Lauren French from Motto Fashions | Checkout

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Lauren French: Welcome to the checkout. We catch up with previous add to cart 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.

[Ad]: Here's your host, Bushy Today's checkout features Lauren French, co owner of Motto Fashions, a 40 year old family owned fashion business which under Lauren's watch has thrived in the digital era. From daily live streams to skyrocketing e commerce growth, Lauren's innovative strategies have made Motto a household name for stylish women over 40. In this episode, Lauren shares the wildest thing that she's ever bought. Hint, it involves a car, but it may or may not have keys. She talks about the tech that saved her business from a major crisis and how she's tackling the challenge of scaling Motto while staying true to the brand's values. Lauren, thank you so much for joining us on the checkout. We had a great conversation in our main episode around everything that you and the are doing at Motto, including your big Covid shift which helped you discover live video streaming to your audience, which you do every day at 4pm, which is absolutely incredible, and the incredible growth that you've had over the last 12 months. It's really good to hear such a success story at this time, but we're here to learn a little bit more about you. So I've got five quick questions. Number one what is the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?

Lauren French: There's so many weird things you could buy online these days and I buy a lot for my kids of just really weird pointless junk. But I think the weirdest thing is during COVID when everyone was a little bit bored, I bought a car from the auctions which is where like the car places go to buy cars from. And it came with no key, no logbook, no service history. I was just. Because it was cheap, it was on a whim. So I didn't even know if it would come with a key. I didn't know if it would start. It was just. All you got was the picture of the outside of the car.

[Ad]: Okay.

Lauren French: And you just had to take a punt. And I did. And it works well, still, still going today.

[Ad]: What inspired you to do that instead of going and buying a normal car?

Lauren French: I have absolutely no idea. My husband's like a real car lover. It's not his job, but he just like loves to hustle cars and he always looks at the auctions and you can get some real bargains. I mean, it wouldn't have been a bargain if it didn't work, but I bought it for like half the price of what it would have been. And you know what? I found the logbook in the glove box.

[Ad]: Oh, well done to you. Yeah, look at that.

Lauren French: Yeah. Only had one key, but I only need one key.

[Ad]: That's a good one. I like it. Number two, which retailer has most inspired you recently?

Lauren French: Oh, I feel like everyone is so inspiring, actually. I get little, little bits from every single retailer. One that's just in my mind and I was just on their website the other day. It's a brand called Bon Maxi. They're a bags brand. We're actually collabing with them on it. We're doing some compet stuff together. So that's. Yes, she's bad. So I was on her website and I was like taking screenshot, screenshot, screenshot to send to our team because she's got some really, really clever UX and I was very inspired by that. So she's the most recent one. But really I get inspired from everything from supermarket, website, anything. I think I've got to stay away from fashion. That's what I want to do. I want to look at other industries and how they're doing things.

[Ad]: Really smart. I love it. Number three, name a piece of tech that you or your business couldn't live without.

Lauren French: I can't live without it. Sounds really boring, but I've got a great story as to why I can't live without my password manager. It's called Dashlane. I'm sure they're all the same, but I can't live without that. And the reason is because I use the, you know, the generated passwords that it makes. So it's not like Lauren 1986, exclamation mark. Can't use that. And the reason I do that is because about six years ago, we got. Our server got hacked by Russian hackers. And we had to. They closed off every single. All of our pause, our database, our sales history. We lost every single bit of information that we had. And then they said to get it back, we had to pay them in bitcoins, which we actually did, you know, and then they changed their mind and said, no, we need more bitcoins. Back then bitcoins, I think they were at three grand a bitcoin. So it was. Thank goodness for that. Right. Anyway, they never gave it back. They just kept wanting more money. So now I'm like, so diligent with passwords. They'd, like, hacked in six months prior and turned all our backups off. So we didn't know the backups weren't running. It was crazy. Anyway, so everyone needs to have a very in depth password.

[Ad]: Oh, wow. I could imagine that that experience would have shaken you up a fair bit.

Lauren French: Oh, my God, it shook me up so much. And the funny thing was my dad, who listens to like, you know, I don't know what radio station, but the news station 3 and HE. Yes, something. And he was coming in going, he was saying, like, there's Russian hackers. They're hacking in. And I was like, dad, you are crazy. What are you talking about? Oh, my God, were you going senile? Like, stop. And I swear, like six months later, it actually happened. I was in tears. It was awful. It was absolutely awful. But, you know, we bounced back.

[Ad]: Well done to you. That's. I couldn't imagine going through that. All right, number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into? You recommended a fantastic one in our main episode. Maybe we'll revisit that as well as any additionals you might have.

Lauren French: Sure. Yes. The best book I've ever, ever read is How Brands Grow by Byron Sharp. Totally changed my world on how important acquisition is and what that looks like and actually how irrelevant loyalty and retention is, which there's still a place to for it. But he flipped my entire way of thinking upside down. Everything that I've ever thought in business was, was changed from that book. It's a really good one. It is a bit of a hard read because it's quite a scientific marketing book, but it's definitely worth pursuing. And obviously Add to Card is my favorite podcast.

[Ad]: Thank you. It gets better every week, especially.

Lauren French: Especially my episode.

[Ad]: Yeah, I was returning the plug. All right, lovely. Thank you. And last one I've got for you, Lauren, what is your biggest challenge today?

Lauren French: My biggest challenge is probably now where the business is changing and evolving and I really lack structure. I'm not a structured person. You might be able to tell that from our chat. I'm very creative and on a whim and I think for my business to keep growing, I actually need to put in some structure and different types of accountabilities and different organizational structures. And that for me is probably the next 12 months I'll be looking at that just to make sure I'm set for success as we continue to grow. Right now, I think it's great for where we are now, but if we double our revenue then perhaps we're going to come into some issues. So that's what I'm working on.

[Ad]: Brilliant. A good stage of growth to be going through. Good problem to have. Lauren, thank you so much for joining us on the checkout.

Lauren French: Thank you.

[Ad]: If you want to hear more about how Lauren and the Motto team have turned a bricks and mortar business into a digital digital powerhouse, jump back into episode 459. You'll hear all about their live streaming journey, how they've grown the business by focusing on hero products like the Miracle Pan and what it takes to work with high profile celebrities like Julia Morris. Thanks for listening. And until next time, keep adding to cartoon.