Episode 478: Lou Rice of Strapsicle
In this episode of the My Daily Business Podcast: Join Fiona Killackey as she sits down with Lou Rice, the innovative founder of Strapsicle. What began as a simple solution to a common parenting problem has since blossomed into a thriving business with over 100,000 customers. Lou takes us through her unique journey—from a late-night Kindle accident to the creation of a product that has resonated with readers worldwide—all while navigating the challenges of motherhood and entrepreneurship.
In this conversation, Lou shares how she and her partner, Ben, used their advertising backgrounds to craft a product that filled an unmet need in the market. She reveals the strategies that led to Strapsicle’s rapid growth, including their game-changing appearance on Shark Tank and how community-driven marketing played a key role in their success. Lou also opens up about the obstacles they’ve encountered along the way—from quality control issues to the complexities of cash flow management.
This episode offers valuable insights into building a brand from scratch, connecting authentically with your audience, and the realities of scaling a business. Whether you're just starting out or are already running your own business, Lou’s story will inspire you with its lessons in resilience, creativity, and perseverance.
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Lou Rice: I launched on Amazon in the US November. So we were four or five months in and luckily without even knowing, it launched right before Black Friday. And originally I was just going to Amazon Australia. I was like no, no, why wouldn't I just do you as well? Just for stock. It's all the same. And so lucky to do it before Black Friday. I think we were making like three grand a month on Shopify. And December we clocked our first five fig a month through Amazon and I was like, shit, this is a game. Sorry, Tox swear. This is a game changer.
Fiona Killackey: Do you love your life as a small business owner? Let's be real.Sometimes we just don't. It's my hope that this for my daily business podcast, helps you regain a little of that lost love through practical, actionable tips, tools and tactics, interviews with creative and curious small business owners, and in depth coaching episodes with me, your host, Fiona Killackey. With more than 20 years experience in marketing, brand content and systems and having now helped thousands of small business owners, I know what it takes to build a business that you can be proud of and that actually aligns with your values, your beliefs and your hopes for the future. So much of our daily life is spent working on and in the businesses and the brands that we are creating and so it makes sense to actually.
Love what you do.
So let's get into this podcast and help you figure out how to love your business and your life on the daily hello and welcome to episode 478 of the My Daily Business podcast and to the very first episode of 2025.
If you're listening in real time today, it's a great one. It's such an interesting interview with somebody that I did that I have to say I didn't know a huge amount about their business. They had been pitched to come on the podcast and I just thought this sounds like a really interesting story and brand and then we did the interview and honestly I was blown away.
There were so many insights and tips and really practical ideas for how to make your business grow and happen at all and what that means for personal life and just so many other things. Before we get stuck into that, I want to let you know that group coaching is open. You can apply for the next round. We will kick off officially in March. However, don't let that, you know, hold you back from applying now because we do do an interview on first come first serve basis so you can hop on over to My Daily Business Group Coaching and figure out if this is the right fit for you. Basically, we work together for 12 months.
There's group coaching, there's some one on one coaching in there. You get access to all of our courses and coaching programmes for free for the whole 12 months and anything else we develop during that year. There's templates, there's so many things involved in it and it's just a lovely way to connect and grow with people. I actually just got a text message today from somebody who had received a little gift from me and she said, I just want to say you that, you know, group coaching was such a huge thing for my business and for me personally and it's made huge inroads in where I want to get to with her brand.
So if that's you, if you want to make this year the best yet in your business, then cheque out group coaching at My Daily Business Group Coaching.
The other thing, of course, I want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of this beautiful land on which I record this podcast and do group coaching and all the things. And that for me is the Woburong and Rundri people of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to their elders, past and present, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been seded. Alright, let's get into today's interview episode. Sometimes we get a pitch for this podcast and the story is just so interesting that you're like, yes, absolutely, we want to interview this person because just I'm naturally very curious as to how they made this happen.
And today's guest falls into that category so heavily.
And that is because she created something after seeing a massive, problem happen in her own life. And I guess you could define whether it was massive or not depends on, you know, her own experience. But she had something happen that I think has happened to countless people, especially parents and guardians around the world with their child. And it helped her come up with a solution for that.
Actually her partner also came up with that solution and then they thought, well, other people are going through this, so why don't we look into actually creating this as a product and as a business? And they've done that and in a very short amount of time they have boasted more than 100,000 customers.
And today she talks through how that actually happened. But also it's completely transformed their life in terms of both of these people being able to retire out of where they were previously working and work full time in the business. They have moved country, they have done so many things. And I just Love that in today's chat we go through how did that all happen? And also how did it happen so quickly?
And so today I'm talking to the wonderful Lou Rice, founder of Strapsicle. Now you may have seen Strap School recently on, the Australian version of Shark Tank. And we talk about that and what it's done and how did you even get onto a show like that.
What does it do for traffic and for actual sales figures. But we also talk about how do you go from something happening that sort of alerts you to the idea that there isn't a product for what you need for this solution, but then how do you take that and actually then create a full blown business?
And also what are some of the pitfalls and challenges that you're going to go through when you're doing this all very quickly as well?
So I won't rab it on anymore. I just want to say a massive thank you to Lou from Strapsicle. She's so open in this, so real, telling you all the behind the scenes stuff that often isn't talked about when we see these people kind of seemingly go from, you know, nothing to overnight success. And I love that she's just really raw and honest and also gives you so many ideas if you are a product based business.
And even as somebody, you know, I predominantly sell services, but it's just really inspiring and makes you wonder what else is out there?
What else could I do?
So thank you so much, Lou. We will of course link to Strapsicle in the show notes and I'll give you all the places to go and connect with Lou in the outro for this podcast. But for now, sit back and listen to the incredible interview that I've done recently with BLO Rice of Strapsicle.
Fiona Killackey: Welcome to the podcast, Lou. How are you feeling about life right now?
Lou Rice: I'm feeling pretty good, actually. I think what we one week out before Christmas and I'm just resigning myself to the fact that these are the things that need to get done and everything else is parking till Jan. I think you just got to be careful not to pile on the pressure this time of year.
Fiona Killackey: Oh, I feel exactly the same. I finish. I usually am finished now, but I'm just doing an extra few days and yeah, there's part of me that's like, it can just wait, you know, not everything. And also I find the whole socialation as well. Like everyone suddenly wants to catch up and it's like we haven't seen each other all year. Why do we need to see each other you know in the last two weeks of the ah year but you're not actually here in Australia with me, you're somewhere else. So can you tell us about that? I know I'm putting you on the spot with that question but we were just talking about it before we hit record. Where are you?
