How to bootstrap your business, Aimee Connolly, Sculpted by Aimee

0:00I definitely think there is a superpower in number one, a founder is a human. people buy into human. I do think that founders, head office teams and creators are the future of content. So no pressure. I will put my hands up and I will say I can be guilty because you can't have this relentless treadmill company that's just like go, go, go without actually stopping and taking stock. Do I feel it's the full level of where we should be? No. But am I totally motivated to get there yes if it can go wrong the cons are it goes very wrong i think and i have to say juliette i have no part to play in that so you know in today's episode of how to start up we dive into the reality of building a business from the ground up without investors without a big marketing budget and without a safety net joining us today is amy connolly founder and ceo of sculpted by amy and sculpted the academy me, the global beauty brand she launched at just 23 in 2016 with 10 ,000 euros saved from her part-time job.

1:05Less than a decade later, Sculpted is a multi-award winning brand with over 140 products stocked in nine countries and shipped to 68 markets worldwide, all built from a bootstrap beginning and still without taking external investment. In this episode, we talk about the pros and cons of bootstrapping, what you learn about yourself when you start a company and how to work out if you're ready to bootstrap your own idea. Thank you, Amy, for coming on How to Start Up this morning. Before we get going into everything about bootstrapping business, I'd love it if you could introduce a little bit about yourself and the business that you started.

1:42Yeah, sure. Thank you for having me. So my name is Amy. Like you said, I'm the founder and CEO of Sculpted by Amy. I always joke and say how modest of myself to leave my name in the title and just make it super obvious that it's mine. um a very brief overview of my background I started as a makeup artist about 16 years ago and I was one of those very eager beaver teenagers who just adored beauty and was given a part-time job on counter with Urban Decay in House of Fraser at the time and so I had the coolest part-time job going of all my friends because I would go in and make people beautiful and sell products that I was so passionate about but it really unlocked my love of beauty and I worked there for three years while I was in school, went on to do Mac.

2:25In the meantime, I went on to pursue my degree, which is business and French for four years and all the while kept up makeup part time. So at this stage, I was saying yes to everything like a TV slot. Have you got a show reel? Of course. Yeah. Let me come in and I'll try it. Had to Google what a show reel was like literally just putting my hand up to say yes and was figuring out all the rest after. So I was very lucky to have quite a spread across beauty by the time I graduated. And I realized that I didn't want to give it up. But I also realized that I loved business and I wanted to make it a bit more formal for me to go into full-time so I decided to mix my love of business and beauty together and launch a brand and one of the kind of secret ingredients before I launched the brand itself was I had found a makeup academy so if you'd asked me as a young teen what I wanted to be when I grow up I would have said a teacher and so although I wasn't teaching kids I was teaching you know makeup to those who wanted to learn I was able to kind of scratch that itch at the same time but it really showed me the common concerns the sheer overwhelm people had when it came to beauty and actually how I could just help to make it much easier so my ethos was always like whoa like hang on a second five minutes fuss free it doesn't have to be more complicated than that we're not solving the world's problems here we are making ourselves feel a bit better with a few great products so that was really the kind of ethos that I led into the brand and is still to this day one of our sources of truth for us is how we make it easy and how we simplify.

3:52So now eight years in Sculpted is available across our main markets are Ireland and UK. We are across retail, online and we have four of our own stores that we call our flagships. We have a team of 124 people and we are still privately owned and I have highly enjoyed what I can only describe as a rocket ship of eight years. And I feel like we're only getting started, which is great. Absolutely. And I think you've made that sound very matter of fact. Yeah, you did this, you did that, and it's a really massive success. And of course, that's normal. This is not normal. You started at 23 and you had saved 10 ,000 euro to put into your own business and for anyone at any age 10 000 euro is a lot of money yeah but for you to a have saved that by that age is really impressive but then to have the kind of confidence in yourself to go i'm putting it all in i'm going what gave you that confidence to know that that was the time and that was the amount and fast forward to today eight years later you are still privately owned you haven't i believe taken any investment external you are your own boss and the true definition of this and i will caveat this with the massive astros in the founder world everyone's like oh you need to get investors you need to scale you need to be serious d did it you then have a whole like band of people you owe reporting to and you have sort of sorrow but bosses in a way when you take investment yeah what gave you the confidence at the age of 23 to put that 10 000 euro in so i it's funny right because i i get asked to reflect on this a lot and i nearly wish I had like a Dear Diary journal to read back on what my mental thoughts were but whether it was a weird perfect combination of naivety confidence whatever it was there was just this inherent thing in me of like but of course I'll just give it a shot what's the worst that can happen but the one thing I will say is I didn't overwhelm myself in sitting down and writing a five-year business plan that would have been like whoa whoa whoa like let's pause here this is too much you know I'm just going to give it a go throw myself into it I inherently believe it's going to work but I'm not going to psych myself out whereas I feel like when I meet entrepreneurs these days and people who are in between will I won't I they nearly think of the very long litany of things that needs to happen and so the easiest way to say no comes pretty quickly because they're like oh I don't know half those things so no I couldn't bother and actually that's half the reason why people don't start.

