Inside the $20M Rise of Who Is Elijah

0:00Hey, I'm just jumping in to remind you that our biggest in real life event of the year is happening in New York City on Sunday, October 5th. Yes, I'm talking about Female Founder World Summit back for our third annual event. This is the event for anyone who is serious about building businesses, building wealth, building influence. It is the place to pack years and years of networking into one supercharged day. Our speaker lineup is incredible. We have Joanna Griffs who built and sold NYX, Barbara Rivera from Ceremonia, Sif Haider from Array. We've got Phoebe Gates from Fia and more amazing women who really just want to help you take your business to the next level.

0:42We also have a bar one-on-one mentorship opportunities, amazing gift bags, and more experiences to help you take things to the next level. This event honestly sells out every single year and I know we're going to sell out any minute. So please, if you are planning on coming, do not wait. Head to femalefounderworld.com to secure your spot at Summit. Hey, business besties. Welcome back to Female Founder World. It's Jasmine, I'm the host of the show. And today I'm chatting with Carol Forrest. She is the co-founder and chief creative author of Who is Elijah. Welcome back. Hi. How do you remember all of that?

1:14Well, I mean, I follow you on Instagram. I do these podcasts every week. Like your story is ingrained in my head because I follow you and you are so good at building this brand in public that I feel like I know everything about what you're doing. You've been on the show before, like a couple of years ago. I've been on the show. I know it's been so long ago. Like two years maybe. And it was such a, it's still a full circle moment. But you were one of the first podcasts I started listening to at the beginning of Who's Elijah. Okay, I love it. Yeah, so I'm like, it's every time you ask me to come on, I'll be there.

1:43Oh, amazing. I love it. Yeah, because this is very last minute. I was like, oh, we've got a gap in the studio recording spaces in like two days. Let's do it. And you said, yeah, here I am. So we love this. I want to just introduce a brand for people that don't know it. It's like most of our community are based in the US. I feel like everyone in Australia who listens to Female Founder World knows who is Elijah, but I feel like you're entering the US or it's kind of like a new market for you. I have some news for the US that I probably shouldn't say, but I'm going to say it. I just signed a contract with Revolve.

2:10We're launching in like six weeks. Oh, amazing. So the US is about to really start to know us. We just started working with an amazing PR agency over there. So I'm so excited. I'm going there. I'm going to be there for Halloween. So like you, I'm going to be going back and forth every month now. so I'm very excited to like grow in the US. It's been such a long time coming. Yeah it makes so much sense for you guys. Okay but what is Who is Elijah? Sorry I skipped. What is Who is Elijah? So we are a modern fragrance house. I started in my garage. I started filling bottles with sauce bottles in my garage.

2:40I was working full-time. We make beautiful fragrances. I did that really bad. I'm so bad at telling stories. But we make fragrances and we're less about the memories that every other fragrance brand talks about and we're more about every fragrance is a different character or like stepping into a different version of yourself or a different alter ego. I love it. Like when I look at your messaging and your products, it's kind of like, I often, I think about this quote often when I'm getting dressed, particularly now when I'm like pregnant. And I feel like when a woman has a crisis about what she's wearing, it's actually not to do with what's in her wardrobe.

3:14It's more about who she needs to be that day. And it's like, I can't find anything that reflects who I need to be today. And I feel like your fragrances are like, who do you need to be today? Like who are you today? And you get to picked out. And we hope we're giving you a little bit of confidence to step into that because sometimes it is hard to step into that boss bitch. I want to ask for a$50 ,000 pay rise or I want to become the COO or the CEO. So I used to be so shy when I started Who Was Elijah. I'm a completely different person now. Hilarious because you're like so like radiant, you radiate confidence and energy.

3:44Yeah, I didn't used to. Like honestly, it's been like the last three to four years I've really come out of my shell and it is because of Who Was Elijah. It's not just because of the perfume, obviously, but it's everything that I pushing myself to step into a different version of myself as the business has grown. And yeah, like I just want to bottle that and give it to everyone. I often think that building a business is like the ultimate experience, like the ultimate self-actualizing experience, like whether it goes well or whether it goes badly, like you are pushing yourself into a journey of growth regardless of how the business goes.

4:13And like, I feel like you have, every time you overcome something new in the business, it like unlocks another level of confidence within you and I can see that in you like I can see it in yeah last time I spoke to you a couple of years ago versus like the person that you are now oh I feel like a completely different person honestly crazy yeah are you able to share like a revenue milestone of something that you've hit last year has been our biggest year to date we did 20 million Australian yeah uh this year we will hit the same because we pulled back but next year hopefully 40 Yay! Raquel, so when did you launch?

