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[Voiceover]: Welcome to the checkout. We catch up with previous add to cut guests and ask them five quick questions to get to know them better and leave you with a little extra inspiration to get through your Friday. Here's your host, Bushy.
[Ad]: Today's checkout features Stacy Hollins, CEO and Creative Director at Lust Minerals. Stacy was an experienced beauty consultant and used her knowledge to to create the clean makeup products that she felt were
Nathan Bush: missing in the industry.
[Ad]: Today, Lust Minerals is vegan, certified, Paraben free and Australian made, all non negotiables for Stacy. The brand launched in 2014 and hit $1 million in sales within the first 18 months. They continue to grow as an e commerce powerhouse with a turnover today of
Nathan Bush: more than $20 million. Stacy, welcome to the checkout. Brilliant to have you here. Thank you for our main chat where you shared everything around how you came up with the for Lust Minerals where we went through everything from some of the amazing interactions that you've got on the website, your custom website and all the way through to your rebranding journey. But we're here to learn a little bit more about you. I've got five quick questions. Number one, what is the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?
Stacey Hollands: Do you know what? So I feel like I lead two lifestyles. I'm in this beauty space and then on the weekend we have a farm. We have 269 acres, 50 minutes out of the Sunshine coast. And the weirdest thing I've bought online is two donkeys.
Nathan Bush: Where do you even shop for two donkeys?
Stacey Hollands: Well, it was Marketplace which we found this beautiful donkey place, what would you call it? Where they love them and look after them and so we bought them there.
Nathan Bush: What an amazing mix. Did you always have the dream of kind of being farm, personal life, running, busy business.
Stacey Hollands: No, I am not a farm girl at heart. I'm a water skier. I'm a beach baby. I've been around jet skis. And we traveled last year, the year before, for four months and we set our friend's farm in the Barossa Valley and I absolutely fell in love with it. And I think the reason I traveled was because all I do is work and I was craving that family time and. And I got that on the farm. When you're on a farm, you leave to get essentials, whereas when you live on the Sunshine coast in such a beautiful place, we leave to entertain ourselves. We don't stay at home. So it was the complete reverse. And we decided after traveling we'd come back and buy a working farm that my husband does now full time. So I am in heels, dressed up, full of makeup and, you know, doing all nice things during the week. And then I head out to the farm in my jeans and boots on the weekend.
Nathan Bush: I feel relaxed just thinking about that. That's. That's very cool. I love it.
Stacey Hollands: It's very cool.
Nathan Bush: Number two, which retailer has most inspired you recently?
Stacey Hollands: I definitely think there's a lot of brands that are doing really cool things at the moment. But obviously being in my industry, I'm loving what Sephora are doing and how they portray their message and do their advertising, obviously, because that's sort of on my radar at the moment.
Nathan Bush: So stocked at Sephora.
Stacey Hollands: I would hope so. Mecca or Sephora would be. Would be nice guys, if you're listening.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, just throw the hint out there. Love it. No, they do a phenomenal job. Number three, name a piece of tech that you or your E commerce business couldn't live without.
Stacey Hollands: One would be Shopify. Like, we cannot live without Shopify. That's technically tech. Kalaviyo, I think, is a major one. As I spoke about. That's probably my top two. I mean, then I could go into socials, but that's not tech. That's not as. That's different.
Nathan Bush: Great tips. And I loved in our main conversation where I was kind of baiting you to kind of go, what's the new, like, marketing platforms that you're interested in? What's cool? What are you kind of diving into? And you're like, actually, we're just getting our email right? We're getting our flows right, Making sure it all makes sense because it's those fundamentals and that functionality that is already available through platforms like Shopify and Klaviyo that often gets skipped over in a race to get to the cool shit.
Stacey Hollands: Oh yeah. So much potential there. So much.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Love it. All right, number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into?
Stacey Hollands: Yes. So if you're dealing with consumers, I highly recommend Delivering Happiness, which is a Zappos book by Tony Someone. He is incredible. It's about delivering a five star customer service and I've had all of my team read that book. Love it. And one other one for more of the entrepreneurs is Rocket Fuel. If you're a visionary and you're in a visionary role, you really need to understand a visionary and an integrator and having an integrator with you for a successful business. So that has been a very, very valuable book for me because I now have my integrator and I think we work just in harmony so well.
Nathan Bush: So great suggestions. Delivering Happiness was one of the first books that got me so excited about E commerce. I was already in the consumer game, but it really made me excited about it. And Rocket Fuel, I think is a phenomenal book, especially for founders. How did you realized that you were the visionary and then how did you bring on an integrator?
Stacey Hollands: I feel like I've always been a visionary. Everything about me is more visionary and you know, reading contracts and doing nitty gritty is not even my thing. So I think on layman's terms, before reading the book, I roughly knew I needed someone like an integrator. So first I found my EA and she's definitely an integrator and she's now moved into a business management role and we just went work so well together. But I think the biggest thing is too is admitting that even though you are an entrepreneur and you're running multimillion dollar businesses, you can't be good at everything. And as soon as you understand that and you realize that and you accept that, then you can find people who are good at things that you're not and then you can focus your time on the things that you are good at.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I love that. And also I love that you've taken the approach that yes, you're the founder and that you're a visionary. You don't necessarily need another co founder to balance that. It's. It's literally plugging the gap with integrators around you who can balance that out for you.
Stacey Hollands: Yeah, definitely.
Nathan Bush: Number five, what's your biggest challenge today?
Stacey Hollands: Honestly, I think in person, retail and E commerce. I think for a product like ours, it's always going to be challenging to get people to want to try things online, but I feel like we are in a really good position with leaning into our virtual try ons through AI and leaning into, you know, one on one consultation zooms, live chat. It'll always be a challenge for us, but I feel like we're definitely working in the right direction to make it more successful for us as well.
Nathan Bush: I don't think you're alone there. There's a lot of brands at the moment struggling. Not struggling, but trying to work out the balance between online and in store retail and how to maintain brand and connection with customers while at the same time getting expansion. So I don't think you're alone there. It's a great challenge. Stacy, thank you so much for joining us on the checkout.
Stacey Hollands: Thank you so much for having me.
[Ad]: To hear more from Stacy, jump back into episode 429 where Stacy shares the story of how she launched her business just as influencer marketing was getting started. Think about gifting to Bachelor contestants. And she talks about all the tips that she's had on how influencer marketing has changed throughout their time because it is still a key strategy for her today. She also also shares the learnings from
Nathan Bush: her recent $300,000 rebrand and we find out why.
[Ad]: For Lust Minerals, Seven is the happy number. Thanks for listening and until next time,
Nathan Bush: keep adding to cartoon.
