The Self-Built AI Brain Behind Style My Wall's Growth to 22 Staff | #656

The last time Justin Bausch was on the show, in May 2024, he was leading CRM at Ryderwear and AI meant product recommendations. He's back as a founder, this time with his partner Felisha Mina, and everything has changed. In a year he's grown Style My Wall to seven figures, and he's built his own AI platform to run the whole thing.

Style My Wall started as a Facebook Marketplace side hustle selling art while Justin still had his day job. He turned it into a print-on-demand ecommerce business, kept everything in-house, poured the agency savings into profitable ad spend, and went from one employee (his nephew) to 22 in two years. Then he built the tool that runs it: an AI platform, made with Claude Code, that manages his Meta and Google ads on autopilot, scans inventory, runs customer service through Gorgias, and updates shipping windows across Shopify and Klaviyo when dispatch blows out.

We get into how he built it, why he thinks most small businesses don't need a paid media agency, the Mattel deal that came from founder-led content, and how he and Felisha Mina now help other small businesses do the same through their agency InHaus Digital.

In this episode:

• Keep it in-house and reinvest the savings into profitable ad spend, which is what took Style My Wall to seven figures in year one
• Small businesses spending under a few grand a day on ads often don't need a paid media agency, they need to understand their own margins
• Build AI into the whole process chain, not just one-off tasks, but roll it out in stages and never straight to autopilot

Connect with Justin Bausch and Felisha Mina
Explore Style My Wall and InHaus Digital

Transcript

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Rapid Growth With AI Tease

SPEAKER_01 0:00

And within two years, that one staff member turned into 22 now. I'll be honest, and I think a small business needs to pay for a paid media buyer. I'm not just some random AI guru from his basement pretending like he's an amazing SaaS provider. I'm not a SaaS company, I'm not a SaaS guy. I'm Justin.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

And I'm Felicia.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

And we're from Star My War, an in-house digital agency.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

We are here presenting with Adjacart with Nathan Bush.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

And we grew our business to seven figures in our first year using AI at the heart of the core business.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Be sure to listen to the episode and take notes because it's going to be a really good one.

SPEAKER_02 0:39

The last time that Justin Bausch joined us, he was the CRM manager at Ritaware, and we were talking personalization and AI. Now that was back in May 2024. Justin is back today, but at a very different point in the story. And this time he's brought in his partner in life and in business, Felicia Mina. Justin left Ritaware to go all in on Style My Wall, which was his side hustle selling artwork that he was running out of his own home. Two years on, that one-person operation is now a seven-figure business running out of two warehouses in Melbourne. And Felicia, who spent close to a decade training e-commerce brands all across Australia, is his co-founder across both Style My Wall and in-house digital agency. Justin didn't just stop at building Style My Wall. He found a new way to build an e-commerce business with AI at the core. And he built an AI tool that checks his true daily profit, scales his Meta and Google ads on autopilot, runs his customer service replies, and even scans his own warehouse inventory. Now he's taking that tool that he built for himself and opening it up for other small business owners to use. Now, this isn't a plug for Justin's AI tool, but I thought it was a fascinating story to dive into to talk about and explore what it looks like when you build an e-commerce business with AI at the core. Now, just quickly before we get into today's episode, I want to say a big, big thank you and a big shout out to Shopify and to Clavio for making Ad to Cart possible. We really do appreciate their support. Now, if you want the cheat sheet from this episode, head on over to Adtocart.com.au and sign up for the newsletter. It's free and we send it out on the day that we go live with every episode so that you get all the good bits and all the learning, even if you don't get to listen to the whole thing. Now, let's get into

Meet Justin And Felicia

SPEAKER_02 2:43

it. Here's founder and CEO Justin Bausch and co-founder Felicia Mina from Style My Wall and In-House Digital Agency. Justin Felicia, welcome to Add Descartes. Thanks for having us. Pleasure. Thank you for being here. We've got such a big agenda to cover today because lots to catch up on since you were last on the show, Justin. You were here in May 2024, and I had a look at the title of that episode that we went live with, and we called it the power of personalization and AI. And I think it might have been one of the first to actually have an AI focus at that point, at least in our episodes. I'm not sure we knew exactly what was coming with AI. Has it surprised you in how fast it's got here?

SPEAKER_01 3:24

It really has, because I think last time we spoke about it, I think the AI we were talking about was just like product recommendations and just the basic bare bones of that combined with personalization. And now AI has evolved to the point where businesses can now implement it to a point where it just elevates any small business owner to a point where they can squeeze out so much more than what they thought they initially could. And it's growing by the day and keeps evolving, and it's pretty exciting.

SPEAKER_02 3:55

And you, we've spoken about this a lot in our pre-conversations around the system that you've created since leaving Riderware to create your own business, but also to help other businesses implement AI. And so we're going to unpack a lot of that. So that's where I see a lot of the value in our conversation today. But I think it's really important that we take people on the journey. So Felicia, you're here as well. Tell us, guys, how you work together. What does this look like?

SPEAKER_00 4:17

Well, funnily enough, Nate, I know that we crossed paths many, many years ago, but prior to what I'm doing now with In-house and doing all the digital and creative side, I was actually training a lot of e-com brands for the last almost 10 years. So MI Academy, very well-known training academy, e-comm brands all around Australia, which you'd be very familiar with. So when Justin and I merged for Says last year, obviously with him and his CRM background with Riderware and all these amazing brands that we work for, my experience in training brands and my creative side, that's how we merge together.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

Cool. Professionally and romantically as well.

SPEAKER_02 4:55

You are brave people. Multiple businesses and together in life, you guys are in the thick of it. So we've got a few things going on here. So we've got Star My Wall, which I want to talk about, which was your venture that you took up on after Rideaware, because last time you joined

Leaving A Job For Art E-Commerce

SPEAKER_02 5:12

us on the podcast, you were at Rideaware. What was the move to go from working at Ritaware under a founder's direction, focusing on CRM, to going, actually, Star My Wall is the thing.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Yeah. So I think what the major thing was, because I was doing Star My Wall just as a small thing on the side during Ritaware. I know.

