindness. Be present.” We definitely get this in today’s honest and very personal conversation. We cover everything from how Lisa founded Ecooriginals, the low point of her founder journey which included domestic violence, motherhood and small business pressure, how she found the mentors that pulled her out and how SHE-com became the silver lining of it all. Oh, and we also hear why her husband calls her Dory.
“We’ve got 5000 women in our community and I daily talk to amazing women who are so dynamic, clever…and broken.”
Lisa Jones
Community
“We have women from… I’ve got an idea for an ecom brand, through to startup, through to I’m building something but I can’t quite get there, through to I’m building it and it’s growing, through to I’m making 10 million plus per year. We have everything. So if you’re a female and you’re in an e-commerce brand, then we’re your community.”
I have a kind human only policy. We have like zero trolling in my community because we just all show up and help each other, whether it’s free or paid help, it doesn’t matter. We just want to help assist her. And I think that shows up with the women that become part of the community on every level.”
Don’t rely on Facebook
“I think for many women, 2023 has been like a slap to the face. I think a lot of women this year got a little comfortable with the last few years in e-commerce, assuming that’s actually how it was going to be from now on and this year hasn’t stuck to the same trends. It hasn’t been as easy to sell this year as it was in the last two to three years.
I think the thing that’s changed is the ability to rely on Facebook advertising has diminished. And I think the women that are clever, that are still growing. Sure, they’re putting money with Mark every month, but it’s only one of say, 12 eggs in 12 different baskets.
It’s about omni-channel marketing, it sounds cliche, but it’s true. We have to bring our attention and awareness to making sure that we’re selling in multiple different places, through multiple different channels and avenues and different platforms for paid advertising, then organic and if we do that and we do it successfully, then we’re still growing at the moment.”
Find the silver lining
“It was a bittersweet moment. I was divorcing my business partner and we had an investor involved, and essentially we had to sell when I didn’t actually want to leave the brand. So I think for me, probably there was no choice. And I think the interesting thing about life, and this is something I focus on with a lot of women that I work with all the time, is finding silver linings and for me it took a while it felt awful and honestly, I felt like a failure.
I think anybody who’s ever sold a brand could always look back at the exit later and wish for something different or wish they’d held fast on a particular negotiation point or something. And I think nobody ever gets the exact perfect exit.
When you do sell a brand, I believe that the thing you’re looking for is that brand continues to succeed. I think to exit a brand and have it fall in a heap, that’s actually really awful. So for me, Ecoriginal continues to go from strength to strength with an amazing team building it up. And that makes me really proud. If you can exit and three years later, say you’re still proud of that brand, then that’s a clever exit.”
Links from the episode
- SHE-com
- SHE-com LIVE
- She Talks Ecommerce with Alisa Fraser from al.ive body
- Shopify Plus (sponsored)
- Packleo (sponsored)
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