Today on the Winning with Shopify podcast.
I didn't even do a business plan, I just did it.
OK, this lady clearly knows what is going on in this world and I
trust her. I really wanted to be strict
about the types of ingredients. They're all plant based.
It has to be something you recognise and everything has to
have a purpose. Have I just sold my mortgage to
you? Like what?
What have I done here? Like.
I'm not perfect. I'm not a Robotron.
No one. Yeah, exactly.
This isn't an AI conversation. We're real people moaning about
things. Hello and welcome to another
episode of the winning Shopify podcast.
If you tuned in last week, I'm still wearing the yellow
T-shirt, but I put a jumper on to try and hide it, but then
thought someone's going to notice.
I get more emails about little details like that about
marketing sometimes. But welcome back to the show.
Yes, I'm recording more than one episode on one day.
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I might not because the posting might get shuffled.
If you haven't already, please hit the subscribe button, leave
us a review. And if you first time tuning in,
hello, I'm Nick and all of the rest of things I've just said
make absolutely no sense unless you go back and watch last
week's episode with Janice as well.
I'm welcoming back and another guest within a few guests back
who we've had on previously. Janice Thomas from last week has
been on several times and we were talking about AI and lots
of things that are affecting her business and her teams and how
they're approaching that. Delighted to welcome back
Rebecca from Conscious Skin Care.
So Rebecca, welcome back to the show.
How are you? Hey, I'm fine.
Thanks so much. Fighting me on again, Nick.
We're all good. We're still going and we're
still here on the beautiful best host of Wales, enjoying the
gorgeous sunshine and Four Seasons in a day.
Yeah. Amazing, amazing.
And we're going to dig into that a bit more.
I absolutely love Wales and we've only had one season here
just South of London today and it's been grim, grim season,
which we get for about 9 months of the year where it's grey, it
doesn't quite rain, which means my grass doesn't get waters, but
it's also not sunny. But we're having you back on.
You've been on. We were trying to wait a minute
ago. It's about two years ago you
were last on. Yeah, 2023.
Yeah, and there's obviously a big void there.
I love that you mentioned we're still going to tell a very quick
story that's always stuck with. I was in the barbers once and
there was this chap next to me and he's quite old and they sort
of helped him into his chair and then says, how are you?
And he just went. So I got up this morning and,
and then a long pause and everyone went, ah, OK, that is
the answer. And it was like he's just happy
to be alive. And that's always inspired me.
But so Rebecca, it's been 2 years since you were last on and
lots has changed over that time. But also lots of people won't
have heard that initial episode with you on maybe not come
across the brand before. Tell us I I love the story as to
why you started it and tell us a bit about why you started and
what you guys are doing today, how it's evolved.
Cool. Well it all started a very long
time ago when I was in a previous life doing a very
corporate job, working, living in London and buzzing round,
doing a few more air miles than I certainly do today and always
been into health and fitness ever since I was 12 years old.
And when I was that age, it was the aerobics boom, which you
know a lot. Who is the guy on TV in the UK?
Mr. Motivator in the. Mr. Motivator, Yeah, that was
him. And he just.
Always. Is he?
He was like on BBC News most mornings and he'd sort of be
walking on and off one single step of the staircase going.
It's so easy guys. We could all do it together with
a funky beat. I remember him.
What a legend. Oh yes, he's still going.
He pops up at random festivals and stuff like that.
Of course he does. Yeah, yeah.
Well into that. Yeah, yeah.
So that kind of began my own health and fitness journey and
from there I actually qualified as a fitness instructor, weights
instructor, all that, but I knew.
You don't run a fitness brand do.
You, I know I don't. I did kind of start out, I did
want to get into the fitness industry, but it was, again, a
very, very different place to how it is today.
Totally different. So, you know, just wasn't on
people's agenda in the way that it's on people's agenda today in
most people's. Yeah, yeah.
So I keep interrupting SO. You're.
Working in that corporate life. No worries, no worries.
Back in that corporate life, for me, it wasn't just about the
fitness, it was about health, it was about food, it was about
everything. It was about environment,
although I kind of kept that very quiet to myself, bearing in
mind the job I was doing, which was like a relationship manager
for an investment bank. So it's like very at the
opposite end of the spectrum of where my thoughts and ethos
were. And I was delayed at an airport.
I was actually in Dublin and I bought my usual pot of cream,
which I thought at the time, like a lot of people, if it's in
a pretty box and it costs a lot of money, then it's really good
stuff. So I was sitting there and I
just started to read the ingredients and I did Latin at
school and I thought, OK, I can translate some of this stuff,
but still, what the hell is this stuff?
Because I'm not recognizing anything here that looks to me
like anything I know. And that kind of started me
thinking around what the hell is this?
What the hell is that? And asking lots of questions.
And that was the the initial seed that was sown into really
getting into the research around what's in all these products on
the shelves. What are we being punted
basically? And what in a lot of cases, are
we paying an awful lot of money for that?
