How Natalie Barbu Went from Zero to $2M ARR After Nearly Shutting Down Rella

23:26Like how would that work? I think that a lot of investors appreciated when I said like, yes, I will still be doing content, but my time is devoted to Rella. I spend even today 95 % of my time on Rella, but my social media is also a good top of funnel strategy for the companies. Of course, I'm going to still do social media, but in terms of how much time I'm spending on being an influencer versus being a founder, I view them as slightly overlapping, but most of my time is spent on Rella, building that business. Those are some questions I got, but overall, I think, especially with the investors we have on our cap table, they really appreciated the value that I brought with being a creator.

24:05Yeah, and I love that. And I think what's very interesting is what you mentioned. If you're a content creator, that gives you a unique ability to launch a company because it means that you're able to bring top of funnel, so you're able to put free eyeballs on your companies. And that is something that traditional brands have to pay millions of dollars for. The interesting process is that if you then start to launch your own company and you have to dedicate 95 % towards that career and become a part-time content creator again, that means you have to take a step back. So what was that like for you, having to take a step back from content creation and also for your audience?

24:38It's definitely took a hit. My views, my engagement, my content has not been, is definitely on the decline, I would say, because I can't put that much time into it. I've actually recently, though, started putting a bit more time into it, but it's entirely focused on, you know, business and entrepreneurship content, which I also think will then help Rella as well because I'm it's driving people in versus just like a generic lifestyle creator that like a week in my life in Miami like okay who cares it's more like now like business related content so I kind of am restarting my and taking a pivot with my content as well which I'm not unfamiliar with in terms of content but I'm starting to focus more on just business content because it's definitely taken a hit and I feel like it's taken a hit because I've been all over the place with I'm like I don't know what to post let me just post random content because I don't have time to think.

25:27And now I've started to dedicate a little bit more time to it, but also because I know it's going to help Rella as well. So I view it as an extension of like founder led company, being a founder led company versus having the two lives be very separate. But yeah, it will take a hit. Like if you're really focused on your business, it's going to be hard to maintain being like an influencer and having, you know, a successful business. But now that I'm intertwining the two a little bit more than I was in the past and I'm focusing pretty much exclusively on like entrepreneurship and business content, I think it's actually going to help Rella grow in the end.

26:01Yeah. So let's talk about that for a second, because I went online and I went on Reddit to look a little bit of like did a little bit of research on you. And I found the following quote, I used to like our New York content, but now she's so boring and pivoted into the shallow tech startup founder content. And as you mentioned, like by focusing full time on your startup, you had to say no to like creating content full time, also guaranteed income through brand deals to adsense living a good life where you can travel with all the flexibility in the world to now pursue an idea that initially didn't really work out the sleepless night the stress the founder salary having to invest your own capital and then also like the the output right like followers and views it works as dopamine so if you then put out another video and you see that it's like a 10 out of 10 you're not very happy so like can you tell me more about also the personal thought that I took on you and the doubts that you potentially had in the company working towards potential bankruptcy.

26:59And you were like, oh man, maybe I should have actually stayed a full-time content creator potentially. Now in hindsight, obviously it's very easy and I'm glad you didn't do it. But I assume that was definitely a thought. Yeah. I mean, I do not go on Reddit, like that corner of the internet. I'm like, stay away from. So I don't know what they're saying about me on there. When it comes to, I've gotten that feedback before. I'm like, oh, I used to like your old content more and the thing is that I mean my life has changed so like my content's not going to be the same um and I actually want to provide more value like and this is not saying anything bad about any influencers because I post a lot of lifestyle content myself but it got to a point where I was like what value am I providing I'm just like showing my life like that's cool that people care um and I like to watch creators that you know it's just kind of like they're morning routines and everything like that and I appreciate it but I was like I want to the content I'm looking for is content that is going to, you know, help my career, my business.