Lou Rice: Yeah and look it probably sounds like every small business owners dream. we relocated to Bali. We've been the business been going two and a half years so I went full time on it earlier this year in fair my partner Ben in May and you know daycare fees two and a half grand a marth and Sydney Bondi small two bedroom apartment. We were like why not? Because we're going to get more help. We have no family in Sydney. More help and just try and live more of a I guess a high vibe life while building the business in saying that you know, it's not without its challenges and we moved here in September. Arguably the stupidest decision right on the C of Q4 but actually we couldn't have gone any later in Q4 or I would have died. So it's been a real whirlwind and I think as well you know being able to reflect on the last three months we've done so much including moving countries.
Fiona Killackey: Yeahah. That is massive. And I love that you think like that. I had my first child 12 years ago in London and we had no family or friends or we didn't, we had lots of friends but none of them had kids and we didn't even have a car. Like I remember when my son got sick we needed to go to hospital and my husband had to run out in the snow and try and buy a car seat so that we could at least take to the hospital and just all of those things. It's so hard wherever you are to raise children without a village community around it. Yeah, I love that you thought well instead of just moving to wherever our family is we'renna move to Bali and make a whole community.
Fiona Killackey: Which is great.
Lou Rice: Well it was kind of like okay we could go to Brisbane where Ben's family are but we're still paying the same and again like trying to buy a house. No, can't. Cause everything's going back in the business. So we're over here now. We've got a housekeeper six days a week and she's $60 a week and that's the going rate and then we've got a nanning 30 hours a week and it's just, it's fantastic. And I don't like. And then he's now part of our family. So it's not like we run off when she comes, we just kind of float around. But it's so helpful.
Fiona Killackey: Yeah.
Fiona Killackey: And your children like seeing, you know, different cultures, different foods even, you know like whenever we've traveleed with our kids, just them like trying does something that I wouldn't necessarily be cooking or that we don't necessarily go out and eat.
So yeah, I think it's so awesome. So here we are talking about your business which is very exciting and like you've alluded to, it hasn't been running that long. But can you tell us about strapsical and then how did it get started? Cause I understand you had a bit of an incident and then it kind of created this whole like snowball effect that now finds you living in Bali running like the entrepreneurs dream.
Lou Rice: Yeah. And if you told me that when we started. No way. Right. So it was three and a half years ago and we were newborn. We had a newborn new parents and three months in doing that kind of sleep, eat, repeat, 24 hour cycle and breastfeeding one night 2am M. And I was reading my Kindle because so you know that mum guilt of being on your phone all time. I was trying to be worthy. and I just nodded off for a second and it just fell out of my hand and whacked Archie on the head and he obviously startles I startled, Beingham running in and we were all very upset. And then the next day, and I think I actually credit this, we were in lockdown, there was nothing else to do.
And Ben is quite a handy.
He's a creative buy trade, a creative director, ad agencies. But he's always been a problem solver and a hoarder which actually worked to our advantage because he had this piece of silicon mat lying around and he whipped up a strap for me, a really crude strap that I could use to hold my Kindle and I used it and after a couple of months I was like, oh, I don't want to go back to kind of Bareack Kindle. I need the strap. So maybe we should see if others do too. And that's kind of where it started.
Fiona Killackey: It's so interesting and it's such a real story. And I was saying before we hit record, I have been in that exact same. Except I was that mum on my phone and the phone hit, you know, landed on my son and I think so many of us do it. And also I like that you Said, you know, that whole worthy by having a Kindle, there's so much mum guilt around every little thing. Every time you take any time for yourself, it's like, oh God, you know, And I'm sure like I felt a lot of judgement if my husband had seen the phone hitting, he would have been like, well, he would have been fine. But I think we women, we just jud ourselves all the time.
So can you explain then, like, what is the Strapsicle? Like if you were to say it in like one word, if people aren't looking it up straight away, what does it do? Is it just like what you said, a silicon?
Lou Rice: It is, yeah. It is as simple as that. It is a set of silicon straps that you just flip onto your Kindle 2 seconds, lookook over the corners and it means you can hold your kindle in a very neutral, relaxed phys positionian. So it also basically means the Kindle won't drop out of your hand so there's no more drops. And I had no idea how many people have dropped their kindle on their face and they've fallen asleep reading. That's a big thing. And then, hand cramps are a thing of the past because you're not gripping the Kindle like, like you would normally have to equally with a pop socket which a lot of people use. So we're really trying to give people more comfortable reading. We're all about the joy of comfortable reading. So yeah, super simple. And two and a half years later we've really found our stride with it.
So there's a whole tribe of millions and millions and millions of E readers out there who are obsessed.
Fiona Killackey: Yes. And how then did you go like that's, you know, innovative of your husband to go and get the strap and to make the strap. But then when you were like, okay, this I don't want to go back to just normally, you know, barar back as you said. How did you go from okay, this worked for me to actually this could be a business and then the actual manufacturing and the tech design and all of that. What was that whole process like? And did you have this experience before you started? Is that what you used to do in your otherwise career?
Lou Rice: No. So both Ben and I, advertising agency backgrounds. I was on mat leave and I've kind of been a bit of serial entrepreneur. I've been trying different things and nothing landing or sticking and been similar lots of product ideas. And so when this came along, I think it was just a perfect storm. We had a baby who was sleeping three to four hours a shift. We had Covid so there was no one to see, nowhere to go.
And we were lucky enough to be introduced to a manufacturer off the bat from friends of ours who were using them in China. And I actually think that shortcut helps accelerate things because, as you might know, you know, the process of finding a manufacturer can takes such a long time. So we were really lucky to, speak to them. They're like an esteemed M Silicon manufacturer. I think Ben was the product designer, or he kind of guided them with the exact measurements they were sending back designs. We got a couple. I think it was a couple of rounds of moulds made. And then the third round, we nailed it. And we were like, oh, okay, this is cool.
So we got some samples made and I remember we did a friends and family survey we did of research online. There really wasn't much like this out there. Like on Amazon, there were some straps, but they were really ugly, very functional. Nothing, silicon and nothing fashionable. And once we did our friends and family survey, we were like, okay, there's a lot of people out there who could use something like this. But really, it was just. It's just that naive optimism of let's just give it a go. And Ben always had the sign on the wall, don't let the music die inside you. Something. Something like that.
