How Gentle Habits Hit 7-Figures With Indie Retail Stockists

5 Dec 2023 · 36 min

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Female Founder World Podcast Episode Notes

Episode Details

  • Title: How Gentle Habits Hit 7-Figures With Indie Retail Stockists
  • Guest: Sophie Marshall, Founder of Gentle Habits
  • Host: Jasmine Garnsworthy
  • Description: In this episode, Sophie Marshall shares her journey of building Gentle Habits, an incense-turned-lifestyle brand, to a million-dollar business within two years, focusing on independent retail strategies.

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Key Themes

  1. The Origin of Gentle Habits
  2. Started as a side hustle from Sophie’s affinity for incense, which helped her transition from work mode to mom mode.
  3. Initial product was called "This Is Incense," reflecting Sophie's personal journey and mental health.
  1. Transition to Full-Time Entrepreneur
  2. Sophie balanced a full-time job in global product management while developing Gentle Habits.
  3. A pivotal moment came when she hired a friend who helped grow sales to $1 million quickly, leading Sophie to quit her job.
  1. Building a Sustainable Business
  2. Emphasis on an omni-channel strategy:
  3. Focused on relationships with independent retailers rather than big-box stores (e.g., Target, Sephora).
  4. Discussed the benefits of a disciplined growth approach—quality over quantity.
  1. Distribution Strategy and Retail Relationships
  2. Engaged in selective wholesale partnerships, ensuring brands align with the vision of Gentle Habits.
  3. Implemented a cash on delivery pricing model to maintain financial sustainability.
  4. Sophie’s approach includes handpicking accounts to ensure brand alignment and quality representation.
  1. Growth Milestones
  2. Key milestones include:
  3. Quitting her corporate job.
  4. Donating over $50,000 to mental health initiatives.
  5. Gaining entry into notable retailers like Anthropologie.
  1. Rebranding Journey
  2. Transitioned from "This Is Incense" to "Gentle Habits" to better reflect the brand’s scope and vision.
  3. Emphasized the importance of trademarking early to avoid legal issues down the line.
  1. New Product Lines
  2. Expanded product offerings beyond incense to include:
  3. Dive masks
  4. Ritual oils
  5. Connection cards for family engagement
  6. Roll-on perfumes
  1. Advice for Aspiring Founders
  2. Importance of pricing products to support wholesale margins from the outset.
  3. Recommendations to prioritize self-care to maintain business sustainability.
  4. Encouragement to seek professional help for branding and trademarks.

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Actionable Takeaways

  • Focus on Independent Retail: Establishing strong relationships with indie retailers can be a more sustainable growth strategy compared to major retailers.
  • Slow and Steady Growth: Prioritize quality partnerships and steady scale rather than rapid expansion that might lead to over-saturation.
  • Engagement with Customers: Utilize social media and direct communication to involve customers in product launches and gather feedback.
  • Financial Planning: Ensure product pricing accounts for wholesale margins to avoid future conundrums.

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Resources Mentioned

  • Retail Bootcamp Waitlist: [Link](https://bestie.femalefounderworld.com/retail-bootcamp)
  • NYC Summit Tickets: [Link](https://www.femalefounderworld.com/summit-2023)
  • Free Group Coaching Calls: [Link](https://www.femalefounderworld.com/coaching)
  • Sophie’s Website: [Link to Gentle Habits](https://www.gentlehabits.com.au)

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Final Thoughts This episode provided invaluable insights into the journey of building a lifestyle brand focused on wholesaling through independent retailers. Sophie’s practical advice and personal anecdotes serve as inspiration for budding entrepreneurs looking to navigate the complexities of retail growth.

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Transcript

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0:00Hey, business besties. Welcome back to the Female Founder World Podcast. I am Jasmine Gansworthy and I'm the host of the show and the creator of the FEMA Founder World Universe. Today I'm speaking with the founder of Gentle Habits. Her name is Sophie Marshall and we're really focusing this conversation on retail, how to build your retail business. It's something that she has done so well. Their distribution strategy is honestly perfection. They've nailed it. It's a really big part of the business and I'm a really, really big believer that if you have a physical product and you want to turn your business into something that you can take full time, or you want to be able to scale it in a meaningful way, you need to be looking at an omni-channel strategy and launching into Target or Sephora, or if you're in Australia, Mecca, or one of those really big stores, like sounds amazing, but it's a little bit of a gamble, a little bit of a let's hope you get picked.