27:53And I know that there are other people, especially women that want that content as well. And it's not there. Because if you're looking up day in the life of a tech startup founder, 90 % of them are going to be men. And, you know, it's just you want to find someone that you can like relate to and also learn from. So I wanted to do that. Like I was like my my life also, I mean, not to make my business my whole identity, but like your life kind of starts revolving around it when you are a founder. And And so I want to post content about that and I want to provide value to people and I want to inspire people to start businesses because I think that it's one of those things that if it doesn't get talked about, people just think it's like the scary thing that like is so impossible to do.

28:30And unless you come from money, unless you come from having a ton of connections, you know, you're working in that industry, then you can't do it. And that's just not true. I do think that, you know, if you have a desire to become an entrepreneur, you can be. And it's actually more attainable than maybe it's set out to look like. Yeah, I want to I want to provide more value. Truly. Like I don't want my life to be the whole purpose of it. And like, also, I don't want to share every aspect of my life anymore. Yeah, I want to focus more on, you know, providing value to people and content that I'm searching for and that I'm watching.

29:02I'm watching more entrepreneurial content. So that's why it makes sense that my content is geared that way. Yeah, and I applaud you for that because like I have a lot of content creator friends who have been doing this as well for 15 years. And they originally came out with a format that is very successful. but let's take a gaming content creator or whatsoever someone that plays minecraft but now they're 15 years old older and they don't want to play the same game anymore however that is giving them like all their income all their revenue stream the whole business and if they stop they kind of have to reinvent themselves i think what's really excited about you is that you have been able to reinvent yourself also as a content creator because the problem is if you're just going to push out content that you're not enjoying making it's going to burn you out in the long term and you're kind of reinventing yourself to find out what is the type of content style that I like to push out.

29:49And also just looking at content creators in general, like I think being an entrepreneur is made like very glamorous, but oftentimes it's not. Like I always referred to Jessica Alba when she co-founded The Honest Company. She was like in supply chain meetings and product development meetings and she wasn't acting for like a couple of years. So she had to become boring and obviously it paid off because she made an IPO, but it's definitely something that you have to go through. So can you tell more about having to reinvent yourself as a content creator? Yeah, I think right now, honestly, is the time when I'm reinventing myself the most because I am making a conscious effort to post pretty much exclusively like business and entrepreneurship content and content that provides value, especially on YouTube.

30:28And like it sucks because like I have a video, you know, that's going out and it has like less than a thousand views right now, which is like not good. But I know that I always remind myself that like any pivot, it's going to have a slow start, like not a pivot that you do for the most part is going to be embraced by the masses because I'm also trying to attract a new audience. Like my existing audience for the past 15 years, most of them don't care about business content. They don't, you know, even like that comment said, like I used to like her New York content, whatever. So it's like, unfortunately, I have to make the decision to say no to like the content that those people want to see and focus on creating content that I enjoy, that I enjoy watching, that I want to kind of like move in this new direction.

31:08Hopefully you can stick along with me if you care. But if not, then, you know, I'll find a new audience as well. And so it but it is hard, like looking at the numbers. It's like, oh, my God, that's so embarrassing. I have this many subscribers and like I'm literally getting like no views. But I know that the content I'm creating will find its audience one day. And also the content I'm creating now is evergreen content where like in two years or a year from now, if you're searching, how do I find customers? I hope my video shows up so it's still relevant versus a vlog. If I posted a week in my life of, you know, just living in Miami, that video only has a lifespan of like a month before no one's going to watch a vlog from a year ago.

31:45So at least I'm focusing on more like evergreen content. And so I think it'll pay off. And I'm experimenting. Like, of course, I'm like trying to experiment with more short form video content. And it's kind of like starting a new company. Like it's hard because I'm really going through like a big pivot with my content creation. But I think it's going to be beneficial down the line. Yeah. I think whenever creators launch a new company, like as investors, like we are always looking for does that creator talk to their specific target audience? So let's say you are a content creator that creates content about hair loss.

32:17Like for the last two years, you have been going through a hair loss journey. You experiment and you document that whole process. Then other people are going to tune in that experiment that same problem. Now, if you then launch a hair loss product, that is actually going to do well. For you as Natalie Barbu, like your original audience is probably not the audience of Rella. And this is what I think is super interesting what you have done with the Rella social accounts. So for the people that don't know, you've started to create these comical skits where you talk about the tension between social media clients and social media managers and kind of position Rella as the solution to those frustrations.

