Hero Packaging Full Podcast
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[00:00:00] Hey, this is Besties. Welcome back to the Female Founder World Podcast. I'm Jasmine. I'm the host at the show, and I'm the person behind all things female founder world. Today I'm chatting with Anita Saka. She is the founder of Hero Packaging and the CEO of Hero Packaging, and she is the person behind Sell Anything Online.
That's a book. It's a full ecosystem that you see on TikTok and Instagram, and she is a digital marketing expert. Anita, welcome. Thank you. I'm honored to be here today. Actually, I wanna give a little bit of background on your story, but I also am like very keen to extract all of the things that you know, AB around digital marketing brands, the future of business, because you're someone who spends a lot of time in this space and I wanna get all that knowledge and share it with everyone on the show.
Okay, let's do that. 'cause that's my. Specialty. Like I, I nerd out on that on a Friday night, like reading business reports. So, okay. I need to know what business reports you read. Um, okay, let's start with your story. So you started Hero Packaging in 2018. For people that don't know the business, what are you doing?
Hero Packaging is a sustainable packaging company for [00:01:00] e-commerce retailers. So what we're trying to do is eliminate. All single use plastic when you are shipping packages from yourself or your warehouse or your third party warehouse to your customers. And it kind of started 'cause I was using so much plastic in my previous business, so much plastic.
You had this consumer brand, right? I did, yeah. Um, really small but amazing business and it was like, uh, everything that I imported was. Full, like covered in plastic inside was all this plastic bubble wrap. And then I would take it in these postage bags and it was all plastic and I was like, this looks terrible.
Mm. Um, and I was like, surely I can just figure that out. So anyway, that was kind of a seed right of hero packaging and I thought, I am going to figure this out for myself. Ultimately, that turned into a business because I asked other business owners if they would be interested in it, and they were all like.
Yes. And so we started that business 2018. Um, and it has, I didn't think it was gonna be a massive business. I think some people starting businesses now know that their [00:02:00] company's gonna be massive. I started it like going, it's a really good idea and people are really interested in it. And at that time I started it, I had another business and I was like, this is the life.
I'm a business owner. I've got two companies. I'm like, happy. Amazing. And let's give some milestones because you've sold over 30 million compostable mailers. Yes. To. What of my notes, checks, notes 73 3000 businesses? Yeah. Globally. Correct. We've got 73,000 active customers. Wow. So it's probably not, probably it's a lot more customers.
Um, but right now when I check our data, it's 73,000 active. That's incredible. Thank you. We're gonna go through the story of how you actually built that, but I want to kind of tap into what the business is and what you do a little bit more. 'cause I recommend you and the female founder World group chat all the time.
Thank you. People are always like, we need, we need eco-friendly packaging. Where do I go? And I send them right to hero packaging. Thank you. You guys are global. We are. Well, we're Australian based mostly. Mm-hmm. I would say 90%. And we tried to open up a warehouse in the USA. This was when Trump was first in power.
Yeah. And um, that was really bad. Like we [00:03:00] failed at that. So we were making a lot of money, but we lost a lot of money. 'cause he increased tariffs at that time as well. Yes. Uh, we lost so much money that we were like, let's close it down. So we operate out of Australia, but we do ship internationally. Mm-hmm.
But 'cause our packaging. It looks like a mailer is really light, but when you add a hundred of them, or 2000 of them, or however many you're ordering, it's so heavy. So the shipping cost is really high. So 90% of our customers are in Australia. How did you get your first customers when you started the business?
B2B is not something I understand. Oh, you'd think I would because I have a business that literally reaches business owners, but not my space. I think it is the same as a D two C company. What you need to do is give free shit away all the time. Um, so when I started, I wanted to test demand first. So the first thing I did was ask people that I knew that were in business, would you be interested?
Of course people around you are yes people. So they're like, yes, yes, yes. But they're not giving you money for it. Yeah. And I know that a customer is someone that pays you. So I got all the yeses, gave them some free samples. They were happy with it. Thought this is a business idea. Um, my [00:04:00] husband was like, absolutely not.
