'You're Too Focused on Content' And Other Reasons Your Biz Isn't Growing

0:00I think people are focusing so much on content, founder content, behind the scenes, content, content, content, content, content, content, content. We've got 73 ,000 active customers. Wow. What you need to do is give free shit away all the time. That's how we got our first 700 customers. What we decided to do within the last year and a half was invest in machinery. It was the biggest risk of my life. You're famously pretty anti-agencies. I am. They charge so much money. They don't listen to you. You get sold to by the head of that agency. And then a young person who is an intern is managing your account.

0:35I just think you can do it yourself. Don't let any bad thing get in the way of a good story. When we almost failed as a business at the end of 2022, I used that as my story for a year. Let's talk about things that are going to shift with this potential recession. The majority of businesses, they're not doing so well. A lot of them built businesses during COVID. It was such a boom. And then there was a slump. You need to be everywhere. It can't just be D2C. It's D2C and B2B through wholesale. There's also Amazon. If you can't leverage all of them, you're going to fail at some point. Hey, business besties.

1:05Welcome back to the Female Founder World podcast. I'm Jasmine. I'm the host of the show and I'm the person behind all things Female Founder World. Today I'm chatting with Anita Sarkar. She is the founder of Hero Packaging and the CEO of Hero Packaging and she is the person behind Sell Anything Online. That's a book. It's a full ecosystem that you see on TikTok and Instagram and she is a digital marketing expert. Anita, welcome. Thank you. I'm honored to be here today actually. I want to give a little bit of background on your story, but I also am very keen to extract all of the things that you know around digital marketing, brands, the future of business because you're someone who spends a lot of time in this space and I want to get all that knowledge and share it with everyone.

1:44Okay let's do that because that's my specialty like I nerd out on that on a Friday night like reading business reports. I need to know what business reports you read. Let's start with your story. So you started Hero Packaging in 2018. For people that don't know the business what are you doing? Hero Packaging is a sustainable packaging company for e-commerce retailers. So what we're trying to do is eliminate all single-use plastic when you are shipping packages from yourself or your warehouse or your third-party warehouse to your customers. And it kind of started because I was using so much plastic in my previous business.

2:19So much plastic. You had this consumer brand, right? I did, yeah. Really small but amazing business. And it was like everything that I imported was full, like covered in plastic. Inside was all this plastic bubble wrap and then I would take it in these postage bags and it was all plastic and I was like this looks terrible and I was like surely I can just figure that out so anyway that was kind of the seed right of hero packaging and I thought I'm going to figure this out for myself ultimately that turned into a business because I asked other business owners if they would be interested in it and they were all like yes and so we started that business 2018 and it has I didn't think it was going to be a massive business I think some people starting businesses now know that their company is going to be massive I started it like going it's a really good idea and people are really interested in it and at that time I started it had another business and I was like this is the life I'm a business owner I've got two companies I'm like happy amazing and let's give some milestones because you've sold over 30 million compostable mailers yes to what are my notes Checks notes, 73 ,000 businesses globally.

3:25Correct. We've got 73 ,000 active customers. So it's probably, not probably, it's a lot more customers. But right now when I check our data, it's 73 ,000 active. That's incredible. Thank you. We're going to go through the story of how you actually built that, but I want to kind of tap into what the business is and what you do a little bit more because I recommend you in the female founder or group chat all the time. Thank you. People are always like, we need eco-friendly packaging. Where do I go? And I send them right to Hero Packaging. You guys are global? We are, well, we're Australian based mostly, I would say 90%.

3:55And we tried to open up a warehouse in the USA. This was when Trump was first in power and that was really bad. Like we failed at that. So we were making a lot of money, but we lost a lot of money because he increased tariffs at that time as well. Yes. We lost so much money that we were like, let's close it down. So we operate out of Australia, but we do ship internationally. But because our packaging, it looks like a mailer is really light, But when you add 100 of them or 2 ,000 of them or however many you're ordering, it's so heavy. So the shipping cost is really high. So 90 % of our customers are in Australia.

