£700K+ A Month Business Then Lost Everything | Behind The Growth with Ama Hill

0:00You want to be a part of that inflection point. And if you're not, you will be left behind. Things get harder. I had no job. Mom's looking at me. I'm looking at her. I said, girl, I don't know. You don't know. We don't know. Ten figure business owners. I was just looking at them and they're just having a chat with me. I'm having a chat with them and I'm in this room and I was just like, hmm, is this real yet? I was like, mom, look at these numbers. And I just see the bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. And I made like$38 ,000. I'm like in the movies. And I was just like, oh my gosh. Your most expensive lesson and how much did it cost?

0:29i mean it cost me my business lord just yeah trusting the wrong person losing control of

0:34Laura Donadio: your business what did that teach you about control oh i had a hundred percent of that business i don't have percentage in the business anymore not because i wasn't supposed to legal battle hi my name is amma hill i'm a founder and storyteller and we know for building businesses and telling stories about builders and this is behind the growth.

0:59Laura Donadio: Right well thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. I'd love to have you introduce yourself first. Gosh my name is Amma, I'm a founder and creator. I build brands and content online and love to have a good time. Oh we love that. All right our first question is gonna be what are you known for oh building brands and storytelling okay both both together and separate i feel okay can we elaborate a little bit more yeah well um i'm mostly known for building a business in the hair care space which expanded into the beauty world um for about five and a half years called part made which was my first baby first business but before that i've actually always had a presence online i've just switched verticals or switch platforms so i used to actually have a big twitter account and we used to i used to go viral quite a bit they just put me trigger fingers what are you talking about mindset okay business wealth building all of these things and just micro micro journaling really or micro um yeah micro journaling and then i just switched that over to Instagram and then I went on TikTok and just been again kind of had that thread for like the last 10 years online that's so cool if um someone picked up my early days Twitter it would be live tweeting from like the version of Love Island we had in Belgium growing up um so I hope it never surfaces but it's in French so I always thought it would be my saving grace if someone ever found me like that yeah there's not that many people that speak French in the world compared to English so yeah you'll get away with a lot exactly I thought like you know what no one will no one will ever know what I was talking about um were you always entrepreneurial growing up no no that really came about when I believe I was like 19 20 okay but no I was just a model model student tried to get by in school um loved psychology like yeah studied that for six years cool but before that was kind of like whatless like I didn't really have much many goals I just used to binge a lot of tv and films after school so you said you studied psychology.

3:07Laura Donadio: What did you want to be growing up? Psychiatrist. Okay. So I was going to, you know, do clinical psychology. I was going to become a doctor. I was going to be all things, you know, mental health, helping people engineer life better. And I really wanted to help people. That was just something that I really wanted to do. And I was just obsessed with humans. I love human behavior. I love why humans do things. And I got to the point where I had to realize I'm an empath to hear bad news every day yeah to see people go through stuff that's so intense like I even you know some of my friends that um I'm still with from my course yeah that actually went into the field I was just like I'm so glad I didn't do it I just had a realization to carry home as well very very again I carry a lot like I could watch again a tv show or I could watch a documentary and be finished for a week and a half yeah not even my not even my problems but I'm carrying them so yeah I kind of diverted and I was like okay I kind of need a different path I feel like this is a necessary skill tool that I can use psychology understanding human behavior but how can I put this into something that maybe has more longevity and I could actually maybe thrive yeah um not just professionally but also as a person yeah like build something that meant something for you yeah just like yeah yeah that makes sense aligned with your values yeah yeah i completely get that yeah is that so when you obviously decided that psychotherapy was not for you did you do something before plant me like where did you so i fell into marketing okay i was like it was an interesting natural step from psychology to marketing do you think like it's consumer behavior at the end of the day like it's like because I also really wanted to do um psychology when I was growing up and like that was always something that made me think oh but I love understanding humans and how they behave and why they behave and I always thought like marketing is such an interesting thing because it's a science of human behavior exactly and I love and I love the science behind humans and yeah just apply to business I was like okay well I also want to be wealthy I want to be rich my brother he gave me rich dad poor dad which is a book some people love some people hate I don't have feelings towards it I just feel like it was the catalyst for me to kind of think about myself as a business owner I think of business as an option when it wasn't before and I think that for me when I read that book that cemented okay I need to figure out a path to building something building a brand whether I'm alongside it or whether I build it myself and yeah marketing was that next step so I was watching Gary Vaynerchuk, I was watching like Grant Cardone, like a few other people just studying and just seeing what they were saying.

