The Realities of Scaling A Social Media Agency with Sedge Beswick

0:00Today I'm joined by Sedge Beswick, social media pioneer, entrepreneur and one of the women behind how brands show up online today. Her story is one of backing yourself before there's a blueprint, building at speed in an industry that never stands still and navigating the realities of leadership, ambition and motherhood along the way. So let's find out why she's a lady who launched.

0:29Three, one, zero. All engines running. I'm so pleased you're here. I feel like what you've done is so interesting to me. In a world where a lot of people might have overlooked this at one point as a kind of revenue stream or as a, when we talk about social and we talk about starting in that world first, I think it's so impressive what you've built and what you've sort of managed to build off the back of it. So I can't wait to talk about this. And I love to, I love stories that don't follow a traditional path. Yeah, there's none of that. No, exactly. Exactly that. So let's talk about it. So you started in social when I suppose, to my point, it wasn't considered a career.

1:16Absolutely not. And do you know what I find so interesting? I still find that to a degree now. A lot of my longstanding partnerships or deals, you know, now are factored in social, but they almost don't they're like oh yeah if you could take a couple of pics like like this is a whole this is a whole thing like there's a whole team that needs to be put on this for like the kind of importance of it they want it all but I don't think they really understand that okay well we need to factor in a whole separate day for that it's a different thing in itself um so tell me back and that's now we're still sort of dealing with that so tell me at the time what did that look like then?

1:54Sedge Beswick: Yeah. I mean, taking it right back, I studied fashion marketing at uni and we had a lecturer called Tim who was brilliant. He was like, every single one of you, by the time you come back in on Monday has to have a blog and it is not an option. You need to have your blog. And so at the time I was really, well, I still am like really into sneakers, limited runs, but also into like graffiti, street art. And I just had this very niche blog where I was obviously a bit of a teacher's pet and wanted to make sure that I did as good as I could at uni. And I then did like a post about Travis Barker from Blink 182 and he retweeted it.

2:31Sedge Beswick: And my blog just blew up. So I was at uni being like to Tim, who was so fashion, being like, oh my God, Travis Barker. And he's like, who's Travis Barker? And why are you writing about sneakers when you do a fashion degree? But it really made me understand that like cheesy as it sounds, the power of social and the impact that it can have, but also how connected you can be to anyone, anywhere just through social. And then I was in my second year at uni and I saw an ad that was, if you had 25 grand to throw a party, what would you do? And I know, I mean, who would give an 18, 19 year old 25 grand to throw a party?

3:07Sedge Beswick: But I came, I got into the final 25 and then you had a week to get as many people onto a Facebook page as you could. And I got like eight, 9 ,000 people onto this Facebook page in five days, but I was like in my student union, like scribbling, like such a social page on people's arms. And I came second to one of the relatives of the family who owned Glastonbury and it went onto Glastonbury's Facebook page. So like, I was never going to win, but the company then called me and were like, we don't really know what social is. You clearly have some like gamification tactics for building communities and audiences.

3:39Sedge Beswick: Do you want a job? And so I had a year left at uni and I thought that would kind of fizzle out. They'd forget they'd hire someone. And I had a job to go to before I graduated. I mean, that is crazy. For me, I'm like, did you, at that period of time, did you, was it just sort of momentum was going in really organically? And like you say, these things are working out for you. Did you really understand the back end of it? Or was it like, okay, I'm just going to throw it out there and see what sticks. It was way easier than it is today from an algorithmic perspective. Like it was early into platforms.

4:14Sedge Beswick: It was very much built around that growth momentum, I didn't really know what was happening, but I could also really understand that like the people that came on and I was connecting to people that I'd met on summer holidays when I was like 12 and had forgotten they existed and vice versa. But I don't get away with a lot with a name like Sedge. So it's like we were like reconnected with all these people. And I was like, wow, this is insane. Like how the how many people this Facebook page has like touched and allowed me to reconnect with. And that's when, again, I started to really realize the opportunity that was here.

4:44Sedge Beswick: And so then when I started at three and if someone doesn't have signal on their phone, like there's some bad days that you can have in an office. And again, that's where having a name like Sedge didn't help me because there were people who were unable to have signal, who were jumping on and being abusive across like all of my personal platforms, as well as my professional platforms. But to really be like, you need to get my signal back up and running. You're like, okay, again, the domino effect, the impact, but also how quickly you can get those messages back out to people and really calm people down.

5:14Sedge Beswick: And so that connectivity piece is obviously the heart of it all. But just, I really throughout my entire career was so early into social, into content, into influencer, that there was no rule book, no playbook. And so you just had to try and see what worked and see what stuck. And then you built strategies off the back of all of those various different tactics that you had. And I always say like anything that didn't go to plan is always the best stuff because that's where you learn the most for sure and I suppose there's a there's a kind of beauty in everything being in its infancy as in like you're really you've kind of struck gold here and you're understanding it and you're in and you're trying and you're experimenting I suppose the beauty is people know that they're going to have to jump on board with the idea of social media but the beauty of them really it's the unknown to them so they're kind of trusting you and I suppose letting you fly ASOS was absolutely that so I was like ASOS's social hire number one and this yeah we need to unpack that a little bit because that's a really that's an accolade so their first ever social media hire yeah I was actually interviewing at Net-A-Porter and at ASOS at the same time and I was like culturally I am like ASOS through and through so I really want this gig I remember when it was all as seen on screen I mean I'm not that old I am I am so I'm definitely older than you but I wasn't there when it was as seen on screen oh I remember it so so well and it would be like covered in all of the like weekly magazines and it would and that would be the thing and you'd see a scene on screen and you could find the exact app I mean now there's just a link on someone's Instagram yes yeah that was such a cool moment of time yeah it was an amazing amazing place to work it was full-on it was hard graft but again because there was a this no notion of like this is what you should do this is how it should be ran I very much got to just go at it and there was a weird part where I'd get to my desk every single day and I'm sure you can visualize this but like mountains of clothes and some of it will be like Michelle Obama just wore this.

7:08Sedge Beswick: So can we make sure we do a big push across social? And then you'd also get the, no one's buying this. What can you do? How can you help us shift some units? But my desk every day, when it was me, I was like photographer, videographer, caption, editorial, did a bit of videography, whatever happened from a platform perspective, we just had to drop everything and give it a go. And then I got a D in my French GCSE and it was like, we need to be on the French channels, but we don't know if we can build an audience there. So can you just use Google Translate? And I was like, yeah, I'll give that a go.

7:37Sedge Beswick: And when we actually hired our first French social media manager, she was literally like, who has been doing this? Who's writing the captions? And I was like, yeah, I've got a bloody D in my GCSE and here I am running like a million followers trying to be a French social media editor. But yeah, the team grew really quickly because we could prove results. We could see what we were doing, but I had such autonomy from the top. And I didn't really have a budget because I was probably like 23 at this point. And I used to just go to the founder and be like I really want to do a live interactive Twitter something or other I think it's going to cost me 12 grand you'd be like go on then give it a go and they trended globally every single time um so then it was easy to just unlock of course more cash like when you look back and you're 23 and you're it's you've got that momentum and everything you're doing is working you're trending every time do you think at that age you were completely fearless yeah it was so much fun and there were results in what you did and I because I was so young and because there was no one telling you this is right this is wrong it was just like give it a go see what happens and just being like I look back at some of the things I did at ASOS now and I'm like oh I would never in a million years do that now well let me read this because you were you ended up being responsible for building a global community of 17 million across 22 platforms and launching their original influencer program which I mean that was that's such an iconic program and I think when I think of those kind of big e-commerce sites they would sort of for me trailblazing in that and that's you yeah so so talk me through that and how the kind of ideas are born and how you I suppose how you execute that yeah so we had this exceptional fashion director called Melissa Dick and she could really articulate and understand a business problem but put the like fashion editorial lens on it so we're having all these meetings and obviously again the enormity of customer complaints that would come through I can imagine yeah I think there were probably like 60 people in the customer care team that all oversaw social across eight different markets and I spent a lot of time with the customer care team because I was like I want to know what's happening and I want to know what we can improve and what we can change who in which department wanted to do something about that was a different story.

