Six Months Post-Launch: Leigh Campbell's Building the Next Big Beauty Brand

1 May 2023 · 31 min

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Female Founder World Podcast Episode Notes

Episode Title

Six Months Post-Launch: Leigh Campbell's Building the Next Big Beauty Brand

Host

Jasmine Garnsworthy

Guest

Leigh Campbell, Co-founder of Brillo Beauty

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Episode Summary

In this episode, Jasmine Garnsworthy interviews Leigh Campbell, co-founder of Brillo Beauty, who shares her journey in launching a new beauty brand after years of experience in the beauty industry. Leigh discusses spotting a market gap, overcoming fears of entrepreneurship, and how they achieved significant traction shortly after launch.

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Key Topics Discussed

  1. Background of Leigh Campbell
  2. Professional Experience:
  3. Hosts Australia's largest beauty podcast, *YouBeauty*.
  4. Previous roles include:
  5. Beauty Director at Cosmopolitan Australia.
  6. Head of Lifestyle at Huffington Post Australia.
  7. Current position at Mamamia, a major women's media brand in Australia.
  1. Launching Brillo Beauty
  2. Initial Investment: Leigh and her co-founder contributed $260,000 of their own money.
  3. Revenue Achievement: Generated $180,000 in sales within the first three months.
  1. Allocating Startup Funds
  2. Breakdown of Initial Investment:
  3. Website: $5,000
  4. Product formulation and testing: $30,000
  5. First product run and packaging: $150,000
  6. Branding and content: $50,000
  7. Legal and admin: $10,000
  8. Other startup costs: $15,000
  1. Market Gap Identification
  2. Brillo Beauty focuses on premium body care products specifically for pregnancy and postpartum, addressing a lack of options in Australia.
  1. Overcoming Fear of Entrepreneurship
  2. Leigh emphasizes the importance of research and community feedback.
  3. Utilized her extensive network from her podcast to gauge audience needs.
  1. Launch Strategy
  2. Pre-Launch Secrecy: Maintained secrecy to create anticipation; launched with a two-week pre-sale.
  3. Visibility: Initially, they relied on organic growth and influencer gifting to promote the brand.
  1. Distribution Model
  2. Direct-to-Consumer (DTC): Focused on e-commerce due to its advantages and control over brand experience.
  3. Partnered with a premium online baby store, *The Memo*, for exclusive retailing.
  1. Co-founder Relationship
  2. Leigh and co-founder Tegan share complementary skill sets; their friendship enhances their business relationship.
  3. Importance of shared vision and communication in their partnership.
  1. Future Vision
  2. Leigh is cautious about long-term predictions, preferring to focus on short-term goals and adjustments based on market changes.
  3. Expressed that success is tied to enjoying the process and learning as they grow.
  1. Resource Recommendations
  2. Leigh recommends utilizing her Instagram saved folders as a source of inspiration and motivation. She emphasizes the power of community and connection through social media.

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Key Takeaways

  • Identifying Market Gaps: Look for areas where consumer needs are not being met and leverage personal experiences to create relevant products.
  • Financial Planning: Prioritize initial investments wisely and track how funds are allocated to ensure efficiency.
  • Community Engagement: Utilize your existing community for feedback and ideas; they can provide valuable insights into consumer preferences.
  • DTC Strategy: Consider the benefits of launching as a direct-to-consumer brand to maintain control over branding and customer experience.
  • Co-founder Dynamics: Finding the right partner with complementary skills is crucial; ensure that personal compatibility exists.

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Additional Resources

  • Brillo Beauty: [Visit the website](https://brillobeauty.com)
  • Group Business Coaching Calls: [Join here](https://bestie.femalefounderworld.com/events)
  • Female Founder World Newsletter: [Subscribe here](https://femalefounderworld.beehiiv.com)

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This episode of *Female Founder World* offers valuable insights for aspiring entrepreneurs, particularly in the beauty industry, illustrating the journey from idea to launch and the importance of community and partnerships in building a successful business.