5:52And also I was like, Gary V is a storyteller, but also a fortune teller because how is he saying things and things are happening and his predictability. I used to think about it, like, how the hell does he know all of this? But actually, you know, he's just following the trend cycle of business, the trend cycle of tech, but also the trend cycle of human behavior. This is how it's going to trend. So I was like, oh, I really want to be able to do that because I feel like that is a very very profitable skill um so that's what I started in so I actually became a copywriter okay I learned how to sell with words and I remember charging them like 2k and I was 20 and I was like I'm gonna charge you 2k are you gonna say no and they were like fine and I was like I should have said more I was about to say like if they say yes

6:36Laura Donadio: straight away you're not you didn't ask for enough didn't ask for enough um that's always my thing I'm like if you say yes too fast like there was definitely more budget on the table okay and then so you were a copywriter and then from there what keep keep talking yeah and then from there um I wanted to now learn like how to do media buying okay so like Facebook ads things like that that didn't really go down too too well it was so random like I was like listening to all these like online gurus and they were like yeah social media marketing is the new frontier and like you need to pick a niche so like some people were picking like dentists some people were picking people in the financial sector I was like okay let me do like wealth managers and people who like people who manage people's money I mean you guys have money and those clientele have money so I can get you some more clients it was very interesting because I didn't know how to run Facebook ads so yeah it was not fruitful and I've not I lost some people some money and it was really sad but I did my best I tried really hard sometimes you have to learn on the job as well like you have to learn as you go yeah I think with that kind of thing is you kind of have to like go and do it and then like refine it was really crazy and around it can go very quickly and while at the same time I was like tinkering with all these like different businesses I was I had a podcast okay I was documenting the whole thing on there it was called rice at home basically you can't afford to eat out so it's always right at home to eat at least I was kind of yeah it was like a pop culture business thing we were too early um I'm so angry like I'm like it's one of slums right now revive it bring it back to life something like that um but yeah we were doing that and then my mom was looking at me she's like girl you are wantless right now get a job I was like damn you right I can't even like I don't even have results right now to like prove like no like everything is fine no it was just so in and out because that contract ended and then from there it was just hard for me to get clientele again like I consistent right um that was like more than two thousand pounds so fine let me do sales so I'm just stacking all these things okay so psychology and then marketing copywriting okay and then sales this whole realm of consumer behavior and you know thinking commercially doing the sales role I happened to go and convert into recruitment it was like Wolf of Wall Street the gongs the leaderboards the everything couldn't believe my eyes I did not think it was real I did not think it was real everyone on the phones on the shop floor and I was like we're selling human beings I didn't think I was going to social cuts we were selling human beings I was like this is really weird it was really strange but obviously like yeah like people are looking for vacancies people are also looking to fill the vacancies it was very strange and i did 360 so i'm looking for the jobs and also looking for the candidates yeah but i also i had two markets sorry i had a market that was hard for each side okay so like very little candidates very little jobs okay and i was like i don't understand why i was handed this market because why am i having a hard time yeah both it doesn't make sense like how am i supposed to be one is hard and one is easy not both it should always be the man one side if there's a man neither side like why are you exactly it's hard i was like why did you give this to me i don't understand oh you'll figure out i was like will i do are we sure and it was kind of like there was a factory yeah it was kind of like you do this you call this many people you do this like and it definitely helped me build like a lot of resilience yeah calling a hundred times on the phone every single day or being three hours on a phone at least that was so character building yeah i couldn't believe like thinking on my feet and being told no that many times and being told no it's just like oh okay no go again don't call me again call you next week like it's like all of that like it was so character building but like i could attempt i could just see the line of like i am here if i didn't go through these experiences if I didn't go in this client call at 21, 22, like I'm young.

10:50I'm like out here. But that was like really when I started to think commercially. I only lost those six months though because I got fired. And then two weeks after COVID happened. So epic. I was like, wow. Shit. How are we getting a job in COVID? Yeah.

11:09Laura Donadio: Yeah. That was something that I think took everyone. Well, obviously took everyone off guard. Like no one would have predicted that. but i've excited had no job mom's looking at me i'm just i'm looking at her that's a girl i don't know you don't know we don't know um but i thought this is probably happening for a reason yeah let me take this time to figure stuff out what do i want everything is burning around us like there's so much happening the world is going into chaos did you have like the meme of the dog you know with the like the dog with the cup and everyone is burning behind you like everything is yeah it's It can't get any worse than this.

