AP 1158: Where Are They Now: Leili Farzaneh from Supakit

AP 1158: Where Are They Now: Leili Farzaneh from Supakit

Pat Flynn:
What's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to episode 1158 of AskPat 2.0. You're about to listen to a coaching call between myself and an entrepreneur like you. And this is a special episode because this is a Where Are They Now? episode.

Back in episode 1069, we recorded an interview with Leili the founder of Supakit, S-U-P-A-K-I-T.co by the way, where she was challenged with scaling and growing her business. Supakit is a business that helps cat owners with some really cool, blinged out leashes and so forth. And now we're back with her nearly two years later to chat about what has happened since then. What does she take away from that episode? And I'll tell you the results are pretty mind-blowing. Let's give credit to where it's due. Leili did all the work. I'm just the guide, but I'm here to help all of you today. So make sure you stick around, listen all the way through. And then at the end, I'll tell you how you can get coached like Leili did as well. So here she is. Leili from Supakit.co.

Leili, welcome back to AskPat, thanks for joining us again.

Leili Farzaneh:
Oh, it's my absolute pleasure. I'm so happy to be here.

Pat:
I'm so excited to hear how the business has been going since episode 1069. If you might recall that episode, we talked about scaling up your business. You were just starting out and online and were wondering ways to expand. And I'm excited to get an update from you today. I'd love to start with perhaps what were, if you can remember, the biggest lessons and the biggest takeaways from the last time we chatted, so we could start there and see how things went.

Leili:
I came to you at a bit of a crossroads with the business and things were ticking over, but we were interested in finding ways to really supercharge what we were doing and help people find us and hear about us, which was a big problem at the time. And with your help, we talked everything through and we reached a nub of an idea, which was working with influencers to create custom product for them, or do custom promos and use that as a vehicle to reach a bigger audience of people who'd be interested in our products.

Pat:
That's right. That's right. So influencer marketing, very powerful. Also has had a negative tone in some cases with various products and events that have happened in the past. So how did you ensure that when you approach other influencers that you were going to do this the right way?

Leili:
I think actually after we spoke, we did it both the right and the wrong way, and it was really interesting dialing it in and working out what felt good to us. So an example of the wrong way, because we only did it, I would say wrong once and then we learned our lesson: we reached out to an influencer who we didn't have a very deep relationship with. We really admired what they'd done and we'd watched them from a far for a long time, but essentially we contact them with a business deal essentially, and they were interested, but that project never really got off the ground. It took quite a lot of work, we were developing a custom design version of one of our products for them. And when it fizzled out, we stood back, and we're like, "Huh, what wasn't quite gelling there?"

And we realized that we hadn't started at the first date. We'd gone straight to the marriage proposal. It felt wrong. And I think that it was mutual. We both felt like we were just thrown into this deal together. So after that we reassessed and we're like, "Actually, what feels really nice to us?" I'm sure this is not going to hold for everyone. I think some people can go straight to the first proposal, but for us it felt right when we were building friendships with people and then using that as a springboard to say, "Okay, well, what's interesting for both of us to work on together and what would be an interesting collaboration?" And some of those we didn't even go into with our eyes open. We weren't being cynical and just making friends with people that we wanted to tap up later. Often, we were forging genuine relationships.

So an example is there's an influencer called Dean who has an amazing story. He's the Scottish guy who started cycling around the world. And when he was halfway through Europe, he found a stray kitten and took her in and she then joined him on his journey around the world. And it's just such an incredible story. Loads of people have followed him. And we heard about him after he was featured in the Dodo. And I just thought this kitten would really benefit from one of our harnesses. He could use it. Reached out and sent him the harness and thought nothing more. Just thought it would just be a nice act of charity. And out of that grew a huge friendship. And we've been in touch over the last, I guess, 18 months.

Pat:
That's so cool.

Leili:
It's really nice to see. From a selfish point of view, I just love watching them travel the world together. And it was so lovely to even play a tiny part of that. And then, because we were friends, later that year in November of last year, he contacted us and he said, "Hey guys, I'm hoping to do this amazing project for charity. I want to release a calendar, but I don't have distribution. Can you guys help?" So we helped him retail and distribute his calendar, raised an incredible amount of money for charity. And that was, again, it was not really a business deal. It was a helping your friends out deal. And then it's evolved. And now we do have a working relationship. He's an affiliate for us. And he promotes our product from the heart because he's used it now for almost two years. And that is the relationship that's felt really well-rooted. We've helped him out. He helps us out. And we genuinely admire and respect each other and are friends. And I think that was a good example of one of the successes when we got it right.

