How a career built on calm couldn't fix her own insomnia with Hayley Dawes, Dreem Distillery

0:00Hayley Dawes:I was a property developer and interior designer, and I had the pleasure of turning everyone's homes into beautiful, aesthetically pleasing homes, especially the bedrooms. But there's one thing that the wheels came off in my mind was that the fact that I couldn't sleep, yet aesthetically everything looked perfect. The lowest point was I was frightened to death of going up the stairs to the bedroom because to me that was not an area of safety. I was in a cafe in Notting Hill at my wick's end and the guy there said, have you tried broad spectrum CBD? Every guest on this podcast talks about looking after yourself and your sleep when starting a business.

0:37So I was really keen to speak to someone who has first-hand experience in losing her sleep, how she got it back and why she then made a business from it too. Hayley Dawes spent years designing beautiful calming homes for other people, but she couldn't find a moment of that calm for herself. A mother of four and a long-time entrepreneur, Hayley battled chronic insomnia that began to affect every part of her life. The thing that finally shifted was broad-spectrum CBD and plant actives, and used properly and consistently really helped her get her sleep back. This personal discovery became Dream Distillery, a science-led luxury sleep brand now known for its award-winning night drop sleep oil, and this year, the new magnesium body butter, Dream Melt.

1:20This is an episode about building a business out of a problem you genuinely couldn't solve any other way, which seems to be a recurring theme for many of our guests. Hayley, welcome to How to Start Up. Before we get into all things insomnia and why sleep is so important, and every founder will be listening to this being like, oh my God, tell me everything. I'd love it if you could introduce yourself and a bit about the brand that you started.

1:44Hayley Dawes:Yes, absolutely. So I'm Hayley Dawes, founder of Dream Distillery, and we are the wellness destination for people who struggle with sleep. So hopefully I'm talking to a lot of you out there. I started the brand five years ago out of my complete debilitating insomnia, because before that, I was a property developer and interior designer. and I had the pleasure of turning many people's homes into beautiful, aesthetically pleasing homes, especially the bedrooms. But there's one thing that the wheels came off in my mind was that the fact that I couldn't sleep yet aesthetically everything looked perfect.

2:24Hayley Dawes:What was it do you think that was causing your insomnia? Now I can look back at it. So it was about 10 years ago and 10 years ago, nobody would mention the word sleep. That was the most boring topic alive. And I was working hard, playing hard, meaning I was working long hours and then entertaining clients every evening getting back at 10 59 turning the light out at 11 and hoping to get those sort of seven eight hours and of course that works for a long period of time but suddenly it no longer works now looking back at it it was all to do with my nervous system but I didn't know that at the time so your nervous system this is something that we're hearing more and more in the news across all health pages there's general news that we should regulate our nervous systems.

3:07And for you, were you just burning yourself out year on year?

3:10Hayley Dawes:I was, and I didn't realise that because of course you're living on adrenaline. When you're really loving work, you don't think twice about your nervous system. You're just living life to the full. So 10 years ago when I went to see the doctor about my sleep, the first thing they just give you a sleeping tablet. And that was the quick fix for a few months. But of course, it's always a recipe for disaster. And then I tried so many different things to help you sleep and then landed on broad spectrum CBD and that's when dream was born. Before we get into dream, for you, what was the lowest point for you and that made you really finally push for a different solution?

3:46Hayley Dawes:I think the bedroom should be somewhere that is aesthetically pleasing but also it's where you switch off and have a good night's sleep. That's first and foremost. I was so scared to even go to the bedroom. I would do anything. I'd put another load in the dishwasher, do the washing. I was frightened to death of going up the stairs to the bedroom because to me, that was not an area of safety. I'd had so many panic attacks trying to get myself to sleep or going up the stairs that I just wanted to steer myself away from that area. So I think that was the lowest. And of course, when you're taking that many sleeping tablets night after night, you get that sort of five hours of just deadness, but they're just not good for you and you do feel a bit depressed the next day but you have to carry on so that was the turning point it's that numbing isn't it where you've been in bed but you don't feel rested and you're waking up tired and I'm sure every founder because we're all guilty of this of burning the candle at both ends in the sense that I'll just work until 10 because then tomorrow it'll be an easier day but then you don't wind down until 2am the later you finish the longer it takes you to wind down to then sleep and so many people have said to me and you'd think I'd have listened after six years but if you don't look after yourself you can't look after your business and it's actually russell foster who said you're running a red light on your business if you don't look after yourself and i was like oh god and it's it's hard but for you how did you discover the broad spectrum cbd and like the plant actives because they've become more commonly talked about but how did you find out about it has and i tried a lot of things so i tried cbt which is cognitive behavior therapy for sleep.