No one has paid for it. So. Give me our first 100 customers. If you can do that, I'll leave my job. Um, and so I was like, challenge, accept it. I can do that easily. And so what I did was I, you know, I, I created a landing page on just this, it was so, so bad. Um, a, a photoshopped image of a compostable mailer.
And a fields that said like, name, shipping address, uh, email address. And do you wanna get a free mailer? Ran a Google ad for anyone typing in sustainable packaging or compostable packaging. 20 bucks a day. I am pretty sure it was. They went to that and then we would get signups, right? And so we got a thousand, I think we got over a thousand signups within the first week.
And we slowly built out this website over time and we were waiting for the actual purchase. 'cause that was just free samples. They came back like within two months it was about 70% of them came back. So we had, that's how we got our first 700 customers was. We gave them free stuff and we waited for their return [00:05:00] and their their second purchase.
As someone whose background is in, like my background's in consumer more than B2B, and I always am envious of product based businesses that can sell to businesses. I just feel like that that customer is so much more valuable when you get them in the door Yes. Than just an individual person. Well, they return so much more if they're happy.
Yeah. Yeah. The problem is that we are so. We're so dependent on the fact that businesses have to do well and businesses are growing. In order for us to grow, we can't just simply grow. We are so dependent on other businesses. So it's such a rollercoaster, let me tell you because. Right now, you know, the economy is not great and no matter what anyone says, I don't care because I can see there's a huge dip.
And then there's sometimes interest rates. They decrease them. And then, you know, business takes a little bit of an upturn, but it's so low. And so our packaging that we sell also depletes them. Recession indicator that I never thought about a [00:06:00] hundred percent. Like you can look at it with even any business like McDonald's, I think reduced by 3%.
Year on year revenue. That's the first time ever in McDonald's history. Um, people are just trying to do things at home, trying to be like cost efficient, and what that means for us is that they're choosing plastic again over sustainable options. And so we are competing with plastic. Wow, that's sad. It's very sad.
That's terrible. Okay. I wanna talk a little bit more about your marketing strategy now. We spoke about what it looked like when you were kind of getting started and scrappy. You guys are a big business now. Mm-hmm. What does it look like? I wouldn't say we're a big business. Okay. Compared to a lot of businesses.
You're. Yeah. Okay. So marketing strategy right now is product innovation. So there were two ways to grow. For us. It was international expansion or it was innovate through product. And we decided that international expansion is very expensive and we needed to innovate through product and grow through our current customer base and sell more things to them.
So what we decided to do within the last year and a half [00:07:00] was invest in manufacturing. Machinery to do our own stuff, like make our own boxes, make our own tissue paper, you know, print on things. Wow. And do everything in house in our warehouse in Sydney so we could. Control the entire supply chain and everyone is so into the Made in Australia and not made overseas.
And I don't actually buy into that. I think that there are so many quality products everywhere made anywhere, but I know that that was a huge focus for a lot of consumers. So we decided we'd manufacture in-house and it has gone so well. But it was the biggest risk of my life because we put in so much money to get this machinery and it, and we.
I didn't even know if we were going to get people who were interested in it because we were going to be more expensive than other people who've been doing it for years and years and years. Uh, international suppliers. And I thought, well, we've got Australian labor. It's us doing it. Our machinery's expensive, we've gotta charge more.
People won't buy our [00:08:00] stuff. And they, they did. And our first customer. It was so interesting because the day we got the machine and as we're unwrapping it and the guy is setting it up, we get an email from, do you know Lucas ppo? Mm-hmm. Ppo, um, oh yes. Women. Yes. Yeah. Um, we get an email from them being like, we need 250 boxes, um, ASAP.
And then we were like, well, we can, we can do that. So absolutely you're our first customer. And then they wrote back to us and they were like, actually, we need 2000 boxes. Wow. Um, then can you get that done in a month? And we were like. Yes. Like we've never done it before, but yes, we can do it. Incredible. So it was just awesome and I felt like we did it, we took the risk and it paid off immediately.
