#63. How To Build Your Ecommerce Empire, Interview With Doone Roisin | Podcast

Alissa: 0:16

I am so excited. Today’s episode makes me wanna sing, uh, who run the world, girls. We want you all to meet Doone Roisin. She is the founder of Female Startup Club.

Vira: 0:51

Hello everyone and welcome to Flowium Podcast. We are email marketers at email marketing agency called Flowium. We are very, very passionate about email marketing and because we love what we do, we want to share our insights with you. And Flowium is one of the fastest growing email marketing agencies in the world and we specialize in providing premium full service e-commerce email marketing experience to all of our clients, delivering the right message to the right person at the right moment. That’s what we are here about. And I am really excited about today’s guest, Alissa. Please introduce the guest of the day.

Alissa: 1:30

I am so excited. Today’s episode makes me want to sing, uh, who run the world, girls. So our episode today is going to inspire you. So if you are not ready to get off your butt and start taking action and feeling inspired, then this is— consider this your official trigger warning. This is not the episode for you, but you should still stay and listen because it’s going to be awesome. So everybody who’s listening, thanks for joining us today. We want you all to meet Doone Roisin. She is the founder of Female Startup Club, and you can already tell by the name of the company that this is going to be a pretty badass podcast episode. So what is Female Startup Club? It is a media platform that exists to help women in progress learn through insightful podcasts, technical courses, and resources. Their website is the best. If you go on, it’s amazing. It literally says, think of us as your hype girl, and everybody needs a hype girl. Or if you’re a guy and you prefer a hype boy, I get that. But everyone needs a hype girl. Everyone needs one. So Female Startup Club is a major platform, and basically what it does is it helps female founders find, if you could call it that. But really, it exists to really provide inspiration, give as much insight, provide as many resources as you need in order to help you become a female founder and really move forward and impact the world through your business and through your ideas. And we are especially excited for this episode because Floeum is actually in the process of doing some very, very big things with Female Startup Club. But less from me, more from Dune. She said before we started recording that she’s a talker, and I’m really excited for it because sometimes we get some guests who aren’t quite talkers. So we’re looking forward to this. June, can you say hi to everyone? And by the way, everybody, she has a cool accent, so stay tuned.

Doone: 3:22

Oh my God, guys, firstly, wow, what an impressive introduction. I am so flattered and I feel so grateful for all of those kind words and what you’ve said about Female Startup Club. I am just grinning from ear to ear, which you can’t see me right now, but I’m smiling a huge smile. So thank you so much. I’m I’m the founder of Female Startup Club and also a non-alcoholic wine company, which is kind of in R&D at the moment. And I forget if there was a question already, if I’m just saying hi, but that’s who I am. That’s me in like a very one quick sentence. Where do you guys want to start?

Vira: 4:24

We want to actually start with quick blitz Q&A. Yeah, just to get to know you and like to warm us up.

Doone: 4:32

Cool. Let’s do it.

Vira: 4:33

This is like this or that. Texting or calling?

Doone: 4:36

Texting, definitely.

Vira: 4:38

Yes, I’m the same. Okay. And the next one, if you were a food, What would you be?

Doone: 4:43

Oh my God, like a pickle because they’re so delicious.

Vira: 4:47

And it is so random too.

Alissa: 4:49

I love that. I love that.

Vira: 4:50

I love how random your answers are. Statement necklace or statement earrings?

Doone: 4:56

Oh, earrings. They suit my face better.

Alissa: 4:58

Me too. I’m the same way. I’m the same way.

Doone: 5:00

I love necklaces though, but I’m more of an earrings gal.

Alissa: 5:03

Yeah, me too. Me too. What is a place that you most want to travel to?

Doone: 5:08

Oh. Let’s see, there are so many. I haven’t been to Mexico. I really want to go there. I feel like that’s so like basic. Are we allowed to swear on here? I feel like that’s kind of basic bitch to want to go to like Tulum in Mexico, but like I actually really do want to go. That aside, I’d also love to go to Japan. I love Asia and it’s on my list.

Alissa: 5:30

Very cool. Very cool. Mexico is a fun place. I would definitely recommend for sure. Okay. If you could only choose one song to play every time you walked into a room for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Doone: 5:40

Oh, well, Well, I am a Justin Bieber believer.

Vira: 5:46

Yes.

