How a small blog turned into a $20 million toxin-free beauty business with Nourished Life’s Irene Falcone | #389

Irene Falcone:

I was actually the first person in Australia to ever advertise on Facebook.

Tim Reid:

No way.

Irene Falcone:

I was. You know how hard it was to talk to Facebook. I had to call America to get someone and there was these little matchbox size ad that you would click on and that was the only sort of advertising you could do on Facebook at that time and I desperately wanted to put this little thumbnail to one of our movies.

Tim Reid:

How did you know you were the first one? Did Facebook say oh we’ve never got a phone call from Australia. That’s amazing. And that’s a really good claim to fame.

Irene Falcone:

I’m not a 100% by that claim by the way.

Tim Reid:

Edit that out now. Don’t let the truth get by way of a good story, Irene.

Irene Falcone:

Exactly.

Tim Reid:

Now, you were working in corporate and I understand that one day and I’m looking at a picture of you on your website my last day in corporate is the headline of that picture. You tell the story of sitting on the steps at lunchtime exhausted. And what happened?

Irene Falcone:

I was so exhausted. I was a Mom. I’ve got four children. I was a complete makeup junkie so I was flattering my body with well now we find out or smothering my body with up to 500 different chemicals every single day and that’s what women do. And I never really thought about what was what was in those products. And I just sort of sat down on that step and I grabbed something out of my bag rubbed it on my leg so I could keep walking and I looked at the back and tell what am I putting on my body? That was the first time I ever really thought about it. And I just sort of stuck with me for the rest of the day. And then when I got home that night I started Googling and looking up what these chemicals were. And Google sent back some things not very good about these chemicals. I thought I wonder if that is contributing to me not feeling great and not eating well and exercising. But I was putting a lot of chemicals on my body. And so I thought well when I’m going to stop doing it and see if I feel better. And I stop putting everything on my body. And I worked in the film industry and we would have movie premieres and I put makeup on. I literally I threw up my shampoo I threw out everything. And I didn’t have anything to use. So I was sort of forced at that point to go and look for alternatives and I really couldn’t anywhere where I could find all natural alternatives to the mainstream products that I was using. There’s a few bits and pieces at the health food store and stuff but it was very hard to see what was really natural what wasn’t. I found it all really confusing. And they say the best business ideas do come from frustration or try to open up of you. And that was my personal problem and I thought well how many other people also would love to swap to natural products. So, I set up a Facebook page and a blog and I started just writing about these discoveries. I found this particular lip balm that you can use instead of the traditional bombs that are made from petrochemicals now days five years later mystery farms aren’t made out of petrochemical anymore but they were back in five years ago they were. And I put that up on Facebook and no one behold. Would you believe? There were so many other mums out there with kids. My child has eczema. My child has cyst. I’m looking for a lip balm for this. And it really did take off and so I wasn’t alone. And that’s the other exciting thing about social media. So, often you think your problem is your problem. You know you’re alone. But once you jump on social media and you realize that there’s actually thousands and thousands of people all wanting to know the same information. So that’s really how Nourished Life started.

Tim Reid:

What a great story and very quick proof of concept by kind of asking the question or sharing what you found and everyone come back to. Just going back to your corporate life. Were you actively looking to get out and start your own business or was it not even on the radar?

Irene Falcone:

No. It wasn’t on my radar. I love my job. And I really worked so hard to get that position because it was only before in the country. So it was a really special job. But interestingly enough when I left, I decided to leave because I’m so passionate about what I was doing at that point and I’d replaced my income pretty much all of that.

Tim Reid:

So, let’s just explore that. That is fantastic. So, what you have done your corp job. You’re loving it. You’re on a good wage you got the job you love. You discover this whole new world of people and toxins and toxin free living and you get your back up about that and go on to do something about that. So you start why you’re in corporate blogging. Facebook posting sort of forming opinions and building a bit of a tribe would it be fair to say.

Irene Falcone:

Absolutely.

Irene Falcone:

Actually what happened there was a little thing that happened and that was that Channel 9 picked up my blog and I was on mornings. And that really propelled my Facebook following and actually my website crashed at the time. I had so much people logged on and so that was huge for me because I got a lot of extra exposure from that.

Tim Reid:

Tell me about the blogging, Irene because channel 9 in order for channel on to pick it up. It must be a blog of substance. It must have been ranking well when they Google whatever it was for you to pop up. What did you do. Just set up a little WordPress blog and be able to express your opinions once a day or once a week.

