The Lazy CEO Podcast with Jane Lu

Today I sit down with Samantha Appell, the founder and Director of The Skin Bar, a leading Boutique chain of skin care clinics. In just 4 years, she’s opened 9 clinics, in 3 states, making over 8-figures. Yes, that’s 9 clinics since 2020 which includes Covid lockdown years. 

Samantha’s approach is deeply personal, driven by her own personal battle with severe cystic acne that profoundly impacted her self confidence. This experience fuelled her passion for helping others achieve clear, healthy skin, particularly through skin needling - a treatment that transformed her own skin.

Under her leadership, The Skin Bar has become known for popularising skin needling and offering tailored, holistic skincare solutions that avoid injectables like Botox. 

In this episode we talk about: 

• The economics of beauty clinics 
• How she’s achieved this growth of physical locations in such a short amount of time, whilst maintaining quality in every experience 
• The importance of having focus in your brand and product 

And so much more!

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Few people love their jobs more than me, and my next guest is one of them! I absolutely fell in love with Karlie’s story when she told it to me over cocktails in Bali and I’m so happy she’s back in Oz and here to share it with all of you. 

Karlie was previously a school teacher for 12 years and after a few trips to Bali, she started Bali Buddies as a Facebook page to share Bali tips with friends. 

At the age of 33, she decided that she wanted more in life and life isn’t so black and white and took a total career pivot. She officially launched Bali Buddies and moved to Bali with her husband and 2 young daughters.

12 years on, it’s now a full blown Bali travel media platform that has a team of 15, expanded to Indo Buddies and makes high 6 figures in profits (yes, not rev, but profits) - which when you think about the cost of living in Bali, it’s incredible. She literally lives like royalty in Bali and gets invited to all the best events and openings.

Karlie has created the ultimate lifestyle business for herself and epitomises everyone’s dream of working to live and not living to work. 

In this episode, we talk about how she did it all, how do you start a media company, how do you make a living off of affiliate marketing and media sales, and the challenge she overcame with such a career and lifestyle pivot. 

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My next guest is an OG in the Australian retail space with a retail career spanning three decades. I like to think of him as the Godfather of the online retail industry in Australia, it’s none other than Paul Greenberg. 

Paul is the co-founder of Deals Direct, one of Australia’s first online department stores, which has listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. 

He subsequently started NORA, the National Online Retailers Association. A network that now supports over 25,000 online retailers.

Paul now is an angel investor and holds advisory board roles on several retail tech businesses, which we get into in this episode. 

Paul is a serial entrepreneur, ecommerce expert, and regarded as one of the pioneers of online retail in Australia, he has such a wealth of knowledge and is connected to everyone in the industry - and of course, always so great to chat!

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Today I chat with Anaita Sarkar, founder of Hero Packaging and better known on socials as @sellanythingonline. If you're a long time listener, you'll know that Anaita came on the poddy last year - and well, I loved it so much I had to get her back! Absolutely loved hearing what she's gotten up to since she was in the studio last - including writing a book, developing courses and starting a podcast.

We covered all things marketing - with a specific focus on paid ads. It's so interesting to hear Anaita's stance on digital marketing agencies and I love how she's wanting to help her followers learn it themselves. So many amazing tips in this episode! I'm sure you'll love it!

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Today I chat with Stacey Hollands - the founder of Australia’s leading clean beauty brand Lust Minerals. Back in 2014, Stacey launched from an initial $10k investment and then went on to achieve $1 million in sales within the first 18 months! And more recently making $24million in the past 3 years. 

After sadly losing her dad at a young age to cancer - Stacey realised that we only really get one chance at life, and how harmful the chemicals and toxins we use every day can really be. So 7 months later she got to work and started to formulate the perfect natural product - this actually took 2 years to get to market, but it was worth the wait because that perfect product is now Lust Minerals’ best seller, with one selling every two minutes!! 

Today we chat about the journey that brings us to today, how they grew using influencer marketing and their big rebrand that cost $300,000! 