Doone: 5:47

And I actually walked down the aisle at my wedding to his song with David Guetta. I don’t know how you say his last name, but that To You song. And I just love it so much. And that obviously reminds me of that day. So I would say.

Alissa: 6:02

I love that so much. That’s the best. That is the best.

Doone: 6:05

My husband and I’s first date was at a Justin Bieber concert. And we just met him.

Alissa: 6:10

Wow. You are such a badass. I love that. I love that so much. That is amazing. Okay, and very last one. This is a very silly question. Socks or mattress?

Doone: 6:19

Oh, mattress, 100%. I want to sleep in a cloud all the time. If I could spend more time in my bed, I would.

Alissa: 6:28

I love that. I love that. And this is also another, like, very random fact about Doone. Doone, you’re gonna have to help me with the pronunciation. Doone is now, like, an avid, like, fruit pitcher collector. Like, glass fruits. And there’s one that she’s specifically looking for. So if anyone has a hookup, You need to help her. It’s— what is it called? A car— carnis—

Doone: 6:48

It’s a capsicum jug that I really want. And like, capsicums here, I think they’re called red peppers, but in Australia they’re capsicums. And I found it recently at this restaurant. It’s new in London called Ave Mario, and it’s so cool. And they’re all kind of like this vintage Italian theme, and they have all these fun fruit and veggie jugs. And I’m clearly obsessed. I really, really want one, and they won’t sell me one. And the supplier also won’t sell me one, and I’m just devastated because I’m going to have to resort to crime and I’m going to have to steal one. I’m not kidding. I’m totally kidding.

Vira: 7:26

First episode of How I Met Your Mom, if you guys ever watched it, remember they stole the blue horn thing from— never mind. That’s how I learned English. I watched like a lot of American TV shows, so that’s why I have like a lot of references. Well, anyways, how did you come to be an entrepreneur? Tell us a bit about yourself. Were you like exposed to entrepreneurship as a kid at all? Maybe, did maybe you had like a lemonade stand, or how did it all start for you?