SPEAKER_02 5:32

I remember when we were filming, you had like pictures like just in the corners of the shot, and I'm like, what's going on there?

SPEAKER_01 5:37

Yeah, like it's my little side business. Yeah. So I guess what the major turning point for me was the fact that I was just constantly busy selling artwork myself, just purely on Facebook Marketplace. And I was like, you know what? I can turn this into a business. I know CRM, I know paid ads, I know everything about e-com. So I took a punt. I bought my own professional printer. I opened up a little studio where I was just selling purely e-com, created a Shopify website. I did all that whilst I was at Riderware. I didn't want to throw all the eggs in one basket. And it got to the point, you know, my first ever employee that I hired was my nephew. He's 21 years old. So I saved him from being a dishwasher. He came and learned everything about e-com from me. He did all the printing and framing with me. And within two years, that one staff member turned into 22 now. And yeah, seven figures in our first year. We've now got two massive warehouses in Melbourne. Yeah, and I guess the point of transition was realizing that I'm now looking after a full-time business. Yeah, and that was the change.

SPEAKER_02 6:44

And what's made Stone My Wall so successful in such a short amount of time? Because I don't think there's any shortage of people who have tried to revolutionize the art world and make it more accessible to people. What has been your key to success there and being able to grow so quickly?

SPEAKER_01 6:59

It's a combination of, I mean, selling artwork online. There aren't a lot of competitors that do that. And I don't think there's one major competitor in that space. So you're not competing with the Kmarts and you know freedom and stuff like that. You know, there's no major player in that industry. But at the same time, my background in e-com and marketing, I was able to keep everything in-house and double down on my ad spend and not having to outsource those that money to other people. So I was able to do everything myself. And for a small business owner, I think that's make or break in their first year. You know, you'd be spending almost a grand a month paying someone else to run your ads and learn that stuff. Whereas because I was blessed with knowing how to do that myself, I was able to save that, put that towards ad spend and just scale quite aggressively, but also profitably as well. And having a print on demand and fulfillment business, I didn't need to hold a lot of stock. You know, the only stock I need to hold are the frames. I can create a new SKU just like that. I can find an artist, list the product, and then we print and frame it when the order comes in. So that is probably what separates me from someone that has a retail store or having to buy a lot of stock as well.

SPEAKER_02 8:09

And I can imagine that setup's not cheap though, especially as a small business buying that first printer must have been pretty daunting.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

It was daunting, but knowing how much many orders I was getting on Marketplace, I just knew that this was going to pay off very quickly. Oh, so you launched on Facebook Marketplace first. I did, yeah. And that's where I was testing the waters. And I was just getting heaps of sales locally in Melbourne. So I'm like, if it's working here and all I'm doing is advertising for free organically on Marketplace, surely I can double down and make a proper

Founder-Led Branding That Attracts Mattel

SPEAKER_01 8:39

website, branding. Yeah. So that's what the timeline was. And now you've got a collaboration I saw with Mattel. Like, that's big time. It is, yeah. And funnily enough, they reached out to us, and it was because of yeah, Felicia really helped me out with this because being an e-com, tech, CRM, AI guru, I didn't really care much about branding, personal branding, all the colouring in fun stuff that I like to put on the back burner. But Felicia has come in and turned that black and white into color, did a lot of personal branding content, owner-led content, getting myself out there. And yeah, Mattel saw me on LinkedIn, reached out as a result of that, and that turned into a big conversation. So yeah, now we license their prints that we can we can sell.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

And I think that's actually a really interesting backstory because prior to Mattel reaching out, Justin had completely revamped his LinkedIn page. Like we did like this photo shoot and we like updated it, and he had started obviously becoming more active there and updated all the, you know, the buyers and everything. And I think that combined with the activity that we were doing on social media, had brought in that Mattel conversation. Because had there not been a level of frequency and obviously Justin's face popping up on LinkedIn in that kind of way, then that conversation probably wouldn't have taken place.

SPEAKER_02 9:56

So it was a real intentful move then at the start to do that founder-led content rather than scale this business where you guys can sit behind the scenes, you're putting yourselves out there first.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

And I think that's what elevates our brand as well, is like if you think the art industry, you just you don't know who you're buying it from. We wanted to put a face to the name. You know, my dad works for me now full-time, my niece, my nephew. So I talk about that family orientation behind it. You know, the staff love working there. So we're always putting organic content. And you don't really see that from an artwork industry. You think art, you think high-end museum, a bit dull, a bit boring. We've kind of changed that up a bit and we're putting a bit of flair onto the art industry. So that's what's helped us stand out as well.

SPEAKER_02 10:38

How aggressive do you have to be, like to stand out? Do you have to like be we're anti, anti the old school world of art, or can you kind of do it more subtly?

SPEAKER_01 10:46

The two best performing ads that I've run are the ones where I say the art industry is outdated. You know, I've wanted to take the industry and and break through it. You don't have to compromise on affordability and quality anymore. Most places, you know, the reason why artwork is so expensive is because they can put any price that they want. No one knows how much to pay for art. We care about affordability. You know, a lot of people care about the quality of art, but some people just want something that is good quality but also is affordable. You know, rent's expensive, groceries are expensive, and I say that in my ads. So that's the appeal that has allowed us to stand out for those customers.

SPEAKER_02 11:21

And Felicia, as Justin's kind of, if I've got the landscape right, Justin's doing a lot of the system work and you're doing a lot of the brand and identity pieces on top of that, as well as the marketing pieces. What's important for you as Justin's like pulling the levers on ads and things like that? And then for you to like, actually, we've got to have an identity on top of all of this. We can't just rely on beating the algorithm every time.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

Absolutely. I think content volume is a very important one and a really big one for us, and I think a lot of brands these days is really harnessing on collaborations. You know, we are very fortunate in our industry because we have artists who have their own brands. So we try and leverage those people as much as possible because those are our advocacy pieces. So really getting that volume, creating that community. We do a lot of partnership work as well with schools and stuff like that. So we're part of the curriculum for some schools in Victoria and that's gonna expand.

