Simon Beard: You have to say no to some customers. For me, I always built Cold Skin's the first shop you go to as a boy without your parents. We didn't want the parents in their shopping. This is where my mum or their friends would complain, the music's too loud in something. I'm like, it's good. Get the power.
[Voiceover]: About 1500 brands on site. You know, 20 million visits a month, 5 million app downloads. So, you know, we're dealing with scale, big sort of sets of eyeballs and traffic.
Speaker C: The truth is my cortisol would have just been through the roof and I would have been actually in a very, very bad place physically and mentally. But I've just normalized it.
Nathan Bush: Welcome to ADD to Cart, Australia's leading e commerce podcast that express delivers all
[Voiceover]: you need to know in the fast moving world of online retail.
Hannah Yudena: Here's your host, Bushy.
Nathan Bush: Welcome to another episode of Add to Cart. I'm Bushie and I'm joining you from the land of the terrible people, otherwise known as Brisbane, Australia on Add to Cart. We welcome everyone to share and listen to E commerce stories. The more diverse, the better. I want to especially welcome the traditional owners and the original storytellers of the land that we are on, our indigenous and Torres Strait Islander listeners to join us in our E commerce conversations and our community. Welcome to Summer Holidays. We all need a bit of a break in the retail world and I hope you are taking your chance to rest and recover here at ADD to Cart.
Speaker F: We just don't.
Nathan Bush: We just soldier on, always giving the content you need and if I'm really honest, trying to keep the Spotify algorithms pumping through with weekly releases. All right, what we've done this year is we've got two very different episodes where we are going to release over Christmas Day and the New Year's period where we recap some of the best and most popular conversations from 2023. So if you've missed out on those conversations, now's your chance to go in and get a little snippet of what ra the highest, but also what we thought were really interesting conversations. And if you like what you hear, you can always go back into the archives and listen to them. But first, a little recap from me. 2023 was a huge year for me from a work perspective. It's fair to say that it was the most challenging year that I've ever had in E commerce, in business, in my career. There were some really tough moments in there, things that I learned a hell of a lot about business and about myself. And now looking back, I'm extremely grateful for them and really excited about where we're heading. But I will be honest is that it was a really, really tough year for me. So add to Cart was a shining light through all of that. And I'm really grateful for everyone who listened, who reached out, who agreed to be interviewed. Because for me, it was something that really kept me going and kept me excited, not just about E commerce, but about the people around me and the people who were interacting with and contributing to and helping out. And it meant a lot to me this year. So firstly, I just want to say thank you for listening and being there this year because it was a tough year and I know for many of you it hasn't been the easiest year either. So here we are, we have got through it. We are looking into 2024. First, we're going to take a bit of time to relax, take a break. But first, here are some highlights, here are some gems. Now today is all about the most popular episodes. So these are the episodes that rated the highest and had the most downloads throughout the year. We have a countdown of three episodes. And so these are the ones that you decided were the most popular. We're going to come back next week and give you what we think were some of the best conversations, the snippets of the conversations. But this week we're the most popular. We are going to kick off with third place. And this was episode 318 where we talked to Hannah Yudena, head of partnerships for Shopify in Anz, and Simon Beard, co founder of one of the most exciting retail brands Australia has ever seen, Culture Kings. From a market stall in Carrara markets to a $600 million valuation in 2021 and a successful partial exit, which was one of the biggest private retail acquisitions in Australia's history. This episod explored the findings that came out of Shopify's Australian Retail Report, published back in July. But we get some really cool insights into how Simon has built the phenomenon that is Culture Kings. As you will no doubt know, the brand has an almost cult like following. And so it makes sense to jump straight into the section where I ask Simon how he measures loyalty.