Doone: 7:56

Yes. Oh my gosh. So I really love to talk about the beginnings of where I come from, because for a long time in my life, I was actually really embarrassed about my upbringing. I was raised by a single mom and, you know, I was her only baby and we didn’t have any money. We were totally poor and we lived this really unique lifestyle. And what I mean by that is we lived in a town where there was like 90 people. It was on the side of a mountain, you know, dirt road, creek, outdoor toilet, no electricity, to paint the picture. Wow. And so my life then looks very different to my life today. And I wouldn’t say I was really exposed to entrepreneurship from a young age. I certainly didn’t know what that word was. I’d never heard the term startup until I was like in my 20s. But I guess I was just born with like this hustle gene. And I think I got it from my mom because she was such a hustler. And, you know, she would do things to get by. She would repurpose furniture. She would, you know, we lived off the land. We would eat our own veggies. We would kill our own chickens, all that kind of stuff. So I grew up in a really different way. And when I kind of have these few turning points in my life, and the first one is when I reached I don’t know how old I was, maybe I was 14 or something like that. My paternal grandparents, so my dad’s mum and dad, said that they would like to give me the opportunity to go away to boarding school. And so my life kind of changed really suddenly. We’d kind of moved to a small town by that point because where we lived originally, I was like the only person in my grade for a couple of years. There was like 20 kids in the school, you know, like you couldn’t really raise children into adulthood there. So we moved to a small town, and then my grandparents decided to send me to boarding school. So I went to this fancy all-girls private school and was kind of thrust into this different life and this different lifestyle. But I also was put into a situation where I saw what was possible in the world. And, you know, when I was younger, I was, you know, interested in lots of different things, but I didn’t really know what was out there. Like, I, I feel like I didn’t have a lot of dreams when I was younger that I can remember anyway. And so I, I went to school and for my senior years. And I just really was exposed to all sorts of different people and what money could do really, and what wealth could do and what wealth could provide you, i.e., education. And so it was kind of then that I was really interested in getting experience. I wanted to learn from anyone. I started wanting to work in fashion. I was like, what am I going to do? How am I going to like live my life kind of thing? So I did the whole go to uni thing, dropped out. I wound up enrolling in this kind of like an arts visual communications program and studied graphic design, web design, all that kind of stuff. It was pretty varied. And my goal at that point was to work in fashion, but to work in like a glossy fashion magazine like Harper’s Bazaar or something like that. And I tell this part of the story because for me to like explain the kind of hustle that I had at this time, I love to share this bit. And so in Brisbane at that time, which is kind of a small city in Australia, there wasn’t really any glossy magazines that you could work the same way that there are in big cities around the world. but there was this free magazine that was printed with our national newspaper and it would go out, you know, maybe every Sunday or something like that. And so I was like, okay, well obviously I need to get experience there. So what am I gonna do about it? I went to the local nursery and I bought a thyme herb and I took it home. I potted it up in this like cute little pot and I wrote on my business card, could I have a moment of your time? And I put it in, I don’t know why I did this, but I thought it would be really smart to dress up as a delivery driver and actually go into the office so I could like snoop I get my like oversized high-vis shirt and like my little Nikes and I stroll on in and say, I’ve got a delivery for the director and like get to have a little peek about. And anyway, long story short, the next day she calls me and she’s like, you know, we, we don’t have any internships, but we would love to give you one. So I landed like a 12-week internship there. And this was kind of the beginning of a string of things that I was doing just to get free kind of experience under my belt so that I could eventually one day get a job. And so that’s kind of like one example, another example of something I did at that time was I’d done experience at another magazine and I saw that there was this job advertised for a company and the application process said, send your email to yocheckthisshitout@laundrycreative.com. And I was like, cool, everyone’s going to send their resume to that email. Like, what am I going to do to stand out? So I went home, I pulled apart this magazine that I’d done all the layout and design and like branding and stuff for. And I stuck it up on my wall and I like kind of in 3 rows and I wrote, yo, check this shit out, www.dunarogine.com. And I like covered it in sparkles, like sequins and painted it. And I text my friend and basically I had a little bit of insight because I knew that their building was glass. And so they kind of looked out onto the river and I would run past it every day on the boardwalk. So I knew what it was like. And I text my friend and I was like, do you want to come and deface a building with me at 3:00 AM? And he was like, I was like, okay, sure. So we go down and we stick it up on the outside of the building facing in. And so when they would come in in the morning, all the team would be able to see, yo, check this shit out, with my URL. And left a little note for security, was like, please don’t take this down, like, this is a job application. Um, and anyway, again, like, the CEO called me the next morning at 9 AM and was like, this is amazing. I remember him posting all about it on Facebook and like kind of being like, this is so cool. So anyway, I was doing those kind of things, I was getting free experience, and then the next turning point in my career, which is kind of where entrepreneurship more comes into the picture, was my friend had told me about this company that was like launching in Sydney. It was in 2012, which was a time in Australia where e-commerce and online shopping, it just wasn’t really known. The market like wasn’t educated about that at that time. And so this company, The Iconic, had launched into the market. They were a funded startup. They were doing really exciting things and they were in the fashion space. And so my friend told me about it and he was like, hey, you should try and get internship and work there? And I was like, yeah, I should. So I packed my bags, moved to Sydney, transferred my, like, you know, admin job to the Sydney office, got myself an internship, and basically started working, like, before work, lunchtimes, after work, like, any time that I could spend time being on my computer doing anything I could to help them, I was doing it because I was like, I really want a full-time job with these people. So I did that for about 3 weeks. And then the managing director at the time was like, I remember he came to me one day and he was like, hey, If you want a job here, you’ve got it. I want you to be the person that creates our social media. I want you to be the person who creates our community. I want you to read everything there is on the internet to be this person. And I was like, done. That’s me. Like, I’ll do it. And it basically put me in this company where I started to understand what a startup was and what it meant to be entrepreneurs and like what it meant to be around all these crazy smart people who were building this thing and impacting people. And it was the most most exhilarating, fun, crazy experience because it was so scrappy. You know, we were like working on picnic tables. We’re an internet tech company, but we were using dongles. Like, it was all just so weird. And now they’re like this mega successful company in Australia, and they’re, you know, very well known in Australia. But at the time, we were educating the market on online shopping and what it meant to buy online and innovating on 3-hour delivery and all these kinds of things. So it was like this turning point where I really was like, wow, maybe one day I want to do this kind of thing. And maybe one day I want to be like one of these guys who are the founders at the top. And so that was kind of where I became interested in entrepreneurship. But I like to tell my story from the beginning because I think like sharing that hustle is really important and sharing those early beginnings where, you know, my life looked really different to what it does now. And, And I think it’s important to kind of flag that.