Fiona Killackey: O. I love that.
Lou Rice: And I think, yeah, for her, I think tortured creative, but also we needed to succeed or fail at something we hadn't. And so we were like, let's just give it a go. And so I remember February, we got. We were really lucky because, we were able to produce off our sample mould, so we didn't have to do an big MOQ. 500 units.
Got those shipped in, got in. February took us four months. I was tinkering over the website, obviously grown small human. And then by May, I was like, come on, let's just do it. Because I was about to go back to work in two months and let's just do it. And I heard a great podcast with Anita Saa about launch strategy of just kind of giving away your product for free. They pay for postage, just to get those first kind of true fans. And we did that and took off.
Fiona Killackey: Wow.
Fiona Killackey: Okay, so there's so much in there. I mean, there's so many insights and tips and no, even, like, with the friends and family, you know, survey and getting people involved and kind of validating things. How did you come up with the name and even the packaging for it? And when you got the 500. Did the manufacturer already have the packaging?
Did you have to get that designed? Like yeah. And did you think, I mean did it just literally ship over or did you have to learn all about customs and freighten? No getting it into the country.
Lou Rice: So n with all of that. Honestly like we got the straps, the strap, they came originally, they were a shrink wrapped plastic bag was our packaging. So talk about minimum viible product right. Not even sustainable and I'm so'm such a good recycler so you know that I think about that now. So we went minimum bible packaging because the relatively low cost, lightweight. No. No real customs duties to pay. I mean honestly I only started paying those this year. I think so. Just so naive and I think But I think that's good in the beginning there's only so much you need to know and I think if you try and learn everything you're just going to probably freeze yourself up.
Fiona Killackey: So yeah it feel so overwhelmed by likeactly.
Lou Rice: Yeah ye so it was literally like cool, let's get 500 of these straps shrink wrapped in and then let's just put them up on the website and do a bit of marketing and get them out there and test the market. We kind of saw it as a soft launch to test the market that was in friends and family. Yeah, yeah.
Fiona Killackey: And so was it the fact that both of you had come from ad agencies that you knew even when you say that, you know, get on the website, get it out, market it, you had obviously a bit of knowledge about that. More so than say the average person who hasn't had that background. Was there anything in particular that you tried first? Were you straight into ads? Were you like oh let's build up this community. Did you have an existing community on just I don't know, your personal social medias or anything like that? How did you first get it out?
Lou Rice: Yeah, good question. I think yes, naturally both of us obviously have experience building campaigns and you know, but we were working with clients like Woolworth and Combank. Millions of dollars. Right. So very different but the principles are still the same.
Put the customer first, build the brand.
Build the brand.
And that's probably the most important liston I think anyone can take out of it. I think the biggest thing for me actually was because I'd had these kind of previous little side hustles. I knew how to build communities. I knew how to garner people around us and pull them in to get them into customers. So that was my big focus. I think a lot of business Owners can make a mistake of just launching a website and expecting people to find them from a few kind of organic social posts.
You have to go out and chase those people down upfro front. So I did have. I was kind of an enthusiastic novice on LinkedIn so I did and also participated in some female e commerce founder groups on Facebook and entrepreneur groups. So I posted on LinkedIn and in those groups and I was so lucky. The post went viral and I just had women going this is so caus it was quite a novel product and.
Fiona Killackey: And also people that have been in that exact situation.
Lou Rice: Yes.
Fiona Killackey: Know that that's a solution to a problem. I've had the time. So they can instantly see like oh, I can see working in my life. Yeah. So sorry.
Lou Rice: Beautiful thing about the product is anyone who owns a Kindle, I me it's just like damn it, I need that. So I had that virirality. We were giving them away free, just charging people postage. So it was kind of try before you buy basically. And then I went hard on micro influences and affiliates. I had no idea about bookshop before we launched went down this huge hole of bookshop and realising that so many book choperss are Kindle users and all they're doing all day showing off their Kindles and how easy for us to just search hashtag Kindle and find our ideal customers.
So I was reaching out to micro influenceces like under 5000 followers but very engaged following and just saying hey, would you like to try it out?
I'll give you if you like it, leave a review and I can give you an affiliate code. And again I think because it was quite new and novel these girls just jumped on it and then they were making content for me and yeah, it kind of snowboball from that. I did dabble in ads early on as we all do using some of that content but then Facebook shut our page down for no reason and that's when I realised look, you can t. I can't rely on this. So yeah, I just doubled down on community building and then we launched on Amazon really early on. That just was a game changer for us.
Fiona Killackey: Wow, that's again, oh my gosh. I'm like this is a roadmap for anyone listening of like all these things to do and it makes me so happy because so often people just think I'm just going to throw money at ads.
Fiona Killackey: And you're so right.
Fiona Killackey: If you don't have that community, if you don't have. It's like yeah, Anyway, I could go on and on and on about this, but then at some point you ended up on Shark Tank. So.
Lou Rice: Yes.
Fiona Killackey: And also, sorry, going back, you gave these things away for free, except for the shipping. At what point did you go, okay, we're going to turn that off now, or was it just you were giving them away free to a certain segment that you knew would then grow it, or were you giving it away for everyone and was it like three months in, we decided to then go, okay, everyone needs to pay for this now, or. Yeah. What point did you sort of switch that off?
Lou Rice: Yeah, we got to two. My goal was 200 orders and then we switched into real pricing. And that was amazing because, obviously the advantage of that is I think I got the same advice launching on Amazon. It was like, the goal is just to break even because what you need to do is bring in as many sales as possible as quickly as possible to get reviews, to get referrals. And so I realised that early on that the more I could push the product out there through these influences, through this free kind of giveaway product, the more reviews we were getting in, the more word of mouth was building. And it's. That's always going to be way more powerful than you talking about your product.
There's other people talking about your products. So, yeah, I would highly recommend that. I remember hearing us saying early on, like, do the things that don't scale in the early stages of business. And I'm still doing that to this day. It's that one on one outreach. Don't sit behind a computer and pay for ads like, get in people's inboxes, getting 100 people a day, you know?
