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Stacey Hollands from Lust Minerals | Checkout #443

In this Checkout episode, Stacey Hollands, founder of Lust Minerals, gives us a glimpse into her personal life and shares some quirky, fun insights. From buying donkeys online to her dual life as a beauty entrepreneur and farm owner, Stacey’s unique lifestyle shines through. She also reveals the retailers that inspire her, the tech tools she can’t live without, and the books that have shaped her business philosophy.


Links from the episode:


Check out our full-length interview with Stacey:

From Beauty School to $20 Million Brand: Stacey Hollands’ Journey with Lust Minerals | #429


About our guest

Stacey Hollands is the founder of Lust Minerals, an Australian beauty brand known for its chemical-free, vegan-certified skincare and makeup products. With a background in beauty therapy and a passion for holistic wellness, Stacey built Lust Minerals into a multimillion-dollar business that champions affordable, high-quality products made in Australia.


About your host

Nathan Bush is the host of the Add To Cart podcast and an 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 or via email.


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Email hello@addtocart.com.au We look forward to hearing from you!


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Broadcast on:
05 Sep 2024
Audio Format:
other
Marketers, your time is now. Amasis is on a mission to give power to the marketer. With Amasis, they want you to wield the ultimate marketing power. Amasis is an omni-channel customer engagement platform that connects more native channels than any other vendor in the market. Safe farewell to one-size-fits-all campaigns, Amasis empowers you with personalized data-driven strategies that captivate your audience and boost your bottom line. Just ask a door beauty, pet circle, total tools, and city beach. They've experienced first-hand the game-changing impact of Amasis on their marketing efforts. Seize the reins of your marketing destiny today. Embrace Amasis and watch your business soar to new heights. Visit Amasis, that's E-M-A-R-S-Y-S, amasis.com now. Welcome to The Checkout. We catch up with previous ad-to-cut guests and ask them five quick questions to get to know them better and leave you with a little extra inspiration to get through your Friday. Here's your host, Bushy. Today's checkout features Stacey Hollands, CEO and Creative Director at Last Minerals. Stacey was an experienced beauty consultant and used her knowledge to create the clean makeup products that she felt were missing in the industry. Today, Last Minerals is vegan-certified, paraben-free, and Australian-made. All non-negotiables for Stacey. The brand launched in 2014 and hit $1 million in sales within the first 18 months. They continue to grow as an e-commerce powerhouse with a turnover today of more than $20 million. Stacey, welcome to The Checkout. Brilliant to have you here. Thank you for our main chat where you shared everything around how you came up with the idea for Last Minerals, where we went through everything from some of the amazing interactions that you've got on the website, your custom website, and all the way through to your rebranding journey. But we're here to learn a little bit more about you, I've got five quick questions. Number one, what is the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online? (laughing) Do you know what, so I feel like I lead two lifestyles. I'm in this beauty space, and then on the weekend, we have a farm, we have 269 acres, 50 minutes out of the Sunshine Coast, and the weirdest thing I've bought online is two donkeys. (laughing) Where do you even shop for two donkeys? Well, it was Marketplace, which we found this beautiful donkey place, what would you call it, where they loved them and looked after them, and so we bought them there. (laughing) What an amazing mix, did you always have the dream of kind of being farm, personal life, running busy business? No, I am not a farm girl at heart. I am a water skier, I'm a beach baby, I've been around dead skis, and we traveled last year, the year before, for four months, and we set our friends' farm in the Brossa Valley, and I absolutely fell in love with it, and I think the reason I traveled was because all I do is work, and I was craving that family time, and I got that on the farm. When you're on a farm, you leave to get essentials, whereas when you live on the Sunshine Coast in such a beautiful place, we leave to entertain ourselves, we don't stay at home. So it was the complete reverse, and we decided after traveling, we'd come back and by a working farm, my husband was now full time, so I am inhaled, dressed up, full of makeup, and doing all nice things during the week, and then I head out to the farm in my jeans and boots on the weekend. - Amazing, I feel relaxed just thinking about that. That's very cool, I love it. - Very cool. - Number two, which retailer has most inspired you recently? - I definitely think