The Weird Way This Rural Founder Makes $6 Million A Year

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0:25Kira Mackenzie Jackson:this episode of female founder world is presented by adobe express the quick and easy app to create on-brand content you can sign up for free at adobe express.com hey everyone welcome back to female founder world this is a group chat episode of the show we drop them in as often as we can as often as we can like rally some members of the team together and this episode is where we talk about some of the headlines the interesting stuff we're seeing in female founder world in consumer brand news and in the world of entrepreneurship. We're talking about things from some of the headlines to some stories.

0:57Kira Mackenzie Jackson:I've got one for you about the kind of business that you would never have heard of that is doing so well right now. And I wanted to bring you a story about that founder. But first, Paige, you are an award-winning entrepreneur this week. What's the award that you won? Tell me about it. You are too kind. You're too kind. So I won two awards actually, which is, you know, so humble. Also, this isn't like your first award, right? You've won a few. No, I don't even know. What do we consider awards? You know, like Forbes, is that an award? That's like a list. Maybe this is first like real award. My family's sick of it, I'm sure, in the group chat.

1:34But I won the Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award and then the Young Wellness Entrepreneur of the Year, which is such an honor. Everyone listening, you get it. Like we don't get performance reviews. Well, thank you, Jasmine. Thank you. You're always the best. no performance reviews no nothing so it's always nice and I will say like I was nominated for this and it's just like always you know like gotta send a video blah blah blah and I did probably just like 10 minutes before the video once we were nominated closed sent like a very quick little clip just because I was like I might as well like throw my hat in the ring so if anyone is like nominated for things or you're just kind of over applying for awards you never know throw it in there.

2:18Kira Mackenzie Jackson:Yeah. You never know. It's worth applying. And you've won free flights for a year, which is quite funny because we were talking about in the, in our chat, like you've been saying, I need to travel less. I need to pull back. Cause you, how many, how many flights have you been on this year for Benny? 44. Yeah. Um, and it's funny, this podcast, I feel like it's such a marker of where I am. I feel like I'm never fricking home and I miss being home. Um, But I'll take free flights for a year. Yeah, I know. It's like the universe telling you, no, keep going. Just lock in. I'm ready. I'm locked. Oh, well, we're very proud of you.

2:51Kira Mackenzie Jackson:And I wanted to talk about it on the show because I think everyone's been kind of watching you build from day one when you were sharing, you know, your brand identity in the female founder group chat and like getting some feedback. And now, you know, you're winning awards and in Target. And we love that. I also have a little announcement. I haven't sent a single email about this except to the wait list. So you'll be hearing about it first. if you weren't on the wait list, Female Founder World Summit tickets have dropped. It's happening on the 15th of November in New York City at Chelsea Piers, which is probably the most iconic waterfront venue you can get in New York.

3:25Kira Mackenzie Jackson:And actually makes me, I like have a bit of anxiety about it. It's like such a nice space and it's so big. And I'm like, oh my God, we've really bitten off a lot here. But it's going to be, you know, this is the main question that we get in our DMs and in our emails is when is Summit happening? So you guys, you've heard it here first. Tickets are on sale right now. I think there's only, they've only been on sale for about 24 hours. I think we have five VIP tickets left, guys. Like these tickets are going really fast. So please, please, please go and grab yours. I'm going to tell everyone here on the podcast first.

3:57Kira Mackenzie Jackson:And then after this podcast comes out, I'm going to send out the email comms, all of the social, the press. But I want you guys to hear about this first so you can secure your spot. You guys need to be there. It's the greatest. like I look I'm so you're speaking this year yeah Paige oh I'm happy to this is yeah anytime put me put me behind a mic we've definitely spoken about it we've spoken about it but like you've had a lot of flights but um yeah I want to I want to get you on that stage and I haven't announced the speakers yet because there's a really big one that I want to wait until she signed her paperwork before we kind of like do the big and moment of announcing what their schedule looks like and I think I'll give you guys a little sneak peek.

4:40Kira Mackenzie Jackson:So we've got Paige, you're going to see Paige there. You'll see me there obviously. I'll be running around doing all of the things plus on stage. We also have a mentor of yours Paige. We've got Tara Bosch, the founder of SmartSweets and she's now the founder of Snackish. She sold her company for I want to say 360 million something like that US dollars. It was you know one of the biggest exits by a female founder, I think, in Canada. And she's now gone on to start another business and she is absolutely amazing. So she's going to be on stage. We have Kira McKenzie-Jackson, who was the chief brand officer at Set Active.