Actually, it's a yeah, it's just a pot of rubbish.
Let's use a polite word. And it just extended on from
then. And then we had the opportunity.
We kind of decided, right, we're going to get out of the city,
change our lives. Unfortunately, as part of that
journey, my husband ended up being poisoned by a very famous
type of pesticide which you will see alongside foodstuffs in
supermarkets, which does along on me because it's a poison and
we don't really want it going on our soil and into our food.
But hey, that's an argument for another day.
And he was really ill because of it.
And you'd think where we live now in Wales with farmers, the
chemicals that they interact with, that the hospitals round
here would be familiar with that kind of poisoning.
They weren't, and they basically said to me that if he presented
these symptoms again, they'd send him to the psychological
unit. So that was an eyebrow raiser.
So we contacted a private GP who used to work at the in the
poisons department at Saint George's Hospital in London.
And he's, oh, absolutely, this is glycophosphate.
This is what it does. This is the what it can cause if
you get it on your skin, which he had just kind of there a
little bit. And yeah, so it was a case of
right, well, we'd better make our own stuff because at least
we know what's in it and really limit that chemical exposure
because his body just went into OverDrive, allergic to
everything and all the rest of it.
So it's kind of my previous journey and that episode of a
kind of all came together and I'd always wanted to run my own
business as well. So it's like, right, I've got an
opportunity here, I'm going to go.
And as I was saying, someone yesterday talking to me about
things I said, I didn't even do a business plan.
I just did it. You know all the things that you
know they're always telling you should.
I've, I mean just on that, no. None of that.
Yeah, we here at my agency, we've totally stopped doing
business plans. Do you ever find that in your
warehouse you have dead stock, You can't sell it, no one wants
to buy it, and you can't get a refund on it.
Or alternatively, you're missing inventory in your warehouse that
you need, you've got sales coming in and you're low on
stock and you haven't ordered more stock.
In time, all these things hit profit.
And I've been there. I've run my own Shopify store
and had exactly that problem, but we've partnered up with
Inventory Planner who have the most incredible app to help you
manage that and forecast exactly what products, what skews even
down to what colour of products you need to order in advance to
make sure stock levels remain consistent throughout.
They're also running a seven day boot camp and if you want to go
and sign up to that, it's 7 emails every seven days and it
takes the same amount of time as your morning coffee.
And in seven days, like me, you can become an inventory
management pro. Both links are in the
description. Enjoy.
We, we even advisor Sean, who I should probably shout out on a
sort of like every two or three minute basis.
I've learnt, I've got him on retainer and I've learnt so much
from him. I know you don't listen to this
Sean, if ever you do, thank you. And I normally I never say
saying thanks for anything. It's just like, what do you
think of this? OK, cool.
And that's it. And, and, but Sean's always said
to me, like the problem with the business plan is you get to the
end of the year and go like, well, we said we were going to
grow 20%. We've grown 25%.
And then a genius like Sean comes along and says, could you
have grown 200%? It's like, actually, yeah, we
achieved this at like the 3/3 of January.
What do we do the rest of the year?
Well, we just rode that wave and everyone was very happy.
And equally, you could say we shrunk by 10% this year.
Oh, we're so upset because we set a 50% growth target or
something silly and it gets the end of the year and go, well, we
shrunk 10%. How disappointing.
Everyone's really depressed, but 90% of our competitors have gone
bankrupt. So actually we've done really,
really well. So he said it's all and it's,
it's always sort of as much as possible all the time and keep
keep an eye on what industries are doing to know if you're
above or below. But he just made the point
business plans, they give you either a warm fuzzy feeling or a
depressed feeling. And the reality is you were
going to do what you were going to do.
You want to focus on as much as possible.
So I completely agree. And I think it's only for
e-commerce, It's the same. It's like, are we profitable?
Yes. How do we be more profitable?
And that's the constant cycle of those two questions is the
healthy place to be. Oh.
Absolutely. I mean, we watched our thing a
couple of years ago. Is it last year?
And you know, I am a sucker on social media for these things
that pop up and it's why they get.
Posted Yeah. It is why they get posted.
I get lured in and I know 99% of them.
If it sounds too good to be true, it's too good to be true.
But there was one that I actually thought, oh, they
might, there will be some merit in that.
And it was something like the 3030 thirty.
And it's not the dire that everyone's banging on about this
was actually relating to it said if you can increase the number
of customers you have by 30% and increase the frequency that they
order and the average order value by 30%, actually you right
there that is a really good kind of growth target.
So well actually there is some logic in that there is some
sense so. Well, isn't it the, there's the
logic if you took like, was it an inch or like 10 centimetres
for our European friends or whenever it is.
But if you took an inch and you doubled it, what is it 11 times
you've done the Eiffel Tower. So it's like, it's those little
process. Yeah.