32:55And I was checking and that's been performing really well. You already mentioned one of these videos went really viral and kind of saved the trajectory of your company. And it now has like tens of thousands of followers and millions of views. And those are exactly the type of target audience that fits with Rella because they resonate with the content. So while you're gay followers across all your platform as Natalie, only like 3 % of that fits the target audience of Rella. For your social accounts on Rella itself, probably it's the other way around. So it's like 97 % is the exactly target demographics of Rella.

33:30So could you tell me more about that strategy and what inspired it? Yeah, so with Rella, we always wanted content to feel not as salesy as maybe some other tools that are out there. And we love when we get a comment because now we do paid ads on social media as well with our organic content. So we don't create separate content for paid ads versus organic. Our organic content is funneled to paid ads because we find that content that is made for paid ads, it's like, try a free trial today and sign up to whatever. It's like, okay, skip, that's just an ad. but we've gotten so many comments that's like oh my god I didn't even know this was an ad like you guys got me whatever but we love that because we want the content we want you to stop in your tracks to be like wait I resonate with that I resonate with that character I resonate with that problem I need to keep listening because I want to hear the solution for this and so that is what how we try to create content for Rella versus just being like here's Rella this is what it does all of our videos are pretty product focused like so it's not like we're creating content that has nothing to do with the product but we want to approach it in a way that's like do you have this problem keep watching if you do and then like here's the solution at the end so it hooks people in with the problem versus with just the product up front which i think a lot of companies still have the mindset of like well we have to show the product or else you know no one's gonna know who we are and it's like it's so not true like people will know who you are there are some skits that sometimes i'll like forget to say the name rella i just kind of like start showing the product and i'm like oh my gosh i didn't say rella i'm like actually that's fine because it's in our username we want to know they'll ask it's in the caption you know so it actually it's worked for us to try to come at it with from a more like influencer-y approach I guess than than coming at it from a just like product perspective yeah and like the best marketing never feels like marketing so I think you guys are spot on with that and do you also have like any data around like what is the percentage of customers today that actually signs up through the organic content or paid content in general to Rella.

35:26Yeah, I can't tell you off the top of my head, but it's around like 70 ish percent that come from social media. So it's most of our content is social media and the rest is like referrals. Crazy. Okay, interesting. So let's talk about the ecosystem of creators and celebrities launching companies in general. So as I mentioned, a lot of them are focused on CPG companies. So another liquor brand, personal care company, apparel company, beverage company, you name it. Why do you think that's the case and why do you think you are one of the only creators that has like launched a tech company? I think because starting a tech company, if you're not technical, is really hard to conceptualize and to get it off the ground.

36:05So I'm not saying that having a liquor company or anything else is like easy. I know everything comes with its own challenges, but I think just not being able to physically control it, like I'm not hands to keyboard, writing lines of code, bringing the product to life is a lot harder to like go from zero to one than starting a physical brand in my opinion. So for me, I had to go out and find co-founders to help me build this. They had to believe in the mission. They had to believe in the what I was building. They also I had to like them just as people, you know, if I'm like going to bring them into my company, I had to trust them.

36:38Like it's really hard to find good co-founders if you're not technical. And I knew I didn't want to outsource it. So once I was like, OK, I'm actually going to build this as a company, like once because in the beginning that I thought this could be like passive income and like a project for me I had no idea what it what it would intend but once I realized like oh no this is going to be a company I knew I wanted them in-house like I didn't want to just find like a development agency and like outsource it and so I think that's just really hard like I do think it's easier to find manufacturers and things like that than it is to find really good co-founders and to bring it to life I could be totally wrong I've never had to deal with anything physical so maybe I'm totally wrong but like in my I think that that's the the main reason because even and even if that's not the case at least that's the idea that some people have is that it's it's harder to find people to build something than it is to bring a product to life so yeah i think tech and tech is not glamorous like it's so much cooler to be like oh look at my drink this cute drink and the cute branding and like a lot of creators love branding and the way something's going to look it's hard to have good branding with a tech company because like there's nothing physical to show and i'll get i'll even see like a lot of my friends that i follow that maybe do events they're looking for sponsors for events and they're always looking for something to fill like the goodie bags of, you know, the events that they're doing.

