642: I Quit My 15 Year Career To Build a Jewelry Business — and Hit $400,000 in My First Year

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0:39Just head to OmniSend.com forward slash founder without the E to get started. All right, now let's jump back into the show. What if a single Christmas epiphany about baby shower gifts turned into a multi-million dollar jewelry empire? And the secret to scaling wasn't actually hustle, but an engraving fairy you never actually met. Well, today's guest, Rosie Collins, is founder of Deja Mark. And after noticing that every baby shower gift focused on the baby and never the mom, Rosie became obsessed with creating elegant, timeless jewelry that really captures fingerprints, handwriting, and meaningful moments.

1:18And within a year, she'd hit$400 ,000 in revenue. And in this conversation, you're going to discover how Rosie built this business while working full time by finding an engraving fairy who'd pack her orders while she was at work, why she tracks MER, marketing efficiency ratio over ROAS, and why that single shift changes everything about profitability and her counterintuitive take on mastering the craft before outsourcing, even when you're exhausted. This is an absolute masterclass in building a product-obsessed, customer-first brand without burning out and proof that sometimes the best ideas come from noticing what everyone else overlooks.

2:00Hear the stories, learn the proven methods, and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder Podcast with Nathan Chan.

2:14Welcome, Rosie. Thank you. To the Founder Podcast. Welcome to Matilda. Yes. You've traveled all the way here from Perth. So I just want to say thank you for taking the time and in true spirit as a new mom, you're showing us how to build a business with all of these different competing priorities. So you've built this incredible brand, Deja Mark. Like talk us through after spending 15 years in strategic roles across media agencies, how did you come up with this idea on kind of personalized jewelry, fingerprinted jewelry? That was kind of how you started. But how did you start this thing? I feel like it was just like many micro moments.

3:01It all kind of stemmed from when my friends were going through their life stages, getting married, having kids. and for example a few of my friends were getting married and I did a reading or I made a gift and I just with the reading for example I couldn't quite find one that I liked I was like well they're all just really standard so I wrote one just based about their journey and then that cut sort of became like my thing the next friend I would then make like a personalized piece of artwork for them. And then when it came to them having babies, I was like, there's nothing for mum. It's all around the baby, which now makes sense because I have two kids myself.

3:46But at the time, knowing nothing about babies, and I don't think there's a lot of overwhelmed elements when it comes to choosing a present. I don't know if anyone else feels that way, but there's so many gifts to choose from. And for me, having something that was really personalized made the most sense. So we'd go to these baby showers and mum is about to go through this huge life stage, this huge moment in their lives, but it's still about the baby, not about her. That was just like a micro moment. I just kept thinking about that over and over again. And they always say creativity comes in those moments of like downtime.

4:21So it was Christmas, I can't remember when it was, Christmas five years ago. And I was without my family and I was just like reading a book in that real kind of like zen moment and just had this weird like epiphany to create super sentimental jewellery, elegant, refined, classic, timeless pieces. But you're the person who adds your story to it. Can be a fingerprint, can be a piece of handwriting from a loved one's card, whether they're still here or whether they may have passed. And you just add whatever story or moment in time that's meaningful to you onto a piece of jewelry. And then I, classic founder, just became obsessed and here we are.

5:04So the brand is booming. You've got a flagship store. You sell worldwide. You've got a team. This business is really growing and you're growing in a really sustainable way as well. But it's a multi-million dollar company and it's really impressive how you've been able to grow this. to still maintain it while everything's going on and there's a lot I want to talk about and break down. But tell me about your first order. How long did it take to bring this thing to life? Oh, my God, Rhea Galipsi. I remember her name. I was in a meeting with my old company and I remember I heard the Shopify cha-ching.

