This week on The Lazy CEO Podcast, Jane is back with Linda Hammond, co-founder of Quay Australia and founder of OTRA Eyewear, for part two of their conversation. If you haven't listened to PART 1 yet, start there - it's a MUST LISTEN.

In this episode, they get into the chapters most founders never talk about. Linda opens up about what it actually felt like to sell a nine-figure business to private equity, why the exit wasn't the finish line she expected, and how she's channelling everything she learned at Quay into building OTRA Eyewear.

In this episode, she dives into:

• The truth about selling a nine-figure business to private equity, and why it's more complicated than it looks from the outside.
• How the industry has shifted since 1999, and how she's approaching marketing and team building differently with OTRA.
• What it's really like to build a business with your partner.

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Follow The Lazy CEO podcast: @thelazyceo_podcast @thelazyceopod
Stay updated with Jane Lu: @thelazyceo
Connect with Linda: @lindamhammond
Follow OTRA Eyewear: @otraeyewear

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This week on The Lazy CEO Podcast, Jane sits down with Linda Hammond, co-founder of Quay Australia and founder of OTRA Eyewear - the woman who quietly built one of the most recognisable eyewear brands in the world, sold it for nine figures, and is now doing it all over again.

Linda left school at 14 with no plan and no industry experience. What she built instead started with a market stall and a music festival in 1999, and grew into a brand stocked in 5,000 retailers globally, the first collab Kylie Jenner ever said yes to, and a Desi Perkins drop that sold 20,000 units and $7M in just 12 minutes. Now, with OTRA Eyewear scaling fast, Linda is proving the first time was no fluke.

In this episode, she dives into:

• The exact first steps that got Quay off the ground, and what actually moved the needle early on.
• How she cracked retail, from City Beach to Nasty Gal, and the decisions that changed the trajectory of the brand.
• The strategy behind landing some of the world's biggest names, including Shay Mitchell, Desi Perkins, and Kylie Jenner.

Connect with us:
Follow The Lazy CEO podcast: @thelazyceo_podcast @thelazyceopod
Stay updated with Jane Lu: @thelazyceo
Connect with Linda: @lindamhammond
Follow OTRA Eyewear: @otraeyewear

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In this episode, Jane challenges the idea that stress is something to eliminate entirely, and calls out the rise and grind culture that has a lot of founders quietly exhausted. This one is for anyone who has ever felt guilty for sleeping in. In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why not all stress is bad, and how to tell the difference between pressure that sharpens you and pressure that is just noise
• Why the 5am club and hustle aesthetic is not a universal blueprint for success, and why so many founders are quietly exhausted from trying to fit the mould
• Jane's three-question framework for deciding which stress in your business is worth keeping and which to cut for good

This episode is brought to you by Xero. Blast past tax time stress with Xero. That's Xero with an X!
See what Xero can do for your business, by checking them out now!

Connect with us:
Follow The Lazy CEO podcast: @thelazyceo_podcast @thelazyceopod
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In this episode of Help My Small Business, Jane is joined by Hannah Vasicek, founder of Francesca Jewellery, to review Sylvie's business Unicorn Cart - a Shopify app that boosts average order value through personalised upsells, free gifts, and cart rewards.

By the end of this episode, you'll learn:

• Why doing one acquisition channel really well will always beat spreading yourself across five and how to figure out which one is yours.
• How to stop leads going cold by leading with value upfront
• Why speaking to everyone means converting no one and how you can niche down without burning your existing base.

This episode is brought to you by Xero. Blast past tax time stress with Xero. That's Xero with an X!
See what Xero can do for your business, by checking them out now! 

Connect with us:
Follow The Lazy CEO podcast: @thelazyceo_podcast @thelazyceopod
Stay updated with Jane Lu: @thelazyceo
Connect with Hannah: @hannah.vasicek
Follow Francesca Jewellery: @francescajewellery

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ICYMI: This week, Jane sits down with Eugene Healey, brand strategist, educator, and creator who has helped the likes of Google, Spotify, and Red Bull cut through the noise and actually stick in people's minds.

If you're still running the old influencer playbook, throwing product at lifestyle stars and hoping for the best, it's not going to cut it anymore. Eugene breaks down exactly why everything has changed, how to find and partner with creators who educate, entertain, and own niche communities, and what it actually takes to make your brand impossible to ignore.

Plus: how to set up your brand identity so your audience knows exactly who you are the second they land on your page, and why building consistent brand assets from day one is the difference between content that disappears and content that compounds.