9:57Sedge Beswick: And you get like various different kind of like buying teams and merch teams and senior leaderships that are like, let's do it. Let's listen to our audience and change things. And other stuff would be a slow burner. But with Melissa, she was very much like, we have just got too much choice. And it's really overwhelming from a customer perspective, but we also want to give them the choice because we want to be a one-stop shop for everything. And so we're having all these different meetings. And essentially it was like, well, how do we create this community of stylists that if you want a black pair of jeans, you don't go onto the site and see 800 pairs and you have to then work out which ones are right for you.

10:29Sedge Beswick: So enormous amounts of data and again, phenomenal insights team. I've never worked with an insight team like it in my career. And because I was so early in my career, I just thought that was normal. And I was just like, yeah, everyone's going to have like a data team of like 30, 40 people who are just like sweating that insight all day long. But we basically looked at all of our individual markets. So the UK, France, Italy, Spain, we looked at the behavioral trends across men and women. We looked at the brands that they were shopping and then we recruited people off social who had no real following, but you could tell they had appetite and interest in like building their communities.

11:05Sedge Beswick: But it was all based on the shopping behaviors. So then they didn't just like, I'm sure now you get a like, can you do X amount of assets and can you distribute it across your channels because your audience is there. But it was very much like we are actually going to basically build this system for you. So they had access to their stylist. They had access to me that was around how to grow your audience, the data team. And so our lowest followed person who had like 17 ,000 followers, he was driving an average of seven grand a week just from his Instagram channel. So it became really easy for me to scale and grow the team because I had all of the data and all the numbers behind me.

11:39Sedge Beswick: And also this is like pre TikTok shop, shoppable overlays. It was very much like enter the skew X to be able to buy here. yeah so it was long it was laborious but they were paid next to nothing they then had an amount that they could spend on site the actual the actual content creators but then they had this like ecosystem around them that made them exceptional at what they did and that loyalty to ASOS is something that like that program was probably 11 12 years ago now and people still in interviews are like yeah ASOS made that happen for me like I was really early into my career and I had someone that told me what my style was, how I dress for myself, how I built audiences, how I built communities.

12:22In a career that everyone, I suppose, was finding their feet at the same time. I suppose having that support of a big monster like ASOS, I suppose, was really...

12:31Sedge Beswick: And ASOS were promoting them all day long too. So you've got like Freddie Harrell, who now has investment from L 'Oreal into Red Swan. Leonie Han, who's got, I don't know, 10 million followers across her channels. you know so we really found unbelievable people and helped them to like skyrocket what did it teach you about building something before it exists yeah I think the greatest gift that I got from ASOS was this kind of visionary viewpoint of like if it doesn't exist try it test it play around with it adapt it move it like we shouldn't have the answers because they shouldn't exist yet yeah um and being given that freedom to play around to throw shit at wall and see what stuck and it was only as I'd been there for you know three four years that then you got the like oh my daughter's on Instagram and she didn't like that post and you're like okay well what does your daughter know about our social strategies because again it wasn't a stage like it is now where I think being a social media manager must be the worst job on the planet because everyone has a view and everyone has an opinion and you spend hours editing a clip and no one sees it and then you put something out for two seconds and it's the one that goes viral.

13:39Sedge Beswick: Whereas there was just none of that at that time. It was very much just like, you're given the freedom, you're given the autonomy and you, if you listen to the community, you can get the results. Yeah. And let's play and let's figure this out. Was there a moment that you realized that social media was going to become the marketing channel? Because if you sort of rewind and you look before that moment, like you just could never, it was like the place where we shared pics of our friends or our holidays. Like, you know, was there a light bulb moment for you that you thought, okay, this is going to be a revenue stream for a lot of people, for a lot of businesses?

14:14I think it was when I started three, because with my course at the time was very much like,

14:20Sedge Beswick: you can go into PR, you can do fashion PR, maybe a little bit of CRM, potentially a stylist. And we were obviously playing around and doing stuff within a social perspective. But when I got my first job I think I was on 25 26 grand and my mates were getting jobs in PR on 12 grand and so I was like there's a career here there's something and I was in a team of three at three um but the next youngest person was like 37 and I was 20 yeah um and so I was like okay well if I'm really early into this but you're getting people to retrain in their careers from like editorial backgrounds to be able to run Twitter accounts there's got to be a career in it but trying to explain to people then that I worked in social I just had this constant like so you sit on Facebook all day and you poke people and you're like yeah that's exactly what people pay me to do yeah yeah and I see it with um people that I work with on my team and whether that's creating content or however that looks people really are like oh well that's a job like it's it's it actually annoys me on their behalf like we'll be out shooting or an event and they'll be like oh so what do you do what you know just genuinely curious yeah they'll be like oh what that's what you need there's a whole job for that I'm like how do you think it lands like I can't take a picture of myself in the moment when I'm doing that you know it's like it's 100 it's funny how people sort of see it as and I think people still have that attitude when it comes to influencers too oh right obviously you you talk to your phone and you post some stories there's that real kind of hater mentality I would call it when it comes to to that as as a job like it's crazy to me yeah are we gonna it was this gonna land are you gonna realize that this is the way that the world yeah people are making a shit load of money from it yeah exactly jump on board get your phone out um so you you sort of had this I suppose amazing experience being inside such a big brand but then you decide because I'm already getting this you're not the girl that's gonna sit still you're not the girl oh we've tried that I'm happy here it's like on to the next yeah then you make a leap into building something of your own which a girl after my own heart I love it what where did that feeling come from what made you really think okay I want a step from being now I know this I know yeah I suppose was it the next challenge or what what sort of propelled you to do that mine was a total accident okay so I I have always been like very obsessive about brands like I love a brand whether that's like a Nike whether it's a Dyson like there are all these and I was fascinated by the marketing campaigns how they story told how they brought everything together so for me it was like when I work at a brand I'm all in and I was like very much like I was doing a lot of work with Nike when I was at ASOS and I was like I'm just gonna get my way to Portland and work in the Nike marketing team.

17:09Sedge Beswick: And I had lots of those amazing conversations with the teams at Nike. And I actually had got a job to be the head of talent at Instagram. And this is like, again, for context of how long this was in my interview process. So like your first job will be to get David Beckham onto Instagram. Oh, okay. Sure. I was like, that sounds like a really tough job. Okay. I'll give it a whirl. And I got to interview number 17 and the woman was American. Wait, hang on. When we say interview number 17, you mean? They do 20 interviews. Stop. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is part of it's fascinating because, again, I don't know if they still do this now, but it's very much that you essentially have your community and a committee of people that support you when you start.