5:24Hayley Dawes:I tried so many different ways. I did everything wrong. So for example, I decided to go upstairs at 8.30pm, not tired at all, but to start the evening wind down with plenty of time when actually you should go up the stairs when you're feeling tired. You don't need all that wind down time. So now the advice is go up when you're tired and not hover around in the bedroom for three hours before you actually go to bed. So I was doing everything wrong, but Where the broad spectrum CBD came from, I was in a cafe in Notting Hill at my wits end. And the guy there that worked there knew all about my sleep because, of course, it was a regular conversation, someone that would listen.

6:03Hayley Dawes:And he said, have you tried broad spectrum CBD? I slightly rolled my eyeballs because I didn't really know too much about CBD. I didn't know what it did. And, of course, straight away, I just thought THC, psychoactive element, I definitely don't want to touch that. not realizing that CBD is actually the hemp plant or the different parts of the hemp plant and no THC. He had a little bottle on the counter, just in a brown plain bottle with a hemp leaf on. Please take this, report back in one week's time. And so night number one, night number two, by night number three, I started noticing a difference.

6:41Hayley Dawes:And I thought, oh my goodness, night number four, five, six, it just got better and better. Everything feels different when you've had a good night's sleep. Oh my God, you could take on the world. You could do anything. You could land on the moon. It's insane. It is insane. So I knew then that I wasn't planning on starting a new business. I was very happy in the interior and the property development world, but I just knew then there was something about the way that this transformed my sleep that I could potentially help others. Incredible because we've seen the rise of Trip, the drinks brand habit and actually I've replaced my Coke Zero habit with Trip now because I just feel so much better for it and how much can there really be in it but yeah a friend of mine's replaced her glass of wine at six o 'clock after day of work with Trip like having a CBD intake somewhere so what does it do to us?

7:33Hayley Dawes:Why is it good for our nervous system? So actually there's three different types of CBD, there's isolate which is the pure crystallized CBD all again from the hemp plant that's good but it's just pure isolated CBD we use broad spectrum which of course is more expensive but the reason we use it is because it contains all of the plants so all the different cannabinoids but not the psychoactive elements what's a cannabinoid that is a main it's yeah one of the many plant compounds and the more goodness from the plant itself the better it is but I guess the magic happens so for example here are our night drops actually my number one favorite and our sort of cult ardent cult following with this one but these particular ones are the broad spectrum CBD but we then add these additional plant compounds so plant terpenes and when you add more plant compounds not from the hemp plant from other different plants they synergistically work together and enhance the benefits so it's a real sort of cocktail of ingredients in here and that's this is where the magic happens and you obviously you had a business already you knew what self-employment entailed and it can bring a lot of stress and anxiety it's a job but it's got extra weight to it what for you as a founder made you want to pivot and do you still do both or is it you full time on dream now I was really trying to do both because of course I loved it but a I hadn't been ever in the beauty wellness industry and I did not know quite how many hours and how much energy it takes yeah so I've come out of interiors and I thought I could always fall back at that any time but I no longer do interiors and I'm a hundred percent feel like 200 percent dream so yeah that's where I'm at right now and is there a moment because I think a lot of founders say this that you start with a kind of quite a deluded ignorance as to what the job is going to entail because it's a job description that's not been written before yeah for you to leave one business behind that is quite a big moment because you put so much of your energy and your heart into that and I've had six years recently and I thought god I can't make myself redundant from this role I can't take a sabbatical from this role it's one I've made up for myself but it's the one very happily I'm very anchored to at the moment but to walk away from it that would have been a really big decision how did you tackle that it was I was on the board of another beauty company and I think the penny dropped when this was probably so we've launched five years ago so I'd say eight years ago I was looking at all the various brands in the room they were doing some social media content and they all looked very similar it was when all the beauty brands very modern and just pared back visually so there wasn't any color they were all whites blacks and greys everything looked the same and I was just sitting there thinking oh that awful hemp bottle which is brown with a green leaf could we get any worse we need to be doing something with this in order for it to have prime status on your bedside table again aesthetically pleasing because my interior design world so that's where the sort of penny drop for that but yeah leaving the interior design business, it was hard, but sometimes you just need to change things up.

