460: 4 Stories. 4 Founders. 4 Lives Changed.

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1:16So finally, before we get into today's episode, I'm inviting you to come back, check out Founder Plus and go to founder.com forward slash membership. I'm really excited, guys. This is an incredible new evolution of entrepreneurial education and our mission is really to get as many of these founders that we interviewed to teach and also give back on the founder plus platform and really go more in depth with the knowledge and the experiences and the lessons learned that they're sharing all in founder plus so guys please go check it out if you're enjoying these interviews that's it from me i hope you enjoy this episode now let's jump in What you need is thirst.

1:59You need to be a thirsty human who is intent on learning. It's a really fascinating exploration of human potential. Now. The Founder Podcast. Even the greatest entrepreneurs had help. If you want to learn from the most successful founders on the planet, you are in the right place. Branson, Mark Cuban, Tony Robbins, Tim Ferriss, Ariana Huffington, Seth Goh, Steve Case, Gary Vee, Sophia Amorosa, Albert Corcoran, Damon John. Learn from the greatest minds in business today with interviews hosted by Nathan Chan. This is not your average entrepreneur podcast. The Founder Podcast.

2:42Hey guys, I started Founder to serve people like you and me. People want to start their own business and pursue purposeful work, meaningful lives, and the ability to chart their own course. It's been 10 years since I first launched Founder Magazine and Founder still exists to demystify entrepreneurship and really share successful stories from successful founders and empower as many people as possible to define their own success on their terms. None of this would be possible without our amazing community of students. Whether you've taken one of our courses or several, subscribed to the magazine, read an article on our website or listen to our podcast, you're part of the Founder family.

3:25And the latest issue of Founder magazine is dedicated to you. In honor of this occasion, we're shifting the spotlight onto our very own community this episode. The remarkable individuals you're going to hear from have been diligently implementing the proven strategies and insights provided through Founder Plus, which is our comprehensive platform designed to equip founders with everything they need to start and grow a successful business. Usually we bring you conversations with some of the world's most accomplished founders, but today join us as we deep dive into the journeys, experiences and successes of our very own students.

4:03So if you've been following these episodes so far from the bottom of our hearts, thank you. This is an episode you do not want to miss. Firstly, we're jumping into conversation with Madison Danforth, whose agency Boho Social was forged really out of frustration. Madison started Boho Social in 2020 with no budget and no clients. Three years on, she has a waiting list of clients and Yahoo Finance named her one of the top 10 CEOs to watch. Here's how she did it. I'm Madison from Boho Social and I am an organic marketing specialist. I specialize in everything not paid basically, so no paid work, everything organic and yeah I've been doing that for almost three years now so coming up to three year anniversary of my business.

4:54It's been a long journey now it's been yeah years and years so I went to uni and I studied communications so I did mainly marketing and PR and back then we really focused on LinkedIn and Twitter because they were the two big social media platforms and it was really corporate based on you know crisis management and you know how big brands would use their brand voice on socials and I was just getting into brands kind of getting over the hurdle of not having a corporate voice it was learning that you know a brand can actually be a little bit more personal and a bit funny and all these things were just starting to emerge this was you know 12 13 years ago so we're really just seeing that that start then I graduated uni worked in digital agencies so I've always been in some kind of digital marketing pretty much moved to London from Australia as a lot of Aussies do had to have that London experience worked in digital marketing over there for a year and my other year I worked in communications came back did a few bits and bobs and worked for a business just building their building their brand building their business and sort of building that brand from scratch that was a year and a half gig basically where I just got to work on that one business which was really cool to work on something from the ground up.

6:13It was like having a baby. It was like raising this child and helping their team grow that business. And then I very briefly worked for another agency, didn't really vibe there too much. And I kept seeing these small business owners come into meetings and it was heartbreaking because they'd all come in, they'd be so inspired and they'd be telling you about their business or they'd bring in a really cool product and get to see it and stuff like that but they just didn't have these huge agency budgets to be able to afford you know the packages that agencies offered usually it's so inclusive that you know it's up in the tens of thousands of dollars so I'd always see these small businesses like leave the meeting you just see that little defeated look on their face like oh I know I need marketing but there's no way you know we have the budget for this I kept seeing it over and over in a short time I was at this agency I thought, I know I could help them.

7:05Like, I know I could just like send them an email and be like, oh, hey, like I know what we should do. Here's the plan. But obviously I couldn't because I was working for this agency. And then that's kind of when Boho Social, the idea was born. I was like, hang on, I have the skills and the knowledge and I love small businesses so much. It's me. I can help them. So yeah, that was it. I left that agency on a Friday, started Boho Social on the Monday, probably a Saturday, let's be honest, straight away. And that was it. I've been full-time ever since. So that's kind of how it became. I just had to help these small businesses that needed that guidance.