17:53Sedge Beswick: Because in the interview process, you meet one, maybe two people. And then you start in this big job and you don't know who anyone is or how to make anything happen. It's a bit workshop-esque. Yeah. So you do like an hour and a half and you'd have three interviews back to back. but at interview number 17 also love that you're like sorry sorry slow down a bit but this woman was unbelievable and she was called lauren and she was like have you got anything else that's happening and i was like yeah i've been offered this like random gig to start my own business i met this guy at shoreditch house for like 15 minutes obviously obviously where else and he was like his words were like put your money where your mouth is like what i got introduced to him because one of his agencies did experiential and they were like we're really struggling to say to our brands like the impact that putting an event on has for them and they're like you're so data driven and like so nerdy that actually you could come and do like an intelligence role here and I was like I can't like I'm used to having this big team of data analysts and insight people kind of behind me um but I kept talking about opportunity with influencer how many brands should be doing it the missed opportunities the ROI that we were saying and he was like just do it yourself and I did so like in this interview at Instagram the woman was literally like she was very American she's like get out of here go and do it and if you hate it I will give you the job and it is yours but you've got three months and I will give you a brief so my first client was Instagram yeah oh my god this is incredible yeah so that woman is unreal and like changed probably the course and trajectory of my entire career in life and years later I was in New York and a mate of mine Jeff works at Instagram and I was like right I'm in Meta's offices I want to track down this Lauren woman and like say thank you he was like do you know how many fucking Lauren's are in the database of Meta but I we found her did you yeah and she was like it's really not that deep like I'd say it to anyone and I was like oh oh this is I've waited my whole life to be like really want to thank you make a big fuss and she's just like yeah girl you did the right thing don't worry about it what a good woman she is unbelievable that's just her norm as well so we we should flag that that is such an interesting story and also what a credit to your success and your journey and your skill set that the likes of instagram is saying to you give it a try and if you don't like it you've got a job here that must have been a an incredible feeling yeah it was it was fun i was terrified because i couldn't articulate and work through in my brain like how you work for an agency and how you split your like creativity your interest your passion across all of these different brands and obviously you scale and you build a team but when you have never I'd never been agency side I'd never even worked with an agency and all of a sudden I had an agency yeah so the point about failure like I learned a lot of things the hard way but we were profitable from literally the first week of trading and the clients that we had were unreal so we had the like obviously instagram we had josh wood he's like still does my hair like years later uh nike very.co.uk and i really took for granted like the amount of stuff that asos were doing that was so early on so as soon as i then went to linkedin and was like i'm gonna do this now for you like let's have a chat yes i was flooded and then i was actually going into businesses and i was like oh you don't have a social strategy so we'll start with social we'll sort your social out then we'll do your influencer then we'll do your celebrity then we'll do your production at this point you can do this with your eyes closed yeah this is like you've built the model essentially and then you're offering it I mean it's genius that you would build an agency like you said agency that world wasn't your background so what was that who was the first call that you made like who did you pick up the phone to and say okay right I've I mean you know over my head I know exactly what I'm doing on this side but I've never built an agency and a team around that before.

21:41How did you first start?

21:44Sedge Beswick: I also think because I hadn't been agency side and I hadn't worked with an agency. And again, I didn't have this rule book in terms of like what to do and how to do it. Just got on with it. So there's a lot of ways that we were profitable that a traditional agency at the time would have been like, you don't do timesheets. Are you insane? But I couldn't compute how you would do a timesheet and people would on a Friday go, fuck, I need to fill this out and try and retrospectively, oh well that client said they wanted this many hours and if they asked for it then I'll just put it here and I was like no let's just be known for doing really brilliant work and driving ROI and ultimately that's all that's all that anybody wants if things are looking good and they're on brand and we're showing that we're proving success to the business we're going to keep getting repeat work yes and so it was so simple in terms of like what we were doing and then obviously you have one or two things to talk about and the momentum just built and again from ASOS I had a ton of people that were like we know Serge we know how she works we know the success she's had here so that became pipeline but it also came became my support system and there are a lot of very senior people at ASOS where I could be like right just quickly can I do it pick your brains from it yeah yeah and that could be like finding me people in the team it could be finding me clients it could be help me to scope and cost out jobs um and like that's I think the biggest gift you can give anyone is just time yes and it's and you know what it's so true of that like I'm always a firm believer in like a lot of my relationships with people with you know colleagues however that looks I've had for a very very long time and we've gone from company to company together and I still work with them and I think it is really important to those kind of those formative relationships that you that you build with people they go from strength to strength I think when you've got that trust exactly that exactly that did you did you take on investment to launch the agency so yeah I always had an investor from the off um it was never like a lump sum go and raise it was essentially my salary he had 60 of the business and he paid for an office space at this point I think my salary went from like 50k to 70k so I thought that I was like JLo and I was like bowler this is great um and then obviously when we started to and I understood the business and how we were operating and how we're making money more then I was like oh like there's a lot of money to be had here there's a lot of operational margin that we're being able to maintain so like if I was to do my time again would I give away 60 % of my business of course I wouldn't but I was 27 I was I was just about to say there's also a few ways of looking at that and I I understand what you're saying but you can't predict the success at that point like you say your your your salary's gone up you have got that confidence you've got that backing in somebody and and at the time that's when you don't really know what to expect or what the future is that's all you can really hope for isn't it and I had the freedom to grow because cash flow was a nightmare for us so our first client that paid us just shy of two mil paid us on 120 day payment terms and we play paid all of our talent on 30 days and that was 70 every single time out the door so like I felt sick when I looked at our numbers and the cash flow was always going to keep me up at night but I always had that that safety blanket there to know that I could pay the team, to know that I could pay the talent and that I could draw on those kind of resources as well when I needed them.

25:01When you sort of had the idea of taking on investment, was that a process that you had to go through or was it you, you had someone that believed in you from the off? I literally met him for 15 minutes and then I got the paperwork the next day. Tell me everything.

25:15Sedge Beswick: I find this so interesting. I think honestly, like I've done this like since I've had like strength tests done and it always comes out with like enthusiasm and passion and the things for me and I think I honestly just like bamboozled this guy with how excited I was about the influencer space and I think anyone that is getting into business I always say like if you've got an idea and you can't stop thinking about it and you can't stop talking about it you've got that passion and that hunger to make it work so just give it a go yes and I think he saw that in me of just like wow she is saying shit I don't understand she's so excited that that energy is infectious when you then go into a room and so I loved being in a room with clients and then being like influencers it's just never going to work for us and I'm like all right tell me about it and then I could react really quickly because I had so much that I knew from even like my time at Red Bull when I was literally 18 to 21 through to my time at ASOS I was like no this is the solution this is how it could work and I could find the answer so quickly um and it you know nine times out of ten it would work but that excitement other people just being like all right then okay i'll find budget we'll make it work and a bit like you were saying at the start it was very much when we started probably the first like 18 months of trading started as a like oh i could probably find 10 grand somewhere oh yeah i'll be able to find 15 grand at a push so we were always the tag on right and it might be into pr it might be into social it might be into production but as soon as we got a little bit we could then focus around the roi and again just keep chipping away and unlocking more budget yeah And I suppose just gaining that faith, because like you say, when it's something that is so new, people are like, oh, I can know this works.

26:51Let's invest a little more into that. When it comes to investment, like you say, that the belief that you had, the passion that you had, do you, I'm really from the standpoint and I've, you know, sat and spoken to so many women sat in that seat. And I think what I'm really understanding when it comes to investment is that people really do invest in the person.

