Founder in focus

The following interview is an extract from our fourth annual Top 200 Women-Powered Businesses Report, produced in collaboration with Beauhurst.

Click here to read the full account. 

Can you share the journey that inspired you to become an entrepreneur?

I kind of fell into the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey! I started posting fitness content online at 18, it was a faceless, nameless account made just to keep me accountable on my fitness journey. As it grew, I didn’t think of it as a business, until I was told my student finance payment hadn’t come through to my university and I needed to find thousands of pounds in a matter of days. So, I turned my workout videos & recipe posts into PDF guides, built a website overnight, and from there, without really knowing it, started what’s now an 8 year entrepreneurial journey and led to me founding three businesses, SHREDDY, TALA & The Productivity Method. 

What role have mentors or role models played in developing your businesses?

I really do believe that seeing is believing when it comes to your business journey or chosen career path - it’s why I’m so transparent about the highs and lows of running my companies online. In terms of role models, I think what Emma Grede has done with Skims & Good American is absolutely incredible, she’s a real inspiration of mine. She’s taken the brands so far beyond the realms of the celebrities they’re affiliated with through incredible product, whilst so many other have fallen by the wayside.

As a founder and investor, what are some of the key qualities you look for in a business or entrepreneur when considering an investment?

Firstly, I’ll look at the unique value proposition, a business needs to solve a crystal clear problem for it’s customer, which should lead all its messaging. I’m incredibly product focused in my day-to-day running the businesses, so I tend to invest in founders who share my love for incredible product that redefines the standards we had for that specific industry.

I then always look for proof of both customer - love and market fit. This is needs to be backed by data, but I also always add reviews & DMs we receive into our pitch decks for TALA as I feel it really brings the customer - love to life!

In terms of the founder, people really do invest in people - I look to invest in founders who have amazing clarity of vision and can simultaneously be incredibly passionate about their idea, and, more importantly, willing to adapt and innovate in the face of change.

What are three key characteristics or traits that you believe have been instrumental in your success as a founder and have helped you navigate the challenges of building and growing your businesses?

Number 1 would 100% be resilience. It’s the trait I’m most proud of as, to be honest, it took the longest to build! Especially in a product business, you have to get used to things going wrong constantly. One minute you’ll be celebrating your Series A funding, and the next minute you find out the shipping for your new collection has been delayed by weeks due to a storm causing a cashflow issue of thousands.

Secondly, a podcast guest recently told me that their motto is ‘Clarity is Kindness’, and I think it couldn’t be more true when you’re beginning to hire & grow your business. You might have the most incredible ideas for your business, but if you’re not communicating it clearly to your team, and giving them direct feedback when work isn’t up to the standard you want it to be, you end up wasting a huge amount of precious time and money that could be spent growing. This is true not just when giving feedback, but when communicating to your customers too. At TALA we speak to our customers like we would a friend, we know they can handle nuance, and so we don’t speak down to them - we always say it how it is and I think it’s put us in good stead as we evolve.

Finally, discipline! This might seem simple but I am so strict with my calendar and without it I don’t know how the businesses would function. I time block every hour in the work day, order every task in order of priority, have a daily approval block so I’m never holding up decisions & try to only take meetings at specific times. I’m so passionate about this method I created a whole business from it!

In your opinion, what are the most persistent challenges that women entrepreneurs continue to face in business?

I think the two main challenges are intertwined with each other. Firstly the barriers to entry to entrepreneurship as a whole & then also access to networks. We’re doing so many young girls a disservice by not presenting entrepreneurship as a viable option for their future. At school I was never once encouraged to pursue entrepreneurship, or even educated on what it is. I believe everyone should have the opportunity to learn about what running a business is like, and this should start in school, and then continue through incredible founder networks.

Speaking of networks, the second challenge is the incredibly limited access to funding for female entrepreneurs. Too many women are pushed out of entrepreneurship because of a lack of access to capital. The UK is a diverse & thriving place for entrepreneurs which is why it’s so shocking that only 2% of the country’s VC funding is given to female-founded businesses and even worse, 0.02% to businesses founded by black women. You only have to look at the small numbers of female founders who have secured funding to see just how difficult it is, and this continues to perpetuate issues further down the funding trail - smaller cohorts of funded female entrepreneurs mean smaller networks, and smaller networks don’t make for easy journeys.

How can the United Kingdom’s business community better acknowledge and support the role of women in enterprise?

Not to sound like a broken record, but we desperately need to improve networks for female founders. VCs need to make an effort not just to invest in women-owned businesses, but then to help these founders into the right circles. So much of business happens through connections, and many of the female founders I meet spent years feeling isolated on their business journey.

I think the business community needs the support of the government too. Earlier this year I was invited to the treasury to discuss exactly this. I think we desperately need more support in creating networks of female founders at every stage of the business journey & drawing awareness to the gender funding gap (it’s still a shock to most people when I tell them!). I’m writing this before the first budget of the new government, but I’d love to see grants & incentives which will boost female founders and give them the support they’re currently lacking from the investment landscape.