4:26How did you get your first customers when you started the business? B2B is not something I understand. You think I would because I have a business that literally reaches business owners, but not my space. I think it is the same as a D2C company. What you need to do is give free shit away all the time. So when I started, I wanted to test demand first. So the first thing I did was ask people that I knew that were in business, Would you be interested? Of course, people around you are yes people. So they're like, yes, yes, yes. But they're not giving you money for it. And I know that a customer is someone that pays you.

4:55So I got all the yeses, gave them some free samples. They were happy with it. Thought this is a business idea. My husband was like, absolutely not. No one has paid for it. So give me our first 100 customers. If you can do that, I'll leave my job. And so I was like, challenge accepted. I can do that easily and so what I did was I you know I created a landing page on just this it was so so bad a photoshopped image of a compostable mailer and fields that said like name shipping address email address and do you want to get a free mailer ran a google ad for anyone typing in sustainable packaging or compostable packaging 20 bucks a day I'm pretty sure it was they went to that and then we would get signups right and so we got a thousand I think we got over a thousand signups within the first week and we slowly built out this website over time and we were waiting for the actual purchase because that was just free samples they came back like within two months it was about 70 percent of them came back so we had that's how we got our first 700 customers was we gave them free stuff and we waited for their return and their their second purchase As someone whose background is in, like my background is in consumer more than B2B and I always am envious of product-based businesses that can sell to businesses.

6:13I just feel like that customer is so much more valuable when you get them in the door than just an individual person. Well, they return so much more if they're happy. The problem is that we are so dependent on the fact that businesses have to do well and businesses are growing in order for us to grow. We can't just simply grow. We are so dependent on other businesses. So it's such a roller coaster, let me tell you, because right now, you know, the economy is not great. No matter what anyone says, I don't care because I can see there's a huge dip and then there's sometimes interest rates, they decrease them and then, you know, business takes a little bit of an upturn, but it's so low.

6:55And so our packaging that we sell also depletes. Recession indicator that I never thought about. 100%. Like you can look at it with even any business like McDonald's, I think, reduced by 3 % year on year revenue. That's the first time ever in McDonald's history. People are just trying to do things at home, trying to be cost efficient. What that means for us is that they're choosing plastic again over sustainable options. And so we are competing with plastic. Wow, that's sad. Yeah, it's very sad. That's terrible. Okay, I want to talk a little bit more about your marketing strategy now. We spoke about what it looks like when you were kind of getting started and scrappy.

