Add To Cart

Real Ecommerce Talk: Success, Failure and Not Giving a F*ck with Anaita Sarkar | #441

In this episode of Add To Cart, we are joined by Anaita Sarkar, the Co founder of Hero Packaging and author of "Sell Anything Online." Anaita is a self confessed marketing and ecomm nerd with a massive Tik Tok following and a refreshing way of looking at life that only comes when you’ve had a few wins and a few bumps and bruises along the way. She’s been an accountant, a consultant, an ecom founder of Olivia & Co, a B2B founder for Hero Packaging, mentor, coach, lecturer, social media star and now author.

Her main gig, Hero Packaging, started as a solution for Anaita’s previous business, where she was using enormous amounts of plastic to ship her products, and is now a global company that has sold over 35 million compostable mailers and has over 73,000 customers. In this chat, Anaita shares her thoughts on the importance of cash flow management, the pros and cons of working with agencies, and the impact of content creation on brand visibility. Anaita is also extremely candid about a particularly tough time for her own business and how she coped.

What you'll learn in this episode:

The critical mistake that nearly pushed Hero Packaging into voluntary administration.
How customer demands led Hero Packaging to take control of their entire manufacturing process.
Anaita’s strategy for maintaining a growth mindset while keeping a close eye on profitability.
The surprising approach Anaita takes to social media, and why she ignores follower counts.

Links from this episode:

Hero Packaging Website. Learn more about Anaita's sustainable packaging solutions and their latest innovations.
How to Sell Anything Online on Amazon. Check out Anaita's latest book, a bestseller in the Business category.
Marketing ATM Podcast. Listen to Anaita's podcast where she discusses marketing, e-commerce, and business trends.

This episode was brought to you by…

Deliver In Person

Shopify Plus

About our guest: Anaita Sarkar, CEO and co-founder of Hero Packaging

Anaita Sarkar is the Co-Founder and CEO of Hero Packaging and the author of the Amazon bestseller "How to Sell Anything Online." With a strong presence on TikTok and Instagram, where she shares daily marketing tips with over 340,000 followers, Anaita is also a sought-after keynote speaker and business advisor. She collaborates with global tech giants like Google, TikTok, and Adobe on content marketing strategies and serves as a guest lecturer at Macquarie University and UNSW, inspiring the next generation of marketers and business leaders.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Broadcast on:: 01 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: other

A 100% core belief, I think everyone should stop giving a fuck. You've got to say to yourself, "I'm going to be consistent and I'm going to do it every single day." It took only six months for me not to look at the numbers for everything to go so wrong. Welcome to Add to Cart, Australia's leading e-commerce podcast that express delivers all you need to know in the fast-moving world of online retail. Hello and welcome back for another episode of Add to Cart. My name is Bushy, joining you from the land of the terrible people here in Brisbane. Now if you tuned in today needing some real talk, needing a little pep in your step with someone who's been there, done that bit of real life experience, some real tactics, maybe a little bit of tea along the way where you have got you covered today because they don't come much realer than today's guest and my good friend Anita Saka who is the co-founder of Hero Packaging and the author of her new book, Sell Anything Online. Anita is a self-confessed marketing and e-commerce nerd. She has actually got a massive TikTok following where she explains e-commerce concepts in a really simple and fun way. She's done a great job there. She's also got a really refreshing way of looking at life that only comes when you've had a few wins and a few bumps and bruises along the way and she's brutally honest about all of them. Anita has been an accountant, a consultant, an e-com founder, a B2B founder, a mentor coach, lecturer, social media star and now an author so she's got plenty to draw upon. Her main gig is Hero Packaging where she's the co-founder with her husband Vic. It started as a solution for Anita's previous business which was Olivia and Co where she was using enormous amounts of plastic to ship her products and she wanted an alternative to that. Hero Packaging is now a global company that has now sold over 35 million compostable mailers and has over 73,000 customers. In this chat, Anita shares her thoughts on the importance of cash flow management for your business as she's learnt this the hard way as we both reflect upon from our own businesses. Anita talks about the pros and cons of working with agencies and why you've got to be hands on with the ad tools before handing them over and she talks about the impact of content creation on brand visibility. Anita is also extremely candid about a particularly tough time for her own business and how she coped personally. Now, before we get into that chat with Anita, I would love to invite you in to sign up for my weekly e-commerce newsletter. Every Tuesday morning, I write a little opinion on something that's going on in the industry as well as five must read e-commerce stories for professionals in the Australian market. They could be research pieces, they could be case studies, they could just be fun stories around e-commerce. I like to think that if you get across these five stories, you're ready for any e-commerce conversation. Be the most interesting person in the room. You can sign up for free at addecart.com.au/subscribe. Let's get into the chat. Thanks to our partners, Shopify Plus, and Deliver in Person, here's our conversation with Anita Sarkar, co-founder and CEO of Hero Packaging. Anita, welcome to Addecart. Thank you. I have been wanting to be on Addecart for such a long time. So thank you for finally having me on. I am so thrilled, honestly, like I just, I love your podcast. Stop it. You've started a podcast, what are you in the podcasting world? Oh, you know what? I love it because I thought podcasting was like a really serious matter where we had to do things so professionally and I realized that you can just get a good friend who is equally as nerdy as you and just like have a nice chat and put it online and people listen to it. So that's what we're doing and it's actually so fun. And it's Jess. It's Jess Rufus. Yeah, she started a tech company back in day called Collabosaurus and now she has an e-commerce business called Number Two. And so we just love to nerd out on e-com marketing, business stuff, all the stuff that's going on in like pop culture, but also related to marketing. It's really fun. That's so cool. Name of the podcast. Come on. Give it up. Marketing ATM. Beautiful. All right. Now we are going to get into so much stuff. I feel like we've got like years of catching up to do. We do. We do. So I saw you at online retail and you were dressed in the best get up I've ever seen. You and your whole team at hero were dressed as Olympic medalists with real Olympic gold medals. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. I loved it. You know what? I, hero packaging at online retailer is the smallest fish in that ocean. And I know that. I've known that for three years since we've been there. We're like right next to Shopify, next to Clavio, we've got big commerce across from us. And all of our competitors, like even, you know, there's Australia Post is there, Signet's there. And honestly, I love everyone. I think everyone's so like big and onto, like, you know, what do you say, enterprisey, but we are really small. And so I need a way to stand out. So for me, it's just about like dressing up and having fun and getting people involved and having little competitions and doing all the stuff to make sure that we're noticed because we're so small. It's a great spot you've got there though, next to the Shopify booth because it's a little hive of activity. Yeah. Absolutely. You know what they do when we have our booth there? The lady from online retailer comes around at, "Well, we're standing there." And she's like, "Are you ready to book in for next year?" And if we don't, we can't get that spot. So we're like constantly booking that spot. It's like Caravans at Christmas time. Oh, right. I wouldn't know. No, neither do I. I can't be there. I hate it. But I heard that people like book for years out to get the same spot that they always have. Yeah. That's what we need to do it. Oh, yeah. All right. And while you were there, and I'm holding it up now, which isn't a great look for a podcast, a new book was there, which I was so excited about, how to sell anything online. Yeah. You're a mad woman for writing a book. It's my second one. And do you know what? It's not that I enjoy writing. It's that I enjoy talking about e-commerce constantly. So even on the weekend, it's like when I'm reading, people read the news, like I read e-comm news. I read marketing news. I read every single e-commerce newsletter that's out there from America, from Australia. I read yours constantly. I'm really into it, and it's something I enjoy so much. And I do think that I have an ability to understand and break down e-commerce concepts more than and better than most people. So when I look at the success of any big company, like it could be high smile, it could be July, it could be like any of those big players, I'm able to explain it to small businesses in a way that's easy to understand. And we can talk about strategies that are easy to implement. The only difference with those strategies is really how much money you put into it and how much time and resources you put into it. But the strategies remain the same. So I thought, like, if I write a book and explain that you can literally sell anything online with things like Facebook ads, Google ads, influencer marketing, content marketing, and just explain it in a very digestible way, then that's my job. That's what I want to do. I love that. There are a few things that I picked up as I was reading through it. The first thing that stood out, and I've showed this to you as soon as I was flicking through it, at your stand, was on page, I can't even do Roman numerals, 30 in Roman numerals. Hagel was out on the flight. Number, your business principles, your seven business principles, number five, stop giving a fuck. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. I believe that's like one of my core values of all time is to stop giving a fuck because I gave a fuck for so long. I think everyone does, when you're building anything, you care so much about everybody. You care about literally everyone, your next-door neighbor, your friends, your family, your competitors. I think that's a huge thing. Now I've realized that if you just want to be better, and I think a really common thread between a lot of successful companies is that they stop giving a fuck at some point in time, and they just keep on going, and they try and be as different as possible. They don't stick to the norms, they don't compromise. Some founders who are successful, they just don't care anymore. They just know what they want, and they just go for it. So 100% core belief, I think everyone should stop giving a fuck. Is that difficult though? Like you gave that example before when you've got hero packaging at online retailer, and then you've got some pretty big enterprise businesses around you who are in your space with lots of money. Here it is, your business that you've set up with your husband, Vic, like this is your livelihood, is it hard not to give a fuck when you see all these people coming into your space, maybe even saying things that aren't as true as you'd like them to be. Is that difficult to kind of turn that off and just focus on what you're doing? Yeah, of course. It's really hard to feel like you're not good enough to be somewhere. But what I've realized is that if you think about Shopify as a whole, right, or Clavio as a whole, yes, a big intimidating organization to be standing next to. But there are people who are human beings also just running the stands. That just needs connection, right? So people who come to us, and we had some really big retailers come to us at our stand and say, "Hey, we're looking into packaging." And at one point in time, I would have really been so intimidated by it. But they're just human beings who have a job to do, and I have the information for them. So if we think about it that way, and I know what I know with hero packaging, I know more than them anyway. I think this applies to so many things. Like when I was teaching at Macquarie Uni, and the first time I did it, I stood out the front of the class, and there was 25, 20-year-olds, and I was so nervous. And I just realized in that moment, though, as I spoke, that they think that I know more than them, and I'm nervous because I hadn't done this before, but they sit there thinking, "Well, she knows more." And that's why people come to my stand because they think that, okay, hero packaging, it doesn't matter if they're big or small, they obviously know what they're talking about. So when I talk to them, it's human to human. I think that's what we need to remember and not get so intimidated by a company when you need to think about it as like human interaction. I love that. Love that. So let's take us back. So I want to one-pack hero packaging and how you're unique in market, but I'd love your personal story. Like you just mentioned in there about when you started lecturing, but going like doing a bit of a LinkedIn stalk on you, how much stuff you have done. So you go from being an accountant, which I didn't realize, and we've had many conversations, I didn't realize you started an account and say, "I couldn't imagine you in that world," through to consultant, e-com founder at Olivia and Co, founder, co-founder at hero packaging, now author, but you've also been a mentor, coach, lecturer, social media star, your TikTok account is massive. How do you tie it all together? How do you choose what to focus on and how to show up in each of those situations? The problem with being a business owner is that once you've done it once, you think you can do anything. And so like, I'm like, "Oh, you want me to be a lecturer? Sure. Absolutely. I'll do that before I've ever done it." Or like, if I'm like, "Oh, I need to start a new company called hero packaging because people are like really into sustainability nowadays, absolutely, I can do that too." So it's a problem that we all face and we kind of like love this next pretty thing and the shiny objects, but do you know what? I have luckily been able to choose the things that make me really, really happy and I also can get rid of things that no longer serve me and I can do it really quickly. I think a lot of people hold on to things and they get quite sentimental and emotional about things, but I've been able to lean out my life. It sounds like I do a lot, but I'm choosing to do the things that I absolutely adore. So I guess that's it. It's really hard to answer the question though, because it's like, you know what it's like? You want to do all the things because everything seems so exciting and you know that you can do it and you've done it once, so why not try something new? For me, I'm really consciously trying to choose the things that I genuinely love and what I tell my kids all the time, I tell Vic all the time, I tell myself all the time is like, if you're going to choose to do something, give it your absolute best. If you've chosen to do it, do it well, because if you're not going to do it, if you're going to do a half-assed job, just don't do it, that can be put up in two years time you can try again. But if you're choosing to do it, whether it's my personal brand or the content creation side of things on TikTok or it's hero packaging, it's writing a book, doing a podcast, those are the things I've chosen and because I've chosen to do it, I make sure that everything goes into