SPEAKER_02 12:12

So how do you get as part of the curriculum? How does that work?

SPEAKER_00 12:15

Great question. I'm glad you asked.

SPEAKER_01 12:17

This is all Felicia's idea as well.

SPEAKER_00 12:19

So, you know, it was very convenient because I went to an art school myself. Like I went to LCI and you know, a lot of the artwork that we bring on are from established artists. But I said, what about we create a brief for universities whereby we present them a brief to create a set of prints for us that goes towards their mark as part of the curriculum, but also let's select the three top ones to actually bring on a site so that they can receive the commissions coming from that project. And you know what it's like when you're sitting in union, you're doing all these pieces, you're investing time, money, your folio, and it goes to nothing. This is actually coming back to them commercially. So it's a beautiful brief. It's the only one of its kind, to my knowledge in Australia at some of the buttons we're very excited in expanding. So those partnerships are obviously very special. And also, we're starting a couple of things with some NDIS organizations, and I guess the other one that we look after as well is wholesale, which is a separate conversation, but I'm obviously looking after those wholesale partnerships as well. Yeah. So for me, it's very important that when I need systems in place to run those initiatives, it's a very important for me to go to Justin and be like, hey, I need this built on the AI platform. Hey, can you do this? Tweak that. Someone's having a shitty experience over here, fix that. So that's when he's really quick on jumping on all the AI stuff, which I'm sure we'll touch on later.

SPEAKER_02 13:37

We will.

Print On Demand Scaling And Mistakes

SPEAKER_02 13:38

Before we get to that, Justin, I'm keen to understand the the move from activeware and fitness into art from an e-commerce perspective. What's the hardest part in the new business that you weren't expecting?

SPEAKER_01 13:51

I've got to be honest with you, the hardest part I wasn't expecting is the type of customer that we get from an art perspective versus activeware. I would say it's probably more of the older, it's a big demographic mix, but you know, a lot of people that are a bit hesitant in buying online, especially artwork as well. So, you know, the customer service and the questions and everything we get, the volume is a lot higher because a lot of the people buying artwork aren't familiar with e-com. I think a lot of people don't know what they're used to in terms of time frames from print and frame on demand. So our dispatch time can take a lot longer because we're not taking things off the shelf, you know?

SPEAKER_02 14:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

Even though we overcommunicate, if they don't get their order in a week, they pour artwork online. Is this a scam? Where's my money? Blah, blah, blah. Like, why is my artwork not arrived yet? So balancing customer expectations with a print on demand company and fulfillment within an industry that is not as, I guess, fun and popular as ActiveWare was probably the hardest part to juggle.

SPEAKER_02 14:48

Is there a limitation around print on demand in being able to scale quickly?

SPEAKER_01 14:52

It's a great question. The hardest part is probably getting the quality right and getting the frames perfect, and also you've got to be really good at getting every single order correct. You know, it's so easy to make mistakes. So I think when we had a such a huge volume on Black Friday, and I was getting all my staff all hands on deck, printing, framing, they just want to get the orders out, and sometimes they can get the wrong color frame or get the wrong print size. So all of a sudden, your errors can multiply exponentially because again, you're not picking off leggings off the shelf that's in this colour. You know, you have to look at the invoice twice. Is this the right size, the right colour frame? Have they got a white border around the print? Is this the right print? Heaps of potential errors that can occur. So that's probably the biggest thing is balancing accuracy with scaling aggressively.

SPEAKER_00 15:39

Back to that scaling question as well. I think the very obvious one is because we're not cooling stuff off the shelves. Obviously, the speed to delivery is a lot different. So what we'd be able to get out in a day would be a lot less than obviously a brand that has just has mountains of stocks too in there that they can brush out. So that's something to factor in as well.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

Yeah, we did a 70k order, 70k day, and you could just imagine the line queuing up, and then when we got to it, the dispatch was blown out by about four weeks. Like customers were taking four to five weeks to get their order, and I was like, I can't have this. So I put in a lot of systems in place with AI to help that dispatch and processing time. So that's another thing that I did.

SPEAKER_02 16:20

Lorna Jane built a whole brand on the idea that movement is medicine. And it turns out that customers took that literally because they do not stand still. They'll discover the brand in a store, shop online a few days later, then tap through the app. Sometimes all of this happening in the space of a couple of days. That is beautiful for loyalty, but a nightmare to keep up with. Especially when, like Launa J, your email and SMS are stuck in two completely different systems. So they brought it all together with Clavio. One platform, one customer profile, and a shift from blasting campaigns to nurturing proper life cycle journeys. Post-purchase upsells alone now drive three to four times the order rate. And across the last year, they've pulled an 84 times ROI on email and SMS. 84 times. For a brand that swears that movement is medicine, that is a very healthy result. Head to Clavio.com forward slash AU and see how brands like Lorna Jane are doing it right. Well, I

Building A Profit Dashboard First

SPEAKER_02 17:28

think that's a great segue because let's talk about how you've engineered this from an AI perspective. I'm especially keen to understand because you've seen Riderware and you've seen that almost D2C brand and the evolution of that. And I know they're a bit broader than D2C now, but that seems to be the business that was there with D2C. And now we're moving into a new style of businesses that are being founded with AI at the core. And it feels like you're in this sweet spot where you're developing with AI at the core. When you were looking at how you do this from building style my wall into something that is scalable using AI, where did you start?