Vira: 16:28

Oh my goodness, your life does sound like a Hollywood movie or something.

Alissa: 16:32

Yeah, it really does.

Vira: 16:33

Who would play you in that movie? If one day they were making a movie about you, who would it be?

Doone: 16:38

Oh my God, I’m so bad with names of actors.

Alissa: 16:42

I am too.

Doone: 16:44

I am like the person who’s not seen all the classics and people are like, how come you haven’t seen this movie? And I’m like, I don’t know. We didn’t have a TV when I was little.

Vira: 17:20

Just say Brad Pitt.

Alissa: 17:21

Brad Pitt in those cases.

Doone: 17:21

Yes, totally, totally. Yeah, I’m not sure. Who do you think?

Vira: 17:27

I don’t know. The blonde girl, that blonde girl. I’m bad with names too.

Doone: 17:30

Yeah. Oh my gosh.

Alissa: 17:34

So Doone, going from that, obviously. So you ended up building your own D2C jewelry brand named Kinks. So how did that come to be from all of this whirlwind experience? What led you to that point?

Doone: 17:49

Yeah. So basically from there, what happened was I started working. I decided, sorry, that I wanted to move overseas. I wanted to, like, travel, get new experiences, experience a whole different world, I guess. And moved overseas, did a lot of freelance work for companies like IMG and Snapchat and a company, I think it’s more known in the US, but definitely Australia, finder.com. And I was like, you know, this is kind of cool, whatever. But I, I then got this job working for a really corporate company over here. That’s right. That’s right. Now that I’m thinking back, I got this job at a corporate company and it was so different from that kind of like freelance remote working lifestyle, being thrown into this old stuffy, you know, things are just weird. And I was like, yeah, I don’t want to be here. Like, I really, I need to figure out how to like start my own thing. And so I met this guy and he was like to me, you know, why don’t you come and join me? I’m building a tech platform. I need to build a content arm, like agency of the business so I can fund the development of the platform. You can lead it. It can be your business. You know, we’ll build it together and it’ll be run by you. And I was like, I was like, great, let’s definitely do that. That sounds amazing. Here’s a really great opportunity. I’m totally gonna jump at it. So quit my job working at that company and started working with him. And that guy is now my husband.

Alissa: 19:13

And so he’s been very fancy.

Doone: 19:16

Spoiler alert, he’s my husband now. We fell in love. He’s always been my biggest cheerleader. But during that process of building that business with him, there was this moment for me where I was sitting on a panel at Tech Week and I was talking about the benefits of bringing a business from Australia to the UK and like the tax scheme here and, you know, all this kind of thing. And I was like, damn, this is not playing to my strengths. I’m not actually like enjoying my day to day of what I’m doing here. Like, this isn’t like I’m not going in the right direction. And I’ve always been someone who, if I identify that I’m not happy, especially in the journey, because the goal is like, sure, it’s great to have it. But if you’re not happy in that day to day, then you’ve totally lost. And so I’ve always been really good at like iterating, changing direction, to get to more of what I do love instead of doing what I don’t love. And so I was like, you know, my background is in e-commerce. I love tangible products. I love pretty stuff. Like I’m gonna start an e-commerce business and it’s gonna be jewelry. So I start this jewelry brand, it’s D2C, it’s super fun called Kinks. And it kind of like starts this new journey of me building a business by myself, learning a lot about building a product-based business in the CPG space and basically learning all these things, failing, doing things well, failing again, Failing again, failing again. And yeah, that’s kind of how Kinks got started because again, I was like iterating towards what I do love versus what I don’t love.

Vira: 20:46

And right now you’re working on your new D2C brand as well, right? Tell us a bit about it.