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Transcript

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0:01Hey, it's Jasmine here, the host of the Female Founder World Podcast and the creator of all things Female Founder World. And you know what? It is awesome having these conversations on the podcast. I always learn so much. I feel like the feedback we get is that you are all picking up gems all the time. But the thing you need, if you want to build something meaningful is you need people in your life that you can ask questions to who have done this before and know specific answers to very, very specific questions because a lot of this just can't be Googled. But it's super hard to find those mentors.

0:40Really experienced founders are also usually really, really busy. And so that's why we started doing these group business coaching calls. They are regular mentorship sessions where you can literally just join a video chat with a founder that we've teed up and ask them a very specific question about your business or how they've grown theirs. And tonight, which is May 1st, the day that the podcast is dropping, We have Rachel Liverman, the founder of Glow Bar. She launched her beauty spa just before the pandemic. And you can just imagine like the absolute headache that that would have been and how stressful, but she survived.

1:17She went on to raise$10 million and she has since opened six more locations. So that is the person to chat with about resilience, but also about fundraising and opening physical locations. And then next week, I have the perfect person to chat with about getting into big retailers. That is Lindsay Holden. She's the founder of a haircare brand called Odell that stocked an altar. But not only that, Lindsay was a buyer at Target before she launched her own company. So she's the person to chat with if you want to know how to get into retail. Okay, the links to those events are in the show notes. So you can register, find out the timings, make sure it works for your schedule.

1:58and if you're a business bestie member of course there will be a recording in the dashboard for you that you can re-watch at any time. Okay now on to the show my guest today is Leigh Campbell the co-founder of Brillo Beauty. Yes she's another Aussie I've been on a real Aussie streak at the moment but there are just lots of people doing really cool stuff in Australia and I want to talk to them. So Leigh is actually an OG beauty girly she hosts Australia's largest beauty podcast It's called You Beauty, and she's worked in the space for years. She was a beauty director at Cosmo, head of lifestyle at Huffington Post, and now she's at Mamma Mia, which is Australia's largest publishing and podcasting brand for women.

2:39And just as an aside, it also happens to be where I worked when I was 21. It's where I got my start in media. So I didn't cross over with Leigh, but I just feel like that is a fun fact. So Lee recently started this beauty brand with her friend and they put in$260 ,000 of their own money to start this company. And that was a pretty big move for her. They were both pretty nervous about it. And I think if you're somebody who has an idea and you're about to put your own money into it, that you are bootstrapping. Listening to Lee and how she kind of overcame that fear and made the leap, I think will really, really help you.

3:16She's also very upfront about pretty much everything about her journey so far. She also told us exactly how she spent that money. So I followed up with her after the show to figure out where she allocated all the spend. And I'm going to share it with you now because even if you're not investing that much money to start your business, it can help you figure out where she has prioritized, right? So she put 5K towards the website. That is the smallest cost. then formulation and all that testing that you have to do to create a product was$30 ,000 their first run of product including packaging was 150k they spent another 50 on branding and content and the most beautiful photo shoot which I will link in the show notes so you can check it out 10 grand on legal and admin and then there are a lot of just other costs that pop up when you're starting a company and that all came to about$15 ,000 for her.

4:11So 260 grand of their own money, fully bootstrapped. And then they made$180 ,000 in sales through the website in the first three months of business. So we'll get into how she made that happen. I really think that this company is going to be huge. I'm a big believer in what Lee is building and the space that she is getting into. And I think it's so interesting to hear from somebody on the ground floor of this journey, I'm going to tap her in a couple of years on the shoulder and be like, come back on the show. She probably will have taken over the world by then and will have a lot more to share.

4:45But it is always interesting to hear from somebody who is in the early days. She is in it just like you, just like me. And she has a lot of really interesting stuff to share about where she's at right now. Okay, let's get into the show. You are now entering female founder world with your host Jasmine Garnsworthy. Leigh, welcome to Female Founder World. It's so great to have you on the show. Oh, thank you for having me and thank you for being up late. It's very early here in Australia. Well, I am obviously very familiar with you and what you're building, but for people who don't know Brillo Beauty, what is it?