Fiona Killackey: Y. Yeah, it's so funny you mentioned that because, our last guest on this podcast, Naz, who created an incredible AI tool called Poppy, he said the exact same thing. He's like, we're trying to scale the unscalable because that's what you got to do at the start. Like, almost exactly what you just said. So I love, I love when you hear this from two amazing different people. And then, sorry, back to my question about Shark Tank. When did that come in? And yeah, ah, because it's only going for like three years. You've done so much in such a short amount of time. But, yeah, Shark Tank. What did that do?
Fiona Killackey: How did you even apply?
Fiona Killackey: And then. Yeah, what does it. Did it help?
Lou Rice: Yeah, so we actually applied last. We're sitting here December 24th. We applied last year for the first season. That came back after the Five year hiatus. So welied last year we were nine months in. I think we applied the night before and it was just such a boring video. We didn't get anywhere this year. Fast forward huge, huge year of growth for us and found out that we had a week and I was going to Bali for an e comm retary. Luckily one of the coaches in the econ programme had been on Char last year so I was able to kind of bounce off her. But I had been. He wrote the script, he was cutting the video back in Sydney I was doing voice like piece to camera filming. So we really went hard on the application video and then we got the call. We like they're like, you know, your next step is a video interview with the producer. And yeah, it just went from there. So that was kind of March we recorded the application and then July we filmed the show. So we found out we were going in and we filmed the show in July and then we literally took off to New York a week later to be. To head over for an expo. And then it aired in October but we were lucky because they had to postpone filming and so we actually had about six weeks up our sleeves to prepare. And I know the. Yeah, the participants last year had like two weeks. So we, we literally went back through. Ben went on to chat GPT and put in.
Ask them to generate. I think he asked them to generate like all the questions that have ever been asked and all the answers. Yeah. And so we kind of used that as our boilerplate to then just craft our own answers. We had like 20 pages of notes. We just practise, practise, practise, practise. Because I was so scared of looking like a fool. You know how they can pickick at you with a question and then you unravel.
Fiona Killackey: Yes. And then they'll be like oh, but you just said this. Doesn't that contradict that? Yeah, I mean it makes fooding tv but yes. Not fun for the person in the middle.
Lou Rice: Yeah. So I think it was the scariest thing I've ever done but it was most, you know, when you back yourself and you really take a risk. I think that was the most exciting time. And then when it was on like we'd been in Bali a month. Banan was in China the week it was on and at ah, Canton Fair because we only found out the week before we were going to be on the first series, episode one. The first team to go into the tank.
Fiona Killackey: Yeah.
Lou Rice: W. And so I've just made like some lovely Mum friends Herera and Balley and one of them threw me a watch party and my mum had come over to help me out and so it was really special and so many wonderful messages. And then just like the traffic and the sales.
The traffic more so was amazing because sales, yeah, they were great but the traffic, you know, the amount of people coming to cheque you out and then, and then it just carried on for at least a good week. But now I look at my analytics, I was looking there the other day, a post purchase survey we have and still people are like saw you on charge change for you're in chap tank. So the catch up to anything must be real. Hey.
Fiona Killackey: Yeah. And also just that long tail of you know, you're on a podcast, you're talking about it, there'll be people who will ll be like oh I'm going to Google thanks Trapsicalle and see what they did. And then you know, and then that might, you know, it's just this constant like. Yeah. Ripple effect of people talking about stuff. I had the women from the dinner ladies on the podcast recently and they were talking about my kitchen rules and what that did or didn't do for their brand. But that is different as well because it's not necessarily business owners that are on there kind of rooting for you.
Especially if, I don't know, sometimes with the American one, my son and I watch that quite a bit because it's on like Samsung TV kind of gives you a free channel of just that the whole time. But sometimes you just want, you want to go and support that brand just even if they didn't get funding because you're like, they just seem like really lovely people.
Did you get a lot of people reaching out who have known you from your previous career who had no idea that you were doing this?
Lou Rice: It was so nice. Yeah. Because we had to keep it so under wraps. I mean I slipped it out to a few people but not many. And then I. The number of messages. I felt like such a celebrity for like 24 hours. The number of lovely messages from. Yeah. People who were watching it. watched it, like our corporate colleagues and friends from like 10 years ago. It was just such a special time. Yeah. I think for all the blood, sweat and tears you go through. Cause it's not easy. And you're in there for like 45 minutes being grilled. It's a proper pitch, business pitch.
Fiona Killackey: Yeah.
Lou Rice: So it was nice to get that recognition. Wow.
Fiona Killackey: And then you guys are now have boasted more than 100,000 customers, is that correct? In like less than three years or three years. That's amazing. And so did a lot of those come, you know, I mean I, I guess it's only been a couple of months since you've been on Shark Tank.
What do you think is the biggest like attribution channel for that amount of customers? Do you think it's just not just but the community that you've built up? Do you think it's Amazon and all of the kind of Amazon algorithm? I used to work at Amazon a long time ago. Yeah. So fully understand a lot of the back end. Well, that was 10 years ago. It's probably so much more sophisticated now. But where do you think that most.
Fiona Killackey: Of those customers have come through?
Fiona Killackey: Do you think it's your email post? Like all the stuff that you've talked about, the nurturing.
Lou Rice: I would attribute it solely to two things. Amazon us has been was absolutely the game changer and I think it was. It's just the way I guess things have mapped out for our ecom journey. But I launched on Amazon in the US November, so we were four or five months in and luckily without even knowing it launched right before Black Friday.
And originally I was just going to Amazon Australia. I was like, no, no, why wouldn't I just do you as well? Just for stock. It's all the same. And so lucky to do it before Black Friday. I think we were making like three grand a month on Shopify and December we clocked our first five figure month through Amazon and I was like, sh. Yeah, this is a game. Sorry to. I swear this is a game changer. because as you know, it'relatively hands off. I'm doing fulfilled by Amazon. I'm reaching this huge audience of millions of Kendall users because.
Because I'kind business. Yeah, it's like our ideal market so we can just get our advertising in front of them. And since then, and because I was still, I went back to my corporate advertising job but I went back three days a week because I knew if I went back four days they would make me work five in four. So it'like three days they couldn't p work on. So then I had two days to work on the business and Amazon was just the focus because it was making the most money and I was quite ashamed about that for a while. I was like, oh, I don't really have a proper, E comm business. I'm not doing all these growth strategies with Shopify. And then I realise now it's like I was able to make so much money through so much money, relatively a large amount of money through Amazon for relatively low effort to then now invest in you know, and shopify. So now I'm really focused on building that channel.