Simon Beard: My sort of thing is on the discounting and the loyalty part is that so we know, like fashion's like a pyramid, right? Like you got Louis Vuitton at the top, Kmart at the bottom. The more you go down, the more competition because there's so much volume of people down there. More you go up, there's less competition. But there's a lot less people to sell to and it's sort of you sit somewhere among there. My thing is when you discount you sort of get this customer that was lower that sort of aspirationally comes up to buy your brand just because it's on sale. And but they're actually the most disloyal customer. And the problem that can happen too especially in the fashion space is that when you get that your most loyal customer suddenly once it's on sale, especially if they've paid full price and then they see it get hit with the add on sale, they feel like an idiot.
Speaker F: Yeah.
Simon Beard: And that is such a cause you sort of, you're trading down, you're getting up a more disloyal customer and you're burning a loyal customer. It's a really double edged sword. And this is the thing you sort of can get blurred by the immediate impact of seeing this rise in sales. But you don't understand like that's the earned in drips lost in buckets. You just let a big hole in it that comes later. And this is from Louis Vuitton, right. Which never discount. They will burn 30 million euro worth of product a year because they know that they just it cannot be donated, it cannot be thing, it has to be destroyed because that's the only way you can maintain brand value. And I believe so in this part of the discounting and creating loyalty my one's always being more. How do I just create more value for the person without discounting? Which could be gift with purchase but we do it in a more value creation way that feels, you know, and this is, there's definitely art in how this is delivered. So it doesn't devalue the product. It actually creates more emotion, creates a more memorable experience. That's the way that I sort of see a lot of people should doing it. And that as much as you can maintain your price because that is the value, the second you, you discount it, you're discounting the perceived value.
Speaker F: Yeah.
Simon Beard: Which is, that's the, the problem especially on a long term, you know, it's that the doom loop that I'm sure a lot of retailers find themselves in now. And it's like well how do you just get back to selling on full price because you've just trained your customer to buy on sale. And you know, this is the thing like I would always talk about the dinosaur retailers, right. Meyer and David Jones and stuff and throw shade and stuff. It's part of our thing of creating the battle. But I Was like, no one would ever buy full price from there. Like have they ever sold anything? This just gives the, the perception, right? And for Culture Kings, that was started in a market store with no loans. Investors get 600 million valuation and David Jones been around 100 years. Iconic, legendary, sells for 100 million last year. You know, it's, I just like to give that is a perspective of like, this is what happens, you deteriorate brand value.
Speaker F: What I'm hearing there is know your customer, serve your core customer that is on your level, within the pyramid. Reward them, offer them value to keep them loyal. Don't go straight to price, ignore, ignore the pyramid climbers or the aspirational climbers below because they're not going to be long term customers.
Nathan Bush: Can you bring customers that are potentially
Speaker F: above you in the pyramid, down to you 100%?
Simon Beard: That's, that has to be the constant. And that's for me, where I studied Louis Vuitton, lvmh. Because I was always like, I'm going to bring their principles and be that for that youth, that young market of how I attach it, attach that emotion in the same way. Lvmh so it has that status. So when they walk around with the Culture King's bath bag, they buy stuff from other shops, they put the bag inside the Culture King's bag and they walk around because of the status of it. This was always drilled from day dot into how that brand is perceived. And to do this too, you have to say no to some customers. For me, I always build Culture Kings as the first shop you go to as a boy without your parents. We didn't want the parents in there shopping. This is where my mum or their friends would complain, the music's too loud in something. I'm like, it's good, get the out. Like. Because I didn't want them shopping in there with their parents. I wanted it to be that first shop when they got dropped off the mall, 13 years old, 50 bucks, they would just beeline the Culture Kings and be like, oh my God, heaven that was. And to do that, like, yeah, you have to alienate some customers, which is you try and sell to everyone. You sell to no one. First rule in retail as an uncool
Speaker F: dad, I take offense to all of that, Simon, but no, no.
Simon Beard: Well, see, this is, this is part of the evolution of Culture Kings because we've been around so long now our customers now have kids and we want to keep them. They're so, you know, so this is the whole thing because it's like for myself. But that's where we, we balance that.
Speaker F: Yeah, I love it.