1:01And there's not as much of a formula to growth. Plus once you launch into those stores, often you're not actually making any money for quite a number of years because of margins, because you have to pay to play. So there's a lot to be said for actually pursuing an indie and boutique retail strategy. And that's what we're talking about in this episode. I think it's something that is going to be super practical and tangible for a lot of you who are trying to build businesses right now. and it's something that we're going to focus a course on in 2024. I'm going to put a link in the show notes so that you can join the wait list.

1:34I think we're going to limit it at a hundred people. If you're on the wait list, I'll make sure that you hear about it first so that you can sign up. We just want to keep it limited. It's going to be the first time we do this course and we might teach it a second time at the end of the year, but I'm roping in some experts who have done this and who know how to just build a really meaningful business through independent retail. Okay, let's get into the show. You are now entering Female Founder World with your host, Jasmine Garnsworthy. Sophie, welcome to Female Founder World. It is so good to have you on the show.

2:07I am so stoked to be here. I have been an avid listener for a long time, as you know. For people who don't know what you're building at Gentle Habits, talk us through some of the things that you guys have been up to. It's been a very busy year. We're one years old. Obviously, we'll go into it but we started with this is incense as a product and we've now built a overarching lifestyle wellness brand called gentle habits and gentle habits is about creating products to help people create rituals and explore rituals throughout their day to basically it's it's essentially just to be able to create gentle habits to allow yourself a better mental health and a positive outcome and it could be from incense to dive masks to whatever product i'm absolutely loving and trial and testing myself to become part of the brand.

2:57And you started, like you said, with a product called This Is Incense, and that's kind of what the brand was called. That was everything. And you were doing that for what, two years before you made this big rebrand and pivot? Yeah, that's right. So I was working a full-time job. I was head of product, global product for Rip Curl, and I bought some incense, funnily enough, in New York. and I came home and I really was struggling to try and become go from like crazy office lady to mum mode and I just started using incense to kind of like to be able to really make myself present to my kids because it's really hard to unwind from you know office to being a mum and burning incense for me it was just so helpful I couldn't quite believe how much of an impact it was having on my life and one day in the shower it just came to me you have to make incense popped into my head and I ran out to my husband and told him and he just like looked at me and went you're crazy but at that time also too I really didn't have anything other than work like I was working ridiculous hours I was working on the weekend and this gave me a little bit more of a hobby or a purpose for myself so that started the journey of trying to look into how I can do it and we kind of made a few rules early on it had to be easy we only wanted to deal with good humans and it was completely bootstrapped so that's how it started and then yeah I started pretty much working all day and night with two kids.

4:24So you had your full-time job and you were doing this at night at what point did you leave your job to focus on the business? Well this is an interesting one because I didn't expect it to be like get so big so quickly and I literally was coming home working because I had a global role I was you know doing all different hours as well so I would come home pack wholesale and econ orders at night and then it wasn't until one of my really close girlfriends got made redundant and I she was in sales and I just went you know what I have to honor the brand and so I hired her on the spot she started part-time and she grew our business to a million dollars in the first two years and then she fell pregnant and I knew it got to a point where I knew that I owed her to have a maternity leave and come back into the business so that was actually the pivotal point for me to look at the business and go I need to I need to take a jump here and and have a go so I got to quit my job and now a few years in what does the team look like who's building this with you okay so hubby and I are building the team um he loved that when did he quit his job well he got made redundant so you know it's funny how the universe delivers because I we got told that maybe Simon his nickname's tripper to come into the business and we kind of laughed at it because his job was just that stable stability that we needed um and when he got made redundant we were like oh we just he started looking at jobs and then two months later we were like what are we doing like I can't believe I did it all on my own for so long so now he's come in as a managing director and helps with all the digital marketing HR and he's been pivotal in terms of like building our little small team in Torquay.