But Amazon is just booming for us so putting the focus in early on where I think it's a bit harder when you come into it a few years in and then you just kind of treat it as a side thing. So long story short, Amazon was the first thing and then this year we have hired content creators to literally with the goal of taking US viral on TikTok and Instagram and YouTube and I ended up engaging in US agency led by an amazing girl called Summer. If you go and look at our content, she is the blonde girl who's basically leading charge and we have, I think in six months with racked up nearly I got my VA to cheque it out yesterday we've racked up nearly 6,70 million views across those three platforms.
And when I look at Zigpole, the post purchase survey we have about 30 to 40% of purchase responses saw us on TikTok. So we really haven't frackd a solid paid ad strategy and we just haven't needed to yet because organic content marketing has been the best. So yeah, those's my two.
Fiona Killackey: I love this, I love this. Holies to be. I'm m like oh my goodness. And funny that you said oh I felt a bit bad about Amazon. So when I first worked at Amazon I was in charge of vacuum cleaners for Amazon. So I looked after Vax and Dyson and you know, these huge brands and they were able to absolutely like annihilate any other department store that they were selling at through the Amazon platform because it just does. It literally is reaching millions and millions of people. Obviously it's not, you know, the right fit for everyone but yeah, I think that's fantastic with the content creators because there'll be people that ask this how.
Fiona Killackey: Did you find them?
Fiona Killackey: Were they again, you sound like a very. You sound like I'm a big researcher and it sounds like you'll like that too. Like, okay, if I'm interested in something I'm going toa go down a rabbit hole and find all this stuff. How did you find them? was it recommendations? Were you following them already? Did it come through your agency connections?
Lou Rice: Yeah, first of all, I'll say I watched my girlfriend Gabby who has CMY cubes if he wants to cheque out someone who's crashing it in Kind of growth hacking organic strategies.
And she had implemented that strategy to great success with her own content creator. He's a guy talking about colour theory. She has this coloured cube. I just downplayed it completely. Go and have a look. But, she would. She'd done it with such great success. I was like, I need to do this because I can see my efforts are a bit woeful and I can't keep pumping all my time into it. So it was hard. You have to be. So anyone knows hiring anyone, you have to be really tenacious, put the feelers out everywhere.
So I was. I had an ad on, TikTok Creator Marketplace. I was advertising in local Facebook groups and female founder Facebook groups. Like, like mindd a bit, Just drinking mind. But then I went on Upwork and put that up there. And then I kind of realised, oh, yeah, someone in the US makes more sense. And I had. It was actually someone's fiance. Jimmy replied to me and then it was really hard to pin down. I actually, I remember I finally got a call in with them when I was here in Bali in May and they gave me their pricing and I was like, okay, this is not cheap, but five times a week across Instagram, Ted up and YouTube and I think it's been the best investment we've made.
Fiona Killackey: O. I love this. And also Upwork. I mentioned Upwork a lot. Yeah, I get a lot of stuff from Upwork and I feel like people have this perception that, oh, if you go to Upwork, you're justn to get somebody for $4 an hour on the.
And it's like, no, like you said, there's so many people from the US. The guy who helps me with my Squarespace site, he's in LA. He runs an incredible agency in la. He's also an actor. he's a very interesting guy. He's not cheap either, but it's like, yeah, I just want to put that out there that, you know, there are incredible people on Upwork from all over the world and you can pay them proper and all of that. It's not just this sort of. I mean, of course in any platform there's going to be people that take advantage of it. So then you've also expanded the actual range. So you've gone from straps to clutches and cases. At what point did you go, okay, we're going to expand this?
Was that your partner because you said he's into like product development and did you test and validate any of those or was it like, okay, We've got this market. What do they want next?
Lou Rice: 100%. Second one. So I think I've realised my genius zone is connections. I locked into my purpose early on, which is like connecting people and possibilities. And so I just love engaging with my community. And going into that TikTok BookTok community we were like, oh shit. People are using clear cases on their Kindles because they often want to have put these stickers on M to show off but they don't want to stick them on the Kindles so they using a clear case for extra prediction. Next thing, you know, I mean also we were so naive in the beginning. We have one size strap, now we have four. So we didn't even make straps for the larger paper lights. But so then clear cases were a thing and then, okay, what models can we make them for? Then we could see that people love stickers and I was just getting like real time feedback from my community. And then recently we've set up a Facebook group called the Strap Circle. And it's great Nameviously you guys come.
Fiona Killackey: From ads because they're all of it great names.
Lou Rice: The straps, that's definitely been, that's been the creative. But we've only got 900 people in there. But they'so so many of them are so engaged. They've got like every set of our straps, all our clutches and they're the ones who we feed ideas from and also through our Instagram stories, but mainly them. And last week I actually'got a bit of a top secret product launching in January. I was like, I really need some dialogue. I need some feedback. That's dialogue, not just comment sections, you know. And so I invited anyone in the group to focus group and I had about 18 of them on the call and it went for about an hour. And they not only gave us clear feedback, on this product because it was quite niche into a book space. They basically gave us a whole roadmap next year there were so many ideas flowing and we were to scribble SW to it. So and if you go back to that, you know, do the things that don't scale, I'll die on that hill now because that is just never be big enough to they, you can't stay connected to customers. So that's how we're doing it. That's how we're rolling everything out. Ah, for next year. It's all through them.
Fiona Killackey: I love this because when I was at my last employed role we paid. I'm sure they were't, you know, no One's probably going to listen to this from that I used to work with, but we paid around a quarter of a million dollars for a focus group agency to work on the brand and all of this. And I remember going to a brand workshop early on in my business and there was a guy leading it and he came from agency land and he said, yeah, I mean, small business owners.
Fiona Killackey: They could just get focus groups.
Fiona Killackey: And I was like, okay, so how.
Fiona Killackey: Much is that going to cost?
Fiona Killackey: And he was about. He said, oh, I don't know, 12,000. 15 probably could get a cheap one. And I said, most small business owners don't have $15,000 to spend on a focus group, let alone a quarter of a million. And I just love that you talked about like, using the network you already have and then inviting them in and having that really lovely, genuine connection with them and still having a focus group. Like I often say to people, a focus group can just be a phone call that you do. Like, it doesn't have to be this huge thing, get everyone into a hotel foyer, like, yeah, I love that. So.