5:24What are you creating? What is it? It is a premium body care range for pregnancy, postpartum and beyond. So six products, essentially body oils, body butter and the like, because I've got a background in beauty and I saw a gap in the Australian market. And so I did it with my business partner. I think that everyone in Australia and all the beauty girlies know who Lee Campbell is. But a lot of our listeners are based in the US as well as, of course, Australia. But I think there are going to be some people that don't know your story and what your background is. You host a couple of really award-winning top podcasts.

5:59you have built you've built an amazing career as a journalist as an editor what have I missed so I was beauty director at Cosmopolitan for eight years so that's where I really found my feet in beauty then I went to HuffPost Australia to head up the lifestyle team and now I'm at Mamma Mia which is Australia's biggest women's media network and I host Australia's biggest beauty podcast You Beauty which is daily believe it or not Australia has a daily beauty podcast I I didn't think there'd be an appetite, but there is. We went from twice a week to daily. And as well as that, I host a parenting podcast.

6:31So I've got like a little bit of my feet or my fingers in the pie of parenting and then definitely still very much in the beauty world. I've been a beauty journalist for 20 years. The daily podcast cadence, hold on, talk to me about that. That's intense. That's a lot of content. It's intense. So we were twice a week for a couple of years and then Mia, who runs Mama Mia, she always just knows what the audience wants. and she said, let's go daily. And I thought, oh, nuts. You know, five episodes a week of beauty, but the beauty community is just so engaged. There's a group on Facebook of 75 ,000 women and about five men.

7:05Wow. And yeah, they are just super engaged in beauty. Very broad range of knowledge. Some are beginners, some are absolute experts and it's such a beautiful community and listeners. And yeah, five shows a week. I just, all I do is talk about beauty. I think that there's something about um with podcasting it's just like the company it's the company that you want so once you get to know a host and you feel connected with them they're like a friend and you do want their company all the time and it becomes part of your ritual so I can understand why people would want it daily that's exactly what we say you know it's your friends in your ears and essentially it's me and my co-host Kelly just chatting about beauty so it's not necessarily making her buy something every episode but it's just you know you drive to work or you're exercising and you just you've got your two friends in your ears chatting about beauty and that's oftentimes what girls do when they get together.

7:54Okay so how does a beauty editor and a podcast host end up with a consumer product brand? Oh good question so over the years I've been lucky enough to be approached many times to create my own products but honestly I would see probably 20 brands launch a week across my desk and I just didn't feel that there was space and I didn't want to make something for no reason and then co-host of my parenting podcast her name's Teagan and a very good friend of mine she owns a range of day spas here in Australia called bump day spa and they're day spas for pregnant women or pregnant people and she's also got a fantastic business mind so for years she was saying you've got to do something you've got to do something and then two years ago she came to me she said I'm going to do a range of body care for pregnancy and postpartum are you in and I said no because I'm not a risk taker in that way she is I like working for the man and getting my salary and then I thought back to my postpartum period and and pregnancy as well and thought, yeah, you know, like I did cherry pick from different brands, but they didn't really speak to my style or speak to me completely.

8:55And so I rang her back two days later and I said, all right, let's do this. And I was absolutely terrified. But, yeah, she's the one that convinced me. I have obviously just gone through this whole pregnancy time in my life and I'm in the, I mean, I'm still in that fourth trimester phase. It's not 12 weeks yet. And I remember, like you're just saying, like cherry picking certain products but also like I just couldn't be bothered doing the research so I just cut everything out pretty much used nothing for for the full nine months because I was like I don't know I can't be bothered doing the research like I'm not familiar I don't trust these brands so I can totally see why there's space for something like Brillo.