6:08Amazing and you're working with freelancers, contractors, is there anyone else that's on the team? Yes so I have obviously we have our beautiful staff that are doing all of the e-com and wholesale orders and our customer service. We have hired an amazing gun that's just started who's doing all of our inventory and helping me with the back-end supplier and raw materials because obviously I'm dealing with making incense. P who's our full-time sales manager, who's now obviously looking after global regions now as well. And then obviously my husband, and then we have some amazing creative contractors along the way as well.

6:47Okay. Incredible. And I want to know some milestones. You said before that you guys hit that million dollar revenue mark pretty quickly. What are some other milestones that when you look Kate, you just think, whoa, can't believe we got here. Yeah, for sure. Quitting my job was definitely one of them. Obviously had a massive pay cut, but I just knew that I would be happier. And also too, I get to see my kids and pick them up from school, everything that I hadn't done. So for me, that was just such a huge lifestyle change and a milestone for me. We have also donated over$50 ,000 to charities and obviously mental health, because that's a really big passion of our brand.

7:26and we have just been picked up by Anthropologie in the US. And that has been P &I's sales dream. And yes, we are in there and online. What do you think has been driving all of this traction? I think a lot of people, you know, we have ideas for things and we kind of dabble in it and it doesn't really go anywhere. But you guys just really hit the ground running. Why do you think it worked? Look, I think to be honest, we had an amazing product. My background is product and anything that I'm developing, I absolutely have to be 100 % obsessed with myself. And also too, I've got a wholesale background.

8:07So for me, having a wholesale background, I knew that if I started with say five accounts, I still remember going, I'm just going to start with five accounts and then five accounts turned into 10. And I knew that also, too, I wanted to create a sustainable business. And I think having those wholesale accounts, and especially because also, too, everyone wants to smell, you know, my incense. So having it actually physically in store was super important. And word of mouth, wholesale and definitely, obviously, social media. And COVID actually helped us as well. obviously being locked down in Victoria a lot of people discovered our incense and it became a really big part of their day.

8:50I want to talk about the retail piece for a minute because you know we were talking before we started recording and just discussing how you've really nailed your distribution strategy and a lot of people I think really focus on getting into Sephora or Target or they want to get into those really big retailers which is amazing but it takes years when you do it it you can not make any money from those partnerships for a long long long time it's pay to play and you just need to really like be in a really established place whereas kind of picking up the right independent and boutique stockers can help you build such a big business and it's something that is much more of a formula than like getting into one of those um you know target or something like that where it feels like luck it has so much to do with it and just constantly, you know, trying to get in front of the right people.

9:42Talk me through what your approach has been and what's been working. Okay. So we have been so disciplined in this approach for wholesale. I think one of the biggest things for me is having an in-house sales rep and manager and not just an agent. Look, agents can work, but for me, obviously I wanted to hire my friend, but her and I, P and I worked so closely together on picking, handpicking every account, looking at every inquiry like it's been so disciplined and having a slow and steady growth and a sustainable growth not just you know hey we're going to open a thousand accounts in Australia and let's just hit these sales targets like I've seen brands die within 12 months with that approach so for us it was never short-term game it was always a long-term play so a conservative approach quality not quantity and we just didn't want to be saturated in the marketplace so we started out obviously um for myself I had the incense brands of like of the sense that I was really connected to so places it was Noosa Byron Margaret Rivard Bells Beach so I started with that just really small um and I knew that those best of stores people follow those stores so that's definitely an approach like and also to thinking outside the square so our distribution is so broad as well we've picked the best of the best we're in um museums we're in the national gallery of museum in canberra to say a beautiful wellness studio in bondi to an amazing high-end fashion store in noosa so we went aspirational and by doing that with wholesale it allowed our customers to actually understand what our brand is and how aspirational and where we sat in the marketplace.