10:47Hayley Dawes:And I could do it with my eyes shut. Whereas entering the wellness world, I'd never really done social media before. There's so many elements. I've never thought about an NPD, minimum order quantity, all of that, that I am learning every single day. Given it's a whole new sector, category, market, what did you have to learn the fastest? All I wanted to do was help people who struggle with sleep. So the fastest, I think, was all about the formulation. And the night drops, which are our number one, which is what helped me through my deepest, darkest days, I wanted those to be the best in the market.

11:29Hayley Dawes:And of course, I wasn't from the wellness world or a botanical scientist. So I went out there to find a brilliant botanical scientist who could explain a lot more about botanicals to me as well, because it wasn't something that I'd studied at school. But when you work with these people that are really on their A game, you just, you become absorbed and want to know so much more about every single ingredient and why they work together and how they work together. So it gets something that I very much enjoyed. Incredible. And sleep and CBD are categories full of substantiated claims. It's a tricky space to go into.

12:08And we talked about with the sustainability world, greenwashing and green hushing but with something that's quite linked to health and wellness how did you approach the formulation and the evidence to make sure that dream just wasn't another wellness

12:21Hayley Dawes:fad you're right cbd at the time was at its height and i was not going into this market because i wanted to tick a box on the cbd yeah i'd almost do anything not to be in cbd because there are so many rules and regulations which i like which i really do like with all our formulations we have a certificate of analysis which is basically all these laboratory tests so we make sure whatever we say is on that bottle is actually legitimately in that bottle so potency wise there's no mold there's no toxins everything is very heavily documented and I assumed that's what you do with all wellness goods and all beauty goods but little did I know so I was always looking at it from an outside world I guess slightly naivety but assuming that's what I would be wanting as a customer to see legitimately that product is the same product on the paperwork in that bottle.

13:15Presumably now you've got through all the red tape with CBD you could launch any other beauty brand out there and it'd be a doddle.

13:21Hayley Dawes:I don't think a doddle but I definitely know I know a lot more and it's great actually because CBD has definitely moved along they have got rid of quite a few cowboys and it's good that there's a few remaining legitimate brands that can really help people. Yeah, fantastic. That brings me to the point of why is sleep so important and second to that, what is good sleep? We're taking a quick 30-second break from this episode to ask, are you thinking of starting your own podcast? If so, this is great news because we run a course that will train you how to produce your own podcast yourself. This course is for people who do not want to outsource and pay someone else to do it.

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14:16Hayley Dawes:I think until you don't sleep, you don't really realise what sleep is even all about. I know that 10, 15 years ago when I had the bad insomnia, I just thought sleep was an off button and you just lie there actually for seven or eight hours. I had no idea as to what it was doing to my body and mind. And now, yes, sleep is literally our superpower. There's nothing like a good night's sleep. It's the foundation of good health, resilience, relationships, decision making, performance. The list goes on. And there's so many elite athletes that just swear by good night's sleep, as do just normal human beings.

14:52Hayley Dawes:and what's quite interesting is we have a system in our body called the glymphatic system it's in our brain and that literally gets rid of all the toxins it's like a dishwasher every single night when we sleep so that helps us stay away from disease but you don't realize all these other systems are ticking along nicely whilst you've got your eyes closed hopefully not at all and that's the thing if you don't sleep what happens then that's when the mood starts isn't it really Everybody, there's I think a third of adults within the adult population will have insomnia at one point in their life, which is a huge statistic.

