691: Anastasia's $850K Brand Collapsed To $42K A Month - Then She Tripled It Herself

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1:06Welcome to Little Empires, brought to you by the team at Founder. At Founder, our mission is to support the next generation of e-com founders. So while you may know us for interviewing some of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, this series is a little different. Little Empires shines a spotlight on the builders inside our own founder community, the entrepreneurs who are in the trenches, taking action, learning, and building their businesses in real time. These aren't overnight success stories. These are real journeys, real lessons, and real founders creating their own little empires one step at a time.

1:39This podcast is proudly produced by the founder team to give our students a platform to share their experiences, wins, challenges, and honest realities of building a business from the ground up. Now, let's dive into today's episode. Anastasia, welcome to the show. Super excited to have you with us. For context for everyone, Anastasia is part of our new membership called Founder Operators, and it's really a place where we help DTC founders scale. So you have to be doing at least closer to half a million dollars a year at minimum in revenue and we have members that are all the way up to five ten fifteen there's something doing 20 million a year in d2c and we really help you grow and scale through facebook ads we started email marketing soon conversion rate optimization doing the full funnel it's an amazing community and anastasia uh we we started this community in in march and i'm distinctly remember this call with anastasia because i do all the enrollments uh we're taking it really serious how we grow this community.

2:42We're very thoughtful and intentional of who we let in. And I remember Anastasia, we had to do a couple of calls to really think about it. It was like, oh, I don't know about this. And you've been able to go on a really good run since March. I have. Yes. I've been able to turn things around, which I'll tell you all about. So happy beer. Can we get like a one liner? Like where'd you go from where you started with us to where you are now? Yes. I feel like Some context isn't involved. But last year, we really started scaling through meta ads. I'm a solo founder. It's just me. And we went through a pretty brutal trademark infringement last year.

3:22So I had basically built this meta machine, had an amazing Black Friday. And then because of this trademark infringement, I had to legally change my name. We used to be called Lou Drops or Lou, change it to Louie. and overnight turn our ads off and turn them back on with like a new logo, new brand essentially. And it rocked my business. So January was kind of okay and February and March were brutal. So I think when I joined in March, we'd had our lowest revenue month in over a year. So I had to take back control of the person that was helping me run my ads and start running them myself, which I had never really done.

4:03And now we're doing at about like 120 a month. And I'm trying to get to like $300 ,000 months by December. So we're finally, you know, the first couple of months of joining was really trying to understand my meta account and how the structure of it and what I was doing and then start building it up. Yeah, that's amazing. And so you, when you come to us and when you start in March, you were doing like, I think it's like 50 grand a month? You're lower. I think we got as low as like 42. two. Yeah. Wow. Okay. So we're on a triple, triple, triple run rate in what? Five months. Yeah. So April was, you know, me getting the reins, letting go of someone, restructuring things a bunch of times, but having a lot of help with the coaches and finally finding momentum again, which has been like amazing.

4:49Yeah. Wow. Okay. That's awesome. All right. Better than I thought. That's awesome. Let's get these$300 ,000 a month going. So yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. So tell me about Louis. Like, how'd you start it? Like, so, and just for context, everyone's listening. These are drops and it's really for women, right? These are drops for women. Yeah. Men buy them, but not really. Like 95 % of our customer base is women. Yeah, we are a modern bathroom brand. I like to say, like we help people move through their most awkward moments. And part of that is going number two. So these are pre-poop drops that you put into the toilet.

5:25and then they're formulated to trap the odors and just leave amazing scents behind. So they're odor eliminating bathroom drops and that's what I'm selling. I kind of only have one hero product right now that I've been able to scale with. But yeah, we're in the personal care and the bathroom space. Yeah. And how did you start and when did you start? Like, how did you find the inspiration for this brand? Is this your first e-com brand? Yeah, great question. This is my first brand. Yeah, I've always worked in startups. Like I mentioned earlier, I've worked in tech, in the tech world for a number of years.