it. Nothing is half-assed. Yeah, it reminds me of the Matthew McConaughey book, Green Lights, where he tells his dad that he's going into acting and he was doing something else I can't remember exactly what it was, and his dad's only advice at that time was, don't half-ass it. Yeah. It's like, go do whatever you want, but just don't do it half-assed. Yeah, exactly right. As Add to Cart listeners, are high performance athletes, you would be very aware that games only come when you eat well, exercise regularly and get good rest. You can't just do one, I mean, it's obvious for us. So when it comes to a tech stack, why should it be any different? This is what the LSKD teams thought as they continued their omni-channel growth and international expansion. Offering online in the US, Shopify Plus, open retail stores rapidly, use Shopify Plus. Make a scene with pop-up experiences, Shopify Plus. There are no weak links here and the gains speak for themselves. Since migrating to Shopify, the LSKD team have seen a 37% increase in online sales, with over 200% year-on-year growth for US store revenue and a 400% increase in pause revenue. With Shopify Plus, there's no skipping leg day because they've done it for you. Check out Shopify.com/au/plus and get in touch with the Aussie Shopify Plus team to see how Shopify Plus can help you unify your tech stack for growth. Does that tie into one of your other business beliefs there, which I really loved and you kind of summarize all your beliefs into a business is easy to start, but difficult to grow. And that's one that I went, that's so on the money because everyone's got a thousand ideas, and to your point, once you've started a business, you're like, "Yeah, I can do education, I can do content, I can do new product." Is that the key, is focusing in on a couple of things to get past that idea stage and into that growth stage? So if you are starting a business, it is really easy nowadays, especially econ business. You can import something and just build a quick Shopify website and start selling it. And initially, your friends and family will buy it, you launch it, it becomes like this really cool thing, and then all of a sudden it dies down. And this is the part where it becomes really difficult because you need consistent sales to actually make some money off of it and live off that. And so when we talk about scaling, it really comes down to, it's going to sound so simple, it comes down to money. It comes down to resources and money. So a lot of the time when you see these big companies scaling up and they say, "Oh, I'm focusing on retention and I've got a great loyalty program and I've got this and that." That's fine. And that's all the extra stuff that you do, of course, to build your community. The thing to scale is you need money. So a lot of these brands that say they focus on retention are actually spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on meta ads, on Google ads, on influencers, and that's how they're scaling up. And I think that that's what people don't understand, is that when you run an econ business and you want to scale it up, of course, it's easy to start, but what ends up happening is you sell through your first amount of stock and then you need the margin and you need money to not only buy extra amount of stock, but then you need to spend it on scaling up through meta ads and Google ads and all the things. And that's when it becomes really, really difficult. Yeah. And that's what I loved about your book because it feels like it's a book written for today. Right? So in 10 years' time, there's lots of concepts in there that may not be a spot on as they are today. It's written for small to medium business owners today. Like it's literally got what your cost of acquisition figures should be like, you haven't kept it broad. You've kept it very practical and tangible for people. Can you talk us through your stages there that you go through in the book? Obviously we've got what 200 page books I don't expect you to explain at all, but you go through stages of tofu, mofu, bofu, retention, magic bucket. That's the overarching line through that. So the overarching line is the fact that there is absolutely no success that can't be explained. Okay? So that's the first thing. There's no magic when it comes to ecom or business success. Everything comes down to a limited amount of strategy news that businesses use to grow. And so I've documented every single one of those strategies that I know to be true in the book, but the way that I've categorized it is in top of funnel, mid funnel, and bottom of funnel. All of us nerds, we know what that is, right? So we know that top of funnel is essentially people who are in our target market, never heard of us before, middle of funnel people who are like quite close, they've visited our website but haven't actually added to cart and then bottom of funnel, added to cart, but not actually purchased. So that's the funnel. It's pretty simple. The two parts that I think we need to focus on are customer retention, which I think people do okay at, and then also the last part, which is the magic bucket, and the magic bucket is essentially how do you get people to keep coming back over and over again? And how do you make them fall in love with your business so much that they talk about it to other people when you're not in the room? No one is 100% loyal to any brand and I'm fully aware of that. But how do you make them feel guilty for not coming back over and over again? How do you make them feel like they're missing out on something? And so that's kind of the whole premise of the book and each strategy is kind of built into that. And then also, you know, I've interviewed some incredible people like Britney Saunders from Fate the Label, like Mark Boris, like LSKD, like a lot of brands that I think are so successful in this particular area. And we've kind of broken down like what they've done to get there too. Beautiful. I was about to ask you. I was going to be my next question is what Australian retailers do you think are doing the magic bucket really well? You mentioned LSKD there. LSKD is, I think, really gold standard. It's very hard to emulate what LSKD have done. They've done everything that I want in a brand and more. But I would say that Fate the Label is one of those brands which is a newer brand but is absolutely taking over the world. And there is no brand that isn't watching Britney Saunders and her content and going, "I want to do that." They're like, "Everyone wants to do that." And I can see everyone trying to emulate and copy what she's doing. So I think, you know, the way that she does retention and loyalty and keeping people so excited about her brand through content, which is absolutely free, is such a cool thing. She's kind of like the new age of e-com. Is there any specific types of content or activations that she does? Because I put myself in the LSKD issues, I know Jase fairly well, I think. And even at my gym this morning, it was amazing to look around and go, "All the people who used to be wearing Under Armour 12 months ago are now wearing LSKD." Like they've taken over the world. And it's through their mystery boxes, it's through their Tesla giveaways. It's all these little bits of magic around their brand that they've done above and beyond the basics of e-commerce that you just have to do. Is there anything that Britney's done that you're like, "That is just really special that execution?" Yeah. So for example, she'll do content around warehousing. So when she's packing orders, we all do like packing order content, but she'll make it so exciting, she'll jump on trends. And then she like once had her a new car and she just put fake the label all over it. And when they did that, they did a grease lightning video around it as well and got everyone in the warehouse to do a video. It sounds like almost trivial when I say it like that. But the amount of reach, she gets millions of people seeing her stuff all the time. People are talking about her, people are inquiring about what is this fake the label. If you