(upbeat music) Looking to grow your business on TikTok? Introducing TikTok ads. With TikTok ads manager, the possibilities for your business are endless. Reach over one billion active users across the globe, unleash your creativity with their range of advertising solutions and stay on top of your campaign's performance. Join the eight and a half million Aussies who are on TikTok every month, alongside over 350,000 Aussie businesses already thriving. Whether you want to increase brand awareness, drive sales or connect with your audience, TikTok ads manager has got you covered. Ready to take your business to the next level? Try TikTok ads manager today and watch your business grow on TikTok. - 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, Bushie. - Today's checkout features Jared Carlin and Jimmy Shamim, the co-founders behind Plant with Willow. Plant with Willow is an innovative, smart home technology designed to keep house plants alive. I mean, who hasn't had that problem? Their startup has captured the attention of plant lovers and tech enthusiasts alike with a successful Kickstarter campaign and now, hot off the press, a relationship with Bunnings. - Jared and Jimmy, welcome to the checkout. Great to have you guys here. We've had a great conversation on our main episode around everything that you're building with Plant with Willow. We covered everything from how you created your Kickstarter campaign for your plant sensors to stop people from killing plants all the way through to your recent contract and distribution deal with Bunnings, which is hugely exciting. But we're here to learn more about you both. I've got five quick questions for you. Number one, what's the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online? Jimmy, kick us off. - I'm not buying much online, but I did Uber Eats English tea bags, working very late at night. I went to make a cup of tea. In Perth, and there was no tea bags left, and I was like, I need my English tea, so I Uber Eats a box of PG tips. - Was the delivery driver confused? - No, but the worst part of this story is I paid for PG tips. I've got a box of Mandra tea because they're over stock, and I couldn't even have a cup of tea either. - Oh, no. I thought you were going to say you went to put the milk in and there's no milk. - No, well, that had been worse. Yeah, that had been a worse nightmare. (laughing) - What are you, Jared? - Honestly, I do not know. This is like, yeah. - You're a clean cut buyout. - I'm a clean cut. I don't often treat myself to goods. So outside of clothes and some tech, that's me. - Well, I'm going to kick you off with number two. Which retailer has inspired you most recently? - Yeah, I think with the world, which do some pretty cool plant care products, I was recently buying some stuff with them, and definitely something that we want to focus on from a D2C side of things. They've just got a really great post purchase, kind of that ad to card checkout confirmation page upsells, and that's definitely, yeah, it's just personalized deals on confirmation pages rather than generic thank you for your order, it's here's what else you can buy, time limit around it. So just some really cool integrations there that we would love as Willow to start looking at, and from a personal point of view, definitely get sucked into that, yeah. Yeah, go on, yeah, one more. - Do you find that the horticultural industry is very advanced when it comes to online and digital, like is there much inspiration out there for you to borrow from, or do you have to go to other categories? - There's some amazing and well constructed brands I think I find from that perspective, maybe not so from the tech outside of the one I suppose that I'd recently experienced, but definitely aspirational from content, from styling, from things like that. There's some pretty cool brands. - Jimmy, any retailers inspired you? - Yeah, vital, actually, from a customer experience perspective, like they took vitamins, and then I'll write them in as well if you say it over here, but I'm gonna say vitamins. There's a vitamins, and I got a subscribe to it, and then I get my packet a day, and it's got my name on it. And I'm just like that, it's just, what an amazing customer experience, and fair play to them. I think like us as Willow, we look at A, we can improve our customers experience every day, and just those little tiny things that we're at. I'm about vitamin packet, and I'm like, oh, look, it's me. - Yeah, that's cool, yeah. - Showing your age there with your vitamin packets. - Yeah, I know. (laughs) - All right, number three, name a piece of tech that you or your e-commerce business couldn't live without. Jimmy, I'll stick with you there. - A piece of tech, I'm probably gonna say my PC that I've built. Like I said, I'm a tech person, I love tech, and I was like, I'm gonna build a PC, and I think my partner complies know how much time I'm spending my office around my PC. I just love it, I'm always tweaking with it, and adding little bits and whatnot, so. I'm gonna go on my PC. - I could imagine, there must be a beast of a PC. - It is, it's a beast of a PC in terms of internally, but I don't have all the likes and stuff like that, but I've got a really cool case. I can't remember where it's from, but it's got a wooden front to it, it's really aesthetically pleasing, it's just really cool, but yeah, I'm on it all the time. - That's awesome, what about you, Jared? - I think for home and our office, I couldn't live without our Google home setup. We very much, music blaring in the office, every room, there's a little nest speaker or a display unit, or the whole ecosystem setup. As soon as I get home, it's straight cast Spotify to a speaker or to all speakers. I think it's really, it shows when you go visit other people's offices, and it's just quiet. It's, yeah, I definitely couldn't do it, so. - Music, I'd be worried if the connected home wasn't important for you. - Yeah, I mean, Wi-Fi, we should take it back a level. - Love it. All