27:12Sedge Beswick: They 100 % invest in the person. I've made, I call it my fuck it pot. but since I've sold my business I put a set aside and I was like that's my gamble and there's businesses most of them are female founded but like the one you just jump on a call with a founder and it doesn't matter how good their business plan is if you can if you're believing and selling like they're selling to you essentially their product you're just like I need it I need to be involved in this journey and I want to be working alongside this person yeah yeah yeah I know it's going to be good and then there's people I've sat on business on pitches to and they've had brilliant ideas and I'm sure they'll go really far but if I'm not excited by the person and I'm not picking up that like real passion I just kind of I get a bit bored and a bit lost on the call and I move on yeah um and I'm I will always say this but people buy from people and so the more that you can like invest and really tell that story I need to be buying what you're selling yeah yeah yeah on the flip side of that like taking on investment early on which has given you the scope to achieve and build so much like you say and have that security that you were going to be able to pay your rent or your mortgage at the same time and you know that you can sort of keep yourself safe because that's the other risks too isn't it when you put everything into a business that you're like okay how the cash flow is a problem here yeah on the flip side did you feel any element of pressure I suppose that you had to you had more to prove because you had that support from somebody.

28:35Sedge Beswick: Yeah. And I, again, you like obviously set your annual forecast and you do your targets for each quarter. And I really gamified that because I was like, I want to have my seat at this table. And that gave me a complete different fire in my belly when it came to like going out, selling, networking, building the pipeline, building the business, because I never wanted to feel like I was in a situation where I was having an uncomfortable or difficult conversation about the revenue of the business. And I wanted to know my numbers inside out. And I wanted to surprise people. I wanted them to every board meeting and be like, you've done it again.

29:10Sedge Beswick: How? What is it that's working? What is it that you're doing? And again, it helped that I was early. It helped that I didn't have a lot of competition. It helped that I could talk from every angle about the influencer space. But it was, it really lit something in me to just like be able to put myself in a position where all of those board meetings were exciting and positive. and then I could take their feedback and all of the years and years that they knew around finance that they knew around agency operations and just keep using all of that as a sponge yes to improve the business as I went was there a part of sort of starting your own firm and building your own agency was a part of it that you kind of underestimate it all of it yeah that's made me feel so much better yeah and any business like I I say to anyone like actually running a business is not for everyone.

29:59Sedge Beswick: It is really lonely. It's really isolating. You obviously swap your nine to five, your 24 seven, and you can't stop thinking about it. There is always something to do. And again, even though I had the security of my salary guaranteed and the backing, which again, a lot of founders that I work with don't, they don't pay themselves still. But it is, it's like, it's terrifying because one client could switch off or an algorithm could change and your whole business model has to evolve and adapt and change around that. And we had clients that didn't pay us and we had clients that were difficult and we had team members that were hard work and so there was always a fire to put out so they talk about like the founder roller coaster and like not operating in the high highs and the low lows and really steadying your flow so that you make very logical and rational decisions but again like agency I've never had product so I'm sure it's like similar vein but it's like oh my god we've just won another x million pound brief this is amazing oh we just lost our key player oh and so it's every single day you just felt like you couldn't ever get a real genuine grip of what was happening because something would always be thrown your way what did you do to keep yourself like level in those moments because like you say you know you're you kind of I always try my best not to act on emotion and not to even when the times are great like I don't want that to change you know make me feel comfortable or and then when the times aren't so good that make me make again decisions that I shouldn't make because we're in a sticky patch so I think what what do you do to sort of keep your mindset level and be in that kind of flow state as we call it yeah I mean me now versus me then are two very different people okay so talk me through the then and the now I guess then it was it was everything cry it was like that was my 24 7 it was my all-in I like you know I wasn't married.

31:48Sedge Beswick: I didn't have kids. I didn't have a house. Like that was the most important thing. And I could really see the more hours you put in, the more you get. So you always wanted those wins and everything felt so personal. You lose a pitch and you're like, that was good. Like, I know that was good. I know that was brilliant work. And so again, I think my big thing when I was running the business was to as much as I possibly could. And again, in an office, five days a week, 12 hours a day, in many cases, like again, very different to how things are today. I did show my emotion but I would really try hard not to yeah and whether that was just disappearing for a quick walk around the block or but also like trying to I really believe that winning breeds winning so when we were having those highs I really wanted the entire team to feel it and to know it and whether that was like shut your laptops we're going to go now and we're going to do something together and we're going to have this like team moment we're going to really celebrate this win because they could feel it and that also like gave them a real drive the next day when they're coming in they're like let's do it again I want to feel that I want to get that um whereas like me now I definitely operated and felt everything far more personally but one I spread myself across multiple different things and as the internet likes to call it have a portfolio career so I can't ever get too much into one thing yeah so I sit at a much more kind of like elevator position across the different things that I do and work across I also have the kids so I'm like they'll chuck a curveball in there yeah yeah but it's also like that I'd rather be present with them from five to seven than pulling my hair out about something going wrong somewhere and so it's a real game changer and do you think your mindset starts shifting slightly when because I've really started over the past sort of year or two I'd say probably a year and a half trying to get better at knowing that if something happens there's actually nothing that I'm going to be able to do about it at 11 p.m until everyone's backing anyway so really try and I'm now not I don't sleep with my phone in my bedroom and I don't yeah it's been again that's been since the start of this year how do you know what time it is I've bought an analog alarm clock unreal it's so good and what I do is I like basically we had um a lady called Izzy Atterson on the podcast and she did um like her sort of preparing yourself for the year and I really I took the advice so literal and so seriously and it's changed my sleep altogether so I sleep with my phone in the living room and the only time that might possibly change is I plug it upstairs but a bit further away from myself is if like Marv isn't there or whatever so I leave it closer to me but I sleep most nights I sleep with it in the living room and then I made this deal with myself that I can't have it back until I've read I've got a book next to my bed and I'll read like sometimes I'll literally read one page I try to make it three at least but I've done something before I've looked at the screen and it just it's changed it for me because I'm like you do become and even just for the team and for everyone I'm like I don't really want everyone talking at half 10 11 about something that we're not going to be able to solve yeah yeah and we're all going to now be thinking about it at two three o 'clock in the morning and it's it's just not a kind of healthy mindset for anybody so I've really it's but it's taken me a lot of years to realize that yeah and that was my problem when I was running the business and especially when I went off maternity leave my first I was getting bored emails at like 3am and I was breastfeeding so I'd wake up at 3am and then I'd read the email and then I couldn't sleep again because I was there trying to like find the solution and the problem firefight yeah whilst having a baby on your boob which is just ridiculous right so why do we torture ourselves yeah but that was my big thing when I like did step away from the business it was very much like I create this like pivot framework but it was like I've got a gift which is to pause and to stop and to look at where I am where I want to get to like what is it that I want next time and it's like I don't want to be that reactive person that always feels like I'm on the back foot who's always chasing fires who really like I've been on holidays and Nike have called and been like can you just pop to Portland I'm like now yeah no problem and obviously pre-kids but like those things now are wild and I would never do them it's so funny and even like I get invited on to like speaker gigs and it's like oh it'll be on a Saturday I'm like no sorry I'm with my kids my kids yeah I think obviously you you want to be so present for your children you want to be able to make everything work alongside building a career which is also it's hard to get everything right and you know most of the time none of us are but it's they become this great excuse that nobody then questions like it's almost like they they give me the thing that I was looking for years ago when I was just a bit of a slave to it and I couldn't switch on.

36:24A hundred percent. That they're like, no, I can't. I can't. I'm out with the kids that weekend. No one actually questions that one. Yeah. Which is brilliant. And I like also weirdly thank them for that too because I'm like.