How do you think about making those big decisions? Because I think, you know, like at the moment I'm, I've got a couple of decisions that I need to make. Mm-hmm. Just in female found world in my business, and I do often feel like a bit paralyzed about making a big swing. Especially after you get some traction and things are doing well.
'cause you've got so much more to lose. Mm-hmm. How do you come to those [00:09:00] decisions? Do you have a process? Do you have people that you lean on? Yeah, I think it's people. So I love calling people and voice noting people. Yeah. And, uh, saying, and these are people that I know. It's not random people. Yeah. Um, people that I know that I'll call or voice note and say, I am faced with this decision.
I am so stuck. You need to help me. Um, so there's that. And then also I work with my husband who, uh, together we are. So, so different in that I'm like, let's do it. And he's like the financial show that we cannot process this transaction. So I think he's a really good, uh, board to bounce off. I think I don't have a process.
It's more if the market has demanded something from us. And the way that I test that is have over a hundred people emailed us about a product that we don't have. And if so, can we bring that out? Um, if the market is telling us that that's what they want. Then it's a really good risk to take. So over the five years that we were in business up until about [00:10:00] 18 months ago, you know, people had emailed us saying, we want boxes, we want packaging, we want luxury packaging, we want luxury tote bags, we want this, we want that.
We got so many of those. So when I say I took a risk, I took a risk because we had had those emails. Uh, and I guess that's what it is for me. It's like I love taking risks. I, it is in my nature. I. It's not good, right? Like 80% of the time I fall flat on my face, but. I do it because for hero packaging, I do it because I've had the demand.
I've bounced it off some people, and my husband has said the transaction makes sense. So I think that's kind of the process. It's not really set in stone, it's just, and it's not even gut feel, it's just based on the emails that we've received. It also sounds like to me that you're someone who has. Taken lots of risks over time.
And you've built that self trusts as well of knowing that you can execute on something? No, no, no. I don't trust myself. I like, [00:11:00] I feel like I have confidence, but I just take risks. I do things without thinking about them. It has been great and it's been horrible at times. Like I just do things without thinking.
I am so. Type B in my personality that, you know, type A's are very organized. They'll think about everything that like super and type B too. I hate it about myself. Yes. And it it for me, it's like I'm pretty chill. Like if you say you wanna go on a midnight hike and invest in something, I'm cool. I'm there.
You know, like I love that because I. I really think life is so short. I just wanna do in interesting, exciting things. And I don't wanna sell compostable mailers for the rest of my life, but I can go into manufacturing because that opens us up to so many more threads of business. I wanna do things that I can, like hire more people and have a bigger team and feel excited to go to work, and I don't wanna do the same thing over and over again.
How many people are on your team now? We have 15. Okay. I, I used to think the, the more people like the better the business. And now what I'm recognizing [00:12:00] is that people on our team, what I love about them is sometimes I feel like how am I gonna pay for them? Sales have been, haven't been good this month, but what I love about them is they're like, oh.
So my partnerships manager, she's like, oh, well I'll help answer some emails. Mm. And then my customer service girl is. On the production floor, printing orders when she has a break. Um, I just think they step in and do stuff and they're all, all rounders. And for a business of my size, it, it's so nice to have people who aren't like, that's not my job.
Yes, we've got a really nice team. I wanna talk about looking forward now.
So we're looking at um, a pretty like, strange time to be running a business, I think. Yeah. Digital marketing's different. We talked about a potential recession. AI man, AI's gonna change everything. What do you, when you look at marketing and how you're adjusting your strategy and how you think brands should be adjusting their strategy, what do you think that like big [00:13:00] things of the next couple years are gonna be to not fall behind?
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I think people are focusing so much on content. You know, I think what happens is now everyone's like, you gotta do the founder content. You gotta do the behind the scenes. Content, content, content, content, organic content. Let me tell you that probably about 2% of. Like your sales come from organic content, right?