The brands winning right now are playing by a completely different rulebook.

Connect with us:
Follow The Lazy CEO Podcast: @thelazyceo_podcast
Stay updated with Jane Lu: @thelazyceo
Follow Eugene Healy: @eugbrandstrat

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on The Lazy CEO Podcast, Jane sits down with Natassia Nicolao, founder of Conserving Beauty, the Australian skincare brand she built on a Bachelor of Science, a proprietary dissolving technology, and a refusal to take no for an answer. Natassia identified a genuine gap in the market: people with acne-prone and sensitive skin being failed by traditional beauty. She built clinically proven, water-free solutions around them, secured a world-first technology by out-pitching a major beauty conglomerate, and scaled to an eight-figure valuation with backing from top venture capital and shelf space across Australia and into the UK.

In this episode, they dive into:

• What product development and packaging iteration actually looks like in practice, and the costly mistakes worth avoiding.
• Why your customers are your best growth strategists, and how to build systems to actually hear them.
• How she beat a major beauty conglomerate to secure the technology behind her first product, and why a compelling story will always outperform a spreadsheet.

Connect with us:
Follow The Lazy CEO podcast: @thelazyceo_podcast @thelazyceopod
Stay updated with Jane Lu: @thelazyceo
Connect with Natassia: @natasssia@natassia__
Follow Conserving Beauty: @conservingbeauty @conservingbeauty

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode of Help My Small Business, Jane is joined by Michael Porter, founder of Skin Control, Australia's No.1 Acne Care Brand, which sold over 4.8 million pimple patch packets in 2025. With his experience scaling a small, niche skincare brand into a national success, Michael is bringing that hands-on expertise to review Melanie's business, Youth Skin - a safe, effective deodorant brand made for kids and teens.

By the end of this episode, you'll learn:

• How to use a personal brand to build trust, tell your story, and drive conversions
• The retail strategies that get your product into more stores and keep it selling
• Key lessons for early-stage brands - proving demand, boosting retailer confidence, and owning your niche

This episode is brought to you by Xero. Blast past tax time stress with Xero. That's Xero with an X!
See what Xero can do for your business, by checking them out now!

Connect with us:
Follow The Lazy CEO podcast: @thelazyceo_podcast @thelazyceopod
Stay updated with Jane Lu: @thelazyceo
Connect with Michael: @michaelwporter
Follow Skin Control: @skincontrolau

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this Ask Me Anything episode Jane pulls back the curtain on the reality of being married to your business partner, and the AI tool that's completely changed how her team operates. Plus what actually keeps her up at night running a nine figure fashion brand, and the apps and hacks she swears by.

Nothing is off limits.

Connect with us:
Follow The Lazy CEO podcast: @thelazyceo_podcast @thelazyceopod
Stay updated with Jane Lu: @thelazyceo

Leave a comment letting Jane know if you like this style of solo episode and send any questions you want her to unpack further to [email protected]!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, Jane gets honest about what stress really looked like behind the scenes of building Showpo.
This one is for anyone who is in the thick of it right now.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why ignoring stress does not make it go away, and what actually helped instead
• The storytime of Jane's lowest moment building Showpo
• Why letting go is not just a systems problem, it is an emotional one

This episode is brought to you by Xero. Blast past tax time stress with Xero. That's Xero with an X!
See what Xero can do for your business, by checking them out now!

Connect with us:
Follow The Lazy CEO podcast: @thelazyceo_podcast @thelazyceopod
Stay updated with Jane Lu: @thelazyceo

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on The Lazy CEO Podcast, Jane sits down with Hannah Vasicek, CEO and co-founder of Francesca Jewellery, the Australian jewellery brand she built alongside her sister Rachel. Hannah started making jewellery at 12, was selling at markets by 16, and somehow grew the business while completing a double degree in science and law. She's since led Francesca from a weekend market stall to one of Australia's most recognised jewellery brands on the global stage.

In this episode, they dive into:

• The burnout that put her in hospital and the wake-up call that completely rewired how she leads and runs the business.
• Why jewellery is one of the hardest categories to scale, and how Hannah cracked it anyway.
• How she went from managing 60 direct reports to building systems that actually work.
• The decision to launch charity collections, what drove it, and how it reshaped the entire Francesca brand identity.

Connect with us:
Follow The Lazy CEO podcast: @thelazyceo_podcast @thelazyceopod
Stay updated with Jane Lu: @thelazyceo
Connect with Hannah: @hannah.vasicek
Follow Francesca Jewellery: @francescajewellery

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.