36:35Sedge Beswick: I don't work on a Friday. And I say to everyone that I work with, I was like, just to set expectations. Like I do work weird hours. I tend to do like my deep work between like 7.30, 10 p.m. Like the kids are asleep. The house is quiet. I know no one's going to call me at nursery. I'm like I don't expect anyone to apply at that time like that's just when I work but like I will not work on a Friday and the amount of clients were like I'm jealous I really respect that that's fine having those clear boundaries really clear boundaries and how much people respect them I'm like I probably could have got away with a lot when I run the business I just never asked it's like that we've and I see the seminarity here that we've used kids to give us those boundaries because obviously then you don't really have much for choice but if I'd have been firmer and also I would really respect that if somebody come to me family no family 100 particularly no family that said hi this is if this works for you these are the hours that i work i'd be okay cool yeah and it makes everybody else stick to their shit because we'll only do it we'll make sure it's it happens within that time like boundaries are such a good thing but it takes a while to become comfortable yeah and i think generationally and i know our careers are very very different but like it's always always on thing it's always on you were just taught the more hours you put in the more you get out so just keep putting the hours in and eventually you know you'll work your way up the career ladder or you'll get another gig or you'll get another whatever and so that mentality was just like I never thought the word I never probably discussed the word boundary in my entire career because it was just not a thing it was just not a thing and it's like almost that like okay I'm the first one in last one to leave that's I would always wear that as a badge of honor too I'm like no it's fine I'm busy for the next you know I haven't got day off in six months and i'd be like i'd be bragging about that asos's offices there would be meetings and it'll be like what time did you leave last night what how long late were you sending it did you take your laptop home you left at 10 and you still took your laptop what time you're in this morning you haven't taken a holiday oh you're carrying your four days over but you've only taken four other days you're like yeah two of them for a funeral and and it's just like what life are you living yeah but we all did it because it was really and again you're at a time when it asos going through crazy fast growth and it was really fun but like again i didn't discuss burnout when i look back i was burnt out by the time i came to leave and like all having that sort of toxic relationship with your work and becoming a slave to it i think and we've we've all been there we have but it's when you look back it's like wild that you i don't think i could physically do it now and still be standing when i look back to it and that's also the other thing that it becomes a bit of a a bit of you set yourself a bit of a benchmark don't you like oh well I used to be able to do all of this yeah what's happened to me you can't now girl yeah you can't um I want to talk about this because it is just incredible because you've you've built Synconnex into a 24 million pound business and I mean if you could go back to that day that you met with the investor of 15 minutes and gave him all of your passion and excitement.

39:35I could imagine that hearing that sentence out loud was probably never on the cards. Oh, I thought I was going to be Instagram in three

39:41Sedge Beswick: months time with no clients and just take back. Lauren, is that you? Yeah, I'm here. Yeah, no, it's totally, totally wild. And I think, again, when you're in it, we went through obviously the process of going through private equity and we got our like three proper offers which were in a similar kind of parameter but you're in it so you're like okay cool so that's happened you move on and like my husband is brilliant at being like can you just take a beat the business that you have built that you have slaved away for that you have put in 24 7 one you've won clients like xyz but two you got to set up an office in new york and three someone is not and i'm like oh yeah no i needed you to just make me stop in the moment a little bit and really realize what we have achieved and what we have managed to do and i say we because we had a team of 60 people and everyone worked their bollocks off and everyone was very much like building up to you know the the big business that it kind of became um but yeah when you're in it I think anyone that male or female they like you you tend to stop forget to stop and really go okay we've done this in in order to sort of grow it like I said from those like from day one where you're paying for your salary and you're covering staff in order to scale the business what did you have to focus on like was it systems client stuff like what what did you have to focus on to really scale it into what it and you know yeah it was two two things which kind of tie together but clients and sales essentially which sounds really gross but I was without realizing I was very good at new business but I was really good at new business because I really knew the space and I was hugely sell the influencer space to anyone and I could show that it would perform and it would work.

41:31Sedge Beswick: And whether that was like on a stage or whether that was on a podcast, whether that was on a one-to-one meeting. And so that obviously helped drive the momentum of the business. My LinkedIn drove about 75 % of the leads to the business. And again, we're talking 10, 12 years ago, like no one was on LinkedIn talking about what they were doing at that point. And then once you have the clients, like I'd always say this, but it's far easier to grow your existing than it is to win new which I'm sure is the same in your world it's easier to get Tesco to buy more than it is to go and get a new grocer of course um and so again it was like really thinking about well as we grew we had to make sure that there were people on the ground who really nurtured and looked after the clients and understood the business need but also understood the team need like what on a human level what did that person want a need in their career to make sure we're servicing them to kind to really build those relationships too.

42:20And when it, when it comes to sort of the transition, I suppose, for you from being hands-on in the weeds with everything and doing the work across, we say a lot on this podcast that, you know, the role of CEO is the most unsexy role because it just means that you're doing everything at a certain point until you can build and afford to sort of build that team out beneath you. Do you think, how did you find that transition yourself as in like hiring more and building the team till you were saying 60 people? How were you in that moment? Because I can understand that it would be a really hard thing if you start off small and you're growing bit by bit to actually, it's a huge shift, isn't it?

43:07For most founders.

43:08Sedge Beswick: Yeah, so they talk a lot about the multiples of nine. so like the first nine team members that you have are brilliant you feel like a family you know everything about each individual person it gets a bit trickier at 18 and I actually read that after I'd left the business and I was like that makes so much sense I wish I'd read this bloody book beforehand because I'd have really known like the processes and the things and the team that I'd have to change where I got things wrong is I really should have built out the kind of support system sooner but because I knew influencer and because I knew I could sell and because I knew could get brands excited.

43:40Sedge Beswick: I very much was like leading the charge from that perspective, but I really should have had like, I had a fractional essentially CFO. We definitely needed a full-time CFO because there were things that they could have done that would have been a totally different perspective and maturity level for the business. And then I also should have hired a proper sales director sooner, earlier. And it might be that we could go out and double and double, you know, the amount of meetings or double the amount of revenue. um but again they would have systems and processes and like that's not my forte and the same thing when it comes to like the business director your client's website you're number two um and i when i went through my process they spent an unbelievable amount of money on due diligence on the business right and that's when it came back around like the business is too dominant on you and actually i thought i was unreal at delegating because i had a team of 60 and they're all busy but actually there's a different way and a different level that you can delegate to essentially be the cherry on top rather than like working still yeah and is it something you found like like you say it's all great with hindsight isn't it that of course you could have been a little more hands off and do you think you would have found it hard yes because I loved it yeah and because you know it so well and I was in it and I really I just like I was that business that business was me like the two I couldn't see a world where those two were just not fully connected and so and again you can see the more time I put in the more hours the more pitches the more this the more we win the more we grow so that gamification piece is really there like I couldn't in like I as soon as we hired HR I really struggled with it because all of a sudden I didn't know if everyone in the team was okay and I didn't know what the people in the team needed and I didn't necessarily have all the solutions but we needed it because all of a sudden we needed different policies that we didn't need Like, you know, when we're a smaller business and a smaller team.

45:28Sedge Beswick: So that mindset shift was hard. Yes. And especially as we're about to essentially go from being like privately owned. We always made money. So I always had an easy time with the investor to if the deal had gone through working with, you know, essentially a fully very well known private equity firm. Everything would have been so different overnight. Right. You touch on a couple of times, you know, like your your team. To me, it sounds more like a family. And, you know, you become you made a conscious effort to if we've had a win. OK, laptop shut. We're going to go and celebrate or knowing, finding the sort of difficulties when you've then got a hate chart and not knowing if everyone's all right.