Simon Beard: That was very clearly from the start was that was the gap we were shooting.
Nathan Bush: If I'm listening to this and I'm in an E commerce business as an
Speaker F: employee, whether I'm an E commerce manager, a merch store store person, whatever my role is, I'm probably got my ears up right now and I'm thinking wages are putting a lot of pressure on retail owners right now. So headcount is going to be looked at if it hasn't been looked at already. Plus we're going to dive into AI because I think it's fascinating to talk
Nathan Bush: to, but we've got AI which might
Speaker F: be able to do my job.
Nathan Bush: If I'm sitting in a retail organization
Speaker F: right now, what would be your tips in how I add more value from my role? Hannah, I'll start with you and we'll go. Simon, I love both of your thoughts.
Hannah Yudena: Yeah, look, it's a good question and I think it's ever evolving. First of all, people I don't believe need to panic. Like the AI is taking our jobs has been around for the last 10 years. Right. That's kind of been the fear. The truth is, if you look at roles or what we did 50 years ago, they're completely different to what we do now. Right. It will shift, it will change. It doesn't mean that there won't be jobs. It means the roles that you'll be doing will be different and it's actually for the better.
Speaker C: Right.
Hannah Yudena: It will be more focused on growth. It will be more focused on utilizing data to make decisions around best business practices as well as innovative projects. You know, Simon is the best kind of advocate for this in terms of thinking differently around how you're creating the best possible experience. So if you're in a role right now, first is don't panic. It's going to be okay. The second is think about how you are contributing to your business's growth, how you are coming up with the ideas based on what you're seeing, based on the data that you're analyzing to put projects or make changes that are focused on growth. If that's where your mindset is, you're going to be able to adapt and be agile and no matter what comes along. And another add on to that is constantly thinking about upskilling. And this is where I mentioned Stephen Barlett's really good episode with mogodot around AI and the future of AI. The premise of it was is that you need to understand it to be able to act on it.
Speaker C: Right.
Hannah Yudena: Go deep, understand the technology, understand what's happening in the space and then make decisions accordingly. So I know that's probably a long winded. Simon will have a much eloquent way of putting it, but yeah, that's my take.
Nathan Bush: No, it's great context. Simon, what are you looking for out of your team?
Simon Beard: I definitely feel you need to embrace AI as you've got to leverage it as your thinking partner. I'm all about having it open all the time, really using it to test my thinking and my knowledge. Like if I've got a problem, I will talk it out in the notes, dump it in there, talk out my solution and say, can you write argument of why this could be wrong? Right. It's so good in triangulating your thinking like that because it's just. But as well, you need to incorporate this into your everyday life. It is not going anywhere. I do believe there is so much opportunity to just. These roles are going to change and if you're doing a job right now where you're literally like copying and pasting, it's like the rubber stamp next, next like 100. You should panic because that's your days. It's a matter of time. If you're not creating value actively critically thinking to add value to the company to solve problems, you're going to be in trouble and you need to build that muscle. I always try and train this in the team of like when something goes wrong or breaks, such a natural reaction to do the homer into the bush, man, like, not my fucking job. Where you've got to, you've got to train that emotional reaction of like, no, get out of the way. I'm going to solve this and charge at it.
Speaker F: What would be your one piece of advice to retailers for the next six months, Simon?
Simon Beard: I feel one of the biggest things is you have to make sure you maintain your psychology and your certainty in your team. Because if they sniff one bit of uncertainty, a team, it like amplifies like 5x. And as much as times are tough or anything, you have to be like a duck, like calm on the surface, but you're pedaling like there's no tomorrow underneath. And you have to make sure for your team like you're bringing that certainty because, look, just like those great times, they pass. This too shall pass. We'll be out the other side and there's, you know, we're definitely not through the worst of it, but my more is maintaining that solid psychology and doing a lot of discipline around training this, you know, I'm a huge one on, you know, I've done ice plunges at 4am for five years straight, you know, but it's part of all this sort of discipline and meditation stuff because I know it just trains my mindset to be certain when there's uncertainty, which is for those that are entrepreneur, founder, the one that's actually taken the risk, that's the game.