11:36So wholesale is so important from a branding perspective as well. And yeah, it's like that sustainable approach as well allowed us to really nurture and have good long-term relationships. Because if you went and opened 50 accounts and you don't have the stock to fill, you're going to lose customers. So having a really small approach of like growing every year allowed us to really nurture and create relationships with our accounts. For you guys, what does that mean in terms of slow and steady? Are you, just to give people an idea, a little bit more of a tangible idea about what that actually means, like how many accounts, what percentage are you kind of talking about growth?

12:19Like what is something that you would recommend or this worked for you okay so for for what worked with us we think in the first year we had over a thousand inquiries um we yeah it was it was solid and we had that wholesale inquiry form on our website which that's kind of how we manage it how were people finding you they were literally finding us from other wholesale accounts or instagram and so interesting dm 100 the other thing is too if you're in those elevated accounts to start with everyone else is following those elevated accounts and it can be pretty brutal out there that's why we've said no to probably you know i would say 80 of inquiries and so now we're probably in less you know we could be in triple the amount of doorways at the moment but we just want to be able to you know hold strong and you know grow with our accounts that we already have okay super interesting I can't believe you had a thousand um my poor team that my poor team my poor team they were just honestly just dealing with so many emails and we responded to pretty much every single one of them um just saying yes or no and look there was a lot of people that were unhappy but for us as a business as well like we're bootstrapped as well so we're financially putting the money back in so we just couldn't sustain that either and we also made a rule of cash on delivery to ensure that we could also be sustainable as well because that was so important and because our product was selling everyone was more than happy to treat our business like that.

14:00So that means cash on delivery for folks who don't know that means basically once your product arrives at the retail stockist you're getting paid for that stock right away and you know a lot of other retailers maybe internationally maybe some of the bigger ones some of them have like 90 day terms they have paid for three months big terms and look it's look we got approached by a large beauty retailer in australia like pretty amazing but we just decided no because of the margins and also too we have such a beautiful account base and we actually just want to deal with amazing people and some of our accounts are nearly like our family and that is something that life's too short and you want to enjoy what you do every day and that's been always been really key is to as part of our business ethics is only deal with people that we love to deal with.

14:52I want to talk about some of the nitty gritty pieces here so you mentioned the wholesale inquiry form what kind of information are you gathering in a form like that? Well definitely website absolutely definitely Instagram handle how long you've been trading for um the other thing is too which has been a bit of a i forgot about this and it's been really key we actually don't stock online only stores we stock stores that have a bricks and mortar store as well um because we've seen so many online stores start up and and fold over and we just decided because we've had so many inquiries that it was just yeah it just made more sense to have bricks and mortar that had an online presence the other thing is to as a brand we don't go on sale we don't participate in black fridays cyber mondays we do however provide like incentives gifts with purchases bundles and stuff like that because when you start you know dealing with wholesale it's just it's you know there's no reason to as a brand really to you know go down that path and it's a hard path to come back from and also to we as a business part of our ethics and vision is to donate a dollar to mental health speak and share which is a mental health philanthropy group a bunch of guys that go into high schools to talk about mental health and last month amazing yeah we donated a thousand dollars and that allows them to go to a school and yeah I think grassroots mental health advocacy is really important more so than discounting and so is that something that when you're back and forth with the retailer you just say to them when you're negotiating terms you're like hey we don't do this and then it's in an agreement and therefore they can never discount you and well that's actually we we can't actually legally say there's there's trade like laws that we can't we can dictate at rrp and say hey we're at 42 obviously we don't want them to discount but they can do whatever they want um so we just become that's how we become really choosy in terms of like we won't go and open say an online store that we know that's discounting all the time because your product's going to get discounted okay so legally we can't go and tell anyone the price that they have to sell it's always called a recommended retail price okay that's really good to know and i'm super curious about what your process is about once you have somebody reach out to you, then what happens?

17:23What's your internal process until you end up on their shelf? I have a very quick message from our sponsor. And honestly, we never do ad breaks on the show because I am just really picky about the sponsors that we work with and who we want to promote. We've partnered with folks like Shopify, TikTok for business, just guys that we know are really going to help grow your business. And honestly, we've turned down a lot of the rest because we want to make sure that the people that we are recommending to you, our business bestie community, are going to help you grow your business and that they're the best in the category.