7:30You guys are a big business now. What does it look like? I wouldn't say we're a big business. Okay, compared to a lot of businesses you're big. Yeah, okay. So marketing strategy right now is product innovation. So there were two ways to grow for us. It was international expansion or it was innovate through product. And we decided that international expansion is very expensive and we needed to innovate through product and grow through our current customer base and sell more things to them. So what we decided to do within the last year and a half was invest in manufacturing machinery to do our own stuff like make our own boxes make our own tissue paper you know print on things and do everything in-house in our warehouse in Sydney so we could control the entire supply chain and everyone is so into the made in Australia and not made overseas and I don't actually buy into that I think that there are so many quality products everywhere made anywhere but I know that that was a huge focus for a lot of consumers so we decided we'd manufacture in-house and it has gone so well but it was the biggest risk of my life because we put in so much money to get this machinery and it and we I didn't even know if we were going to get people who were interested in it because we were going to be more expensive than other people who've been doing it for years and years and years international suppliers and I thought well we've got Australian labor it's us doing it our machinery is expensive got to charge more people won't buy our stuff and they they did and our first customer was so interesting because the day we got the machine and as we're unwrapping it and the guy is setting it up we get an email from do you know lucas pawpaw um oh yes yeah we get an email from them being like we need 250 boxes asap and then we were like well we can we can do that so absolutely you're our first customer and then they wrote back to us and they were like actually we need 2 000 boxes and can you get that done in a month and we were like yes like we've never done it before but yes we can do it so it was just awesome and I felt like we did it we took the risk and it paid off immediately how do you think about making those big decisions because I think you know like at the moment I've got a couple of decisions that I need to make just in being my founder in my business and I do often feel like a bit paralyzed about making a big swing especially after you get some traction and things are doing well because you've got so much more to lose how do you come to those decisions do you have a process do you have people that you lean on yeah I think it's people so I love calling people and voice noting people and saying and these are people that I know it's not random people people that I know that I'll call or voice note and say I am faced with this decision I am so stuck you need to help me so there's that and then also I work with my husband who uh together we are so so different in that I'm like let's do it and he's like the financials show that we cannot process this transaction so I think he's a really good uh board to bounce off I think I don't have a process it's more if the market has demanded something from us and the way that I test that is have over 100 people emailed us about a product that we don't have and if so can we bring that out if the market is telling us that that's what they want then it's a really good risk to take so over the five years that we were in business up until about 18 months ago you know people had emailed us saying we want boxes we want packaging we want luxury packaging we want luxury tote bags we want this we want that we got so many of those so when I say I took a risk I took a risk because we had had those emails and I guess that's what it is for me it's like I love taking risks I it is in my nature I it's not good right like 80 % of the time I fall flat on my face but I do it because for hero packaging I do it because I've had the demand I've bounced it off some people and my husband has said the transaction makes sense so I think that's kind of the process it's not really set in stone it's just and it's not even gut feel it's just based on the emails that we've received it also sounds like to me that you're someone who has taken lots of risks over time and you've built that self-trust as well of knowing that you can execute on something no no no I don't trust myself I like I feel like I have confidence but I just take risks I do things without thinking about them it has been great and it's been horrible at times like I just do things without thinking I am so type b in my personality that you know type a's are very organized they'll think about everything that like type b too i hate it about myself yes and it for me it's like i'm pretty chill like if you say you want to go on a midnight hike and invest in something i'm cool i'm there you know like i love that because i i really think life is so short i just want to do an interesting exciting things and i don't want to sell compostable mailers for the rest of my life But I can go into manufacturing because that opens us up to so many more threads of business.

12:41I want to do things that I can like hire more people and have a bigger team and feel excited to go to work. And I don't want to do the same thing over and over again. How many people are on your team now? We're 15. Okay. I used to think the more people like the better the business. And now what I'm recognizing is that people on our team, what I love about them is sometimes I feel like, how am I going to pay for them? sales haven't been good this month but what I love about them is they're like oh so my partnerships manager she's like oh well I'll help answer some emails and then my customer service girl is on the production floor printing orders when she has a break I just think they step in and do stuff and they're all all-rounders and for a business of my size it's so nice to have people who aren't like that's not my job yes we've got a really nice team where's your office this is a selfish question for myself now it's in chatswood okay no do you know chatswood yeah yeah yeah i'm not totally like unfamiliar with yeah i know a little bit i want to talk about looking forward now so we're looking at a pretty like strange time to be running a business i think digital marketing is different we talked about a potential recession ai man ai is gonna change everything what do you when you look at marketing and how you're adjusting your strategy and how you think brands should be adjusting their strategy what do you think that like big things over the next couple of years are going to be to not fall behind i think people are focusing so much on content you know i think what happens is now everyone's like you got to do the founder content you got to do the behind the scenes content content content content organic content Let me tell you that probably about 2 % of like your sales come from organic content, right?

14:30So you focus so much on this, but actually the rest of the sales, the website traffic, it's not coming from content, okay? That's to build a brand. What you're trying to do is make more sales. So I think people need to go back to the foundations of business and people, especially business owners who are like me and they love taking risks and they're so excited about stuff they forget that seo traditional seo on google they forget that google ads uh is so important you know and i feel like for me if you can get your seo right and this is so boring but hear me out okay if you can get your seo right i'm telling you that's thousands of extra people to your site every month and i feel like people are not excited by it because it's such a long-term strategy it's old school people are saying seo is dead but when i focused on it last month and i'm seeing thousands of people extra people coming in through seo and i and i use just a freelancer to do it i am like i'm shocked that i haven't done this more and i i lose focus and you can actually see in my seo tools like you can see where i've lost focus and our traffic drops right but it's such an important tool.