look at SEMrush, which I do all the time for every brand that I know, I can see the spike, how many, the organic search traffic because of her organic content, I think that when you can incorporate what you do every day and make it fun, or even if your brand personality isn't fun, say for example, it's like old and wise, how can you incorporate that into just what you're doing every day? Can you show up? Can you educate? Can you be relatable? Can you be funny? Are you showing up every day? And I think the one of the most successful things that brands do that have done really well for themselves is show up everywhere all the time. So they're always in your face. And I think that is honestly key to people remembering you and buying from you. How do you balance that show up everywhere and all at once with remaining focused, especially if you don't have huge cash flow behind you and limited time? How do you do that strategy? The strategy is actually quite easy because you've got your Facebook ads, you've got your Google ads, they run while you sleep. You are showing up all the time, so you've got to put some investment into that. That works for you. The third thing is content. And content is you have to be strict with yourself and say, well, every day I'm going to produce a piece of content, I'm going to show up in people's faces, a brand that does that really well is who is Elijah and who's Elijah is a perfume or fragrance company. And Raquel is a genius at this because all she does every day, every day, she just stands in front of the camera and spritzes her perfume on her and she posts it online. Now people think, well, I don't want to do the same thing over and over. The fact is that she's been doing that video over and over and over in different locations. And it's gained her so much popularity, so many more followers, so much more reach. I think that showing up online is actually easier than what people make it out to be. You've got the things that run while you sleep and then you've got content where you've got to say to yourself, I'm going to be consistent and I'm going to do it every single day. Yeah. And does it always have to be video? Do you think? No, absolutely not. You just, your face or your brand needs to just like pop up every time they open up Google and they're searching for a problem. Your brand needs to be there. If they're on Facebook, your brand needs to come up. If they're on Instagram, like you're there being like, hi, like remember me. You know, it's yeah, that's one incredible job of this personally, like your personal brand is insane and for good reasons because you offer so much value. But I saw that one of your TikTok videos has it just hit 10 million views? You know what, I don't actually look at the views anymore because when I was getting obsessed over the views back in the day, I would then only start to create content that would only get views. And so now I don't even, I don't know what my views are. I don't even know how many followers I have to be honest with. Really? Yeah, I don't look at it anymore. I post a video and I leave the app. You do the whole comments thing, replying to comments? I do. As much as possible, until it gets to a point where TikToks decided it's going to go viral and comments start flooding in and then I just let the comments, like I let other commenters comment and then let them have discussions and disagreements in my comments. And unless it gets really bad, there was a one video I did where I was talking about a certain influencer who said how easy it is or something, how hard it is to create a brand and I just had my opinion on it, but a lot of hate comments towards that influencer started happening. So I had to like actually stop comments altogether. I deleted everything, but I don't get into my comments. I don't check followers. I don't check likes. I don't check reach anymore. I just kind of create the content I want to create and I do it consistently and then I just believe because I think that can be exhausting, especially from a personal branding perspective for a lot of people is, yes, I could probably create content every day in some form or another, but I can't always be onto the interactions around it. So it's probably about setting boundaries for yourself too, isn't it? I'll be honest with you that TikTok is not so that's where I've got the most amount of followers. It's like well over 300,000. That's my personal brand. Even though that's the place where I've got the most amount of followers, it's actually the place where I get to just say what I want to say about marketing business e-commerce. It's also a place where I get paid to make content and I monetize that. So that's TikTok, but my personal brand and my actual thoughts go onto Instagram and onto LinkedIn. It's really where people follow me and they see my content. So my followers see my content, whereas on TikTok it's random people who see it a lot of the time. So when I talk about my personal brand, I show up more on the places where people are actually wanting to hear from me and that's usually Instagram. And why do you differentiate between the two? Is it that because you know how the TikTok algorithm works and you can pretty much feed it without having to, genuine is not the right word because it does still feel genuine. But you know the content that it needs and you can produce that and just get it through the system. Yeah, I think so. I think that's what it is. I think for me though, I have a lot of thoughts and they're not positive all the time. I have like real honest thoughts and genuine ideas about the state of Australian e-com. And I do tend to say that a lot. But on TikTok it won't be as taken well because people don't know who I am. So every time my video is shown to someone, usually that person doesn't know who I am. So me just going on a rant about something doesn't really matter. But I feel like that's important to me because people who follow me want to hear about the truth of things that are happening. And so that's why I differentiate. Here are like my real thoughts and then on TikTok is more about, okay, you want some tips? I'll give you some tips. What's your latest rant? Are we spilling tea on? You're going to get me in trouble, honestly. Okay. Well, let's go on some rants. So one is agencies. Now, I've got nothing against good agencies, okay? So let's just be really clear. And I know a lot of listeners would be agencies as well. But there is something that I think shouldn't happen. And that is that agencies tend to prey on, some of them prey on vulnerable people who don't know how to use a certain platform. So when we look at like Facebook ads agencies, Google ads agencies, even SEO agencies, they exist because a lot of business owners, a lot of econ managers in like bigger companies, they think it's overwhelming to learn about these ad platforms and this SEO stuff. And so it's a convenience fee that they pay to these agencies. But I want to tell people that you can do it yourself, you know, bringing things in house and saving that cost is really, really important, especially because you can do it yourself. Plus it's your money, like that money that say you pay $100,000 in ad spend per month and you're giving it to an agency, you have no idea what's happening with that. And I guarantee you most of the time they don't know and the agencies know that they don't know. So they produce reports that look fantastic and they hand it over, but they don't actually explain what's good, what's not good. They don't explain how it's all working and I don't think that that's great. I think what you should do when you have an agency is you have an agency because you don't have the time, but you understand the platform so well that you know how to manage them. You should never have an agency for convenience purposes because you don't want to understand the platform. And I think that I don't like that they take advantage of, especially in the area that I'm in, which is like small business and helping small to medium sized businesses. I don't like that they take advantage