46:12did you ever come across sort of that stage where you I suppose there's a struggle and there's always that little imbalance where you kind of you want to be liked and you want to it's something that I always really struggle with I want to be liked but I also know that I have to lead so do you did you ever struggle with that liked sort of being liked versus being respected yeah especially in the last

46:37Sedge Beswick: like so the whole last 18 months that I was like fully fully in the business we were going through the deal and there's a lot of stuff you can't tell the team and then all of a sudden there are a lot of different problems in the team like even small things like we grew out of our office space but we still had nine months left I think on the lease so it was like we're not going to do anything about it until the lease is up because I'm not going to pay double to be able to and there's a lot of things that you also I used to be a very open book and tell the team absolutely everything and then all of a sudden when something's happened and there's a cease and desist going out the door you're not going to tell the team yes um and so you also then hire very different bombs on seats and different people from like different backgrounds, different motivations at work and how they want to operate.

47:16Sedge Beswick: And so again, I think hiring that senior level would have, and that support system sooner would have really, really helped me there. And especially as I was spending a lot of time at that point in the US, I just, I did feel like I really lost that scope of like the team and their needs and what they wanted. And then it was all of a sudden I was probably more of a boss than like a mate, because again, we were going through this private equity deal and there was a lot of different things that were changing quite quickly in the business and I definitely wasn't doing the job of like articulating all of those bits and pieces the right way but in a lot of cases I couldn't and I wasn't allowed and there was red tape um and then I was knackered and you're just a bit like oh god just get on with it yeah so it can't be like that um so that wouldn't be happy we're not happy so yeah I really really and I still find it difficult now I probably I've got three full-timers across different businesses and like three fractional part-time um and it's again i'm like i want to keep the small team small and i want to really enjoy working with everyone i work with but then when you build that it's really hard to have those uncomfortable conversations when you're around your dinner table being like right what we're doing today kind of cocked up a little bit here can we have to talk about it yeah and i also don't want to do that stuff anymore i'm like i did the hard bit yeah let's just have fun can i just enjoy the fruits of my labor yeah exactly just i want i want to just touch on and then we we have spoken about it but I'd try to dive a bit deeper into the private equity process and then how that looked and what that meant I suppose for you as a founder but for the business too yeah so my intention was never to sell the business because obviously I didn't intend to even set up a business um and it was again we got to a point where we got really big and in the pandemic we really started to realize this like global shift from brands where it went from like local UK to everything's being run out of our global HQ, whether that was Japan, whether it was the US.

49:09Sedge Beswick: And so we had this demand to be stateside. And then we also won Lululemon at the same time, which was a huge, huge project. And so it was like private equity deal, huge growth momentum in the UK, and we now need to go and do the US. And I would say to anyone, I think if you're going to launch in the US, like the founder or someone who is like intrinsically linked to that business needs to be there. And I couldn't because I was pregnant and I was doing a private equity deal and I was back and forth constantly on the plane. And the US was phenomenal. The way that they like respect founder, CEO, entrepreneur, like I could walk into any room and have a meeting.

49:49Sedge Beswick: And from that perspective, I was so excited because I could see this growth potential. In the evenings, I didn't have the structure behind me. So I was like, googling pre-ai like where should i do my tax in the u.s lawyer american like it was taking me an enormous amount of time and i think any founder should free themselves up to do what they're really good at like what is your superpower where's the thing you had impact and the way we were set up like we everything was slow and everything was painful and everything was taking longer than it needed to be and that's a lot of where the conversations around the deal came from right and my old investor was 70 years of age he's had his lovely time he doesn't need to be dicking around with agencies and stuff like there's other things that he could do so the conversation was all very positive all brilliant and so we put the agency on the market um one of our competitors had just sold and had an unbelievable um multiple on their EBITDA which meant that there was a lot of excitement about influencer at the time so I got to ride off their coattails and it was all going at a million miles an hour until I found out I was pregnant and then the gear change was like so significant wow um and then I was like okay well I'm in it now so I might as well just carry on but I had a hard deadline and so you know that baby was coming whether we liked it or not um and so they chipped the price essentially twice but it again by that point I think we're in like July and my daughter came in September and it got to about two weeks before her due date and I was like I'm not doing this like I'm wrecked I'm worried genuinely about like the health of the baby my health me and my husband were arguing like mad because he's like what the hell's happening here we weren't in our house because we're doing work to it like between the US between the UK and it was like something here has to give yes and then I all of a sudden just had this moment where as soon as I thought about this might not happen it was like well this isn't right for the team because I'm not going to be here so I've they've never really never had to work with the investment team that we had and all of a sudden I'm not going to be there and they're going to be working with them I there's a lot of stuff that the business needs to do and to change and to grow to like really scale they were also putting headcount in so they did hire a CFO they did hire a sales director when I was my baby was weeks old I was interviewing chairman walking around with a pram for like two hours around where I live um because they were like this this is all part of the agreement like this is what we want and what we need in the business but the idea was very much pause come back from maternity we'll pick it up and we'll go again how long did you give yourself for maternity about three hours i'm so with you i was still doing email she was asleep and i was in hospital for about six seven days total and i was like just doing emails and you know when you're just like it's all i know it's trained behavior um and then my first was a savage sleeper she didn't sleep she screamed and screamed and i think it's because like minor energy she was like stop yeah my nervous system was shot and i was just putting that on her yeah um whereas my second was like a dream just slept they slot in a bit i was confident we've already got this going on you just have to come on board exactly wherever they go we're going too but it was like a real again it gave me this opportunity to just like stop a little bit yes and be like well what does this look like I know I'm not going to go to New York because that's not fair on grandparents and I don't know anyone and trying to navigate motherhood with no one around me that I know is not an option and then this deal and it was like so like all deals you have an earn out you have loan notes you've got all these various different bits and pieces and I was like I could sign and get x today but do I really think we'll get here and then based on the loan notes do I really think I'll get here and again if I was working it would be full-blown cheek to jow and I was like I think I've fallen out of love I think this process has kind of made me not love the business anymore and I need to listen to that and I the the really telling bit was like so I went back into the office after four months hired a nanny she had every qualification under the sun she was wonderful and gorgeous and lovely and the poor woman like opened the door on her first day to be like I'm here and I sobbed and I so I live in North London got on the northern line for an hour into shoreditch just sobbing uncontrollably boobs just leaking leaking everywhere firing away so by the time i got to the office and like the investor god love him called me at like whatever it was like 8 a.m to be like welcome back we really missed you i haven't been anywhere but sure uh and he was like so that chair you hired don't think we can afford him right now so do you want to ring him and i was like oh my god you motherfucker like I spent hours with a days old baby making sure that we had a chair ready for this deal to go through and I just got home that night and I was like I can't do this I can't like I the job I want to do is I want to be mom first and foremost and this job right now and the way I've built it doesn't give me the opportunity to do that um and so the idea was very much that I would step into a non-exec that I would hire an MD um and I knew that I wanted more kids and very lucky that I managed to have my second in pretty close succession.

54:55Sedge Beswick: My dad worked in the Far East seven months of the year. My mom worked in London, which was like a three and a half hour drive. So like I had a nanny growing up and I, so it never felt weird for me that we would have a nanny and that we would have support. And again, unbelievably privileged to be able to have that support. But I just couldn't do it. I was like, I was 34 when I had my first, like why have I worked my bollocks off my entire career to not be, to not have the options and the choice. And I'm a better working and I want my kids to see me work so I knew I needed to work and I knew I wanted to work and I love making money and I love being like financially independent but I really love being a mom so like I had to get that balance and I know balance is like always thrown around yes I just had to make it work better for me and there wasn't a solution with the business so like that was so that was the real kind of kickstarter to be like this isn't this isn't working yeah yeah and And was that like a sort of decision that you came to yourself that felt like a weight off your shoulders now that you'd made the decision?