9:32Well that's what a lot of our feedback in our research was that she's completely overwhelmed oftentimes it's her first baby or even if it's your second you've kind of forgotten everything and she's researching prams and cots and, you know, sleep safety and feeding. And we wanted to just offer her a range that she didn't have to think about. It's obviously pregnancy safe. It's obviously safer postpartum, but at the end of the day, they're just premium body care products. Anyone can use them, but it was just taking something off her to-do list that she'd go, great. That whole range is for me. It looks good.

10:01It works. It's effective. And so she could then focus on the rest of getting her life together as she's about to become a mum. You mentioned that you were you know terrified starting a business and I think that this is something that is pretty relatable like me and the rest of the female founder world community we're a bunch of people who really feel like we probably have no business starting a business like we don't have an MBA we probably are our customer and we've seen a product we've got a product idea and we're kind of reverse engineering everything else how did you overcome that hesitancy to actually think okay you know what let's do it yeah well we did a lot of research so thankfully Tegan with the pregnancy Day Sparts had a lot of knowledge in that they sold and do still sell other brands there and she knew what sold well from a retail perspective in a pregnancy space and then me being in beauty and my podcast in the group is very two-way conversational and every single week I would see people jumping in there going you know help I'm pregnant what can I use or my girlfriend's just had a baby what what's a beautiful gift pack I can give her and that's why when Tegan and I came to we firstly we decided okay we both from both sides of our expertise we think this is a good idea but then when we decided to you know narrow down the six products we would launch I said we absolutely have to have postpartum products and she's like why they can use any body moisturizer and I said no you know I remember when I was going to hospital to have my son I wanted to take something nice for me but I knew I couldn't have any fragrance because baby bonds with you through your unique scent so important for feeding they can't really see you yet so I said I want to do some fragrance free you know body wash and body lotion and she thought that's silly excellent seller she really wanted to do the magnesium spray I didn't really use one in pregnancy I thought oh oh really it's you know you don't it's not the same as a moisturizer another one of our best sellers so we kind of combined our two expertise and thought we're pretty sure this is an idea it was still terrifying but it was also a really fun process so at the end of the day we said as long as we make our capital back we'll call it a success and we just decided to go for it.

12:00When you're talking about that, you know, tapping the community and looking at what people are talking about and getting validation that way, did you do any focus groups, any surveys? Did you do anything that was like more robust and intentional in that way or was it more about that intuitive kind of being involved in the space? Look, definitely intuitive because through my work with Mamma Mia, I do have access to that huge group. But we just use good old Instagram polls and Instagram question boxes because I feel like, you know, Tegan has three kids in one year. She's got two five-year-olds and a four-year-old.

12:30I've got a three-year-old. So our audience are already mums and generally are already into beauty because they follow me. So I felt like I had our target market there and I just asked her, what do you want? What do you think is missing? What brands did you love? What, you know, what did you struggle to find? So we kind of just used our own audiences, which were essentially our customers. I was following you on Instagram as you were kind of teasing this new, something that you're doing and I was like okay definitely in the beauty space and I was like will it be in the parenting space I don't know and I was trying to like guess along as you as you were building it and then you launched and I feel like you were everywhere in like a couple of days like all of a sudden I was seeing the brand that's obviously what people want out of a launch but all of a sudden I was seeing the brand kind of everywhere and I'm wondering what were you doing that was giving that impression like what was the launch strategy and how were you getting all of that visibility?

13:24Yeah. So it was so hard to keep a secret because we were working on it so hard. We have our other jobs. We were working every night and every morning and every weekend, and we desperately wanted to share what it was, but the attention economy has never been so busy. And I feel like if we'd revealed the brand before we were ready to take sales, when it actually launched, people would be like, oh yeah, I've already seen that. And so we wanted to just keep it a secret, go for a bang. And so instead, as hard as it was, we waited until the products that are made in Melbourne were being shipped up to Sydney to our warehouse so we had a two-week pre-sale instead and we just went bam one night this is what we've launched we posted it on the Brillo Beauty Instagram which no one followed at the time but also on our own accounts and said this is what it is and if you'd like to purchase it'll be shipped in two weeks so we sort of had that two-week buffer while we waited for the products but we didn't reveal anything earlier because for me I've seen other brands show what they're going to launch or take you on the on which I do also enjoy.