6:24Whereas actually, if you just break it down into the small steps, I always break everything down into small sustainable steps. And then you're just ticking it off one by one. So for me at the time, it was like, okay, I have saved 10 ,000. I have these two products I want to purchase. I'm going to Google factories. I'm going to go and revisit that. I'm going to look at a logistics warehouse. It was very big steps, but small things that I could tick off instead of thinking, and then in 10 years I want to be x y and z yes I think that's it you can try and forward plan too much that you get that overwhelming panic totally you get paralysis yeah and actually anything in life getting fit saving money if you chip away at it little bit by little bit you cannot do it all at once I think I saw something recently someone said they chucked a load of seed in a pot and watered it and came out the next day it's like well there's nothing there and it's like well of course there isn't it's going to take a year for that to come through and it really is a really good visual representation of starting a business of actually just plant the first seed you mentioned you launched two products yeah i want to know because i now know your entire age how you chose just those two and why just two so firstly from a cash perspective you know you're one of your biggest outlays at the beginning of a business if you're in the product business will be your inventory so sometimes it comes down to the sheer like what can you actually afford to launch with and although 10 000 is a substantial sum I think to have saved in the grand scheme it's very small for what a business requires so it was very much brand business exactly needs most of what I can launch with but outside of that I had been a makeup artist like I said for those a couple of years and I was doing a lot of bridal that was definitely my signature look so very much like you still natural but like the best version of yourself and within that I was always obsessed with skin and even on a more critical detail obsessed with like how easy the sculpt on the skin could be and we're talking about in an era now like nine twelve years ago where the trend was more is more so instagram heavy makeup and then i was kind of coming in a little bit unconventional to say you don't need that much product you don't need that many layers like just a few simple steps and you're done so it was interesting that my first two products one was a simple sculpting kit so it had three tones in it to um bronze glow and highlight and you could also double up and use it on your eyes and then the double-ended brush was very meticulously shaped to fit right into your cheekbone because the biggest things I was seeing was people were overwhelmed by the size the brush they were using so their contour was too low it was too dark it was too mucky it was too gathered so it was actually really about trying to give them the tools in their hands to say this is going to make it easy for you and I had a little how-to guide inside the palette I had a mirror and I had like a step-by-step on the back so everything was really rooted in that education of how can I make this so simple for people and something that they can rely on and trust so one product in their hand they go this person knows what they're talking about I believe in them I have to say there's absolutely no I've not thought about this interview at all eight o 'clock in the morning in midwinter speaking to someone on camera who's a makeup artist and was like I wish we're in person because then you could show me I know I actually could have done your makeup before we started although your makeup looks gorgeous dream that's very kind but I suddenly thought I've been doing the same makeup for so long like I need her help so what was the second product the second product was a brush set actually so it was an extension of those I think our brushes are like the dark horses of the line I think they are exceptional tools because I've always felt so passionate your brushes should assist in what you're doing not overwhelmed what you're doing and so it's a brush set and then my next product was our first skin product in South Korea that was Beauty Base that was really the decider and the direction leader of the brand so I mentioned earlier I was obsessed with skin for me it was always the foundation of everything um but again that kind of how can I make it easy how can I simplify even more beauty base was kind of a pioneer of its kind it was um spf 30 with an actual radiant glow through it peptides and hyaluronic acid and really the whole thing was trying to combine the few steps pre-makeup to make it easier for people and to make it guaranteed that they wouldn't skip spf and being totally honest i was the person skipping spf i was like it's a bit heavy i want to put my glow primer around and i want to do this and i want to do that and i went to one of those skin consultations you know when you stick your face into the machine and it tells you all your terrible sins of your whole life yeah and I was like 24 at the time and they were like your sun damage like you need to watch your application of SPF and I was like okay how can I guarantee that I apply SPF every day and reduce the time that it takes in the meantime and that was my first product bootstrapping your business a lot of people when they're starting or scaling or thinking about starting a business would be like wouldn't it be great if I could bootstrap and it's one of those kind of jargony words in the founder world that people talk about and it's wonderful when you can but it does force tough prioritization in those early days bearing in mind that you've not had that much work experience I mean you've been working at accounting you're doing makeup you've been dealing with clients and customers for quite a while actually doing your degrees um but in those early days what did you choose to spend your money on and how did you choose where to put it well an honest fact that you mentioned there about you know not having worked in many companies I had never sat in a job interview I had never had to prepare my CV for anyone's even now these days when I'm hiring roles I'm like googling what would this job spec do what would this person do so yeah it was it was definitely a roller coaster shock into the world of business but I also loved that.