7:45I think going from that full-time gig with a good salary to literally nothing made me work so hard because I didn't have anything to fall back on. And it was like, this has to work because I have to pay my bills. So it really gave me no choice. So I was like, okay, I'm going to make this work. I'm going to do everything in my power, you know, to get this business off the ground because I don't want to go back to a big agency. I want to help small businesses. So I just told myself, you've got to make it work. Whatever happens, it's going to work. First thing I did, I think, was build my website because I had a bit of experience in that.

8:20So I was really excited to build my website and do those little fun things. the next thing I did I think was jump in um Facebook groups so I'm in um WA and we have one called Girlboss and it's just full of Perth business women you know asking for recommendations and asking for things so I would just sit there and I would wait and I would look every time I went social media I was like hi my name's Madison I have this business I can help you and I just like plugged myself like continuously every time I saw someone asking for social media help I would literally tag myself and be like hi yeah I can help you I can do this I can do that I'd sit in there and I'd just continue so that every day I would look has anyone asked for social media help has anyone asked for this and then I started getting more and more clients and then they'd start recommending me in that group and other groups which was really cool because I could stop plugging myself so hard and let other people you know help and and do it for me and yeah it kind of took off from there so I think the very first thing I did was get a website so when people when I did tag myself I could be like hey here's my website like I'm real I'm legit I exist and I think even before that I was thinking about this the other day my very first sort of business expense was getting my logo done so I had not a lot of money to spend on everything but I knew that I wanted like a really cool logo that represented the brand so that was the first thing and I was so excited to get that like on my website and on my socials and yeah the Facebook group was probably the very first step in just connecting with people and putting myself out there.

9:53My first client for social media was an interior designer. And yeah, she wasn't keen. A lot of clients tell me they're not like keen on a platform. They're like, I don't really like socials. I get that. It's not everyone's thing and it's time consuming as well. So it's like, we can't, you know, put that much time into every single part of our business. We've got to outsource somewhere. And she was really looking for that like connection and collaboration. And I remember, I think it was two weeks in after I'd taken over her account. I remember getting a DM from her. I've got a screenshot somewhere and it said, oh my gosh, I've got like 40 new followers and all these DMs from clients and builders.

10:30She wanted to connect with, you know, people in the industry. And she was like, it's only been a couple of weeks and like all these things are happening. Whereas before it had just been pretty, you know, nothing, a bit dead. And then all of a sudden she was getting all these things come in and it was cool for her to say, oh wow, this platform actually is letting me not only show to more clients, but also connect with people in my industry that's going to help my business grow, you know, in other ways. So I think that was like a huge moment, not only my first client, but you know, I got to get her results really quickly as well.

11:04So yeah, it was definitely a win for both of us. After that one year that things really started to escalate. So I had gold in my business coach and that was like the 10k month. I think a lot of us in business have that 10k month goal um so I had that and I did three consecutive 10k months and my business coach kind of said like this means that you have the tools now to keep being able to you know bring in that that 10k I was like cool just keep doing what I'm doing and then it just kind of kept growing like by two grand by four grand by five grand I was like oh my gosh okay like is this the new normal or did I just fluke it was it just like a fluke month and then three months went past and I was like okay no still making like well over 10 okay here we go here we go and now I have like sort of capped myself again while I grow because I need more systems and automations and processes in order before you know I take on another team member or give current team members more hours because you need that good foundation before you can go to the next level so I'm at a level where everything's working pretty smoothly but I know I need a few extra little things in place to be able to take on more clients so it's a difficult phase to be and I guess because I know that there's more clients I want to work with me and I want to work with them but I also know from you know previous experience that it's overwhelming if you don't have you know the processes and procedures and all that especially automation in place to you know go to the next level without any more stress you just want it to be nice and cruisy and just feel like where you are now.

12:43And yeah, systems, processes, automations definitely make that so much easier. Start before you're ready because there's no green flashing light. One day you wake up and there's a little sign above your bed that says, today's the day, you're ready today. I don't think you're ever going to feel a hundred percent ready to start your business, launch that new service or product or do whatever that thing is you really want to do you've just got to give it a go and do it so with anything in business start before you're ready and you'll just work it out you'll work it out as you go but you never know if you don't start hey founder fam i want to talk to you about something super exciting we're officially partnered with omni send the email marketing and sms platform built specifically for e-commerce founders we've been recommending omni send to founder students for a while now because it just works.