55:56Or did it instantly make you feel like, okay, this isn't, I can't do, was it more like a desperation, like I can't do this?

56:04Sedge Beswick: I operate a lot on gut. And I just felt like I had every signal around me saying something has got to change here. And again, I'm, not again, but my husband is an accountant by trade. He is, you know, very head and I am very heart. And I was just like, no, that's it. Like decision made, very impulsive. I know in my gut that this is the right thing for me, the right thing for my daughter, the right thing for the family, but also the right thing for the business. Because if my heart is also not in the business, I'm not going to be the best person to operate, to lead, to grow, to scale. And so I did stay with the business for essentially like 12 months.

56:40Sedge Beswick: And then it was probably another three six months where I was like right I'm ready to sell my 40 % now um and just really give myself that like full clean slate um and just like re-evaluate reassess like again unbelievable gift to be able to have an opportunity in my career to pause and to really work out like what are my values what is my identity yes how where do I want to show up what does my next chapter look like because when you're in it if it's like you get a promotion you get a pay rise okay well now I've done those steps well now I'm going to set up a business so I've really had like a really boring life in the sense of like went to school went to sixth form went to uni got a job worked my way up set my own business off business and then I was like no I'm gonna just like rip up the rule book here and like do what intuitively feels right for me and what was that so one I knew I wanted my second so I couldn't jump into anything else or think of anything else because I was like right I've got a gift of like being able to be on maternity leave and so I took a year in theory but I a cleaner is way more than a cleaner and basically took my daughter for a day and a half a week so that I could still be in the game um and my biggest fear was basically having two kids back to back and then you feel like you're just like no nothing and you're forgotten and everyone in the world just assumes I've lost my ambition and I've chosen to be like a stay-at-home mom which is guess what I can have ambition have kids exactly exactly so and I still loved again I still love working and so yeah I basically have built this portfolio career where I've got a couple of businesses that I don't run day-to-day so I oversee and I say I sit kind of as a chair position where I can support and guide and advise but the sleepless nights they're not mine like I'm not in it day-to-day as I said earlier made a couple of investments and then I have a mentor program which I love I bet it is unreal so it's productized there's only 10 people a year we go through a process to get part of it but I'm like my superpower is growth and I love seeing other people win and again when you're running a business it's lonely it's isolating so I'm like I'm just here I'm in your corner I'm like your champion and if you want to call me if you want to whatsapp me like but then we do our structured like mentor sessions um and it's brilliant I bet and what a gift what what a kind of gift to be able to help other people in that way when you've like you say you've done the sleepless nights you've done that that's not your journey anymore yeah you're not also knowing that no one else is as isolated as i felt when running mine yes um that's the big thing when someone's like bringing in tears and they get the call they're like oh my god i i know why i'm in this now like this is unreal because it's paid for they pay for my time uh but it's like no this you this is the person that i can call and come to and i've got a fair few war wounds that i can share with them that make them feel better about the situation that they might be in that and on reflection is your would you say your idea of success is completely different to what it was at the kind of start of the business yeah I think early on in my career I think success was very much like what's my title what's my salary when I had the business it was then like big how do I have the biggest office how do I have the biggest team and you know they would be the questions that clients would ask well where is your office how many people have you got yeah how many senior personality you have?

59:47Sedge Beswick: And so that was really like the notion that was drummed into me that bigger was better. And now for me, success is very much like doing things on my time, having freedom and being able to work at a scale and a pace that works for me, that works for the family. When your kids are older, like mine are one and three. So my big one starts school in September. Everything changes then. I don't get, there's no point in me taking Fridays off if they're both in school. Like I can work then, but I might decide to finish earlier. So it's like giving yourself that flexibility and that autonomy like that for me a success is like getting to Friday and knowing that I'm all in as like head of entertainment as mum yes do you know what you still want to keep that Friday let me tell you for the minute you drop them you're like how is it already three o 'clock and you're running I bet I bet Friday don't let that one go go get my nails done do some stuff exactly do do the bits for you stay local um I want to do our rocket round now okay Which is essentially our quickfire round.

1:00:40Don't be scared. I mean, they're never as quick as I bill them to be. Okay. But the first question is, what do you believe are the non-negotiables for running a business?

1:00:50Sedge Beswick: Oh, passion. Having that passion, that excitement. I think anyone can run a business if they genuinely believe in it. And I've seen people want to set up businesses because they want to make money. And they're always the businesses that are doomed from day one because you're in it for the wrong reasons. if you genuinely really believe in what it is like you will have success in what it what you do yes yeah I love that it's so true and I think particularly with your story you can just hear your passion has got you to where you are now you know it's got that investment so on so forth clients etc people are terrified of me so they just say yes she's not gonna leave us alone unless we give this to her someone give us money and we'll crack on with it really when did you first realized that you truly launched was there a moment yeah I early on with my finance director so I'd never met him and so we had shared resource at a group level and the FD was one of them so I'd never met him and then he basically like sat me down and like drew a stick man and then another stick man and was like this person pays this person this is how you make money you need to make more margin and I was like well enough and I was like okay well what numbers are we gunning for here and what does a good business look like and he was like if you do a million EBITDA you're doing all right and I was like okay well I'm really far off that on my like week three but all right I'll keep going and then in my first year of trading we got dividends which I didn't know what dividends were before I sat in this board meeting they're like congratulations we've got dividends and I got four grand which you know 50 % of that goes straight out the door but I went to Chanel and bought myself my first Chanel shoes yeah and I was like this is I've managed to like do something that I've always wanted to do that's for me that I obviously love um yeah probably a stupid investment from the having four grand and spending a grander shoes i'm wearing them right now there you go yes thank you never stupid uh what is the first thing you do when you wake up and the last thing you do before you go to bed oh i am at a really gorgeous stage in parenting where i wake up every single morning far too early but to the foot my my kids feet running down the hall and then she jumps into my bed and so like every morning is just like with her telling me what she's dreamt and then the other one I can hear in her car be like um but then I am bad I do the opposite of you I'm then straight on my phone straight on whatsapp straight on my calendar like I very much live like day by day I can't plan in advance I can hear right but you know so I've been like right where am I what am I doing what do I need to get organized for today and then same thing I think before bed I probably check my calendar check my emails check my whatsapp this was so me I still do all that by the way but then I just do it in the lounge and then I can run upstairs like I'm still doing it are you ready for bed when you leave your phone downstairs if you like taking your makeup off done your skincare routine yeah it's like the last thing like sometimes even Marv will be like we'll be sitting watching a tv show and he'll be like right I'll go and take your phone like he's he's really good because he's holding me accountable with it amazing so he'll it's more that I if I if I have it next to me and then I'm like oh I need a wee at like 3am and then go back to my bed I will always instantly pick up my phone and that's where my problem lies then I'll just be replying scrolling doing nonsense in early hours which is just adds no value to anyone's life yeah even for me sending it for the receiver getting it like no one wants a message from me at 3am it's not a thing it's not a thing um is there one piece of advice that you wish you hadn't listened to I mean I've had lots of bad advice over the years yeah I feel like when you run a business and especially when the business starts to do well everyone likes to give you their view and opinion it's probably a bit like motherhood everyone's like oh you should breastfeed or you shouldn't until it's that bit well you think you think this is hard wait until that happens yeah and I think you need to obviously people want to help you have to remember that part but you can choose the bits and that work for you but I found it especially in my deal process everyone everyone had a view and an opinion and they wanted to give me but it's quite entertaining now but I was told as we were about to start our deal process I really think you should go and buy yourself a Rolex and I still have the Rolex I like the Rolex but I rarely wear the Rolex but it was like if you want to be in a room with a load of like old boys who are finance they measure their dick based on how many Rolexes they've got basically and so it was like if you want to play with the big boys the second you walk in and the first meeting I had had the Rolex on like bless my brother helping me to get because this was also So like, what does one even need when it comes to Rolex?