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Today I chat to Blake Micola - the brains behind GMS Media Group (Growth Marketing Systems). GMS has grown to a 7-figure ad agency and was crowned "best marketing service" nationally twice at the Australian Business Champion Awards!

They have managed a whopping 1,200 clients and boast a super impressive portfolio including Culture Kings, ABC, F45, Who Is Elijah, Dr John Demartini and Jordan Belfort.

In this episode we chat about how Blake built a successful agency in a highly competitive and saturated market, the expensive lessons (including a $250k debt due to over-hire and overspending), how he overcame it. We deep dive into digital marketing and I thought we’d shake it up a bit in this episode and I gave him 2 live case studies to talk through - how to market for an event like BitchCon and one of my Shark Tank investments Mimi & Co, a D2C online reusable nappies business.

Such a fun and informative chat - I’m sure you’ll get a lot from this one.

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

I’ve got 2 exciting guests on the pod today, Leigh Campbell and Tegan Natoli - the duo behind Brillo Beauty, a self care solutions brand for modern motherhood.

Self-funded and organically launched, Brillo Beauty made $200k in revenue in the first 3 months alone. They follow a direct-to-consumer business model with a small collection of hand-selected exclusive stockists. 

Prior to starting up Brillo Beauty - these incredible ladies have very formidable careers. 

Leigh has worked in the beauty industry for over 20 years. She was the beauty director of Cosmo magazine, executive editor for Mamamia and now hosts number one beauty podcast, You Beauty. 

Tegan co-founded Bump Day Spa, Australia’s premium pampering destination catering specifically to pregnant & postpartum women, with spas in 3 locations and more on the way.

We chatted about growing a business with such a niche target market, the journey that brought them here together, all about their direct to consumer business model and the marketing strategies that’s been working them.

We honestly had such a fun chat and I know you’ll be able to hear how electric the energy in the room was! 

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My very special guest for this episode is none other than my co-bitch Gen George! Yes, my co-founder for Like Minded Bitches Drinking Wine. In case you missed it, it’s a women’s business group that we started 10 years ago as a passion project that’s now grown to over 180,000 members. The group is on Facebook and the Boa app if you want to join us, but also very excitingly we’re kicking off in-person events again, with Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane to start.

Okay now a bit more about Gen, because she is one hell of a serial entrepreneur. At the age of X, Gen started OneShift, which was an online talent marketplace that instantly connects local candidates to local businesses. Gen grew OneShift to over 40k employers and 700k potential candidates and achieved a valuation of $20m in their first year alone. 5 years ago, the business was successfully acquired. 

The process of growing OneShift allowed her to see a clear market gap which led to her launching Tamme - a marketing AI and analytics platform for two-sided marketplaces.

In 2019, Gen established Genry Capital, which is focused on companies in manufacturing, research and development, logistics and the consumer brand space.

In 2020, she established Australian Private Label, which develops and manufactures products for brands, musicians and influencers locally in Australia. APL has already grown to a 7 figure business and is growing at 35% year on year. 

And yes… There's more, in 2023 she launched Daily Shake, which is a premium supplements brand that is known for its fun unique flavours. Launched only a year ago, the brand is already rolling out into Coles and Mr Vitamins in Australia, and later this year launching with a Middle Eastern retailer that has 6000 points of sale. She's just incredible!!

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My next guest is Kirsten Carriol, the founder of Lanolips, a lanolin lip balm and beauty brand that started as a niche brand, then quickly rose to becoming a cult brand that was winning all the awards and talked about by every beauty editor and blog to then becoming an iconic brand that’s a household name. 

Lanolips is now an 8-figure company that even after 15 years of business is experiencing 30% year on year growth. They’re now in over 30 countries and over 4,000 stores.

Kirsten previously owned a PR agency and we talk about how she used PR and comms to educate and create a market for lanolin products. We also talk about the, what she called, “messy middle” parts of a business - which I love as not many people talk so openly about this. And we chat about her experience in getting funding and the impact on the business.

@lanolips

@kirsten.carriol

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