Irene Falcone:

It was a WordPress blog that was free that I got downloaded for free. That I was sharing to Facebook at the time and it wasn’t really the blog content itself. I think that got their attention but it was quite a shocking thing. 5 years ago for somebody a female who did throw away ten thousand dollars worth of cosmetics from their house in Coast in a garbage bag. I threw out my husband shampoo. Literally we couldn’t brush our teeth. And that was sort of I was known for that. And then they thought that was a really interesting story and it was about the I guess the growing toxin free movement. You know like we look at it now five years ago and five years ago now it was such a big deal. People were thinking I was crazy that I was a hippie I was a conspiracy theorist but now even the mainstream brands are taking out half the stuff out of their products now and claiming toxin free. But back then it really was an unusual thing. Yes that’s the key. The media attention. I was very lucky because I was one of the first to market.

Tim Reid:

When did the e-commerce play come into being? How many months after starting your blog?

Irene Falcone:

I started a blog after I had my baby because it’s really interesting because actually most of my customers will find me after they’ve had a baby or they’re pregnant because that really is an interesting time when you think about your body and what you’re putting on it. So he was born December. Yeah started in about January 2012 and then I incorporated Nourished Life in October. So that was about eight or nine months where I was blogging on WordPress. And then I decided to move to a proper e-commerce platform and there was another business that was a sort of selling off their website that I purchased which is that actually I use a custom build website which is coded and I don’t use a particular product just yet.

Tim Reid:

So just I understand this because this is where the business start. This is where the business is born essentially up until the content creator. Have you gone and purchased an e-commerce store that’s selling toxin free products to get a kick start. Is that what you did?

Irene Falcone:

Exactly what I did.

Tim Reid:

You sound guilty then. I did start from scratch.

Irene Falcone:

Because I don’t think I would do it. No. I made so many mistakes back then. I completely took that website and gutted it and completely gutted it. Looking back now I think that was really a silly thing to do because ] I lost all of the Google rankings. That would have had some Google rankings it took me a good 18 months to get even a right even to get on Google’s radar. And I did do a lot of blogging to get back up there and it’s interesting. I deleted all the blogs and content that was on the original site and I could go by the time I would have kept them all.

Tim Reid:

That’s interesting. A past of friends business only this morning who he just sold his business put a lot of effort into branding. He even went to the effort of his shopfront. He got a famous graffiti artist to do a whole lot of work on it. I noticed the new owners have come in they’ve completely changed the logo the branding they’ve painted over the graffiti. And from what I understand are changing a whole lot of other parts of the business and I’m wondering what are you buying if you buy something and then go and change. What are you actually buying. So you realize that now, right?

Irene Falcone:

I do. And I think that was you learn from your mistakes and that’s probably one of the biggest regrets that I have and I think the business would have gone off the ground sooner. Thank goodness that I was able to use Facebook and social media to get my name out there. But had I not completely taken a platform and completely gutted it I think I might have been able to do it faster so don’t do that. If you have to buy something, tweak it but don’t completely change it.

Tim Reid:

Well I guess one thing you were buying. I’m gathering that business must have had a list of past customers that you could market to.

Irene Falcone:

Yes so that’s another really interesting point. It had a list of 600 customers and. And they all didn’t top with me so that’s another learning as well. I wouldn’t Yeah. So I had a list of 200 customers and they just were not interested in anything that I was doing because it was so different to what they had before. So it looked so different to them. I was completely gutted it was rebranded. I wasn’t even really selling the same products as they were because of course I’m very strict with what I sell to them. They were quite annoyed with me and I wasn’t able to retain any of them in fact I was annoyed. I paid for the least.

Tim Reid:

I’m guessing there was some tears around this time, Irene. Would I be right?

Irene Falcone:

There would be a lot of tears. There’s been so many. Yeah and blood and sweat with it as well.

Tim Reid:

Was there a moment when you’ve looked at hobby having deleted the blog posts. Having realized that 600 customers that came across with the purchase didn’t want to talk to you where you’ve gone their job or had in the nice mahogany offers. I think I’ll go back to that.

Irene Falcone:

You know what? I’ve never thought once the entire time that I was struggling as a business owner I mean I remember because we had my husband sell our house some to get out of our mortgage. I didn’t have to work and we moved into. And then I sold my car. I used the car to buy stock and get some warehouse rental and then what was left from when we sold our home I tweet about 20, 000. After I paid that was the profit on my house and so that was enough to pay rent for a few years. We were renting this really small place and we had the kids in one bed. It was like a two bedroom house yeah.