there's a lot of brands that are doing really cool things at the moment, but obviously being in my industry, I'm loving what Sephora are doing, and how they portray their message and do their advertising, obviously, because that's sort of on my radar at the moment, so. - Stocked at Sephora? - I would hope so. Mecha or Sephora would be nice guys, if you're listening. (laughs) - Just throw the hint out there. - Why would Sephora? - Oh no, they do a phenomenal job. Number three, now I'm a piece of tech that you or your e-commerce business couldn't live without. - One would be Shopify, like we cannot live without Shopify, if that's technically tech. Colavio, I think, is a major one, as I spoke about. That's probably my top two. I mean, then I could go into socials, but that's not tech, that's not as different. - Yeah, great tips, and I loved in our main conversation where I was kind of baiting you to kind of go, "What's the new marketing platforms that you're interested in? What's cool, what are you kind of diving into?" And you're like, "Actually, we're just getting our email right. We're getting our flows right, making sure it all makes sense because it's those fundamentals." And that functionality that is already available through platforms like Shopify and Colavio that often get skipped over in a race to get to the cool shit. - Oh yeah, so much potential there, so much. - Yeah, love it. All right, number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into? - Yes, sorry, if you're dealing with consumers, I highly recommend delivering happiness, which is a Zappro's book by toning someone. He is incredible. It's about delivering a five-star customer service, and I've heard four of my team read that book, love it. And one other one for more of the entrepreneurs is rocket fuel. If you're a visionary and you're in a visionary role, you really need to understand a visionary and an integrator and having an integrator with you for an successful business. So that has been a very, very valuable book for me because I now have my integrator, and I think we work just in harmony so well, so. - Great suggestions. Delivering happiness was one of the first books that got me so excited about e-commerce. I'm already in the consumer game, but it really made me excited about it. And rocket fuel, I think, is a phenomenal book, especially for founders. How did you realize that you were the visionary and then how did you bring on an integrator? - I feel like I'm always been a visionary. Everything about me is more visionary, and reading contracts and doing a degree is not even my thing. So I think on layman's terms, before reading the book, I roughly knew I needed someone like an integrator. So first I found my EA, and she's definitely an integrator, and she's now moved into a business management role, and we just work so well together. But I think the biggest thing is, too, is admitting that even though you are an entrepreneur and you're running multi-million dollar businesses, you can't be good at everything. And as soon as you understand that and you realize that and you accept that, then you can find people who are good at things that you're not, and then you can focus your time on the things that you are good at. - Yeah, I love that. And also I love that you've taken the approach that yes, you're the founder and that you're a visionary. You don't necessarily need another co-founder to balance that. It's literally plugging the gap with integrators around you who can balance that out for. - Yeah, definitely. - Number five, what's your biggest challenge today? - Honestly, I think in-person retailing in commerce, I think for a product like ours, it's always going to be challenging to get people to want to try things online. But I feel like we are in a really good position with leaning into our virtual try-ons through AI and leaning into one-on-one consultation, zoos, live chat. It'll always be a challenge for us, but I feel like we're definitely working in the right direction to make it more successful for us as well. - I don't think you're alone there. There's a lot of brands at the moment struggling, not struggling, but trying to work out the balance between online and in-store retail and how to maintain brand and connection with customers while at the same time getting expansion. So I don't think you're alone there. It's a great challenge. Stacey, thank you so much for joining us on the checkout. - Thank you so much for having me. - To hear more from Stacey, jump back into episode 429, where Stacey shares the story of how she launched her business just as influencer marketing was getting started, think about gifting to bachelor contestants, and she talks about all the tips that she's had on how influencer marketing has changed throughout their time because it is still a key strategy for her today. She also shares the learnings from her recent $300,000 rebrand, and we find out why for last minerals, seven is the happy number. Thanks for listening, and until next time, keep adding to cart. (upbeat music)