Nathan Bush: I really like how we started with customer loyalty and even discounting and then moved through the psychological safety of having a space that's great for your team to perform. And I think that really encapsulates 2023. We had to think about everything. There was no space that was safe. So well done, Simon. Well done Hannah. Number three most listened to this year. Now, from one Iconic brand to another. Up next, the second most downloaded episode for this year is my chat with Erica Burchtold, former CEO of the Iconic. When we recorded this, Erica was the CEO of the Iconic. She is no longer there but Erica remains one of the most influential leaders in the retail landscape and she is also add to cart's most requested guest. So no surprise that this chat came in at number two. The Iconic is Australia's very own online fashion powerhouse, committed to customer and at the forefront of technology and innovation. Dispatching from a 28,000 square meter fulfillment center in Sydney with almost 1,000 staff, they continue to redefine the future of retail in Australia and New Zealand. If you've shopped with the Iconic, you'll know how well they nail the customer experience. Free shipping, fast delivery. They have that mind blowing stat which is that they dispatch in eight minutes from when a customer places an order to when the item is ready to go. And I wanted to ask Erica what most people wonder, I guess which is how do they do all that, take it to the next level and stay profitable?
[Voiceover]: Yeah, well, I mean the business wasn't profitable when I started. So a few things A, you've got to back the right horses.
Speaker F: Right.
[Voiceover]: So what is your strategic plan? Where do you want to get to? What's going to give you some fast return, generate some cash to then allow you to keep investing in other things. But reality for a business like ours is you need volume to cover your fixed costs. Right. So we've got a big fulfillment center out in Unora. Yes, there's variable cost, that is some wages that you could flex up and down depending on, you know, is it Black Friday or Black November as I'm calling it. And so you need extra people out There and, but reality is, Whether you're doing one order or 100 orders, there's some costs out there that are just fixed. And so you need to get your volumes up so that you can cover those fixed costs and then you can find that a little bit easier to breathe, I guess. So we are doing a lot of work to have a look at, say, delivery. I'm starting to question, well, does everybody want it in three hours still or do they just want to know when it's coming? I mean, I know myself as a customer of the Iconic. Often I will pick a three hour delivery window because I know definitely where I'm going to be in the next three hours. But I don't want to roll the dice and have the Iconic tell me, oh well, it'll get there sometime on Thursday. Like I might only be home for two hours on Thursday or, you know, so. And that's where I say, like the grocery guys really help set an expectation. I want this two hour window. So, you know, we'll have a look at things like that from a customer value proposition, like what do we need to keep doing in that sort of delivery space and that operational space and then from a promotional space. When do they want promos, when don't they? Where did they just want premium sort of offerings? And that varies by customer as well. You know, I'm hoping next year will be a bit of a reset in this marketplace. You know, everyone's expecting consumer sentiment to drop a bit. And on the back of that, I think you'll start to see retailers probably manage their inventory a lot more tightly. I know we certainly want to do that. Which then means if you don't have as much excess stock, then you probably don't need to discount and promote so much. I mean, that's the idea anyway. Like, we'll see how that goes. But you know, I am wondering with, with perhaps a lower volume, will that actually allow a lot of retailers in the industry to actually reset customer expectations around promotional sort of mix? So, yeah.