14:22But then by the time the products were available, it didn't feel new to me and there's never been so much newness. So you really want to capitalize on when you're new and exciting, but also make sure that that translates into sales rather than just coming soon. That's a really interesting way to think about it. I do think that there is a lot of this build in public kind of mentality. And it's interesting to see the other side of that. And one of the reasons why you wouldn't, because I do think a lot of people feel pressure to kind of share their, to share their business as they're building it, especially with TikTok.

14:54And a lot of people are kind of building audiences that way. But then I also think you open yourself up to like copycats and there's this whole other part of it as well, where if you're kind of talking about the business before anything actually exists, then that's something that you have to be really careful of as well. I absolutely agree. And also, you know, timeframes blow out. So when we started, I mean, what we thought we needed to spend and the amount of time we thought, oh, this will be on the shelf, you know, we'll be ready to go in six months. And then, you know, 18 months later, we were pretty close to launch.

15:21So we just didn't want it to be a long and drawn out process. Well, it was for us, but we didn't want the audience to tire of the story before we were ready to fully tell it. So you launched with quite a few products. You launched with a beautiful website, very premium photography. The entire experience is once you're on the website and every kind of touch point is very considered and beautiful. and I can tell that you have put effort and also invested money in this. What do you think for somebody who wants to launch a beauty business, like what is a ballpark to kind of pull off something that looks polished, professional and is a good product?

15:55What do you think people should be looking at? Well, look, we, again, were very naive. I think we didn't really know what we were going into and I think that's probably the best thing because if you did know all the hurdles along the way, you probably would never launch. So at the end of the day to get us to launch, Tegan and I, we bootstrapped everything. So it was our savings, not our husband's. It cost us$260 ,000 to launch the brand. We started with 50K each and then we went, oh, okay, a bit more, a bit more. But thankfully, it's such a long process. You know, you pay a deposit for the packaging and a deposit for the formulas.

16:25And then so it happens gradually. So it's not as terrifying, but, you know, it's still a huge investment. And then for me, the visuals were so important because I think, you know, Brillo's bright, beautiful fun colors biodegradable packaging because for me when it came down to the branding everything that I'd used in pregnancy or seen in pregnancy I loved but it's all very sort of earthy organic mom beige or white or black and for me I love fashion I like you know a pop of color I wanted something that I hadn't seen and the same with the imagery so we did we spent about 30k on our campaign shoot and we had a wonderful ex-vogue stylist the best hair and makeup the best photographer because you know I think brands forget how lucky we are to have social media these days but if you don't have good content it doesn't it doesn't work you know the fact that you can do e-commerce and social media and that's your whole brand you have to put money into good imagery and again you know beautiful pregnancy imagery out there but they're always in nude knickers or a bra so you know we put her in a power suit and pops of color and you know fold it over cool baggy suiting and we just thought you know she's pregnant but it doesn't mean she has to wear a white boho dress on the beach at sunset she might want to but she's also a boss and she's you know she's a creative or you know she's all these different things and so we just wanted to do some imagery that was really different and really powerful yeah and you've definitely pulled that off I look at what you've built and it definitely like feels like you're doing like a d2c e-commerce first kind of strategy.