12:31But in terms of bootstrapping, kind of deciding how much and where to spend and how rigorous that you need to be on it, because like you said, it has to come with very, very clear discipline. I actually, I think this is how I kind of managed to save that much. I come from a small family, so it's me, only child, single mom. And my mom worked so hard. But like I think a lot of parents or that generation when the last recession hit she was hit quite badly so I definitely experienced her relationship with debt and the sheer stress that that brought on that that has definitely started something in me of like I don't want to be in debt I don't want to owe anyone or just the kind of fear from having watched the trouble that she went through which you know a lot of people did and it's amazing in one sense because it gets your ass up off the chair and you're like I gotta go to work and I gotta make money and I love that for my own independence but it definitely made me quite good at saving and very practical so when I was getting my paychecks in my part-time job it was like some went straight into savings some I would obviously you know buy my first radio whatever it was at the time we're talking way back now and then when it came to the business I wasn't aware of all of the kind of forecast calls that I had to make but one thing I was very clear on is watching the cash cycle so you'd spend a little bit on your inventory so what I did was I placed a huge not a huge order a big order at the time because you have to meet the minimum order requirements but then I would draw down in batches of stocks it wasn't all due for payment in one go and then when I sold into stores because obviously I was retail you're playing on their payback dates of like 30 60 sometimes 90 days so I would have a color code on my laptop of invoices that were red or green and on a story because I was a one-woman band at the time and then I was trying to be the the charming personality that would rock in to sell the product I found it hard to be the person who was chasing the payment so I used to sit on my bed and pretend to be Anne and accounts and I'd be like hello Stephen from whoever you are and thanks so much for your recent order please see invoice attached payment due in 25 days regards Anne in accounts.

14:49Anne was the best fiction character you've ever known. She got shit done. But this is great because you can also be really struppy and angry, Anne, and Amy doesn't have to be that person. Exactly. You can have that. There is something, whether it's like female or not, there's something in like discuss and payment that just makes us squirm a little bit, particularly when the next day you have to be there hey do you want more product here's my plans here you know it's like yes it's hard it's really hard I I weirdly love the finance side of the business because I think in PR and podcasting you don't get to touch numbers that often and I'm the same as you you interviewed Rachel Harris accountant she fame and she said there's a lot of people who grow up with financial trauma and people deal with it in different ways and you can't go one way or another but I think in business and this is something that everybody says is that if you're not comfortable with numbers learn how to be because without learning how to be whether you bring someone in to support you or you put yourself through a course where you just face the music yeah you can't do a business without being comfortable with a spreadsheet I agree and I think that there's levels to it like you said like once you know the basics and you understand your numbers you don't have to go and come out as an actual accountant you know that's why you hire people but you can't hire someone that will always know more than your basic numbers because then you're at an automatic disadvantage.