5:54I've worked remotely for 10 years. So I've worked in the startup world for a long time, which to anyone listening just means like wearing a lot of hats and being able to pivot and being resourceful and like flying by the seat of your pants. So I've had that experience, but not in the CPG or D2C type of world. And I came with the idea on like any good ideas on the toilet, sitting on the toilet. Actually, I was very lucky because I had these jobs and worked remotely. I was actually able to travel the world like pre-COVID and post-COVID. So I worked for companies that, you know, allowed me to be a digital nomad, if you will.

6:29And I really took advantage of that and was able to travel the whole world. And I shared a lot of bathrooms with my boyfriend at the time, who's still my boyfriend, and my friends. And I came up with the idea because I actually had the competitor, Poo-Pourri. So I was traveling around with it because I was sharing, you know, at the time, I think I was in Mexico. I had four female roommates and my boyfriend. We're all sharing an apartment with a couple of bathrooms. I had poopery. I'm using this product. I'm embarrassed by this product. I'm hiding it. Any chance I can get like out of the way so he couldn't see it.

7:00And I just remember having this like, I don't know if it's not really even epiphany, but I was sitting on the toilet thinking like this product sucks. Like it doesn't spray. You have to put your whole hand in the toilet bowl to spray it before. It smells artificial. It says like trap your crap on it. Nothing about it I loved except for the fact of like what it did. by eliminating odors. And I remember talking, coming out of the bathroom and sitting with my girlfriends and we were joking around and we really started talking about like, what would this business look like? And it was all kind of a joke.

7:27And then this idea just like wormholed in my brain for like six months. And then I decided to, I was like, why doesn't this exist? Like something that is sleeker and more chic and smells better and isn't toxic or artificial and is easier, has an easier application. Because really there's one product on the market and it hasn't been innovated on in like 15 or 20 years so when I started it was really just for me and my friends like um I never really thought it would be a business I didn't think I'd be building a poop empire but but here we are so you're also based in South Africa but then moved between South Africa and is it in Canada Ottawa no Vancouver Canada so I'm still I'm not a nomad anymore like that life got tiring I'm too old for it but I do still split my time between South Africa and Canada when I started developing the product like I actually developed it out of an Airbnb in Cape Town I like ordered all these essential oils and chemicals and all this weird stuff to my Airbnb and I just started mixing batch after batch after batch after batch and what I would do is like hold it up to like a wine glass with water in it and then drop it in and then see if it actually created a barrier or not so once I kind of figured out how to create a formula that actually trapped the odors then I started giving it to friends and um I made them fill out a poop score score card so I'd give them like here's five samples one to five and then they'd get their little card and then say you know text me after make notes on the card it like lived in our bathroom for a couple months until I found something that I thought worked yeah wow there you go and then when did you launch I didn't launch for like a year and a half after that because I was still had a job that I liked in moving around.

9:04So I think that was in, I developed it in 2022 and I launched it in 2023. And even 2023, it's kind of a write-off. I moved around, I wasn't really home. I think I sold, I don't know, like a few thousand dollars worth. Like 2024 was really my first actual year in business. And even then I was working full-time, but that's when I started to take it more seriously and saw like, okay, there seems to be some traction here. People are buying it. I was starting to get unhappy at my other job and thought, you know, maybe I should give this a go. Yep. Got you. And you said, uh, so 2025, so we're recording this of, you know, July, 2026.

9:42So 2025 was probably the breakout, uh, breakout year. You had a trademark issue. And I, I resonate with that because founder wasn't called founder was actually called key to success. Yeah. It was called key to success. And I was, I was sued by success magazine in the first four months of starting founder. So I just got an interview with Richard Branson in the first four months of starting. And then, um, this is kind of like one of my arc stories. Yeah. But a lot of people don't know because I've been in the game for so long. Yeah. That's what I think. You're an Ethan from founder. Yeah. So first four months, started founder, then got sued by a success magazine.

