Your Brand DNA Is Your Make Or Break with Founder of The Blow, Phoebe Simmonds

Phoebe Simmonds is one incredible soul and I absolutely love her business.

The Blow is an amazing environment where I spent many occasions chatting all about entrepreneurship, crystals, astrology, career and boys.

So much good stuff amongst the hairdryers going off and the laughter of the salon.

Here, I break down our podcast interview where we spoke all things hustle, branding and so much more. You can listen here to the full episode.

Tell us a little bit about you. What's your business and how long have you been in business for?

I’m the founder of The Blow, which is a blow-dry boutique in the heart of the Melbourne CBD, Australia. It will soon be a national business which is what we're working on now. We opened on September 7 2019, which is incredibly exciting and my day to day is about growing the business and making sure that we're on track.

In terms of strategic direction: a lot of brand and marketing, looking after the social channels, working with a publicist on media and then spending about 50% of my time making sure that I've got enough headspace to run the business outside the operational tasks.

Just do it

Prior to this you were in an amazing job as marketing director for Benefit. What did you learn about starting a business and how did you bring that across in terms of the early-stage ideation mode of starting a little side hustle? 

I had one of the greatest jobs that I could ever have imagined as a marketing director for Benefit, a brand incredibly rich in DNA.

I had a very disciplined time with brand training for eight years when I was living in London and then in Singapore, then back in Melbourne and Sydney as part of LVMH. My training was around how to build a brand, how do identify a unique point of difference and a unique voice. What stuck with me was that if you don't stand for something, you never gonna stand out.

When did you quit your day job? What did it look like for you in terms of balancing your role as marketing director and then starting the boutique? 

I think that balance for me was never a concern. I am an excellent manager of time and I'm pretty efficient. I had the idea on October 17, I resigned in February but I didn't leave until July. I got in the car, drove from Sydney to Melbourne and that same day we got the keys and opened in September.

While I was still working corporate, all my own branding was done in my own time. It was achievable for me was because with business building it can be quite lumpy and there's a lot of waiting around. I feel that if I had quit my day job just to focus on the business, I don't think it would have made much of a difference in terms of turning things around. 

I'd get home and work on the business plan and also on a lot of Sunday afternoons where I feel I can be in quite a creative headspace. I love a good Sunday hustle with the candle on.

I love a good Sunday hustle with the candle on.

The business plan took six months to get perfect and beautiful. There was also a lot of tinkering, meetings and catching up with people. The best advice that I had during this time was, “just do it”. That was incredibly helpful because that was what my gut was telling me - I was ready to go, but I felt like I needed more credibility to or to feel even more confident. 

The hair part of the business was so important because it's the product and I technically am not a hairstylist, had no control over the product. So what I did was I was able to reach out to a referral for an incredible woman who is the best hairstylist.

What I learnt was that you need to lean into your strengths, play them and also, acknowledge your weaknesses. I really had to lean into someone who I could really trust to take that vision and run with it to build out the styles, the signature styles that we create in-store to be able to train the team.

You need to lean into your strengths, play them and also, acknowledge your weaknesses.

It’s interesting that you can stay at a plateau for so long and then two or three pieces fall into play in a short period of time and you're ready! 

Can you break down for us what you mean about brand DNA?

This is something I'm incredibly passionate. Every brand has a unique DNA and that's what makes the brand special and unique. Just like how we all have our own unique DNA.

When I was building out the brand, what we stand for, who our customers are, what the product is, how we're going to deliver it, what our vision is - the first step before we do before any of that is DNA.

There are six pillars of the DNA that we use these as a yardstick for the brand. We ask ourselves, what are the six things that make us so unique and so different from any other brand out there? ...because let's be honest, a blow-dry bar is not unique.

• I am offering up fast and effortless, blow-dry that without the fluff and fuss. 
• I don't do champagne. 
• I don't do chandeliers. 
• I value women's time with high importance. It's more important for women to be able to get on with their day rather than spending hours in the hair salon chair. 
• We're all about efficiency
• Good hustle, that positive energy.

I want women to be able to walk out of The Blow, feeling like they can conquer their day with confidence, that they can smash glass ceilings, that they can go into that meeting feeling a little bit more special or they can go on that date feeling a little bit more special or they can go to that wedding feeling a little bit more special. It's about real women getting stuff done, feeling great and getting on with it. 

It's about real women getting stuff done, feeling great and getting on with it

Also, it’s really important to me as a small business that we root ourselves in the community and we give back, so $1 from every blow-dry goes to Share the Dignity. 

The last element but not least is always on warmth. I hire based on high energy and positive vibes. We’re all about having created a really positive experience for our guests. 

Our DNA informs everything we do and don't do. That's what makes us unique from everyone out there. That's what makes The Blow experience one that can't be replicated by any other business.

If you don't know what you stand for, then you just end up becoming a wallflower and blending in with everybody else

Branding is one of those things that can creep up on you. But if you don't know what you stand for, then you just end up becoming a wallflower and blending in with everybody else. You can apply the DNA concept to your own businesses as well; whether it be a physical business or an online one. 

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LISTEN IN: Episode 72 - Your Brand DNA Is Your Make Or Break with Founder of The Blow, Phoebe Simmonds

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