Pat:
That's great. I'm trying not to cry because that's just, it's a beautiful example of actually doing this from a place of service first and not going straight into the deal. And it's cool that you had done it the wrong way first, because I think it taught you that lesson right up front and then look at what happened now. I mean, I'm sure this isn't the first time this has happened. You've probably done this in other ways and shapes in different cases. The hard thing is it's not necessarily a cookie cutter thing, which most people want. Like, "Let's send the same email to everybody and just hope to see what sticks." Give me another example of maybe another person that you've developed a relationship with and how that's helped out with your business too.

Leili:
I mean, we have done it an awful lot. Again, it's not like we've sat down and had a strategy meeting and thought, "Who can we make friends with on the playground?" but there's a lot of influences who have produced amazing photography and videography for us over the year. So there's a lady in Ireland who's just the most extraordinary photographer. And she has a really unique set of skills because she has a cat that goes out adventuring, but her cat has black fur. And traditionally that's a trickier cat to photograph. We've been just slowly building a relation - this is an example of something that's just in the friendship stages at the moment where we've given her products, she shot amazing photography for us. We're starting to do more business, but it's essentially grown out of us just being huge admirers of her work and telling her so. And just being like, "What you do is incredible. We'd love to hear more about how you do it." And we've jumped on video calls together just to touch base.

That's something I do a lot actually now, is I try not to have an agenda, but I do very often just be like, "I like what you do," whether it's a fellow brand or an influencer or anyone else. "I like what you do. I don't know how our stuff would align, but do you want to hop on a video call? Let's just get to know each other." That seems to work quite nicely. I think you just got a cameo from my cat in the background.

Pat:
I saw him. That's cool. I mean, that's such a beautiful thing. And as I often say, you want to dig your well before you're thirsty. If you're reaching out to people and you already are asking for stuff, it's too late, you're thirsty and you're digging, it's too late. So I love that you're doing that. And those are very, very key examples. I'm curious, now that the business has grown, what have you had to do to pivot, to be able to accommodate? Because sometimes there are growing pains with businesses, especially when you have... And literally sometimes it can just take one influencer to just send a rush of stuff and then servers go down and you have so much work to do. Have there been any growing pains and if yes, or even if not, what have you been doing to avoid that?

Leili:
So it was a huge experience for us doing Dean's charity calendar, because I think in the course of three days, we did more sales than I think we've done in the entire history of Supakit, but for charity.

Pat:
Wow.

Leili:
But what was so lovely was - so we were working pro bono, but essentially we got a free test of our entire system. So yes, some servers did go down. A lot of people sitting refreshing the website. We also had to deal with a lot of customer service. So his audience is spread in parts of the world that we didn't maybe reach beforehand. And so we had to navigate issues with shipping to Brazil and goodness knows where else. And then we also had to manage people's expectations. So one thing that happened with that example is Dean, before contacting us, had scheduled an initial print run of his calendar and it sold out in an hour.

So everyone was bashing down our door, emailing us, DM'ing us, getting really, quite emotional about the fact that they had potentially missed out on this calendar. So we rushed through, in two days before Christmas, a reprint and tried to keep people happy and understanding. So our customer service leveled up enormously and we reap the benefits of that now. Now this Christmas we've been doing the same with our own sales, but we got to stress test all our systems beforehand and understand where we need to grow up a bit. And this year it's been quite a roller coaster. Bit of a white knuckle ride in that we've been really fortunate that our sales haven't been hugely affected by COVID and we've been able to ship. And our warehouse staff have been amazing at keeping all the wheels turning. We have had to hugely increase our customer service. And we've actually brought in two members of staff to join us, to help us out with both customer service and social and just make sure we're doing the very best with increasing numbers of people.

Pat:
That's great. So how many people are on the team now?

Leili:
So we're four. I think when I spoke to you last time, I was in the point where I was like, "It's not really paying my bills and my partner works full time in this, but he doesn't get paid." So now both me and my partner worked full-time in the business. And then we have two additional members of staff who have been fabulous and really freed up quite a lot of our head space to look over the horizon.

Pat:
That's fantastic. And they're employees or are they more contracted?

Leili:
They're employees. It's interesting actually, we've been through a bit of a - I would say this year we've learned a lesson about what we contract out and what we bring into the company. So we've had some really good experiences with contracting out. So we contract out our manufacture, we contract out our fulfillment, that went very well. So when it came to growing our customer service, we thought we'll just contract out our customer service. And when it came to doing extra social, we thought we'll just contract out our special media. And actually we found that that didn't work as well. It works okay. It works well enough, but we're total perfectionists. And we just really missed having somebody who was right at the heart of the brand, understanding our ethos, our voice, our approach to things, what we would and wouldn't say, and the two people who've joined us as team members are both taking on roles that we had previously contracted out. And we felt like it was just a little bit too far away, too generic an approach for our very specific brand. So that's been an interesting learning.

Pat:
That makes sense. How did you find those two people?

