 | Episode Cheat Sheet |
EP654
17 AUGUST 2026
47 MIN LISTEN
Elysia Krstevski
Founder & CEO, Meke Baby
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THE TL;DR
Stuck in a COVID grocery queue with a screaming baby, mastitis, and no way to heat expressed milk, Elysia Krstevski went home and started Googling.
There was nothing. So she left her 15-year dream job as a musical-theatre CEO and built Meke Baby, a portable breast-milk warmer, from scratch.
Three years on, it's in Baby Bunting and The Memo, selling across three countries, she’s made the Top 50 People In Ecommerce and is the face of Australia Post’s new campaign.
Elysia had the biggest growth year of her life while on maternity leave, with a one-year-old on her hip.
| Watch the Full Episode |
| From Bushy |
I feel like I've been seeing Elysia Krstevski everywhere lately, Top 50 in Ecom last year, the face of an Australia Post campaign, popping up across my feed... but we had never actually met! So I used the podcast as an excuse to meet her (the perks of the job) and I’m so glad I did.
Elysia has an incredible story: she was the CEO of Stage School Australia until an ecommerce inspiration struck with Meke Baby. She’s now an ecommerce entrepreneur with a really unique product and strong brand. Only four years on, she already has some war stories, including how she took her Meta account back from the agency and turned a single recurring DM question into one of her best-performing ads. How a competitor copied her product line for line and how she borrowed a private jet to avoid legal fees. And, perhaps most admirably, just pulled off the biggest growth year of the business with a one-year-old on her hip. Enjoy!
CHEERS, BUSHY
Tap any time code anywhere in this cheat sheet and the episode opens on YouTube at that exact moment.
From musical-theatre CEO to accidental ecom founder04:41 The COVID grocery-queue moment that started it all06:54 Seeding the product to big-name mums before it was ready10:09 Taking the Meta account back off the agency14:17 The private jet, the Lambo and out-creating a copycat18:53 Proving a category Baby Bunting had zero data on22:05 The confusing-choice problem hurting conversion29:12 Scaling through maternity leave with a one-year-old44:05“You can copy the website, you can copy the product, but you can't copy my brain”
— ELYSIA KRSTEVSKI | Meke Baby
| 02 The Big Lesson |
Use your Meta Ads account to respond in real time
Elysia had a good agency for 12 months, then took the account in-house and never looked back. The lesson isn't "agencies are bad," it's that as the founder she sees the whole picture, and Meta is where product, demand and customer insight all meet. Running it allows her to move fast. Here's how she does it.
RULE 01 15:50
Mine your DMs for your next ad
The most common question in her DMs was "can you heat frozen breast milk?" An agency would never see it. She turned the exact question into an ad, launched it overnight, and it was selling product by the next morning.
I'm seeing the whole picture. I see it all as the founder. I'm now using that as my engine.
RULE 02 15:24
Learn the numbers so the month makes sense
Running it herself means she sees what every ad costs and reads demand before it hits inventory. She dials up and down as needed, depending on where the business is at. The founder knows the customer better than any agency ever will.
Once you start to understand those numbers, the month ahead makes so much more sense. You're not going in blindly.
RULE 03 16:47
Win on creative, because that's the game now
With the algorithm doing the targeting, creative is the lever. Elysia's theatre background is the edge, when a copycat cloned everything, she out-created them rather than out-lawyered them.
The algorithm is doing the hard work for you now. It's all about the creative.
The lesson here is that Meta accounts can’t be treated as set-and-forget. They are an opportunity to steer your business in real-time. It also doesn’t mean that you need to fire your performance agency. They just have to be ready to move fast. Listen to the cues, refresh the creative and adjust the spend, ALL OF THE TIME.
#45
Where Elysia ranked in the Top 50 People in Ecommerce. In just her third year! Next goal: top 10.
| 03 Steal These Tactics |
1
Seed your product to influential users before it feels "ready", real feedback beats a perfect launch, and early advocates become lifelong cheerleaders. (10:23)
2
Turn your most-asked DM question into your next ad, it's pre-validated demand in the customer's own words. (15:50)
3
Out-create copycats instead of out-lawyering them, the brain behind the brand is the one thing they can't clone.(20:28)
4
Send paid traffic to one clear product, not a category, too much choice stalls people in the funnel and drops conversion. (30:06)
5
Keep customer service human, use Claude to triage the inbox and surface themes, but don't automate the replies. (28:04)
| 04 The Stack |
Elysia's core acquisition engine and customer-listening tool, she runs in-house rather than through an agency.
Used to triage the support inbox, surface the month's top issues and flag unanswered queries, plus strategy and creative, never automated replies.
The store platform behind Meke Baby's DTC business, recently rebuilt into a new site (with a conversion puzzle she's still solving).
Part of Elysia's day-to-day AI stack for creative and operations, alongside Claude and Manus.
Elysia's third daily AI tool alongside Claude and ChatGPT, though she jokes she needs to delete it off her phone.
| 05 If This One Landed |
EP175
Baby Shop for Grown Ups: The Memo Story
Elysia name-checks The Memo as a partner and a kindred modern-parent brand. Meet the founders reinventing how baby gear is sold, with the same fresh-branding instinct Meke brings to feeding.
EP123
From Avalanches to Nipple Hugs: The Milkdrop Story
A founder-engineer redesigning breast pumps from the nipple up. If Elysia's product-development rabbit hole grabbed you, this is the same relentless problem-solving for mums, told from the design side.
EP415
Laura Klein from Snotty Noses: The Wholesale Snot Boss
A modern baby brand scaling from DTC into wholesale and retail. The perfect companion to Elysia's Baby Bunting journey and the shift from online-first to retail-led growth.
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| Continue the Conversation |
Would you out-create a copycat instead of going legal, and could you run your own Meta account instead of handing it to an agency? Jump into the ATC Community to discuss.
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