5:19Now she's moved into another role

5:21Kira Mackenzie Jackson:and you see her on TikTok. She's incredibly intelligent and she just knows the world of brand and brand building and world building so well. And she's going to be doing a like intensive 30 minute session where she's going to be on stage solo teaching you the fundamentals of brand building and world building which is just so valuable because she is a expensive hire if you want to get one-on-one with Kira because she's just an absolute gun so we've got Kira we've got Tara we've got Nadia Okamoto from Pi she's been on the pod recently she's also from August she's got about six million followers. She's an absolute like expert on all things, social media, content, community building, brand building, entrepreneurship.

6:06Kira Mackenzie Jackson:Like she's incredible. Okay. You know what? I'm going to leave it at that. We're going to roll the rest out through our like marketing plan and you'll see who we have. But if you know Summit, you know us, you know the caliber of speaker we're going to have, you know, the topics we're going to have, you know, that it's going to be the room that you want to be in. So please go and lock in your ticket, go and grab it because this will sell out and my DMs get flooded for like the second half of the year with people who have missed out. And I can't do anything about it. It's a physical room. So we can only fit in the people that we can fit in.

6:34Kira Mackenzie Jackson:We've got VIP tickets. We've got general admission tickets. And you will get some of the recordings from the conversations on stage if you have your ticket. So I'll put the link in the show notes. Or you can just head to femalefoundable.com and grab your ticket. I can't wait. Counting it down. Best day of the year. Okay. Should we, I'm trying to think what we should talk about first. I'm thinking, should we talk about this Nike stuff? You had a really interesting perspective on this. Okay, I'm obsessed with this Nike moment. Well, I'm not obsessed. Okay, you might not know this, Jasmine. I'm like a bit of a Nike nerd.

7:04Like I feel like so many founders are. If you read Shoe Dog and like you love that story. So I'm clocking what's up with Nike. But this was pretty big news recently that they are now removed. So their stock has gone down so much that Nike's off the S &P 500, which we don't need to get into that necessarily if you're like hearing S &P 500 and you're already bored. But I think what it kind of tells us is so interesting. So two things. One, I saw an Instagram story, had to screenshot it immediately and send it to our group chat from one of my heroes, Joanna Griffiths from NYX. Previous summit speaker, right?

7:44She was on? Yes. Yep. She's spoken. Yeah. A couple of times. Hell yeah. She is the best. So she shared a screenshot of Nike's yearly performance since their launch and what you'll see and maybe we'll share it like in the show notes or something but it's not hard to find if you want to google this like graph but it's years of red and green and it really just goes back and forth it's like a Christmas tree and there's like years of like five years in a row where they're growing and then five years in a row where they're declining or just a year that's down and what Joanna said which I needed to see and I totally love because I know we're kind of at the end of the year where it's a lot of pressure for your business to be 10xing you know every year 3xing every year and Nike a powerhouse like Nike has down years too like we can't only grow in one direction I know Lindsay Carter has posted about this quite a bit on set having down years in the past and I just want anyone hearing you know the pod it's the end of the year kind of we're getting there to be, you know, gentle with yourself.

8:46You're doing the most and it's okay if it's a down year. Obviously, we don't want a down pattern, but you can still build a powerhouse legacy brand with that. So I thought that was super interesting. But then what I also think is very interesting with, you know, Nike is the definition, I would say, of like a legacy brand. Like they are eternal, launched in the 80s, but like our parents would know it, our grandparents would know it. them being you know removed off that off the S &P I don't know if that's happened is really telling to me on the consumer environment in general and these massive legacy brands maybe not performing you know how they used to like I think a Nike like a Lululemon even in CPG like a Lay's chips like because people like the brands in female founder world

9:38Kira Mackenzie Jackson:are coming up and taking over and they're taking market share. That's what I think is happening. I think that the people who used to shop Nike, yeah, the people who used to shop Nike are now buying like set active and they're shopping their brands on TikTok where they're following their founders. And like brands like Nike genuinely like are having a hard time competing. And so I think don't sleep on your power. If you want to try and shake up one of these industries and you see massive legacy players, I actually think that's a massive opportunity because they're probably a bit disconnected from their customer.

