Viral videos, beauty, and bank loans: How Rachael Wilde built an empire

18:56Yeah. And I think that's actually a very common problem that founders face. So people won't back them until they've like got proof in a certain revenue run rate. But in order to get to that revenue run rate, they're going to need money. And so, yeah, we were talking to all these private equity companies. And then eventually we spoke with one and they said, we've actually already invested in a skincare consumer goods company, but we think you should talk to them because you guys have really complementary skill sets. And so we were like, sure, went and spoke with these founders who were Boost Lab.

19:28And then, yeah, just realized like on paper, it looked really strong in terms of the skill sets that we could all bring to the table. They didn't have a like CFO or experienced finance person. They didn't have brand building or marketing expertise in their business, but they had like really strong retail experience. They had international like sort of export experience and they were really good at raising money, which we weren't because we didn't have any track record and we'd sort of never done it before. And so also we just liked them. Like we're like, we get on. How important is it that you work with good people?

20:00Mads:Like all of those things that you've just shared, very complementary skill sets and alignment. But at the end of the day, working with good people is such a priority. And I think people really underestimate that when you're going into business with people. Yeah. Like you have to be value aligned, like non-negotiable. And actually, you know what? We didn't deep dive enough into that. We got lucky. And mergers are notoriously risky because of that, because you're bringing two businesses together and you just don't know whether you're going to do that. to operate well together. It's been a match made in heaven, which is so nice.

20:31So Boost Lab and TBH came together and created York Street Brands. So all the founders of those businesses co-founded York Street Brands. And then we all assumed new roles in the company and also got backed by a new raise with private equity. So we, I think, raised 5 million to back that joining of hands and to give the resourcing to TBH that we were looking for to launch into retail, have a proper marketing budget, etc. So my role went from being very like in the weeds as a founder to then going into a CMO role across two brands and then starting to build a team. What's been really apparent to me is your

21:08Mads:ability to use social media to bring greater awareness and sales for your brands. Is social media the main driver for your business when it comes to connecting with your consumer? 100 % and I think I use social media as like this testing ground because I think what works it's almost like it gives you signals as to like are people interested in this do they care about it do they engage with it I think a lot of people go to paid channels for example like they want to turn on meta ads and TikTok ads or they want to do this and two key barometers in the business for me are, will media write about it?

21:43And do people like engage with it on social? Because they're two key indicators that like, one, you have something worth writing about. It's newsworthy. It's like worth someone telling a story about it. So it shows you that it's different enough in market to be interesting. And then secondly, do people want to like engage with you on social media? I think that's like the heartbeat. If you can get that going, it's actually really hard to like find that. But if that's working, then when you turn on paid channels and all the rest, they hum so well. And yeah, your efficiency just goes through the roof.

22:17But if you start with that and haven't done like the groundwork, which I think is in those like more earned channels, then I think, yeah, you're not really setting yourself up for success. You might have a quick win, but it'll be fleeting.

22:29Mads:So it feels like a two pronged approach. Can I go a bit deeper on the comment around being newsworthy and having a lot of presence in publications. I would say that your brands feature in a lot of the major media outlets, news.com, Daily Mail, they're getting serious eyeballs. Did you know that they were going to make those headlines or was it very much leaning on your PR agency to be the ones who are opening doors? Oh, I think a mix of both. So you absolutely have to have an expert there. Like I cannot pitch for media myself. I would have no idea what I was doing. And you have to have those relationships and you have to know that industry straight inside out to really, I think, be able to operate well in it.

23:07So having that person there, like Jessie, I've worked with her for four years now and she's incredible. And is Jessie internal or external? External. Yeah. She's got an agency and they're the best, particularly in beauty. So I've always worked with her, but also she's not going to be able to pull something out of thin air. So it's like giving them the material. And I think where we started with that was the story around how we came across the tech and what the tech was in the products because it was so different and it had a lot to it, like a lot of meat to that story in terms of... Feels sticky.

23:41Yeah. So there was a lot to sort of write about in a way where there was, and there's multiple components. It's like, it's local, it's Aussie, it's, you know, a young female who's been through the problem, but then it's also this tech and like the way it was licensed was very different to something else in market. So we had like this story that I think in the early days, that's what we leaned on to get that media coverage. And I think a lot of people would consider maybe that like media is not necessarily super important because they go, well, are my customers reading like these magazines or whatever?