Doone: 20:51

Yes. So the new brand is a non-alcoholic wine company. Again, basically I realized with the jewelry brand that I’d chosen the wrong product. I really loved e-commerce. I really loved building a business. I really loved marketing. I loved that side of it, but I’d chosen a product that didn’t solve a clear problem. And I kind of struggled with the constant newness, the constant collections, all that kind of thing, which is the same in fashion. It’s the same in, you know, those kinds of industries. And so I was like, I love all of this, but I have truly chosen the wrong product for me. So I need to like cancel this, cut it and figure out what I’m going to do next. And so I kind of started Female Startup Club organically. It grew really quickly, especially last year in 2020, but throughout that process of interviewing I think I interviewed 100 people last year and now we’re at 210, all in the e-commerce CPG space and, you know, women who are very successful, they’re doing crazy things. They’ve got amazing strategies. And so through interviewing them, I eventually found, I was looking for like a gap of something that was really interesting to me that solved a clear problem that would play to my strengths. And so in January of this year, my husband and I would try January. And we had this kind of like aha moment where, you know, it was the middle of winter. It was popped down. We weren’t drinking. It was so boring. It was a Friday. And he was like, oh, why don’t we go and get some of those non-alcoholic cocktail things like Seed Lips? Or I think Liar’s is another really big one. And I was like, yeah, we could do that. But like, I would never make a cocktail for myself at home. That’s not my vibe. I would only want to drink a non-alcoholic wine. And we’re both really big wine drinkers. We love to drink wine. He’s from Switzerland. So He’s, you know, all about it since childhood and has always loved doing it. Sorry, drinking wine. And basically we had this aha moment of like, oh, we should make our own non-alc red wine. So we did go to the store, we bought all of the options there were, they were all terrible.

Alissa: 22:54

And yeah, that’s the problem with that.

Doone: 22:56

Yeah, it’s not good. It kind of all started from there.

Alissa: 22:59

That’s— wow, that’s really cool. So, okay, so you started to dip into talking about Female Startup Club, so we’ll go back to the non-alc wine brand that you’re, that you’re launching, but how would How would you, in your own words, we talked about it a little bit in the intro, but how would you in your own words describe Female Startup Club? So obviously we know what kind of where it came from, but like, how would you describe it? What is it? Let’s, let’s talk a little bit about that.

Doone: 23:20

Yes, of course. Well, I’m obviously totally biased, but Female Startup Club is really bloody cool. What it is, it started as a podcast and that kind of grew really quickly. It’s now a top 100 podcast for entrepreneurship. As I said, we’ve got lots of episodes and it all kind of evolved really organically. So now We tend to say we’re a media business, but we have a performance marketing agency off the back of that. So my husband’s a performance marketer by like his skill set. And so we decided to kind of take the leads that were coming through to us from brands who needed performance marketing help and funnel them into his business. So it’s a digital marketing agency. We have a private network specifically for entrepreneurs who happen to be women in the CPG space to come together and connect and get mentorship from the women who are coming on the show, for example. We have a book coming out in October, which is super exciting, kind of a compilation of our top 50 episodes from the show. And it’s really just a cool community, basically, is like, in simple terms, that’s the way I think of it. Female Startup Club is just this posse of entrepreneurs who happen to be women who are building really cool companies that are solving problems and impacting people. Yeah, it’s kind of weird to me that it’s my, like, full-time job because ’cause it is just so much fun and brings me so much joy every day. So that’s kind of it in a nutshell.

Alissa: 24:50

That’s really awesome. So would you say that Female Startup Club has helped to create more opportunities for women specifically in the e-commerce space?

Doone: 25:00

Oh my God, yeah. I know for sure that the podcast has inspired and impacted people all the time. I get really beautiful messages from women who are like, yep, like I decided I decided to start my side hustle, or I decided to quit my job and fully go in all in on this brand and, you know, pursue what I actually want to achieve. So I know that Female Startup Club is impacting women who want to get into e-commerce, and also it’s impacting women who are already in e-commerce. It’s giving them tactical insights, strategies, learnings, advice from the women that they are looking up to as role models who are building the world the world’s most successful brands.

Vira: 25:41

That’s awesome, that’s awesome. Tell us more about that small business grant opportunity that you guys have. I’m very excited about it as well, and I might be biased, but I think that the idea is dope.

Doone: 25:55

Thank you, so do I. I was so excited to launch this, especially with you guys. It’s been such a pleasure working with Flowium. I’ve really loved it. But basically it came about because I was thinking about at the end of every episode in the show, I ask a series of 6 quick questions. And one of them is, what would you do if you received $1,000 of no strings attached grant money to spend in the business? And it’s kind of to show like, where’s the most important spend of a dollar. So we get some really cool answers, all that kind of thing. But my ulterior motive the whole time was to actually start giving out that $1,000 to women myself. But it kind of started because I was thinking like, what would I do with $1,000? $1,000, like what kind of impact would I do in the business? And I started realizing that I should give that away to other female founders and let them do something with it. So it just kind of happened like that. Then I connected with you guys and that’s basically it. It’s live. Everyone can go and sign up. It’s super, super easy. The more you refer other people to the campaign, the more chances you have to win. And we’re gonna host it every month. So that’s awesome. Awesome. It’s something to keep coming back for and to tune into our, our weekly newsletter.