10:15Yeah. No, it's exciting. You gave me chills with that, Jasmine. It's so motivating. Pep talk. That we can do it. It is because look at you.

10:22Kira Mackenzie Jackson:That's what you guys are doing, right? We're trying. You have massive, massive legacy brands in the energy drink aisle. You think about, I don't know, Red Bull and whoever else. And I bet they're watching you and they're thinking, oh, shit, we should have taken this a little bit more seriously. Totally. I hope so. I wonder, do you think Nike would ever be like acquiring, maybe not like a set, but like we've spoken about like Micah, the label, and these like clean kind of brands. I wonder if Nike will be doing any, you know, acquisitions. We saw Nike Skims this year. I'm surprised that it was a down year.

10:58Kira Mackenzie Jackson:The interesting thing that I think as well is that they had, they brought in like a management consultant and they, you know, listened to everything that they said, obviously. I think they pulled out a lot of retail. And I do think for a brand like Nike, is a management consultant the best person to help steer the ship? I don't know. I think there's something to be said for the magic of brand and the magic for community and how that drives the growth for a business like Nike where it is all about brand. and maybe that is something that isn't as appreciated by the folks in suits sitting in McKinsey and I say this is someone who has a lot of friends in suits who work at McKinsey like we love we love sometimes we want to be you uh on the other side too I think right I like that you know pension what getting a paycheck yeah imagine all the time wow really cool um no Nike I think you You could never.

11:56Kira Mackenzie Jackson:You could never. I could never. No, I literally could never. My co-founder and I were just talking about that. I'm sure no one listening that like loves the podcast. That's a part of this community. Like we're, it's, it's hard. But Nike, I think like they're forever, but like you can't get, you can't get complacent, I guess, you know, on where you're at. Like things, things are changing. The markets are changing. So it's interesting. It is interesting. Okay. I want to tell you, I want to tell you about this business that I found. randomly I'm excited on Instagram okay I'm gonna send you the link and I wanted to I want you to tell me what you think this business makes in a year oh this is a fun game I'm gonna put the link in or like just tell me what you see when you click on this link oh my whoa so this is real time reaction this is the prospectors club hilarious australian gold delivered to your door what like literal okay i don't want you're gonna see it says the subscriber number there so you're gonna know but i want you to like have just just have a guess what you think this business makes in a year it's a pretty basic like website it's a photo of someone like someone just holding a chunk of gold in their hand it's like taken on a phone and they're just standing above grass like there's no fancy styling no what do you think yeah ballpark well because I'm guessing like I feel like it has to be high like are they doing over 50 million a year no no no no not yet oh good okay okay it's no you guys you have to look at the site with love to them rock and roll it's a pretty like Jasmine said like it's a pretty entry-level Shopify template site yeah because like the brand that's that is the brand for them they are doing 6.6 million dollars a year in revenue and that is before they turned on paid ads so that was last year this year they've turned on paid ads so you can just imagine what the year is going to do for them now this is a business yeah are people doing this as like a yeah a paperweight like is this like an item decor are you using it Or is this like an investment?

14:09Like you're trying to buy gold to have. It's an investment.

14:11Kira Mackenzie Jackson:I have so many thoughts about this. So I've been DMing with Tyler, who is the co-founder. She's in Female Founder, or the founder. She's in Female Founder World. She comes from generations of prospectors, of people who, you know, like looked for gold. And she started this business where she was quite literally selling chunks of gold online. And she thought, you know what? like let's do a subscription here and let's make it a subscription because people are investing in physical gold and when you buy gold like you know in the stock market you invest in gold like technically someone somewhere has gold that has your name on it but I think that the way that the world is going people who are investing in gold are doing it as like a hedge to if everything goes to shit I'm gonna have these chunks of gold when AI ruins everything like I'm gonna have these chunks of gold to like trade with.

15:02Like genuinely, that's what I think is fueling a lot of this.

15:06Kira Mackenzie Jackson:Plus just people also want to collect gold, whatever. There's that too. And people want to physically have it. They don't want it to be something that's just like numbers on a screen. And so you can sign up. There's all of these different tiers where you can choose how much gold you want to be getting every single month. They were the first to do it. And they will literally send you a chunk of gold in the mail. When they launched in 2019, they did about$20 ,000. The next year,$50 ,000 in sales. And then they did their first million in 2024. So we're talking four years, which I also think is really important to share, four years to get to a million in revenue.