Nathan Bush: Now, as CEO of the Iconic, obviously
Speaker F: huge organization, big team, huge responsibility, how do you personally stay connected to the customer? Because I know that's something you're really passionate about.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, I mean, look, I used to love a shop floor when I worked in bricks and mortar. I used to love just going out, talking to customers, talking to the team in store and just hearing what was happening. So I've had to find my own way of being able to replicate that sort of experience for myself here in this business. So I'll Sit in and listen to, you know, customer service calls just to hear how they're having to, you know, pacify or satisfy our customers. I will pack orders at the fc. So last week I was out there packing. I would love to point out that actually I beat our CFO in terms of cooking per hour. So I did 66, 7. He did like 30 something, I think. So anyway. Yeah, well, you know what, the people out there that I actually could pick 90 orders per hour, so I was nowhere near them. But I will go out there and pack orders. And it's funny, you can start to see. So I'm like, wow, why, like, literally all these people in Queensland bought knitwear last week. Oh, yeah. Like, and so we ran the data because I was like, I came back to the office and said, hey, I noticed we were selling a lot of knitwear, which I thought was crazy because it's so hot at the moment. And they came back and said, yeah, Queensland actually over indexing knitwear. I don't know why they're just investing for the season ahead because it was cheap or, I don't know, bunch of weirdos. But you can start to see some little trends. NPS surveys. So I read every single customer comment that comes through in an NPS survey. That's how I could try and hear what they're saying.
Speaker F: There must be hundreds.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, yeah. But I love it. Like, and I always. There's some customers that just make me laugh so much. Like, there's some that make me cry because I'm like, oh, my God, we stuffed up so badly. But then there's some that just make me laugh. Like, just like the comments they're making about the items that they've bought or the sort of models that we use or what have you. So I do love to give a random gift voucher to, you know, some people just with a little note from myself saying, hey, you made me laugh with your comment. I really do read this stuff. Here's 50 bucks.
Speaker F: So, yeah, everyone out there, if you're doing it, an MPS for the iconic, keep it entertaining.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, if you entertain me and make me laugh, you will probably get a gift voucher. So. And also, I just shot myself. Like, I'm, you know, we've got a big app focus at the moment, like, to try and drive app usage, but also to try and drive improvement of our app features and functionality. So we're actually going to look at shifting our entire staff discount mechanism to app only because if I actually get all the team using the app, we're going to get all the feedback on what's working and what's not so. And what we could do to improve it. So yeah, there's lots of, you know, we ourselves can experience the customer experience and feed that back into the business too.
Nathan Bush: So taking a step back and looking
Speaker F: at the bigger picture, you've obviously had an amazing career so far and I was lucky enough to work with you. How do you stay inspired and motivated?
[Voiceover]: I'm just naturally such a curious sort of person. Like I love, I love retail and I just always looking for what next or what are customers thinking now or so I, I guess I'm pretty self motivated to just keep looking for the next big thing or it's just I don't know how. I'm kind of programmed I guess and, and I'm really lucky. I get to talk to lots of interesting people. Like I'm naturally a converser as you would know, so. So I just love to chat to people and inspiration comes from just sometimes the most random places.
Speaker F: So. Yeah. And what are you most proud of in your career so far?
[Voiceover]: I think, I think that I, I don't think. I believe not having to make a, an either or choice between family or career that I actually was able to do both. You know, I have three young children, I have an eight year old, a five year old and a three year old.
Speaker F: We're on the thick of it.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, right. In the thick of it. And some people have these sayings that like and they only target these things towards women where they say oh women can have it all just not at once. And I'm like oh that is such B.S. like you know, who does have it all at once? Life is a constant recalibration as you know, dial up work a little bit at the moment, okay, down a bit, family, whatever. But the fact that I could have three kids as well as a career, you know, I think is my proudest achievement.
Nathan Bush: I really want to know if anyone took Erica up on that challenge of writing something entertaining in the MPS feedback. If you did and you got a response from Erica, make sure you let me know. But Erica's chat was really real and for a CEO of an organization like the Iconic, she could have easily made it unattainable. But I think there was so much knowledge and so much sharing in that chat that most of us could take something away and implement in our businesses, which was fantastic. So really enjoyed that chat with Erica. All right, it's time for our last conversation and the most downloaded episode of Add to cart in 2023. The episode that is most listened to in 2023, one of my favorites, it's Davey Fogarty, founder of the Oody. I like to think that ADD to Cart gave Davey the start to get him onto Shark Tank, but probably not. Davey's product is the original oversized wearable blanket, the Ootie, and it turned his last $500 into a $250 million business that now sits inside the Davey Group alongside Popnaps, Zoetech and Australia Furniture Warehouse. Now, you may or may not know that Davey's story is a real rags to Rich's tale. He had some hard times and more than a few failures before hitting the jackpot with the Ootie. His energy was refreshingly low key and there are a lot of practical takeaways around product selection and trends. Anyway, I am so glad to revisit some of Davey's wisdom. Here it is. Enjoy.