10:26And the magazine was called and the brand was called Key to Success. And then, yeah, I had to change the name. Luckily, it was in the first four months. There was not that much to change, didn't have that much real estate. What happened with you? Yeah, it was pretty like brutal. You know, it's interesting, actually, it ended up being an amazing thing for my brand. But at the time, it didn't feel like that like hindsight is 2020 because I called the brand Lou I didn't know anything about business I was just like oh my god Lou is such a cute name it's like the English bathroom word and then I was like well it's drop so then people started calling it Lou Drop so it was kind of always confusing because it was called Lou and Lou Drops and I hated Lou Drops so whatever I had filed a trademark for Lou it was kind of unlikely it would ever get approved because you can't trademark um the common words like you can't trademark bathroom so Lou probably wouldn't have got approved but what it did is it flagged it to a company another company has a very similar name and even though they have a different product they're in the same category so they sent me a cease and desist I was like oh shit I had to drop my trademark and then was in the middle of figuring out my new name a couple months go by I had a lawyer at this time but like we didn't really respond they sent me another cease and desist we started negotiating with them they're a really small brand but they were pretty brutal about it so we had to I had to figure out a rebrand pretty quickly the shit part is I had just ordered like 30 ,000 units of packaging with my my like I just paid the bill it was like getting it was already in production and we had to negotiate a timeline to like let me continue to sell that product like after the fact of changing so now I have a Louis I was able to register it we are officially like registered and we're all good in our class but But yeah, it was like it wasn't even like much of a financial burden.

12:13It was like the stress of not knowing how to handle it. And then the biggest, you know, the biggest thing we had to overcome was the meta ads. Like, I think I really underestimated what it would be like to restart. Because when you look at our old brand, it looks so similar. The logo looks very similar. We opened up the extra U or the O. We made it a U. We added an I. It looks very similar. So I was able to like use a lot of my old photos and kind of Photoshop them and stuff and update them. But yeah, 2025 was our biggest year. We did like$850 ,000, which the year before we did$120 ,000. So it felt like a really big year for us.

12:50I say us, it's just me. A big year for me. And then when I turned it off and turned on Louis, it kind of all crashed within two months. I just couldn't figure it out. And you found us somehow. And then I found you guys. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, it's a lesson to like it helped me figure out where things were broken. Like I was so reliant on Meta and I saw what happens when that can kind of crash. Like, you know, how founders talk about getting locked out of their accounts or things happening. Like I felt like I experienced that in a different way. So kind of showed that that gap in my business. But yeah, then I found you guys.

13:29I fired the guy that was running my ads because he was just spending so much money. and you know the other lesson is like last year I found a couple winning ads like pre-Andromeda and those ads just carried me so I was like wow you just need like three winning ads and like you got a million dollar business and then when those ads turned off I could like never find a winning ad again so I think my perception of ads themselves like the actual creative has like really changed um with the help of like joining the group too and just like learning from everybody Yeah. Yeah. So it's been awesome to see and watch your growth from afar.

14:01As I was sharing offline, we did a study of like our founding cohort. So we took on about 30 members and on average, we couldn't take on any more because Nick couldn't take on any more. Yeah. And it was originally - At right capacity. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, and now we're scaling out the group. It's not reliant on Nick and all that good stuff. But on average, a member increased their revenue by 23 % from the month of March, April, May, June, right? So amazing growth. And, you know, you're one of the outliers. That's why we're here, right? Like you're one of our great case studies. You've doubled, if not close, tripled your business from, you know, four or five months, which is amazing.

14:45and I remember our distinct conversation because I'm doing every enrollment and I remember our distinct conversation we did a call you know like oh I'm not sure Nathan need to think about it like it sounds great and we did another call and there's a lot of hesitation there like I was like but I knew I could see that like you're an absolute jet like you I needed you are on it it. But where I'm curious, I just love to unpack that hesitation because sometimes founders like, you know, it's, it's, it's a scary thing to join like a, you know, like what are we like a coaching program, mastermind community group?