5:45Yeah. I think I just went to the toilet and cried. I was so happy that someone finally, not finally, But like someone had like what I had created and put out there, like resonated with someone. How long did it take from concept Christmas to bring this to life? How did you bring it to life? Did you go and buy the machinery? Yeah. Talk me through how much that cost. Let me take you through the journey. So, yeah, it was Christmas. Then in, and I had no idea, ChatGPT or tools were not there to kind of tell you what to do. But I'd come from an advertising marketing background, so I knew enough. Yeah.

6:22And it was in January. I then went and sourced and found a supplier. And that first supplier is still our supplier to the day. And we've worked together and we've built a beautiful relationship, which now, you know, we can get into and kind of like tips on how to kind of work with a supplier. But they were our supplier from the beginning. And then I always say, like, everything's easier then. Like, you're so, you just don't know anything, do you? So it's all magical and you kind of like know your ill-informed optimism, as Homozi always likes to say. So in regards to like the setup of just, you know, getting the packaging, getting the fingerprint kit, getting everything sorted.

7:03Like for me, that was relatively simple. It was just like design tweaks and it's and bobs. But you have no understanding of like your unit economics. Like, sure, sure, no worries. Yep, that'll do. I'll, you know, that'll be the price. No worries. and then when it came to the engraving machine I tried to work with a couple of other companies just to make it work I remember between meetings I would drive to this engraving studio to see what their samples were like but they were never good enough and I always say like you need those expertise yourself so in the end I ended up doing the engraving and bought a machine from overseas found them we still use those machines today they're they're great and I just learned myself so I would come home from literally doing it was the hardest year I was so tired and so burnt out having a full-time career which is more than a nine-to-five as well as trying to get this off the ground yeah agency world too yeah I know it doesn't stop and the and I ended up learning how to engrave and what I did is I found an engraving fairy as I call her and I didn't realize that there was like minimum requirements when it comes to minimum wage I'm pretty sure I paid her under minimum wage but I would go to work and I would come home and all the jewelry had been engraved and packed and that was like my engraving we never actually saw each other during the day because I would you know leave to go to work and then she would arrive and be done before I came home so that was like the first eight months, they helped me out.

8:41And then I, from launching the business in January to quitting my job in August to then starting on the business full-time in November. Yeah. Wow. So it took you about a year to build it up. And I think you did about$400 ,000 in sales in that one year period, right? Yeah. Okay. Now talk me through, like how much does an engraving machine cost? I put 30 ,000 into the business. Wow. That was it. Okay. And again, for me, there was no plan really. And I, you see a lot online now about people who invest their house deposits, a significant amount of money. They launch these businesses as if they are, all these brands and businesses as if they're world-class, right?

9:30But I also want to show the side which probably is where the majority lies where you can just do these small things and get started and as long as you have a product that's good quality that people resonate with you can grow it sustainably and don't have to go crazy to start with and actually if I look back at what our first website looked like what our first kind of social media launch was it was so bad. It was really terrible. And you just start to learn what people like. And I say that, sorry, I should say I'm coming from an advertising marketing background. So I do have a good knowledge. But for my standards now looking back, it's quite funny about what that first kind of like post was.

10:17I remember the website was just live and it was ready and functioning. So I was like, cool, let's go live. You know, there was no big hype or no big launch, which is very different to the today world. And that's only within five years ago. Yep, I'm the same. I remember when I first started Founder, first magazine edition, I just did a Facebook post on my personal. And that was it. I just wanted to launch. Yeah, and I think it's just so important to start. I always say if you have a perfect product, then you launch too late. You just need to either get an understanding of whether your product is interesting to people, get it into a viable product and then just start from there.

11:00And for me, there is a very easy framework. I'm sure you know this as well. I believe it's relatively simple to get to a million dollars a year quickly with a very clear e-commerce framework and structure. Yeah. Let's go through that. Let's go through that. Okay. So for me, as long as you, let's just say you're in a situation where you have got a product that you resonate with, because I think, you know, I saw one of your questions around like how did you know that your product, you know, was ready to kind of go to market. But for me, it was something that resonated with me and that I wanted. So you don't necessarily have to do a crazy amount of investment into research to understand.