15:32Hayley Dawes:And probably most people listening to this right now will know they just don't feel themselves the following day. You're cranky, you make the wrong decision, no energy. You're just clouded, aren't you? You're just a bit in a funky light. And where you could have gone the virtuous circle, you might take the vicious circle. Yes, you eat the wrong thing. If you have a five hour sleep because you've been out, you just binge on absolute junk to just get yourself feeling good again. You don't feel good at all, but that's the first thing that you crave. Absolutely. Your night drops have become your signature brand product and you've launched Dream Melt, which is a magnesium body butter designed, I think, to use before the tension builds up rather than after.

16:12So that's a sort of preemptive strike.

16:14Hayley Dawes:It is. I've actually got the face mask here, but similar to this one. and this is a great product just a few months into the market it's a lovely magnesium butter 9 000 milligrams alone in the jar itself and it's just got a really faint lavender smell not a synthetic smell most people put it on the soles of their feet i sometimes soles of my feet and just pat it here as well and magnesium itself does not help you sleep however it calms your nervous system. So it's all about calming your nervous system in order to have a good night's sleep. I'm renovating the moment and I've learned a lot about electrics and circuit breakers and I was like, why can't I have a circuit breaker in my own nervous system that I could just switch it off and be like, just chill out because it fills with self-employment.

17:04Everyone who isn't self-employed is like, oh, you've got so much freedom and autonomy and unlimited annual leave. I'm like, I've basically not white knuckled it for six years but it's a big weight of responsibility that you're living with on a daily basis not Monday to Friday seven days a week is there any other things you should do to help your nervous system I'm asking for a friend yeah you know what

17:25Hayley Dawes:I think because I've learned a lot the main answer to that is you really need to take micro moments throughout the day and micro could be 30 to 60 seconds it's really short sharp bursts so you It could be at your computer for two hours, like recording a podcast and doing some emails. Go outside, listen to birdsong for one minute. It sounds a bit of a joke, but it's not. It's not much to ask though, is it? It's not much to ask. A little walk around the block, 100%. My favourite thing to do in the morning within half an hour of waking is to obviously see natural sunlight. So I do that from the bathroom window at the same time as standing on one leg brushing my teeth.

18:04Hayley Dawes:I try to incorporate everything at the speed of light. but all those little micro things that you can do there's no point in just going to the day sitting at a desk straight away lights on and just sitting there all day long movement is key you know the more steps you do and the movement in the day even if that's first thing really helps your sleep in the evening that's so interesting i had a friend come and stay for a couple of nights and she does a daily walk she said it's just the best thing i love it about my day she's got hannah Spicer and she's an email marketing wizard and we met through oh I love her oh you would know her yeah she's helped me do my email marketing she's an absolute legend and she's like my walk is for me I just do it sometimes without listening to anything and we went for a walk after work the other day and she came to work out here and today she messaged saying you're gonna go for a walk again I was like oh I hadn't thought about it because you're not here to go with but actually I took myself out for a 20 minute walk and even you're not technically at a desk you're still working so I always have I think it's just a work attachment style that I need to really work on but if you're at your laptop you feel like you're being productive but actually go for a walk you're thinking things through you're problem solving you might have a phone call with somebody your eyes up and out rather than buried in but it's so interesting that that breath of fresh air that you get into your system it is and even in winter you can get not lazy in the winter but just want to stay indoors and I try to take myself for a walk most days but again like you just 20 minutes and it's not always listening to a podcast I could be literally speaking to nobody but looking up just looking around looking at the bird at the leaves somebody on the street and sometimes I would then play a podcast in the car but it's just me time again without having a full conversation with somebody else it's just another way because I do find podcasts and I'm always wanting to learn I'm sure you are interviewing all of us.