Alissa: 27:07

So in terms of how Female Startup Club works, so if I was a listener and I’m like, hey, this is awesome, I wanna sign up, like how would that work? What should they expect on a week-to-week basis? How much involvement is there or can there be from someone who’s just signed up recently for the club?

Doone: 27:22

Yeah. Okay. So we have like a weekly newsletter which goes out on Mondays and that’s kind of like a dose of insights from the previous week’s episodes. It has some jobs from female-founded companies. Around the world. It has, you know, just some cool kind of industry news, all that kind of stuff. It’s a great one to open on a Monday. And then we publish 3 times a week on the podcast. They are a mix of interviews with the founders, but also kind of my solo journey in building the Non-Alc Wine Company. And then if people are interested in joining Hype Club, which is our private network, they can sign up at any time and they just have to be building e-commerce CPG brand or actively working towards launching their CPG brand. And that has stuff going on all the time. We do masterclasses, we do workshops. We have the, the women from the show coming in and doing kind of live Q&As, ask me anythings, giving their brainpower to other entrepreneurs who need it and specific to their business. We have, my husband goes in there once a week and answers any questions around Facebook and Instagram ads or TikTok ads and kind of shares resources that will help small business owners in their journey. And then we just kind of have like a lot of different stuff going on in there every day. And it’s so much fun. We’ve got a lot of like one of our channels, is Biz Wins and Biz Fails. And so all of our entrepreneurs will share the things that are going wrong for them as well as what’s going well. And it is just so insightful because from hearing what’s going wrong, you can kind of keep that in mind for yourself. And, and I’m learning a lot actually through that process.

Vira: 28:50

That’s cool.

Alissa: 28:50

Have you seen any, have you seen any collaborations happen within, within the club? Like someone will meet another person and they’re like, oh, this is really cool. We should collaborate on these two brands.

Doone: 29:00

And I don’t know if I’ve seen any collaborations, but people are definitely connecting like outside of the group and catching up and kind of making friends. And then we have these little mini masterminds where it’s kind of grouped by industry.

Vira: 29:13

The best. I love them.

Doone: 29:14

Yeah. And so once a month they’ll, you know, if it’s in the beauty industry, the beauty entrepreneurs will catch up once a month or, you know, I’m in the beverage industry. So the other entrepreneurs who are in the bev industry will catch up once a month. And yeah, it’s all about like building those networks and relationships, but I imagine there are going to be collaborations that come from it. Certainly from, from my side, I’m definitely going to be hitting people up.

Vira: 29:38

And I honestly think that e-commerce has created like so much opportunities for women. I do believe that there has never been like a better time to be a female entrepreneur and like, oh my God, the first time I realized that when I traveled to Nepal to that like a really remote Himalayan village and I saw some women who were actually like working online as one girl I met, she was doing some like photography retouching and stuff like that. She was like making making some money online, which weren’t like big money, but that was like her little business, which helped her actually to support her family, to be independent from her husband and stuff like that. And honestly, I think that there has never been a better time to be a female entrepreneur. That’s why I like— I love what you guys are doing. I think your organization is awesome and your mission is amazing.

Doone: 30:32

Thank you so much. I agree. Now is the time. You know, women are launching businesses at twice the rate that men do. You know, women-founded businesses perform better than male-founded businesses. And that’s like data, like you can find those stats online. And I think there’s even some crazy stat, like for every VC dollar that’s invested into a guy business, a guy-founded business, sorry, for every dollar that’s invested into a female-founded business, it’ll perform like twice as much as if that dollar went into a guy-founded business.

Vira: 31:04

That’s interesting. Interesting.

Doone: 31:06

It’s so interesting. It’s really like now is the time. And I think we also have like a really big advantage of being a woman, especially if you’re going into a male-dominated space because like whether it’s a good or bad thing, people are looking for diversity and they want to have, they want to highlight the women of their industries. So being a female founder in the wine industry, which is typically male-dominated, it actually can, you know, there’s a, there’s an advantage there that you can use and kind of be part of these initiatives that lots of companies are really, really focusing on at the moment.