13:36Whether you're launching your first store or you're scaling the seven figures, it really helps you automate your marketing and get real results. Did you know on average, OmniSend customers make$68 for every$1 they spend, which is an insanely good return on investment. And because you're part of the founder community, you get 50 % off your first three months with the code founder50. Just head to omnisend.com forward slash founder without the to get started. All right, now let's jump back into the show. Next up, you're going to hear from Mia Dixon, who was three weeks from launching her second business when she decided to post about her product on TikTok.

14:16The organic momentum on TikTok helps safe bands generate$10 ,000 in sales within two weeks of launch. So we sat down with Mia to learn how she put this powerful social media tool to good use. Enjoy. So my name is Mia Dixon. I'm located in Townsville up in North Queensland and my second business through the Start and Scale side of things is Safebands which is a wearable waterproof wristband for kids, adults and including a pet collar attachment that can store contact names, numbers as well as any important medical or important information about the wearer. So I have four kids. All four of mine have been runners at some stage.

14:58They've all picked the perfect opportunity to just leg it in the opposite direction. But the aha moment was that when I went to a rodeo with a girlfriend, she wrote her phone number up her son's arm. And she's a police officer. And I kind of thought as a police officer, I wouldn't want my details out there on display. I didn't like that idea of having my mobile really, really out there. So I noticed that it wasn't just me who had an issue and kind of started just working behind the scenes on it. And luckily enough, with our first business, we were able to reuse some of the tech behind the scenes to build out this second business now.

15:33We actually started, we probably had a dozen different molds, a dozen different ideas, everything like that. Obviously, we needed it to be mum-proof and kid-proof. and living in North Queensland, it needed to be sunproof, waterproof, everything proof we could think of. And we had managed to do that. So with some of the earlier molds, we were using like a plasticky type material. I have a lot of skin irritations and allergies and things, and it wasn't working with me. So I thought it was not going to work for the majority of people. And then we switched it over to a different style of band. We wanted it adjustable because we do have quite a few adult wearers as well and so we need it to fit sort of toddler to adult race so so we say one size fits most um so the other the other side of things is we like to go camping a lot and so there's always a lot of nighttime use and everything like that so we made sure that we stitched in reflective stitching into the band so it could be used at nighttime we could play spotlight and find the kids in the backyard that sort of thing so we've really tried to think of every angle we possibly could as parents and then the kids our kids have tested them you know through through thick and thin and we've come up with probably the best design that we could possibly think of to make it all happen we probably contacted um half a dozen a dozen manufacturers received samples all that sort of thing sent feedback and you know just like you do you know not quite right, not happy with this, want to change this, yada, yada.

17:06And we managed to finally get in contact with someone that understood what we were hoping to achieve with the brand and what we wanted the product to achieve. And all of the different do's and don'ts in the product that we wanted it to be able to do and not do. So it was a mammoth effort. I'm very lucky that my husband plays a quiet role but a very important role behind the scenes and yes we managed to get there in the end. Took a while but we got there. I actually got them to send over a few samples and I lent them out to my girlfriends. They have kids sort of under five or six and toddlers and everything as well and I just kind of said put them through hell.

17:49I'm going to do the same. I really want to see how these go and how they're tested and that was kind of before we had the tech It was just about the band itself. And they did. God love them. Good friends of mine. And we did too. Our kids, we took them camping. We had them in and out of water parks. Everything we could think of. And the lasting effects of the quality of them really stood the test of time and everything. So we were really happy with our end result of what we had ordered. And then it was kind of time to figure out the tech side. After I dabbled in the platform with Social Dot, I knew that I needed to bring safe bands to TikTok.

18:28And we started probably about two weeks before launch, maybe three, I can't remember. And we just started telling our story. You know, we're a mom and dad. This is what we've come up with. We're so excited to be launching a new brand. We didn't give away a lot of information, but we were just telling that story aspect. Through that, we managed to grow our email list before launch. And once we launched, we used that email list, obviously, to let everyone know we were alive and well and off and going. and continued to post our TikToks. As I said before, like with people reaching out on TikTok and things, they have a great feature where you can video response a question.

19:03So when people were asking, you know, does this suit for NDIS? Can I use this for my Nana in Belgium? Can I, you know, whatever it is, I would video response back to them directly. That would then go gang busters as well. And it just slowly grew and grew and became this big marketing machine for us. that was very organic and very honest to what we are and wanting to help, which I think has made a huge difference in the end to our marketing. Our own curated hashtag of SafeBands has over 5 million views on that hashtag. Certain videos and things have popped off, which has been amazing. But overall, yeah, a huge amount of views in probably, I think we've been on the platform for five months.