16:14I actually majored in tax in my business and friends degree. So I too, like you, loved the numbers. I love the satisfaction of like everything lining up. It was like, this is great. And playing the numbers as well. What you were saying, it's almost like a kind of computer game with where your invoice is going out, the payment terms are coming in. And this is something that's so wretched about retail is that the store set the term. You can't go in and go, well, no, you need to pay me in a week. And they're like, well, we have 90 day terms. It's like, who wins this? Oh, you do. You're bigger than me.

16:44Fine. Yeah. You're like this tiny little fish in their massive pond. Yeah. Which doesn't support small business because obviously if they enabled your terms, you would be able to order more and everyone would scale. So it does seem a little bit counterintuitive. It is hard when you are sales, payroll, HR, marketing. Your clients, the retailer, would struggle to believe that you're this wonderful, shiny, glossy person coming in to sell a new product. And the person sending the invoice. So you used your makeup artistry skills as your biggest asset early on. How can founders potentially identify and leverage the skills that they already have to reduce their costs when they're starting?

17:20Yeah, I definitely played into my educator role, which to be honest, we still do as a brand, you know, eight years in. But for me, where education was such a core pillar of what we wanted to achieve in terms of how we want to simplify. and that came through everything from like the multitasking products that I was creating because I was heavy on the product side to how I was bringing it to life via tutorials or breakdowns or ingredient analysis for the customer and which actually in turn naturally created this culture of authenticity and which and I hate that because actually to say you're authentic you're not authentic but in terms of the broader scope of being really clear on what was in our products and how we wanted to bring them to market and who we were working with and people now love that the scenes.

18:04So it's something that's kind of stayed from day one to now. I think in terms of founders playing into where their strengths are, they need to be really clear on firstly what their strengths are, but secondly what they're passionate about. Because I think nowadays when we're living in a culture where there's a lot of opportunity for founders to be at the fore, there is nothing worse than a founder being forced to be at the fore who doesn't want to be there or who is maybe just trying their hat at something because they feel it's like the most recent thing to do. There's no consistency and they give it up after a week or two.

18:37And so people don't actually believe in their passion of that subject, whatever it might be. But I definitely think there is a superpower in number one, a founder is a human. People buy into human. They appreciate human stories. They like to understand the background. There's probably a way if someone is listening to this thinking I don't know what mine is by actually just telling your story and showing your personality you could be really surprised by how you could actually convert people into really engaging and listening to what your brand and product is about particularly if there's a very true problem solve at the base of it so you know I was in the academy teaching so people can instantly understand that that was kind of a real story someone could find a solve in a product they've created because it didn't work on their child or something like that and they're actually bringing that to life But I do think that founders, head office teams and creators are the future of content.

19:31So no pressure. Well, you're speaking to someone who's in PR and broadcasting and I am absolutely behind you on that. And I've actually really struggled with it myself, my team. So I came from a luxury brand background and was doing the brand's PR and no one was bigger than the brand. It's about a brand. It wasn't about you. And this is just as Instagram was coming through and we were told we couldn't post work content on our personal Instagram accounts. Now PRs are also influencers and they are speaking on behalf of the brand. As much as the influencers are doing it, the press are doing it, so are the teams.

20:03But when we're looking at the media landscape, you see that brands are going to become the new commissioners of content and they're the new publishers. It started with social media. You can see branded content on the website, newsletters, podcasts. Everyone as a brand is capable and able to create their content and be that thought leader and commission the journalists and the influencers to create that content. But you can own your narrative. You can own your story. But I really struggle with it because I don't necessarily want to have to put my face on everything. And it's another job, right, when you're doing payroll, HR, recruitment, sales, to do content as well.

20:40It's a big thing to ask. I think you do, as a founder, have to work out what you want to do, what you can do. and what you want to delegate. For you is there anything else in the business when you started you love teaching you obviously love makeup you love helping people was there anything else that kind of fueled that fire and has kept that fire burning? I've always had a very internal need to drive forward or to succeed I don't know where it's called from whether it's from being an only child or from a single parent household and you know my mom worked really hard and it was always the natural thing that I was being dropped at my minders because she had to go to work.