Leili:
So we advertised for the position. It was interesting, we advertised both on regular job sites but also amongst our customer pool. And we did interview a couple of customers who were fabulous. In the end, I think my two employees were not from that route and they were the more traditional recruitment. And it would have been weird before this year, but they both worked fully remotely. So we're not in the same room, but we see them every day. So it feels normal for us.

Pat:
That's cool. Are they cat people as well?

Leili:
Yeah, that was actually really important to us.

Pat:
I was going to say...

Leili:
With customer service it's like, "You can't have a really niche brand and then not embody it." People can smell it a mile off if you're like, "Yeah, I love cats." It just doesn't work. So it was front and center of our job advert. It was like, "Must love cats." It has to happen. And I think now that we have that in our workforce, it just makes us so much more authentic as a brand because any contact point that you touch Supakit, you're getting somebody who's obsessed with their cat, who knows the customer experience because they are our customers as well, type thing. So it's worked quite well.

Pat:
Do you have pictures of your cats on your website?

Leili:
Yes, we do. So we've actually started revealing ourselves a little bit more. So actually I'm not like a natural front of house person, but I think somehow having a team has made it feel like there's safety in numbers. And we've all entered that... For the first time this year we did a Christmas gift guide where we all chose our favorite gifts and each one of us has written a really personal write up of why we think it's special. So you get to meet all the team through that way. I jumped on Instagram Lives now and do stories and things. I think people see me, but it's not the Leili show by any means.

Pat:
That's great. Pets are a wonderful way to connect with other people. And even in a big website like Amazon, when you hit a 404 page, it's like dogs of Amazon, it's dogs, not cats, or pets of those who work at Amazon. And just that little connection is like, "Oh my gosh." And now we can develop a relationship. And it's great to see that you're doing that with your customers too. And even your new employees. When the whole company shows up, it's like, "Wow, these are people here who are helping me in this company." And you connect with the person on the other end. And I love that because that was low-hanging fruit in my opinion. And I'm glad you're doing that already. So that's fantastic.

Leili:
We're being coaxed out.

Pat:
I think there's this lesson here of trying something and maybe it not going the right way, but you tried it anyway, knowing that that's the direction you want to go. And not giving up when it didn't work, but moving forward and persisting and learning from the mistakes that you've made. In that regard, where are things headed in 2021 for you? I'd love to know a little bit more about your plans. What else are you looking to perhaps experiment and maybe even fail with, to learn and grow from?

Leili:
I'm sure we'll do loads of failing. I'm really comfortable failing. I'm very happy with it because it's always definitely the path to success. You've got to be prepared to try things. I think we feel like we're in quite a nice place to develop the next iteration of our offering. So things that we're thinking about for the next 12 months are how to serve our community better and actually really give people a safe space to share tips, advice. Obviously that happens on social to a certain extent. We also deal with it privately in a lovely way in our customer service inbox. We have lovely, private conversations with our customers that are really profound about the importance of their cats and their lives. But we're just, we're thinking about how we keep growing that and enhance that and give more places for our customers to meet each other and not just meet us. So that's one thing we're thinking about.

The other things are, again, we're finding in our customer service inbox that we provide an awful lot of really tailored advice and support. So we have a morning meeting where we literally go through people's harness troubleshooting, like, "Oh, it's really weird, my cat was doing well, but now it's spooked. What happened?" And we review photos and videos. It's like a surgery. We just basically give customers one-to-one advice on their particular training journey. But I am aware that it's lovely for the customers who get it, but I'd like to give it to everyone. So we're just thinking about whether we can create some training course or a webinar or some way of us expanding the surgery experience to all of our customers.

Pat:
I love that. It's a little meta because guess what I'm doing with you or what I did with you in episode 1069 and coming back today? We've done some surgery on your business together, but on a podcast now it's helping others too. And now you coming back, we're getting the full circle, full story. And so whether it's a podcast or a webinar or some public forum to dissect a single person, it still helps everybody. And I love that you're thinking about that. That's fantastic. How is content creation for you and the business? Is that a big driver of sales? And is that an important component to the brand?

Leili:
It is a really important part of the brand. So we've actually got a lot better at producing our blog content, for example, and making sure it's really valuable for our particular customer base and the things that they are crying out for. It's surprising, there's some topics that just aren't covered in articles. So that's one arm of it. And then we're working really hard at creating original content for our social media channels. So it is good. I just think it's just a little bit ephemeral. And I'm just looking for ways of us reaching people. This is not a business perspective, but I feel like I want people to be a customer of Supakit without having to buy something. I would like them to know that we are a community. And if you don't need our products, that's totally cool. This is still a place for like-minded people. So that's something that's in my head. Obviously we have to square that with our business goals, but that's the direction we're headed.