15:23Yeah. So I'd love to hear. And then, yeah, what were the hesitations? There's a few things. So the first one I think is a business owner, like when it feels like people want to take advantage of you, like there's so many agencies and people that want to talk to you all the time and just like at the end of the day you think they want to help your business but like they don't and I had and that's not you guys obviously that's why I'm still here and will be a member for a very long time but I had experienced that with social media agencies with an email with the guy that ran my ads and I think at the time of March like I mean I said nothing was off the table today and like there was a point where I really thought I might have to shut down my business like when I was looking at the unit economics of it I'm just like I sell poop drops.

16:03I sell a$17 product. If people buy one, it's expensive to ship. It's expensive to run ads. It's all very expensive. Like, is this the business that is really going to take me where I want to go? And our ad account, like I was having such a hard time that I had convinced myself, like, no one wants this product. Even though we already had like tens of thousands of customers, I was like, I think this is kind of the end. So that was where mentally I was in March, Like probably like the worst I mentally had been within my business to date. So I think when I was hesitant to join, it can feel so tempting to like find the white night and be like, someone saved my business.

16:39Like I remember having calls with people to even do my ads. I'm like, do I just fire the guy that's running my ads now and hire someone new? And like, maybe they'll save my business. But like, at the end of the day, only you can save your business. Like only you are going to love your business and run it and be able to save it. So my hesitation was spending the money because we were so cash broke. And in March, it was, is this really going to help? And then I think what got me over it, like got me to the finish line is one, I've been watching your podcast for a long time. Like, I think you're amazing.

17:07You have amazing founders on. So like that was, you know, you have the credibility, but really it was being making the decision of like, I'm going to do this myself. Like, I'm going to make the conscious decision. I'm not going to hire someone. I'm gonna it's scary and now it's not I love running my ads I love making ads I love running my I made my own website I still like do everything on my own website I've never had a developer but I think I had to make that decision like okay like I'm gonna go all in and I'm gonna try this I'm gonna try to bring some experts in because I don't have anyone else on my team and see if it helps and if it doesn't I'm already in a bad headspace anyway so what's the worst you know Well, look, it's, it's been amazing to watch you grow and, and, you know, there's no, uh, no mistake.

17:49Like you really like you're, you're at a lot of the sessions. Like I got, um, my AI to do a session. He's like 22 years old. He's an absolute freak at this stuff. I think he went a little bit over people's heads. I don't know. He did. I thought, I, I thought he's great. Like I was like, Oh, I want to get on a one-on-one with this guy. Yeah. So, so I joined that session, but, um, and it was, it was incredible. like but we got to do more to just really help him because he's on a whole other level like he built a whole operating system for you guys like um which is crazy and we went through landers and creative on how to scale it with ai but i was on that session i saw you there and i and i see the rsvps and i see who goes to the sessions like we're behind the scenes like myself maggie the team because we're building out this community you are a super engaged member like you are absolutely milking the sessions and you're like, I'm trying it up and like, and you're taking action.

18:45So like all the credit goes to you. We're just playing a very small part in your journey. Like you've got a great product, great brand, super smart. Like, but I think, I think the, the, the key thing that I want to kind of pull out there that you described is like, I truly hand on heart believe if you are a solo founder and this comes from doing so many successful founders in the DTC space, especially if you are a solo founder marketing you need to bring internally you have to build that capability i agree either you or it's your co-founder otherwise you will not win if you're a solo you cannot win like like i it's not you can't but it's just the times have changed it is so aggressive right now like some of the stuff that we're teaching you around direct response and landing pages and offers, right?

19:37Like you can't just create a great product and just run ads to it. Like it's, the times have changed. I actually think that, one, thank you for that. The compliments, that was really nice. Like I'm driven, like I feel like it's a matter of time. Like I always say, I'm like, this will work. If it's not this, it will be something else. Like I'm never going back to working for anyone again. Like it is a matter of time of like, it's like a hit ratio, right? Like I'm just gonna keep showing up because every single call, like I shared earlier, is like, I'm always picking up something. Like today I joined Ben's.

