Ethique and Incrediballs founder Brianne West expands business mentoring

Ethique and Incrediballs founder Brianne West is on a mission although she always feels “a bit lame” expressing it publicly.

“I truly believe that if you want to resolve the environmental crisis facing us and some of the social ones than you do that by changing the way we do business,” she says. “If we did business, but better we could change the world and I can’t do that through my businesses on my own.”

The serial entrepreneur, who was named a Kea World Class New Zealand award winner in 2023, set up Business, but Better in March 2023, just before she stood down as CEO after more than a decade of the sustainable beauty products business she founded.

She’s still a shareholder in Ethique which is now sold in over 22 countries and more than 8000 stores and worth $100 million.  It revolutionised the beauty industry by stopping millions of plastic bottles ending up in landfills. 

Last year, West launched her new venture, Incrediballs, which aims to do the same to the bottled drinks industry globally by offering concentrated drink tablets. It hopes to launch its first products in late April, early May.

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Plenty of mistakes were made along her entrepreneurial journey and West thinks what she has learnt at the coalface could be useful for others with the same mindset.

Alongside her podcasts (featured on Caffeine), Business, but Better is a free online education hub to help purpose-led entrepreneurs start and scale companies that solve meaningful social and environmental problems. It has already attracted around 870 people, including roughly a third in a smattering of countries outside of New Zealand.

Each month West hosts a free challenge for community members with prizes that include things such as personal mentoring sessions with her or three hours of free legal support. 

West says so many people also wanted personal advice that in May last year she set up group mentoring – some 20 or so Kiwi founders are now involved.

“I thought okay, let’s do group mentoring because it’s not as difficult on my time and also you’ll start creating cohorts of entrepreneurs together who can then go on and support one another and that is exactly what has happened.”

More entrepreneurs have been turned down than accepted for mentoring if West doesn’t believe in their business model or that she can be useful to them.

Other experts are also doing some modules for the hub and participating in mentoring as there is a limit to how much time West has available.

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The paid model

West and business partner Tristan Roberts, the former chief operating officer at Ethique, have also set up Insprie Labs to offer paid-for advice for those entrepreneurs wanting more in-depth one-on-one coaching as their business grows.

“It’s kind of taken me by surprise which maybe it shouldn’t have done, how many people actually want more from it,” she says. “ The best mentoring comes from people, whatever it is, that have actually done it themselves. You see a lot of social media experts who are only popular because they sell how to be a social media expert.”

Roberts is also critical of the number of kiwi business experts charging startups too much for their advice.

“There are lots of good ones but there are also a number that charge large amounts to startups and deliver not a lot. There’s a big difference between someone who has been involved with a startup from day one and seen it go from an idea, execution, right through to a sale and expanded around the world, to consultants who have worked for a corporate.”

Roberts says West experienced bad advice herself in the early days of Ethique and one of her biggest regrets was engaging and paying a consultant $120,000 for marketing material that was largely irrelevant. It was an expensive lesson the startup could ill-afford.

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"You’ll start creating cohorts of entrepreneurs together who can then go on and support one another and that is exactly what has happened.” Brianne West

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Non-predatory investment

There’s also the potential for investment and the pair have invested in six companies so far with another in the offing. All are New Zealand-founded though some are based offshore.

Roberts says their investment is “non-predatory”. “We’re not going to go out and take 50 percent of a company for $50,000. You could look at any number of businesses that have been going three to five years now in New Zealand and the founders have lost control of their business from a shareholding aspect. We want founders to keep control of their company because I’ve seen time and time again that once a founder doesn’t have a controlling interest anymore, it loses its appeal.”

Insprie is a bit different from typical angel groups of VC funds as the pair want to be more involved with the founders, West says.

“We will only take on a small number and work with them hand-in-hand to try and get them to achieve what it is they want to do that year.”

One of the companies they have invested in, for example, wants to break into the US market while another is eyeing up Australia and yet another wants help setting up its own manufacturing.

Roberts says he’s surprised at the number of kiwi entrepreneurs he’s talked to who have set themselves up in other countries because they can get more public financial support than in New Zealand. For example, one company has set up in New South Wales where the state government is offering several millions of dollars in grants to the right business ideas.

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Some free one-on-one coaching for very early-stage startups is still being done by Roberts, who has a background in turning around distressed companies for sale.

“In the last quarter there were at least five or six businesses we worked with where we spent a day or two with them and we haven’t charged them because it’s not the right thing to do and it might be just a day out of our time. The idea is if we can help them get on the board a little bit more they might come back and ask for more help in which case that’s a different story and then we can talk about how we can work with them on a chargeable basis.”

Roberts says neither he nor West need the money so they’re doing this work from more of a social aspect. It’s also a lot of fun, he says.

“When I started with Ethique that was my motivation.  I didn’t need to worry about money and Brianne couldn’t pay me and I went to help her for ten weeks. However many years later I’m still around.”

On the free side West says most people are either seeking help on marketing and social media which is more her wheelhouse or are at the idea stage and have no idea how to progress from there.

“They’re keen to have someone walk with them because I don’t do things for people, I help them do things and I think that is a really important distinction.”

West admits to not knowing much about business when she first started out (she had two companies before Ethique) but learned on the job.

“As an entrepreneur the best thing you can have is passion, persistence and grit because everything else you can learn as long as you want to learn.”

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