SPEAKER_01 18:03

I think I started because I wanted I wanted one tool that could tell me all my data from a profitability level across my ads in one spot. And I speak to a lot of other business owners and I say, hey, what's your LTV to CAC? What's your AOV to CAC? What's your blended MER? Like all these metrics that a lot of people, even in marketing, don't understand, A, what that means, and B, how that is affected by them scaling their ads properly, right? So I realized you have to pay a lot of different tools, a lot of different softwares, or you need a business coach to help you identify those metrics. What if I can just speak to my Shopify, speak to my ads, create an app that refreshes my orders every 30 minutes, so it's always updated. And then at the end of every night, it analyzes trends, it goes back 120 days and it spits out all those metrics and numbers that I want there. And then it created a dashboard. But then from that dashboard, I was like, okay, now I know Google Ads well, I know meta-ads well, but I want to scale profitably based on all those metrics that I've identified. You know, it's one thing to go into Google Ads and see your ROAS and go, okay, I might increase budget there. But Google Ads doesn't know how much you made the day before, like your net profit after staff wages after everything. So I was like, okay, I'll integrate zero and all my wages and expenses in my app. So after every day, my app knows how profitable I am, right? It knows my AOV to CAC, my lifetime customer value to CAC, what it costs to acquire a customer, how much they pay it back, and then that evolved into the next thing, which was a system where it tells me how I should scale my ads for my business numbers. And that didn't exist before. So then I built that, and then it was just a domino effect after that.

SPEAKER_02 19:54

It's really interesting that you started there because obviously when we last spoke, it was all about CRM. So the other side of it, like you're obviously starting with acquisition there with ads when we spoke, it was about CRM, about retention and activating existing customers. Is that a symptom of the life stage that Stall My Wall is in, or do you think that's where all founders should start?

SPEAKER_01 20:13

I think all founders should start in the acquisition piece at the start, but then all like the CRM is definitely important. For my brand with Star My Wall and Artwork, it doesn't have the highest retention and repeat purchase rate. So I knew I had to focus on the acquisition piece. And my market is very, very broad. You know, mums can buy for their kids, babies with artwork in their nursery, all the way up to 60, 70 year olds wanting to buy your classic Van Gogh soy cool Monet. So I'm fortunate that my target market is huge. So I can focus on acquisition. But, you know, I am doing my strong CRM piece, like having the reactivation flows, and my app, as an example, plugs into Clavio. It identifies all my segments, all my flows. It looks at all the offers that I'm giving away my product margins and gives me recommendations on what offers I should give to my segments. So it can identify someone that has purchased four plus times or three plus times. It knows my product margins on this is like 80%. It knows I give away 15% on my abandoned cut flow. So it says, hey Justin, for this group, you can afford to give away $40 off at a min spend of $150 or something like that. So that's another thing that my tool can do in that reactivation piece as well.

SPEAKER_02 21:29

And I'm keen to understand because obviously there's a lot of tools out there that do AI analytics and reporting.

Autopilot Ads Driven By Net Profit

SPEAKER_02 21:35

There's lots out there. Where we were talking was around a system that can then go and help execute and make decisions. How do you then automate some of the tasks or the activities in a business like yours using what you've built that you actually don't have to employ people for?

SPEAKER_01 21:52

Yeah, it's a great question. So, as an example, because it looks at my daily profitability. So a lot of business owners, they don't look at their profitability daily. It looks at it every single day. So it knows yesterday how much money I made net profit. When it plugs into my Google ads or my meta ads, it can understand and identify after three or four weeks that it's learned enough about your business that it can turn it on autopilot. And during those three or four weeks, it gives recommendations every day where you should scale, where you should cut back, to the point where now the decisions it was giving me, it was identifying areas that I couldn't identify just purely because it looks at it all the time. Like I don't have the time to do that. Right. And all those metrics that I spoke to you about before, it knows that the numbers that it's recommending and suggesting, it's scaling for your business profitably. And I probably couldn't identify that as accurate as that. And it's cross-checking your net profit every day. And I was so confident with the recommendations it was giving. You can toggle on autopilot. It pings me in Slack, sends me an email, and goes, Justin, just letting you know I increased budget on this campaign because in the last 14 days, it's achieved the ROAS of this. Your AOV to CAC stands up. You're paying this customer X, but you're getting Y back in return after one year. I've put in an extra $40 for you because you have profit headroom. Just let me know if you want me to revert it. And I can just leave it or just say revert and it will revert it. So it can execute from the platform, pause ads from the platform just with a touch of a button. So I don't even have to go into my Google ads anymore. I just log into my platform, let it run. So yeah, if I was a small business owner, I didn't know anything about Google Ads or Facebook ads. You know, like there's that meme where someone jumps into the meta ads business manager and it looks like a cockpit and a plane. You know, like everything is just so confusing. I don't have to go into that anymore. I just let my autopilot run. It tells me what it's done, and the results are there for me because my profitability has never been better since I've implemented for myself and for other businesses as well.

SPEAKER_02 23:53

And Felicia, I'm keen to understand from your education background as well. Were you able to help set rules and guidelines in here? Because not every business will be the same, right? Because what works for Style My Wall in the art category might be different for other businesses. How have you set this up so that it can work across different businesses?

SPEAKER_00 24:13

So it's really dependent on who we speak to, right? So, for example, you know, we might have spoken to like a wellness provider who wants to integrate some of this stuff in. And obviously, when you are trying to integrate the system and platform for a wellness instead of e-comm, that requires a whole different sphere of metrics. So I guess for me, it's just about conversing with those people, and obviously with my background in some of those other industries, and going, hey, that's not going to work for here, but like let's tweak this for this. So I think with that, it's very much client-led and it's very organic and it's very much customer-led because it's about asking people those questions and going, hang on a second, like let's fix that and let's make it better over here for that specific purpose.

SPEAKER_01 24:52

And on that point, when I do integrate it, because for example, when I was speaking at online retailer and I mentioned about my app, I had a couple of businesses approach me and you know, they were they're only spending $50 a day on ads. Like I'm spending five, six grand dollars a day. But when I integrate their account with the platform, it reads historically what they've done, where the gaps are, and it will adjust its recommendations purely based on their volume, their budget, and everything like that. So, you know, it looks at its history and it can understand it from a business owner when it plugs into zero, when it plugs into their margins, it recommends, understands, and will provide that guidance based on that business as well.