Pat:
When you serve your customers or your people, your avatar, whether they buy products or not, it helps everybody, right? And this is the approach that I've taken too. I don't expect everybody to be a customer and buy my courses, but if I can help one person and they have a friend who might need help with the podcast, then I can be confident or at least more confident that they'll share my stuff with their friend because they trust me and they've gotten value from me in some way. So I love that in terms of expansion and just going beyond the product and going into the community. I think that's very smart. To finish off here, Leili, I would love to ask you now that you are, I don't know what we call... a graduate, a veteran? We don't have a name for people who come back and do the work and get some great results, but-

Leili:
I want a cap and gown.

Pat:
Right? I mean, you've done it. And commencement begins in another realm in 2021 for you. And I love that. What advice would you give to those who are listening to this? And they've heard the transformation and the effort that you did to take the information in 1069 and then implement it, and here you are now. What piece of advice would you give those who have been struggling to get flowing? And maybe they've been listening to a lot of content but they haven't really gotten results yet. How might you encourage them this year?

Leili:
I think there's a few things. I think it's important to try stuff and not be afraid to fail. So I think before I spoke to you, I might not have - when I saw the Dodo video of a guy cycling with his cat, I think I emailed him and didn't hear anything back. So I now know that he doesn't read emails. And then I DM'd him. And I think the persistence - be like, "I really would like to reach out." I probably wouldn't have done before we spoke to each other, but I was just a little bit more confident and tenacious after our chat. So I think it's important to have that confidence to go after the things that you think are good, but also be prepared that they might not always work out great. And if they don't, I think having also the confidence to say, "Huh, that really didn't go well, but let me analyze why and take the things that did work out of it and move them forward."

And rather than feel like, "Oh, that makes me feel uncomfortable. I'm going to put it in a drawer and never look at it again," I think it's actually being able to sit down and examine something and ask the question about why it did or didn't do well. Same with successes. Rather than just being, "Yippy, I'm great," be like, "Why did that work? And what can I take home from that?" So I think those are my main take-homes. And also, especially at the point where we spoke to each other last, but actually even now, time is so limited and so precious that focus, I think, is one of the big gifts that you gave me to be like, "Do you know what? We're just going to have this one idea and that's it. Run with it. Go." Rather than being spread too thin.

So I think it is worth, if you're a solo entrepreneur or even if you've only got a small team to really go, "Okay, I'm going to put my chips on this and I'm going to give it everything. And then I'll see where I'm at afterwards." And go a bit more focused in that way.

Pat:
I agree with that. I mean, you're at least giving yourself a chance for the thing that you chose to do to succeed. Versus, like you said, if you divide that energy across all different things, you might not even give any of them a chance to get to the point where they could actually do something for you. So thank you so much, Leili. This has been an amazing catch-up. I'm inspired, I'm motivated, and I'm ready to get out there and make 2021 the best it can be. And I know everybody else listening is the same too. So one more time, thank you again. And where can people go to check out the product, check out the content, check out the work that you, your partner, and your team are doing?

Leili:
Well first of all, thank you so much. It's been instrumental in our journey and it's really nice to just come check back in and be able to say, "Thank you." If people want to come see us, we're at Supakit.co. That's S for sugar, U-P-A-K-I-T.co. Or come hang out with us on any of our social media channels, which are @SupakitStore.

Pat:
Thank you so much, Leili. We appreciate you. Good luck. And we'll talk again soon.

Leili:
Great. Thanks so much, Pat.

Pat:
Thank you.

All right, I hope you enjoyed that conversation and catch up with Leili. Again, you can check her out at Supa, Supakit.co. And she's doing a supa job with her business. Leili, thank you so much again for coming back with us. And this is one of my favorite things to do. If you are listening to this and you're inspired and you are not subscribed to the show, please go ahead and do that. Do that now. Whatever app you're on right now, I want to help you further. You're going to get to listen in on even more coaching calls like this down the road. We're going to, every month, bring a Where Are They Now? episode back into the mix as well. And I might be able to help coach you personally too.

All you have to do is go to AskPat.com and right there you'll find a button to potentially apply and get picked. Now you have to apply to get picked, but I cannot pick everybody, unfortunately, but we're always looking for new stories and people to come up and bring on the show so we can help out. And by you allowing us to share this live with everybody, I mean, it helps so many more people. So I appreciate you so much. And Leili again, thank you so much for allowing us to share this. And I'm looking forward to potentially working with you. So again, AskPatat.com. Oh, and by the way, thank you for all the amazing reviews that have been coming in since the last time I asked, it's just so helpful. I read them all. Thank you. And if you happen to have a chance to take a second to leave a review for AskPat on Apple, that would be a really, really helpful.

Anyway, thank you so much. Make sure to subscribe because we've got another killer episode coming at you next week, where you get to listen in like a fly on a wall to myself and an entrepreneur like you. So thanks again, take care, I'll see you next week. Cheers. And as always, Team Flynn for the win. Peace.