24:13But that credibility that you get from being in those like earned media outlets and on the earned side is just crazy. Like I think it's such an important part of business. And yeah, it's something that I've always focused on with all of the brands is getting that. But then we carry that through everything. So now if something happens, and I remember this was a lesson I actually learned from Jessie throughout the whole business was, and it happened when the video went viral on TikTok, this one that I'm talking about in August of 2022. And I remember so distinctly, she picks up the phone and she's like, because I started talking on my TikTok about, oh, this is blown up or whatever.

24:49And she called me she's like, what happened? What's going on? What happened? Like, what do you mean? And she's like, you need to tell me this. She's like, this is like a story. And I was like, oh, okay. And then she, yeah, so she was able to like spot these opportunities because of the stuff that we were doing. So we're doing things all the time that are fun, newsworthy, like different. But then she's there with her media lens all the time being like, right, I'm taking that to media or well, here's an opportunity for earned. And it's made us also think differently. So then when we're planning organic moments, we'll say, well, does this have media leverage?

25:26Like you've got to think smart because then all your work just works harder for you. It goes well on organic. It generates an earned media story and that earned media story can be leveraged back as content. And it's like -

25:36Mads:Yeah, you're looking at it from a bird's eye perspective now, whereas before you were looking at it in a linear X equals Y. Yeah. You can see that even in the way that you're talking to me. obviously this is a podcast so people can't see it but there's a lot of animation and excitement when you're talking about this and clearly you really respect jesse which yeah you can't underestimate the value of having really good people around you as well and the fact that as a founder you've acknowledged how much having that relationship has been integral to the success but also yeah that element of traditional media and helping with that earned space now i want to focus on the social as the second touch point that we're looking at here in this two-pronged approach I would love to know, when do you know to jump on a trend at the right time?

26:17Mads:It's not easy. How did you learn to do this? You don't. Trial and error. And I think that's something that a lot of people maybe underestimate is the amount you're going to have to fail on social media before you like get a win. You give yourself the ick. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. You should cringe. Like, do you know what I mean? Like, if you're not doing that, then you're not moving fast enough. It's always, it's even in terms of a business, like don't wait for it to be perfect to launch it. Otherwise you're literally going to be too late or it'll never see the light of day. If you don't look back and cringe at your earlier work, then yeah, you didn't launch it soon enough.

26:51And it's very similar with social. I would go back to my videos six months ago and be like, what was that? But I was posting, I was getting somewhere and it's like practice. You won't end up being good at it if you're not putting yourself like out there and actually just doing the thing over and over again. and also doing the thing in public to get the feedback. Like it's the greatest feedback loop you can get is like, is this working? Is it not? Did people like it? Like why? They'll tell you in the comments, you know, like you can get so much from that and then you iterate on that and it makes you better.

27:25And so, yeah, social media, like how do you know which trend to jump on? Like you just have to try lots of different things in my opinion.

27:33Mads:I want to talk about the Gen Z boss in a mini. I feel like you knew this was probably coming. But what I want to understand is we've all seen the video. We all saw the backlash and a lot of the commentary that came with it. What I was really fascinated with and really was impressed by, to be honest, was that you took this viral moment and you turned it into a product. Can you tell us about that decision and how you came to the idea to turn it into its own bundle that you then sold? Yeah, I mean, I would say the whole team is like quite resilient and creative in that way where they do think like bold and they're encouraged to take risks like day to day, like calculated risks.

28:11And so when all of that was unfolding, the general energy in the room was like, ha ha, like, let's keep going. Let's push this. Yeah. And I think that because a lot of the commentary that we were getting wasn't coming from our customers. So it was like, okay, well, we're kind of pissing off the right people. Like we never, we never wanted to appeal to this group in America, you know, of men. And so it's like, okay, whatever, like, let's just keep going. In saying that it was a crazy time. And like, if I was to actually dive into the detail, there was a lot that went on behind the scenes. And it was really important throughout that time that there was a balance of number one priority was support the team.