of that. So that's my one rant. I've got a question around that because at what point, because I'm a big believer as well that when you're starting an e-commerce business, you need to be in on these tools. So you think about your two biggest costs when you're starting a business is going to be product plus advertising through these channels. So you need to know both really, really well to start with. At what point do you think you know enough about Meta, TikTok, Google, to be able to hand over to an agency and legitimately call bullshit? I genuinely think if you spend one day learning an ads platform one whole day, you look at all the free content online on YouTube, but you can do little courses, whatever you want to do. If you spend one day on each, so three days to learn those three ad platforms, you know exactly what's going on. I don't think it takes any more time than that. And I think by doing that and actually understanding how it all works, you need to look at CPA or you need to look at ROAS or you need to see how costs go up and down. You need to see how it all works together. If you can figure that out in one day and then you look at the ads manager of that platform and say, okay, I understand what this agency is doing, I think that is the best way to have an agency. So that's my rant on agencies. And I do think that it's more along the lines of just educating yourself before you get one. And the idea that you're being charged monthly and you don't know what it's for and a lot of the time, I've heard these agencies now are not just $4,000, $5,000 a month, but they'll take a percentage of your revenue. And that's really difficult, right? Because the minute you commit to that, it's usually a six to 12 month contract. You can't pay it. It doesn't matter because you still have to pay it. So you might as well know what they're doing. But that's a big thing for me. So if you were to give advice to small to medium business owners, considering an agency, what are two or three questions that you think are critical for them to ask an agency before they engage? I don't think it's about asking the agency. I think it's about how much do they know about the like, for example, a Facebook ads platform. So I know that recently, like Julie Mathers with Snuggle Honey, she's recently brought ads in house and she used to have an agency. And it's been extremely beneficial for her. It's like highly profitable. It's so much better for them. And they spend a lot of money on ads. I do think that there's so much benefit in bringing it in-house. So it's not really about what to ask an agency because agency owners and agency people, they will have the right answers for you at that point in time and they'll say what you want to hear, but you need to understand what it is to actually run those ads yourself. In fact, I would recommend you doing it yourself and then handing it over, knowing fully well like what you need them to do. Yeah. Okay. Good. So hands on experience. Know what you're talking about before you ask anyone else because if you ask the question, you'll get the right answer. Well, this is not just for small and medium sized businesses. This is for everyone, even in enterprise level companies too, who have so many agencies. Please educate the econ managers so that they know exactly what they're doing before they outsource. How was your last e-commerce delivery experience? Did your order arrive on time and undemaged or did it fail to fulfill expectations? If you are a high value brand, just think about the low value experiences in the last mile affecting your reputation. Delivered in full on time or die-fought if you're in a hurry is a metric that matters for retailers and customers. Why? It shows where the deliveries are happening reliably and on time. Many Aussie retailers are settling for 70 to 80% die-fought scores and dealing with a lot of unhappy customers. However, after partnering with deliver in person, experience driven brands like Samsonite, The Party People and July see a consistent 99.6% die-fought score. Don't settle for less. Take your last mile experience, the first thing that customers remember. Learn more at deliverinperson.com. What else would you change about the Australian e-commerce industry at the moment? I do have one more, which is a lot of coaching going on with e-commerce, business, marketing, coaching. I'm going to ask you what your thoughts are on coaching. Have you had a coach before? Have you had a coach? Have you been a coach? My thoughts are good coaches know what coaching is, so coaching is very different to consulting and sometimes people are very good at subject matter but they are not necessarily coaches because coaching actually takes more EQ than subject matter knowledge. Most coaches actually don't give any answers, but the coaches that we're seeing out there at the moment, I think, are just trying to give quickfire questions that are generic across the industry. Yeah, I would agree and I think it's the generic nature of coaching that really irks me a little bit. I think though that it's interesting what you said about subject matter compared to EQ, I do think you need to have both. So if you are someone who is coaching someone in business, you do need to have that experience yourself and I think it's really important because if you are coaching someone in business and you aren't running a business in this economy and this environment, then how are you to navigate that for somebody else? And I think I see a lot of, and there's thousands of them popping up everywhere and it's becoming this thing where everyone is now a coach and it's not cheap either. It's about $2,000 to $5,000 or something a month to have a coach. Is it worth it? Again, it's the same thing with agencies. Do you know exactly what you need? Do you know exactly what the path is for your business or do you know what you're really, really good at in order to help the coach help you? Same thing with the agencies. I feel like e-commerce is becoming such a thing where so many businesses are starting that all these little, little new businesses are starting, the agencies who I don't like to use the word praying, but that's all I can think of, praying off businesses as well as coaching as well. So I think there's a lot of things that are happening. We just have to be very, very careful because it's very easy to spend your money thinking that it's such an easy way to success. But I don't think there's any easy way to success. Oh, I don't. And it depends what you're looking for in a coach, right? So I once had a coach who didn't come from my world at all, didn't come from this part of business, but just coached all different types of people from athletes to business people to non-for-profit to CEOs. And she was great because she didn't know anything about my world. So she'd ask all these questions, which might seem silly. But then you're like, actually, why am I doing it that way? Is that really, am I just following a bouncing ball that shouldn't exist because she came in without that? But she came in with structure around how good coaches work and how to get best results out of people based on coaching models, not e-commerce models. That was really beneficial for me at that time because I didn't need someone to come and teach me about e-commerce, but I needed someone to sort my head out and sort out direction. I think that that's awesome. I think that like having someone like that, and it's like almost having a leadership coach. So someone to teach you how to be a good leader of people because that's probably one of the hardest skills and I have absolutely not perfected it, but I think having someone like that giving you that path of how to have EQ when it comes to being a coach, absolutely. I'm more so talking about the coaches that have popped up because they're like, I'll help you grow your business. Now it just can't always be that way. There are lots and lots of people who may be able to help you, but there are way too many coaches in this world and we just got to be really careful. Yeah, if I see a coach, an