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19:44Okay, let's get back into the show. Well, this is probably the most time consuming part. And at the start, P and I would literally meet every day or on Instagram. And this is probably why we've got such a beautiful curated account is because we've put so much time and effort into handpicking and approving all of our accounts. So she would come with a list and we'd just literally get online, check it out, look at it on Google, make sure it's not too close to any other account that we already have. We get on Instagram and that's kind of how we have handpicked and approved all of our accounts. So it is time consuming, but it is absolutely worth it because if you start here, then it's only gonna help your brand long-term.

20:32And then do you have like a minimum order quantity that people have to place or anything like that? And did you have that kind of thing from the beginning or in the beginning, were you maybe less strict and selective? We've been pretty strict in terms of like we, okay, so we now have 12 incense scents. So, and also a rack of other products. So when we first started out, we definitely encouraged everyone to buy at least all of them. because when you go into store people want to smell all of them and choose them and all of a sudden if you're not if you haven't got Tasmania there you're robbing that person of that experience of trying to choose which scent they want so we did that at the start and now we we definitely still try and say that because yeah sometimes it was getting to the point where people were just picking the colors to match with their stores and I get I get that but then also too we've got so many people fight going hey where can I smell Tasmania and you know wherever else and if they don't have it there they're losing sales so we definitely try and you know work with the customer and doing that but anyone starting out I would absolutely just start as a minimum order and and it can just be you know really simple could be$500 it could be$250 depending on what you're just to make sure that your brand's getting the best representation in store for the customers.

22:01Have you done any outreach? It sounds like so many stores have come to you, but I'm sure there are some that have been on your wish list and that you guys went after. Yes. Talk me through what that looks like and any advice that you have for somebody who wants to, you know, they've got that store on their wish list and they want to get them. Oh, there's been so many. one of my first ones was a beautiful store in Byron and I just knew I wanted to be in there and luckily enough I sent them a sample sent them an email popped into store and sure enough that kind of nailed it just recently there was one store that a museum that we have just pinnacle that we wanted to go in so we actually flew down met their staff left their boxes but yeah fingers crossed because we're still waiting on that.

22:46The in real life thing, seriously, don't sleep on it. You just need to go and like it's real people that you're dealing with. Just do it. Honestly, I have incense in my bag all the time. And in New York, we actually did this. I actually walked around New York with incense in my bag. We went to Goop store, gave it out, spoke to the staff members, like grassroots. People love that. Like, yes, you can send an email to you know whoever and do it do that but they've got so many inquiries that why not like just go in there and you don't have to be pushy you can just say hey is the buyer here or speak to the staff member and just go have got something that I'd love to show them can I leave a look book can I leave a sample like that's all you really kind of need to do but yeah face-to-face is definitely the way to go okay before we wrap the conversation on retail because I want to talk about your rebrand and like there's a lot of good stuff to get into do you have any other tips for somebody who is launching a new business or maybe they've been e-com only and they're like you know what sophie sounds like she's really onto something here i need to be getting into wholesale and retail absolutely what other advice do you want to leave okay my biggest bit of advice and is when you do your pricing and your costings even if you're starting an e-commerce brand from scratch make sure that your margin can actually hit a wholesale margin too because if you're always thinking direct to consumer and you want to pivot and go wholesale all of a sudden you're in a pricing conundrum so that's my biggest advice because a lot of people don't understand that you know there is a margin that needs to be built in for wholesale usually it's about 55 % could be a bit higher or lower depending on which category you're in but that needs to be considered because it's really hard to undo once you've already hit the marketplace at an e-com direct to consumer.

24:42Meaning that the wholesale stockist is taking 55 % of your, yeah. Correct. And it's harder to go backwards once you've set that price. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Let's talk about the rebrand because you used to be one thing and now you're something else. And I know that you were umming and ahhing and thinking about it and then you just took the leap and it looks like it's going really well. Talk me through some of the lessons that you've learned now about how to create a brand and just some things that if you could start from the beginning, maybe you would have done it right from the get go. Okay.

