How Lucy Jackson and Nikki Westcott turned a shared Instagram into a fashion label, podcast and radio show

“Made a career out of yapping and making cute outfits.”

Those words are emblazoned across an Instagram video of Lucy Jackson showcasing her latest “cute” fit for her 130,000-strong following.

The reimagined grey pinstripe suit, which bares her midriff, may not be appropriate for a corporate boardroom but in a world where women are setting their own agenda, it’s a power suit for the fashion-forward, multitasking, rule-bending girl boss on the rise.

Women like Jackson and her best friend Nikki Westcott, who started their fashion label JGR & STN in 2018 before launching their podcast Happy Hour with Lucy & Nikki the following year.

The duo have always worn the pants, owning every business they have built together, while subscribing to the theory that they wouldn’t bend to suit others, instead building their success on being nothing but their “unhinged” selves.

They’ve never had a boss to answer to or a boardroom to convince. Just each other, a few microphones and some wild ideas, and yet in the process they’ve garnered well over 17 million downloads, sold out national tours and landed a radio show on the Hit Network.

Their popular fashion label now has a team of 10 and is stocked on leading online fashion retailer The Iconic.

Of course, there’s been the obligatory viral moment, which came last year when they dared the Prime Minister to use the term “delulu with no solulu” in Parliament.

Anthony Albanese accepted and used the phrase in a speech blasting the costings of Peter Dutton’s planned nuclear energy policy.

Albanese later returned to the podcast to share that the comment had been met with disapproval from conservative quarters, but as he travelled the country he realised it had struck a chord with the wider population.

“People would yell out to me in Perth or Karratha or Launceston: ‘hey, tell ’em they’re delulu’,” Albanese told Jackson and Westcott, who said they continued to get comments about the incident every day for months.

Jackson and Westcott are among a cohort of young female founders who have evolved from the hashtaggable millennial ideal of the 2010s girl boss, which celebrated a particular kind of ambition — namely, women who weren’t prepared to wait for a seat at the table and instead set out to build their own alternative. They were hyper-productive, polished and on brand as they rewrote the rules of success.

Then the term became a punchline. Hustle culture lost its shine, personal brands collapsed alongside actual companies, and in the most extreme case Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes swapped her black turtleneck for a prison jumpsuit.

By the pandemic, women were no longer interested in glorifying the grind dressed up as empowerment.

But the idea of the girl boss never really went away, it just needed a rebrand.

The new breed of girl bosses don’t pretend to have everything all worked out. It’s being career-driven but with a side of chaos. They can build a business while raising kids, oversharing on the internet, and admitting they don’t always know what they are doing. But they are still doing it successfully.

In the US, Alex Cooper turned Call Her Daddy — a podcast about sex and relationships featuring high-profile celebrity guests — into a media company, creative agency and beverage business.

On the Gold Coast, Rachel Dillon built Move With Us and Crop Shop Boutique into a label worn by Hailey Bieber and Dua Lipa while raising her baby.

In Melbourne, Shameless Media founders Michelle Andrews and Zara McDonald, a mum and expecting mum, expanded the podcast idea that was rejected by a women’s media company into an empire worth an estimated $10 million.

While in Sydney, Laura Byrne and Brittany Hockley used the exposure of appearing on reality show The Bachelor to build a hugely successful podcast, Life Uncut. Byrne also balances a successful jewellery company, with items purchased by Sydney Sweeney, while raising three girls with Bachelor husband Matthew “Matty J” Johnson.

The through line isn’t expertise or seniority in the traditional sense, rather it’s influence built on being genuinely themselves — in all their occasionally messy and chaotic glory.

“I’m going to have to feed her,” Westcott says as her eight-month-old daughter Rafa coos in her lap during our video call.

The conversation doesn’t falter as she proceeds to feed her baby, before Rafa nods off — already used to the sound of her mum and Jackson talking about everything from the manosphere to motherhood and birth to body counts.

The duo record two podcast shows, a video episode for Patreon subscribers and two radio segments each week.

They answer questions the way they podcast: no filter or script and as freely as they would with friends over a wine at, fittingly, Happy Hour.

It all began with an Instagram account, We the Wild Ones, where they would share their festival outfits. With a following of over 100k they leveraged the engagement into their fashion label — the first drop sold out immediately. The podcast followed, which then led to the national radio show. One thing has always led to the next, not by grand design but rather opportunity, interest and intuition.

Jackson says the goal was never to be influencers — they’ve always had their sights set on bigger things. Without a clear map on how to get there, they’ve taken a “cowboy” approach to business, sticking to their guns while learning and growing along the way.