e-com coach, whether I'll grow your business by X percent or get to a million dollars and there is a lot out there, especially on Instagram at the moment, I can't see the benefit in it because there is no one way together. I know you said through the book, there are steps, but everyone will need a unique approach with a spine through it. Not everyone follows the same path and no one can promise the exact results. Yeah, 100 percent. And that's exactly what you were saying before about the generic approach to growing a business. It's just not possible. One of the things that I've found in speaking to founders recently, and especially in the last 12 months where it's been a bit tougher, is I think there's a feeling of loneliness and connection that's needed. Some of the best things that I've done with founders is actually connect two founders together that might be in different categories or different states or whatever it is and actually you two should just get on the phone and talk and share and get into the detail of everything that's going on, whether how's your agency going, what's working, what's not working, how your ads running, what products are selling, that to me, that kind of one-on-one connection, that peer connection is so valuable I think at the moment because you've got two people who are in very similar situations who can talk at a peer level without any fear of competition or giving away things to each other. I think you are a really good connector. That's something that I've learned about you. I do feel like I recently have made a lot of time to connect one-on-one with people and I always thought networking was going into a room full of like-minded people and trying to find connections. I found that I'm really bad at that. I find myself that I don't know what to say, I don't know who to go up to and it's quite intimidating, but I do reach out on DMs, emails even, and I will say something like, "I'm really struggling, can I get your advice on something?" Let me tell you a story about what happened. With hero packaging, we went through this really, really bad phase and I've got some really bad news about it and we'll talk about that in a second, but I was so upset and the next morning I didn't know what to do. I knew there was a founder called Mike from Zoroko never spoken to him before in my life and I was like, "I bet you he's gone through this before. He's run multiple businesses. I'm going to email him and I'm going to say, "Hey, can I get your help on something because I'm really struggling. I'm really worried about the state of the business." I emailed him and I said, "This is what I'm doing. Just to be clear, I'm not asking for any financial stuff, I'm just asking if I can have a call with you." He emailed back within five minutes and he said, "My wife's about to have a baby, but call me and I'll give you 15 minutes." I did and I called him and I was crying on the phone and he gave me some of just the best advice financially as well, just what we need to do and the steps I need to take. He didn't need to answer that email when his wife was having a baby, but the fact is that people have struggled before you and your problems are not new to anybody. If you can find people who have gone through it or at least are going through it with you and understand where you're coming from, it's like you never feel lonely because you feel like there are so many people who are in the same boat and that phone call actually changed the way that I was looking at the situation and he actually really, really helped me. I emailed him like three months after that and I said, "You changed my life and I'm so appreciative of that 15-minute phone call." He has no idea the impact he had, but I'm just saying that in business, don't be afraid to reach out to people and say, "Hey, do you want to have a coffee or do you want to just chat sometime?" I would love to just talk to you. It's not about getting your tips and advice, but I would actually like to talk to you and that's what you can actually change this feeling of loneliness because people do want connection. You're not the only person. For someone to be able to help you for them to say, "Yes, I would love to have a coffee with you." That human-to-human connection is always available. You know what you did so beautifully there is that you put it all out on the line first. You said, "Actually, this is where we're at. This is the help that I need. I'd love to get a coffee or a phone call with you." That person that goes, "Oh, yeah, look, I can add value to that or I know I can help. I'm prepared to help here." You probably get so many people and I get a lot of people like this going, "Hey, love what you do. Well, let's catch up for coffee," and I'm like, "Why?" No, and I've got into this habit now of not to be an ask, but just because you've got to be protective of your own time and make sure you're adding value, we can add value to go, "Oh, is there anything in particular, anything specific I can help you with, or is it just a catch-up?" You put that question to people and either they come back with a scenario like you did or it's like, "Oh, no, I just want to meet and just see if there's anything we can help each other with." Cool, cool. It's like, "Good to know you and we will stay in touch, but there's no urgent need for us to hang out straight away." You know what? It's so okay to say no to things like that, but I love the idea of just protecting your own energy and in your time. I do feel like there are certain people out there that you know are in that same space as you, though, so when they do reach out to you and they say, "Hey, I just would love to have a chat," you know it's going to be a good, real chat and that's what you have to find. I think even with you and me, I just know that every time I see an email from you or like, "I bump into you," it's just a solid conversation. I like the fact that I can come up to you and say, "Hey, I've got this problem and you won't judge me." I think that there are people out there that you can do that with. You've just got to find the right people. I think you just need to find those people in the industry and actually reach out to them and not just go up straight away with like, "I need your tips on X, Y, Z," but let's develop this relationship constantly. You get to know me. When I do ask you a question, I know that I could come to you now and say, "Hey, I actually have this problem. Do you know anybody?" It doesn't feel like you're doing me heaps of favors. It's just that we've built a relationship and I think that's what we need to do with everybody that we want to build a relationship with. I agree. That's why I genuinely love this industry and I love hanging out with people like yourself because there is that authenticity. It's like, "How are you?" It's not always roses because there's a few people that you always come to and everything's great and everything's like, "We're always selling. We're always good. We're always good. I'm like, "Can't be that." There is no way that it is that. You can actually offer more help and more value if you go, "Actually, I've got a real problem here or I don't know what to do here." That's how relationships are built. I think being vulnerable up front, not always expecting anything in return but just having that bit of vulnerability shows a realness that you can connect on. That's what networking is, isn't it? I think it's like friendships. When someone says, "How are you?" You just say, "Good." There's nowhere to go from that. If you say, "That's the truth," I was speaking to you this morning before we started recording and when you said, "How are you?" I said, "Well, I've actually had a really bloody stressful morning." That is the truth of the matter. I think what people struggle with is that open communication. Can you be vulnerable and if you can't, can you learn to be? That's the way that doesn't necessarily mean that everything in your life is bad and you need to talk about all the bad stuff. You can say real stuff and it doesn't always have to be the most