18:00Is that an intentional thing? You always wanted it to be e-commerce first. Yes. Is this just like the necessity and you think retail is going to come? Like what are you thinking about distribution? DTC was definitely the goal from the beginning and still is, which is so hard to turn down retailers. So we didn't really build a wholesale price into the product. You know, our oil, for example, is roughly$20 to$30 cheaper than our competitors so while we go from cost to retail there's not a huge margin there um we were approached by the iconic which is a really huge website here in australia and adore beauty which is another probably the biggest beauty retailer within the first week which was so flattering and very tempting but we decided to steer our course and then there's um a very premium online baby store here in australia called the memo they're based down in melbourne they have one store in Melbourne but they're online so we decided to go with them for our as our exclusive retailer um purely for the branding um not purely for the branding but you know also they had a huge audience they they came to us with a whole bunch of content ideas and a package so we had a beautiful launch event down in their store in Melbourne and it's the type of store that only sells like two cots two prams you know it's just the best of the best so the fact that they wanted us sight unseen we actually flew down to Melbourne right before launch and showed them empty bottles and pictures and said, do you want us?

19:22And they were like, we'd love you. And we were like, oh, my God. So we do have one retailer, but no, direct-to-consumer is definitely our model. We're pretty much a gifting brand, so you can buy the products individually, but then they come in packs of three, pregnancy pack, postpartum pack, or the lot. And there's functionality on the website to add a gift card. And it's mostly branding, sorry, it's mostly gifting in that we get the most beautiful messages from friends or husbands or whatever, you know, sending the products. So we're direct-to-consumer and that's the course we're going to stay for now, but let's see.

19:53Yeah, I can see some big retailers wanting to work with you very, very soon. I feel like that's definitely going to be on the horizon for you guys. And at some point, those unit economics are going to work out in a way that you'll be able to get those prices down, I'm sure. Yes, hopefully. We'll see. But, you know, we have the functionality, we have a warehouse, we have the ability to really scale and still send ourselves. We're also in Teagan's day spars. So there's three days for us one in Brisbane two in Sydney so if someone in Sydney Brisbane or Melbourne does need to purchase last minute for a baby shower there is a few locations but for the most part we're all online I mean everyone's online the world's online I don't really go yeah absolutely no I don't go into stores and I do think that there is something about there can be like some discovery you know going into a store but I rarely actually walk into a shop and then purchase it from there and usually it's just like I feel like brands just end up competing for SEO with their stockers, you know, and they're just stocked online.

20:48And then, you know, I just don't know if that's the most, the best use of a partnership. Are you looking at Amazon or is that not part of the strategy? We don't know yet. I mean, we're a premium brand. I love Amazon. I get my kitty litter. I get everything delivered every six weeks, but I think that we don't want to get lost in a sea of thousands, you know, and that's why we chose to be direct to consumer. And that's why we turned down those retailers is because we do want to be a destination that she goes to. The memo was perfect because there's very few ranges in there. So not at the moment, but never say never.

21:21Okay, let's talk about finding a co-founder and why this relationship works. It's something that like, okay, so we have a community of entrepreneurial women. We're hosted on a platform called Geneva and it's very much like a group chat. And one of the questions that comes up, I would say once a week, somebody in there saying, I don't want to do this by myself anymore. How do I find a co-founder? and the responses and the comments on there are just like, it is so hard to find a co-founder. Don't just go out looking for somebody to bring into the business. It's a marriage from the beginning. What have you learned about this as you've been building it with Tegan?

21:59It's hard because Tegan is my best friend. We were very close before the podcast, you know, became close on the podcast and now we're literal best friends and wives. We see each other more than we see our husbands. and that to me was a bit scary because I thought you know they always say don't go into business with family and friends uh and I was worried about that but I guess I didn't have to find her she came to me and she found me and thankfully we have an entirely different skill set you know when we got the label printer and it wasn't working she watched eight hours of YouTube and I wanted to just throw it out the window and quit the business I just I do not have the patience and the brain for that she's she's technically sort of back end and I'm more front of house so Luckily, we have a very different broad skill set.

22:41And occasionally, we've gone head-to-head on decisions and we sit down and go, okay, who feels stronger about this? We chat it out and then that person goes, okay, I say, all right, yep, I think you go for it. Let's go with your decision. But for the most part, we haven't had any huge blow-ups. But I would say I wouldn't jump straight in with a stranger. I think you have to, like you say, it is a marriage and you spend so much time together. You actually need to like each other, not just have, you know, the right skills. I think it's an energy thing, talking about where you want to take the business.