28:50That was number one. That was going to come before any commercial gain or business move or anything like that. Like cannot stress that enough. But then it was also, how do we get a win out of this? Because that's what they deserve. Like they don't deserve to be put through this. So how do we rewrite the narrative here to actually like one, start a really important conversation, but to show people that you don't like have to back down. I just didn't want to meet this with like silence, which for me was like permission. It was like, absolutely not. I'm that's not in my nature if I feel strongly about something it's like you can like see it through um and like stand on business like do your thing and if you believe in something really strongly like hold that belief and we weren't like you know it would have been different had we done something really offensive or harmful like it was an innocent TikTok standing around doing a trend so yeah I think from that moment we went okay how do we say our piece which was starting this conversation around why do we have this like reaction to women in the workforce doing these things let's unpack that and start that conversation because it was quite an important one to be had also on behalf of the team because they didn't do anything wrong so they I wanted to also establish for them like it's not you this is something that's wrong with the world like do you know what I mean it's not a you problem you have nothing to feel bad about or like it was your fault or you warranted this in some way because you just didn't so for me that was really important to establish.

30:16And then secondly, yeah, like how do we have fun with this? Because that's the nature of like what we, you know, we love our jobs. We're here to have fun. We want to be bold and yeah, stand up for what we believe in. So we turned it into a bundle and that wasn't what, that wasn't my idea. That was the team's idea. Genius. Genius. So they created the Gen Z Boston mini bundle and yeah, and then ran with it and used the eyeballs to actually find a new community and yet convert them into the brand. And that's what I will say is whilst we did get this enormous, like huge, huge amount of backlash, we equally got this community that showed up for us and went to bat for us in that time as well.

30:57So it actually strengthened the community, which was amazing.

31:00Mads:Okay, I want to talk about Boof, your most recently launched brand. Super exciting and congratulations. Thank you. Skincare to hair care. It's not a regular transition. What motivated it for you? Again, it wasn't planned. There's a theme, guys. Very similar to TBH because it was a patented tech. Yes. Not one that we came across, actually one that came to us. So they saw this company that owned this incredible hair tech out of Japan. It came out of a university study from a group of hair microbiologists. They owned this tech, had all these clinical results behind it. It was really impressive. But had sort of a challenge of where is the customer?

31:40How do we reach the customer? How do we connect with the customer and actually turn this into like a brand and something that sells? Because you can have an amazing tech and amazing science that never sees the latter day if you don't understand a customer, what's going to motivate them to buy, where they're shopping, how they're becoming aware of products, what influences them, like all these things. And they'd seen what we were doing in the skincare space with TBH and Boost Lab and they could see our ability to nurture these communities in quite niche pockets and drive the same sort of growth that you would see out of big conglomerates with big budgets for just not a fraction of the marketing spend.

32:17And so they came to us and said, look, we've got this tech interested in partnering. This is, you know, everything it can do. And I was like, oh, this is really interesting. Really impressed by the clinicals. Genetically, I have thin hair. Then I damaged it so badly, like with bleach and all sorts through high school. Then it got so thin that I put taping extensions in. Then I realized the tape extensions weren't very good for me. Then I would buy clipping extensions and get the hairdressers to cut them to the lengths of my hair. and every day in the office I would wear clip-in extensions in my hair.

32:50So my hair was something that I was always like hyper-conscious of and so when I heard about the products I was like, oh, interesting because I'd used quite a few growth products and like not really seen that much. It's a pretty well-established market. Yeah, yeah, it is as a category. Like it was already there. And so I took the products, I took these samples away and was using them like the tonic, you know, I was popping that in my scalp every day. And then I was using the shampoo conditioner. I didn't noticeably say like, wow, within like the first 30 days, I'd noticed anything. Two months later, though, I was getting my hair done by my regular hair and makeup artist for an event.

33:28And she picked up my hair and she was ready to put extensions in it because I always wore extensions in my hair. And she was like, you're going to need more extension pieces. She's like, what's happened to your hair? It's so much thicker. And I was like, is it? Like, I didn't notice. And then I went to my hairdresser another two months later. so four months after using the products, my hairdresser said, I'm going to have to extend your foil booking because you've got new hair and like, it's going to take me so much longer to foil your hair this time. Like this is goals. What's happening? And I was like, okay, this product is starting to work.

34:01And then like probably another two months later, so six months after using these products, my friends started commenting like, whoa, what's happening with your hair? Do you have extensions in? They would say that. And I'd be like, I actually don't. And so I actually went back. We hadn't really like spoken with this company again. And I went to Craig, our CEO, and I was like, this product is insane and we have to do something with this. And it's not in one of the other brands. Like it is a new brand. And he was like, oh, it's going to cost so much money, blah, blah, blah. I was like, we have to do it.