Lou Rice: Oh, my God, yes. And you say that what's so interesting now? I think now I'm joining the dog because throughout my advertising career, I mean, I was m so lucky to work with some of the best brand strategists, you know, Woolworth. And it was like, right, we're gonna do this focus group. And it was like, you had to get the questions approved. You had to stimulus. It was so serious. And now I'm thinking about it, I'm like, this is what I'm doing now. I'm just way more, grassroots with it and agile. But at the end of the, the results are the same.
Oh, the results are raising.
And all those girls loved it. And afterwards they would, they would decide, love that so much. We're gonna do it once a month. And then also I was like, I feel like I need to hire you guys. And a buch couple of them have light, reach out when see my life would be complete if I could work for you. And I was like, o. Okay, we've got to create some roles here, some marketing roles.
Fiona Killackey: Yes. Oh, I think this is so good. I have a client and she's in the craft space and an incredible, incredible entrepreneur. And they had, they've just hired somebody who reached out with that exact thing, saying, it's my dream to work for you. And then a role actually became, you know, available a few months later. And they're like, isn't that amazing? She's obsessed with the M brand and now she's going to work with us and be obsessed with from the internals as well. It all sounds very positive. Like, you know, it all sounds like, oh, yeah, we just did this and then it went viral and then we did this and then we're in shark tank. But I'm sure there's been lots of challenges and so can you tell us about some of those and what are some of the bigger kind of things that you had to deal with?
Lou Rice: Yeah, touch wood. We haven't had any, like, massive setbacks yetah. Probably. Oh, sorry. That's a lie.
The biggest challenge we are facing at the moment is the current factory that we started with. The quality control as we've scaled has really reduced to the point where we were so excited to launch our leopard print straps and clutch.
And it's so sexy and just such a hype launch. And then we just started getting people messing up going, hey, the Lopard print'pling off. It's like, beating on my, like flaking off on my hands like a white residue. And we ended up recalling all the product and compensating all those customers. But yeah, they just hadn't done the right, testing of the design application. And so now we're in the process of kind of working now with a QC agent to help us with that stuff because it's just. Yeah, that's. You don't know until something like that happens and then you're absolutely screwed. And so I can't even like the cost of obviously compensating customers. But then the lost revenue from sales M, it's unquantifiable. But that touchw with nothing else. Too bad. I think what we struggle with the most and we have done literally for like the last three months is just a lack of team. We have grown so quickly. Like, our forecast is almost tripling from year two for year three and it's still just Ben and I and five freelancers and it's okay, but it's not like.
And just having the headspace to hire people is the whole thing in itself. So I think that's our biggest challenge right now. Just optimising all the processes and structures. You know, I was so lucky yesterday. Completely. Other Blue Lisa Messenger. I don't know if you know her. is. I know her.
Fiona Killackey: We collaborated a long time ago when she talk started her magazine and yeah, she used to do events for us at, at Mimco a lot. Yes. No, I know her well, actually, not well, but it's in. I know her. Yes.
Lou Rice: She's been around for a long time, but she's in Bali and she just kind of posted about doing mental sessions. So I just slid into her DMs and next thing you know, I went to a two hour session with her yesterday, like wild.
Because, you know, when I first started my business journey, she was one of those people with the inspiring content. But she was just talking about the fact that with her business, the thing she would do at the beginning is lay down the right team, the right processes, the right structures and invest in that. And I think that's for us, it's something we need to kind of pull back and actually go, yeah, right, let's dedicate a month to this.
Fiona Killackey: Yes.
Lou Rice: So, yeah, that's. Yeah, that's the growing pains we're facing at the moment. Oh, and running out of money. Sorry, that was really big. completely running out of moneyy. Yeah. So this last. As everyone who's got a product business knows, you know, going into Q4, you stacked the production and we stacked it so big because we had things like Sharp T, we had a US TV opportunity, we just didn't know. And we stacked it so big and then got to November. It's like we were rolling two Amex credit cards and it was coming up to the. And I was like, we don't't have enough money in the bank to pay these off. What is this situation?
No one had really kind of walked us through cash flow management.
So next thing you know, we've now got a Cash Daily tracker. We've educated ourselves, we took out a loan and that was kind of a. That was a bit of an ego hit. But then you realise how many businesses in that scaling phase have to do.
Fiona Killackey: That and you have to. And I have so many product based businesses who are putting down hundreds of thousands, if not millions. And the hope, the hope that it sells, you know, like it has to all be paid upront before they've got any orders. And sometimes if it's things like you know, that are, that are dateable in some way, then there's even more of a risk. Like if this doesn't.
Fiona Killackey: Oh God, 24 on it.
Fiona Killackey: I've got, you know, calendar. It's got. Yeah. So I think that that's just not talked about enough. So many people going into.
Lou Rice: Not talked about enough.
Fiona Killackey: No.
Lou Rice: Well, y are so lucky though. And this is again like me flying the flag of Amazon a little bit. But what, what people who aren't on there because I speak to a lot of business owners'a bit fearful going on there for various reasons, you know, fees they take or competition and, and what people don't think about, I think is the power of the sales promotions on Amazon, like locking into their Black Friday promo.
That was massive for us. But now Christmas, like our Christmas sales are blowing through the roof and they're increasing day by day and obviously with the prime next day delivery, I don't see that stopping until what, the 24th. So I think I'm so glad we overstocked essentially. Yeah, we needed it.
Fiona Killackey: And it sounds like you guys have backed yourself a lot. And so how do you, I mean get you living in Bali and you've got opportunities there. How do you go as a couple working together and both of you kind of you left your job and then he has been retired into the business as well. Like do you ever to switch off.
Fiona Killackey: Or do you feel like God, this.
Fiona Killackey: Is all we talk about. Or do you feel like no, we have a clear delineation of okay, this is work time, this is, this is home time. Or, or you both just so passionate that you're like in this season we're fine to just go for it.
Lou Rice: Yeah, or 100% right. It's the season. It is the season of kind of chaotic life and business intermering. You know, I work really well early in the morning. We have our n. We've got nanny that comes in at 6:45am and she'll get us she ready for daycare.
Take him off to daycare. We're still around. Comes and visits the office about five times in that hour. But that' fine. But I think we just Ben and night. It's something for next year. I'm very conscious we should define our roles more clearly and how we work together. But at the moment, I mean we just kind of float in and out and it is all about'at the moment it's all about Archie, it's all about the business and it's all about our life. Like we're moving house in Valali this week on Thursday before we get on a plane on Sunday to go back to Australia for Christmas. And we're away for a month because we're going to the States to go to a consumer electroics show.