11:49There are simple ways that you can do. So number one, does it resonate with you? Does it solve a problem for you? Yes. Another thing which could be just to put some Facebook ads out or some meta ads to just see if whether it's generating pre-orders or just generating interest. I remember I put the concept out onto a couple of business closed Facebook groups. Yes. People loved it. Like very unique. Haven't seen this before. So it just gives you that micro bit of confidence to go to that next step. And then it's just those steps and steps and steps. So that's the first is then the product. And if you think about 100%, you need about like I'm very, I talk about profitability a lot.

12:28And that revenue is vanity. You know, profit is sanity. So I've always been about maintaining a profitable business and doing that sustainably. So if you think about the 100%, you need around 10 % to 20 % profit to be a super healthy business. Higher than that, amazing. That leaves you, let's just say in this example, like 90 % left. You're going to have a percentage that goes to marketing. Let's say 20 % to 30 % of that, again, is really healthy. That then leaves you with variable and fixed costs. And again, you have a benchmark of what your variable needs to be and a percentage of what your fixed cost needs to be.

13:11And the mistake that I made, and I should say it's very different at the beginning, isn't it? Because you don't know if your brand is going to be successful. Like I never thought in a million years I would be talking to you on this sofa. But here we are. But one thing I wish I did do was understand the unit economics and the business fundamentals much more. whereas I kind of treated it a bit like a school project. Either way, we're now in the scenario that we are, so everything's good. But if you understand those things up front and you structure a P &L and you make sure that you pretty much stay within those percentages, you're always going to have a result in profit.

13:49And I know that that sounds very simple, but if you challenge yourself to stay within those means, there's always going to be a number left over for you from a profitability perspective. That means that you can either pay yourself if you're not putting that into your fixed cost already or you can put that money back into the business. So yeah, I think, I know that sounds really simple because you have to learn obviously how to do marketing with variable cost. You have to understand how to negotiate with suppliers. You have to get a good product within that and then fixed costs, getting good talent, you know, your OPEX, your operations, having good, you know, your Shopify, your website, whatever it might be.

14:31Like all of those are many things in themselves. So I understand that's making it sound super, super easy. But as a framework, I just always just come back to that myself. Yeah. And you said you made some mistakes at the start. What were they? And how did you fix them? I think I make mistakes every day, to be honest. You look back in a year or two time and I don't know whether, I wouldn't probably call them mistakes. They're probably more learnings, right? It might be from pricing things incorrectly, from hiring internal or external people who don't necessarily help grow the business, but then they're increasing your fixed costs and therefore reducing profitability.

15:17I think one thing, and I say this now in a very busy stage of my life, But I probably could have pushed harder earlier. But I didn't realize how efficiently I was probably running the business. A lot of people always say, I've got this many team members. But your goal is to run your business as lean and efficient as possible. so that's probably the one thing I now by you know doing all those with our CFO like going back over the years and seeing how efficiently we were running it I probably could have invested a lot of that back into more people or back into marketing to grow it quicker but you're just learning the ropes as a founder you are doing everything you're wearing all these hats and you kind of have to give yourself grace that you don't know everything and you're not doing everything all at once because online you see these people who seemingly have got their shit together but they're definitely scrambling and you know doing that duck was it pedaling underneath the water but on top just super graceful so yeah I just want to I guess show the realities that you're going to make mistakes and you're going to have learnings every second of every day like I've got learnings from this morning already.

16:37What happened? So one of the things with running a business with two kids under two is around processes and operations. So I'm very big on let's just try and refine things. You're constantly optimizing everything as you go. You put a process in place last month, it's going to change this month. So I just having a call with our marketing team and just refining our weekly check-ins for example so for me I have a marketing check-in on a Tuesday it sounds really boring sorry everyone but like in terms of operations you just got marketing meeting on a Tuesday you go through everything you prove everything on a Thursday then it's done what happens is a small business is you're very everyone's constantly texting everyone oh we could do this, we could do that, you know, whatever, whatever.