37:48And I'll always email them and I'm like, we're not a physical product, so I can't give you like a physical thing, but like we can give maybe a couple of free months or, you know, something like that so that we can be more involved with people that are working a lot with like CPG brands. So we kind of try to think of our marketing. Like I am really inspired by CPG brands and the way that they market and the way that they run influencer campaigns and everything like that. And I always try to think like, how can I do it at Rella? Because it's more fun. And it's more glamorous to run a consumer product than it is to run a tech company.

38:17Yeah, it's funny. Like maybe you have to add some flyers into the goodie bags, but that's obviously not so fancy. Are there any specific like creator or celebrity founder brands that inspire you? Yeah, I really love everything Grace Beverly does. I think it's crazy that she is the founder of like multiple companies because I'm like, how do you do that? But she's also someone that, you know, posts business content, but it's in a very like relatable and approachable way. and it's very thoughtful everything that she's she's posting while also building a community so i think that and everything that she's built has come from like a pain point she has faced herself which i really appreciate i would say she's like definitely an inspiration um i also love what marianna hewitt and lauren ireland have done with summer fridays because that's a brand that also lives on its own like yeah you you might know that they're the founders and they do a great job creating content for it but like you can tell they really care about their products and their products are really good.

39:08And they have fun with like the influencer campaigns that they do and everything like that. So I would say Marianna Hewitt and Lauren Ireland and then Grace Beverly are definitely like top inspirations for me. Yeah, we know Grace Beverly and her team very well, obviously. So what is one skill that you learned from being a full-time content creator that you think was most useful in co-founding a tech company? Yeah, I think the building community aspect of it because again it's easier to build community I think around a physical product because a lot of tech companies especially or tech companies especially in the space we're in where we're a productivity tool you know we're going to help you save time you can help run your business on it it's hard to make that something that people advocate for I'm I don't know you're just kind of like okay well I'm using it just to run my business but it's just an app that I that I use it's not you know my favorite lip balm or my favorite it's harder I think to build community around a tech product.

40:00But I think because of my content creation background, I have done a good job at that and really listening to our customers because just like as a creator, I have to listen to my audience and like always reading comments and everything like that. I'm doing the same with Rella. So I think treating us less as like an old school tech software company and always trying to come up with like new ways to build our community and market ourselves has helped being a creator. Yeah, and I I think that also, to your point, listening to your community, when you're a content creator and you publish a video, you're always going to look at the comments and see what they say.

40:34And the next video, you're going to integrate their feedback. And to your credit, the pivots that you had to go through, we talked a little bit about it, but you probably have to go to 10 pivots. And that is probably a skill you learned from actually being a content creator and listening to your audience. So what's next for Rella? What are you most excited about? Yeah, I mean, we're excited to continue to build Rella. We have a lot of new automation and AI features in the works. So we do have Ella, which is our AI program in Rella, which is great for like content ideation, video scripts, understanding your voice, giving you your AI insights for your analytics.

41:09And it like understands your voice better than I think any AI tool because we pull from your content on social media from the platforms you've connected and like a persona that you can fill out. But we're just moving forward with more things that are going to really act as like a team. So things that are going on in the background when you're not even on Rella, more automations, more project management workflows that we're setting up so that you can use us for more than just social media content. You can also internally with your team use us more for project management and then building just more like AI features within Rella, which we're really excited about and improving Ella.