19:48so we've managed to amass over 30 ,000 followers and a verified channel on the platform as well so we really love our TikTok community and they really do play a huge role in our side of the business as far as improvements and suggestions and questions and sales and everything like that so yeah it's been a big big crazy journey over on TikTok for us I think as always, before you hit launch, you sort of climb a mountain. And I was having this chat with my husband the other day. It's like, you know, you put in all the extra hours after the kids go to bed, everything like that, you get to launch and you're just knackered.

20:28But then as soon as you hear that little kind of ka-ching, you go, oh, hang on, here we go. So it was really crazy. Within that two weeks that I started posting the backend story of, you know, how and why we started. on our TikTok channel, people were signing up in droves. And then within that, after we launched two weeks later, we had sold around$10 ,000 of stock and we were putting in our second order of safe bands and opening up for more colours. Because at that stage, we'd only launched with a pink, blue and a pet collar attachment. And some of the feedback that we had on our TikToks, funnily enough, was that could they be more colour diversity?

21:13you know, color isn't gender specific. There was all these sorts of things. And not that I think pink and blue are gender specifics. They were just the market research that we had done. And, you know, we opened it up to the audience and said, okay, well, what colors do you want? What do you want to see next? Sign up for the email list and you'll be notified when those specific colors come along. And that's what people have done since then. So now we have five colors on board and the pet collar attachment. And it, yeah, it's, it's been a, it's been, I keep saying it's crazy, but it really has been crazy.

21:47Get out there and talk about it as much as you can. You know, don't be afraid to put yourself out there. Don't think that everyone's going to steal your idea if you talk about it, because it's not going to build a community. It's not going to get you the feedback that you need, anything like that. You just have to take that step and be brave, whether it's, you know, jumping on Instagram and building a platform there or Facebook or TikTok or whatever it might be. I think you just really need to be brave enough to put yourself out there, start talking about the brand, the ideas, the journey and the story behind it is a huge part and just kind of make it happen.

22:21Like don't take no for an answer and just do it, do something every day to get you that one step closer to, to opening the shop and hearing that first ka-ching and then you're hooked, you're done. You'll be in e-commerce or, you know, your own business space forever, I think. Hey guys, I hope you're enjoying this episode and learning a ton. As you know, in this series, we interview some of the greatest founders of our generation to find out how they did it. However, if you're thinking of starting your own business and you want to hear from some incredible stories from everyday people like you or I who are actually in the trenches, only been building their business for maybe one year or two years, like they're building right now and they're really in the early stages, but they're getting success, you should come and check out our new podcast, From Zero to Founder, hosted by our community manager, Molly Flynn.

23:15These are in the trenches stories from our very own successful students that have gone through some of our programs. People just like you who are deep within the process of building their very own successful business. These are the founders of tomorrow. You can find the From Zero to Founder podcast on all platforms. And remember, it's founder without the E. All right, now let's jump in the show. In this next conversation, you're going to hear from Mark Boxer, a man with a unique set of skills. He's a qualified motor mechanic, a cameraman, a motorsports expert, a YouTuber, and an engineer. When Australia went into lockdown, Boxer's regular work began to dry up.

23:57He needed to find a way to make some money, so he turned to an invention he'd conceived himself a decade earlier. In just over a year, his business Three-Footed Monster has caught the attention of some of the most influential content creators in the world and is dominating in its category. Let's have a listen. I'm Mark Boxer. I'm from sunny old Adelaide. I'm a mechanic by trade originally, and then I somehow transitioned into media and television, and from there developed the product that I've been pushing this last year. So the product is called a three-footed monster. It's a magnetic mount and it was originally designed a long time ago just because I used to do a lot of motorsport stuff and we were putting cameras in cars and we wanted to do something different so we made a magnetic mount so it could stick cameras inside cars in weird places.

24:47And from there I eventually, I think it was last year actually with COVID hitting and a lot of work because of the motorsport TV and the working sort of dropped away. I decided to pull my finger out, so to speak, and get the product and develop it further and then actually got it out there and ran a Kickstarter campaign on it and got it out into the market. I think the first step was with the Kickstarter campaign, I come from a media background doing magazines and TV and stuff like that, but not so much a marketing background. I've been a content creator for companies and so forth, but it's always been based around products that already exist and things like that.

25:27So for me to jump in and do a Kickstarter campaign was new and exciting and scary because we weren't really sure exactly if it was going to work. And the word is that usually crowdfunding campaigns are either successful or a complete flop. So for me, it wasn't really a huge success, but it did meet the target and went over it, which was great. So, and being a one man band, so to speak, it was enough for us to sort of jumpstart into the next step of, you know, getting more product and then going to market and starting a website and selling on an e-commerce platform. So it has been a good start and I would say, you know, a slow start, but I guess, you know, going back to the fact that it is a very, I hate using this word, but a bespoke product.