Tim Reid:

Can I just ask the. You did all that with the belief that you were onto something because of the Facebook posts and the blogging that you been doing.

Irene Falcone:

Yeah.

Tim Reid:

Wow.

Irene Falcone:

Because of the feedback I was getting everyday. I had about a couple of thousand followers on Facebook and I was getting hundreds of emails a day from women already asking me questions.

Tim Reid:

A couple of thousand followers. Yeah. So a couple that was not here or there but hundreds of emails a day. Say what. Yeah go Irene. I love what you’re doing or asking you where they could buy a particular shampoo.

Irene Falcone:

On getting this product back in stock. Do you have a natural alternative for this. Do you have an actual exact colour that I wear in this particular brand of a natural version of it. I have already here greasy roots. What can you recommend or my child got eczema etc. And so what I did that probably the best advice I can give any business owner is that I listened to my customers those every single one of those 100 emails a day I read them all and I reply to them all. A lot of people like to give you feedback on how to do things better. And in the beginning I was quite annoyed. This is my business. I know what I’m doing. Who are you. Go start your own business. You think you can do it better. But actually I started taking advice on board and listening to people and every single thing my customers asked what I’ve done and I think that’s what’s taken it to where it is today.

Tim Reid:

Very interesting because I don’t think there is a right or wrong here. But let’s talk about Steve Jobs, the late Steve Jobs. Who didn’t listen to customers so I mean he said I’ve told this story before but he came up with this little white box that said hey listen everyone. Throw out your c.d. you won’t need them anymore. I’m going to give you this little white box. You can download music as software from a website that I own that became the iPod and the rest is history. But if he’d asked people they would have said you mad. So it’s interesting that while listening to customers thing you either do or you don’t. And as I said no there’s no right or wrong answer.

Irene Falcone:

No. Well for me that was the right thing.

Tim Reid:

Yeah I love it.

Irene Falcone:

Of course everyone’s different and I just knew  wholeheartedly with every cell in my body that that this was the right thing to do that this business was going to be successful. And I did not ever have a doubt in my mind ever. I cried a lot about stupid mistakes I’ve made but I never had a doubt that it wasn’t that the outcome wasn’t going to be the outcome.

Tim Reid:

What’s the crying about? Because you said you’ve never ever looked back. Can you reflect back on a moment where you were sobbing. That deep cry. But you kept going.

Irene Falcone:

I think I cried mostly over I think. I was a marketing person and I wasn’t very good with the accounting side of things or the legal side of things. And I was very frustrated that I didn’t understand I couldn’t get myob to work at one point. I cried the most over like myob. What do you mean I’m afraid and all this. When I can’t keep this.

Tim Reid:

Well 100% on the dollar is mine.

Irene Falcone:

I remember the people from the government ringing about. I hadn’t lot of batch for you I was like, what do you mean? Totally spent that money by then buying more stock. So I had some of tears over the accounting side of things that’s definitely been hard for me. I cry over a bad review. I’m really passionate about my business and if a customer is not happy and they write me a bad review I feel really gutted about it. Personally I feel like I’ve been stab at the heart.

Tim Reid:

You are ignoring the other 99 really good reviews, are you?

Irene Falcone:

Yes. Yeah. I’ve got 1,205 star reviews on my facebook page and like six star reviews and then I’ll cry because I care a lot about the money and stuff. I care about the business and I care about my customers and I always want to do the right thing. But y it’s hard to do the juggle. It’s really hard to keep every single person happy. We have customers now that we’ve got to get orders out to their door and if that doesn’t get to their door quick enough they’ll complain and I know it’s hard to always guarantee.

Tim Reid:

Well, I think care is a reason for your success. Listeners I’m talking to Irene Falcone she is the founder of the toxin free ecommerce store nourished life. Irene, just tell me about your hubby because I’m happy. I’m happy to have a lovely lady. And she said we’re going to sell our house clean the mortgage. So again as I got a business idea I don’t know whether I’d be as forgiving as your beautiful husband was. Is he just a good guy?

Irene Falcone:

Yes. My second marriage I don’t think much about me.

Tim Reid:

Was hubbs husband to the one around when you decided to go into this business?

Irene Falcone:

Yes.

Tim Reid:

So he’s just a good guy. He’s flexible.

Irene Falcone:

He’s a great guys. He’s a great dad. And so my current husband definitely understand me and that I like to do crazy things and he just trusted me so much. My first husband was a lot more traditional.