If you refine 3 things, you're times in the average order value
by the conversion rates and multiplication times by the
price or the margin or something on it.
And suddenly you've made like, you know, threefold growth even
though it's sort of 3030 thirty or twofold.
So yeah, there's a lot of logic in that, I think.
But yeah, lots of incremental changes equal a big change.
And that's kind of what we thought.
Well, actually, OK, let's delve into this a little bit and look
at how could we get more customers.
So you know, I was improving doing leads ads on Meta.
How can we get our customers to spend more?
So looking at what the opportunities were there, how
can we shove up that AOV and thinking, you know, just entice
them little by little over the line to a new threshold.
And those things have worked really well.
And obviously it's a thing around, well, you've done that,
now you've got to do it again and kind of keep repeating it.
It just makes growth feel less like this enormous jump that
you've got to make and something that's a bit more manageable and
piece meal and ideas come up and it's just a lot more creative.
Kind of takes the stress out of, you know, starting on January
1st thinking, oh God, you know, what are we going to do for the
year? How are we going to do this?
Kind of gives you a bit of a structure and a bit of a place
to start. So I'm just looking back at my
notes. The question was what do you
guys sell? And we've gone completely banged
past all of that. No one has do what we do.
I'm banging on about Aovs and all the rest of it.
It's like, yeah, we're gonna. Come back to those I've made
notes to them. I wanna know what you changed,
and we'll come back to that in a minute.
But so you guys, you sell skin care products.
That's right. Which we were talking about
briefly, But just to make it clear, if anyone's like, sorry,
I'm still my pencil's sharp, but the paper's blank.
Yeah. So tell us about the range of
products you got. Like, what sort of stuff do you
sell? Who's it for?
Yeah. Cool.
The first thing I wanted to do was have a lot of I'm a bit of a
control freak, nerd, OCD, all of those things.
It gets on everyone's nerves, but hey, that's who I am.
I really wanted to be strict about the types of ingredients.
They're all plant based. It has to be something you
recognise and everything has to have a purpose.
So this is kind of all the the principles upon which we were
building what we were going to do, which were the skin care
products and the body products, the hair products, the hand
products that we make and we have formulated like our face
products. That's me sweating and pouring
over loads of research, finding, looking up everything that the
plant world has to offer. Lucky for me, one of my best
friends is a gardening journalist and so she's been
fantastic for kind of needs and ideas because between us, I'm
crap with plants. I'm the kind of person I can't
even keep a cactus alive. So yeah.
I I jet wash the patio, my wife looks after the flowers, I do
the grass, but the grass is like there's three things.
It needs heat, water and to be left alone and that's it.
It's like it's quite simple. Exactly.
I'm I'm good at destruction. I'm good at kind of, you know,
cutting things back or tidying. But the actual growth part I
leave to my husband because he's whereas.
I would cut the wrong thing back at the wrong time of year and
kill it in the process. Yeah.
Oh yeah. I've been there, done that.
We were growing carrots once and I thought they the tops were
weeds, so I took all of those out.
So yeah. I got a grilling from my
father-in-law for cutting back one of our Acer trees in the
summer. He was like, don't you touch the
don't touch the Acer. I'm like, what's an Acer?
It's like the branch was in the way.
It's gone. And luckily the tree survived.
But yeah, he now comes round every kind of early spring and
it's like we're cutting the tree today.
He's like, can I have? No, no, no, he will do the
cutting. I put it in the yeah.
You're not allowed anywhere near it, no.
Got your own range of products, which is cool.
And you guys have obviously come up with your own formulas.
So to ask a marketing question with that then, and this is a
bit of this might be your $1,000,000 question of like,
we're still trying to suss this out.
We're on that journey. How do you get that across on a
web page? How do you say to people that,
OK, we've developed all this stuff ourselves, the credibility
behind why these ingredients are better than everybody else's,
why you should believe and trust us?
What do you need to do on a web page to get that message across
to a customer who's gone? That's a nice face cream.
Clicks on an ad and welcome to the site.
That is an enormous thing because it's it's not something
you can do overnight. And what we have seen, obviously
we've been going over 14 years now.
And when we started, the world of skin care was very, very
different. And the world that we're in,
which is the natural and organic skin Care World was very, very
different as well. And that was also part of the
reason we got started because the choice was so limited.
The formulations for creams, etcetera, all water based.
Well, that doesn't work for me. My skin's dry within two hours.
You know, there was clearly a gap.
And I've because I'm a bit bloody minded about things as
well. And I've always been the kind of
persons like, if I can't, you know, I'll do it myself, I'll
just do it myself because it's easier.
And that's kind of some of the stubborn principles behind what
we do. And I've seen it with come
start-ups come out there into this super competitive world
that we're in. I mean, I think it's as intense
as is for supplements in the space that we're in.