15:47So I would say like SEO, Google ads, go back to the basics. Of course, meta ads, everyone is paying for meta ads at the moment. And of course, content, but you need to look at your Google analytics and you need to say, okay, what, where is my traffic actually coming from? If you are doing five things, so say for example, you're doing meta ads, Google ads, SEO content, and you're doing Pinterest ads, you need to see what's actually driving the traffic. Some things are really pretty, like Pinterest will give you lots and lots of traffic but will not convert anybody so you need to find out where the sales are coming from what the traffic is and I guarantee you if you can master something boring like SEO you're winning because it's an asset that you can own when you talk about you mentioned the word like you focused on this and then you lost focus on it I want to know what that means like when you're talking about focus like what resources are you putting behind it how much of your time like what are you actually doing when you say I'm focused on so this is why I love you because every time I listen to one of your podcast episodes, someone's like, I use influencers.

16:44And you're like, who, how much, where'd you find them? What are the tools that you, okay, SEO. What I mean by that is, so there's a tool called SEMrush, which is quite expensive, but free version. You can see the traffic to your site with the keywords. Okay. So say for example, you sell activewear and you sell like, let's call it purple activewear. And that's what you, that's the specialty. if you're typing in purple activewear and you put that into SEMrush and you can see that there's about a thousand people searching for it a month and you are ranked number two or three that is going to give you a certain amount of people coming to your site from that search term if you are ranked number one it will tell you how many people are going to come to your site extra from that search term then it'll be based on your conversion rate on your website can you convert them into a sale and so when I say I'm focused on it I am picking keywords that I want to rank for So, for example, I introduced custom boxes and manufacturing, right?

17:39I needed suddenly to rank really high for custom boxes. So I've got a freelancer who I charge, sorry, they charge me$100 a month. And I just went to like a freelancer.com, freelancer.com or fiverr.com or there's another one. I can't remember. So$100 a month, you give them five to 10 keywords and they will go and get you white hat backlinks to. What does that mean? That means that they will have directories, websites, articles online that they will put your keywords in that links back to your site for those keywords. And that is the hardest part of SEO. The rest of SEO is super easy. It's making sure your product descriptions are great, making sure your images are labeled properly, making sure you've got blog posts.

18:23You know, you can do all that stuff yourself. And you can learn about it on YouTube for free. You can learn about that. Yeah. You don't need to pay anyone for that. But the backlinks, that's a real pain in the butt. So I pay for those. and sometimes I'm like, oh, is it worth paying? And I stop it. So when I say I'm not focused on it, I just stop paying the freelancer. Six months later, our SEO rankings have gone down. Our traffic has decreased. I can see sales are lower and I'm like, what am I thinking? And so then I repay and I can see it. And it takes like about three months to see the effect.

18:50But man, like I'm telling you, SEO is so underused for so many business owners because it's not exciting. Yeah, it's not sexy. You don't get the dopamine hit that you get when you post a blog on YouTube. Exactly. Or like when you're like posting a reel and you're like, oh my God, 100 likes. I'm amazing. Yes, yes, yes. It means nothing for your business. Okay. I love this take. I love that you're using a freelancer and it's a hundred bucks or something like that a month. That's very interesting to me because you're famously pretty anti-agencies. I am. What made you have that experience or like that thought?

19:19What was the experience? Anti-agency? Yeah. It's because I've used agencies. I'm sure you've used agencies. I've been really fucked over by a paid ads agency before. Yeah, I am. They charge so much money. Okay, so let's talk about meta ads agencies, for example, I think, you know, anywhere from$1 ,000 a month to$5 ,000$10 ,000 a month, depending on what your revenue is. And they will set up your ads for you. They'll sometimes think of creatives for you. And then they'll tell you what to do. And then you'll say, I want to increase budget because they're doing so well. And they say, I'm so nervous to do that.

19:51And they won't do it. They don't listen to you, then they stop monitoring it, you get sold to by the head of that agency and then a young little person who is, you know, 19 years old who is just getting in there as an intern is managing your account. They're scared to increase or decrease the amount that they spend per day because it will ruin the report that they give you because everything relearns. I just think you can do it yourself. Yeah. You can save. And we are talking to, like, what's the audience of your podcast? What size of business? Oh, my God. It ranges so much. We have folks who are just getting started and then we've got a woman who listens whose business is like, no, just sold for a billion dollars.