Speaker F: Can you give us an idea on how big the Oodie is today?
Speaker C: Yeah, so about 170 million. Top line 1015% EBITDA.
Speaker F: Amazing. When you first came up with the idea, did you ever imagine it could be that big?
Speaker C: Look, it's an interesting one. No, to be frank, I think e commerce can just grow so quickly. As everyone knows, we had a couple of lucky breaks. There's no doubt about that as well. Covid accelerated the E commerce industry overall. But yeah, we executed really well. We focused on global diversification, product diversification, got our kind of product flywheel cooking. So yeah. But no, we feel very blessed, feel very lucky that it grew to the size that it did.
Speaker F: Yeah. And there's obviously some real smarts and process behind what you're doing there. With such a diverse range of brands, when you say that they grew early and grew quickly, what do you put that success down to? Because a lot of founders, especially when focusing on one brand, they grind for a long time before having that moment. Sounds like you've got a bit of a formula there.
Speaker C: Yeah, it all comes down to product selection and it's down to where the product is or the trend is in the lifespan. So people are generally solution or product aware, but they just might not be brand aware yet. So launching a brand at that time is really ideal and especially when use the platforms that you plan to be advertising through, such as Facebook ads, to guide that decision making around the product selection. Because if there's already product channel fit as well as product market fit, it can just grow really quickly through Facebook, which is undoubtedly the most powerful advertising tool to have ever existed. So that was my framework initially. I think we, you know, and I'm trying to build software at the moment to create that entire process from trend selection. But I think one thing that I underappreciated is how hard these businesses are. Like getting sales in the early stages doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be a long, sustainable business. You're going to have to grow a team, you're going to have to build a brand so that you can continually create new products and reinvigorate the audience. That level of execution is something that I underappreciated. So while these brands were doing almost $10 million in their first year, they needed a lot of execution over many, many years. So that's something that we're getting very good at now. Probably underappreciated how hard it was in the early stages.
Speaker F: Yeah, because I bet you had your fair share of people saying to you that the Oodie was a fad or a trend and it wouldn't be a long term business.
Speaker C: It is hard when so many people say that and sillier things have died out earlier. I'm not one of these people that can predict trend longevity very well. I'm not one of those people that thinks that I know what consumers want before they ask for it. But yeah, it was very difficult with lots and lots of people saying this is gonna, you should sell this business because it's gonna go. And you know, I looked at doing that, but nobody would touch it because even for 5, 10 million we ended up getting some offers a bit over that mark. But yeah, people wouldn't even touch it because they thought it was going to be a fad as well. And it's just grown and grown and grown. I think there's. What was unpredicted was that it was going to become a category within itself. So there's the wearable blanket category, but I think you wouldn't put the dressing down as a wearable blanket category. And I think like that Woody block is so perfect, just like hoodies are perfect in themselves and are timeless in themselves. And I think that's what everyone underappreciated and me included. So it'll be interesting to see if that block now becomes really just kind of universal in nature and sticks around similar to the dressing gown of which, you know, being synonymous with that block will be quite valuable in itself.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Speaker F: And then obviously the idea that the Oodie is the Kleenex or the Dyson of that category. You mentioned some of the different products There categories, we've got pets, we've got loungewear, we've got outdoor gear. And you mentioned that you use Facebook as a key channel and I'm assuming a lot of your research before you decide to go into a category is around what's happening on Facebook. Do you use any other tools to do your research on what product categories might be fit?