It's a real fight. I was thinking about this
recently. If you think of the breadth of
type of shop that sells products that would compete with yours,
rightly or wrongly, better or worse, you're talking
supermarkets, petrol stations. Like there is such a breath.
I went into a local cafe recently and they had a lot of
face creams because everybody asked the lady who works there,
how come you've got such an amazing complexion?
And when you work in a cafe that has like, you know, coffee in
the air and all the humidity and the heat and air conditioning,
how do you keep your face looking so amazing?
It's like, well, I use this cream and people started buying
it. It's like, I should just buy a
box wholesale. And she did and this.
So I was like, why? It's just sorry, I work in
marketing. Why have you why are you selling
this in here? And she explained and she said,
we sell one of those to every like 30 coffees we sell now.
And I was like, what, as you said, we've got stacks of the
stuff in the backroom and we just keep topping them up every
day. What you see there, We'll sell
all that today. Just like what's this like
brilliant little, it's called sweating the asset.
I've already got my coffee shop, I'm already selling coffee, buy
another product here and I make an extra £2 per person that
does. It's like it's really smart.
So, so you've got that breadth of competitor.
How do you, I'm asking the same question.
I know you're halfway through explaining, but like how do you
carve out a niche? Then with that in the context,
how do you carve out something customers relate to you just.
Have to keep fighting your corner.
The ultimate thing is not every product suits every person.
So even if you're some mohusive brand like L'Oreal, your product
is not going to suit everyone. The stuff you put in there, some
people might be fine with it, a lot of people aren't going to be
fine with it. It's going to cause problems.
So that automatically creates some differences.
Then you've got customers own drivers, the drive, the
awareness now around sustainability, authenticity,
traceability of products, ingredients, your whole supply
chain. So people are a lot more
discerning. There are some who aren't,
they'll just carry on going into boots and super drugs, Sephora,
whatever, buying that stuff and if it were we?
Will have off pays. Yeah, yeah.
But for other people and a lot of the customers that we get,
it's those with challenging skin, sick things like eczema,
contact dermatitis, problems caused by.
The stuff that they've been buying from Boots, Super Drug,
etcetera. Then there's the drive toward.
I don't want to have needles shoved in my face.
I don't want Botulism pumped into my face because that's what
Botox is. You know, I want to do something
that supports my skin but isn't, you know, going to damp,
potentially damage me long term. So it's really trying to hit
that market. It's not a quick, you know, if I
wanted to start a business and be a multi millionaire within a
year, well, I wouldn't be doing this.
You'd probably be in. Property in the UK that's.
Exactly. I'd be doing something
completely different because this is not the gig to be doing
if we want that. Now we've seen them come and go,
other brands that pop up, you know, they're out there.
And I was reading an article by one who just folded the business
after a year. And I thought, yeah, it's
exactly all of these reasons that this is not an easy market
because they said their cost of customer acquisition was huge
because I just knew they've no authority.
Their website had no brand authority.
You know, you're starting right at the very bottom and you only
way out of that hole, if it's quick, is to try and throw money
at it. And they had gone for two or
three rounds of venture capitalist funding and they blew
it all on advertising and marketing.
Bottom line, what they were selling.
Scaling a problem? I call that it's like it's not
profitable and now you're throwing more money to you're
increasing the volume of something that's not working,
hoping it will fix the problem. But when you increase the
volume, profits get shrunk more. So if you're a negative profit
when you start, it's game over. Oh, for sure.
Because it's like, what are you really selling?
And they were offering, you know, natural hand wash, body
wash refills. Well, big kahunas, I'm sorry,
but and throwing loads of money at a problem isn't going to
solve it. And because in the first year or
two they'd burned through so much venture capital and I
thought, wow, how could you have gone for even more funding when
it clearly wasn't proving that this is going to work?
So what would you say as? Some of the key messages then
that you put in front of customers that that, that really
resonate. Like how do you, you cutting
through the someone who's got £1,000,000 a day and you're not
anywhere near on that scale by choice as well as you say, how,
what kind of messaging works for you guys to cut through?
How do you contain what you've described about the ingredients,
the, the, what's positive, negative?
Is it a long term conversation? Is there, are there certain
things that just seem to bring people in and then we start
nurturing them or get their first product out and then they
can see how good it is? It's all of the.
Above, I mean, when we started, we just started with cold
pressed oils, organic cold pressed oils on a very popular
auction site and that's where we started.
And then it was just at that time when Etsy popped on the
scene, so we jumped on there. They're a very different beast
now. They're nothing like they were
back in the day and not on the High Street came out into the,
you know, in a very different beast to the one that's out
there today. So there are different ways we
could access the market, which didn't mean we had to shove
everything into the kind of Google ads world or anything
like that. There were other platforms we
could benefit from and it was continually all about being
transparent, being honest, sticking to our guns.
I mean, we had various things with, well, if you want to look
luxury or high end or anything like that, you've got to put
everything in a a little pretty box and just said, well, we're
not because it just goes in the bin.