Mm-hmm. So you're focused so much on this, but actually the rest of the sales, the website traffic, it's not coming from content, okay? That's to build a brand. What you're trying to do is make more sales. So I think people need to go back to the foundations of business and people, especially [00:15:00] business owners who are like me and they love taking risks and they're so excited about stuff, they forget that.
SEO traditional SEO on Google, they forget that Google ads, uh, is so important, you know? And I feel like for me, if you can get your SEO right, and this is so boring, but hear me out, okay. If you can get your SEO right. I'm telling you that's thousands of extra people to your site every month. And I feel like people are not excited by it.
'cause it's such a long term strategy. It's old school. People are saying SEO is dead. But when I focused on it last month, and I'm seeing th thousands of people, extra people coming in through SEO and I and I used just a freelancer to do it. I am like, I'm shocked that I haven't done this more, and I, I lose focus.
And you can actually see in my SEO tools, like you can see where I've lost focus and our, our traffic drops, right? But it's such an important [00:16:00] tool. So I would say like SEO Google Ads go back to the basics. Of course. Meta ads, everyone is paying for meta ads at the moment. Um. Of course content, but you need to look at your Google Analytics and you need to say, okay, what?
Where is my traffic actually coming from? If you are doing five things, so say for example you're doing meta ads, Google ads, SEO content, and you're doing Pinterest ads, you need to see what's actually driving the traffic. Some things are really pretty, like Pinterest will give you lots and lots of traffic, but will not convert anybody.
So you need to find out where the sales are coming from, what the traffic is, and I guarantee you. If you can master something boring, like SEO, you are winning. 'cause it's an asset that you can own. When you talk about you, you mentioned the word, like you've focused on this and then you lost focus on it.
Mm-hmm. I wanna know what that means. Yeah. Like when you're talking about focus, like what resources are you putting behind it? Yes. How much of your time, like what are you actually doing when you say I'm focused on something? So this is. Why I love you, because every time I listen to one of your podcast episodes, someone's like, I use influencers.
And you're like, who? How much? Where'd you find them? What are the [00:17:00] tools that you, okay. SEO um, what I mean by that is, so there's a tool called SEMrush. Yes. Which is quite expensive, but free version, um, you can see the traffic to your site with the keywords. Okay. So say for example, you sell active wear, um, and you sell.
Like, let's call it purple activewear. And that's what you, that's the specialty. If you are typing in purple activewear and you put that into SEMrush and you can see that there's about a thousand people searching for it a month, and you are ranked number two or three. That is gonna give you a certain amount of people coming to your site from that search term.
If you are ranked number one, it will tell you how many people are gonna come to your site extra from that search term. Then it'll be based on your conversion rate on your website. Can you convert them into a sale? And so when I say I'm focused on it, I am picking keywords that I want to rank for. So for example, I introduced custom boxes and manufacturing, right?
I needed suddenly to rank really high for custom boxes. So I've got a freelancer who. I charge, oh, [00:18:00] sorry. They charge me a hundred dollars a month and I went to find like a freelancer.com. Did uhhuh freelancer.com or fiverr.com so a hundred dollars a month, you give them five to 10 keywords and they will go and get you white hat back links to What does that mean?
That means that they will have directories, um, websites, articles online, that they will put your. Keywords in that links back to your site for those keywords, and that is the hardest part of SEO. The rest of SEO is super easy. It's making sure your product descriptions are great, making sure your images are labeled properly, making sure you've got blog posts, you know you can do all that stuff yourself, and you can learn about it on YouTube for free.
You can learn about that. Yeah. Yeah. You don't need to pay anyone for that. But the backlinks, that's a real pain in the butt. Mm. So I pay for those and um, sometimes I'm like, oh, is it worth paying? And I stop it. So when I say I'm not focused on it, I just stop paying the freelancer. Six months later, our SEO rankings have gone down.
Our traffic has decreased. I can see sales are lower. And I'm like, what am I thinking? Uh, and so then I repay and I can see it. Uh, and it takes like [00:19:00] about. Three months to see the effect. But man, like I'm telling you, SEO is so underused for so many business owners 'cause it's not exciting. Yeah. It's not sexy.