21:18So kind of really seeing that grit and determination from a young age, I think definitely was very much embedded in me. So there was always this very clear will and ambition to do something for myself and to move forward and to, you know, very much succeed at that because the expectations I would hold on myself would be quite high. Like I was even that kid in school or that student in college where like if I didn't get all A's I would be really hard on myself and it's funny because it doesn't come from pressure from my mum or anything like there's no one else standing there being like you have to achieve this.

21:55Do you feel like you've achieved something now? Yeah and I say have you patted yourself on the back for the brand that you've built and gone? Do you know one of the things I have had to learn along the way is celebrating the wins because I will put my hands up and I will say I can be guilty like a lot of entrepreneurs of like you're on to the next thing by the time that thing has happened. Well there's always another bend in the road and a corner to go around. And there's some fire that's going to get in the way that you have to put out as well that doesn't help the stress levels but I feel like from having the team it's really forced me to pause to celebrate for them because you can't have this relentless treadmill company that's just like go go go without actually stopping and taking stock and taking a bit of a breather so in short juliette yes i am really proud of what we've done do i feel it's the full level of where we should be no but am i totally motivated to get there yes so it's a bit of both you talk about that relentlessness i heard recently there's a thing called a narcopath which is a psychopath and a narcissist i've never heard that and if you look at silicon valley and a lot of like we work uber all those sorts of founders they are kind of in that knock burn your teams out push people relentlessness and now really sort of taking a moment to breathe and oh this is to be cherished so i love that you have that you can tell you're very kind and nurturing person and your teams will be very lucky to work with you um you built your product range by listening closely to your community how can entrepreneurs use customer feedback as their main R &D tool when they don't necessarily have budget for formal research?

23:37So I'll say something quite strongly I think if you are a business of any size actually I would say listen to this and you're not using customer feedback I would say it's a very dangerous road to a quick finish because they are essentially the most integral part of feedback that you can have and it has to be balanced because sometimes you can have a very biased, obsessive, loyal community who are all in on that brand and maybe not thinking macro enough. But at the same time, they are users, hopefully very continuously of your products and they will know in and out what they expect to come next or what can be better from the current product line.

24:18And it's their behaviors that you're ultimately trying to cater for. So listening to them really closely is so important. And also it is one of the biggest foundations of cultivating a community so they move from being a customer purchasing group into a loyal community where there's two-way communication they feel seen and heard they feel a part of something they know they're having an action into what the brand is about and they actually feel like they want to go on the journey with you that has been like I would say top two biggest successes for us as a growing brand is really nurturing and cultivating that community that have been so mega loyal to us.

24:55Like they are insane. If we could replicate the sculptor community around the world, we would be laughing because it would just be amazing. And how have you done that? Is it DMing them or emailing them back after they've got their order? How have you physically engaged with them? I think social has been an amazing tool for it. I think social media allows that kind of instant communication. You know, for us, where education was so big from day one, social was also an amazing visual tool for tutorials and education. So you're automatically bringing conversation that way. But sometimes it can be as simple as actually DMing back, be it in the posts or in messages, emailing back.

25:31Sometimes I find businesses might go in a tick the box approach. I respond to their journey, actually respond and actually listen and actually take the action. We would have done sculpted committees over like three or four years that were like different groups of focus groups in different cities. And they were amazing. We'd just be like, what was your favorite marketing campaign that you listened to? what products would you love to see and generally what we found is any products that the sculpted community nominate they're typically already in our pipeline so there's such an amazing synergy between both because they are like very active and really like very much in the brand and to your point and kind of the wider data set this is actually the first year that we will engage in proper market data and like you said it is expensive so we're what eight years in and some brands will have a different view on this because people will always want the kind of bigger sector data to to maybe validate what they're doing we have a trademarked term internally where we always say what's your data gut so i'm so passionate about not losing like the brand champions intuition that we have like i would always say that i go with my gut but obviously as you get bigger and the risks get bigger you do need to prove that with data and with evidence so for us it's a balance of data gut and but we're going to get that kind of wider information now and I do think it's important to maybe look at trends that are coming because what you also don't want to be sidetracked by maybe a smaller initiative that your community might have and you're not thinking bigger enough for how the industry is moving but I would also say if you have an intense curiosity you probably are watching and reading and listening all the time that you'll have a good inherent knowledge yourself of what's coming it's so hard isn't it because when you start your one size when you have success you're growing you have growing pains to then get to the next level but then become a that tipping over to that other scale where you have to then behave in a different way again the iteration of your culture your practices your processes there is never a dull moment and I blindly thought in year one oh by year five it'll be much easier and friends who are year 10 year 15 it's like no jules it gets harder and i'm like what okay i didn't know that and then everyone says if you told me then what i would have to have done now to get to where i'm going tomorrow probably when i've done it yeah i agree ignorance is bliss yeah honestly that naivety that ignorance all this is so good it's so nice i remember in lockdown starting up and going blindly into it being like yeah great put on LinkedIn it'll be fine and everyone's like have you thought about this and that's when I came out I was like no I just was made redundant I had no choice I'm gonna go for it but yeah I look back and go yeah I'm quite tired now yeah it's been a quite long time but that is why it's so important to celebrate the wins and what you're proud of and take that moment but on that that multitasking part is such a core part of you as the founder and the leader of your business how do you like manage that overwhelm and maybe imposter syndrome or whatever's coming at you from a mental health perspective?