20:30Okay. I'm not talking about the billion dollar girl. Okay. I'm talking to the people who are just starting or potentially going up to$5 million. Okay. Which would be most of them. Most. Yeah. And I would say to you that you need to save money. The only thing I want for you in your business is cash in your bank account. That is all I want. And imagine you spending three hours a week just watching YouTube videos and implementing as you're watching YouTube because you can do your Google ads yourself. You can do your Facebook ads yourself. And the reason you're not doing it is because it's too much time.

21:00It's very inconvenient to do it because you've got other things to do. It's boring. It's boring and it just seems like too much. You've got other things to do like pack orders and create content and you've got to like order inventory. Just do that instead of paying an agency. try that for six months because I guarantee you, you spend three hours a week on it, you'll be a master. You'll be better at it than any agency. We often recommend someone on the show and we've got actually a workshop that's in the Bestie dashboard for members on this. And her name is Mimi Bonnie. Someone in the community worked with her and has just been recommending her over and over again.

21:33And now she's like the person everyone uses. But what makes her difference is she sets it up for you. She teaches you how to do it and then she buggers off. I love that. And then you're running it and you're left knowing how to do it rather than having this ongoing massive overhead. So that's not an agency to me. I call that, I did start something like that last year, then it got too busy, but it's called the anti-agency. And an anti-agency is set it up. That's a lot of projects and businesses for you. Yeah, yeah, too much. Set it up, teach people and piss off. Yes. It's such a great idea. There needs to be more of that, actually.

22:05That's really interesting to me. Okay, let's talk about a little bit more about content and influences because you are a content creator yourself. You have this incredible book. You've got this TikTok channel. People know you as this business guru now. And I want to know how do people cut through over the next few years? You talked about that founder content is getting maybe a bit stale. We're kind of all doing the same stuff. I want to be posting more founder content in the back of my head. I always think it's such a missed opportunity that we're not doing more about building this business. But I'm also feeling very uninspired because I'm seeing the same stuff over and over again.

22:37And I don't know how to cut through. Do you know who you should watch? Frank Grief. Do you watch him? Oh, yes. His founder content. He's doing all the AI stuff now. He's doing AI stuff. But his founder content is the founder content that I absolutely adore. Now everyone's going to create it. So it's going to be the same. However, what I love about him is he does things that are outrageous. And so when you're watching it and he's talking about his day, but then he's got comments of people on TikTok or on Instagram, and it's about how much they hate him while he's like showing his day. And I just think it makes me stick around because it's so funny to read that, but then watch what he's doing.

23:15And I think that founder content, have you seen this girl on TikTok? She talks about selfish content versus unselfish content. And a lot of founders, what they do is when they create founder content, it is so selfish. Here's what I did. I'm pretty amazing. Like I went on this podcast and that's what I'll be doing today because I love this podcast, but it's very selfish, right? So people will watch it for like 10 seconds and be like, I'm going to scroll. Can you turn that selfish content into unselfish content? So, you know, I went on the Female Founder World podcast and there are like three marketing tips that we spoke about, which were so new and so different.

23:51And this is what they were. And then it's like B-roll clips of you and me talking, but it's about learning for other people. So can you do founder content that makes people learn something or feel inspired or aspire to? That's what I want. I think when it comes to content, like I said before, you have to realize it does not always lead to conversions on your website. I think what you honestly have to think about when it comes to content is, are you showing people what you stand for? Are you showing people the enemy that you are creating? And if you are creating an enemy out of something, so let's say hero packaging, the enemy is single use plastic.