34:33Like, I just know so many customers that are going to like absolutely love this. It's just so different to anything else I had used. So yeah, that's really where it was born. So it wasn't a plan.

34:45Mads:Both of these experiences when you've launched these brands have come from your own personal experience with the product or your own challenge. I am loyal to a slick back bun. So I really need to start embracing this product because I feel the hair loss, even, you know, as someone who wears their hair back all the time, massive problem. It's the first thing my hairdresser always says to me. She's like, you need to stop wearing your slick back. And I'm trying really hard. But, you know, there's also that angle of postpartum, which you speak about a lot in your messaging. And obviously you've aligned with Indie Clinton for as originally when you first launched the product as a brand ambassador.

35:24Mads:Can you tell me why you wanted to approach Indie for this brand? Yeah. Well, whenever we're looking at who to partner with, it's who we think genuinely has firsthand experience with what the customer is going to be experiencing and therefore buy this product for. So unless they have that tangible experience firsthand with the product, they just couldn't endorse it, in my opinion. And so Indy is someone who has had three kids, obviously being through postpartum hair loss, but actually long-term has always had like quite thin hair. She's got a very engaged community who trust her recommendations.

36:02And so when we were looking at Australia and like who to partner with to get the biggest bang on launch, she was someone who had both like the product fit and the level of engagement that we were looking for and trust. And so, but also Indie is someone that I really love the way which she doesn't promote in a certain way. She's very chaotic and very organic. It's not a traditional influencer piece to camera.

36:30Mads:Hey, guys, how are you? She's got a really unique energy and authenticity. Yeah, and I think that married up really well with our team energy and actually how we function behind the scenes, which is quite chaotic, loose. We like to take risks or do bold things. And that doesn't necessarily gel super well with like every single influencer or content creator. So I think there was a lot of like synergy in between the teams as well in terms of like her and us. And so, yeah, we approached her and just I told her all about the clinicals and like basically showed her through the science of the product.

37:03But in true indie fashion, like she answered the phone the first time we had this call and she was like in the car and like the kids were in the back. She's like, sorry. And I was like, okay, we're getting like the live time, you know, indie. She's exactly the same as what she shows up as online pretty much. And so, yeah, talked her through the science and the products and she was interested. And she was like, yeah, I've always had this problem myself. And she was like, yeah, like, let's keep chatting. But the most important component for me was you have to try these products. You have to love them.

37:34You have to experience what I experienced. Because if you don't, then you're not going to be able to like do that job of like, you know, really. You can't advocate it. No, and she's very genuine in that way where like she probably wouldn't do it justice if she didn't really like see that first time result. So I went to lunch with her and drilled into her like, Indy, this is what you have to do. Like this product at this time, like, you know, and we need you to be doing it every day and you absolutely have to be logging like your results. so we would make her submit submit like her her weekly like updates um so that we knew like she was you know on track using them and and we could track how she was experiencing them also through that process she got to know the team and how we functioned and she loved that and she was like i want to be a part of this so it was actually just like the marrying of these two crazy worlds that came together and it was like the perfect synergy it was really nice so what you're talking about

38:31Mads:here is that key moment where Indy's identified, hey, I don't just want to be an ambassador. I want to be a shareholder. Can you tell me more about that conversation and how you've ended up where you are today as partners? Yeah. So we had initially said, okay, look, come on board as an ambassador. And then she came into the office for the first time and had spent a day with the team where we were talking about the launch. And when we partner with an ambassador, like even if it's just an ambassador. We get them in the building. So it's like, okay, how do you want to launch it? Like we're coming up with these things hand in hand together because it wasn't that level of ambassadorship.

39:09And she spent the one day with the team, whole day, like nine to five in the office. And she's never had a corporate job in her life. So she was like coming in. And she didn't even have a laptop. And she was like holding other people's laptops, just like cosplaying basically for the day. And what she was able to like witness in the office, she loved. And I think she like actually found almost like a little place of belonging like in the team and in being involved in that capacity and also being able to like be across that level of like the partnership and so we left that day and we were walking out of the building and she's like saying to me like I really want to be involved but like in a much bigger way and she's like would you ever consider like me coming in to the business and um and I was like yeah of course like I we really loved working with her.

39:58And I was like, obviously, that's my goal is for someone to be that like involved and believe that much in the products that they're willing to, you know, come in as a partner and invest in the business.

