The One Piece of Advice Every Founder Needs, ft. Emma Grede, Jo Malone, Sam Faiers & Perrie Sian

0:00I think that like a lot of good ideas, it came from frustration and wanting to solve a problem, right? It's successful and I really kind of lived in fear of this idea that I wouldn't be successful. And so the idea of taking a risk, I mean it took me a very long time to even do this. I didn't start Tower 28 until I was 40. And I actually tried to work with them on a brand. I tried with some other people. I tried with investors but it never worked out.

0:24Perrie Sian: Just literally the morning I quit my job, I didn't wake up thinking I was going to quit my job. I just was like, this is a sign that I just need to take it. This week on Ladies Who Launch, we're taking a break on our traditional episodes to take a little look back at some of the gems that we have got from incredible founders over the past year.

0:45When I speak to our guest, there has really been a common thread of products, brands, businesses, companies that take off and do well. they all sort of stem and they're born from a problem that the founder was I guess trying to solve I want to start with your why and I never intended to start a business but back in 2011 so a long time ago now when I was in my second year of university I got very unwell and I had a problem with my autosomic nervous system I spent about a year in that hospital I was refreshing Facebook and like watching what my friends were doing and the fun they were having and the world that I wasn't a part of and feeling lonelier and more disconnected and just extraordinarily, as I said, apathetic.

1:37And so I thought, you know, this is actually this is what I need. I need some semblance of focus in my life. I need to feel like I can tick something off a to-do list. And so I thought, OK, I'm going to learn to cook. I'm going to see if what, you know, be inspired by those people's stories. I'm going to teach myself to cook. I'm going to make natural food filled with fruits and vegetables, delicious, something that I want to eat. But I'm going to force myself to do it by creating a blog. So I'm going to take photos of it and I'm going to learn about blogging and I'm going to record this online.

2:05And that will be my hobby. Almost the blog was holding you accountable. Exactly. But that love stemmed from a frustration. Yes. Almost a hate. Like I was at the point in my life where I had really bad acne as a teenager and then 26, bang, it was back. So I was at the point where I was like, nothing works. I hate everything, but I'm not going to give up. I'm going to figure out why my skin is going through what it's going through. At that point, I started doing some research and looking at what my skin specifically needed. And it just like triggered this real urge to just understand skin as a whole.

2:42So I'm going through this deep dive and I come to realizing that melanin rich skin actually does need a little bit more care like so if you make skincare with melanin rich skin in mind you actually get skincare that's better for everyone

2:53Perrie Sian: I threw all the potions and notions and all the appointments out the window and I was like there's got to be something for acne or postpartum like whatever it is skin rosacea whatever skin issue that you've got that's not just topical or you know not just and I think this is when I started researching more about gut health I was like I've got a really good idea for a business and And I was like, I really want to do skincare, supplement. It needs to be collagen. Like going back to when I was taking the powder and other supplements, I was like, right, why don't I just put all of this into one sachet?

3:24Perrie Sian: Is that possible? John was like, can we do this? And he was like, well, we can speak to the lab. I'm sure we can. It took a lot of time to find the right people to make our product. And that was the first thing. And then after that came, obviously, packaging and marketing and stuff. But to start off with, it was just about us perfecting the product. Fragrance was the forgotten category until COVID. It was undisrupted. It was boring. It was the same recipe, the same equation constantly. Even though we launched KLE in end of 2018, it struggled for the first few years because it was not disrupted.

3:57And we were probably too soon. You know, we were trying to, you know, teach this new experience, this new ritual of layering, this new, this whole new idea that people weren't really ready for yet. And the content creator community wasn't there yet. So it was a really big battle for the first few years. I'd say 2021 was when it really kind of started to snowball and grow. At what point did you think, okay, I'm ready to build something for me? I never had that point. At one point, I was unhappy. I think there was a combination of you have kids. When you have small children and you're working a big job, I think it can feel, and being a woman and working that second shift all the time um and frankly I just wasn't happy and I told my husband and he was like why don't you just quit and I was like wait what I I can quit my job

4:53Perrie Sian: and I literally quit the next day just taking me time and this is where having my own brand came into it as well so it's always been one of those things was like I have to do this like I'm so passionate about fashion I'm also passionate about people and giving solution based things and I'm just so passionate about all of that it would be so silly for me to not use my experience and my passion to do that and invest in something which could be great in the future but it's always been that can I find the time am I going to be able to commit am I going to have to make sacrifices like I'm the sort of person where I don't want to say no to anything I want all of the opportunities and I don't want to have to give up anything for something else so I think it was just the case of I got presented with the chance to do it and I was like it's push that button it felt like a push up a button like it's go time I didn't really have that I didn't really think that would be like a global empire I just was like oh I need to make some money and so I just started like selling clothes on eBay it wasn't really a huge decision in the beginning to be like oh I want to create this huge brand it kind of just started out as me selling clothes I think looking back I I was lost.