24:27Am I creating enough of an enemy to have so many people polarized that they're building this like cult like following of me and the business and I try and do that as a brand with single-use plastic and me as a brand personal brand which is anti-agency learn everything yourself just like watch my 30-second video and I can teach you SEO and ads and you never need to use an agency again I think that having that enemy or like standing for something with your content is like that's the way to build community I love that yeah that's such a clear point of view can we keep brainstorming stuff with female founder world I'm gonna use your brain like this is amazing what other ideas do you have for us what else should we be doing there's so let's talk after because i feel like there's so much to do we were talking before it and um before we like turned the mics on if if uh for you guys listening and you already had so many good ideas so we need to like just have a separate brainstorm i think who do you think is doing it really well founder content so frank grief yeah 100 these are all australian okay so bear with me but the internet's global guys you can look them up yeah you can look them up yeah um but fantastic content okay um Um, Rach from TBH Skincare, hers is a little bit different and not everyone can do it.

25:35The reason her founder content is so bloody good is because she and her business is innovating product constantly and she has something to talk about. So when you have something to talk about and you make people curious and interested and you hype it up a little bit and you don't tell them what it is and then you tell them what it is, they're kind of invested in this whole story and the process of it. She's launching new products. She is launching into new retailers. She's launching into international retailers. and she's taking you on the journey of how she's doing it. I'm so bought into her story.

26:02I love it so much. She knows exactly what she's doing too. She is so prepared. She has content that she filmed a year ago that she's bringing into it now about the new brand name of her business. But she filmed that a year ago knowing that that's what is going to sell today. It's so smart. The way to replicate that as any small business owner is to do new shit every day. Like try and do something. Have you heard of Misogi? I heard someone talk about this on a podcast and I'm really sorry that I can't credit who it was because I can't remember. I think it was the Spanx founder's husband and he basically said Misogi is one interesting thing that you should do every single year to talk about and in business you should have a business Misogi.

26:48What is this one interesting pivot or one interesting thing that you can do that you can talk about and stretch that content for a year that people are so curious about. I love that. And I think we all need to do that. So for me, I'm like, when we almost failed as a business at the end of 2022, don't let any bad thing like get in the way of a good story. So I used that as my story for a year. And now we've moved into manufacturing and I'm stretching that content out and that story. Can you think of interesting things that you can do every month or every year that that is what you're going to talk about?

27:20I love that. I saw something similar. I don't know who it was. Maybe it was Gary Vee. was speaking about this for people who want to become content creators and influencers and around the best thing to do is have an interesting life like have an interesting life that you can talk about and show people and it's the same thing in the business like do interesting things in the business and then you'll have something to talk about and create content about do new things there's another um oh my god have you seen attention seeker no joanie mitchell i think her name or joanie is her name attention seeker writing this down one of the best accounts on TikTok and she's doing this rejection therapy where she is going out on the street and asking people to coffee and basically getting a yes or no.

28:01She's taking them to coffee and she's one of the best content creators I've ever seen on TikTok. Okay, amazing. And that's a big call and the way that she does it is your life might be boring but she's created something interesting. Yes. She's making people go, oh my god, is that person going to say yes or no? And she's meeting some interesting people and some people are hard no, you know, and you just want to watch that. Yeah. It's a really easy series to do. Make your life interesting. Make your life interesting and then you'll have something to talk about. Okay let's talk about things that are going to shift with this potential recession.

28:29Yes. What's the outlook and what are you seeing? We talked a little bit about how you don't think things are looking good based on what you're seeing and I think that's really interesting because you have this overview of how small businesses are doing and how businesses are doing which I think is such an interesting indicator and data point to be able to refer to. How do you think that's going to impact the rest of us who are launching, building, growing businesses? I think there are some businesses that are blitz scaling and they're doing so well and we're going to ignore them for now. The majority of businesses, which is probably around 70 to 80 percent of businesses, they're not doing so well.

29:06I can see that. I can see that in their packaging purchases. I can see that when I talk to them on Sell Anything Online. I can see that in my DMs and they are not doing well because not of what they're doing but because the economy is such. Now, a lot of them built businesses during COVID and it was such a boom. Everyone was so happy with business and e-com. And then there was a slump where everyone went back into store. That slump is not over. Plus, there are now these enormous, ridiculous tariffs that have come into place. International expansion is going to slow down. Businesses are going to close down.