20:09I asked him, I had a couple of questions, but even that he was sharing about this like app called Tribe, which I've tried before and didn't have success. And he's like, oh, I would actually try it this way, try this. And it's like, oh, like every single call, there is value, right? So, and then the second point is, I think I'm a founder because I didn't plan to start a business. I started everything very bootstrapped. Like I don't come from this world. So like I made my own formula. I ordered my bottles off Alibaba. Like I poured hand poured my first 50 ,000 units in my mom's garage with my mom and my cousins and like anyone who'd fucking help me.

20:41But shipped out every order from the garage. So I built my own website. And this isn't like a me, me, me, but I think doing it all yourself, you'll be able to then know what you're hiring for or like what you need help. Like you'll know your strengths and your weaknesses. And like I've learned, like I really do love ads. Like I'm like, I should have been doing this a year. Like it's so fun. I love the creative. I like Phoenix's sessions are my favorite. I just love the creative part. And when it comes to organic posting, horrible at it, hate it, hate social media. When it comes to making ads or like video editing, like my partner is like a professional.

21:14He's a creative director at a company and he's like an actual video editor. And I'm like, wow, look at me. I'm like taking your job. Like I'm a video editor now. So like I'm really loving it. And I would just encourage like every founder, like it's not that scary. And just like you should be doing kind of all of it yourself unless you're experienced or you have capital to deploy, which I don't. And even then, like if you have capital to deploy, it's far better to get an, to hold somebody accountable to know how it should work because so many people are going to tell you one thing and it's hard to hold them to account if you don't truly know it yourself.

21:49And I think founders that are, you know, anywhere between, you know, let's just say $10 ,000,$5 ,000, all the way from starting, you've got, and you've got product market fit all the way up to even half a million dollars, even a million dollars a month. You should be running your ads yourself and understanding it. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's interesting. I would, I would agree with that. There's also like, if you're reliant on ads for a big portion of your revenue and acquisition, you should be in control of that. And I think that's what I saw last year like wow the guy I had I actually really liked him as a person and he was able to scale me like it just felt like wow to the moon and it's almost like when things got bad at the beginning of this year I realized like actually he's really distracted I'm on now I know what to look for in my ad account whereas before I was kind of blind to it I was like sales are great and I'm like wait why is he spending money on something that has like a 0.5 ROAS and spending thousands of dollars like I could see all of it and understand it and eventually was like I just need to I need to take this in house I had no control like I felt on Black Friday I couldn't get a hold of him during Black Friday three days the biggest weekend of the year so shit like that where I was like in the account but I was like scared to make any changes because I wasn't managing my own account which is crazy um where now it's like that would just like never fly that you know and it would never happen and in fact I just if anything now I have someone who helps me with the creative strategy I think I I get kind of stuck on like the creative ideas in between Phoenix and the girl that I that I have part time.

23:20Like I feel like the ideas are kind of endless. And and that was my biggest roadblock, not actually running the ads, which I thought was my biggest roadblock. It's really not. Yeah, I think you really nailed it. Like when you're at the like the scaling stages of your business, outsourcing that part of your growth is is somewhat risky. And yeah, allowing someone to control. and they're spending a lot of money, like a large part of your P &L expense. Yes. Like, you know, 20, 30 % of your revenue is probably going to be ads. And, you know, this person, usually if it's an agency or a freelance or whatever, that you are one of five, one of 10, one of 15.

23:59Yeah. And they're just not going to care as much as you do. They're just not going to know your brand. They're not going to know your customer. They're not going to know what moves the needle. Like they're not going to know your customer's objections as well as you do. No. All these different things, right? And then they're not going full funnel, which is what we do. Yes. We are very, very big in operators, founder operators around going full funnel. We look at your Lando. We look at your Opera. We look at your CR, your conversion rate. We look at your margins, your economics, right, to make sure that we can scale this thing.

