My biggest mistake: Josh Howard, Single Use Ain’t Sexy

Single use may not be sexy, but owning up to your mistakes is.

For Josh Howard, founder of the sustainability startup Single Use Ain’t Sexy, becoming a founder has felt like an “endless series of mistakes”.

But the biggest fish floating down this endless stream, he tells SmartCompany Plus, was trying to do things the same as everyone else.

The mistake

Howard, who worked at Unlockd and co-founded Extra before going out on his own to launch the sustainability startup selling no-waste handwash tablets, says that when founders start a business, they often believe they have to “follow a blueprint”.

“You see what else is being done, and you see who else has been successful, and so when you’re very green and new, you just believe you should employ the same strategies that you’ve seen these other [successful] companies do,” he said.

In the case of Single Use Ain’t Sexy, one of the ‘blueprints’ Howard tried to follow was advertising on social media.

But as he now knows, just because “someone does one thing that works really well for them, it doesn’t mean it will for you”.

“I think our biggest mistake was thinking that that was the only way to grow and be successful.”

The context

Howard started the business in 2019 by himself, and didn’t bring on more staff until around the 18-month mark, following a $600,000 equity crowdfunding campaign. 

“I think when you’re a young business, you’re quite embryonic in the way that you approach growth. So you just look at the way other businesses are growing, and think ‘that’s how we’ve got to grow, too’.” 

“The issue is if you don’t have as much capital as a business that’s raised $20-30 million, you can’t beat them at their own game.” 

Howard didn’t have this power of hindsight at the time. He had seen many other direct-to-consumer brands advertising heavily on social media, and believed that was the best way forward for Single Use Ain’t Sexy, too. 

But with only the aforementioned capital raise and his new staff on deck, it was impossible to create a carbon copy of what other companies were doing, not to mention he had little idea of how its own audience would respond. 

The impact

Relying heavily on social media advertising meant Single Use Ain’t Sexy was lacking in diversification, an issue that reared its head when Apple changed its data and privacy rules.

While Howard admits there were times when social media advertising “paid off really handsomely”, the Apple update is a good example of the business being affected by something completely out of its control.

“If you have all of your eggs in one basket, then you’re completely dependent upon other people and other platforms, decisions, and choices,” Howard reflected.

By not owning Single Use Ain’t Sexy’s own marketing channels, data or direct relationships with customers, Howard found out that “someone else can decide to turn something off overnight, which then affects your revenue stream”.

While Howard can’t disclose direct revenue figures, he does say the primary focus on social media followed by the change by Apple saw Single Use Ain’t Sexy — and many other e-commerce brands — take “a massive hit”.

The fix

It dawned on Howard about 12-18 months into his journey with Single Use Ain’t Sexy that “every business is different and you have different sets of skills and strengths and weaknesses that you should be playing to, or avoiding”.

Moving away from this mindset of what others are doing has helped Single Use Ain’t Sexy pave its own path — including a partnership with The Iconic that Howard admits he “never would have seen coming” when he first launched the business.

No longer having a sole social media focus has allowed Single Use Ain’t Sexy to learn there are other ways to market that work really well for the brand, such as email marketing, selling to B2B partners and subscription offers.

“It’s about having the intuition to follow down opportunities and leads that we thought could be good, and that ended up proving that there was a business case there,” he said.

Diversifying its marketing strategy has also highlighted the importance of developing various revenue streams too, Howard says.

“We’ve diversified our sales channels so that we’re not wholly dependent on one sales channel — whether that’s B2B wholesale, through marketplaces like The Iconic, retail distributors and corporates.

“There are all these different ways that you can grow a business; for us, it’s future proofing the business by diversifying our marketing and sales channels.”

To do this, Howard says the team plans to stay at the “forefront of communicating with people in a way we know that works”.

“We’re playing our own game by our own rules and catering to our own strengths,” he said.

“And that can’t be changed overnight by someone else’s decision.”

The lesson

Howard says it’s funny to reflect on this ‘mistake’, and how far the business has come since those embryonic times.

“As with everything, unless you’ve made the mistake, you don’t ever find the solutions that are actually going to be better for you long term.”

His advice to other founders just starting out in these baby years is to “have a crack at absolutely everything” but “ditch it really quickly if it doesn’t work”.

“The vast majority of things that you try will not work,” he said.

“Ironically, it’s the things that you think are genius or are going to fly that just fall flat.

“And then the things that you don’t have much hope for end up doing really well or being really successful, by creating a new structure or business model or blueprint or pricing tier that can end up serving you really well.”