29:40And it sounds like doom and gloom. It's a really great time to think about a new product. It's a really great time to find new manufacturers. it's really great time to um what do you say when bears go into hibernation and fix your business fix your business at every revenue point are you profitable and if not is there a way for you to kind of go into hibernation and fix the business from the inside out i think there was a culmination of well actually two things one is too many businesses started i don't think everyone is meant to be a business owner but everyone wants to be a business owner that's one thing and then post-COVID and then the third thing sorry is the tariffs so because of all of this it's like the economy is a bit down the tariffs are there too many people starting businesses and in competing industries it's a really really hard time something that you mentioned before and this is deviating a little bit but you're like everyone's back in store talk to me about that a little bit more and how that's impacting online business I don't know what it's like in New York and what it's like there but in Australia it's the physical presence of products that make people buy stuff you're buying a gift you go into store sometimes you're shopping online for yourself but I do find a lot of people are shopping back in the store and so retail presence is really important I think another thing for TBH skincare is what they've done really well and she also owns Boost Labs they have a really great retail strategy and mixed with the the online strategy d2c is it can't just be d2c it's d2c and b2b through wholesale and so i think you need to be able to leverage both if you don't i mean and then there's also amazon but if you can't leverage all of them you're going to fail at some point i think you need to be everywhere so i think about it like two things one is physical presence and one is mental availability right then physical presence is you're there it's an impulse buy you buy it or you go to buy this and then you buy that as well then mental availability is online where you having to show up all the time to every every person through meta ads through google through seo through content creation and that's mental availability have you shown up enough for people to remember you but i think it's such a difficult thing to do and when people go in store it's such an easy little purchase if you're already there they'll buy it you've given us so many good tips i'm going to ask you for one more and that is for your best resource recommendations things that people who are out there they're building the entrepreneurial that they should go and check out okay I've actually written mine down I love it when people pull out a phone or a list because I want I want to make sure I get these all right so the book that I recommend to everyone no matter what size you are and I've read it six bazillion times is how brands grow have you read that no I've never even heard of that book how brands grow is and there's a b2b version as well so if you're in b2b but how brands grow is by far the best book for businesses um the podcast that i recommend is this one but also d2c um i also like limited supply uh and then a newsletter is the nick sharma newsletter yes do you read his so i read it religiously and you can go back i think two years worth of newsletters it comes out every monday for us in Australia.

32:47And I would say you need to find something that is absolutely your own in order to have good mental health in business. Because starting a business is so bloody easy, let me tell you. Getting to a million dollars is actually quite easy. Getting from one million to five million is hard, I won't swear. And then even further than that, it's like requires different people, different things. You need to find something that you can not, you need to not work for an hour a day you need to find something for yourself for me what I have found is pickleball as you can see in my outfit here um you need to I found pickleball and also jogging and I'm a terrible jogger I had no hobbies I need to get a hobby so I had no hobbies as of about six months ago and I actually know I went to New York 12 months ago and I saw an indoor pickleball court and I was like that's the thing that I'm gonna do one day came to Australia no one has it turns Turns out near our warehouse they have this tiny little pickleball court and I tried it and I fell in love with it.

33:45I've made every single person in my life play it. We played on Sundays. We built a pickleball court in our backyard and I'm like, this is the thing that I want to do. And it's the thing that I turn off my phone for an hour. That's a big thing for a business owner. And then I also make sure that I am jogging, even if it's like a one-kilometer jog. I'll do that for myself. I think it's made me the best version of myself. because if I can turn off my phone, what I'm finding, and I don't know if the same thing for you, is my entire value base and how I think of myself is how much engagement I get on social media.

34:20Stop it. This is too real. And everyone is like, you've got to not give a fuck. That's not true. Everyone cares. The biggest content creators, the biggest business owners care so much. They delete posts. You can see it. They hide likes. Why? Because they care so much. I care a lot. You care a lot, right? I need to get off my phone. Yeah. And the way to make myself feel good is to play pickleball. Anita, thank you so much. This has been the most tactical, helpful episode. I'm going to put all of those links in the show notes that you guys listening can go and check them out very easily. But where can people find you?