28:40I think over the last three years, I have become far more aware of when I am Amy's best self. And Amy's best self to be the best person in work, to be the best leader, the best teammate, the best wife, the best daughter, you know, like actually what are the simple practices that I need to do? Because I will admit, like I would say for a couple of years, I was just running at 190. And, you know, definitely had a few health issues come up from that because you're just like, go, go, go and nothing else matters. And, you know, you think you're young and you have all the energy in the world. You don't have a family yet.

29:18So like, why not just throw yourself into it? And I don't have any regrets, but I definitely matured in the sense of, OK, what balance do I need if I am going to go 190 in work and in life? and they're actually really simple things so for me I've put way more focus this year actually on sleep I can definitely feel the benefit of that I still need to get better but I've actually prioritized it and acknowledged it that it's so important and exercise I could not do a week without it if I have my flow or maybe I'm traveling a lot or I'm having like late night events early morning breakfast or whatever it might be and I can't get my workouts in I'll really feel it it's I feel really lethargic or my mind just isn't clear.

30:02So even if it's a simple walk, I'm a huge fan of walking, love the odd run, love the odd Pilates, love the odd hip class, you name it, I'll kind of give it a go. So just being active in general and then eating well. I am a sucker for tea and chocolates. Like I have such a sweet tooth, but I know the pattern myself. I would have a lot of digestive issues that if I am really busy, not sleeping as much and eating on the go, it's a car crash for me at the end of the week so actually where I can making those small wins of like taking my yogurt and berries with me on the plane instead of buying airport food because then when you get there you're going out for lunch and then you're doing a dinner you know that kind of way so um really simple practices that have really helped um my wellness which in turn helps mental health and then when I'm having like quite a stressful time I love to talk it out I love to go on a walk with my husband and just be like, I need to get this all out of my soul.

30:57He's like, okay. And he's so level headed. So he's like, that's okay, Ames. That's fine. And I'm like, yeah, it is fine actually, isn't it? Problem shared is definitely a problem halved. Just getting off your chest and into the world. I don't think people realise that when you're a founder and you've got everything on your shoulders, it's a lot. And you barely have time sometimes to think things through. And a lot of guests have said a walk is amazing because you actually have to look up and out and think and actually that time is very very valuable and shouldn't be dismissed as a luxury and that's it if you don't have the energy for yourself the business doesn't stand a chance as the brand has grown which obviously it has exponentially over the last eight years a huge congratulations on that how have you maintained that sort of scrappy resourceful mindset that you had at the age of 23 into international markets i would actually say that we've maintained too much of that scruffy nature and not enough of the process driven nature and it's funny it's one of the things that always comes up when you're talking about the kind of self-funding versus investments and not always but from some of my peers who have taken investments depending on the investment firm that they partner with they can often bring a lot of rigor and structure which yeah when you're scaling can be a good thing and guidance and mentorship as well I know that is a perk with investors if you get the right ones exactly hang on let me help you over here yeah have you that support elsewhere yeah I think I've been very lucky with networks around me personally so they maybe haven't come into the business and said okay let's take a look here but if there's you know a topic that maybe I haven't been through before be it opening a new market or maybe a retail that we're discussing with I generally have a very lovely plethora of people around me that I can maybe pick up the phone or whatsapp and say are you free for a coffee and sometimes that coffee saves you like six months of work or potential failures along the way so people are really generally giving up their time and I have definitely been yeah very very lucky to kind of cultivate a good network around me as I've grown between different business networks and just general industry humans and so yeah I think that's so important.

