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Serene Lim from Gellae | Checkout #486

In this Checkout episode, we catch up with Serene Lim, founder of Gellae and Cup 49, two innovative brands making waves in the DIY space. With seven-figure success and 400 million TikTok views under her belt, Serene is rewriting the rules of what small businesses can achieve. Serene shares why she’s inspired by the meteoric rise of FAYT the Label, spills on her go-to tech tool, Repurpose.io, which she calls a “game changer” for amplifying social media content with minimal effort, and for fellow foodies, Serene reveals how eating out serves as her inspiration (shoutout to Melbourne restaurant Minamishima). She also opens up about the challenge of staying motivated as a sole founder while managing two successful businesses.

Check out our full-length interview here:

From DIY Nails to 400 Million Views: How Serene Lim Turned Gellae into a Global Phenomenon | #473

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About your guest:

Coming from a non-business background and a family that faced challenges during their first decade in Australia, Serene Lim has defied the odds to bootstrap and scale two thriving eCommerce brands. As the sole founder, she led Gellae, her DIY gel nail sticker brand, to seven-figure success within its first year, amassing over 400 million organic views on social media. This rapid momentum caught the attention of Boots, which now stocks Gellae in 165 stores across the UK and Ireland. Serene is also the founder of Cup 49, a DIY bubble tea kit brand that allows tea lovers to recreate their favourite drinks at home. Both brands focus on addressing real-world frustrations with affordable, convenient solutions. When she’s not building brands, Serene is a massive foodie who loves travelling, bunnies, and all things miniature.

About your host:

Nathan Bush is the host of the Add To Cart podcast and a leading ecommerce transformation consultant. He has led eCommerce for businesses with revenue $100m+ and has been recognised as one of Australia’s Top 50 People in eCommerce four years in a row. You can contact Nathan on LinkedIn, Twitter or via email.

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Duration:: 9m
Broadcast on:: 23 Jan 2025
Audio Format:: other

