Earn Your Happy 349: Take A Crazy Idea and Turning It Into An Empire with Jane Lu
From Accountant To Garage Startup
- Jane Lu left an accounting career and launched pop-up stores, then her first business failed spectacularly.
- She started Showpo within a month while $60,000 in debt and operating from her parents' garage.
Start With Consignment And Social
- Use consignment and test products before buying inventory to avoid cash strain.
- Leverage social media early when you can't afford traditional marketing to reach your audience.
Growth Hacks Create Leverage
- Creative social growth hacks can produce huge organic reach and credibility quickly.
- Doubling down on what works gives you a license to scale until the tactic naturally decays.
In This Episode You Will Learn About:
- What Jane loves about Sydney
- Starting her business journey from accounting
- What Jane’s rock bottom looked like
- What Showpo is and offers
- Starting a fashion business without money
- Welcoming in big numbers in business
- How Like Minded Bitches Drinking Wine came about
- What Jane does in order to market her business + her advice to you
- Finding a growth hack + finding people that are smarter than you
- Getting to the next level in business
- Failures that turned into successes
Resources:
- Learn more: showpo.com
- Instagram: @thelazyceo
- Youtube: The Lazy CEO
- The Bliss Project 2020
Show Notes
Jane Lu joins me on today’s episode! Jane is the founder of Showpo, an online fashion retail empire. Jane previously worked in accounting and corporate finance, but after returning from a year abroad, was inspired to ditch the “cubicle life”, so she quit her job to start her own business. She had always had a sincere passion for women's fashion online, social media and entrepreneurship– it’s no surprise that Showpo is Jane’s creation! This conversation with Jane is SO great because she shares her business failures as well as her successes. You’ll love this one no matter where you are in your business!
Question Highlights:
- How did you start this amazing business journey?
- How long did you stay in rock bottom and what was the next step after finding a solution?
- What is Showpo?
- How did you become the person who could start to think of big numbers and just accept them?
- How did you focus on what you wanted, and not get stopped up by outside opinions?
- What should we know about marketing our business that we are missing?
- How did you know that you hired the right people?
- What advice do you have for the business person trying to get to their next level?
- What are some big failures that turned into amazing lessons?
Jane Lu founded Showpo in 2010 from her parents’ garage. Jane previously worked in accounting and corporate finance, but after returning from a year abroad, was inspired to ditch the “cubicle life”, so she quit her job to start her own business. With much enthusiasm for entrepreneurship , she set off to start her first business, which failed spectacularly. However, Jane was undeterred and got right back on the horse, starting the online fashion brand, Showpo the following month. What started off with a laptop and two shelves of clothing is now an online global fashion empire,shipping to over 100 countries.
Through being disruptive in the retail space and capitalising on the use of social media, Showpo now boasts a cult social following of over 3.3 million engaged followers collectively and has a team of over 90 across Sydney HQ and Distribution Center. A regular keynote speaker, for some of Australia’s biggest brands and having fronted stages for audiences internationally, Lu’s expertise is unparalleled, and her tone of voice, is real and relatable. A prominent figure in the Australian start up scene, Lu has been nominated for numerous awards,taking home taking the title of Cosmopolitan’s Entrepreneur of the Year in 2015 and Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia in 2016.
Lu’s personal experiences led her to build her own entrepreneurial community, Like Minded Bitches Drinking Wine, which she co-founded with serial entrepreneur, Gen George. Together they have grown an active community of over 85,000 members. Bringing women together to hear (and give) real, honest advice, to be inspired and to join forces - all over a good class of wine of course.With Lu at the helm, 8 years since its founding, Showpo owns its status as one of Australia’s fastest growing fashion e-commerce retailers. Recently awarded the highly coveted Australian Online Retailer of The Year Award and is on track to reach its goal of $100 million in revenue by 2020 with no external funding.
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