So, you know, forget about that. I actually ordered.
Something a while ago that said on the box, this box is not
pretty because and then it and it had this like really long
paragraph and because it said this box is not pretty because I
was like what a weird statement like I want to know more.
And I read it was about 20 lines long and it explains that it's
going straight in the bin and actually we've put more funding
and they put like we put 80% of all the products funding into
products not into packaging. And also why your delivery was
slow. Well, it's been an eco delivery
and it's taken a while. I was like, these guys have
nailed it. There's Oatly, the milk brands,
the vegan milk brand here in the UKI drink their stuff like
gallons of it a year. And they always put things of
like, you know, all cow, no moo, this is the best oat milk for
coffee. And they they do really fun,
quirky stuff on the side that if you even only read the headline,
you're like, I'm buying a product.
They've really thought about this.
And so I love I love that as the journey.
But even the thing that was written on the box, they said
this hasn't been printed on because that's a waste of time,
waste of money. And then you need a big printing
machine that needs Manning and others.
We've, we've rubber stamped this on and we just buy ink pads and
a rubber stamp and then we stamp this on as we're packaging the
things like that's really smart, which is why part of it wasn't
quite crisp. And at the bottom said, and if
you've read this, please go to this web page.
So I didn't, it said, thanks for reading it.
You've got 25% of your next order.
And could you leave us a review? And then they, they, they,
they're probably starting a counter as well to say how many
people have read this thing and therefore understand our brand
because those are the people that are going to be our long
term VIP customers. So they must have been
segmenting me as soon as I hit that page, must have gone into
some sort of e-mail segmentation.
So our partners at Saguna have released a brand new app for
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You can go to saguno.com/camber. Enjoy.
But I hear you. There's there's almost there
must be like 50 components. You guys need to be running all
the time to nurture people, to educate people.
So you do become that long term one stop shop.
Like you. I can't shop anywhere else.
It has to be conscious skin care.
I mean, I think. What we've found as well when
we've been doing some recent analytics on our customer
database etcetera is once we've got customers, how loyal they
are, you know our loyalty rates are really good, which is
invaluable. I mean that is what you want to
our customer retention. Well, it should become.
Easy when you've got a good sticky brand as well, that's the
thing. And that's what.
We're trying and work toward and you know, I'm not perfect.
I'm not a Robotron, you know. Yeah, exactly.
This isn't an AI. Conversation where real people
moaning about things. But that's the thing, it's like,
you know, bottom line, you know, I'm still precious when products
go out the door because I have a relationship with them.
It's like I'm giving a bit of myself.
Sounds really nuts, but I do feel like that.
But that comes. Across yeah, I see some of your
Instagram ads popping up and we obviously follow you on
Instagram as well at the podcast because you've been on before.
But yeah, seeing you as the face of the brand I think is so key.
I've seen so many businesses where there's someone like
yourself. It was in fact 1.
And I think Jess from her team might be listening.
There's a lady who's called Rebecca and we were just
constantly wanting to put Rebecca recommends all over the
site. And it was like, no, I don't
want to be the face of it. Like I'm not inside like.
But you are so in control of everything that actually it can
justify why some of the web pages don't look like normal web
pages, don't operate in the normal way.
It's because this is all, this is your world.
And actually if we put that at the front of the brand, you're
stepping into Rebecca's lounge, basically look at all the
products. Now you're stepping into our
kitchen, look at all the products that that brings real
tone and voice to it. Whereas they were so product LED
of just everyone's buying these particular clocks.
Let's push that. And it was just difficult
because people would just come and see the clock and go, it's
the clock. Because I think there's no,
they've got emotional connection, which I think from
your watching your Instagram stories and reels, you get that
watching, watching your content and go, OK, this lady clearly
knows what is going on in this world.
And I trust her. It's authentic and real person
going right. I'm going to tell you about this
product. I'm doing this or today I learnt
this. That's all part of the, the
brand story that you guys provide, which I think you do
incredibly well. So well done.
Oh, thanks. For saying that, I mean, what
we've really noticed and perhaps this is an influence of Tiktok
is whereas back in the day, if you were doing any marketing and
if you wanted to be taken seriously, it was all very
stuffy marketing, all very staged, all very kind of trying
to look high end, looking like some kind of high attending.
You had a. Thousand staff when there were
three of you yeah, that kind of thing, yeah, that's the sort of.
Thing and when you know you saw some of the perfume ads where
they really go to town and then they have someone with the most
monotone voice delivering the brand strap line at the end of
it and you think what but. Insurance adverts, they changed
the law in the UK recently so when an insurance advert, you
know, when they sort of say like, you know, protect the
things that matter, you love your dog, get some insurance for
your dog. And then the boring robot comes
in and goes terms and conditions apply and we're regulated by the
FCA and all this nonsense. They changed the law recently
because there used to be a rule that there was a certain amount
of words per 10 seconds that you could put in.