SPEAKER_00 25:28

And I think a really key thing is that we understand it, you know, as part of training, different brands and business owners are at different levels, right? So someone who's just entering the market, they look at all this stuff, a lot of them are gonna go, uh, that's uh way too complex for me. Can you dial this back? Can we just like have this? And I think that's the beautiful thing about the platform that Justin's built because it's very easy to toggle which features each separate client has. So we can really make it tailor. If we obviously know it's important, we'll educate you on those key metrics. But if some of it's too complex, it's very easy to kind of adapt to that as well. And and obviously the other side of what we do is that training and education side. So if there are

Agency Versus App For Small Brands

SPEAKER_00 26:08

obviously some really key metrics, it's not like, oh, you're left in the dark. It's like, all right, like let's actually help answer those questions. So there is that service element of it as well.

SPEAKER_02 26:16

Makes sense. How does it go against in-house, which is your agency, which is the whole premise is that you go into other businesses to help them with their marketing and their e com. Are you doing yourself out of a job?

SPEAKER_00 26:28

Absolutely not. So in-house is actually made up into three components. So there's the creative arm, which is obviously like the photos, the videos, social media, brand. Then there's the training arm, which is Justin Peace, which is very ads and CRM focused. And then the third piece, then is the app. So what then happens is when brands come in and integrate with us, it's like, you know, we provide that education, but then we give them the tools, an ongoing piece of it. They can use that ongoing.

SPEAKER_01 26:56

And I think the beautiful thing is look, Felicia and I are very busy as well. Like I've got Star Mile Wall, Felicia has a lot of brands that she works for. We love seeing small businesses come for help. But at the same time, I want to maximize your budget as much as possible so you can reinvest that in ads. And if you want to be trained for a couple of hours, I can teach you Google ads, but then the app will then serve as that daily mentor for them. You know, they pay a subscription fee to use the app. And then the amount that they're paying for versus what they pay an agency or someone like me to look after them monthly, the comparison is crazy. And they can reinvest that money into ads, and the app will just tell them every day what they're doing well, what they're doing not, what they can recommend. So it's like, I don't want to retain you as a client. I just want you to use the app and empower you as a business owner so you can do it yourself. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 27:48

And I think in the last six months, I've seen more people coming out with dashboards and analytics platforms than ever before, that they are everywhere. But is that the play here, do you think overall is that there won't be one winner, but the way that businesses operate will be totally different. And you mentioned there the agency perspective. What do you see as the role of especially performance buying agencies over time, especially in small business?

SPEAKER_01 28:14

I think performance paid agencies for small businesses, like I'll be honest, I don't think a small business needs to pay for a paid media buyer. If you're spending less than four grand a day, I don't think it's needed. And a lot of them will attest to that. When I was at online retail and I said that, the panel of that was an agency owner and she completely agreed, you know. So I think that's where that gap in the market is for us is okay, if you don't need it, but they still need help, what is an affordable solution to that? And that's something like this. Uh there will always be paid media experts for larger businesses when they've got a huge SKU, a lot of different creative and creative volume, and helping them get that creative volume as well. Absolutely. For a small business that is spending less than that a day and they want to understand their business from a profitability level, a paid media expert isn't gonna know how to run a business profitably. They're gonna want to show how much ROI they can get out of your account. That's the difference. They're never gonna know your margins, your net profit, your A of E to CAC, those numbers that a small business owner knows, they will never understand. So that's where that distinct difference is, I feel.

SPEAKER_02 29:22

And so for this to work, do you need to be running on a specific tech stack? Like you've mentioned Xero, you've mentioned Slack, obviously Meta, Google, Shopify. Do you have to be on a very specific stack?

SPEAKER_01 29:33

No. So the beauty about this is I sit down with you and go, show me everything that you have for your business, and I will integrate it for you. So if they are using a QuickBooks or something like that, I will integrate that. It's got an API, plugged it in, boom, it's done in 30 minutes. So we've got about five clients using it now. It's set up in five different ways, but for their business. You know, one of them runs their daily profitability sheet from a Google Sheet doc that they update daily, it reads it off that. Another one uses zero, it reads it off that. So I can configure it based on how that individual runs their business. Even if they've put it in in a Word document and they upload it to a Google Drive or an FTP, I can point it to that. And that's the beauty of it. It's very flexible, it's very custom. I would say it's just like a down-to-earth, humble app, but I'm not trying to bleed you dry financially. I use it for myself. It's helped me scale this business to seven figures in my first year. I don't care if you use it or not, I'm using it for my business. And when people approach me with an appetite for this, I actually said, you know what? This is actually a good opportunity to help other small businesses with it as well.

SPEAKER_02 30:38

Why didn't you keep it a secret and just launch three or four more businesses?

SPEAKER_01 30:42

The idea of a subscription-based model as a business is pretty juicy, I'm not gonna lie. And look, coming up with a company where I have to manage 22 people and a business, I don't really have a lot of time to start a lot of other different ventures. And I think just having this app and then having people just plug and play is probably the best use of my time as well.

SPEAKER_02 31:02

And it all sounds very ideal and very

How The Tool Is Built And Trained

SPEAKER_02 31:06

smooth and simple. I think anyone who's played around with clawed code knows that it's not always as simple as it seems. How are you creating this? If we can get a little bit nerdy and whatever you can give us here would be interesting. Is it through OpenClaw? Are you doing it through Claude Code? Are you doing it through something else?