25:17So don't listen to your husband. No, just joking, because he did say to me at the very start. So this is incense was created and we, we use the name obviously because of SEO and he knew that I was probably going to do other categories and he just went no Sophie you have to just concentrate on one thing so we called it this is incense and we looked at trademarking and I can't express how important trademarking actually is from the very start so obviously year in we go to trademark and LMVH actually own the French spelling for incense and it's too broad so we got denied and that's when I just was I was like okay I knew that I had to take on the huge task of creating an overarching brand to house this product because we had a product and not a brand and obviously I've come from working with amazing brands and amazing founders from obviously Rip Curl and Quicksilver so we embarked on the mission of creating it so we did invest to work obviously my husband's in marketing and strategy but you really do need to have an outsider come in and extract all the information that you actually need to do this and they're professionals like honestly we worked with this amazing team and they helped us you know with our vision and our mission and helped us come up with the brand name which we then as soon as we got the brand name and we loved it we trademarked it globally so we own the trademark of gentle habits and I didn't want to go down any further or fall in love with a brand name until I knew that we could have it so a trademark lawyer you can do it yourself but I think a trademark lawyer is definitely worth the investment because you don't want to create something in two years later down the track you're getting you know cease and cease and cease letters and you just really want to invest in your brand so we did that and then during that whole process as well I was discovering my own products that I wanted to bring in so I wasn't taking lunch breaks there's a lot of people listening to this and so I started taking my kids dive mask down the beach and using it and I just loved the ritual of being underwater and how calming it is so I decided to make my own dive mask so all of a sudden I'm creating these products on my own journey as well as gentle habits and it all just came together and we use this is for our categories so we've got this is incense this is swim this is body this is home and that allowed us to really overarchingly build into these beautiful product categories to tell the brand story so we switched over the Instagram name which was really stressful I had a lot of people tell me I was crazy to do this by the way but I knew long term that we had to do it and so we changed it to this is gentle habits to be able to you know have that you know tie to our old.

28:19And look, if there's anyone out there knowing that they have to do this, just do it, go through the process, pull in the branding professionals, because you might come out even better. And also too, it's such an investment for your long-term future. So don't be scared. If I can do it, anyone else can do it. So what are some of the new products that you've launched then? You mentioned a bunch of new categories. It sounds like you have a lot of new stuff that's, you know popped up i'd love to know what that looks like sure so obviously we've got our incense we've got our incense holders we've got our ritual oils now um because obviously this is incense sense is so unique and we have people who are obsessed with them so we've had a car diffuser that has the ritual oils in um we've got the dive mask and flippers i'm working on um i can tell you guys some new things that are coming too which i haven't really mentioned yet but we've got connection cards coming.

29:12I've got two boys. I've got a teenage boy. I want to create gentle habits as a family time. And obviously you're asking your kids, how was your day? And you're getting nothing. So these cards allow conversation and connection from eight till adult. We've got that coming. We've got our perfume, our roll on perfume coming. We're actually building out our categories, but also to incense is where it started incense is our core category and that's what we're known for so we're making sure that that's you know we're really delving into that i've got a new scent launching in february and we've just finished up doing some beautiful collabs with the darling shine girls as well oh amazing yeah so we've got heaps of fun things um happening in another collab that's in the works very cool talk me through what the launch process looks like when you're bringing out a new product both on the you know what's working on the e-com and your website but then also how you communicate that to your retailers as well so what we do I actually um part of our kind of brand vision and ethics as well is transparency and I always like to involve our customers in the process so I always like to you know give them a sneak peek or get some opinions on things we kind of like give little bits prior EDM's obviously key we tell our retailers we put together a pdf we tell them it's coming we take pre-orders as well just to be able to make sure that they're they're getting all the stock that they need and then for launch day it's really about yeah socials EDMs and yeah I like to like give a bit of a build up to it as well this is just such a little tangent but I love talking to other Australian founders I feel like there's just no bullshit and like you're so transparent and I'm really appreciating you just telling me exactly how it is because that's what you know the entire point of us having this conversation and this community it's so that people can learn from each other so thank you for like walking us through all of that and then the very last thing that I have to ask you Sophie is for a resource recommendation so I ask everyone who comes on the show for this it could be a book it could be another podcast just something that's been helping you as you've been building gentle habits that you think other folks should check out well I've got a few yeah I think the biggest thing is is for me trying to unwind myself from corporate and um your podcast has been super helpful for me so many tips and also too it's been pretty sometimes it's kind of lonely when you're working on yourself I'm working on a new something new by yourself so your podcast has been amazing Alison Rice offline has been super key for me Kate she used to be my boss did she yeah when I was at pop sugar she's amazing it's such a small world yeah she's great yeah her podcast I was listening to the very start from my journey so I feel like her she's been a part of my journey um along the way Kate Amato life and business in flow I feel like if you are creating a business out there it actually has to be sustainable for your life there's no point in building a business that is not sustainable, especially if you've got kids, you have to be really.