And they've scrapped that, which is why they just go blah, blah.
And you're like, whoa, if I buy this insurance, what there have
I just sold my mortgage to you? Like what?
What have I done here? Like, but yeah, they changed the
rule, which is why they all sound like gibberish and you
can't understand them. And it's I, I signed a thing and
I'm part of lots of different marketing groups and kind of
business groups here in the UK and, and a couple in the US.
And I signed a thing the other day saying like, can we just get
rid of it? No one can understand him and
actually no one cares. Just because you heard a radio
advert doesn't mean you need to know all the terms and
conditions on that radio advert. I and we worked out like the the
percentage of radio ads that are then ineffective that are
causing issues to the UK economy.
So it's like it's actually having like a nought .5% impact
on the UK economy because radio and TV ads had this spiel
afterwards that honestly there there was a statistical make up
and I read it and went, yeah, I could agree with that.
The data looks right and signed it myself.
So I think it's just, I think as you say, that kind of stuffy
marketing world is slowly disappearing.
There are changes coming to cookie banners in the UK.
Sorry, European friends, you're not getting them.
The EU has said so finally one benefit of Brexit, but there we
go. Let's not get political.
Today we said we wouldn't talk too much about politics.
So you've got that stuffy marketing.
So what's your response to that, Bean?
What's your, how do you guys approach marketing?
What are you trying to achieve versus what L'Oreal and Maybelle
and everybody else would would go after?
We really have. To look up what can, what can we
do, how nimble can we be versus what they're doing.
Now you're not going to have some of their kind of bigger
brands and some of the ones that we thought and we just dismissed
that. But we perceive in some respects
as our competitors, they are bigger than us.
But when I see their ads pop up on Instagram, I think, God,
you're boring. You've got a hell of a marketing
budget opportunity and you've come out.
With this really boring. And I've just finished a meta ad
strategist course and it's been really good because again, it's
back to right. I'll do it myself and not.
Not us, might I add. We did a a.
While ago and. We came back and said, yeah, we
we said we think you can do this best.
So it's amazing to hear that you've sacked all the agencies.
That's good. We tried to be honest here.
Yeah, well, this is. The thing and I like, even if
you're at a stage where you think, well, I don't have time
to do all this stuff because like anything like doing Google
ads, meta ads, you need to have an understanding of what it's
about. And I thought I want to have a
really good understanding of how this fits with what we are
trying to do. That it's not the answer to
everything, how to use it, the best ways to use it, things to
be mindful of and to understand all the technical background,
how to set it all up. So should we outsource those ads
at some point? I know what the team are doing.
I know when they show me all the metrics, what I'm looking at and
I understand it all and that's the key thing.
But part of that process, even though I am now kind of more on
our social media pages, I really don't like it because I was
saying the other day that as soon as I sit with my phone
camera, I'm all animated. As soon as that goes on, I turn
really boring. And I, I don't know what it is
because I'm not like that. But I suddenly feel this
pressure performance and I just think, oh God, but thank God for
overlays and stuff like that and just being images together
because I can kind of cheat it a little bit.
But yeah, I think. I, I said to a lot of, a lot of
sort of founders or marketing people in the past or even when
we've had actors coming in to create content for some sort of
advertising campaign, I've always said focus on the, the
topic. And if you focus on that and
think less about the, as you say, like the production, the
performance part of it, it's one of the things that like this,
this certain that my wife will know more of these than anyone
in my life. There's certain things that if
you mention a certain topic to me, I'll go, whoa, whoa, whoa,
hang on a minute. And whatever, whatever cameras
around me, it just, it riles me up.
And it's always the, a friend of mine.
I used to live with Chris many years ago.
Chris always said to me, when you see something done badly and
it annoys you, that's, that's your career, that's your job
right there. There'll be a few things and you
get to decide between them. I thought that was fascinating
because certainly I mean, I've left the advertising marketing
world and every time I've left it, I've seen something gone
that's all like what? Why on earth is they do like you
say about Loreal and and other corporate stuffy brands where
they do their ads going? That is so boring.
I could do that so much better. And we work with quite a few
kind of stuffy B2B companies. We've got one at the moment in
the kind of occupational health B2B lead Gen. sort of space at
the moment. And it's really stuffy and
boring. And we put one slightly fun
thing going like occupational health completed it mate is
we're not allowed to use it because that is trademarked from
ATV series called The Inbetweeners.
But when someone said he completed football manager,
which I thought was quite amazing to never end, but the
that that kind of like putting a personality on it to say, and I
remember the government of the worst one ever, which was tax
doesn't have to be taxing. And it was like the biggest lie
ever. And now it's become like a
sarcastic like as soon as someone bogged down in the 400
billion tax returns we have to do every week now.
And it was like, it was like taxes have to be taxing.