11:43Like generally it can't, can it? So the only way is up. So I was like, I think I actually want to have my own business. Just maybe the climate for it. And I did see a lot of people like starting up things. And I wasn't looking over my shoulder. I didn't have anyone immediate around me doing stuff, but I just saw online and I was just -

12:01Laura Donadio: It was a trend, right? Bringing the energy from online into my home and be like, okay, let me figure it out. I wasn't even working on PlantMaid. I was working on something completely different, a men's skincare brand. what inspired you to do a men's skincare brand oh i need to be doing a new thing like no one's ever done this before like no one's really figured out this category let's figure it out you don't want to have competition but then it wasn't a viable market it wasn't viable enough to go there so i was like building this like theme page around like it was called like skin brotherhood or something it was like okay cool let's build a community let's build the page up oh she knew it gets followers and then from there we funnel those people to yeah right like create demand and then like exactly when you've proven the demand exactly whilst i was doing that though i was like well i need my own situation fixed and my hair was falling out because the sales role was very stressful because i had no work on both sides like digging for gold because the demand wasn't there exactly the demand wasn't there um so yeah i was doing that and i was like tinkering around with some hair hair products hair ingredients things were working i put it into a bottle i was documenting it on my instagram which was just me my personal friends there was no one else it wasn't a big following and people were like whatever you have here sell it to me like i can see your hair changing i can see your hair changing i really really want to know what it is person review yeah absolutely i was like well i'm jobless it's covid like let's go like yeah let's do it why would you not i didn't it was it was a time like i saw so many businesses grow like i was at wild and wilds started off the back of covid yeah in covid so i got in the market just go at it right like it was a time where everyone was at home they had nothing else to do than just test things and like try things and like see what happened it was a completely different time it was a great time it was a great time i think a lot of businesses had a lot of momentum on the back of it and like you can't replicate this nowadays.

14:01Laura Donadio: Like it was a small niche in the market. It was a moment in time. It was a rocket ship. If you didn't like leverage it there, you missed it too far. Like it's gone. And I think that's the funny thing about business and life. There are seasons and moments where you are in a time where you need to remember to keep your eyes out because there'll be an inflection point. You want to be a part of that inflection point. And if you're not, you will be left behind things get harder there's been so many times where like my friends will be like oh stop building your personal brand on linkedin i missed the wave of where everyone was getting like mad reach mad growth there was a time like now it's like it's way harder it's the same as becoming an influencer nowadays like it's like it's all of that right but it's even the same as like i've um i've had businesses approach me because of like certain successes and like businesses that i've worked in and they were like oh well we want to replicate that business and like this is like our main competitor we want to do that like first of all stop looking at what everyone else is doing what do you want to do what's your brand what's your usb why are you putting this into market if you're doing this into market because someone else did well wrong reason no like it's never gonna work it's about you and your customers correct and it's about what you want to try to solve exactly yeah i just think that people do not take momentum seriously enough because you can ride off a back of momentum you can also create your own and maintain and continue to scale your own momentum but people do not take momentum seriously it's one of the it's one of the luckiest trains you can get on when when it's here get on it ride it to the wheels and build off of it because if you do that will be you'll grovel you'll grovel to get maybe an inch absolutely no honestly i couldn't agree more but it's really funny so basically like you almost got pushed into those situations that kind of like got you there right yeah because we've um we've discussed this with the team so much as um i had a fucking moment i had a moment where i was like i'm done working for someone else i can need a break from this and like this is it was like my tipping point and whilst like i planned for it for a while it was like one day I woke up and I was like, I'm done.

16:18Laura Donadio: And like, unfortunately my job called me that day and needed something for me. And I was like, no, like that's it. Like you've reached my limit. And I was like, I'm like, today is the day. No, like no turning back. I was like, I'm, I'm out. But it really caught me off guard because I'm not, I'm, I don't want to take decisions lightly. I'm not someone that like acts in the moment. I'm not someone that acts in the emotion. I usually love to like take things like digest them sleep on them you know and I was like there and then I was like that's it we're done um so it's quite interesting to like hear that you kind of got pushed to like well now is the time to reflect on like what do I want and like yes you know like I've kind of been forced in this position but also I think this is like a huge like it's super inspiring as a growth story because the amount of people in lockdown that got really like down from it and you know we're like letting themselves like sort of like fall down that rabbit the rabbit hole of oh like the universe is against me yeah i've lost my job i don't have anything like i love that what you decided to do was actually take a step back and think oh this is my moment i don't have anything going on i can decide to do whatever the fuck i want yeah what do i want yeah what do i want to build and then you decided like i'm gonna fix a problem exactly and i think it's it's crazy because i actually wrote a linkedin post about it the other day it's not easy to build with uncertainty and you technically build with uncertainty whether you go out alone on purpose or whether you're pushed out but either way it's not easy but especially when you don't necessarily have the security behind the uncertainty so dealing with security um not being secure and also um having the uncertainty behind it is really difficult because it's like a human's worst nightmare.