SPEAKER_01 31:22

It's Claude Code, but what I've done is it's connected to like a railway, which is a server-based, it refreshes every 30 minutes. I've got everything from Shopify integration, Clavio, MailChimp. And what it does is it just analyzes a lot of data constantly for that business and that workspace and updates it every 30 minutes. So it's always live. So I'm paying quite a bit from a server-based point of view because it's storing all your data historically. And just to give you an idea, every subscription tool that I've paid for, I've got in clawed code to rip it apart, reinvest that the learnings and knowledge of all tools that I've used into my app and thoroughly tested the results of said subscription versus mine and made sure that it was on par and it's not just random data. So I've hard tested it. It's taken me close to 10, 11 months to perfect it now. And also a lot of training from myself because I know when to scale an ad for Google Ads, when to hold off with Meta. Because someone can just go, uh, Meta to Claude Code, speak to my meta ads and give me some recommendations. But Claude won't know straight away, hey, okay, it spent $200 here in two days. It might recommend you to pause or turn off the ad, but any mead media buyer would say no, it's in learning phase, you know, and training it over time has gotten to the point where it is a paying media expert. You know, what it was recommending 11 months ago is completely different than what it's recommending the stuff now. So, yeah, it's a combination of techie, knowledge, and the tools that I've created. It's not just from an e-comm overview point of view. You know, I wanted an inventory scanner. I was paying for an inventory scanner. I've built my own one in the app, and now every staff member has their own login. They scan the frame when they actually assemble the frame. It minuses one from my stock, but at the same time, it adds what they've done and logged as a report. So every week I can see how my staff are going from a fulfillment point of view. And it sends a report card based on gives them a grade. So then I can do a leaderboard on who's doing well, who's framing quickly, who's dropping off. So you can imagine the app just does so many different things, as well as just recommending from an e-com point of view as well.

SPEAKER_02 33:39

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Customer Service AI And Dispatch Updates

SPEAKER_01 34:25

It's always functioning as your ERP for small business. Absolutely. Yeah. And I'm tailoring it like I had another business that says, hey Justin, I want my courier performance rates, I want you to integrate with how that's tracking and have it provide recommendations. What am I paying too much for? Where can I? And I did it, you know. At the moment, it's doing customer automation for customer service. It's going into all my tickets, integrated with gorgeous, and it's replying to customers where it knows it can reply. So that's another beautiful thing about it. Before, if a customer had a frame that was damaged, before they would have to take a photo, send it to my customer service team, they would have to reply and say, when are you free for us to pick up the damage return? When can we do a resend? And now that handles it all by itself. It will analyze the image of the broken frame. It will understand that we can't repair it. So we say, you know, it will recommend just to throw it out. Or if we can repair it, it'll say, yep, here's a portal for you to click for returns from a courier, buy the label, they pick in the time and date, it will publish that. That will create a draft new order in Shopify, tag my dispatch team to say, Janet from blah, blah, blah, got this frame, it was broken, please resend it. Or it does it all automatically. You know, so the the possibilities are just endless.

SPEAKER_02 35:41

That's where it gets interesting, I think, when you start putting into the process chain, when it's not just one-off executions or one-off activities, but it's actually part of a process.

SPEAKER_01 35:50

Yeah, yeah. And to be honest, there was teething issues, but it's gotten very, very confident now that it does it accurately.

SPEAKER_02 35:55

I mean, yeah, you couldn't push it to the level that it's at without teething issues. What's been the biggest mistake? Let us in on where it's gone rogue.

SPEAKER_01 36:03

Probably it identified customers getting the complete wrong order and sending out emails where it was identifying they were getting unframed, like an unframed rolled up poster versus a framed. It just had something to do with identifying the variant titles and it just spit back, oh, you actually didn't buy frame, you just bought a poster. And all these customers that spend five times more than a poster, they're just like, what the hell is this a scam? Blah, blah, blah. Like so I turned off that autopilot, and then I got my customer service team, hey, let me know. It will create and then draft responses instead of confirmed ones. So then my customer service team, after a couple weeks, they said, Yep, I'm confident now that it's replying accurately. Let's now turn it back on. So that was a big issue.

SPEAKER_02 36:45

And that big pain point that you had around the print on demand and when you go through those peak periods like Black Friday and being able to keep up with customer service and customer communication. How have you used your platform with that? Because that is a problem that is probably fairly unique to your business.

SPEAKER_01 37:02

100%. And this is a great question, and it's the best case study that I've done with my app because we were in Bali and this is during a big sale that we had, and I was being hounded every day by customers with updates, and I'm like, what can I do to fix this? So I got my app to look at a rolling day seven average of when a customer places the order and then when it is marked as delivered to their door. So then I'm flagged every single day if that window is increased by one day or decreases by one day. If it starts blowing out over a threshold, it pings me and my operations manager. We need more staff for overtime and we mean we can work to catch up. So immediately you'll identify that. On top of that, if it understands that it's blown out the dispatch window, it'll then go into my Shopify, update at checkout the shipping date window, instead of saying eight to 12 business days, it'll automatically say eight to 15 business days. It will then go into Clavio when it made that change. And the email that a customer is sent after they place an order, it will update that in the flow. Hey, just letting you know this is the update window. And then I got the app to build a tracking portal, and then that tracking portal estimated window will notify that customer. It's now actually gone out to 8 to 15 business days, not eight to 12. And then the progress bar in that thingy will slightly lengthen and it will just let customers know. So they are updated at every single possible stage, before, during, after. And look, to be honest, we still get complaints, people still don't read. It's unfortunate. But that's a big example of what I did to turn that around because we need to overcommunicate, and that's something now that the app does, and I don't have to look at it anymore. It just does it automatically for me.

Security, Change Management, And Trust

SPEAKER_02 38:48

Yeah. If small business owners are saying, Justin, Felicia, this looks amazing, and you know, we'd love it for our business. There's a hell of a lot of trust that goes into it because you're dealing with all of their data and all of their customers and essentially being responsible for their customer experience. That's very different for doing it for your own business. How do you ensure as you move into that, essentially being a software provider, all the security, all the support is put in place so that if one day you are in Bali and uncontactable and the AI goes rogue or something breaks, API changes, that it doesn't all just fall over for them?

SPEAKER_01 39:25

Yeah, it's a great question. And look, I think every software-based industry is always gonna have issues. Like a platform's gonna go down, you know, your email service provider goes down for a bit, suddenly you can't send out an important campaign. There's always gonna be issues. From a security point of view, I have made sure that once you integrate with the platform, it is completely secure because I know if I wanted to monetize this, that's the number one thing. Is my data secure? Secondly, in terms of things going rogue, I think because I've tested it out so much of myself, I want to be confident to then let another business owner use it unless I've gone through all those teething issues as well. And I think being a small business owner myself, with the volume that we do, I trust that other small business owners can also trust me and going, hey, if I've done this for my business, it'll work for you. You know, I I'm not just some random AI guru from his basement pretending like he's, you know, an amazing SaaS provider. I'm not a SaaS company, I'm not a SaaS guy. I've created a tool that works for me. And like I said, like a humble tool that I know will work for your business. And if there's any issues, if you need to get something changed or fixed, I'm always on the phone as well. So yeah, and I think because there's there's no risk in it at all. Like I'll never enable autopilot at the start if they want customer service AI. I will never allow it to be on autopilot at the start. It will draft up those recommendations. So then the proof will be in the pudding for the owner to go, you know what, these answers that it's drafting is very accurate. Justin, I'm confident, let's turn on the autopilot. So there's probably those stages in the actual implementation that they will follow.