incredible. Your business is scaling and this is amazing and you are able to say, "Actually, I had a really shit time here," or had an incredible time and I want to talk about it, but you need to know how to communicate openly. Makes so much sense. Tell me, since that phone call with Mike, how is hero packaging traveling now? A lot better, a lot better. What people don't tell you about when a business is struggling is it can go wrong so quickly, but it takes like three times amount of time to actually get back to normal. You have to be very careful from the outset. You also have to go through these things to end up being a better business owner, but what happened to us essentially was that we were growing so much and revenue wise, sorry, I should say, revenue wise, we were growing orders of flooding in, thought I was doing fantastically well and I was just like, "Yeah, we're winning awards, we're doing all the things are amazing," and then we hired these people to come in and essentially grow us to sell the business because that's what everyone told us to do. You got to sell the business, you can make a lot of money and they came in and they told us, "Okay, we're going to help you to do that." When they did a big, deep dive of the business, they said to us, "Well, you're so cash poor, you might actually need to go into voluntary administration. You don't have any money left," and I was like, "Absolutely incorrect. We've got money coming in the door. I don't understand what you're saying," and six months prior to that, we had hired this external CFO and as soon as we hired her, I let go of the numbers and I know everyone listening will be like, "Well, that's stupid," like of course, you got to know your numbers. Actually, it's a very easy thing to do. When you hire an expert and you just go, "Right, they know what they're doing. I'm going to focus on growing the business," it took only six months for me not to look at the numbers for everything to go so wrong, to be in a lot of debt, to have really bad margins with things, to bring in products that didn't have the margins that we needed. We weren't told anything. It took six months and essentially they said, "Look, in such a bad situation, we're not even going to ask you to pay our bill for this month because you can't afford it," and at that moment where I thought, "Oh my God," and it took me two months to process the situation, to look at the numbers, to realize that what they were saying was correct and it's taken 18 months to actually turn the tables around. When I say turn the tables around, the exact things that we did where we cut so many expenses that we have in the business, to down to the plug-ins. The plug-ins that cost you $50 a month, you just have so many built-up over time. We unfortunately had to look at staff as well. We had to really lean out the business and it's a really difficult thing to do as someone who is, "I feel like I'm a younger founder and I feel like I don't want to have to get rid of somebody because that's their income, they're supporting their family." These things we had to go through and then we had to also find a way to innovate and still keep hero packaging exciting again. Essentially, we did that. We leaned out the business and in 18 months, we've decided now that instead of thinking of ourselves like a small business and contracting because we're so scared of everything, we've said, "Well, we've bloody failed once, we can try again and if we fail again, so be it, we'll deal with it." We decided to have this mindset of trying to be a little bit more expansive and thinking, "Okay, well, we did that. Now we're on top of our numbers. What can we do to make the business exciting?" What we decided to do was we invested in machinery and assets, a protectable IP where we're now manufacturing our own stuff, our own boxes, our own tissue paper, we've brought manufacturing into our warehouse in Chatswood and we get to own the entire supply chain. We have seen such cool demand and such growth and so much excitement from others. We know that it's been the right step, but I haven't felt that excited in the business in such a long time because of what happened. I kept getting triggered by, "Oh, what if we can't pay this invoice or what if we can't do this?" Now, all of a sudden, I'm in the warehouse and excited to see the machinery, to see people working and I feel like we're back. That's so cool. As you were talking, there was a moment where I had that flashback as well because I've been in a business where we have accountants looking over everything plus financial forecasters and I did the wake up at 2am, middle of the night, did a quick three-month forecast in my head, lying in bed over then, "Oh shit, everything's not as good as what I think." Literally went and did a forecast, a new brand new forecast, not a fancy spreadsheet that they'd had, my own forecast. I was like, "No one else is looking at this as closely as we should be looking at this, but when you give up that control, you assume it's with someone else." When you're talking about taking a manufacturing in-house for hero packaging, what is that allowed you to do in terms of delivering new products or new services? We will only bring out products if there is demand for it. There's something that I've believed for a really long time. I see a lot of businesses and a lot of brands even bring out a collection or a range of new products. I try and innovate, but no one wants the stuff and it backfires. What we've done is we listened for over five years to customers saying, "Hey, can you do this size box? Can you do this? We're like 50,000 of this style box and we want to do this and we want to print it like this." Finally, we did our research, we found the machinery, we're going to bring it out so that any business, whether it is a huge business, I don't know if I'm allowed to mention the bigger ones, but some really big national retailers and also small businesses both have access to very, very fast service and fast turnarounds on packaging and something that they can trust because it's made by us with all the recycled materials. They can literally see it from start to finish and it's not imported, it's not going through any other third parties, it's us made by us, delivered by us in a really short timeframe. I think that's what I really wanted. I wanted to own the entire process and that feeling came about was when we switched from a 3PL to our own warehouse, that was the first time I thought, "Oh my God, I have control again over the entire packaging process." I can see the orders going out the door, I can add in little things. There's so much cool stuff when you're owning that process and now when we're manufacturing as well and doing our own packaging and shipping and being able to negotiate and it just feels like we own the whole life cycle of the products and the customer and it. That's what is exciting. What friends are you seeing around packaging at the moment? There's obviously a lot of heroes proposition is around sustainability but I know that you also do custom packaging and you have a few different formats. Where are you seeing retailers really lean in? I think it's always going to be about the unboxing experience, especially now where unboxing on TikTok and all that content is really important. I think people make the mistake of thinking that this is really going to impact lifetime value or loyalty of a customer. They have to be really real with ourselves and realize that no packaging in the world is going to make anyone loyal or stay for a lifetime. In fact, there are very few things that make people stay for a lifetime. That's usually when they're locked into a contract. I do think that what packaging does is like the way I think about it is say, for example, I sell you something and what I'm selling you is worth a dollar and you pay me a dollar for it and I send you that thing. You've gotten what you paid for and it's kind of like meets expectations. When you add on the layers of stuff like custom packaging and you have a little gift inside and you have really