You dont get the dopamine head that you get when you post. A founder found a blog on YouTube. Exactly. Or like when you're like posting a reel and you're like, oh my god. 100 like yeah, I'm amazing. Yes. Means nothing for your business. Mm. Okay. I love this take uh, I love that you're using a freelancer and it's a hundred bucks or something like that a month.
Yeah. That's very interesting to me. 'cause you are famously pretty anti. Agencies. I am. What made you have that experience or like that thought? What was the experience? Inter-agency. Yeah. It's because I've used agencies. I'm sure you've used agencies. I've been really fucked over by paid ads agency before you.
Yeah. That's not good. I am. They charge so much money. Okay, so let's talk about meta ads agencies, for example. I think, you know, anywhere from a thousand dollars a month to 5,000, $10,000 a month, depending on what your revenue is. And they will set up your ads for you. They'll sometimes think of creatives for you and then they'll tell you what to do and then you'll say, I [00:20:00] wanna increase budget.
'cause they're doing so well. And they say, oh, I'm so nervous to do that. And they won't do it. They don't listen to you. Then they start monitoring it. You get sold to by the head of that agency and then a young little person who is. You know, 19 years old who is just getting in there as an intern is managing your account.
Mm. Uh, they're scared to increase or decrease the, the amount that they spend per day because it'll ruin the report that they give you because everything relearns, I just think you can do it yourself. Yeah. You can save in and we are talking to like, what's the audience of your podcast? What, how, what, what size of business?
Oh my God, it ranges so much. Does it? Okay. We have, we have folks who are just getting started. Yes. And then we've got a woman who listens whose business is like, you know, just sold for a billion dollars. Okay. I'm not talking about the billion dollar girl. Yeah. Okay. I'm talking to the people who are just starting or.
Potentially going up to $5 million. Yep. Okay. Which would be most of them, would they? Most? Yeah. And I would say to you that you need to save money. The only thing I want for you in your business is cash in your bank account. That is all I want. Mm-hmm. And imagine you [00:21:00] spending three hours a week. Just watching YouTube videos and implementing as you're watching YouTube because you can do your Google ads yourself.
You can do your Facebook ads yourself, and the reason you're not doing it is because it's too much time. It's very inconvenient to do it because you've got other things to do. It's boring. It's boring, and it just seems like too much. You've got other things to do, like pack orders and create content and, and you've gotta like order inventory.
Just do that instead of paying an agency, try that for six months because I guarantee you, you spend three hours a week on it, you'll be a master. You'll be better at it than any agency. We often recommend someone on the show, and we've got a, actually a workshop that's in the bestie dashboard for members on this, and her name is, um, Mimi, Bonnie, someone in the community worked with her and has just been recommending her over and over again.
Amazing. And now she's like the person everyone uses. Her, what makes her difference is she sets it up for you. She teaches you how to do it. Yeah. And then she buggers off. I love that. And then you're running it and you're left knowing how to do it rather than having this ongoing, massive overhead in your [00:22:00] business.
So that's not an agency to me. Yes. I call that I, I did start something like that last year. Then it got too busy. But it's called the anti agency. And an Inter-agency. That's a lot of projects. Business for you set up. Yeah. Yeah. Too much. Set it up. Teach people. And piss off. Yes, it's fan it. Such a great idea.
There needs to more that. There needs to be more of that, actually. That's really interesting to me. Okay. Let's talk about a little bit more about content and influencers. Because you are a content creator yourself. You have this incredible book, you've got this TikTok channel. People know you as this business guru now.
Mm-hmm. And I wanna know how do people cut through over the next few years? You talked about that founder content is getting maybe a bit stale. We're kind of all doing the same stuff. Mm-hmm. I wanna be posting more founder content in the back of my head. Yes. I always think it's such a missed opportunity that we're not doing more about building this business, but I'm also feeling very uninspired.