17:26But actually just reducing that noise and putting clear structures in place, that was just, we just had like an optimization from this morning because some things have changed over the last month that I, therefore then requires tighter. Control. Tighter control. Yeah. So, okay. So first year did$400 ,000, you spent$30 ,000 investing in the machinery, supplies. Yeah. And then also you said you had an engraving fairy to help support you as well. So talk me through what's on everyone's mind is how did you get sales? A lot of people start brands, perhaps have product market fit. Like you said, you kind of worked out pretty quickly that this is something that people wanted.

18:12It's a new and interesting concept. It's a different spin. Luxury jewelry, a lot of personalization. People love personalization and it's got a really strong sentimental meaning behind each piece. But a big sticking point for people is how do I get people in my digital storefront? So what did you do? How did you do it? I obviously come from an advertising marketing background. So I had a good amount of knowledge of what needed to be done. And you've got to get the right message in front of the right people at the right time at the right cost. And for us, that was meta ads. And to be honest, it still is today, creating like that flywheel of constantly updating the creative, getting people to talk about you that you then turn into content and creative that you then put into your ads.

19:04So I pretty much just started doing a small line of paid media and that equated into$400 ,000 of sales. Again, that sounds pretty simple. And at the time in 2020, 2021, it was a really good time. Yeah, it was. Within the platforms. So we were driving like a ROAS of eight and a MER of like 10%, which is where I'm coming from. Like back in the day, I wish I'd put more money into it. But at that time, you know,$400 ,000, when you're on a salary, you're like, oh my gosh, I'm absolutely loaded. But that isn't your money. Your money is what comes out at the end of that after paying for everything else.

19:53But it was enough of a confidence signal, data signal to therefore go for it. But still to this day, the paid element and the efficiency of that is what would drive 70%. And then the organic side as well. So for me with Meta and it has it has changed dramatically especially last year with the Andromeda updates but for us it's about creating enough content and updating it at the right time understanding what ads are working putting budget behind it to scale it efficiently. efficiently and the thing that we're currently working on which I'm really excited about is just the flywheel of creative and how and who is creating that for you and at what rate you can update that as quickly as possible so interestingly the best performing ad at the moment is a product that sorry is an ad that doesn't have our product in the best performing ad does not have a jewelry product in it has it's a video of myself like this with matilda on me and then my other daughter and i doing the fingerprint kit just super simple we've learned that lesson of the high production to the low production and what resonates more with people and back in the day we didn't have the budgets all the time or potentially the skills like I think my I think I've got a creative mind but I don't think I can apply creatively myself I kind of need the photographers videographers and the team to do that for me so therefore started with very low level production and now we know and in my head I was like oh we need to get better production but actually that was what was resonating and now that's what you know meta will always tell people to push for so I think again that was a it was an accident that worked in our favor yeah and how did you work out in the early days the kits and all that around the logistics because for me looking at the you know from the outside looking into your business that seems like quite an intimidating thing people people are purchasing but the product's not produced yet you've got a seven-day turnaround Is that worldwide or is it just US and UK and Australia?

22:27It's worldwide to produce it in seven days, yeah. So that's impressive. So like that, for me thinking and looking in going, well, how the hell would you do this? Like talk us through that. Okay. I love that you say that the fingerprint kit is intimidating because I think it's more intimidating not to have it. So, for example, for me, I wanted to create something that not only made that experience of who they were capturing that fingerprint with really special. Yes. So therefore, I felt like the tangible product was required to have that experience. Yes. And then secondly, people question whether they can get a good print themselves.