4:45We launched October 2018, so it's our seventh birthday next month. Amazing. Yeah. And I want to, I don't want to spend too much time in the early days. And folks, I'm going to link in the show notes the original conversation with Raquel so that you can go back, you can listen to it and you can get that backstory. But just like in a really quick kind of nutshell, are there any milestones that you think about, okay, over the last seven years, things that you guys have achieved that you're like, this was crazy in year two, this was crazy in year four. Like help people piece together what your story looks like through the good stuff that happened and the bad stuff that happened.

5:16There's been a lot of bad stuff, a lot of learnings, but there's been a lot of good stuff as well. I think like a lot of our key milestone moments that got us to that next level and feels like a bit of a jump in these moments was like big retail partnerships. So David Jones is here in Australia. That's one of that we launched with them in 2020. So that was quite early on. That's so quick. Yeah. And I think it was like the year of COVID, Australian made. I think that sort of opened up a door for us, but they took a chance on us. And now they've put us in every store across Australia now, they're doing so well.

5:52I think that's been like a really key moment. And then, then we've partnered with retailers that have been detrimental to the business. And we're still trying to clean up the mess of that. I won't say who, but. I don't say who, but like tell me why, how they were detrimental. The brand alignment. Yeah, right. Like, so we, we wanted, we positioned ourself as a luxury brand with David Jones and then sort of went down to like more of like a pharmacy level because three year ago, Raquel saw an almost$2 million PO. Of course, I'm going to say yes. Totally. But if they came to me today and said, here's$4 million, I'd say no.

6:26Yeah. Which some people, I know like early on, if I heard this, I'd be like, you crazy, but that has hurt the business so much. We probably lost more than the PO because of that. So just sort of like cleaning up the mess, I think. But then we've had some other good things and we launched in Sephora Australia in 2021. That's been incredible. We're launching in Sephora UK next week, which is awesome. We just got Revolve. We just launched in the Middle East. It sounds like a lot of it has come from retail. And I used to maybe think like, oh, like, should we be focusing more on our D2C? And I wish I did in the early days because we just went straight into wholesale and retail.

7:00and then we sort of pulled back from wholesale and retail and focused on DTC, whereas we should have been doing it together. But you only have so many resources and everything. Like you can look back at your story and think, oh, we should have just been doing everything, but something's got to give. Yeah, I know. So now we're focusing on both, but I kick myself sometimes, but then I'll tell people some struggles that I'm having and I'll be like, it doesn't look like it. Yeah. And I'm like, oh, I hope that I don't want to, I don't like it. I don't like when I listen to other founders And like, I sort of know that it's not as shiny as what they portray.

7:31So I try not to be that. I'm probably too open and honest about all of our struggles, but even still people say like, oh, it doesn't look like that from the outside. But where this year has been such a tough year, but it's been the best year in terms of learnings. I feel like I've got like an MBA of business now. So I'm feeling very confident. I'm just so excited for this year to be over, but I'm like the most confident I've ever been. When you were kind of in the early years of the business, what were some of the things that you did to get traction? So we're like very known for our guerrilla marketing.

8:01You're so good at it. You're so good at it. Yes. I think you personally are so good at it. Not just the team, but like the way that you show up as well. I do it because I love it. Sometimes a couple of years ago, it was hard for me to go into the streets and do it because I felt so uncomfortable. But now I'll just run up to someone and be like, Hey, you look like you need a perfume. But I do it because I want to, but I also do it because, you know, as the face of the brand, people respect it more that you are on the ground hustling. And I think like every, if everyone can do that, do it because you get so much more cut through than Becky from marketing will get, you know, no disregard to Becky.

8:37I don't even have a Becky in my team, but yeah, I think like guerrilla marketing has been how we've really grown the brand, a big part of how we've grown the brand, especially in Australia. I want to talk about some of those guerrilla marketing moments just to show like the level of, I don't know, you're the kind of person who sees an opportunity and you're just like, fuck it, I'm going to do it. Let's go. And everything is a content opportunity. I feel like for you guys, and you really know how to maximize a moment in the business to leverage it for the most like reach and virality. And I think you do that really well and like engineering those moments.