But it's like, you know what, I could be really stressed about it or I could just be like this is life growing a business. We with re a 3 year old and we just got to roll with it. And when we come back, we're go going toa lock in a nanny who's go goingna be like full time. We're go going toa have our new house. We can make it our home and we're going toa get into some good processes together. We're gonna get an ice bath on the deck, you know, O amazing now for now, there's a lot of takeaway food and a lot of kind of discussions.
Fiona Killackey: Yeah. And the thing is, you could be working at an ad agency and be stressed to the nine and be doing all of that and hardly seeing each other for somebody else's dreams.
Lou Rice: I know. No, I know. And this's the thing. I love this business. I could do this. This was to delisa about I could do this 247 and I feel there's never enough hours for me to work on it. It's always. It's a compromise, obviously, when you have a family of the snatched time, so it's being more efficient with the time. Whereas Ben, I think he's happy enough in the business, but he could probably go off and go back to consulting because he loves big brand creation and so, yeah, we'll just have to see how it nets out.
Fiona Killackey: Oh, this is. So this has been such an enjoyable chat. I'd love to know if you have had. It sounds like you're a very determined person and like I said, a bit of a researcher. And it sounds like Ben's. You know, the two of you together are quite dynamic, but have you had any other mentors or. You've obviously mentioned Lisa messenger and your other friend Gabby. Do you have any other. Have you gone through any programmes or have you even read any books or documentaries that you're like. That hit a nerve and that helped me.
Lou Rice: Yes. You know what? When I was early on in my side Hustle days, I was part of the screw the 95 community. Oh, yeah. Jill and Josh Stanton. And I've followed Jill through the years and Jill always said her saying was cut a cheque to go faster. And I absolutely credit investing in coaching and programmes for our success. Like, I think the first three months and I had come to Lisa Jones'orbit she com and I went to her she Come Live conference and I. I was three months into the business, so naive and I was looking around and I was staying at a hotel down the road, room sharing, that's all I could afford. And I was getting all these girls and, they're making six figures a month.
How do you live even?
Do that and cut to actually making six fig a month than realising how much smoke and mirrors that involves because definitely doesn't mean you have that in the back.
Yes. But doing that and then going to her Balley treat like levelling up before I was almost ready I absolutely credit to that so that she come girls and Gabby's one of her coaches but they have been instrumental and then just being around like people who are kind of a step ahead of you M like even through Sharp Tank I don't know. You know Max seemn you judge on there. Like I can see she's going to be an amazing mentor. just casually because she's a woman in business who's been there down there at the head of the game. So I think I'm getting better at also just reaching out to people and saying you know, can we chat or can I.
Can I pick your brain? But you know just actually asking for people's time because they're actually very generous with it than yes.
Fiona Killackey: Yes. Oh my goodness. And so what are some of the tools that you just can't run this business without? Especially now you're living in Bali like and all of your you know you've got these people in the US with content creation like yeah. How do you communicate? What are the best tools that you.
Lou Rice: Use Go so fashion like Slack and Google Docs and Google Spreadsheets. Is it really good?
Fiona Killackey: I love Google Drive. Yeah, I think does pretty much most stuff that you need it to do.
Lou Rice: Yeah, yeah. Like Slack is just it's it, it's it right for keeping in track of everyone and everything. And then yeah I think there's a couple of apps I absolutely adore and Shopify the Zigole. Like understanding exactly the post purchase where people have come from, I think that's really critical. And I've recently installed order editing which oh my God. Changed like in terms of reducing the number of customer support tickets. Amazing. But other than that we have super old school still. I was looking into Gorgeous. I was like you know what? I don't know, I'got 30, 40 emails or what per day. Like I can't justify the cost. And ah, so we're still in the email but this is probably the process of system things I need to work through.
Fiona Killackey: Amazing. And so what do you think has been the most proud moment of running this whole business so far?
Lou Rice: I think I was reflecting on that. I honestly think it was the first 18 months when I was working my corporate job raising a tiny human and trying to build this business and just I hustled the shit out of it. And we worked like we wouldn't have known a time where we weren't working every weekend, had nanny, a rotation coming in. Always making sure Archie was happy, you know, down at the playground with his friends. But if I look back now I go that groundwork and that intense work really set us up for success. And Ben, when Ben came on time he was just like, how have you been doing this? This is wild.
Fiona Killackey: Yeah, yeah.
Lou Rice: So super proud of that. It's not for the faint hearted for sure. And yeah, I think don't be fooled that it's an easy journey's definitely not.
Fiona Killackey: Oh no, it's just been I could talk to you for like another hour but what is the best way for people to connect with you? Fairlyening and thinking oh my goodness, I'd love to connect with her or all of that. And then also what's next? What's coming up in 2025 that you can share?
Lou Rice: Yes, so people can connect with me. you can connect with me personally on Instagram, Lou Ricend also LinkedIn. I'm trying to share more of my E econ founder journey. And then so that's Lou Ricend then strapool on TikTok or Instagram for some fun, slightly smuty Kindle related contest you could get a laugh from. And then what's next for us? Look, honestly it's, you know what the big juggle is right now? It's we have the DTC side of business, Shopify and how much time you can invest in that to really acquire customers one on one versus you have marketplaces and big retail over here.
And we really have to focus in on what's going to give us the biggest bang for our buck next year. And I think for me it's replicating their success of Amazon and other marketplaces. Big retail. We have a really big opportunity, the big US retailer to launch next year with some bespoke products. Also a major Australian retailer hopefully in February. So for me it's going as fast as we can to continue to be the first to market, first to mind. So continue to be the market leader, continue to build the brand. So inevitably when a competitor comes we we've got that powerful brand behind us. We just have to go as fast as we can and be everywhere all at once. So that is the continued focus. I just got on TikTok shop in the US so although they might get.
Fiona Killackey: Banned but yeah, I saying it's going to get. I feel like this whole well, who knows, I might eat my words but I feel like I run marketing for a small business and I've been running it for years and every six months we do a coaching component and every time we have to, you know, update all the social media stuff and there's constantly like I remember February 2023 it was TikTok's going to get banned and we are now sitting in December 2024. Yeah, it's been like three big times when it's like nope, this is it's it it's gon to get banned and it hasn't so far. So let's see. Yeahe.