right, number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into? Jared. - I am a massive fantasy nerd, I read all. So, Way of Kings, start with that. That's a great book one in a pretty amazing series. Otherwise, you'd have to do another hour podcast if you wanted all my suggestions. (laughing) - All right, but that's a good like zone out for you, is it? - Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not plants or business. It's made a book, if authors could keep up and actually release the next book instead of waiting nine years plus. George, I'm on looking at you. - Yep, give up on that one. - Yeah. - What about you, Jimmy? - I was gonna say out to cart. It's a great book, that's nice. Outside of it, I don't know, it's a high performance podcast in the one base out of the UK. They got a lot of elite athletes on there. And business and actors. I recently had Matthew McConaughey on there, but just around how people get into that mindset of high performance, I'm not a person who ever talks about podcasts to be honest. I'm not that person who says how you should listen to this, but I took away some really cool tips, especially from elite athletes, 'cause they have to be operated in a certain level of mentality every single day, right? - Yep, yep, good tips, good tips. All right, last question I have for you both. What's your biggest challenge today? - Time, it has to be, it's, yeah, just the amount of stuff we've always got underway or coming forth, it's, yeah, just honestly, it's how much can we actually get done? Whether that's a capacity, whether that's growing, the team to deliver on it, I think, it's less, I think Jimmy might touch on it, but we consider ourselves to be great problem solvers. So, you know, challenges are certainly welcome, and we deal with every day. It's just how long it takes to kind of get everything done, right? - Yeah, to echo that, to a degree, I'd say prioritization. Time is time, and it's how you prioritize. Every idea we have internally is a good idea, not what we want, but let's say we have so many ideas, so many things we want to do are chasing industries, but how do you prioritize them? And I think that is the biggest challenge, currently, as we scale it, making sure that we're prioritizing and right things. - And I can imagine that flows onto culture, too, because you both strike me as great ideas people, great executors, but then as that flows onto the team, I bet the team get infused with all these other ideas and things they want to do, and you kind of might have to play the bad guy sometimes to go, actually, no, no, no, no, no, we can't do all that focus. So there's that fine balance between inviting new ideas and prioritizing the right things because there is limited time and resources. - Yeah, absolutely. We have such a creative thinking team. Honestly, I couldn't speak highly enough of them. The work that I was in and the quality of what comes out, honestly, is amazing. But everybody is this forward thinking about the type we're able to come down to, then we all have to be accountable to each other. No, we prioritise them at time, and that is the biggest challenge for everybody in the business. - Yeah, it's definitely, you know, our core values as a team is around making the best product that we can, and then around that collaboration piece about delivering on it right. - Beautiful. Jimmy, Jared, thank you so much for joining us in the checkout and thank you for your mission on saving house plants all over the world. - Amazing, thank you very much. - Cheers, thank you. - To hear more from Jared and Jimmy, jump back into episode 439, where they share how plant with Willow went from being a COVID idea to being in connected households all over the world. They tell us about their recent success of being stocked in bunnings and how they prioritise all of the opportunities in front of them, and they let us in on the leading cause of house plant deaths in Australia. And I bet you'll guilty of it, too. Thanks for listening, and until next time, keep adding to cart. (upbeat music)
In this checkout chat, Nathan sits down with Jared and Jimmy from Plant with Willow, a tech startup helping people keep their houseplants alive. From Jared’s love for Google Home and his must-read The Way of Kings, to Jimmy’s obsession with his custom-built PC and love of the High Performance podcast, the duo share their passion for tech, books, and building a fun, dynamic team culture. The pair express admiration for plant care brand We the Wild and the seamless customer experience of Vitable and explain why prioritisation and time management are the biggest challenges in scaling their business, especially with exciting partnerships like their recent deal with Bunnings.
Check out our full-length interview with Jared and James here:
From Kickstarter to Bunnings: Staying Alive with Tech Startup Plant With Willow | #439
This episode was brought to you by:
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About your guests:
Co-founder of Plant with Willow and a natural-born innovator, Jared Carlin has over 12 years of experience in product innovation. With a knack for identifying untapped opportunities, nurturing them from concept to commercial success, Jared's strategic focus on innovation has fueled the development of cutting-edge products and services. Originally from Western Australia’s picturesque southwest, Jared is a proud Curtin University graduate who brings a down-to-earth approach to forward-thinking ideas.
James Shamim brings a wealth of experience in business development, commercial operations, and finance, with a career spanning public, private, government, and startup sectors. He ventured into tech in 2016 and, prior to co-founding Plant with Willow, became a key player in a Deloitte Fast 50 tech-winning company. Known as Willow’s English Aussie, James is a savvy generalist with a passion for all aspects of business, seamlessly navigating strategy, finance, and operations.
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, X or email.
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