9:11And I want to talk through a few of the times that you've been faced with an issue and then you've, or an opportunity and you've used these like guerrilla marketing tactics to kind of meet the opportunity or overcome the challenge. And the first thing I want to talk about is London and the UK and Boots. And I think this is actually where we left off last time. I think you were just kind of, you were just about to, you just got a no from Boots and you wanted to expand into the UK. And then next thing I know you're on a plane and you're heading to London. So what's that story? So yeah, so they said no to me because we had no brand awareness there.

9:44And even like two years ago, I didn't even understand what brand awareness truly was, which sounds so crazy because now it's all I think about. So basically I said, no one knows who you are. So I jumped on a plane with 500 of our discovery sets that have all of our fragrances in there. I took my content girl with me and we stood out at the front of Piccadilly Boots and Covent Garden and handed out our discovery set. I think it was like 500 of them to our, to customers walking in and out of boots and even the boot staff. And we did lots of content and kept tagging boots. I probably thought it was so annoying.

10:12I didn't hear from them, but nine months later I get an email from the head a fragrance of Boots. I jumped on a Zoom call and then they basically sent us a contract straight away. So then I thought, well, I'm going to move to London because they loved what I do here in Australia. And so we packed up my whole family, moved to London. Because you had kids. Yeah, two little kids. My dog. My dog's still there. I live back now in Sydney. It's hard to relocate. My sister lives there though. So he's with her. So it's okay. But long story short, that worked, that the guerrilla marketing worked. We signed with Boots.

10:45We launched onto the Boots website and in some stores, but then I quickly realized this brand alignment is not good for right now. So we've just parted ways with Boots very amicably because we were getting no's from everyone because we were in Boots. Yeah. So I had to undo that mess as well. But this is such an important lesson. We've got this program called retail bootcamp that we have and it's all about I should join it you should I thought you got the hard one lessons you should teach yeah I should do both and it's all about how brand and positioning is so important with retail and you really need to decide like who your north star retailers are and commit to them because if you go for the wrong one like you won't get into like you won't get you got to start from the top yeah yeah start from the top work your way down uh in terms of like prestige or premium yeah yeah so we should have started at selfridges but i love sephora we're a sephora brand here in australia so it's all worked out fine yeah all good but that's probably like a positive that was kind of a negative but led us to where we are i'm a big believer in the universe so i trust the universe yeah i'm sick of making mistakes though but then we've had some like better moments like the sofia richie moment yes okay i want to talk about that i am gonna ask about sofia richie in a moment but i want to still talk about london for a little bit so you You moved home.

12:05Why did you move home? I mean, I lived in London last year for 10 months. I just didn't enjoy it. Yeah, I didn't enjoy it. I've never left Sydney before, like moved out of Sydney before. I just didn't love it. It was miserable. It rains all the time. Yeah. I don't know. It was like death by a thousand cuts. I think it was a bit of everything. I love London. I'm going there next month and I'm so excited. Yeah. I don't want to live there. I can do everything from here. I am so happy to be on a plane every two weeks. Totally. And my kids are safe in Australia. Yeah. I was leaving them in the country with a nanny because I had no one around me to help and I didn't, wasn't comfortable for us.

12:40So yeah, we moved back. We only lasted four months. Okay. Well, welcome home. Thank you. I did nine. Oh, you beat me. But there's lots of great things about London. No hate people that are from there. But it is very different to Sydney. And if you don't have your like crew and your friends and your family there, it's a heart. I had to make friends there too because everyone lives so far away. It's actually similar to Sydney, I feel like, in terms of making friends. in that people are born and bred and they've got their, like, school and uni clique and it's, like, quite hard. Whereas New York, you go to everyone is transient and international.

13:10It's so easy to make friends. So I would have thought London was like that. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, there's probably, like, different circles, but I definitely found it hard to, like, make new friends. Okay, so you talked about Sophia Ritchie very quickly there. Crazy. I followed along this story on TikTok as well. So this was while I was in London. It was near the end of my stay. When was it? like what not that long ago oh like four months ago now probably not too long yeah I think it was in May oh no it must have been in April because I moved back in April I think it was in April uh so I worked with a UGC agency in London while I was there and I give them the brief of sort of like what to say and one of them was Nomad I have always said that Nomad is Sophia Ritchie in fragrance form it's effort luxury it's like if you look at Sophia that is what you imagine she smells like.