19:58Hayley Dawes:Yes, exactly. I'm always wanting to learn and get the best information that would suit me. So there are different ways, but the key thing, as we said before, is just micro moments in the day. And also there's no point in going from the kitchen to the bedroom. Have a lovely relaxing bath or shower. Make that part of your day for you. Some self-care in the evening. Yeah, it's so important. And as I said earlier, looking after yourself to look after your business, if your business is your priority, but you ultimately should be your priority and actually that was a chat hannah and i had is like we've both hit a similar level of revenue that we're really proud of over the last six years we feel like we've got a measure of it now but it was like but now what like we can't whinge about bad dates we like we can't like we're on holiday together so we tick that box now what do we do it is oh we just relax i think our generation as well being brought up in sort of luxury brands in london where you have to try even harder no matter how hard you've already tried that that work-life balance element there's coming with sort of an element of guilt to it how do you boundary your work yeah it's interesting so obviously this has been going five years I'd say two to three years in the summer holiday with my four kids and partner I would just stay in the hotel room and for the whole morning and work just I think because I felt I had to and actually last year I thought I'm still going to have the emails on but I'm not going to have three to four hours of my holiday every single day on that computer and actually it didn't have any effect on the business at all me doing which was quite interesting but it just good and I have felt that by just taking that step back and having that proper holiday I was then even more on it when I came back I'm sure everybody notices this I think you do need that rest in order to have the energy to move forwards.

21:49Hayley Dawes:It's very difficult. For me, I find I take a couple of the children every night to either football or tennis, but I just love that whole experience of watching them play football or tennis. Sometimes it's with a laptop on my knee. But again, that's just another area that I feel like it's work-life balance, but I still enjoy it. Yeah. And I think it's working out how you tick as well of what you need out of your day for yourself. You're so right because I had a really good night's sleep on Tuesday for the first time in a while. And I woke up on Wednesday and I was firing on all cylinders. Oh my God, I've missed feeling like this.

22:22I used to feel like this every day. And it was a real stark moment where I should feel like this most days. And it's so indicative of how much movement I'd done, how much water I'd drunk, how much sleep I'd had. But then there's also, you could be asleep, but you might not have good sleep. So can you define

22:39Hayley Dawes:good sleep? Yeah. You know, when you've had good sleep, of course, maybe some people have got trackables. But for me, I don't track anything. But for me, what I've noticed with Dream Distillery, before I had the insomnia, I was always a very light sleeper, but I did sleep. Now I take the night drops. It's the depth of sleep that I get. The depth of sleep is phenomenal. It's that sleep where you've actually properly sunken into the mattress and you feel as if you've really slept. There's nothing quite like it. And I believe that the CBD itself, because it works with the GABA in your brain, so the calming neurotransmitter, and it just simply tops that.

23:17Hayley Dawes:So if you're not calm, you become calm by taking the CBD. And by doing that, when your nervous system then relaxes, you then relax. And that's when the good night's sleep starts to happen. So it's getting all the things in place that your body can just relax into it and feel confident it can let go which obviously self-employment is not a great recipe for it all about feeling really safe in the environment i think you're probably one of the very few founders in the uk or in the world that has managed to be self-employed and a founder but also protect your sleep because so many people have gone the other way no you're actually you're completely right i protect my sleep like no other there's probably five days of the year that i don't protect it most people should protect it but still have a bit of a good life as well I think you do have to party occasionally or go out with friends and have a couple too many wines life still needs to be lived I completely agree and I think that's it it's like I I think I was an idiot it took me about five years to realize there were only 24 hours in the day and I was trying to do 48 hours worth of stuff in 24 and of course the first thing to slip is your sleep you just creep into the seven, eight hours chunk that you designate.

24:29Because that's a fairly significant chunk of the 24 in a day. It is. And it was a real moment where I went into self-employment thinking that the P &L was the most important thing and the revenue and the cash flow. And actually I was like, no, money will flow. It will come and it will go. The finite thing is time. And I only have 24 hours. And the whole expression, everyone has the same 24 hours a day. It's yes, but it's how you use it. It's how you use it. Exactly. And it's such a waste of time if you're tired and knackered and you don't have any oomph to use the ones that you're awake for.