great communication and the shipping is faster than what you said it was going to be, all of those little little layers mean the surprise and delight factor, which means that when they go to do that purchase again in the future, you are 100% part of that consideration set. You are their front of mind because they had a great experience with you, so they want to buy something like that again. They'll think of you first and that is just a part of what you know, helping retention. Yeah, I love that. It's such a good way of thinking about it. So tell us about the next 12 months. So obviously you've got the new potty that's out. You've got the book that's on shelves at the moment. Hero packaging sounds like it's a brand new chapter there plus all your content creation going on as well. Where's your focus for the next 12 months? My focus is honestly, it's on hero packaging, as simple as this is. It's about the profit side of things and I am really looking at profit every single day. So I would say profit, making sure that we're still in a growth mindset and not just being so triggered by, I'm really worried about the next level, worried about the next level. I want to focus on growth and I want to focus on product innovation, but at the same time keeping some cash in the bank and that should be for everybody, obviously, but it's something that for many, many years I just didn't do. And now it's something I'm focused on, but do you know what? The thing that I'm focused on above all else is enjoying myself. I want to have a good time. I just keep saying to myself, I've probably got another 55 years to live and that's it. I'm going to be dying soon and every day is closer to that and all I want to do is enjoy myself and it's something that my mom had said to me a few months ago and she just looked at me and she was like, "Have you ever thought to just enjoy the business?" And I was like, "Well, no, I haven't actually, but I really think that that's something we all need to do." Like we were saying before, if you're choosing to do it and you're choosing whatever role you're in or whatever you've chosen to do, if you're choosing to do it, enjoy the shit out of it. Like be good at it, try your best, but enjoy it. I love that. I remember meeting your mom at like an online retailer, was it two years ago? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, your mom and your dad were there and they were like, "I came to get all the freebies around." Yeah. I remember that. They were carrying swag bags around. They don't look around to everyone's stand collecting swag and like they were just loving life. They were having the best time ever. Yeah. They're a really good lesson for me because they enjoy like work together. They do everything together, they watch reality TV together, they go to trade shows and get free stuff. You know, it's like a good life. That's so good. All right. So if people have listened to this and they either, you've got a few things to pog you and we need to plug them well by the book, get in touch around packaging needs or follow your amazing content on socials. What's the best way to go about all of that? If you want to contact me for anything, you know, you can find me on Instagram, on LinkedIn, on all the platforms I'm there, you know, my face is everywhere. It goes back to that theory of B everywhere all at once. B everywhere all at once, yeah. So I would say that if you need just marketing tips all the time and you want to read the book and all that, you can find me on Instagram at, at sell anything online. And if you just want to follow along the hero packaging content and all the stuff that we're doing there with manufacturing and custom packaging, then it's Instagram at hero dot packaging. Beautiful. And Nita, thank you so much for finally making on to the podcast. I'm so glad we got to have this chat. I feel we need a part two, part three, part four after this, but it was so good to have you on add to cart. Yeah. And thank you for having me. Honestly, I love this podcast. I really do. I listen to it all the time and I'm just honestly honored to be here. I know I introduced Anita as very candid and very open and no doubt you got that throughout that whole chapter. One thing I didn't tell you is that she's actually very humble. For someone who has her TikTok following has been on the month for a show, has done so much stuff that she's actually incredibly humble. I remember gravitating towards her at this year's online retailer because I wanted to catch up for a chat and she had the lovely hero packaging display out hidden right up the back on the bottom shelf were her brand new books, piles of her brand new books. And I said to her, why aren't they out the front where people can see them? Why have you got them on display? And she just said, this is about hero. This isn't about me. She's incredibly humble and always puts her business first. So that gives you an idea of who she is. What you heard today is exactly what you get. Here are the three lessons that I talk from Anita. When it comes to ad accounts, you need to know enough to manage before handing over. If you are outsourcing your ads to an agency, make sure you know the platform is well enough to keep an eye on what they're doing with your money. It's likely to be one of your top three investments. You need to know how it works. If you are handing over ad accounts, because you don't know how they work, actually take the time and invest when you're understanding them, like Anita said, not only take a day, but for handing them over. It's not going to be a quick fix if you just hand over that huge investment without understanding. Number two, content consistency is key. Showing up consistently with content, whether that be through social media, blogs, ads, is crucial for staying top of mind with customers. When Anita talks about creating schedules and creating little snippets, little insights that you can constantly go to market with. You don't have to reinvent the wheel every time, but you do need to stay consistent and show up constantly. And that might not be just organically. That might be through your paid media schedule as well. And Anita looks up to brands like LSKD and Fate the Label as brands were nailing this. Number three, stop giving a fuck. Apparently she went for that book title, but it was taken. But Anita emphasises the importance of focusing on your business goals without being overly concerned about others' opinions. No compromise, stick to your goals, know what you want and go for it. For Anita, this mindset shift helped her overcome the intimidation of competing with large enterprises and really set her up for what you heard at the back of that conversation, enjoying what she does every day. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. I hope you've got one or two tips out of it that can help your business. Make sure you go check out Hero Packaging Solution on their website. And if you haven't, go get your hands on a copy of Anita's book, you can buy from all good bookstores. There's even a big one, big marketplace online, starting with A, that you can get it. You'll have it in your hands by the next day. It's called sell anything online. Now, if you enjoyed this episode, please please consider sharing it with a friend or a colleague that you think will resonate with what Anita said today, or leave us a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. I make sure I check out every one of them. And last thing, please support our sponsors, Shopify and Deliver in Person, who make this podcast possible. Before you go, we'd love to invite you to join our free e-commerce learning platform at Descartes campus. Meet other professionals and learn from e-commerce experts to take your business and your e-commerce career to the next level. Register to join campus at addecart.com.au/campus. Now, if you enjoyed today's episode, make sure you share it with a friend or a colleague, or even better. Leave us a review on Spotify or Apple. It really makes a difference. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)