18:07Like comfort, security, base is all the things that we look for. And you just completely go against that. But also when you realize the world is not operating on that fairness anymore, people are being laid off right in center, made redundant. Things are going, like people's roles are merging into two, three different roles are like converging into one. Like nothing is making sense. people are posting and earning like hundreds of thousands of pounds nothing's making sense anymore we are in the i said so economy so if you said you were going to do something you can make it happen and you can make it your job apparently we're in a plant shop because people want to talk about plants online and now they're very successful i love that like we are and i think about we look we're in the city we're looking at these countries that we love to see dubai and all

18:56Laura Donadio: of this stuff they were ideas yeah and someone executed i think about singapore as well like 40 years ago singapore is not what it is today it was engineered to be what it is and so if we are living in everyone's idea or many people's ideas then it just gives me more confidence that no matter whether i'm comfortable whether i have security or not if i have an idea and i just pursue it like it's gonna happen whether it's gonna be in my timeline or something a little longer it might even be shorter than i expect as well i can never imagine what the timings are going to be but it's going to happen i'm obsessed um honestly like just bring it on um was success anything like you imagined 99 of the time the best businesses are built on the fact of you see a gap because it's a personal problem yes because then you feel so much more passionate about building it because it's a solution for yourself right um last week and i went very um publicly online about this i'm single and i'm trying to fix my own problem and i was like well i'm single because i don't have time to date what am i gonna do i'm gonna put an event on with single people that are ambitious that are probably all taking a back step on dating because they just don't have the time right i was like i am fixing my own problem i'm building an event where it's okay to network but it's also okay to flirt yeah um you know i'm like we're gonna make it a concept yeah i'm gonna think but that's my own problem i'm trying to solve my own problem by like doing things and i think it's like it's just the best way to build businesses because they can't just like think oh i'm just gonna do a business in this like or you know copy paste as we said like yeah just copy paste someone that's been successful and think oh i'm gonna do it better than them i mean you can but it's probably gonna be a lot harder whereas like if you have your own problem you're fixing you feel so much more passionate about bringing that solution to life absolutely absolutely and you've obviously like built an incredible business with plan made so yeah how did it feel like what what surprised you the most about being successful like did you ever feel like you made it no yeah I never felt like I made it in fact it was really weird um because we got on the Sunday times 100 fastest growing businesses in the UK in 2024 that's incredible we were and I was even nominated for like young good person award my friend Simi won it um and I was sat next to he's done really well so I'm insane yeah I love Simi um I I was just sat next to some people like just like nine figure ten figure business owners I was just looking at them and they're just having a chat with me I'm having a chat with them and I'm in this room and I was just like hmm is this real yet yeah is this real yet but it's funny because um this is not to be like sad but my car got stolen the same day on the way back my car got stolen and like it took us like three hours to get back home I found the car I have the car but yeah you still have the car I yeah I still have it we got it back we got it back the themes weren't that good um but that day probably would have been it and then that thing kind of took out and that is the prime example of being a business owner because you will have good and bad happen on the same day you will have high high very low low happen at the same time you could even be mellow and then someone just does something there's an email that comes through just like wow and I think what what it taught me was that success is not straightforward actually is it in the moment or the journey itself like if you look back you're like I felt more proud about everything that's happened looking back rather than living it yeah um and it's taught me to enjoy the process which is yeah door in door motions at all times I can feel happy and still want more.

22:56I can, you know, I can live in the and.

22:59Laura Donadio: Yeah, yeah. It's a very like, I feel like this and that. So as much as I didn't feel like I enjoyed the process enough when it was happening, which I'm sad about because I was so concerned with more. Yeah. I never felt like anything was enough. It's really tough though, because like when you're in it, like so much is happening. Yeah. Like so much is happening. um it's really hard to be able to dissociate from that and take a step back and give yourself perspective on what's happening here and then yeah and like actually think oh wait shit like this was my goal three months ago smashed it smashed it okay we have to 10x and it's like hello can we recognize yeah we did it by the way yeah it's mad right because like sometimes it leads you to do like silly things as well right like i i launched a business and then before the business even went live we had a really big launch party in february and i spent a lot of money on it and i was like we're gonna celebrate the fact that this business is coming to life exactly in three months and that like no like no one needs no one needs to understand this like it doesn't need to make sense to anyone but me and i was like you all need to just show up and have a good time no one needs to know why you're here i'm just gonna tell you we're celebrating something just come and have a drink and like have fun yeah it was like but to me i really needed to like take a moment and be like okay i had this idea three months ago yeah we're not in a place where we're going to be launching absolutely this is insane like a year ago i was swearing on my life i would never be an entrepreneur i would never have my own business here we are i have two businesses one like the second one is launching within three months like what do you mean and i was like no no no like we're gonna take a minute we're gonna celebrate this this needs to be big And it needs to be something that is engineered into the process.