23:12We're only five months old, but we're often asked, you know, where are you going to be in five years? And we need to make sure we're on the same page or at least, you know, one one stick. I don't know. We're not there yet. We're very new, but I could not have done it alone. I take my hat off to founders that do it all alone. For us, it's working for now, but as I said, we're only five months old. So hopefully we're still friends and founders in five years. So where do you want to be in five years? You mentioned that that's something that you guys have to be aligned on. What is the vision? Look, I always joke that I want to sell and that's not true.

23:45However, I have seen a lot of beauty brands really, you know, have an amazing party and then the party's often over, you know, five years, 10 years, 15 years, it depends. And I want to get out when the party's still good. But we have a lot of exciting things in the pipeline. new products, some other stuff that I'm not allowed to talk about yet. So I just, I don't know yet. I'm not a five-year plan kind of girl. Like the economy can change so much. You know, we decided to do this in COVID, which was great. A couple of our raw materials came from Syria, which obviously what was happening in Syria is pales in comparison, but that was another hurdle.

24:19Now the economy here in Australia has definitely changed and I'm sure in America as well. So we're overcoming hurdles as they happen and they're every three or four months. So to say where the world will be in five years is just too hard to look forward. We're just doing little steps as we go because really we still have no idea what we're doing and so we're not trying to get ahead of ourselves. I was speaking to the founder of a business called Your Super and they're a superfood wellness company over here in the US and her episode actually just dropped. I just listened. She sold the business, yes.

24:52It's incredibly inspiring. inspiring. When Tegan and I were talking about coming on here, I was like, oh my God, we've got tiny figures and tiny numbers. Look at these stories. But honestly, the episodes you do is so inspiring to people like us that are just starting out. I love that. And you know what? Like I also feel like that you need to hear from the people who are starting things right now to understand like what is working because it's very different starting a business in 2022, 2023 versus starting a business in 2014 when you could funnel money into paid ads and scale that way. yes it's a very different landscape different things are working but I was speaking with Crystal and she was saying that one of her biggest pieces of advice to founders who are starting companies now is really just to not focus too much on the end destination and really focus on trying to like enjoy it as you're going and I think that that is such a good way of looking at it because at the end you're either gonna you know you might exit and then you and build enough wealth that you just change the life for your whole family which is amazing and obviously that is what we all want but it might not work out as well and I just think that if you haven't enjoyed it as you've been doing it then like honestly what is the point?

25:59I'm very much get to the destination I rarely even celebrate it I'm on to the next thing but it has been so fun maybe because it's doing it with my best friend and also when you're ultimately your own boss you get to make all the decisions but to launch I had so much fun that I was like oh you know I'm happy with this and as long as we made our capital back to me that's a success and it looks like it will be better than that. So whatever happens tomorrow, I'm all good with. The last question that I ask everyone who comes on the show is for a resource recommendation. And you know what, some people tell me a book or a podcast and some people are sharing a mindset thing or a habit that they have, but what would you recommend for somebody who wants to do what you've been doing?

26:40Mine is my Instagram saved folder. I have several folders, fashion, home, and then I have sort of business and I have a lot of female founder world saved files in there. I have some inspirational quotes and I'm not an inspirational quote girl, but sometimes when things get hard. And so I just go through that and I listen to, you know, inspiring reels or great quotes or go back onto another account. And it's just my little resource of like, Hey, it was hard for them, but they did it. Or yes, that quote will get me through. It's pretty woo woo, but it's just my little sort of folder of business stuff that reminds me of why we started it in the first place.