SPEAKER_02 41:01

And Felicia, from a change management perspective, what do you see from the businesses that you're working with as they're transitioning more over to an AI way of working, either with the tool or without the tool? Like some of the, you know, the tools that we've mentioned, Shopify, Clavia, they've all got amazing AI tools built in within them that you can still leverage even if you don't have the underlying AI integrated platform. Where are you seeing from a change management perspective that you're having to educate or help people make this part of their everyday process and habits?

SPEAKER_00 41:31

Well, obviously, I think speed's a very obvious one. So like I'll just use like content for an example. Like when we are adopting AI, obviously you're using that to draw your captions and just speed it and to do all that stuff. Obviously, I'm saying that, but I think one thing that I really harp on about is I really encourage business owners to use AI and think of it as more of a creative tool as well. I think people are overriding, you know, all the textbook theory that is when I was marketed, it's like one project that I'm working on is uh branching out a wholesale piece, right? So we wanted to grow this wholesale arm of the business. And we didn't have any leads to work with. We didn't have any leads, didn't have any contacts. And I said to Jazz, I was like, you know what, using AI, I was like, I want you to go into Clavio, export the entire list, and give me just the potential accounts that are business owners. And so from that list, I'm able to then extract that, put it in my Clavio list, have my own marketing strategies, reach out to them. And we've now grown our wholesale list by around 20, which is going to feed back in our bottom line purely because I asked that really simple question of hang on a second, like let's ask AI the right questions so that we can do some really like basic segmentation stuff. So speed, obviously finding solutions like that, and yeah, just obviously getting a better grasp of our customers.

SPEAKER_02 42:47

Yeah. And one of the things that fascinates me is that you've repeatedly talked about having 22 employees, including some family members, which is fantastic. I would dare say, as business owners, you're on the cutting edge of AI here in terms of developing your own tools that you're making available for others. How do they feel around your investment and your knowledge in AI? Are they kind of like, this is cool because we're part of like a new age business, or is it like, oh shit, could I be next?

SPEAKER_01 43:13

No, I mean, I guess the beauty about my business is we'll need people to print our products, frame it, and you know, we have a very strong, close-knit team. So I think, you know, I don't hire any marketers or anything like that. So there's no one that is worried about their jobs, but what they're excited about is all the stuff that I've built has helped each and every single person from processing orders, from my customer service team, not having to be annoyed by the you know, Janets and Susans of the world asking where their prints are. You know, it it sends them those automated updates. My dispatch warehouse manager lets him know how far we are behind, if you need more staff. So he doesn't have to ask me, you know, how much staff we need. It's alerted to him every day. When a customer needs a resend, do a returns, you know. They've got a portal now, so he doesn't have to call up and organize everything like that. So it's made their lives so much easier. And you know, I'm not here to look to replace people. The main thing is just to make things easier for a lot of people. And that's what I've done as a small business owner. And what I see is the value of this tool is it's made my life incredibly easier and my staff. And I want to make other people's lives easier as well.

SPEAKER_00 44:27

And I think the beautiful thing as well is that obviously we both kind of have the advantage of that we come from marketing and we come from brand, like we come from CRM, we come from that landscape. So when it comes to hiring people, like you know, some brands might start their business and they'll be like hiring a creative director or brand manager, this and that, but like, you know, not saying that those roles are not important, but we obviously know which roles are really essential and which roles have that return on investment that we really need because we can cover a lot of that ourselves.

The Target Founder And The Next Year

SPEAKER_02 44:59

It feels like you're positioning it very much towards that zero to two mil kind of founder. Is that correct? Like is that where you think it adds the most value?

SPEAKER_01 45:09

Yeah, I th I think so. Someone that actually is across their numbers and looking at scaling their business, this helps them scale the business and definitely is that target market. You know, someone that doesn't have ahead of brand, ahead of marketing, ahead of this, small business owners that want to learn more about marketing and help build their brand and keep their money in their pockets to reinvest in ads to help scale the business. That is the number one advice as a business owner to grow your business is try and do everything in-house, hence the name, in-house, and reinvest that back into your ads and grow your business.

SPEAKER_02 45:46

Yeah. I think it's a really nice way too, if you're a founder and you haven't used Meta or you haven't used Google ads before, to actually learn the platforms in a safe way. The best way to learn them is by doing them. But to your point, when you're in the dashboard, Meta will give you a thousand recommendations, of which most of them are in Meta's favor, not yours. And then how do you actually have some, you know, you guys on the shoulder to give some guardrails around that?

SPEAKER_01 46:09

This is what we do. We sit down with them and I'll go, I'm gonna teach you Google Ads and Meta ads in five hours. So I teach them everything they need to know. I hold their hand, show them the dashboard, show them what they need to be looking at in the platform of Google Ads and Facebook ads. This is how you create a campaign, ignore all this bullshit, ignore your branded ROAS, like only focus on this and this. Like I have small businesses that were paying agencies and they set up campaigns and they're paying for branded search terms on Google Ads. And this is someone that doesn't need to protect their brand. No one is there bidding on their and I'm like, it's just a shame seeing that they're paying all this money and it's going out the window like that, you know. So it's me stripping that back, actually teaching them, no, your RIS looks great, but look at all the people that you've been paying for. They're people that are already looking for your brand. Like it's it's pointless. So then we strip that back, we create a proper campaign, we then jump into the platform that I built, and then they don't have to jump back into the into Google Ads or MedAds if they don't want to. They can just stick in the platform, it understands what we've built, and it will just tell you every day what you need to do based on your product margin. So it's a beautiful kind of piece that they learn, but at the same time they grow as well.

