 Where did the idea for your business come from? Tell us how and why you get started. My Grandad was a hobbying poet and wrote stacks of poems for me when I was a little girl. I rediscovered his words when I was clearing out my Mum’s loft after she passed away and being pregnant at the time I had an overwhelming feeling of nostalgia and happiness remembering my childhood. I not only wanted to share his words with my new baby but thought it might bring some joy and much needed escape to other people as well. My day job had been proving more and more challenging so I needed a light relief and a new focus and during Covid work wasn’t going so well so I had a bit more time and determination to get Nettlefold up and running. Nettlefold was the name of my childhood home that I had to sell when I lost Mum. What's a typical day like? Sadly Nettlefold has to come after the day job and looking after my baby boy so it tends to be post 7pm that I get cracking with Nettlefold. Then when my other half is off work I find myself packing cards in the spare room!  What is the best part of having your own business? The freedom to go at my own pace, on my own terms and take it in whichever direction I want. What's the hardest part? The fact I want to do nothing but Nettlefold and focus on it 100% but am unable to due to the day job! Also the guilt with the Mum/work juggle What’s your best selling product? The Animal Friends greeting cards but I’ve just released a new sunflower design that is proving very popular so that may take over! If you had one piece of advice for someone just starting out, what would it be? Take it slowly, don’t make any rash decisions to ‘get it out there’ and don’t be afraid to ask for help and advice. Let's talk tech. Which softwares do you use in your business? ( Online store, email marketing, scheduling tools, video apps, accounting & banking apps etc)If you're on Shopify, I'd also love to learn your favourite apps. Wix for my website, GoDaddy for the site and Email domain hosting,Mailchimp for email marketing. Planoly for Instagram and Canva for drafting templates for flyers/ads/IG posts etc  Which social media platform works best for you?
Instagram has been slow but starting to get traction now What business book/podcast/courses would you recommend? The Resiliant Retail Club is amazing Where can people find you? www.nettlefoldhome.co.uk IG @nettlefoldhome FB facebook.com/nettlefoldhome
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 The competition is fierce in the busiest period of the year. Especially in the busy, noisy world of Instagram. For this blog, I compiled four tips that will help you stand out from your competition this Christmas season. 1. Use beautiful imagery for your product catalog.  This year, most of your customers will be shopping online. Your potential customers can't touch and feel the products. So inspire them with beautiful photos that will help them visualise what it feels like using your products. 2. Tag your products on your grid, Stories and IGTV. This is a great function that makes it easy for people to visit your product pages. Instagram advises tagging up to five products per post. Make sure your content isn't overcrowded with overlapping tags. You can also tag your products in Stories which will give you the Swipe Up function.  3.Highlight your Christmas related products. Here's a good example from The Body Shop. They added their Christmas and Advent products to their highlights so anyone looking at their profile can easily find out about these products.  4. Add a Gift Card option as a call to action button on your profile or share it in your Story. All you need to do is going to Edit Profile, then to Action Buttons , Gift Cards and select a partner. This is a great opportunity for businesses to seamlessly sell gift cards - even if your shop is closed.  Don't forget to subscribe to my email list to receive my FREE guide to learn what Facebook ad mistakes you might be making or alternatively, if you have an e-commerce business, join my Facebook group to chat all things Facebook & Instagram marketing.
Need expert support? Apply for a free discovery call.  I am super excited to launch a new series of blogs where I interview successful e-commerce founders. This week we have the lovely Anushi Desai, co-founder of Plant Pops Snacks. Where did the idea for your business come from? Tell us how and why you get started. I’ve always been a foodie but I came up with the idea for Plant Pops after making popped lotus seeds at home (just like my grandmother and mother did) with some interesting flavour combinations and taking them into work for my colleagues. We used to work long hours and snack all the time, getting really bored of crisps and popcorn which is all that seemed to be on offer. Everyone loved the popped lotus seeds and that’s when we knew we were onto a winner! My friend Ash was the first to get hooked and he’s co-founder of our brand. We must have tested around 15 different flavours across hundreds of people to get to our starting line up of Himalayan Salt, Smoked Chilli and Peanut Butter Popped Lotus Seeds. Our mission is always to create snacks that are good for you, good for the environment and good for the communities that create them. Every pack sold helps us support Action Village India, a charity that supports farmers and their families in Northern India, from where we source our popped lotus seeds. What's a typical day like? Fortunately there’s no typical day! Although I’m working from home a lot more now, as are a lot of people, my day is super varied. I tend to focus on operations and products earlier in the day so I can liaise with our manufacturers. There’s lots of moving parts to look after so there really isn’t any typical day!  What is the best part of having your own business? I love being able to create something from scratch and see people enjoy it! I also love how flexible we can be and think of an idea, and put it into action within a couple of hours. One of my favourite things is sampling with our customers - I love hearing what they think, seeing them try a popped lotus seed for the first time and getting their thoughts on what they'd like us to bring out next. What's the hardest part? Sometimes running your own business can be a bit overwhelming - you've got so many different hats on that you have to upskill pretty quickly to make sure you're doing the right thing for the business at the right time. It can at times also be a bit lonely - running a start up in particular has some incredibly high highs and some really low lows. Every sale feels so great, but there are some challenges along the way too.  What’s your best selling product?
It really varies by platform – but our Peanut Butter is very unusual and our customers absolutely love it! If you had one piece of advice for someone just starting out, what would it be? I wish I’d been braver at the beginning - I second guessed myself a lot, and toyed with the idea of going forward with the business for at least 6 months. I wish I'd had the confidence in my idea and gone for it earlier. If you have an idea, you've tested the product-market fit, I would say just go for it! You'll never know until you try! Let's talk tech. Which softwares do you use in your business? ( Online store, email marketing, scheduling tools, video apps, accounting & banking apps etc). If you're on Shopify, I'd also love to learn your favourite apps. I use Notion pretty much ALL the time – I use it to make lists, track our stockists, sales, website updates and pretty much everything else through it. Later is great for scheduling content across our social media channels. I use FreeAgent for accounting and invoicing and all the boring bits! Which social media platform works best for you? Instagram is great to share visuals and really communicate with our audience. What business book/podcast/courses would you recommend? I love podcasts – some of my favourite business podcasts are PitchDeck and How I Built This. Where can people find you? You can find our Plant Pops through our website www.plantpopssnacks.com, Amazon and lots of great independent stores! |
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