Yes. Because I'm seeing the same stuff over and over again and I don't know how to cut through. Do you know who you should watch? Uh, Frank Grief. Do you watch him? Oh yes. His founder content. He's doing all the AI stuff now. He's doing AI stuff. Yes. But his [00:23:00] founder content is the, the founder content that I absolutely adore.
Now everyone's gonna create it, so it's gonna be the same. Yeah. However, what I love about him is he does things that are outrageous. And so when you are watching it and he's talking about his day, but then he's got comments of, um, people on TikTok or on Instagram, and it's about how much they hate him, um, while he's like showing his day.
That's, and I just think it makes me stick around 'cause it's so funny to read that, but then watch what he's doing. I think that founder content, have you seen this girl on TikTok? She talks about selfish content versus unselfish content. No. And a lot of founders, what they do is when they create founder content, it is so selfish.
Here's what I did. Um, I'm pretty amazing. Like I went on this podcast and that's what I'll be doing today. 'cause like, I love this podcast, but it's very selfish, right? So people will watch it for like 10 seconds and be like, Hmm, I'm gonna scroll. Can you turn that selfish content into unselfish content? So.
You know, I went on the Female Founder World podcast and there are like three marketing tips that we spoke [00:24:00] about, which were so new and so different, and this is what they were, and then it's like B-roll clips of you and me talking, but it's about learning for other people. So can you do founder content that makes people learn something or feel inspired or aspire to?
That's what I want. I think when it comes to content, like I said before, you have to realize it does not always lead to conversions on your website. I think what you honestly have to think about when it comes to content is are you showing people what you stand for? Are you showing people the enemy that you are creating?
And if you are creating an enemy out of something, so let's say hero packaging, the enemy is single use plastic. Am I creating enough of an enemy to have so many people polarize that they're building this like cult-like following of me and the business? And I try and do that as a brand with single use plastic, and me as a brand, personal brand, which is inter-agency.
Learn everything yourself. Just like, watch my 32nd video and I can teach you SEO and [00:25:00] ads and you never need to use an agency again. I think that having that enemy or like standing for something with your content is like, that's the way to build community. Mm. I love that. Yeah. That's such a clear point of view.
Can we keep brainstorming stuff for female found world? Yeah. I wanna use your brain. Yeah. Like, this is amazing. What other ideas do you have for us? What else should we be doing? There's so much. Let's talk after. 'cause I feel like there's so much to do it. We were talking before it and um, before we like turned the mic.
On if, if, uh, for you guys listening and you already had so many good ideas. So we need to like, just have a, a separate brainstorm, I think. Who do you think is doing it really well? Founder content. So Frank Reef. Yes. A hundred percent. These are all Australian. Okay, so bear with me. But the internet global guys, you can look 'em up.
Yeah, you can look 'em up. Yeah. Um, but fantastic content. Okay? Mm-hmm. Um, Rach from TBH Skincare. Hers is a little bit different and not everyone can do it. The reason her founder content is so bloody good is because she and her business is innovating product constantly and she has something to talk about.
So when you have something to talk about and you make people curious and interested and you hype it up a [00:26:00] little bit and you don't tell them what it is, and then you tell them what it is, they're kind of in invested in this whole story and the process of it. She's launching new products, she's launching into new retailers, she's launching into international retailers, and she's taking you on the journey of how she's.
Doing it. I'm so bought into her story. I love it so much. Mm-hmm. She knows exactly what she's doing too. Mm-hmm. She is so prepared. She has content that she filmed a year ago that she's bringing into it now about the new brand name of her business, but she filmed that a year ago knowing that that's what was is gonna sell today.
It's so smart. The, the way to replicate that as any small business owner is to do new shit every day. Like try and do something. Have you heard of, uh, oggi? Mm-hmm. I heard someone talk about this on a podcast and I'm really sorry that I can't, um, credit who it was 'cause I can't remember. I think it was the Spanx founder's husband.