33:07Given that you are bootstrapped and it's still your business and that's all you've done in your adult life versus the friends that you know that have taken investment what would you say are the pros and cons for bootstrapping or not bootstrapping? So I can obviously only speak to my perspective like you said because I only know this and I and I find it's a funny topic like like you said at the start there's this kind of inherent like when you start a business where are you getting investment from there's an instant kind of dive into that pool which doesn't have to be the case for everyone but equally there's no right or wrong so somebody would say to me like god you're so lucky you stayed self-funded and I'm like we are but equally it's just a different journey you know so some people need the cash and when you need the cash to fund your business you have to do what you need to do because ultimately you want the business to stay alive so from what I've experienced myself and seen from those around me I think the pros of being bootstrapped is you maintain full control and that doesn't just mean financial control that means that you are at the helm the business decision maker so you can grow the culture the pace of the brand in the way that you want to instead of being maybe forced into some financial decisions that are going to better the business short term maybe not longer term and so you can be at a bit of a miss there I think like I said the birth culture don't underestimate that you're basically building the culture that you as a human believe and want within your business which is very special because it can feel more like familial or like family like in a business I mean that's really special as you grow particularly in a busy startup because it's where you get the benefit and the preciousness I think it creates great discipline because you have to be so rigorous with your cash so you're not just spending without any limit particularly in things like marketing and when you are growing into new markets that can be really easily done and the cons of bootstrapping I would say you maybe don't have the access to the contacts or the advice or the structures that an investment firm can bring it's hard to quantify exactly what they are because they haven't tried them but I know from some people who've had great success with this they maybe could have opened doors sooner and then secondly you don't have I suppose the extra cash flow to allow you to move that bit faster so when you are being quite disciplined end you're looking at your bottom line to be sure that you bring that back into the business but it maybe stops you from taking opportunities that could have fastened the pace of the growth but also hard to quantify but I would say it's it's probably quite likely that that's one of the cons and then in terms of taking investment I've heard all sorts of stories and some are terrifying some would make you intrigued and it's hard to know what the reality is but I think the biggest advice that I've ever been given is make sure you pick the right partner because you're essentially entering a marriage and you're going to have a messy divorce if it's not right um but I think if you pick the right partner they can come with amazing industry contacts amazing skill sets within their firm with access to data and trends and people for hiring and it can be really magic but obviously you relinquish a bit more control but ultimately you're relinquishing more control to grow a bigger pie so you know for a lot of people it's a no-brainer um but if it can go wrong the cons are it goes very wrong I think.

36:25And it's knowing I guess it's knowing what your end goal is like what does success look like to you with your business what are you trying to achieve which I think is really hard to answer and it changes all the time. Yeah. Would you ever be tempted to I was gonna say million dollar question but would you ever be tempted to take investment? Yeah I think like the more we grow and the more our ambitions get bigger my mind is just more open to all the possibilities of how we get there so I think for me I'm not so precious around maintaining I mean, 100 % of the business, it's more that the person or the partner that we chose to do with was definitely the right one.

