Creator Spotlight: Doone Roisin of Female Startup Club shares her content and business structure

About the Creator

Doone Roisin started her content creation journey with her podcast, Female Startup Club, at the end of 2019. She started by creating quick videos on social media with no real intent of doing anything with it. At the time she was building a DTC jewelry brand and unsure if it was something she wanted to do long term.

She began chatting with her founder friends for insights, advice, and a bit of guidance. She then started posting these conversations on social media, because she felt it was valuable information.

That’s when she realized how much she was getting out of it.

Fast forward to 2020 - the pandemic hits. In March of 2020 she had just a few episodes, each about 10 minutes long, all of which were recorded from her phone. She decided to start posting more episodes, thinking that people would derive more benefit from that then they would from jewelry.

She shut down her jewelry brand and began her transition. The pandemic allowed her the time she needed to consistently create and post content, which she began doing seven times a week. She quickly identified her niche in E- commerce, because that was her background and what she felt most comfortable speaking confidently on.

Her podcast took off soon after and she started building her community. She realized what was missing was a more direct line of communication with her audience, which was when she decided to start her newsletter in 2021.

About the Newsletter

How did you create your content strategy after expanding into newsletters?

DR: We kind of just talked about the newsletter on social media and on the show, but what we do is take the gold bits from the show, and we repurpose that into the newsletter. We put breakdown strategies of “how to do X,” or “these are the top three things that we learned from this amazing founder, who sold her company for $200 million,” whatever it might be. We then started to add in different things that we thought our audience would appreciate, in just one wrap up, like if they're coming to one newsletter to read, what do they need to read.

We started pulling together all the news and adding elements of pop culture as well because it does draw interest. We include insights, strategies and job opportunities at female founded companies. It keeps it simple to read, and basically just like this kind of nice, juicy breakdown that you start your week with, to get up to speed and get a bit smarter.

What sparked the interest in Female founded startups?

DR: I remember this moment where I was reading Tim Ferriss' book, Tools of Titans, and I loved it. I was like, this is super cool, these are all super direct, no bullshit strategies, biohacking, like, all these things that are just my vibe. It was a good breakdown of strategy where they were covering important things like money or the mistakes people make, growth, and all these other non-fluffy topics. But when I was reading the book, I was like, gosh, it's just all dudes in here. There were only a handful of women in the book.

And I thought to myself, I want to hear this same strategy and the same approach but from successful women, because it's harder for me to relate to these guys. So I decided to start focusing on women and just kind of follow that same blueprint of strategies. You know, biohacking. Like, how do you win the day? That's how it started and where the overall inspiration came from.

How were you able to build connections with such big CEO’s/Founders?

DR: So in the beginning, it started with me just emailing hundreds of people all the time that I was really inspired by, I would follow up, ask questions, and had to really hustle. But once I started getting guests that had more of a hook to them and were more in the scene is when things really started to change. I was able to get a different caliber of guests. That was kind of in the beginning.

But now what's really beautiful and amazing is, I just get so much inbound, I'm connected to all the PR companies, I'm connected to a lot of people who inbound to me, but what I also have done since the very beginning, is my onboarding for the podcast, I have a section that asks for referrals. Like who else would be amazing? Because every entrepreneur has at least one friend that's an entrepreneur.

So most of the time, people refer me and introduce me to their friends or someone they know in business. So I’d say, it’s a mix of referrals, inbounds, and LinkedIn, where I do spend a good amount of time. I focus on what people are posting about their businesses and I’ll engage in the comments letting them know that I would love to have them on the show.

Which founders are a good fit for you to connect with?

DR: Our parameters are kind of like high seven figures annual revenue. We focus on people who are a few years into business, have had some success, have a blueprint that we can basically get from them and then share with our audience who are earlier on in the journey, or they're still in their jobs, working nine to five.

We want the people working nine to fives to still get motivation but to also appeal to listeners who are just a year into business, and still trying to find momentum, and product market fit is able to be like, Oh, I hadn't thought of that. That's an amazing strategy. That's totally like my vibe and sparks somethin.

So we've gone the route of entertainment, but also strategy. We typically don't interview early stage founders who have just launched. We want to provide the insights and mentorship from these people who are a few years ahead of them, or maybe a lot of years ahead of them in some cases. I've interviewed people who have been in business for 25 years. And so hearing those strategies, and learning the long term play of building a business, being able to pass that back to people who are new to business.