Vira: 31:39

Agree, agree. And at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter whether you’re a man or a woman, as long as you like have a drive and and have passion and your goals backed up by some, like, good solid plan, by your expertise, it doesn’t matter, like, you’re a woman or you’re a man. So I love what you guys are doing. But still, what’s your biggest piece of advice for, like, specifically female entrepreneurs out there?

Doone: 32:06

So I would say my biggest piece of advice is first, like, some advice I always love to give is, like, don’t get too— if you’re early on in the journey, don’t get overwhelmed by, like, the goal and like the future, just focus on 1% every day. Like the compound effect over 1 year, 5 years, 10 years’ time is so real. If you just take those tiny small actions towards what your goals are instead of getting overwhelmed by like all the big stuff, definitely do that. Just figure out what’s important to do today. Just try and do that 1%. I think my other big piece of advice is to really build your network because the more connections you have, the more people you know, the more advice you can ask, you know, that is just so it’s gold. It is gold as an entrepreneur and it’s so, so, so important. And so of course I will plug Hype Club here because it’s all about building your network. But I really believe that if you are building your network and making connections and creating relationships all over the place, these are the people who are gonna help you at different stages of building your business.

Vira: 33:11

I love it. Okay, follow-up question. This is a random one, but I love asking entrepreneurs this question. What popular like entrepreneurial advise do you disagree with?

Alissa: 33:22

Oh, that’s a good one, Vira. I like that.

Doone: 33:25

This isn’t something that I disagree with, but I think I tend to hear a lot of just like, just do it, like just get started. And I think it’s a little bit fluffy. I’m like all about something that’s a bit more tactical and a bit more like, I don’t know, I think that one, I’m just a bit like sick of hearing that one.

Vira: 33:44

I agree. Agree. You need to have like a plan in place.

Alissa: 33:48

Yeah, there’s got to be something. I think people, it’s like like two opposite ends of the spectrum, right? Like, just do it, who cares, just go, just go, just go, versus like, it has to be perfect before you do it. Like, there’s a very happy balance in between the two, and I think that’s what people—

Doone: 34:03

totally.

Alissa: 34:04

So in an effort to like not embrace perfection, people go the opposite route, and then it just turns into chaos. Or vice versa, people don’t want it to be chaotic at all, they can’t handle changes, they don’t want to be adaptable at all, and so they’re like, no, it must be perfect, I have to plan it to a T. Little most people know who are starting out, it’s very rarely perfect.

Doone: 34:23

Yes, I think done is better than perfect.

Alissa: 34:26

Yeah, for sure, for sure. Doone, thank you so much for joining us today. Your story is awesome. Your energy is amazing. You are like a legitimate hype girl. It’s great.

Doone: 34:35

Ah, thank you so much. Thank you.

Alissa: 34:38

How can everyone who’s listening find you or further follow you online, or what’s the best way for people to kind of get more of Doone?

Doone: 34:47

Yes, I’m on LinkedIn, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram @dooneroisin, which is D-O-O-N-E R-O-I-S-I-N. Feel free to drop into my DMs. I love to chat. I love to learn what people are up to and what they’re building. And you can of course sign up to Female Startup Club. Go to femalestartupclub.com, pop your email in, and we will start chatting with you once a week. And yeah, listen to the podcast, obviously.

Vira: 35:13

That’s awesome.

Alissa: 35:14

As we mentioned, guys, don’t forget that small business grant is on a month-to-month basis with Female Startup Club. So make sure that you do sign up for that. And yeah, think about that question. If you had $1,000 to help fund your startup, where would you put that $1,000 to? Think about that. And then once you have an answer, sign up for the small business grant. And actually this month, Flowium is sponsoring that small business grant. And then obviously with the months to come, it’ll be going on and on and on, not Necessarily from Flowium, but from Female Startup Club. So definitely make sure that you check it out. We will add links to everything necessary in the podcast description. And, uh, Doone, thank you so much once again for joining us today.

Doone: 35:54

Thank you so much for having me. This was so much fun.

Alissa: 35:56

Yeah, of course. Of course.

Vira: 35:58

Awesome. Definitely come back next Tuesday because we will be talking about segmentation. Yes, segmentation again. So we’ll be talking about segmentation specifically for Black Friday, Cyber Monday. It’s gonna be a fun one. Anyways, thank you so much for listening. We guys I appreciate you being here and, uh, talk to you next week.