24:47Celebration, small win, whatever it is. However you want to celebrate them as well, by the way. I will say we did have a ritual. Any good day, we'd go to the cinema. I love that. So I remember the Black Friday, we absolutely smashed it. I think our best time, yeah, our best month, Black Friday month, was about 700K.

25:08Laura Donadio: Whoa. Which was insane. That is huge. Like most of that happened in like four days. It just didn't make any sense. It was like, it felt like Tetris. And you just see like, I honestly, I still have this view. Like whenever I look at my screen, I'm like, like money's fake. It's just numbers on the screen. It's literally just numbers on the screen. It doesn't make sense. And we were just like, do you want to go to cinema? And we're like, yeah. Oh, I love that. And we just was there and we just zoned it out. And we had like a few barbecues and internal like celebrations just to be like, yeah, it's happening.

25:37Like we're here again. We're here again. You have to. and also with the team that took us there as well. Like it wasn't on my own mind. Like these people weren't here. Like we wouldn't have got anywhere. So now I'm like trying to figure out what that looks like in this new season, what celebration looks like. But I think I've just been, yeah, it's super reflective and just thankful for everything that I've done before 30. Cause I'm like, I am also still young. And everything that's... Super young, like absolutely. What do you even mean? To be fair, like, yeah, you didn't do bad the first time around, if I'm being honest.

26:11Laura Donadio: No, you did really well. Like, honestly. Speaking of seasons, I really like that, by the way. What season do you think taught you the most when you look back at it? And then, like, a different play on this. Which season do you think was the most impactful? Because I think those are two different things in my mind. And I'm like, something that's like massively like dawn on me over the years is that whenever I looked back on my life and like, I, um, I moved a lot. So I left home when I was 20 and like, I came here to do my master's and then I kind of followed my heart every time there was like a job, like a job offering somewhere else that would be like, come live here.

26:52I'd be like, yeah, like, why not?

26:54Laura Donadio: Like, you know, I'm young. I have nothing holding me back. Like, why would I not do that? and I've moved like quite a lot in in my first couple of years and you know you always find your feet yeah but like some of the times I have like really bad times and drops and like when you're in the moment like you feel like you're like shit like what am I doing why am I like why am I even in this and it's happened to me so many times that I've looked back at it and I'm like oh this happened because it then led me to something else that I would have potentially never considered yeah if i hadn't you know been through this for example like i started my career in fashion luxury and it was super important for me i always wanted to work in fashion growing up one of my favorite movie was the devil's brother like you know epic iconic yes absolutely iconic i'm also into movies um if you couldn't tell like i'm also a big movie person I love language.

27:46Laura Donadio: Literally. And you know, like my first internship at 16 was like a fashion designer label in Belgium. And then I got like the second one was a fashion publication in Belgium. And then the third one was at Elle in Belgium. Wow. Yeah, that's amazing. Straight away I was like, this is going to be my career. I'm going to fucking graph for it. Like I knew no one, but like made it happen. And then I moved here, continued my trajectory in fashion and was like obsessed with it. landed like the coolest gigs and like it was really really fun and then moved to Amsterdam and worked for Tommy Hilfiger had a really bad time I hated Amsterdam but I was also really unhappy in my job and um at that point in time the HUD group a tech company in Manchester of all places was like do you want to move to Manchester which is crazy because how do you jump from how do you jump that how do you do how does it how did you even find the relevance correct and I And I was actually like, you sure?

28:41Laura Donadio: Like, why'd you want me? And they were like, yeah. And I was like, okay, cool. I was so bad. It was like, it was the middle of COVID and I was in a really bad place mentally in Amsterdam. And I was like, I just need to get myself back into the UK. It was COVID, it was Brexit. I was like, no one is hiring. And no one is going to relocate me. It's going to be hell. And I thought, worst case, I do a year in Manchester. What's going to happen? like you can you can do something for a year usually you know and um and i moved to manchester and i thought like years later like it got me to like where i am today in so many many ways and i always looked back and i thought if i didn't move to amsterdam i was so unhappy in amsterdam i would have never ever ever considered manchester because if i had been in london working in fashion no one could have come to me with a job offer in manchester in a tech business and i would have been like yeah I'll take that like no chance that's insane I would have meant to be it was meant to be yeah absolutely but looking back at you know just some stuff where I was like oh I can always tell you like what something why something brought me to the next step and like what it taught me and so but some of them are like some of them taught me more and some of them were more impactful so I think it's like oh I know sorry it's spicy that's so interesting um Oh my gosh.