Tim Reid:

This is a big question and I’m sure there’s not a simple answer to this but what fascinates me about Nourished Life is how you’ve gone from zero dollars  to a 20 million turnover business in the space of 36 months. And my question is how?

Irene Falcone:

There’s a simple answer to that actually. I started a business at the right time. If the world didn’t move toward eco-friendliness no animal testing plastic free and natural products and people stop didn’t care about the environment and that was a fad and people don’t care about animals or their bodies then the business wouldn’t have worked. But social media has been able to highlight some of the impact that things have on our friends and our environment and more and more people are feeling passionate about wanting to do the right thing. And I started a business that ticks all those boxes for those people and uneasily as well. I just people are lazy and I do all that hard work for them so it’s a wonderful thing for people for the environment. And that trend is growing faster than I think any other trend that I can remember.

Tim Reid:

So I wonder if you’re being humble because five years ago feels like it was happening before then. It was happening way before then that people were concerned about toxin free living and environmentally friendly packaging and or am I wrong or was it. You really do think it was. I mean you’ve done some other things. Well there’s no doubt which we’ll talk about but you really think the timing was everything.

Irene Falcone:

I think that the timing was everything. I wonder how many times if I had started my business 10 years earlier would I be bigger now. Would I be 100 million in the business and not a 20 million dollar business. And I think no I think perhaps it might not have been successful because people weren’t ready for that but I think natural beauty and the environmental things are relative. The stats are there to growing at a huge rate. And so my business started. First to market advantage on that as well. I was able to build a lot of trust in the early days and also I think I had a lot to do with converting people as well thinking about the environment so it was all those things in place. But then the products are great. The products are really good. There’s an incredible amount of farmers and small businesses in Australia that have now big businesses because of the products that they make sell for them.

Tim Reid:

Because you dropship right. You don’t have any of your own brand. OK. Has it worked?

Irene Falcone:

We have about 5,000 skews all in our warehouse.

Tim Reid:

You are warehousing. Okay.

Irene Falcone:

Yeah. We are warehousing and we have my own line of products as well. We don’t dropship because we used to do that but just not being able to control like those customer complaint that I have my order and you haven’t centres very hard to know because what we do is one of the reasons I don’t works really great for other businesses I think drop shipping is a terrific business model but not really with 5000 skews more for smaller.

Tim Reid:

I mean you got great products. You’ve got a great website. I encourage anyone listening if you want to see good e-commerce website that makes you want to buy then either do or don’t go to nourish life because that’s what we walk away a little bit poorer. What is the one secret to great e-commerce do you think?

Irene Falcone:

I feel like I it gave it away.

Tim Reid:

Don’t say good timing. Don’t say good husband.

Irene Falcone:

I think you need listen to your customers and be genuine to your customers and listen to them. I think that many I mean we’ve all emailed haven’t we online stores or companies have not had a response. Yes I always posted on their page and not heard back from them.

Tim Reid:

I thought a bizarre because you’re not getting a response. Be bizarre when you get an email that says do not reply like really.

Irene Falcone:

Not automated email, not text email or whatever.

Tim Reid:

I don’t know. Some people are a bit precious. I think they need to get out more.

Irene Falcone:

I totally agree. I think the time that you spend interacting with your customers not only do you win a customer for life but you also take on feedback as well. I know little things like we have a lot of customers in a way and it takes seven to 10 days to send something to ww8 through Australia post and just having our way customers wish that they could get their product sooner. Was just the sort of push we needed to get Startrek on board that could do next day to w way. So just little things like that and now we have a huge w way customer buying and that customer base wouldn’t have been as big if I had not listened to those customers. You don’t realize but the little tweaks that you make and that you do they they have a lot in the end. So you think it’s just one little thing they can do that deal with that or I’ll do that another time. But actually when you just do it, it does it adds up. I think that’s been another reason why we’ve been able to grow the business so quickly.

Tim Reid:

You’ve got 212,000 followers on Facebook 72,000 on Instagram. How have you done that? Let’s Facebook and when I say how, mean what are you posting there to get such engagement?

Irene Falcone:

I think it’s good content. What is really interesting is again you’ve got to listen to your customers I posted some stuff back in the early days that wasn’t related to natural products and what I sell I think it was a meme or I said something about bachelor or something. And you know what our customers said? I came here to find out about natural products. Not to see a joke. And I just stopped doing the memes and this is what I watch last night’s post because you know some because I want you to when you’re talking to customers on Facebook talk about general things in the market and be really genuine and whatever and so I was and I really didn’t care about my day. They did pick up to find out about products. So I thought well that’s interesting when you come to nourish life and you go to my Facebook page you’re only ever going to hear about natural products. Take it or leave it.