Who do you feel should be subscribing to your newsletter and would derive the most benefit from it?

DR: We have different categories of people who would kind of derive the most value from us, there's the woman who is dreaming of starting a business one day, he/she may be sitting in their nine to five looking for inspiration to make their next move.

Maybe someone who needs motivation, but doesn't really know where to start. So they may want to connect with like minded people through a newsletter. Or even someone who is a hustler trying to figure things out and build a specific strategy for how they're going to build their business. And there's the entrepreneur, which is our core kind of audience, the person who is a year into business looking for support and to hear stories from other people and hear strategies from other people or maybe eventually wants to be featured in the newsletter.

What do you feel is unique about your content?

DR: I think the content in general is written as if it’s your best friend telling you a story. It's really conversational and relaxed. We really just try to be like your best friend helping you out, telling you stuff that's easy to consume, and not alienating but more inclusive.

Goals for the newsletterDR:

1. We really want to get this referral program up and running. It's something we've been talking about for a while.

2. To just keep receiving emails.The day that you stop receiving messages and emails means you are doing something wrong. So as long as you're receiving emails, and keeping that two way connection.

3. The aim is to become the go-to source of information and inspiration for women in the CPG, DTC, and eCommerce space.

We haven't focused a lot on growth on the newsletter, we typically just post on social media and talk about it on the podcast. So it hasn’t been the same growth strategy that we use for the podcast. It's been more of an extension of the podcast, so we haven't had exponential growth that we can talk to just yet. But it’s been incredibly heartwarming receiving emails and the DMs that we get from people.

I really appreciate the people that take the time to reply and let us know how it’s been impacting them, or how Female Startup Club has helped them in their journey. I think that's been the most powerful thing for me, is being able to be like, wow, people engage with us and are taking the time to read our newsletters, consume it, and love it.

Advice to other creators

DR:

1. Just have fun with it. Speak in your own voice. Be whoever you are. If you're really quirky, be quirky. Lean into whoever you are and let that show in your writing. I think as content creators, people really connect with who’s on the other side. It's the same with the podcast and Tiktok. People come back because they resonate with you and who you are. So be yourself.

2. Consistency. Commit to whatever your goals are and really take the time to audit yourself. look at how much time you have, really start to understand how much time it takes to create content, because it's better to just start smaller, and then ease into if you're gonna go from one day to five. For example, if you’re producing five days a week, and people love it, and then you scale back to one that can create a bit of a bad reader experience to me. Focus on what you actually want from the newsletter. Is it going to be a channel that you want to monetize? Is it just a hobby, etc?

3. Don’t just focus on chasing a viral moment. Focus on authenticity, consistency, and being realistic. If you do that, the other parts will come.

Your favorite published piece

About beehiiv

What has been the most impactful beehiiv feature for you?

DR: So we haven't launched it yet. Because sometimes as a small business, things can be difficult to get going sometimes. But we’re really excited for the referral program, I'm super excited to have this automated thing built out where I can attach different merch and scale a bit more. It's been something we've been talking about for ages. I'm really excited to get that set up and firing, so that we can grow and get people wearing merch.

In general I really enjoy the simplicity of using beehiiv. Also, it's exciting to be a part of something that's so current. I feel like new features are coming out all the time, and we can truly trust that we won't get left behind on any trends or opportunities. I'm most excited to continue to grow our subscribers list and find increasingly cool ways to connect with our audience.

What was lacking in the previous platform and/or any shortcomings it had that was causing frustrations?

There were definitely some frustrations related to the restrictions on our creativity using Substack, as our newsletter started to feel quite monotonous week on week. We were ready and excited for a change, something new that aligned well with our brand.

How simple was the migration?

DR: The migration from Substack into beehiiv was very easy. As we came from Substack, we could import all of our previous newsletters very easily. It took just a short while to get familiar with the new platform, and I loved how user-friendly the platform was. The interface was similar to the one we used before, and I never found myself missing any particular aspects or features.

Since joining beehiiv earlier this year, writing and publishing our weekly newsletter has been a very smooth process. We've seen our open rate significantly increase since our time with substack, currently standing well above industry standards.

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