Mm-hmm. And he basically said, miss Sogi. One interesting thing that you should do every single year to talk about, and in business you should have a business [00:27:00] oggi. What is this one interesting pivot or one interesting thing that you can do, that you can talk about and stretch that content for a year that people are so curious about?
I love that and I think we all need to do that. So for me, I'm like when we almost failed as a business at the end of 2022. Don't let any bad, bad thing, like get in the way of a good story. So I used that as my story for a year and now we've moved into manufacturing and that I'm stretching that content out and that story.
Can you think of interesting things that you can do every month or every year that that is what you are gonna talk about? I love that I saw something similar. Um, I don't know who it was, maybe. Maybe it was Gary V was speaking about this for people who wanna become content creators and influencers and around, the best thing to do is have an interesting life.
Yes. Like have an interesting life that you can talk about and show people. And it's the same thing in the business. Like do interesting things in the business and then you'll have something to talk about and create content. Content about. Do do new things. There's another, um, oh my God. Have you seen Attention Seeker?
No. Joni Mitchell, I think her name or Joni [00:28:00] is her name. Joanie. Attention Seeker is writing this down, one of the best accounts on TikTok, and she's doing this rejection therapy where she is going out on the street and asking people to coffee and basically getting a yes or no. She's taking them to coffee and she's the one of the best content creators I've ever seen on TikTok.
Okay, amazing. And that's a big call. Um, and the way that she does it is your life might be boring, but she's created something interesting. Yes. She's making people go, oh my God, is that person gonna say yes or no? She's meeting some interesting people and some people are hard. No. You know, and you just wanna watch that.
Yeah. It's a really easy series to do. Make your life interesting. Make your life interesting. And then you'll have something to talk about. Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about things that are gonna shift with this potential recession. Yes. What do you, what? What's the outlook and what are you seeing? We talked a little bit about how your, you don't think things are looking good based on what you're seeing.
And I think that's really interesting 'cause you have this overview mm-hmm. Of how small businesses are doing and how businesses are doing. Mm-hmm. Uh, which I think is such an indi interesting indicator and data point. To be able to refer to. How do you think that's going to [00:29:00] impact the rest of us who are launching building growing businesses?
I think there are some businesses that are blitz scaling and they're doing so well, and we're gonna ignore them for now. The majority of businesses, which is probably around 70 to 80% of businesses, they're not doing so well. I can see that. I can see that in their packaging purchases. I can see that when I talk to them on sell Anything online.
I can see that in my dms, and they are not doing well because not of what they're doing, but because the economy is such now, a lot of them built businesses during Covid and it was such a boom. Everyone was so happy with business and e-comm, and then there was a slump where everyone went back into store.
That slump is not over. Plus, there are now these enormous, ridiculous. Tariffs that have come into place. Um, international expansion is gonna slow down. Businesses are gonna close down. Mm. And it sounds like doom and gloom. It's a really great time to think about a new product. It's a really great time to find new [00:30:00] manufacturers.
It's really great time to, um, what do you say when, when bears go into hibernation? Oh yeah. And fix your business. Fix your business. At every revenue point, are you profitable? And if not. Is there a way for you to kind of go into hibernation and fix the business from the inside out? I think there was a culmination of, well, actually two things.
One is too many businesses started. I don't think everyone is meant to be a business owner, but everyone wants to be a business owner. That's one thing. And then, um, post covid, and then the third thing, sorry, is the tariffs. So because of all of this, it's like the economy is a bit down, the tariffs are there too many people starting businesses and, and in competing industries.
It's a really, really hard time. Something that you mentioned before, and this is deviating a little bit, but you're like everyone's back in store. Talk to me about that a little bit more and how that's impacting online business. I don't know what it's like in New York. Yeah. And, and what it's like there.
But in Australia it's the physical presence of products that make people buy stuff. You're buying a gift, you go into store. Um, sometimes you, you're shopping online for yourself, but I do find a [00:31:00] lot of people are shopping back in the store. And so retail presence is really important. And I think another thing for TBH skincare is what they've done really well, and she also owns Boost Labs.