30:04Cause I would have, maybe it's like the obvious choice is to wrap the impact with the lesson, but are they the same? Are they the same? Maybe the impactful thing was the start. like this you it was so crazy to be in a viable market to have your own spin on it to do things that people missed you know people were settling in the market was settling for the products they were using on their hair they needed something else but they couldn't scream to the market that's not how it works so you know we came along at the right time and serve them well and and we were growing and scaling very well. And that just taught me, like I remember the first Black Friday, it was just crazy.

30:55I was in my, it was in my mom's house. My dad was there, but. He was always at work. So it was just like, it's like, he wasn't really, he was always working. My mom was there. So I was like, mom, look at these numbers. Like, and I just see the ping, ping, ping, ping, ping. And I made like 30K that day. And I was just like, oh my gosh. Like this was like, whoa. like this warped my head it just changed me i can't think the same like i've seen so much like growth like sold 80 like 80 countries like hundreds of thousands of products sold like millions of millions of products sold in fact you just can't be normal after that no you're engineered differently you're just engineered differently like that was the starting point

31:41Laura Donadio: that was the beginning of my life as well that was the beginning of my life in business like i was like yeah I'm a business owner I'm a serial entrepreneur from there boom you know I think the the lesson if we will the most wisdom gained was the end okay was the end I think um I think that you can't build your business on unstable foundations and it's not always clear what's unstable what isn't you know I think about the financing that we we thought we were we're good with and you know they they weren't risk averse they were fine and things changed very quickly and from there that kind of set us on a spiral it's it's nice to know it actually wasn't us like and I don't mean like like of course we have a part to play but like generally like yeah it wasn't and like I can say that I'm like no it's just this event happened that was so out of my control was not the fault of mine and this is where it led us and without my inexperience i i tried to handle it as best as i could couldn't do that this it just is what it is but it's nice to know that i didn't mess this up yeah yeah absolutely it was just the market yeah well i think sometimes it's good to know too also like that i used to like i was really bad at this when i was um like a couple up until last year to be honest every time something went wrong i would always blame yourself myself yeah i was straight like this is my fault oh my gosh it was my fault and my my brother my husband were like are you sure about this like we're here too by the way because they were my senior team and they're like i don't think it's your fault like we did the best that we could with the information we had based off of events we did not cause what what like what you mean what do you do and then you realize like oh even you know being so vocal about it um people have praised me because they're like we didn't know we were only two or three events away from this happening or one event or in it yeah or in it yeah like am i am i early enough to reverse engineer yeah us back out of it yeah you know and um that that is why i also pride myself on documenting in real time the good bad and ugly because the only reason why i'm in entrepreneurship is because i saw people be entrepreneurs like i read the books i watched the YouTube videos, I saw it happen.

34:02And because I saw it happen, I thought I could do the same. And with that visibility comes dreams. Dreams are achieved and dreams are chased. And I feel like it's my responsibility. I don't know. I don't know why, but I feel like somewhat it's my responsibility to give back. And I feel like giving back is even as uncomfortable as it is, is to share my journey, whether it's nice or if it's rough.

34:26Laura Donadio: I think it goes back down to like ultimately you want it to be like you wanted to study psychology because you wanted to help people. You wanted to give back to people. And I think these kind of things like like find you back, if that makes sense. For sure. You know, like when you want to do something, you will find your own twist to it. But then you will end up like doing something that does exactly that. Exactly. It might not be in the original form that you, you know, first anticipated, but it's then going to be in a different way. And even you saying like helping people, like I helped people restore their hair.

34:58Like people's hair was falling out.

35:02Laura Donadio: And that's a huge thing on confidence in how you feel about yourself. It was not a dream of mine to solve hair loss. But like, I couldn't believe like the purpose I gained from it. And I gained so much pride in that. Like people generally used to stop me on the street and be like, I'm gonna fix this. I was like, girl, are you okay? I loved it it was so wacky yeah yeah out of all the things you were probably thinking you were going to do with like that was not on the bingo card hey girl what's the like give me the products right now um this was so funny but I was like seeing those before and afters as people like post-cancer that couldn't use like harsh treatments using the products recovering the hair with it people with other conditions people generally just like I this was my last resort and it worked and I can't believe I found something.