“There’s definitely been moments where people have tried to make us be a round peg in a square hole, and we’re usually pretty firm,” Jackson says. “We’re also reasonable if something’s an easier way of doing something, and they’re presenting a more efficient way of doing something, we’ll be like, ‘Yeah, OK, cool’.”

It’s an approach that has resonated with their audience far beyond anything they could have anticipated.

Today, Happy Hour attracts more than 331,000 monthly listeners (and 571,000 monthly downloads), placing it at No.11 on the Triton Australian podcast ranker, just in front of The Imperfects.

Their national Party Girl Tour saw sold-out shows, and fans even have Happy Hour tattoos etched on their bodies.

Their fans are a community, the duo say. One that has been created around authenticity, connection and not taking life too seriously.

With this kind of reach, though, comes the inevitable question about influence, particularly over a fan base of predominantly young women.

Jackson admits that it’s not something that is front of mind.

“I definitely know that we do have that, but I don’t think it’s considered all the time,” she says. “We just want to talk about realistic, normal stuff.”

Westcott is more to the point: “You’re not out there bloody killing people, doll.”

When listeners have pushed back on Jackson for something she’s said, her response is characteristically direct.

“You should just choose what to take in from what I say, you’re an adult. If I say jump, you don’t have to say how high,” she says.

It’s a position that could come across as cavalier, but as Jackson points out, they’re not overly political or controversial. Unlike other creators in the conversational podcast space, they’re not dishing out dubious advice or pushing their views on their audience.

“I think part of why our podcast has been so successful is because we are just two girly pops,” Jackson says. “We’re not out here claiming to be masters of anything. We’re just two chicks who like to hang out. Outwardly we’re quite self-deprecating so it leaves you in a space where you’re pretty safe, because it means if anyone comes to you all you can really say is ‘we’re just talking about ourselves’, you can’t really criticise us for talking to our own human experience.”

And it’s a busy existence, straddling the fashion label, podcast, content creation and most recently the radio show. But the days of being across every minute detail are behind them.

In the past year they’ve made strategic hiring decisions so they can focus on the top-line decisions — in theory, at least.

“We are our own worst enemies because one week will be like, ‘let’s consolidate, let’s just do less things better’ and then the next week we’ll be like, let’s fly a plane to New Zealand and do something else’. So it’s like this, but it’s a business owner’s life,” Jackson says.

Being the mistresses of their own destiny is one thing; answering to a radio network is another.

It started when the duo was invited to fill in on the prime-time drive slot vacated by Carrie Bickmore and Tommy Little — something they recognised as a significant vote of confidence in what they’d built.

This led to a permanent Friday night and Saturday morning gig, and with it, an entirely new set of skills to develop.

“Initially when we were contracted to start doing the radio, we had to learn to do short form, be quicker, get your point across, and do it with a little bit more accuracy — not so much like telling our long-winded personal stories,” Westcott says.

“So it was kind of exciting to learn a new way of doing media.”

The adjustment was smoother thanks to the fact they already knew each other inside out. On the podcast, they can walk into a room without a single note prepared and talk for hours: “We just walk in there and I go, ‘well, I got ghosted on the weekend’,” Jackson laughs.

The radio show demands more structure — similar to the podcast, there is a team of producers and audio technicians — but perhaps less than you’d expect.

“If I was going on to do a radio show with a co-host who I just met and we were trying to find our flow, I probably would look at it as a lot more stressful and more prep, whereas, we’re so used to each other,” Westcott says.

“Once we’re in there we’re just bouncing off each other. We might think it sounds s..., but our producers are like ‘great work girls’.”

It’s this ease — the feeling that the listener is part of the conversation, rather than listening in on a polished production — that underlies everything they do.

They occupy the sweet spot that many of the new-age girl bosses exist in: aspirational enough to look up to, while relatable enough to feel like they could be a friend you haven’t yet met.

“Our real, real community was built when we started the podcast and we shared so much of our lives and what we were going through, and are still are going through,” Jackson says. “There are so many phases of life that we share with our audience. So I think that we got into podcasting at this crazy time where we were just so able to connect with people, and now they’ve been listening to us for eight years.”

From her single days to now nursing her baby mid-interview, Westcott says they have seen this play out in real time. During their Party Girl Tour, messages flooded in from women who had grown up alongside them.

“So many people were messaging me being like, ‘I’m a mum now, and I thought it’s just weird if I go to the show — but I know you’re pregnant, I know I don’t have to change my life or put it on hold’,” she says.

When it comes to future goals, unsurprisingly the “girly pops” don’t have a five or 10-year plan in place.

They have aggressive growth targets for the fashion label, with ambitions to crack the US, but they’re not going to pretend they have it all worked out.

“I don’t even know what I’m doing tomorrow,” Jackson laughs.

And perhaps that’s exactly why people are still listening.