15:45Kira Mackenzie Jackson:And then the next year they did 6.6 million in revenue. And I just think this business is so fascinating because we talk so much about, you know, what is like the consumer brand and building in public and like, what is your brand world? And this is that a different way of doing that. And just because it doesn't look like the same like aesthetic brand that you see on TikTok or in Target, this is a totally different way of building a brand world. Like they are leaning into the Australiana like country vibe like very you know lo-fi simple um very like all Australian she also lives like quite remote in Australia which I also think is amazing because a lot of people think you need to live in like New York or LA or whatever to build a brand she has found an opportunity where she is I had to what do you think about this business I had to bring it to you no it's fascinating I would never guess I'm sure it's a does she have a team do you know I think it's pretty small.

16:46Kira Mackenzie Jackson:I think it's pretty small. Like this would be, I can't imagine this being like a super heavy lift business, especially if it's growing organically. One, it's subscription, right? Like it's like, great. You're recurring revenue. I'm sure her margins are great. What an interesting business. My mind is like spinning at this. I want to do this. I know. Every time I see a business like this, I'm like, oh wow. Like it genuinely feels like such a white space. I'm just looking at my DMs with her to see. Yeah, they're about to hit 2000 active subscribers in the next week or so. They're on track to do that.

17:23Kira Mackenzie Jackson:I asked her what, why is this working so well? And why have you been able to just grow organically and so quickly? Because like I look at their social account and, you know, they've got like 50 or 60 ,000. It's not like they have this massive, massive account. Her idea was that it's been difficult to buy gold, like directly from these prospectors. That's actually something that's been really difficult unless you like get on a little plane and like fly to the outback and do it yourself. And with the prospectors club, that it's a way to kind of be able to do that, that you couldn't do it before.

17:57Kira Mackenzie Jackson:And she also said it means that people don't have to try and time the market with gold. They can either, you know, save up the year and buy an ounce from the mint, or they can spend$200 a month buying small increments from the prospectors club. And that means that they are not as, you know, they're not as impacted if the price of gold changes while they're, you know, trying to save up to make that big investment. So I just thought this was fascinating. If I was Tyler, I would be out there making content every single day. I would be literally panning for gold and I would be telling stories about Australia's history through like the gold rush and how that has impacted different countries.

18:39Kira Mackenzie Jackson:like this the ability to tell stories and build brand around this is just so fascinating and her ability to just create incredible content I like love these kind of businesses so out of totally field well I'm like this has to like I'm like no one's doing it in Canada I can do it in Canada no one's doing it in Canada you know I haven't seen as far as I know yeah so cool and I think it like it speaks to I love what you're saying about the content but I do think like also I'm my mind is going to like she needs to collab with like your rich bff force whatever the equivalent would be you know locally and talk about like the investment of gold because i do think yes people are you know we're thinking about that in a way we didn't in the past no i think it's so fascinating okay what do you what do you think about that story what do you write it out of 10 i also am so curious if you guys enjoy if you enjoy these little stories these little random things that i bring to you from just being way too online, but also people, I think like once you're creating a lot of content on the internet, people, I'm not like well known as in, I'm not famous, but the people who know me, know me really well.

19:47Kira Mackenzie Jackson:And so they bring these stories to me and they reach out to me with the stuff that they know that I'm going to be into. So I do think that's a massive perk of being someone who is like creating content on the internet that you just get fed these like gems of content and ideas all the time. Totally. Totally. No, I love it. I think it's just, it's interesting to think about businesses that aren't you know you hear about the unsexy businesses this isn't a laundromat this isn't like a a parking stall for a car but it's not like you're saying like these like uh I will say it like the target brand like it's not like the typical building a brand building in public blah blah blah that were like maybe you know maybe you're called to something of your own but not that um I like it I want to do more of these beautiful business I know yeah I know okay I'll keep digging I'll see if I can bring you another one let's quickly talk about the meta announcement because this just went very under the radar this week I feel like it wasn't unless you're someone who's like spends a whole life on the internet like me I think you could have very easily missed this and I think meta was intentionally trying to kind of keep it under the radar but it was a big update that came to Instagram I think well it's funny I feel like they do all of these updates all the time maybe that's why they changed the logo earlier this year.