13:59That's the one of your fragrances. Nomad. Yeah, sorry. Nomad. And one of the creators said, basically what I just said, if Sophia was a fragrance, it would be Nomad and did this cool little video. I posted it, went out and saw a play, woke up the next morning, very hungover. And Adam, my husband said, check TikTok. And Sophia Richie had commented on the TikTok that I posted the night before saying ordered. And I just said, no way. So I logged onto Shopify US site and there was an order from Sophia Grange and to a house that I assumed was her house at the time and I just looked at Adam with my hair all a mess and I said I'm gonna fly to LA like now and he goes yeah so I called my PR agency I got them to Uber a bunch of fragrances to my London house and I was at the airport four hours later and I documented the whole thing had my content girl with me and we vlogged it and by the time I landed in London in LA I think like eight or nine hours later, I had been put in touch or in contact with Sophia's manager.

14:58And so the next morning I woke up in LA and I messaged the manager and I said, Hey, I don't know if you've seen, but I'm in LA. I swear I'm not a crazy stalker, but I would love to hand deliver it. It doesn't need to be to Sophia. Happy to leave it to security because she did put her home address in. And so she said, yep, no worries. Just please don't film the house. And I said, no problem. And so we filmed me driving to the house, but then sort of cut the cameras. and then I gave it to security and I got there and they're like hey perfume girl and I was like oh my god I gave it to them and then they said bye and I walked back to the car and Jasmine my content girl was like are you okay and I'm like I was not expecting to walk in there like this is like still a dream come true anyway thought it was done went to Air One got a smoothie and went back to the airport to fly back to London I'm sitting on the ground no makeup in my Qantas pajamas and And I get a phone call from an American number and it's Sophia's manager.

15:51And she said, hey, Sophia, you got the perfume she wants to take you to dinner. And I was like, well, it didn't say I was at the airport. I'm like, okay, when and where, tell me. And she texts me when and where. And I was like, I've got nothing to wear. I had to go down. I was like a crazy lady to British Airways to get my suitcases off the plane. And I had to sit for an hour, but they got me my suitcases. And I booked a hotel room in LA and I ended up going to Sophia's house and meeting her and spending like three hours with her, having some wine and caviar. And it was just the most incredible experience.

16:21But Butterfly Effect, we are now partnered with their PR agency. So now we're working with them. So yeah, it's just so cool. Incredible. What's the lesson from that? For people who are like out there building something right now, like what do you take away from that experience? Be delusionally optimistic. Yeah. Yeah. Because I wasn't going over there to meet Sophia, but I was going over there. I honestly don't know. I thought it was a cool story. I think it was just for the content, but I don't know, like just do it. I had so many like negative comments on the TikTok being like, oh my gosh, just send a PR box like everyone else does.

16:55I'm like, yeah, but I don't want to be like everyone else. So don't be like everyone else. I think that like the lesson, like saying like do it for the plot, it's kind of like that applies to business a lot of the time. If you're building in public and you are taking people along for the ride, it's like make the story more interesting. Go do the more interesting thing. Yeah. And also just like for life, like what a cool story. What an experience. Like that is probably like the coolest experience of my life to date. What was she like? Like exactly what you think she's going to be like. She's such a lovely girl.

17:22Like, yeah, I have so much respect for her. She's so nice. And her husband, I met her husband, Elliot, and he was just the coolest dude. Yeah, just, I can't believe I did that. And it's opened so many doors because it cost me a few thousand dollars to do it, but the best few thousand dollars I've spent. And you think about what a legacy brand would pay to have any kind of affiliation with her. And yeah, millions. And being someone who is scrappy, you are a real person at the forefront of the brand. So it humanizes it. She buys into your story. And it just like unlocks these opportunities that puts you like light years ahead of like what these legacy brands are trying to do.

17:58And you have to take advantage of what the legacy brands can't do. Totally. Because if they started doing what we do, they wouldn't be as. It wouldn't work. It wouldn't work. So do what they, I used to, like I used to say, oh, I wish I had their budget. And like I kind of still do, but I would still do it scrappy. You would do, it would also like look very different. It would look very different. Yes. I think take advantage of not being a legacy brand because honestly, I think it is such an advantage these days. Yeah. Okay. I love that story. That's incredible. I want to talk about like funding and money and milestones.