Lou Rice: Yeah, so yeah, so I think big retail expansion, big us expansion and then also just driving into things that differentiate our brand. So we're looking at more licencing licenced products, how we can do bespoke products. It's going to set us out apart from the competition.
Fiona Killackey: Oh, it has been such a joy to chat. I had no idea what we would talk about. I mean obviously it did a little bit but I feel like there's so much in this. I usually always just pick two things at the end to talk about when I do the outro and already my mind is racing with like at least 12 things that I'm like oh, how am I going to narrow it down to do but this has been such a joy. Thank you so much Lou for giving up your time and yeah, I just think it's super inspiring and there's gonna be a whole bunch of people listening to this over the summer break going that's it. You know what, I am go goingna give myself 12 months and I'm quitting my job and I'm gonna do this. So yeah, massive congrats on what you've done.
Lou Rice: Thank you so much. And if anyone's in Bali, we're in Sanua so help me out for a coct. Love to meetes.
Fiona Killackey: Yeah, it'be great. I'm heading to Sanua, in about nine months so if you're still there I will definitely get.
Lou Rice: We will be awesome. One year lease. Yep.
Fiona Killackey: Yeah, okay, well definitely I'll m meet you in real life then. Thank you so much.
Lou Rice: Bye bye.
Fiona Killackey: Thank you. Goodness me. I'm sure you were taking so many notes.
Fiona Killackey: Honestly the amount of intel that Lou shared is just incredible and I'm so, so thankful for her coming onto the podcast. So thank you Lou. As usual, I'm going to highlight two things that stood out for me but if you're listening to this and you really just want to jump on over and see Strapsicle. You can go to Strapsicle.com. You can also go and follow them on social media under Strapsicle and we'll link to that in the show notes for this episode, which you'll find at My Daily Business Podcast
Okay, two things that stood out.
The first, and I just absolutely love this because I feel like I'm saying it to people all that time. And also it's how I've grown my own business is to utilise the networks you already have. And so Lou talked about growing this Facebook group, growing other things, you know, the connections that she has with other, you know, parents and really reaching out in the early stages and asking for help in terms of, you know, how would you use this product, where might you find this product, what kind of things would you be interested in knowing about this product, but also for growing the business over time and to have this incredible focus group. And, you know, she talked about meeting up with them and having that real life conversation and chats. The amount of gold that can come out of those chats is next level.
And like I said, I've worked at.
Big companies where we spent multiple six figures on these sorts of focus groups. And I think small business owners sometimes forget how much access to community we have to ask these questions to set up something like a zoom call or a chat group or anything else to kind of get information, but also to understand what are the big pain points right now, what are the frustrations? How can I work to solve them for my community? And I just love that she talks about connecting with that group of people again and again, and also that they.
Really helped her think about, okay, what.
Are all the other products we want to launch in 2025 and beyond? So, utilize the networks you already have and grow that community. There is so much power in a community. I saw it a lot with COVID, where businesses that had a community around them found that community rallied to support them, even in difficult times.
Those businesses thrived because the community supported them. On the other hand, companies that didn’t focus on building a community struggled. It’s a reminder of the power of community—and how important it is to connect with the people who love your product and support your business.
Lou did a great job cultivating that. She continues to grow it, and that’s been a big part of their success.
Now, another thing that I love about what Lou said is that, from the outside, it might look like everything has been smooth sailing. You look at Strapsicle and think, "Wow, they’ve done this quickly. They’re on Shark Tank. They’ve been so successful!" And yes, all of that is true. But behind that success, there are challenges.
We tend to romanticize other people’s businesses. We look at them and think, "They don’t have the problems I have. They’re not going through what I’m going through." But the truth is, every business faces its struggles. Lou was open about some of Strapsicle’s challenges. For example, dealing with quality control issues with a specific print. They had to find new manufacturers to solve the problem. It wasn’t all smooth sailing.
I really appreciate that Lou was so honest about that. It’s a good reminder that nothing in business is ever perfect. We tend to imagine that everyone else has it all figured out, but in reality, there’s always something. Even when things are going well, you can bet there will be obstacles. There will be moments when things don’t go as planned. I recently had one of those moments.
Someone reached out to ask if I was going to be part of a certain festival. I had no idea the festival was happening. It would have been a great opportunity, but I missed it. At first, I was frustrated. I thought, "I wish I had known about that." But then I reminded myself, “Okay, let’s learn from this. Next time, I’ll keep an eye out for similar events.” It’s all part of the learning process. We can’t always predict what’s going to happen, but we can choose how we respond.
The important thing is not to let yourself get overwhelmed by challenges. Lou didn’t get stuck in the problems they were facing. She and her team kept moving forward. They asked, “What’s the next step?”
That’s the mindset we should all aim for. Even when things are going well, there will always be something unexpected. It’s part of business. But when it happens, take a deep breath and say, “Okay, we expected this.
Now, what’s the plan?”
This applies not just to business but to life in general.
I was just talking about this with my own experience. I’ve just returned from doing my final Christmas food shop. I’m hosting this year, and before I went to the shops, I told myself, “This is going to be chaotic. Embrace it.” You can’t expect anything less than mayhem a couple of days before Christmas. And that’s exactly what I walked into.
Instead of getting frustrated, I thought, “Okay, I expected this. Let’s go with it.” I put on a podcast, and just embraced the chaos. Yes, it was crowded. Yes, the car park was full. But it was exactly what I had expected. I saw people getting stressed out, honking their horns, and grumbling. But really, what did they expect? You’re shopping just before Christmas—of course, it’s going to be crowded.
Resisting the situation only makes it worse.
The same is true in business.
There will always be surprises, things you didn’t plan for. But it’s how you handle those moments that makes the difference.
My eldest son actually has a mantra at school: "Fall down seven, get up eight." It doesn’t matter how many times you fall, as long as you get up. I love that. Lou’s journey mirrors that philosophy in many ways.
I just want to say a huge thank you to Lou for sharing her story so openly. If you want to check out Strapsicle, head over to their social media (@Strapsicle) or visit Strapsicle.com. You can also find them on various other e-commerce platforms.
I’m excited for 2025, and I’m so grateful to have you along for the ride. Thank you for listening to the first episode, and I’ll see you next time. Bye!