35:48I couldn't believe the joy I had. And that was the thing that kept me going. Like, it was not about me anymore. Like, as much as we start businesses because we want to build wealth and we also want to, you know, see what our talents and our skill sets can manifest into. But there's the other side where it's not even about you anymore. There's a turning point where it's not about that anymore. There comes a point where it's not even about you anymore. It's like, I have to do this for my customer. I have to ride this out for my customer. That was probably the hardest part, walking away from them.

36:14That was the hardest part.

36:16Laura Donadio: after building all of that and obviously it was your identity it was your name it was your brand yeah everything to you yeah yeah um my last question and then we have a quick fire for you um you spoke about losing control of your business what did that teach you about control oh yeah i'm sorry like we're not we're not going with small questions like no no no this is a really good question actually i've never thought about it that way yeah you getting the real the real you know 401 um what did it teach me about control control is everything it's precious um don't give it away lightly um and i think in terms of vetting who comes into your business world whatever that looks like so as even employees partners investors there needs to be not just the normal vetting process but also a character vetting process so are do you align with their values do you align with their character do you align with things um there's some like people that have approached me since and potentially doing business with other people they were like number one what are your red flags or what are your what are the things that like like bring up your trauma again like one of the things would be like communication like having consistent communication whether like oh I can't speak to you right now I will speak to you next week or like just constantly being in the know I don't like not being in the know I would have never known that if I didn't go through what I went through yeah yeah um you learn a lot about yourself as well right but you you just can't predict things until you're in them so like a value like that no like again respect because I I would align communication with respect you know what I mean so that would be one of the ways to kind of go about that but um yeah I think it's important to me but it's also not that important to me it doesn't override the mission yeah as long as the partners that I'm with also have the same sentiment yeah so if everyone again has similar values yeah well yeah similar values is that then things will work out and yeah I don't mind also do you know what is I also thought that oh well I had a hundred percent of that business I don't have percentage in the business anymore.

38:38Not because I wasn't supposed to. Legal battle. Not on purpose. Not on purpose. Come on, I'm not that daft. What do you mean? Just in the studio of the night? It was there, it wasn't. It wasn't there. But I think more so, I also don't mind being in different capacities in business. So I can definitely imagine myself being a minority in multiple businesses. Yeah, for sure. Helping them out.

39:08Laura Donadio: Like an advisory. Exactly. Yeah, it's just kind of like I will embrace being a serial entrepreneur. I'm really excited to be one. I am one, but I haven't said what ventures I'm working on right now publicly. I can't yet. Only one. I can say one, but I can't say another. But just because it's too early and I like to progress. I also think that people are allowed to decide as and when they want to share something. And like some people will want to like shout about it from day one because like that's an accountability piece. For sure. Some people will want to like keep the cards close to their chest and like, you know, let it grow a little bit behind the scenes before sharing it.

39:54Laura Donadio: So I think you have to respect it. So I'm not going to ask you lots of questions. Fair enough. it's interesting about control because i would have um so i've always been a huge fan of like if it's not in control just let it go and like i find that this is like the hardest thing sometimes it's like i feel like i get humbled by life every day yeah whereas like i think i've got like i've done everything i could to like plan it and then something goes wrong and it was something that i would have never anticipated never imagined never thought would even be a thing and then it just happens. And then like, I feel like you're just always reminded that you're not in control of anything and that you can do your best and then you have to just like, you know, stay and watch because like - That's why resilience is such an important skill for entrepreneurs, but not even just entrepreneurs, just in general.

40:43But it's labeled to entrepreneurs, but life's, and life will always life. And there is, and that's why, again, that duality, being happy isn't about not being sad.

40:56Laura Donadio: No, I agree. Like you actually think being happy is about being content. Exactly. And being able to appreciate what you have. It's that middle ground. It's that ability to those highs and those lows will happen. That ability to go to the middle. That's happy. And to self-regulate to the middle part, right? Is to be able in any situation to bring yourself back to like, you know, what is important for you. Like it was really silly, but obviously we're at Cannes Lions a couple of weeks back, right? And then my flight got canceled. And then like on the second day, I was at the airport and my flight got delayed for hours.

41:31Oh, okay.

41:31Laura Donadio: And I was there like, I was so tired. And like, I had a really early start the day after. And yeah, I was not going to be home until like 1 a.m. Like, you know, you start like, you're tired. After like the whole week, I could just want to be home. Like, you know, and like, I don't turn into a crybaby often. But at that point in time, I was a crybaby. and i was just like i was just you know fuck my life i was like this is really like i was literally in a bad place mentally and i was like i almost slapped myself i was like laura yep you get to go home tonight exactly after being where after being at canwines you get to go back to the comfort of your own apartment you get to sleep in your own bed you get to go back to the amazing life that you built for yourself i'm like we're gonna stop being here now like what is this this is a flight home let's all calm down I was like wow I need to get myself in check this is terrible and I always think about I always think about I don't know I can pull on so many stories but let me let me just think about my girl Emma Greed okay so she was what homeless at one point she had to put milk where like just don't even understand and where she is now yeah like I always think about those stories like yeah again I can't think of others right now but no but like A story like that.