23:09Yes. So therefore, wanted to give them the tools to do that. Because, for example, if I was to say, go and provide me your fingerprint, you might go to office work, get one of those super inky kits and not do very well with getting you or loved ones or potentially kids fingerprints. So therefore, that was that done. And yes, the unit economics of that is something to be considered, but I wouldn't change that, I don't think. um then in terms of the turnaround customer service and having that fast turnaround was just imperative from the get-go I knew that it had to be seven days and if anything our process is now so efficient I probably could make it less than that yeah um back in the day in the early days I literally had a list of paper being like hey well this order is outstanding this order is outstanding whereas now i built a platform a production platform which enables us to know wherever these kits are in the world and then when they're returned our production team it's like a conveyor belt basically so um yeah and that that's the things where problem solution my brain is a very problem solution brain and therefore i'm like okay well this isn't as efficient as it could be?

24:33How do we make it more efficient? And that's where we put, create dashboards to create these platforms, which then make all those operations like just run really smoothly. So for me, the seven days could actually be shorter. Yeah. And when did you first introduce them? And yeah, for me, I think it's genius and really clever because even just logistically shipping that kit, it doesn't really cost much, right? Well, no, it doesn't. But for example, if a CFO or a business consultant was to come into the business, they would be like, well, let's just remove that because you could easily save hundreds of thousands of dollars by not sending a kit and just get people to do it by themselves.

25:21But the good thing from a business perspective, which wasn't something that I really thought of in this way at the beginning it is really good from a cash flow perspective because we sell a product and the kit is then their responsibility to send back but they've already paid for it so that's been amazing to help kind of grow the business bring in you know more team members etc make the products better but yeah and then there's the email comms just to make sure that people this is another thing in our customer service so we've never outsourced customer service it's always been done in house people will know um our customer service teams and our production teams by their names and making sure that we're emailing them being like you know your kit's outstanding like send it back to us and at each stage of that production so um we've received your prints your prints are approved your prints all your prints are rejected your prints your items in production just making sure that people know exactly where they're at on that personalized journey has been really, really good.

26:25So talk to me about, I guess, growing this brand while being a young mum. One thing we talked about offline is you were looking for resources, how to manage this, and it's very hard to find. Yeah, it is. I think we, especially from the millennial side, is we're constantly, we were told when we were growing up, Like your worth is your job. You put so much into your work. And now we're in a phase of we're seeing so many amazing young 20-year-old female founders grow these huge, huge businesses. But then if and when they want to become mothers, there's like there's zero resources out there on how to manage having a very successful business and running a family.

27:23And I understand that it's few and far between of people that are in this situation. And each family and each situation is so different and nuanced. Therefore, it is quite hard to put information out there to say, this is how you do it. So for me, it is hard. I'm not going to lie. And I think it's important to have that honest conversation because I've had to make a lot of changes to maintain and be present as a mum of two kids under two, whilst also in this huge kind of scale. stage of the business. Those two things typically, like those two brains, I should say, for me, don't work very well together.

28:11So putting clear structures in place is what I've had to do. So for example, I really struggled when we lived in Sydney. I've recently moved to Perth to be closer to my husband's family, my family, to help look after the children. But when we were in Sydney I really struggled with that mum guilt of putting my first child in daycare for those four or five days whilst I went and worked on day and it's because when you're in control of your business you think you can control more than you probably can in terms of how much you can spend with your children and I very very important to me is living a life by design so that means that you there aren't any real constraints you design and and it's not I'm not talking about going and being on a yacht or anything like that or crazy you know money I'm simply talking about wanting to be with my children in the morning drop them off at school pick them up because the traditional working day is nine till five but you're meant to drop your kids off you know what I mean like before then and pick them up at like two o 'clock it just makes it makes no sense um so that's something that I'm just like navigating a lot and I think about it every day so practically what we've done is I have like my priorities are my family and date and anything outside of that basically outsource it so for me the like the cooking the cleaning anything house related is completely outsourced because why would i work the hours that i'm working and then go and do that that then takes me away from spending time with them i'm just not going to do it so that's the stage at the moment and i think we're constantly told okay you have to be maybe it's not constantly told but i have felt that pressure myself from society yeah or just you know to be the person who has their home shit together that person who can also just cook a meal you know for the whole family like really really quickly clean up run the business look after the kids get all the kids clothes like it's just it there's so many layers to it and I've just decided to just rid anything that doesn't fall into those two main priorities for me so being really intentional and not feeling guilty about outsourcing a lot of stuff because for me I still want those things you can have it all you just can't do it all and there are other people that can help you do it all to have it all if that makes sense and you don't have to be that person who takes on all that pressure even though I do feel it sometimes don't get me wrong to to work to work on that so now I wanted to make sure that my firstborn was able to be with myself and her family you know like her grandma and her granddad for example and not be in a daycare for five days a week and again I understand that I'm in a privileged position to be able to do that but equally I have changed and moved my life to the other side of the world and therefore sacrifice things that potentially I might want to be able to do that so now we've just built a daycare or like a little setup at home and she's there with me and we all have fun and I'm kind of in the office I'm trying to build this life which makes sense for me and there aren't enough systems in place or companies.