Um, they have a really great retail strategy and mixed with the, the online strategy. D two C is, it can't just be D two C, it's D two C and B2B through wholesale. And so I think you need to be able to leverage both. If you don't, I mean, and then there's also Amazon, but if you can't leverage all of them, you're going to fail at some point.
I think you need to be. Everywhere. So I think about it like two things. One is physical presence and one is mental availability, right? And physical presence is you're there, it's an impulse buy, you buy it, or you go to buy this, and then you buy that as well. And mental availability is online where you're having to show up all the time to every.
Every person through meta ads, through Google, through SEO, through content creation. And that's mental availability. Have you shown up enough for people to remember you? But I think it's such a difficult thing to do, and when people go in [00:32:00] store, it's such an easy little purchase. If you're already there, they'll buy it.
You've given us so many good tips. I'm gonna ask you for one more. Mm-hmm. And that is. For your best resource recommendations, things that people who, my God are out there. God, they're building the entrepreneurial that they should go and check out. Okay. I've actually written mine down. I love it when people pull out a phone or pull out a list.
Yeah, because I want, I wanna make sure I get these. All right. I appreciate that. So the book that I recommend to everyone, no matter what size you are, and I've read it six bazillion times, is how brands Grow. Have you read that book? No, I've never even heard of that book. How Brands Grow is, and there's a B2B version as well, so if you're in B2B, but how Brands Grow is by far the best book for businesses.
Um, the podcast that I recommend is this one, but also D two C. Mm-hmm. Um, I also like limited supply. Uh, and then a newsletter is the Nick Sharma newsletter. Yes. Do you read his? Yes. So I read it religiously and you can go back, I think two years worth of newsletters. It comes out every Monday for us in Australia.
Um, and I would say [00:33:00] you need to find something that is absolutely your own in order to have good mental health in business. Because starting a business is so bloody easy. Let me tell you. Getting to a million dollars is actually quite easy. Getting from 1 million to 5 million is. Hard, I don't swear. Um, and then even further than that, it's like requires different people, different things.
Mm. You need to find something that you can not. You need to not work for an hour a day, you need to find something for yourself. For me, what I have found is pickleball, as you can see, my outfit here, um, you need to, I found pickleball and also jogging, and I'm a terrible jogger. I had, I had no hobbies. I need to get a hobby.
So I had no hobbies as of about six months ago, and I actually, no. I went to New York 12 months ago and I saw an indoor pickleball court and I was like. That's the thing that I'm gonna do. One day came to Australia, no one has, it turns out near our warehouse, they have this tiny little pickleball court.
And I tried it and I fell in love with it. I've made every single person in my life play it. [00:34:00] We play it on Sundays, we built a pickleball, um, court in our backyard and I'm like, this is the thing that I want to do. Yeah. And it's a thing that I turn off my phone for an hour. That's a big thing. Yeah. For a business owner.
And then I also make sure that I am jogging, even if it's like a one kilometer jog, I'll do that for myself. I think it's made me the best version of myself, um, because if I can turn off my phone, what I'm finding, and I dunno if the same thing for you is my entire value base and how I think of myself is how much engagement I get on social media.
I'm gonna stop it. This is too real. And everyone is like, you gotta not give a fuck. That's not true. Everyone cares. Yeah. The biggest content creators, the biggest business owners care so much. They delete posts. You can see it. Yes. They hide likes. Why? Because they care so much. I care a lot. You care a lot, right?
Mm-hmm. I need to get off my phone. Yeah. And the way to make me myself feel good is to. Play pickleball. Anita, thank you so much. This has been the most tactical helpful episode. I'm gonna put all of those links in the show notes that [00:35:00] you guys listening can go and check them out very easily. But where can people find you?
Where can they find hero packaging and where can they get your book? Okay. I'm on TikTok and Instagram at Sell Anything online. Hero Packaging is Hero packaging. LinkedIn is just my name, but it's spelled with a little extra a you'll find it. Um, and you can get my book on Amazon. Amazing. Thank you so much.
Thank you. This was awesome.
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