6:01I didn't feel equipped for like what was next.

6:05Perrie Sian: And I had really no idea what my options were beyond university. And nobody really told me. So, yeah, I sort of floundered around a little bit before I kind of got on the path. To get to launch day, how much do you think it took you to get off the ground at that point? So we started super small. We had our own factory. We'd just make a tiny batch because we were able to do that. And then I'd start selling to restaurants in Mayfair, popular restaurants, but it wasn't huge volumes, but it just got us going. And then it just it just meant that I could slowly learn the process of making it, figuring out the delivery.

6:42How do you manage stock? How do you invoice? How do you collect money on a really small scale? So I was really lucky to be able to learn those processes.

6:50Perrie Sian: During lockdown, I basically taught myself the basics of graphic design. I designed Odd Muses logo and I would do£10 logos for all local businesses. I think one day I did like over 30 logos. So that was what actually helped me build the capital for Obmuse. There wasn't an option for me. I didn't have a marketing budget. When I say I started with like£600, that's probably what I had left in my bank account. We didn't have a huge following. Like I said, I literally had£600 left to my name and I had no choice. I had to do something. It was either get another job or start this passion in this business that I wanted to create.

7:29Perrie Sian: I knew that the next thing I had to do is get samples in. And when you've got like£600 in your bank account, that's going to be really hard. So my partner kindly sold his Rolex watch. It was£8 ,000. Right. So that would give me samples. That would set me up a website. Selling random bottles of oil, no logo, no packaging, just a bottle, some herbal oil in it. So within a month, I realized this is going mad. Like I turned a hundred pounds into a grand in 10 days. It was manic. Like I was sleeping like four hours a day, four hours a day. I was making the product. I was shipping the product, marketing the product, customer service, everything.

8:15I was doing all of that. Just you. Yeah. I was literally just like living and breathing this thing every single day. So I just had no plan. I was just going with it. I was literally DMing people even like, hey, I started this business. You have no idea who I am. but like I have this thing and if this is a problem for you like maybe try it we launched

8:31Perrie Sian: just at the end of August of 2020 I remember getting a few orders on the first day but I remember within the second or third week Lorna Lux do you know Lorna Lux yes yeah yeah so she had basically bought the blazer so she basically just posted on her story that she had bought this blazer and she's taking it to paris and my whole like ipad just was like flying like everything sold out and i just cried to him like i've just broke even and he was like don't know what to do and so i broke even within like two weeks on the whole investment we took like 15 000 pounds that day if somebody is listening to this who is kind of in awe of what you've built and wants to perhaps to build something in a similar vein, what would one piece of advice to a lady looking to launch who's in that startup phase that's sort of looking on in admiration, what would that piece of advice be?

9:32You have to understand that you are going to fail. If you're not failing, you're not trying hard enough, that's a knock on me. I'm just like, that's just another thing that I've been through. It's a lesson. It's a lesson. I think we've been good at not looking too much to our left or right and just really knowing that. Staying time vision. Yeah, like, because the thing is, what works for others potentially is not going to work for your journey. I think what I've found is people take on too much advice. Honestly, you learn on the job. That's all I can tell you is you will learn on the job.

10:02Perrie Sian: I think the only one that can make your dreams happen is you, but you're not alone because there's many that have walked the path and surround yourself with people that believe in you and will tell you the truth as well. And I think that balance between believing in yourself and hearing how other people see you can sometimes be a great motivator. I've spent decades with some of the UK's most successful people and even when it looks like they've all got it figured out, none of them do. And I think we've got to get better at sharing that because I think there's a risk if we're not honest and vulnerable with it that we're kind of romanticizing success or glossing over the hardship and the struggles.

10:54One of the biggest mistakes people make is waiting for things to be perfect. Nothing will ever be perfect. Just do it.

10:59Perrie Sian: Be prepared to fall. And if you fall, you get up and you just do it all over again. What do I have that they don't? They've got huge budgets. They've got, you know, a lot of followers. and I just come to the conclusion that it was me. They don't have me. I've only got one life. Why not? Why not do it now?