Speaker C: Yeah, the problem with product research I find for people that are new to business is that there's so many tools out there, there's so many data points, you know where one business might be a great business to launch or one product for one person, it doesn't take into account that it might be better. Maybe it's a more search based intent product that relies on SEO and you're starting a new business and you're a good writer and you know SEO that does it. Woody wouldn't be that product because it's more about creating desire through visual Facebook ads. So you want to be more of a content creator. So I think your acquisition method needs to come into your product research process. So my app tools, you know it goes from everything from trends newsletters to going onto Facebook ads library, using ad spy tools, looking at website traffic through something like similar web, then breaking down the unit economics because you need to understand how much gross margin you have to acquire customers. You can't just create a cheaper product that costs you more because your competitors just going to be out of out spend you. So this is what I'm trying to do through Trendrocket and it's taking longer than I thought it would, but it's always how it is. But it's just a piece of SaaS that is going to break down all of these metrics and more importantly the global network of competitors that are actually selling a similar trend because localization is actually one of the most important parts when coming to sell because of competition. So you have two cafes and one strip. It could halve the business. So and it is really similar to that in that Facebook is an option. So trying to really kind of give new business owners drop shippers or like really solidified brands that level of insight just in a couple of clicks and then hopefully doing some modeling. So we can kind of predict what are going to be massive trends before they kind of happen.
Speaker F: Now you personally, I'm just curious in terms of what your day looks like and what drives you. One of the things that I read when doing a little bit of research is that you work 12 hour days, six days a week, is that still true?
Speaker C: Accurate that's not true anymore and I might go back to that. But I think after I stepped down as CEO from For Woody, I definitely had a point of reflection and I never worked that many hours because I was like, seriously, seriously just like needed to. It's because I enjoyed it. And that's shifting a little bit. I'm getting way into, more into my fitness. I'm enjoying some other things as well. I'm enjoying just researching and just reading a lot. So that's now kind of shifting just based out of marginal utility. I guess so, yeah, definitely not. Not hustling that much anymore. Kind of focusing on more my happiness more than anything.
Speaker F: Was there a moment that made you go, I've got to step back and get a bit more balance?
Speaker C: I guess not directly. It definitely got to a point where I was just so anxious all the time and I was just like, this is not how one should live your life. So it's a slippery kind of slope there to mental health issues. So that's kind of what I. When I realized that I needed to pull my head in a little bit
Speaker F: because I could imagine there's a huge amount of adrenaline running through when you've got so many brands growing at such a fast rate across so many channels.
Speaker C: 100%. I think Andrew Huberman does a really good episode on Stress on his podcast and it talks about how short bouts of stress is really beneficial because it helps us get the task done. And then medium amounts of stress can also be good. But long term stress is really, really bad and can cause lots of issues. And that's what happened to me over four years. It was just constant long term stress. And. And by the end of the fourth year I was like, we had a huge crisis hit us and I was completely under control, sleeping absolutely fine. And just from all accounts, if you asked me, I'd be like, this is just it. But the truth is my cortisol would have just been through the roof and I would have been actually in a very, very bad place physically and mentally. But I've just normalized it and you could only see that when you take a step back. So that's what happened there. And yeah, now I'm starting to realize that I can do those stressful moments and get through crisis because there always is going to be issues. But you need to have a nice baseline to kind of revert back to because, yeah, it's important.
Speaker F: What was the first habit you broke to get back to that baseline?
Speaker C: That's an interesting one. I think it was just scheduling 12 hours of meetings a day with my system. I just started canceling a lot of those meetings and started to, you know, have Tuesday, like, blocking out, you know, reading times and whatnot.
Speaker F: Yeah, I've done a very similar thing this year. My schedule is nowhere nearly as busy as yours, but I've started using a tool called Reclaim AI and it integrates with Google Calendar. And it basically, you set up habits and go, okay, I want between one and two hours of thinking time every day. And it kind of looks ahead in your calendar. And as soon as your calendar starts getting busy, it starts going, all right, shit, I've got to block this out for Nathan so that he's at least got some time to think. And it's really changed. It's changed how I view my diary and how I've got a little bit of space in a day now.