27:14sometimes when we're creating the content for the podcast and for the soap for instagram as well i'm very aware of uh being very much like oh look they started here and now she's worth 100 million dollars and it's always in but at the same time i i do want to show no no but people actually do this people who are like like you they have gone out and they have built something and they're no different they came from the same place that you come from and they've been able to totally change their lives and build something incredible so you can do it too and i feel like it's a really fine line to work to kind of walk that yeah no I think you do that really well and there's so many amazing resources on Instagram now like honestly Instagram is most of our business um and it's most of my inspiration and it's where I shop from so I think just using it for all those tools is fantastic and yeah we love hearing those inspiring stories so we just keep sending to each other going that'll be us one day good I love that um I it is actually very cool to hear from somebody as well who's like you know Instagram is doing great things for the business because I hear a lot of frustration about folks on the platform, but you, I know I said last question, but you are finding that it's still driving sales and traction for you?

28:17Absolutely. I mean, I think we went into it not knowing, you know, obviously I do some influencing work and hearing through paid partnership clients that I convert. I was like, Oh good. I hope I convert for my own brand. And we haven't done, we haven't done any paid anything yet. So just influencer gifting. So it's all been organic, but yeah, that's most of our traffic that in our edm is most of our traffic and it's it's fantastic for us so we'll scale to the next business we're going to bring on an agency to do that sort of stuff for us because we're at the capacity of what we know how to do um but other than that it's it's been fantastic and i think brands just need to remember as frustrating as these platforms can be 10 years ago they didn't exist you know you bought a magazine ad or you bought outdoor or you know you relied on word of mouth so yes it's frustrating in some ways but it's truly the gift particularly for online businesses that just is, it's just, we're so lucky to have it.

29:11I do find it really interesting and refreshing talking to folks who come from a media and content background when they're talking about building a consumer business, because you've been on that content treadmill, like you understand the, you know, how much it requires to actually like connect, get traction and build a brand. Whereas I think people who kind of come from a different background and then launch a consumer business are really surprised and exhausted by the amount of content that's required to sustain a presence online. Content is king you know I think you can never have too much we're shooting every three to four months we just did a beautiful shoot at Teagan's house with the most amazing pregnant women and postpartum women that brought along like one of the newborns came at four days old straight from the hospital for the shoot and sweet it's just the more content you create you know you are you it's social media it is media So you need to feed that instead of, you know, updating your magazine monthly or your website, you know, however often you just need to treat your account like it is media and people want to see beautiful images.

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30:10You know, I say they want to laugh or learn. So they want to learn something or they want to feel seen and heard and feel like they're part of a community. So we just treat the Instagram as an extension of ours because I guess it is and it's doing really well. Amazing. That's really good advice. Leigh, thank you so much for coming on the pod and congrats on everything that you've built. Thank you for having me. Great to chat. Quick shout out to all of our business bestie subscribers. If you are loving this 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.

30:49Head to femalefounderworld.com forward slash subscriber for more.

From the publisher

Leigh Campbell, cofounder of Brillo Beauty, is on the Female Founder World podcast with Jasmine Garnsworthy! 

Leigh is an OG beauty girlie. She hosts Australia’s largest beauty podcast called YouBeauty, which also has a Facebook group with more than 75,000 members, was Beauty Director at Cosmopolitan Magazine Australia, then Head of Lifestyle at Huffington Post in Australia, and is now at Mamamia—a huge women’s publishing and podcasting brand in Australia.

Recently she cofounded a beauty brand called Brillo Beauty just five months ago, and we spend a lot of time in this ep talking about how she spotted a gap in the market in a very crowded beauty industry, finding a cofounder, overcoming her fear to start her own business, and how Brillo got traction.

It’s not often we get to hear from someone really on the ground floor of something that I think is going to be huge, and I think it’s really helpful for anyone who is in the early days of their own founder story. 

Leigh and her cofounder invested $260,000 of their own money to start Brillo, and made $180,000 back in the first three months of business just through sales on the website.

We have a full breakdown of how they spent that first investment too: the website cost $5k, formulation and all the testing you need to launch a beauty product was $30k, their first run of product including packaging was $150k, they spend another $50k on branding and content, $10k on legal and admin, and another $15k or so on other random startup costs. 

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