36:59And it would go beyond the investment that we would physically take and actually the people relationship, you know, the access and hopefully the advice that they could steer us along the way. So I would never say never, but we're lucky that we're not in a position where we need anything right now. Yeah. Well, amazing. And if someone's listening and they want to boost their idea today, what would be the first? practical step that they should take what advice would you give them I think you need to have a rough plan of how much you need to sustain that initial say 12 months of your business at least so give yourself a bit of runway so for me at the time it was looking at the level of product they have to purchase the storage unit I would have to store it in the term payment dates from my retailers that I wanted to unlock the shipping costs I was also selling online and you can actually in fact find easily when it comes to these things and give yourself a rough estimate and ultimately that's all it's going to be because you also don't know the pace of how quickly it's going to sell or how quick you need your next product drop but having a skeleton of a plan will help you to have confidence that you a have enough and b know the plan in terms of how to use that money so it's not what you don't want to do is put everything into that first inventory drop and then you have no money for anything else because like down to the boxes that you send the product out in they cost the labels you know everything has a minimum so you just want to have a little bit of an idea so even do a spider web on a page just write it all out gather some information seek some help like you said if it's not your area although you should do it in conjunction with the person you seek help with so you're actually learning at the same time and just sketch out kind of how much you might need to cover yourself i love that thank you so much and something that we do is the previous guest has a question for our next guest and this was Michelle DeClercq, who founded the Women's Chapter, I think, 11 years ago, a female business networking, amazing platform and in real life events to support women in business.

38:59So her question for you was, what is something that people usually get wrong about you or don't know about you? Oh, that's such a good question. And for her, I love this question because it's always different in every episode. And her thing was like, people think I'm incredibly well organized. it's just like you are she's like I'm not and it surprises people but I've worked way around it so for yeah for you what would it be? Well it's so funny I would have a similar vein where I think I would be someone who would fit a lot into my day so if anyone kind of follows behind the scenes you know the most common question I get asked is what supplements do you take and how do you keep going so I'd be very much like you know I'd have my work at and I'll get to work I'd do my meetings I'd do my events I'd have my change of clothes like my phone notes is just different packing things so I can get it into a case.

39:46So in professional life, I am like done, done, done. Personal life, I am chaos. Like everything is messy. Everything's just organized. My husband won't organize our trips. It's like I completely switch off the CEO button when it comes to personal admin and it is literal chaos. I think that's fair though, if you give it all to work. So do I. I'm busy enough. Also, I would dispute this. It's the 2nd of December. I can see a very beautifully decorated Christmas tree behind you. And I have to say, Juliet, I had no part to play in that. So, you know. So you found the right partner at home. I did. Yeah.

40:28Yeah. Amazing. And what would your question be for our next guest? My question would be, what is the one thing that you have learned about yourself in your time of scaling your business? Yes, because I mean, I think that's the biggest lesson, isn't it? It's how much you learn about yourself at work. It's a total self-discovery journey, I think, running a business. Because if people don't, what people I think rather underestimate is you might start with a product or a service idea, but then as you're scaling a team, you become a HR director. No one teaches you that before you start. No, and how to fire someone.

41:01Yeah. Hiring people and then firing them, which is inevitable, unfortunately, when you work with people and you learn a lot about people. I think that's it for me it's I did an anthropology degree and now running my own business in podcast production teaching podcasts all this stuff it's more about people and how people behave how clients pay their invoices or don't or how they respect you on calls or talk to speak to your team like that's it's all people yeah and people do say people is the hardest part okay what would your answer be to your own question actually oh geez I haven't prepared that what would my answer be what have I learned most about myself?

41:35I think again, actually on the topic of people, I think I have learned that I am, how do I word this, quite sensitive to people in the sense of like very sensitive to enemies and tones and hopefully empathetic and maybe sometimes overly where if I'm in a meeting and I pick up on something, I'll try and, you know, jump in or do this or do that. But actually I think it's been a superpower in understanding people as I've scaled and maybe adapting the ways in which you communicate or being self-critical on myself after like always starting with me first instead of that they didn't understand what I said it's like did you deliver the information in the most clear way possible before that person could interpret it so really having this whole new perspective that there are two ways to everything and two completely different thought processes two completely different perspectives that it sounds really basic but when you see it play out in front of you and in action you're like oh my god we are all so different and so it's so important to remember that yeah that's a really good lesson thank you so much amy for your time today it's been a complete joy chatting to you i feel so much calmer i don't know if that's your energy or what but i just feel like it's all fine it's fine it's totally fine all the fires are out back it's grand we're fine well we can't see them because we've been on a podcast recording and when we go back to our inboxes and our whatsapps to be like, oh shit, but it's fine.

43:02If you'd like to contact Amy, you can find all her details in the show notes, along with a recap of the advice she has so kindly shared and tune in next week to find out W Wellness founders answer to her question about what have they learned when scaling their business.