Tim Reid:

It is a great lesson. For marketing tips, if I start talking about cash flow tips. Oh I didn’t come here for cash flow tips. I don’t mind puppies.

Irene Falcone:

I know but people don’t come. I know puppies are great but there’s a lot of puppies and kittens already on Facebook. So, yes I think that’s how it grew. I only gave people content that I knew they were interested in and I knew they were interested in it because they were emailing me asking me these questions about this particular product or say something like again exparel and kids and things like that. And I actually really interesting as well I put on a natural path because we would get a lot of questions that I couldn’t answer because I was not a doctor or a healthcare professional and I would say you need to go check with the health care professionals. I got so many e-mails from people that I had to send away or other natural that a lot of what I saw and I tripped up to now we have an in-house naturopath and she answers all these customer questions can I have this or breastfeeding etc. And so we can get a lot of content from her on Facebook. So Facebook as well and help people with things like general rashes and lumps and bumps and things like that. But again I’m giving free advice.

Tim Reid:

So, people can e-mail or  hit you up on Facebook to get the naturopath nourish life naturopath

To put it to blogs. I love that.

Irene Falcone:

And it doesn’t matter if you email, you pin, you Facebook or does it instead. I don’t care how you contact us. You going to get the same response.

Tim Reid:

Full time naturopath.

Irene Falcone:

Yes full time naturopath, yes.

Tim Reid:

That wouldn’t have been cheap.

Irene Falcone:

Isn’t that incredible? That business has the business of the grind really well. Was it too risky. Well you know I think that if it were the first couple of months if it wasn’t working then I would go.

Tim Reid:

Send it back to clinic.

Irene Falcone:

Every single investment that I’ve made for my business has paid off.

Tim Reid:

You’re a like, King Midas. So now let’s talk because this is a very timely interview you have. You’re literally in the midst of well the sales done Nourished Life has been sold to a top asx listed company in Australia. You are in the process of handing over but staying on. Was that part of the plan? Did someone knock on your door with one of really big checks that you see on TV and said Irene, we would like Nourished life. How much. What happened?

Irene Falcone:

No. I had absolutely no intention at all of selling the business. And then I was approached by the company B W X they are and they listed business an incredible Australian business actually and I thought I’m not going to sell one of these people. I’m just going to hear what I’ve got to say anyway. I met them and I literally fell in love with them. I was so excited about their processes.

Tim Reid:;

Irene, how excited were you about the big check?

Irene Falcone:

Oh no, it’s not about the money for me. No it’s not about the money for me. And I’ve got shares in the business and it’s about know. You must know me from talking to me now. You are never about the money for me. But what I can do now I can get those products to my customers faster. I’m going to get a bigger warehouse and I would have a better system because I’m one person and I don’t know everything. Like as you know I know about the Facebook and how to talk to people but I don’t know about really running a business. And so to have people that know how to run a business and they can help me with cashflow and all of those things is just such a great safety net for Nourished Life and I’m staying on are absolutely not going anywhere. And I’m just so happy now that I’ve found people that care about my business as much as I do.

Tim Reid:

That is amazing. I think the next three years may pale into insignificance compared to what the next three years hold. I always say I should reconnect with past guests but there’s so many other business owners I need to talk to. But I think it is an interesting thing to do to reconnect to say where I am now because I know I’ve had passed yes they’re out of business and I’ve had past guests that have gone from a million to a billion so I would love to reconnect and see where Nourished Life is at. And just to finish up where would you like to see like what’s the big thing that you would like to happen next for the Nourish Life brand.

Irene Falcone:

Oh well I’m really excited about life basics which is our house brand because we have a really big customer base and all of the products that I buy from a middleman or through a wholesaler. To be able to produce our own products and sell them at a cost to sell them directly to our customers at a cheaper rate and because I strongly believe that the beginning everyone thought that organic products are expensive and they were only for rich people. My entire business is based on organics for all every single family in Australia should be able to buy organic products and environmentally friendly products and not have to pay more for. And so the more and more that I can produce our own products that becomes a reality. And that got that excited.

Tim Reid:

I love it. I love the fact that you can hear the excitement in your voice. Irene, well done on being a cubicle escapade despite the fact that you loved your job in the cubicle, well done on turning Nourished Life from nothing into a 20 million dollar turnover brand in three years and well done and getting the sale and I think you are inspirational and I wish you all the best for the future.