18:28How have you funded the business? We've done it. We've done it all ourselves. We've borrowed money. I hate money. I'm so over money this year, but we haven't gone down the investor route. I think we need to now. or very soon. Next year, we definitely will. We have lots of people wanting to invest in the business. This year's just been a bit of a tricky year. So yeah, I hate money this year, but I'll love it next year. But we've self-funded it, done business loans here, there when we needed. Wasted a lot of money, but we've learned not to. When you launched it, were you just using savings or your salary?

19:00I worked full time for the first two years. Wow. Nearly two years. What was the inflection point to quit? it was COVID I was an EA for a bunch of c-suite executives men love them but a lot of the people got stood down because it was in the hotel industry I did not but I was doing hundreds of people's jobs all at once and I just felt so undervalued I had I got called back early because all these people left and I just had a cesarean still bleeding from my vagina and I went back to work, asked for a pay rise and got told no. So I was like, why am I here? And so, but I gave myself a goal. I'm going to get into David Jones and then I'll quit and I got in straight away.

19:39So boy, bye. Never looked back. And I want to talk about hiring. So you've mentioned your content person, Jasmine, a few times. And I just think having someone who is with you every day and helping to turn the story of you as a founder into content is just so powerful. Like I really want that. I have that in New York, but I'm not in New York all the time. So now I need to find someone in Sydney who can do that for us. Well, you should work with Jasmine because she actually just left Tools Elijah very amicably. Oh, no. But it was just time for her to move on. Now she's doing free, she's freelancing.

20:11So she's still working with us, but freelancing. I'll give you her details. Does she want to like do her own thing? Is that for fun? Yeah, she's doing her own thing. Okay. And I think I burnt her out. Yeah. I think I burnt her out. She's like, I can't fly to LA and London. Yeah, I think I burnt her out. I think we're going to lunch or dinner next week, but I love her. Still working with her. Now I have, I have Sienna who's been in the business for a couple of years now, and now she's following me around and doing content. So I think it's so important to have someone not with you 24 seven, but someone that can be there.

20:39But what I'm getting good at, I'm vlogging today. Yeah. I'm getting better at vlogging as well, which I sometimes gets more views. My days are so like, I feel like it's just me in front of the computer half the time. How do you come up with those ideas of how do I make this an interesting story? because you also do that really well. I see you in your car telling your stories about the business. Yeah. I don't know. I've trained myself to do it. And again, I think it's coming out of my shell a little bit. Yeah. Because if I did it three years ago, I'd probably be on a yacht right now. But we're here now and we're doing it now.

21:10Maybe next year or the year after. I think I was getting frustrated at myself for not doing it. So now it's like I've just made it a part of my, not every day, but trying to make it a part of it. Trying to prioritize it. Yeah. So who was your first hire? or what was your first hire? What role? Filling perfume in my garage. Yeah. Yeah. While I was at work paying them cash. And then how have you built the team? Like what does it look like now you're seven years in? Seven years in, we've just brought on a head of brand marketing, Britt. If anyone ever tries to poach her from me, I'm coming after them because I love her.

21:41She's awesome. She's been with us for like three months now and I feel like she is like helping us. I think what we went through this year is because we've gotten to a stage where we're not solidifying who we are as a brand. I think like it's getting maybe a little bit boring just showing the warehouse stuff. Like we're not really a startup anymore. So we need to start showing that more elevated campaign messaging. And I was telling you how excited I was on the Zoom out the front this morning. The agency that we're working with, it's like, I can't wait for the world to see the new version of Who is Elijah.

22:13And it's because of Brits telling us like, oh, you need, we need to do this. This is why this year's been a bit tough because you sort of like we've grown but not a lot you need to like clarify what that messaging is and because yeah it's like it sounds to me like it lives within you and you need to figure out how to like externalize it so other people can carry that vision for you yeah it took the words out of my mouth yeah if I could put them together because like I'm in exactly the same position right now oh yeah so so we have Brit had a brand we've still have quite a lean team to be honest we maybe like 25 people but we still do all the production in our warehouse so half of that is warehouse stuff.

22:47Yeah. So it's myself and Adam running the business. We have some really great advisors that we work with that like for finance and just advisory. Our marketing team's three people, myself, Britton, Sienna. Wow. Yeah. So, but now we're outsourcing to agencies. So it's kind of a small team, but agencies. And are you guys all in the office every day? I just made it mandatory. Yeah. Yeah. Because we needed to. Yeah. Yeah. I am, again, this is something that I talk about on the show all the time around navigating that and what it looks like and my team are mostly in New York, some are in LA. And I'm like, I'm in Australia and that's really hard now.