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Today's checkout features Serene Lim, the founder of Jell-A, the DIY Now brand that's taken over TikTok and landed on the shelves of global retailer Boots. In this app, Serene shares the tech tool that she swears by for streamlining content. I even went in and had a little play with it after this. The retailer she's most inspired by and how she's working on balancing creativity with organization. Serene, welcome to the checkout. We had a brilliant conversation around what you've built so far with Cup 49 and Jell-A. Incredible stories in there from your appetite for risk all the way through to how you've managed to help your dad retire. Incredible story but we're here to learn more about you. So I've got five quick questions. Number one, what's the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online? Weirdest thing, a rotating ring would probably be the weirdest thing that I've bought. It's not that weird but like that's what you don't really see often. What does a rotating ring do? So it's like a ring and it has like a sunflower and it like it like rotates when you spin it. So we're just walking around like it's just as you can. Yeah just because I can. I love it. All right number two, which retailer has most inspired you recently? So there's this brand by Brittany Saunders called Fate. I don't think they're fate the label. Yeah fate the label. They've been doing really really good big things so probably them. And we talked about your expansion into boots into in the UK and Ireland and you've recently just got back from a trip there. Were there any retailers that you saw while you were overseas that really caught your eye? Oh besides to be honest I think we've only spent most of our time in boots. We're there for a pretty short amount of time. So yeah I think Bruce is massive there by the way. Like you're talking three stories massive massive like shopping shopping areas. So yeah I would still say boots. All right number three. Now I'm a piece of tech that you or your business couldn't live without. Repurpose.io. Have you heard of Repurpose.io? I literally sent this to my team last week and I said we've got to do some experimenting on this. So long story short when I visit content I was figuring out I was trying to find some sort of tech or some sort of software that allows me to you know like repost it on all other platforms. So what Repurpose.io is you sync up all of your social media platforms and they've got so many. You could even do LinkedIn in this whole like Snapchat Pinterest you know and your traditional new Instagram Facebook particular all of those. You sync it in and you only need to really post it on one platform. So let's say you choose to post it on TikTok and you create all these connections like TikTok to YouTube, TikTok to Instagram, TikTok to this and all you need to do is just press one button and it just reposted for you. It's so good. So you're still creating the content natively via one channel so you're not getting punished there and then that's just republishing into the other channels. Yeah. Ten years ago when you used to use those kind of platforms to social media management platforms the platforms were really on to it around punishing you if you were using a third party rather than doing it natively. You haven't noticed any impact on those secondary channels. Well all I can say is we've done like million views on other channels too so I'm like I think I can't say for sure because maybe some of our videos you know maybe maybe we're for some of the videos we're not getting the reach because it's detecting that from another platform maybe but the fact that we've still managed to hit like millions of views in other platforms was to show that that's not always the case. Yeah so you lead with your strongest platform and then repurpose from there that's very cool great tip thank you. Number four can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into? Besides add to cart I don't really listen to heaps but I love Daria the CEO that has really helped me personally with with like mentality stuff developing good habits more so looking after myself so that I can show up better for the business so that's really helped. Are you still pursuing your passion of food do you still like practice that? I'm a huge foodie so when you say practice I immediately think of like I don't cook as much I try to really cook much at all I think I'm just quite busy but I eat out a lot which is also individuals that doesn't sound great but that's my little treat to myself I like to eat out I like to eat good food. Maybe I'll change the question for you we've got a restaurant recommendation for us. If you've got money to spend minamishima have you have you heard of minamishima it's a Japanese and makase restaurant it's pricey but really good Japanese food. It's somewhere in the outsets of the city maybe yeah somewhere I can't remember exactly where but there we go bonus question restaurant recommendation love it. All right last question I have for you Sarin what is your biggest challenge today? I'll be quite honest Nathan my biggest challenge is I'm trying to develop a routine and healthy habits to show up every day for both my businesses I don't know if a lot of other people struggle with it. I think it's also my Myers Briggs I mean my Myers Briggs is I think it's E-N-T-P. I can't remember basically my weakness is organization and my strength is being very flexible so I go through bouts of really high motivation and that's when I give my business my all they've got you know the freshest ideas I put in quite a bit of time and I've got like periods where I have very low motivation and because I'm the only founder I don't necessarily have somebody else to be accountable to and those periods like it's the business really doesn't get much at all for me so my biggest challenge is to sort of sort that out so that I see I feel like the business has a lot more potential but it's just it's just a new problem. Yeah but you can't be on 100% every day right that's just not natural. True but I feel like most people have developed habits where they show up every day because there's times where I don't like I don't show up for the business which is yeah which is bad. I'm a big believer in you've got to God this is the biggest we think I've probably said on this podcast but handle your energy and know what tasks you're up to for that moment if you have the opportunity to be flexible is like where is my head at am I in a creative headspace am I in an analytical headspace and try and gravitate towards those tasks when you can obviously there's stuff that you can't but what I loved about our main conversation and I feel like this must insulate you a lot from those moments where you're not feeling it is those systems and processes that you've got in place though even though you are the only founder your team knows what's expected they know how things run they know you know there's all those backups in case so that even though you're a solid founder you've got this beautiful mesh below you that's holding everything up. That's probably why I was able to go away a lot this year like I've traveled quite a bit I think probably like maybe in total like three months of the year I've traveled but yeah maybe it's just an entrepreneur thing like you feel guilty when you don't show up but you're right like we're supposed to you're supposed to have work life balance you're supposed to not be on all the time. Oh you're doing an amazing job Serene I love love hearing your story and can't wait to see what the next few years brings you've done so much in the last few the next few are even going to be even more exciting so thank you so much for joining us on Add to Cart. Thanks for having me. To hear more from Serene head back to episode 473 where we on Pac-Chalay's incredible growth story including how Serene built a global brand with 400 million video views she talks about her strategic leap into physical retail around the globe and the tactics that she's using to scale her business organically. If you are curious around how modern brands grow and scale you won't want to miss this one. Thanks for listening and until next time keep adding to Cart. You