26:12It's a case of, you know, just getting it under people's noses so they can see it and see how it works. I think for me, it was just more a case of, you know, financially actually just having the capital to build prototypes and stuff like that. So a lot of the money that was coming back in from sales was going back into prototypes. And prior to that as well, when we first launched the product on Kickstarter before that, I had to apply and get a patent application, trademarking, all that sort of stuff, which is, I think, you know, going off on a tangent a little bit. A lot of people jump into business without thinking about that sort of stuff.

26:46and then it can sort of bite them in the future. And I mean, yeah, for me, that was really important. But with the bigger versions, I think really like magnets, the bigger you go, the stronger they are. So it was basically a case of going, well, you know, this one's going to suit people with, say, GoPros and small cameras and phones. And then if people want to go to like an SLR camera or something like that, then they can go to a bigger version. But then it's not really specifically just for cameras. You know, there's people mounting all sorts of stuff, lights and, you know, everything, monitors, that sort of thing.

27:19I mean, I think I'd shown you in the past several cameramen that went to the Olympics in Tokyo took their three-footer monsters with, and I got a photo from one of the guys who works behind the scenes doing the technical stuff. He'd mounted a monitor on the wall because they didn't have enough room for monitor stands and stuff like that. So they're literally just in a small office there and just stuck it straight on the wall in front of him. So just perfect for small things like that. I think researching your product name and your brand and company name is really important first because you can put all this effort into getting thousands of dollars worth of logos and designs done and then find out that, sorry, you can't use that or you use it and then you're infringing someone and then it ends up messy.

27:59But I think with the trademark, we've got the R logo on it now, which is great. All the paperwork to prove it and push that internationally. So I think that's all in the hands of the trademark lawyer at the moment. And same with the patent, everything's in there so we're protected but um they are not a fast process so it's something that i would say to people a do them before you get started and put your product out there in the public eye um but do it as do it as a first point even if it's expensive if you have to find the money to do it um that's one of the most important things i think especially if it's a new product and that hasn't really ever been seen before when i first did the kickstarter campaign i basically just sent a bunch of products out to people and whether or not my theory was right in sending products out and hope that I get stuff back I was pretty lucky to get some pretty good feedback as well as some good content as well and you know really it just cost me the cost of the product and the postage I know that there's through looking at the start and scale stuff as well there's some pretty good info on dealing with influencers and content creators at the moment we're running some ads on Facebook.

29:06We've only just basically started running some ads which are almost now the agency I'm working with and I'm no guru in this, that's why I'm getting them to do it. But they're doing some retargeting to see if they can put it back under the noses of people who've looked at it. And then I guess collecting data as well. But we haven't really bombed into doing a lot of advertising yet. It's been very organic. So which has been, I guess, a really good thing because if your product can sell organically, then once you start advertising it, then that's hopefully going to ramp things up a lot. But at the moment, I think we've run some on Facebook and Instagram.

29:44And now we're looking at TikTok as well. And then also some Google ad stuff. So especially with a lot of YouTubers using the product and so much content on YouTube about camera mounts and so forth and phones and yeah at the moment and and this is a hundred percent um big thanks to a girl by the name of jesse on on the start and scale group uh we got chatting turns out we got mutual friends as well she's put me in touch with a 3pl company in america so i've been chatting to them quite a bit and they're really good because they help startups and they help new companies so with that with um we're looking at very soon putting stock in america because right now as well it's been hard for us too because of postage and everything getting card abandonments and all that sort of stuff from people that don't want to buy the product because it's too expensive to ship or it takes too long so that's a big plan for me plus getting back to the annoying boring back-end stuff of businesses with me doing a lot of the back-end stuff with the manufacturing as well actually going into America I've been very conscious of the fact that we needed product liability insurance and stuff like that over there so you have to have your manufacturing quality control and all that sort of stuff right too.

30:58So I think in the next 12 months or onwards, I really want to have good distribution over there. We're working with a company in Japan at the moment to launch in Japan. And they're our two big market focuses at the moment, although I've got some connections in the UK and Europe and places as well. So it's more a case of just building, you know, the awareness of it, but then getting the products into the other countries so they can be shipped domestically as well. Because for me, yeah, if I'm buying something, I hate long shipping times and stuff like that too. So I put myself in the customer's shoes and go, well, you know, if that's going to take a month to get to me, am I really that interested in it?