41:42Yeah, I love that you actually gave the person like and it's really resonating still with the name, right? like Rella and then Ella, like your kind of personal assistant. So yeah, I think it's always best if there's a personal feeling towards an AI instead of it just being called ChatGPT or whatever. Exactly. Yeah. So we're really excited. And we've been told that our AI is like, like people always mention like our AI is really great compared to the other ones that are out there. So we love hearing that. Yeah. Why do you think that's the case? Why do you think your AI is better than others? Because a lot of the other AI tools have to learn your voice by you constantly talking to it versus because we plug into your social media platforms we already have all of your previous content so we already know like ella already knows all of your the topics that you post about the caption style that you write the hashtags you use and it can also perform what does well and what doesn't so like if there are patterns with content that does well it's going to recommend more of those similar types of content that maybe you as a creator just aren't or as a social media manager just aren't like really paying attention to and then we also have you fill out a persona so that is any like do's and don'ts so like if you don't want to you know sound too salesy or if you don't want to use emojis or whatever it is you know so so there's actually like criterias of what are you trying to evoke what are you trying to do with your social media what topics do you want to touch on what are off limits what's on limits you know and and kind of compiling that with your platforms that are connected it pretty much understands your voice from the jump versus you know my chat gbt knows me really well now but it's because i've spent so much time on it and so this is just kind of like there's not really that like learning curve when it comes to Ella.

43:17Yeah I think that's very interesting because like also whenever you like onboard on a new tool you often have to start from scratch and with Ella or with Rella like you actually are not starting from scratch because it's going to analyze all the previous content and then come up with a strategy based on what works and what doesn't work so I really love that about what you're building. Maybe the final question on my end so what is the number one advice that you have for other content creators that have been thinking about launching their own companies? Yeah, I mean, I would say one, you have to just go for it.

43:48So I am someone that I'm very impulsive. I'm not doing this 30 page business plan before I start something like I'm kind of just doing research and getting started right away. So I encourage anyone that wants to start a business, start doing research, start talking to people, get the ball rolling. Because if you are too much in your head thinking about it, you're never going to do it, you're going to find a million reasons why it's not going to work why it's not a good time why you know maybe you should do something else and i'm not saying to go in blind like definitely do reese but but get the ball moving and like tell yourself you're going to start this and start working at it and start talking to the right people and start getting feedback from from other people that might share that same problem and building it and i think that that's like the best way to do it because too many people hold themselves back because of all of these like worries that they have or you know what if it doesn't work what if it you know and it's like that that's always going to be there Like even today with Rella, like what if it doesn't work?

44:38But like I have to keep going. I think any entrepreneur or someone that wants to be an entrepreneur, you have to just put like one foot in front of the other. I think consistency is one of the biggest qualities in entrepreneurship because there's going to be many moments when things are going to go wrong. It's going to look like you're not going to make it. And you just have to be consistent and keep going because if you give up over the first like hurdle, then you're in for a long road. yeah and i think that especially because you have been a content creator for 15 years you know how it is to be patient and that like yeah you were celebrating your first 100 subscribers you know and you know how long that took and the problem i think nowadays with a lot of content creators is sometimes they gain a million followers from one video the journey that took your you 10 years sometimes for them it takes them three months so they don't have the patient to go into like into product development for two to three years and go through all those loops yeah even with my new content like i'm sure some people are like oh my gosh this content's not doing well why is she still doing it and i'm like well it will eventually like i'm gonna keep doing it because i know that it will do well obviously i'm gonna continue to try new strategies and like you know adapt it but i've been in this game long enough that i know that it's not an instant success and like i'm gonna keep going until i like am burnt out or don't want not even burnt out but until like i don't want to do it anymore, which I hope never comes.

45:56But you know, like, that's kind of my thought process. Perfect. Well, to end, where can people find you? Yeah, they can find me at Natalie Barbu on Instagram or TikTok on YouTube as well. My podcast is Just Grow With It. So you can find that on YouTube or Spotify or Apple Podcasts. And then Rella is getrella.com or Rella Social. But we can give a coupon code for your audience if that works. If anyone wants to try Rella. You can get 30 % off. So if you use the code, is hotstart a good one? Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, hotstart, you can get 30 % off annual plans with three months. I love that. Well, Natalie, it was a pleasure to have you here.

46:31Thank you so much for being on the show. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Thank you for listening to the Hot Start VC podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe and leave a rating or review. It really helps us grow. You can also subscribe to our newsletter at hotstart.vc for more breakdowns on how celebrities and creators build billion dollar brands. Thanks again for tuning in and we will see you in the next episode.