STEPHANIE MILLER & LAURA HENSHAW - KEEP IT CLEANER
ON HOW THEY LOST ALL OF THEIR EARLY KIC APP SUBSCRIBERS WHEN THEY WALKED AWAY FROM THE AGENCY WHO BUILT THE PLATFORM.
How did co-founders Stephanie Miller and Laura Henshaw go from being models and IG influencers to running a successful tech company?
That’s the question we’re asking the powerhouse duo who have taken the health and fitness world by storm with their business Keep It Cleaner.
The pair met when they were both at Melbourne Fashion Week castings, and bonded over the shared challenges of working in high-pressured and demanding world of fashion.
They used this as fuel to create a healthy recipe eBook and community that helped women feel good about their bodies.
Since then, they’ve built the Keep It Cleaner empire which is focused around the popular KIC app filled with fitness programs and daily workouts, healthy recipes, a wellness hub and more... and has attracted over 250,000 subscribers to date.
And at the centre of their success is the near constant social media presence of the pair themselves, who share their daily workouts, meals and musings with their legions of devoted fans.
You’ll learn:
How they lost all customer data (including emails) from their early KIC app, and how they were able to bounce back from the situation
Why they have recently decided to bring their tech capability in house, and how this enabled them to truly see themselves as a serious tech business
The importance of staying in touch with your customers and community, and how they’ve used customer insights to make decisions about which new programs (like KIC Bump) they’ll roll out
How Steph is trying to find her new role in the business after becoming a Mum to Harvey
How we all can be bolder and braver in tough business negotiations where we may feel out of our depth
We hope you enjoyed this conversation – for more podcast action follow us on Instagram @lady.brains, or sign up to our monthly newsletter at www.ladybrains.com
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“Our product was a program that brought people together. It made women feel really good about themselves and it was a safe place for them. Because our product was something that made people feel good, they wanted to share it, they wanted to tell their friend.”
“If you go to an agency and get an app built, it might cost $100,000. Then you have to update it every month, and every time there’s a bug someone has to fix it. The biggest issue that a lot of companies face with apps is that they save money or get investment to build an app, and it’s only enough to build the app. But the ongoing costs and time are huge. ”
“You have to be careful about what you sign, because you can never get out of it. I think women often get taken advantage of. You get this amazing opportunity and you say, ‘Yes let me sign this!’. Obviously, that is not the way to operate. There are so many contracts we’ve signed and have looked back on and thought, oh my god, why didn’t we get that checked? ”
“KIC is a tech company, and we didn’t have a tech team. We didn’t have our own code. It was a huge issue. And from the moment we decided to bring tech in house to building our own team was a 6-9 month process. ”
“It was scary to leave, because we really weren’t sure what the outcome was going to be. We had no idea what re launch [of KIC] was going to look like, we had no idea if we were going to get our community back. We lost all our content, our community, our subscribers, we lost all of that data. ”
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