32:23I'm learning this lesson now. Oh my God. This could be like a whole other side tangent where I'm like, this last year of the business and the baby has just been a sprint. And I'm kind of like, oh no, this is a, this is a marathon that needs to work forever. Like I'm not building a venture backed company that I'm going to sell in five years. Like this is forever. So I need to figure this out. I could talk about this for another two hours because obviously I've walked the path with two boys. One that's about to leave me and go to boarding school next year. But honestly, I think people really need to have an understanding that you need to make your business fit into your life and not the other way around because you are not going to last.

33:06It is key. You're going to have burnout. You're going to have fatigue. You want to wake up every morning and love your business and if you don't do that it's just not sustainable it's not going to work so how do you do that how are you how do you do that okay you're three years in coming from a really bad workaholic um previous life and i and i'll be completely honest i i have days and where i really have to check myself um but it's just the discipline and i think also to just saying no start learning to say no I say no now more often than I say yes and also to listening to your body like I have stopped going out I am just really selective I have my core people that I have around me I do I've just yeah family time's really important you can't do everything and I think that's the thing like you are going to spread yourself too thin you if you don't look after yourself and have that self-care and those gentle habits for yourself it's it's it's not going to work you're you're going to fail yourself and you're going to fail everyone so it is really slowing down and working on what is actually important and what you can say no to amazing okay were there any other recommendations yes i feel like i cut you off and sent you on a tangent what else have you got for us um passion purpose and profit by fiona is it kilaki that is such a key book oh my gosh again it stems back to having your purpose like my purpose every day is to wake up and make products to help other people and i think that if you have that purpose in your business then you're going to be around for a long time um obviously clavio the bundle app for me on shopify um they're two really what's the bundle the bundle app for me is epic because we have pick and mixes so you can pick three like a pick and mix lolly bag um so you can pick three incenses for a you know for together we bundle it up and that allows us to track our inventory although sometimes it doesn't work that well but it allows us to pick and mix you can choose and match it with a holder so that app's been really pivotable for us because obviously we've got so many different scents and a lot of people are like oh I don't know which ones to choose and then I can just it's just an easy one you just put it in your cart and pick the incenses that you want that's been really good for us as well amazing yeah okay that's such good recommendations sophie this has been a lot of fun i could talk to you all night but we are at time so i wanted to say a big thank you for coming on the show for being so transparent where can people find you and where can they find gentle habits sure so if you're in the us you can jump on to anthropology and if you're in australia gentlehabits.com.au and of course our instagram at this is gentle habits thanks jazz Amazing.

36:00Thank you. Quick shout out to all of our Business Bestie subscribers. If you are loving the show and you are building a consumer, CPG or e-commerce business, or you're about to build one, this membership will give you access to the people, experiences and the tools that you really need to build your dream business. Head to femalefounderworld.com forward slash subscriber for more.

From the publisher

Sophie Marshall is the founder of Gentle Habits, the insence-turned-lifestyle brand taking over Australia. As a working mom with two kids, incense became her way to switch off, and the brand eventually became her side hustle.

Sophie and the team grew Gentle Habits to a million dollar business within the first two years, primarily thanks to incredible relationships with independent retailers. Now she's making big moves launching into stores like Anthropologie US. In this episode Sophie gives all the tips on doing the same!

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