24:32Yes. And that's been so helpful. Like there was a time where like the ads was my biggest difficulty when I first came in. and once that got fixed then it's like okay ads are fixed stop spending time on ads now it's like it's offer it's website you got a shit pdp let's fix that and you know you have owen who he like is a cro and he did a full audit of my um website and then came back and i had all these changes and like now i look at my website even last week i've made some more changes and i was like wow it looks amazing compared to where it was and even now i know in six months i'm like that was such a shit website but um that really came from your team like nick kind of challenging me on like testing different offers and moving things around and having someone tell me like your site kind of sucks it converted well but it didn't look great and um yeah being able to make the changes so yeah it is full it's been full funnel it's been really helpful something that i found really interesting so nick and i have been wanting to build founder operators for a while we've been doing something together for a couple years he taught so we have the founder plus platform which is like a course learning platform programs and he was our facebook ads instructor you know quote-unquote instructor and we've been talking about doing something for a while and um it was taking too long i think i told you it's just taking too long so i flew him to australia at the start of this yeah you told me that he's like lived with you for like a month yeah like a month it's crazy and uh it was so much fun like that like we knew each other we're buddies but like we really know each other yeah now you're in it.

26:06You know each other's morning routines. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's a very clean man. Yeah. I could see that. Loves his flowers. But, um, anyway, long story short, I took him to go see koalas and he was like, oh, um, I got to duck out for a little bit. So I went to the zoo and, um, he's like, I've got this, you know, one-on-one offshoot client that he's working with that would pay like probably, I assume, I don't even know that like tens of thousands of a month for Nick to, to, to help. And Nick was like, man, I'm a little bit stressed for my client because, um, he's just cracked an offer and he's going to scale to 300 ,000 US dollars a day.

26:50And I'm worried he's going to run out of stock. And he's like, I've been there. I've been there and I don't want him to fuck up like I have. And I, and I, and I was like, I, and then like he went and did the call, he come back and I was like, dude, like, how can you build a brand? Like, how is that even possible? Like, what does it take to do that? And he said to me, he said, man, once you crack an offer, it's like, it's crazy what is possible. And like, I don't know about you, but I've never met anyone that spent 300 ,000 US dollars a day on ad. No, that's, that's insane. That's like my dream month of making a revenue, not even spending.

27:30Yeah. So founder, the most that we've peaked at is about 40 ,000 a day, Australian. Wow. That's great still. That's great. Yeah. Um, but still like 300 ,000 US dollars. Yeah. That's nuts. Yeah. I'm catching up with dinner with some guys, they're young kids, they're 23, we're doing dinner and they run a big brand. Um, they're doing a few million a month and they're, and they're spending about the same as same, they're 40 ,000 Australian. And these guys are really strong, but like, I've never met anyone that spent 300 ,000 US. And he says it so casually. So like he is truly one of the best I've ever met.

28:06Like I've met a lot of people. Like knows his stuff. You know what though, which I appreciate too. There's no ego with anyone in the group or any of the coaches. Like if someone is spending that kind of money and making that money, he doesn't, he still treats our business like, I don't know, he still respects our business. Even though like I'm like, wow, I had our biggest, like our biggest day has been like 11 grand. And that was during Black Friday. I was like, I can't believe stuff. Like we made that much revenue, you know? And I think he's been really great at like putting, he doesn't make us feel small, I guess is what I'm getting at.

28:38Like ever, you know, if anything, sometimes he's like, you can spend a little bit more, you can bump this up here. Like, and I think he's been, yeah, just really good at working with us like individually and still making it feel like my business isn't small and it can actually be one of those businesses that does really well. If I crack the offer, have a better PDP, it's all like steps to get there. Right? Yeah. So let's talk about some of these steps. So you came in, you're at some of your lowest months. What was the first thing we, obviously you took back control. What were some of the things that we did with you and you learned from a step change growth perspective that others listening to this right now could learn?