42:47Laura Donadio: Yeah. Someone was in a worse position than me and was able to get to that super, super far based on their mental capacity. That resounds. Abandon their current reality and to just walk towards. The other one. The one that they designed for themselves. Yeah. And I'm like, life is by design. It doesn't even matter how you start. I agree. And sometimes I think people gravitate towards conversations and ideologies around, I didn't start the right way. Let's go back to the beginning where some people get fired. Some people get made redundant. Some people never even got the job. Some people didn't even finish their degrees.

43:26Some people didn't even finish their basic, you know, education. Some people didn't go to school at all. Some people didn't even live in a house all the time.

43:33Laura Donadio: There's no blueprint. There are people, there is every version of success. There's a story for every version of that person. if you want to be successful it's down to you it's facts like i and i it doesn't matter who you are i will humbly say that because i feel like that's just the laws of the universe like it's just the laws and i don't i can't tell you when you just have to stick in the game long enough but also it doesn't have to be for everyone right and i think that's the important thing it's like the success is different for everybody absolutely it looks different absolutely and if you want to have your own business you can have your own business but you're gonna have to work for it yeah but if you don't want it that's fine like no one is judging you for it like we appreciate his heart I think everyone can be an entrepreneur.

44:10That doesn't mean everyone should be.

44:11Laura Donadio: No, I completely agree. Yeah. Yeah. I want a movie theater in my house. That's my goal. I'm sure most people don't. I want that. I want that. We're still going to watch a movie on the mend and then you can watch back all of them. So you can celebrate every time you need to. Exactly. I love that. Okay. Quick fire. Are you ready? I don't know. Least glamorous part of growth in one word. Least glamorous. Oh. Growth. Settling. sometimes you have to settle. Sometimes you can't, you can't grow the way you want to. Like sometimes you have to grow in the unsexy way. You have to start unsexy. You have to execute this, not at the budget you want it at.

44:54Laura Donadio: You have to make things look kind of a little rough, a little scrappy in the beginning. But those are the stepping stones that get you to where you want to be but there is a start and i think um entrepreneurship eroded certain perfectionism like perfectionist traits in me because you ain't gonna get anything done you're gonna have any evidence no one's gonna buy anything if you just gotta keep on refine refine refine get out there refine over time over time over time finished a sentence i felt most out of my depth when i first went into investor meetings okay yeah i've heard that oh my goodness i was asking me some questions i said oh i don't know i don't know i do think there's like a lot of there's a lot to be said about someone that says i don't know and i'll like you know i don't have the answer by the middle by the 50th conversation by the 75th conversation it was as if i was a rapper yeah i was just saying i don't again i i can have a messy start i'm not gonna not do it because i haven't done it before i just gotta learn on the go okay so that's what they say oh that's what they're looking for okay great fine now the next ones it's gonna be better more positive more positive more positive that's just what it is yeah you're learning your yeah um your most expensive lesson and how much did it cost i mean it cost me my business lord just yeah trusting the wrong person just yeah fair enough no audience no network a thousand pounds in the bank what's your first move if you need to build a business validate the market look around see the white space intersection what what worlds can combine or what's missing somewhere maybe turn something unsexy sexy boring you know to fruitful or go into a really busy market and just look for the gap that's been very very obvious let's go again I mean there's 50 11 000 skincare brands but I mean we came up with a business idea just here sitting in a plant shop right so like we did so i would agree i would agree about that all right um i'll read the question normally but i'll ask you again for a specific thing you lose everything tomorrow who's your first call and i'm going to make it very specific when you lost plant made who did you call oh i called my entrepreneur friends immediately i called my founder friends immediately and i just went on a tour i met them at the house i was just like help it's and it was strange because i didn't know why i did it but i was like why did i call you guys well so who else would get it yeah like i went there because i they would get it and they did and it really really helped me in the first couple of months because they were like yeah we know what this meant because it was very clear like maybe even my family members didn't always know the gravity it's like if i went through the same thing you did yeah i wouldn't be all right so yeah it was very comfortable comforting to go to them love you founders

48:06Laura Donadio: um last question so you know when we started the first question was um what are you known for yes now the question is what do you want to be known for the same the same founder and storyteller founder storyteller through entrepreneur and telling stories in various various mediums I love that yes thank you so much