It's like, well, it is, but it's, I think trying to make
something that's stuffy fun is such a good, good way to go
about it. And how much in your content do
you guys talk about the ingredients where they're
sourced or and versus how much do you actually talk about most
skin care does this and talk about your competitors?
Like do you keep it quite focused internal or do you do
you kind of out them a little bit and say they're doing this
and This is why it's perfectly legal, but This is why it's bad?
Yeah, it's very tempting to do the latter because I was in
Boots the other day and I saw this brand new brand that had
popped up on the shelf in very now on point trendy packaging,
giving it all the usual greenwash and all the rest of
it. And I thought, right, what is
this stuff? And I had a look at it.
Some of the ingredients were OK, but I thought one of the things
about it was it was trying to give the impression that by
spelling out what was in the ingredients list that that was
OK. But all it did was explain what
each component in the ingredients list did, whether it
was a surfactant like a foamer or whether it is for fragrance
and puff fun. Don't get me started.
That winds me up because there's a litany of poisons.
If you ever see that word on any product, run because that is
legally where you hide all your toxins.
Yeah. And so.
Do you talk about this in your social channels then to just
just to out them and say don't ever buy a product with this and
here's why by the way, none of our products have that in we
have alternatives that are is is that how you approach content
creation then sometimes? I do it that way.
I do get really quite hot under the collar.
I've always been like an armed protester.
But back in the day in the 80s, when I was a teenager, I went on
every March, every March in London.
I was there with my placard. It was also a great way to see
some of the best bands of the time too.
But Band-Aid and all the. Rest of them, yeah.
Standing up for some sort of cause, Yeah, love it.
But The thing is, you don't want to kind of.
I can be accused of and my family do tell you don't want to
anger. People into yeah and.
They're just kind of sound like angry all the time and moaning
about everyone else. And it's like, that's not always
a great look. Just moaning about everyone else
and saying, yeah, this is, you know, sort.
We just like trying to bring some balance to it.
I did do a quite a lengthy Instagram Reel when we were
featured in Ethical Consumer and Ethical Consumer really go into
the like the witch magazine for the kind of ethical product
world. And they went right into US deep
delve and compared us and ranked us to other companies in our
space. Oh wow, And it was.
This could be a double edged. Sword Oh I.
Know it's like you. Want.
That I know, it sounds bad. It's in your.
Line of work, you want that. I think your brand wants that
because it's like, find some faults you won't.
We've really thought about this. Yeah.
Where are we falling short? I mean, we did really well and
there's a couple of things. Of course there's stuff that I
want to do and change, kind of hamstrung a little bit.
It all costs money. Though, which a lot of these
reviews then say, oh, this product doesn't have that.
And it's like, well, that's going to cost me $10 million to
like create that and execute because everyone else has
patented their own version. So there's a reason why we don't
have this stuff. But you're not allowed to write
that in their review. Like their review is just this
car's faster. It's like, yeah, I mean, there
are. Those limitations and things,
you know, sometimes people will e-mail us and say, oh, I really
like this product, but can you take this out?
And I have to say to them. I'm sorry, but that's going to
cost thousands of pounds because we're going to have to
reformulate and retest, and that's the honesty of it.
And then we have to create a whole new label for it, you
know, so it's not just a small change.
We just can't do that. I'm sure some people might and
just, you know, do it under the radar, but you've got to be
responsible, you know your responsible brand.
I'd love to change some of our packaging.
Most of it's glass and aluminium, which is great.
I would like to kind of reintroduce refills in some way,
shape or form where we, you know, have a closed loop cycle
and they've been in touch with the company who have done that
really successfully. But again, it's like you've got
to reach that point where your customer base will engage with
that enough to do it. Yeah, and one.
Of the KPISI always bring investment conversations around
to of like, OK, if we were going to put money behind something,
is it any of these things? The benchmark I always find is
Google Ads click costs. Like I think Google Ads actually
changed the game and it's going well.
That's 10,000 new people coming into my website who are looking
for my list of products. How much do I kind of take that
today and then have profit later or invest in something now?
But I'm still going to have to invest in the Google Ads clicks
later to get traffic in. I'm just conscious of time.
And there's a question I really want to ask as we come in to
land on this. And my question is, and you
might have 1000 answers, I'm going to ask you for your
because there's going to be a lot of things for this.
I'm going to ask you, what's your number one thing that you
are aware of is a challenge at the moment as a brand, as a
Shopify user, as a company running down this ethical Hwy.
are they? Sometimes it might feel like
you're walking rather than running.
What is one thing you guys are so focused on changing at the
moment? What's the biggest thing you
want to see change in the business?
Where to start? That's an enormous question.
That's. An enormous thing.
We want to reclaim the customers we lost through Brexit and
that's all I'm going to say about that.
So I'm actually off to the Netherlands in November to start
that process. So that's really good.