25:00Hayley Dawes:You're right. And with a good night's sleep, you maximize every single minute of the day. So I maximize and then I put the brakes on when it's my wind down bath situation. I love this. Yes. I built a bath in the garden and taken up gardening. And it's something that all Sunday I'd have the house to myself. I'd spend the whole day gardening and then I'd have a bath in the garden and just look at the fruits of my labor. And if I had a stressful Zoom call, I could step outside and look at the garden. It just, it washed it all off me. And it was this whole being in nature thing that I was like, oh, whatever.

25:30But I was like, oh yeah, no, that's definitely a thing.

25:33Hayley Dawes:It really is a thing. I live in Notting Hill, but I came from the countryside. I've been brought up in the countryside. And I literally used to think, oh, the countryside, there's nothing to do. But now I go to Hyde Park actually for my greenery. But without Hyde Park, I'd really crave it because I know how much my nervous system is regulated by just walking around it. Yeah I think I need to rather than restructure my working day I need to restructure the hours around it to support that because pre-covid pre-self-employment I was expected in an office five days a week I had structure and it was forced on me but I fitted in the things I needed to whereas now when you're your own boss it's very grey everything can creep.

26:12Hayley Dawes:It is and there's so much work to be done but sometimes at the wrong time of day as well. And phones are not our friends I'm convinced. They're not. Oh, God. Please take me about two. So something we ask guests is a now, next and never. So for now, what is the one thing you're focused on for the business right now? Now it's very much about growing awareness and also getting dream into people's hands who struggle with sleep. So I want to sit on lots of bedside tables. Absolutely. I can definitely send you a list of people. And then next, what is next for the business or yourself? Yeah, next for the business, we've got a few more products coming actually, and we're still sort of building the brand.

26:52Hayley Dawes:I really would love it to be the leading destination brand for people who struggle with sleep. And I say that with confidence because I feel we're getting there, but we've still got more work to do. So with that, I just really want Dream to be at the tip of everyone's tongue when a friend's not sleeping, or you know what, try Dream Distillery. So that will be the moment when I know it's been successful. cool okay excellent when I hear someone tell me about it I will whatsapp you and let you know there's nothing like it that word of mouth it's just the biggest compliment you can ever have it is you know it's working yeah and what is something you'd never do for your business I think I would definitely never compromise on quality so with the night drops for example they're pretty potent and I chose that potency because it worked for me so we only have one potency for the night drops and all the quality in all the products it is high-end ingredients but we've put the right percentage in order to make a difference yeah and we want our customers coming back we don't want them just to buy once and never come back so yeah the whole point is try and retain our customers as long as we can yeah fantastic and our question from a previous guest was Laura Butler Madden who was also an interior designer and pivoted to Grove England a beautiful fragrance brand she has snowdrop and anemone so she created fragrances for flowers that don't have smells her question is what do you feel the business has taught you about yourself that you weren't expecting or you didn't know before it's a big one it is a bigger one but you know what hands down the word resilience in capital letters i think that is what it has taught me every single founder i'm sure will probably have that word in their top five but for me it really has been and I feel it's been even more because of the CBD.

28:38Hayley Dawes:There's so many different, as you said before, grey areas and I'm very black and white. So it's been quite hard to navigate but with it I've just got an abundance of resilience. You're right, every founder talks about that and they also talk about being okay with the roller coaster, the level of responsibility and the resilience that you'll find. You'll dig deep and you'll find it. Yeah but it does show you, you're like oh wow I've got through that but the roller coaster as well it's real I think we probably quite enjoy it at the same time it's the adrenaline it's just the adrenaline and then when you get through one hurdle you just think well that was quite an accomplishment on with the next tested and you're like I can do that what else can I do is that mindset and if anyone's listening that thinking that's not for me then don't do it because it you need that mentality of go go go and test, test, test, test.

29:27Hayley Dawes:Yeah. What would your question be for our next guest? Thank you. So I think my question for the next guest would be, if you could turn back the clock on your business, what is the one thing you would do differently? Oh, what would the answer be for you? I think I'm somebody that doesn't think about things too much and I just go, go, go. So I had the idea. I'm not thinking about what ifs all the time. I'm just going. So in hindsight, I probably would have thought about CBD and payment gateways, which is where the websites take money on the back end. Oh, yeah. So that's been quite an issue for some retailers.