SPEAKER_00 47:22

And it's very, very, very personalized. You know, it's like it's really tailored to those needs and those metrics and whatever level a founder or a business owner is at.

SPEAKER_01 47:32

Yeah. And you keep calling it the platform. Has it got a name yet? It is, it's called our what our agency is in-house, so I-n-h a US. Beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 47:41

Tell me, about the next 12 months, you've kind of got two very no, not different tracks, but two very different businesses. You've got Star My Wall, on-demand printing, e-com business, and then you've got in-house, both as the agency or consultancy as well as the software. Where are you going to put your priorities? How are you going to grow both at the same time?

SPEAKER_01 48:01

I think the more Star My Wall has advanced and built, I now have taken a step back from the daily operations. Like I've got a very, very good team. They know more about the business than what I do from a fulfillment point of view, right? It's running like a well-oiled machine. So I can focus on the marketing side. But with the help of my app, like I don't need to be in the numbers of Meta and Google as much as what I used to be, right? So that's scaling all my ads on autopilot. Felicia is now looking after the whole wholesale piece for Star My Wall. So I've built like a wholesale lead finder for her. She can just type in, I want an interior designer within the 20 kilometers of this postcode, and it will just send her all the emails, phone numbers she gets on the phone. Do you want to buy some artwork and be a wholesale partner? So there's that. We're growing that piece. But it's also freed up our time to then help these small businesses as well that wants to get on the app. So Felicia still has a creative arm that she does. She's awesome at branding, social media, a lot of video editing. So she's the razzle dazzle of making a brand look spectacular like she has with mine, and that's a testament to how we've grown so quickly. So there's that creative piece that she still does, and that's her main job. Star My Wall is obviously going to be a big part of what I do every day. But there is that room capacity for me to help businesses as well as Felicia to use the app. And then, yeah, the hard part is just onboarding them. A couple hours investment time for us, but then they're on their way with the app. So that's where we see it growing over the next 12 months. Star My Wall is going to keep growing. You know, we're only just getting started, but we want to start building this app and the in-house agency as well together as also.

SPEAKER_02 49:39

Have you uh extended your AI to be able to help founders who are in a relationship together? And an AI app that can solve arguments without getting too heated or emotional.

SPEAKER_01 49:48

It's a great question. I've actually got stage. Yeah, I've got there's the agent that you can speak to about your business. So you can go in and say, How's my business going? Do I need to be worried about any numbers or metrics? I need a relationship consulting advice tab or something like that. I reckon Felicia might have to build that one.

SPEAKER_02 50:06

Think so. Awesome guys. Well, it's fascinating. I think it's such an amazing time to do a conversation like this because if we have this conversation again in 12 months, it's going to look different again. And you guys will be in a totally different stage. AO will be in a totally different stage. But I love that you're part of the cohort of founders that are leading with AI at the core of everything you're doing. And not only that, you're helping other business owners implement that into their businesses as well. So congratulations on one, style my wall, that you've got that just pumping very quickly after our last conversation with Ritaware, and then that you've set this system up that you're helping others with. So I'm fascinated to see where it goes. If people want to get in touch, what's the best place to learn more and get in contact?

SPEAKER_00 50:53

Follow us on Instagram and we'll direct you from there, in houseddigital.au. And that's househavs.

SPEAKER_02 51:01

We'll have all the links and everything in the show notes. Justin and Felicia, thank you so much for joining us on Add to Cart.

SPEAKER_00 51:08

Thank you so much, Nathan. You're a legend.

SPEAKER_02 51:09

Thank you. Tell

Three Takeaways And Closing CTA

SPEAKER_02 51:13

you what, one of the most fascinating and potentially scary things about doing this podcast at the moment is watching what used to take 10 years now happen in one or two years. You only have to look at where Justin was when he joined us back in May 2024 versus where he and Felicia are right now and what they've built since. Everything is moving super fast and success is really speeding up. Three lessons that I took away from that conversation. The first lesson is that AI stops just being a party trick the moment you stop asking it to do single tasks and start building it into the whole process. Justin's customer service AI doesn't just draft a reply. When a damaged frame comes in, it reads the photo, decides whether it can be repaired, generates a returns portal, books the courier, raises the new order in Shopify, and tags his dispatch team all without anyone touching it. That's the difference between AI that answers a question and AI that runs the process end to end. Look at the repetitive processes in your own business, not just the repetitive questions, and ask, what would it take to hand over every step and test it with AI? You might be surprised by what it can actually do. The second lesson is don't hand automation the keys until it's proven itself in draft mode. Justin never let his customer service AI reply to a customer live and never let his ad spender run on autopilot until weeks of drafted recommendations had been checked and approved by a human first. Only once the accuracy was there did he flip it over to running itself. That staged rollout, recommend, then draft, then autopilot, is the difference between automation that you can trust and automation that costs you a lot of customers and a hell of a lot of work time when it all goes wrong. The third lesson is when something breaks, overcommunicate before the customer has to ask. This goes for whether you're using AI or not. That barley dispatch blowout is what pushed Justin to build a system that tracks the real gap between an order going in and the order landing on someone's doorstep. And the second that that gap grows, it updates the shipping estimate on the website, the email flow, and the tracking page automatically. I thought that was very cool. Customers will still complain sometimes, as Justin's found out, but they'll complain far less because they're being told the truth before they go looking for it. Any business under pressure, and we're coming up to Black Friday, can build that same habit into how they communicate, whether they have an AI tool or they don't have an AI tool. Sometimes the fundamentals of e-commerce just do not change. A big thank you to our partners at Shopify and at Clavio for making Add to Cart possible. We always appreciate their support and giving us the ability to bring you these conversations. If you got something from this episode, please do subscribe or leave us a review wherever you are watching or wherever you are listening. Until next time, I'll see you on Ad to Cart.