Speaker C: Yeah, that's awesome. I love that.
Speaker F: And so one of the other things
Nathan Bush: I read is that you had 12
Speaker F: failed businesses before this, and I don't think that's unique to you. I think a lot of successful founders are successful because of what's come before them. What was the key lesson that you learned from those to develop what you have today?
Speaker C: Yeah, it's interesting how you ask anyone that doesn't do business and they would assume that 12 failed businesses is unique. So I think it's very disheartening for people that have one failed business to instantly assume that it's all over and then I was smart enough. But I think the one main lesson, it's a very subjective lesson, simply because the way that I was approaching business was wrong in that I. One, I wasn't researching anything, but I was more trying to focus on building an audience in any way possible. And audiences aren't all made equal audiences. For example, if I scraped. If I bought an email list or, like, created a hacky giveaway on Facebook and got all of those emails and then tried to sell them something that is basically permissionless marketing. And it's. It just doesn't work. So I think really focusing on building a quality audience in terms of how relative they are to the product itself, and then also, you know, how engaged they are. I think that they're two major lessons.
Nathan Bush: Well, there you have it. Number one most downloaded episode for Add to Cart in 2024 is Davey Fogarty from the. We are so lucky to have had all three guests and all our guests on the show this year. Thank you, everyone, for listening. What a fantastic group of people. Makes me really proud to see all the lessons that we're sharing now. Speaking of lessons, it wouldn't be an add to car show without pulling through three things that we took from those chats that we can implement in our business. Here we go. Let's, let's recap really quickly from Simon and Hannah in our very special Shopify episode. The thing that I think if we were to look forward to 2024 on is to get interested in AI. If you aren't already, Simon was doubling down on AI and whether you are into it or not, you are going to find AI features and tools becoming embedded into the software and tools that you are currently using. Get used to them, play around with them. If you've got some downtime during the holidays, it is the perfect, perfect chance to play with the things that you haven't had time for and potentially redo some of the processes that will make you even bigger and better next year. If we move over to Erica, I think the takeaway that we have to take from that is that there is gold in the NPS. So if you've had a crazy busy 2023, maybe now is the time to go back digging through the NPS or if you don't have nps, the customer reviews or feedback and find the gold in there. Make sure you go through and not just focus on the negative but also the positive. What can you amplify or what can you rectify in 2024 to make your business better than it was in 2023? And then if we go to Davey, I think we can't move past product selection criteria. Right. I love Davey's criteria to select products and the categories that he goes after, everything from SEO viability, ability to postage weights. Davey assesses to identify new gaps in the market, whether it is within the OODI brand or whether it's in a totally separate brand. He uses tools like Trendrocket and there are a lot more out there to work out what's available. So again, if you're sitting back with your pina colada, maybe now's the time to have a think. What other categories or product opportunities are out there for you. All right, that is three big ideas, ideas for us to take into 2024. We will be back next week to highlight what we think are some of the best chats, including some that you may have missed throughout the year. All right, go enjoy that beach or wherever you are. Take some time, relax, enjoy. Hang out with friends and family. That's it from me this week. We'll see you again for our best of next week.
Speaker F: Thanks for joining us today on Add
Nathan Bush: to Cart to listen to all our e commerce conversations, now in the hundreds. You can head over to addtocart.com there. You can also join up to our free private Slack community to share e commerce ideas, tips and questions with other listeners. You can also subscribe to the Add to Cart weekly newsletter and browse some of the video highlights from our chats. There is a lot there that's add to cart.com au and if I can ask you one thing before you go. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure you share it with a friend or a colleague who could benefit or leave us a review. It really makes a difference. Thanks again for listening. And until next time, keep those customers adding Descartes.