40:08Mads:So this reminds me of a Diary of a CEO episode. Are you a fan of Stephen Barber? I am. So he interviewed Emma Greed, who is the co-founder of Skims and Good America. Yeah, I haven't listened to that episode. I listened to her on another podcast, though. I highly recommend listening to this episode because what you've just presented to me is this concept of brands moving into a new space of influencer marketing where they're moving away from these traditional influencer arrangements, ambassadorships, and moving into this space of exchanging equity. It's a huge trend in the US. This is actually the foundation of what Emma talked about in the podcast with Stephen and was the idea that she put forward to Kris Jenner for Good American and then Skims.

40:50Mads:And it's obviously paid off exponentially. Skims is valued at close to$4 billion. And what I'm noticing in the influencer and the media landscape is this started years ago, but is now becoming more of a popular trend. We're also seeing with the likes of Alex Earle and Poppy, and that allegedly she, you know, made serious bank off that arrangement. What I would love to understand from your perspective is, do you think this is the future of influencer marketing? We're going to see more of this in the Australian market? I think so. I honestly think it depends on the influencer and the brand. Like there's got to be, because like we said before, if you're going to go into business with someone, like you're genuinely going into business with them.

41:31So you have to be so aligned with them as well. And I think this is an amazing way for startups in Australia to thrive when they don't have the money to invest into like ambassadorship. So what I would love to see is that this results in like big booms for smaller scale startups and like greater innovation just in general in Australia, which means more jobs and all these things. And I think influencers have such a key role to play, I think, but it does really come down to like what influence on what brand and that like genuine, like I hope that it happens in that like genuine way of wanting to build together similar to how founders would come together, like co-founders, because you both have like the same passion or like mission and values, like for what you want that company or business to be.

42:24Yeah. So I would say I reckon it will become more and more of a trend. And I think it's great because I think influencers have a lot to offer. And I think that it's great that they have this opportunity to make smart business moves and get access to this. And likewise, hopefully that means smaller businesses as well get access to things that they weren't able to. So you've sort of got these like mutually beneficial things going on. But a lot of the times, I think for influencers as well, we've seen a lot of influencers start brands. Yes. And actually very few have like that longevity and like real ability to scale into big, like longstanding brands.

43:02And this is where I think you've got, you need that mix of skillset. Yes. Because you need people internally who are going to know how to structure a P &L, how to forecast supply chain, how to create demand just beyond the influencer channel as well. And you need those two things working together. And then when you do, it's magic. But if you don't have like both of those sides and like great product development is the core. Is essential. Like you have to have the most amazing product. Or queen. Yeah. Like queen. You can't sell bad products. So like that's, and I think that these may be like, there's these, been these influencer brands pop up without that maybe know-how product expertise and like long-term thinking around product, which you have in like more of an established business.

43:47Mads:You definitely need that authenticity and that value exchange to be aligned.

43:55Mads:Before we wrap up, I would love the listeners who, you know, not everyone runs their own business. There are a lot of people that are listening to this podcast who work in marketing, work in brand. Even if you're not running your own business, stylish listeners would love your advice on bringing ideas to life, backing yourself. We've spoken a lot about that today, pushing through self-doubt and insecurity. What's the one piece of advice you would give them considering all of that? For confidence, I think confidence is a muscle and you have to be doing things to build it up. So I know that certain things might scare you.

44:30It's like break it down into like what feels manageable and then just action. Like it's this constant action. I look at myself before the business and after and I'm so much more confident in myself. But that hasn't actually come through external validation. It has come through the fact that I have been able to continuously like try things along the way, which means I failed that many times. but what I've built up is knowledge and skill set that no one can like take away from me now and that has built my confidence I wouldn't have gotten there without doing learning failing and I think if you can just create those bite-sized chunks where every day you're going to do something new or you're going to try something new in a manageable way if you are doing that every day you'll turn around in six months time and be like whoa I'm completely different now and like the level of confidence I have in these things that once felt unachievable is like, I don't even think twice about them.

45:27That's how it works. It's like, you just do it. You do the thing over and over again. So I think a lot of people like waiting for what's the thing that I can build up my confidence so that I can do the thing. It's like, no, actually just doing the thing is what's going to give you the confidence later, even if it goes badly, because, you know, and it's calculated. You're not going to go and like throw yourself in a crazy situation, but take those calculated risks along the way. And it's like an elastic band and it just stretches. And eventually you've got like this bandwidth that you never realized that you had before.