1:05:16Your brother, like help me.

1:05:17Sedge Beswick: It was post pandemic. Like when Rolexes were like at their absolute peak, you could not get a Rolex for love nor money. And so I was like, what one do I get? What makes me look like I know a Rolex, but which one doesn't? And he loves his watches. So I went into Harrods with him, got my Rolex, walked to the first meeting. And as soon as I walked in, the guy went, oh, I didn't expect you to have a Rolex. Stop. Yeah. And then I was like, I'm actually not wearing this. Cause my big thing in life is like, I am who I am. If you and me are at the pub, I will be the same person to how I am in the podcast, to how I am in a business pitch.

1:05:46Sedge Beswick: Like, you can't teach an old dog new tricks. I have this massive watch that doesn't feel very me. Yeah. And I was just like, fuck, I've played the game here. And they've clocked it instantly. Interesting, though. Yeah. But, like, I probably should have, like. Just ask someone if you could borrow a Rolex. Yeah. Or just, like, swapped it every week. Might have even been more of a power play. But I was like, I've never played the game before. So why am I doing it now? And you can't wear one in London now. Well, exactly. Yeah, exactly. It's too scary to have anything nice. What's a skill that you'd love to learn?

1:06:16Sedge Beswick: If I had time, which I have none, I would love to do the thing that's always fascinated me is like around our brains. So whether that's like neuroscience, whether like muscle memory fascinates me that you can put on any song that I haven't listened to for like 20 years and you know it all. But like really thinking about how that like ties into when we're in this AI world, like how do we really build out storytelling? and like really tap into that human part of like people's minds and um but I don't really fully know what that looks like so it's something I've talked about for years but I've just never had the time to really think about what that could be oh okay we'll get there space you will you will if anyone can you can um what is one thing that you wish someone had told you before you started your business good question I think how isolating it is I think you and again we glamorize this from social you and I are probably also guilty of this you've got the blow dries you've got your makeup done you're turning up but like to turn up and to be there there is a lot of sacrifice there's a lot of missed friends gatherings kids things and bits and pieces like it is isolating it is lonely it is really hard to articulate the why behind all of the things that you're doing and I think when you a lot of people see entrepreneurship running businesses is this really sexy you're in an airport all the time and you've always got great hair and that's like the 0.1 % of it that you're seeing the great hair makes me feel good at that time yes that's this thing I'm clinging on to yeah because I've not done anything else for myself pulling it out yeah yeah it's do you know what it's so true and it's having that particularly now with social it's the seeing everyone's big shiny office and like you say that it can when you're starting something new that can feel so far away and it's that sort of comparison being the thief of joy always it really really is um If you could choose, well, you do mentoring yourself, but if you could choose one female figure as a mentor, past or present, who would that be?

1:08:10Whitney Wolf Hurd. Who would be yours? Do you know what? That's a really good question. I mean, I know Oprah is very obvious, but I just feel like I'd like her on Speed Dial. Just to be able to hype me up, I think. More than even like mentor. I mean, I'm sure she'd be an incredible mentor, but like just to hype me up, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. it's those moments that i'm like i just need her to tell me something that's going to really get me going yeah i'm just obsessed with well i'm obsessed with whitney wolford full stop but the

1:08:41Sedge Beswick: real like ipoing with your kid in your arm oh my gosh and i just think it's like no we are told so much of like women aren't ambitious well no society is not set up for us the expectations around us is different the mother load and she's just like i'm gonna ipo i love her and i'm gonna have my daughter in my arms she's my dream guest she's one of my dream guests we'll make this happen i would i'd love to i'll be your uh water filler there you go come in you're not far you're not coming on that day um each episode i ask our guests to leave a tip and it's almost like i suppose a real piece of advice that if someone is listening to this right now and is kind of seeing themselves building something in a similar vein or or even a similar point to you what would what would a real tangible piece of advice be for a lady looking to launch I would say start I think so many times as women we wait for things to be perfect we wait for the timing to be right we wait till we've got all of the answers in place like that confidence comes from doing it so like you might be at 70 just go for it back yourself give yourself like the willingness to just do it for you yes I love that you're right and doing it for yourself I think that's the thing that we remove actually that that's the piece that we think about last is actually I want to do this thing actually you are doing it for you it isn't you know enable yourself back yourself and give yourself that sort of I suppose backing isn't the right word but almost the support that you'd give a friend if your friend was going to call you and say right I'm thinking of doing this thing no one's done it before I'm quite excited you'd be like go do it yes why not but I think we all have that you're like I'm here call me whenever there's a problem but when it's you and I think and actually Izzy talks about this a lot she talks about like putting it out there to the universe so to speak like the abracadabra theory ask for it and it will become yours whereas I think again typically speaking women tend to like have this idea in their brain they might spend a bit of time penning it out on their own but then it's like well I won't tell anyone about it because what if they mock me yeah or what if they've got you know the fear of rejection and the fear of it not being successful or working out whereas actually you might start something and in six months time it pivots and it becomes something completely different and I pivoted my business so many times and the business one of the businesses I have now was like I was probably a hundred grand in the red and I was like okay well I either shut it or I've got to think differently thought differently and it literally was a complete gear change for the business it's letting the fear drive you rather than stop you and I think it's not listening to it it's knowing that there's always going to be fear there you know of course there is but it's just not letting that control what you do and stopping you from achieving what you want it's really interesting but we you it's such a good point that actually you're doing it for you yeah so if you see it as almost a little bit of self-care it won't feel like it starts it will feel like a box around yeah as the starting point treat it as that thing that you're doing for yourself um and then lastly I ask this question to everyone because I'm nosy.

1:11:40If I was your assistant and I was ordering your lunch because I was taking, you know, a job off the table. So I'm ordering your lunch for you. What would, what's the kind of regular thing that I know you're going to be happy, you're going to be fed and you're going to not shower me?

1:12:01Sedge Beswick: I have, my guilty pleasure is the spicy tuna from Joe the Juice. It's an easy win. It's an easy win. It's a perfect like lunchtime. There's one opposite here. I noticed. That's probably why it's in my head. I was like, you've got this all nailed down with this office. Yeah, you're like, I've got everything that I need in close proximity. But yeah, no, that is a good go to. That's the way to your heart. There you go. That's what I should have had. I should have had it ready for you to say. Thank you so much. It's been so, so interesting to listen to your story. And that's what I said at the start of this.

1:12:35in a world where I suppose years before you wouldn't have seen this as a career, as an exit. And I think to achieve what you have and build what you've built is so brilliant. And what I love more than anything is that you're helping others and mentoring others to achieve the same. So all power to you. I've loved it. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you.

1:13:03don't forget to follow us on apple and spotify or wherever you get your podcast to make sure that you don't miss out because next time i'm going to be talking to another incredible lady who launched if like me you're a watcher then please follow us on youtube and don't forget to like and subscribe

1:13:25Thank you.