The Welsh Government do a programme and we're part of that
and it's fantastic. So looking forward to that as
AI, Google and everything changes.
I've heard of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We're very, very aware and we kind of realise this, you know,
maybe late to the party at the beginning of the year, how AI
was going to affect how we're found, that Google necessarily
isn't the only kid in town. And the importance and ever
increasing importance of being found on AI because in the way
that Google's own AI, you know, you type in something on search
and the way it pops up and some of the links you get thinking,
hold on a minute, no one's even going to look below the line
anymore. I don't.
We've got to be there with our brand answering that question as
fast as possible. So what we're.
Doing now is with all our content, all our blog posts,
doing tons of content all around positioning us with the
authority that we know we have. We know what we're talking
about, we know what we're doing. Getting more and more of that
out there. So we're busily churning out at
least two to three blog posts a week.
Keywords Tastic. I'm really trying to push that
on both the SEO side, making it all AI friendly so it can be
picked up. Google itself, Google ads.
Honestly, they do my head in. Not to put, you know, I
remember. When we looked it is it is one
of the reasons we didn't just jump in and go, yeah, start
paying us. Like that's what we can do.
We looked at it and we take a long term view on these things
and we take a long term view of like there are so many ifs,
buts, unknowns and actually in six months we could still be
learning a lot of that. And now you're paying us to
learn it and Google and actually thought there's so many things
you it is such a challenge, I think for you guys in your space
because there is every, like I said, every supermarket, every
kind of local convenience store could be selling your products
and advertising it. So it's a real challenge.
It is an. Absolute challenge and we really
understand that and we appreciate when you know guys
like you are honest with us and say look, I think your.
Response, which I always find hilarious was like, we want to
work with you more now and I'm like, well that doesn't help my
position, does it? But you know, you know, you turn
someone down and they're like, I want to be with you even more in
this relationship because you've.
Said. No, yeah, hopefully that's not
the clip that makes it to Instagram this week as a married
man with a young baby. But I appreciate as I'm same as
last time and and today I really appreciate your honesty on these
things. It's one thing we always get
with you, Rebecca, is honesty of like, this is where we're at.
This is the mountain we're climbing and these are the bits
where we keep tripping over rocks.
And well, I appreciate your time and it's been so good to have
you on today. My final question is if
someone's listening to this game, Rebecca, I I need your
products in my life. I want to see the business.
I want to see this. The way you approach socials.
How can people follow you? Get in touch, sign up to your
e-mail or see the store. Best way to get hold of you our.
Website is www.conscioushyphenskincare.com
and I know A-IS controversial, but hey, that's how it is.
That's who we are, that's. Who we are.
Controversial all the way. On Instagram we're at Conscious
under score skin care. On Facebook it's at Organic
Conscious Skin Care. Hey how is that I'm such a good
model? I can't even remember what the
handle is. Too busy.
It's below you. It's too busy.
Too busy for that. And you know, on our website
there's lots of ways you can contact us.
There's an inbox chat thing. You know, we are a small
business. It's basically me and my
husband. We're the directors, but we do
everything. And Quinton.
Deserves. A shout because he's also good.
Miller at the. Moment he's churning out the
content, churning out the news that, you know, he's just doing
and dealing with Google ads. So he deserves a medal and a big
shout out. But yeah, there are loads of
ways to get in touch and we do answer people and we answer them
in lots of detail too. Good.
Well, Rebecca, I mean, thank you so much for your time.
And as I said at the start, like such a different type of brand
and episodes, what we normally have.
So it's amazing to see how far you've gone down certain roads
and some of the challenge you had.
So thank you so much for joining.
It's been a pleasure having you on the show again.
I like price. Thanks so much for inviting me
and have a good day. Amazing.
And thanks for tuning in. And a special shout out to
Rebecca as well because it's things about 24 hours ago I
emailed her saying, Rebecca, I need to get some episodes done
before I go on holiday. Are you around?
You like, yeah, I'd love to. Let's do it.
So here she is and thank you so much and thanks for everyone for
tuning in. Thanks again for all our
subscribers, people that have left us reviews, go and click
some buttons on some of the channels.
If you want to watch us, we are on YouTube with video and we are
also on Spotify. Now we start putting videos on
there and Spotify video is amazing because even if you're
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means you can listen to it in the car, get out and start
watching our amazing guests. We are starting to do a bit more
on screen share and other bits and pieces that are probably
coming to YouTube soon and possibly Spotify.
So watch this space. And if you haven't already,
check out my Tuesday Tea Break Talks episodes.
Different cup of tea every week and I've been sent some coffee
so we have to change the name this week, The Bean Shop UK
based in Scotland, Lorna and the team have sent me some amazing
coffee again and I've even got one of their T-shirts.
So I will be fully branded up whilst on holiday on Tuesday.
So yeah, definitely check out that episode and becoming in a
few days. Thanks again and hope you can
join us again next. This time I just want to give a
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