45:57So that would be like my practical advice. And then when it comes to ideas, I'm a big lover of the purple cow theory. I don't know if you've heard this. I'm not familiar with this. But if you are on a road trip and you see a cow like out the window, you're like, oh, it's a cow, right? You're like, look at that. And then you pass like a few paddocks and like there's more cows and there's more cows and you might go like, oh, look at the cow, look at the cow, look at the cow. And eventually you're like, you don't see them. Like there's just cows in the paddock. Like you've seen them before. But then you see a purple cow and you're like, oh, my God, it's a purple cow.

46:30And anyway, this whole thing is to say don't mimic other people's strategies. Once it's been done before, that's the purple cow. You can't recreate the purple cow by copying. So when it comes to idea generation, what I say to my team, and they will say it back to me now, they're like, it's the purple cow. Because I'm like, is it different? Like, is it going to stand out? if something's worked for someone else, don't like rinse and repeat. Like take, I think you can take inspiration, but like apply your own critical thinking and make it your own and create a purple cow. And yeah, so when I think about idea generation, I'm always asking myself, is it a purple cow?

47:10Like will people stop and be like, whoa, I haven't seen that before. Let's talk

47:14Mads:about the launch of Booth and that moment as a campaign. It was huge. It was everywhere. I do We want to talk about the choice of using wigs in a lot of that campaign promotion. There was a lot of discourse online. A lot of people had opinions about that. Can you talk me through the rationale of that decision? It was a creative brand video. So to provide the context, we were launching this brand in market and we wanted to do so with like a really strong visual asset. Classic marketing, like you have a brand campaign video. If any company launches a new product or, you know, like big companies, they launch like seasonal campaigns, they will do so via usually a visual medium that is quite highly produced.

47:54Not necessarily the same for social media led brands or startups, but this was important. Like it was an important asset for us to create for launch because it was like, what's the tone of voice? What's the brand identity? How can we like bring it all to life with a campaign video? So it's a stylistic choice of direction. And the way that we wanted to do that, we had this really playful, like witty, but quite like smart tone of voice to the brand. and it was kind of retro chic. And so we wanted to, we were coming up with sort of concepts and it was like about bringing it into the home as well.

48:27So we went like retro inspired, like in the house, but like glam and how does it make you feel and wanted to like overdo it in like an, kind of inspired by like a 50s shampoo commercial. Anyway, it was all of this that came together that placed indie in the commercial, I'm going to call it, in wigs to demonstrate like this very grand like visual effect of like what was going to happen to her hair when she used the products and what was going to happen to the customers hair or how they would feel. Most people got that because those who were like following the brand and Indie, they saw that come to life.

49:02And then we'd had Indie introduce the product on her page with her whole video diary where she documented all of her results in her chaotic style that she usually does, which was very familiar to her audience with vlogs. So we had ticked like those other boxes, right? Launched the campaign video to introduce the brand to market. Most people understood it. And then there was like a few people that were like, I'm confused as to why you used wigs to promote hair growth product. And it was like, fair enough. Like that, if you just read that out of context, like 100%. But I think most people understood that it was like an art direction or a brand identity, not like, hey, this is the result she had with the product.

49:42Mads:It's also one element of the strategy. As you just laid out, there were so many other elements that had gone live up until that point. So majority of your audience had been on that consumer journey and consumed a lot of that content. So there is a small minority that obviously haven't. You've addressed a lot of those comments yourself personally. Why did you choose to center yourself as a founder in a lot of those direct reply comments back? Gosh, that's a good question. Why did I do that? um no I think again there's strategy but then there's also just like operating every day like not everything is that well thought out like and I think that's the beauty of it like we're not that calculated a lot of the time there was a big proportion of people so there was like a a few people that were quite genuine in their like questioning of why do you use wigs and then there was another portion of people that were like they use wigs for a hair growth product outrage outrage and then there was like they would run with that and some of these people never saw the original video.

