Brought to you by Plato, the full-service marketing agency that drives real business performance. Connect with the team: https://platocreative.co.nz/

Stacey Banfield left school at 16 to work on the Chanel counter at Ballantynes. Today she runs a team of 12 artists under the SB Collective, is booked two years ahead for weddings, and has never spent a dollar on advertising. She also put her life savings into launching her own product brand, Soleil & Soul Beauty.

Andy and Stacey cover how weekend freelance work outgrew her counter wage, and the accountant exercise that showed she was sending $30,000 of work a year to other artists and getting almost no thanks for it. They talk about why she hires for people skills over makeup skills, how she handles wedding-morning drama, and why chasing follower counts doesn’t matter when word of mouth fills the book. She also explains the gap she saw in the market for brush cleansers, the NZ-native ingredient Totarol, and getting stocked back where she started.

Recorded at Red Nine | businesses building Canterbury

Thanks to Plato, helping ambitious brands and businesses scale faster through strategic full-service marketing. Find out how they can help you grow: https://platocreative.co.nz/

00:00 Intro

00:56 SB Collective vs Stacey Banfield Makeup Artist

02:27 Handing clients to the team and keeping the quality up

03:47 Leaving school at 16 to get into makeup

05:48 From the Chanel counter to going full time

07:49 Low risk, a beauty blog and $30k of turned-away work

10:19 What a wedding morning actually looks like

12:20 Difficult bridesmaids and being the bad guy

15:35 Why people skills beat makeup skills

17:43 Why she’s stayed in Christchurch

19:01 Chanel, Tom Ford, MAC and the blogging era

21:10 No comments, still booked two years in advance

23:05 Launching Soleil & Soul Beauty

26:19 Skin first: SPF, actives and TikTok trends

32:30 Flown to New York by Clinique

35:04 Brush cleansers, Totarol and stocking at Ballantynes

37:30 Advice for two years into business

38:58 Quick makeup and skincare tips

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Brought to you by Plato, the full-service marketing agency that drives real business performance. Connect with the team: https://platocreative.co.nz/

Margo Flanagan is co-founder and head of product at Two Raw Sisters, the recipe app and cookbook brand she runs with her sister Rosa. What began as two sisters finding their way back to good food after their own health journeys has become a household name: six cookbooks, an app built around swapping in whatever’s in your fridge, and an audience that’s 70% aged 50 and over.

Margo and Andy cover how the business grew from a first cookbook that publishers expected to sell 400 copies (it sold 800 in the first hour), why they refuse to put macro breakdowns on recipes, and the “intelligently lazy” system of twenty minutes on a Sunday. Margo also explains how they’ve pivoted from cooking school to catering to web app to mobile app, why failing fast has been central to their success, and why they’ve deliberately chosen a manageable business over chasing $100 million. Plus her advice for any founder: find your North Star and say no to anything that doesn’t fit, even a $20,000 deal.

Thanks again to Plato, helping ambitious brands and businesses scale faster through strategic full-service marketing. Find out how they can help you grow: https://platocreative.co.nz/

Recorded at Red Nine | businesses building Canterbury

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode is brought to you by Plato, the full-service marketing agency that drives real business performance. Connect with the team: https://platocreative.co.nz/

Business Canterbury has backed local businesses since 1859, and Chief Executive Leeann Watson says the region is doing better than most of the country right now.

Andy sits down with Leeann to unpack what Business Canterbury actually does. That covers HR advice lines and training, the Canterbury Trusted endorsement, and lobbying Wellington on the things that hurt small businesses, like a provisional tax date in the middle of January. They get into why Canterbury is outperforming the other main centres: $13.1 million from one Super Round weekend at the new stadium, record university enrolments, and 43,000 people moving south since 2018.

Leeann also explains Canterbury Ambition, a private-sector-led plan that brings 11 local authorities together around one ask of government. She shares how she protects time to work on the business rather than in it, and gives honest advice for anyone in their first couple of years of running a business.

Find out more at businesscanterbury.co.nz or call 0800 50 50 96.

Plato helps ambitious brands and businesses scale faster through strategic full-service marketing. Find out how they can help you grow: https://platocreative.co.nz/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.