31:45There's actually a really great one. I can't, I think it's called Bubba Desk, where mums are able to work and then have their kids looked after, like just, you know, outside by carers and things versus just a traditional daycare setting. There's all these things. And as you can see, like we're talking, this is a business podcast, but there are so many non-business related things that I need to optimize and change in order to run my business and those things just aren't really talked about. What are some other things that people aren't talking about? For me that's probably the biggest one and I probably need to be and want to be more vocal about how to support mums and support female founders who want to become mums on how they can run it all together.

32:37A couple of things that I did with my first child, which actually now doesn't make sense with Matilda, but the first child was I left Dej before I had her. I wanted the business to run without me so that the girls and the team could see, you know, their safety net had been removed, basically. So that was another one that was given to me. That was really good advice, actually, randomly from the lady who I bought my wedding dress from. It wasn't even like a business person at all. And that was really good advice. So it just made sure that, yeah, the team were able to run the business really, really well without me.

33:19And actually that year that I didn't step foot back in physically into the studio was our best year. Wow. Yeah. There you go. Then I should say the downside was then last year because your efforts from the previous year or like the previous six months, for example, always come into fruition later on. So that was where last year I probably found was a little bit harder. Yeah. So I want to ask you a question. You might not have the answer to it, but I want to just kind of delve a little bit deeper onto something that you said around kind of the lifestyle by design piece. So I can really resonate with exactly what you're saying.

34:02So I've worked out all my chores at home across me and my fiance, and I've outsourced them all, putting out the bins, washing the clothes. The only thing, and this might sound privileged or whatnot, but I've worked out from a time perspective, it costs me$800 a month to do that. And it's the best, right? All my meals, outsourced, everything, everything. That's not including meals, but just like all the day-to-day of my place and upkeep and keeping the place clean, all that good stuff. But that's all well and good for us because we have successful businesses. But for a female founder or any founder that is kind of in the thick of it, trying to build their business, maybe working on it on the side, doesn't have that kind of cash flow, what advice would you give to founders in those situations?

34:54And how did you do it? Because you weren't always in that position. However, you weren't a mum yet. I don't know whether it's, for example, in that you don't have kids, do you? No, not yet. Not yet. I don't know whether that question is only applicable to, you know, a mum with kids, for example. It's just a business question. So for me, the answer is the engraving fairy. I outsourced that because I couldn't get it done. You always have to think. You just can't take everything on yourself. So it can be in a business situation. It can be in a personal situation. You just have to understand your value of what it might be.

35:42So, for example, for a business owner, I don't want to be in the weeds because it reduces my time to look at everything from a bird's eye perspective. And six months ahead, I always operate my head side six months ahead. Then from a mum point of view, my priority is spending more time with my children. Therefore, I'm investing in things that would take, if I did them, would take away from that. So it's just prioritizing business or personal. And I do believe you have cash flow for it because you will generate more money by not doing those things yourself. You have to learn to do them. Don't get me wrong.