50:39They actually didn't know what was going on. They didn't know about the brand. They'd never watched the original campaign video. They saw this one piece of information and ran with it. There was also another group of people on the internet that I think were waiting for like the gotcha like moment. You know, it's like there's, and I think that's what happens when you're building at this scale, right? With indie and you've got this big audience. there's a group of people who are like yeah like you know they're just they're there ready to like consume the content and go along this customer journey but there's a group of people there that were waiting for like the the fall down yeah so they were they were like waiting ready for anything and the wigs was like the thing they were like ha gotcha like you're not who you say you are like they were waiting and so no matter what you said they didn't want to hear it like it was just like anyway so that's sort of like the context and it snowballed right like it was like quite a conversation on TikTok, I was scrolling through my For You page, every second video was like mocking, like influencers putting hair growth products in their hair or like, you know, and actually some of them were quite funny, but it was like this huge, huge amount of volume for I was like, okay, like, is this really like warranted?

51:50Mads:Intention versus interpretation. I feel like it's a classic scenario where you didn't intend on setting out for this to be misleading or for this to be, and again, there's only a small percentage of the community or maybe not even your community that think that. Yeah. And I think that was the key call out for me. The learning was that those people were never going to be our customers anyway. In terms of why I was probably leveraging, so I've sort of now been posting more from my own personal channel. That was actually more to not confuse people between TBH and Booth. So I really wanted to start like removing myself a little bit more from the TBH channels.

52:32Number one, that gives like the team more room to operate without me, like on those pages. But also then like I didn't want to become a front facing face on the Booth account specifically. So it was like, how can we like talk about these brands in the way that customers are really interested in? They really want to see that insight and have that transparency. and I love sharing it because I'm super passionate about it. So it's also like fun for me. It was like, how can we do that? And it made more sense to centralize it on my own channel versus have it live on the brand channels. So that was actually the reason why we started posting more specifically from my account and sharing more of like that founder angle.

53:09It was a mix of people want to see it. It's less confusing for it to not live on the brand pages. And also it's really fun.

53:15Mads:It also adds a human element to it. And particularly in Australia, there are a lot of female founded brands where founders do center themselves. And I don't mean that in a way where it's like, oh, it's all about you. It's more so that you're creating a connection with your community through your face, through your own personal channels. I'd be pressed to know an Australian founded brand by females that isn't really doing that. There aren't that many. And I know we've spoken about this on the Shameless podcast before and we actually referenced TBH. I believe it was in a Shame More episode. Yeah.

53:41Mads:And Miss and Zara were going back and forth and having discourse on can brands do this and can they be successful without having that founder journey attached to it? And, you know, what also comes with that is risk because it exposes you. It, you know, brings it convolutes boundaries as well from your own personal, you know, what you're willing to share and how much you show up every day. So it's a really interesting conversation and I don't think it ends here. I feel like it's ever evolving. And, you know, we might look back in a few years and you might even, as you have right now, reflected on and being like, why did I do that?

54:12Mads:Why did I do that? But at the same time, your businesses wouldn't be as successful as they are if you hadn't done that. So it's not the only reason why, but I do think it's an important piece and a reason why a lot of people do show up for brands. I know it's a reason why I show up for brands. I love understanding the why behind founders, their journey, their experience, the ups, the downs, the highs, the lows. I think it always makes a deeper connection for a brand. Yeah. And, you know, people are putting out their hard-earned cash. They deserve to know, like, who they're supporting and where it's going.

54:46I think that is a big component for people in like feeling like they know more about where they're shopping or, yeah, what's guiding those decisions. And then I think there's also a group of people that are probably like, and this is the part I love, is like they're inspired to then be like, well, I can go out and do something or I can question how things are done and find a better solution. And, yeah, like I hope it creates that room for people to feel like they can go and do the same thing. Absolutely.

55:13Mads:Rage, this has been such a good conversation. I feel so lucky to be sitting here and I just know our stylish community are going to adore this chat. You've given us so much good insight into both the brands. You've been really transparent with us as well, which is what we love when founders show up behind the mic. You've told us the good, the bad, the ugly, and I just know everyone's going to love this episode. So thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. A pleasure. And that's all for this new fortnightly episode of Stylish, focusing on brand and marketing. Thank you so much for joining us.

55:43Mads:And remember, you can drop us an email anytime at style-ish at shamelessmedia.com.au or you can slide into our DMs over at stylishpod. And we can't forget to thank the wonderful Shameless Media team, head of podcast Lucy Hunt and senior podcast producer Kate Emma Burke. We'll be back with you in a fortnight. See you then, guys.

56:15Mads:This podcast was recorded on Wurundjeri land. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.