20:59It's like a red herring. Right? Like we were like, what's that about? Like, who cares? And now this is pretty big jobs.

21:07Kira Mackenzie Jackson:Totally. Meta is a B2B SaaS company now, guys, basically is what you need to know. They have introduced subscription tiers where power, you know, power users can get access to additional perks. But the main thing that I think is interesting to us is the tools that you'll unlock through a paid subscription as a business or as a creator on Instagram. And the idea is that you'll get all the stuff you already have, but you're going to get deeper insights and more, I guess, like features within social. First of all, let me just like tell you very quickly what some of those are. There's a few different tiers that you can sign up to ranging from about$15 to$150 a month, depending on what you want to get.

21:51Kira Mackenzie Jackson:There's things like scheduling your stories. You can include some links in your organic posts and reels, which I think a lot of people will sign up purely for that because what that's$50 a month, if that even leads to like one sale for some businesses that would easily, easily, easily cover it. You obviously have your verified badge, which now you, a lot of brands have to pay for. And you can have multiple people accessing, you know, from your team, accessing all of this, You get team member accounts, password sharing, all of that. You get exportable analytics, deeper insights. So there's quite a lot that you get with the new kind of business and creative tiers within Meta.

22:31Kira Mackenzie Jackson:And so I do think a lot of us are going to start using this. If your competitors are doing it, you're going to be doing it because they're going to have better insights than you. Being able to link in organic content, like that is interesting. But what is interesting to me is the fact that, you know, these platforms started as everything is free. Like we are democratizing, being able to have your voice heard with a new town square. And very quickly it has changed from social media is not about seeing what your friends are doing anymore. These are places where businesses are advertising to you under the guise of conversational content all day, every day.

23:09Kira Mackenzie Jackson:Pretty much everyone that you see in your feed is trying to sell you something now, even if they're not doing it in their post, they've got something that they're selling on their feed. And I just think that this is such a representation of that shift and what's actually happened. And also like Instagram and the way that Instagram was built kind of created this idea amongst everyone that everything that you consume on the internet should be free. And I think that's been a big problem for a lot of people. And they're kind of realizing, oh, actually scaling to a mass audience isn't enough. We need to monetize in other ways as well, which is something that I think the big publishers have been like screaming for a long time is they've been trying to compete with free content on social, trying to launch dot coms with subscription tiers and kind of like the economics of this doesn't actually make sense.

23:52Kira Mackenzie Jackson:But it does make sense if you're then going to turn into a business platform and charge like you're a B2B SaaS company. Yeah, it's, oh my God, it's like, it's exciting. And okay, things that I'm excited about, these are really lame, teams, I'm excited to have my team on Instagram. And maybe we can all not like reshare the same story at the same time. Like I'm sure they'll figure that out. It's interesting for people that use Instagram DM as like essentially their customer service. Like I'm a bit confused about like the whole connection to Google Workspace. It's a bit high touch. But, you know, I know a year from now we're going to be like, how did we live without that?

24:30It is a bummer, exactly what you're saying, Jasmine, that it's like it is all of it. Social media is just like advertising, advertising, advertising as someone that advertises on social media. It's just exhausting. and I know consumers are exhausted of it. I'm curious. Like I do feel like it's like almost the beginning of the end in many ways. I think that's why IRL is so important for brands and like just being – So important. It's why you've got to come to Summit. You've got to come to Summit. But being present like with your community and consumers and just being, you know, out of the screen.

25:02I think we ignore everything on the screen now as someone that does a lot.

25:05Kira Mackenzie Jackson:I think so too. Invest a lot in our social. Like this is such a detour. But I also think that everything that we're going to see on our screens, And it's like, have you heard of micro dramas and what's happening with micro dramas? And like this whole space. I'm so deep on this. Do I, am I thinking of the right thing? Is that like AI, like little video? Sometimes they are. Sometimes they are. Hold on, let me find it. I put it in our Slack. Should we create a micro drama? Yes, this is, this is me. Okay. We're not creating a micro drama, guys. If you don't want to know what a micro drama is, maybe you've been served some like content on probably TikTok that's really AI and cringe and like, oh, you know, not great content.