Financial freedom through entrepreneurship: Why 98% of VC funding misses women (and what to do about it) | Emmie Faust, Female Founders Rise [REPLAY]

0:00I can't tell people that I've got four children. We all know that it's hard, but being constantly told that is not always helpful. We had the recession, going to Google, that not working out. I did set up another business with someone and that didn't work out. My husband lost his job twice and had an accident before that. And then we had COVID and I literally was like a shadow of my former self. Jesus. So I basically had a bit of a breakdown. Finally, I sort of got my mindset sorted, started investing in female founders, set up female founders twice. So I kind of like changed everything. what are some of the privileges that you recognise that have helped you get to where you are today?

0:40If you can run a long-term profitable sustainable business that does enable more money to go into the hands of women. There's always meant to be one fund returner and it's going to be a female founder. Most guys that are raising investment have got the message that it's easier for white men. emmy faust is a three times exit entrepreneur turned angel investor and now founder of female founders rise the supportive and inspiring resource for female founders to help them succeed with their businesses emmy welcome to the show thank you so much purposely left out an important detail in your bio can you guess what it is oh my gosh i don't know if i was listening to it it's always cringe listening to your mama four that's the one that's the bit i always start with.

1:26I heard you say that you always start with that detail on your intro so why do you think it's so important to put that front and centre? I think I just like to say that up front because that's probably one of the most important parts of my life definitely is. I also feel like maybe not that it explains things but it's important for me so I think it's important for other people to know and I think when I was doing my consultancy I actually hid the fact that I had four children because I felt like my clients might think oh you know she's not gonna be capable because she's got four children she's gonna be so busy I also thought and I did have a few conversations that I got the impression this is what people thought oh you're a mum you're just doing this little bit of fun on the side oh you charge that much that's very expensive you know aren't you just doing a little passion project so when I was doing my consultancy I remember but actually feeling like I can't tell people that I've got four children because that will definitely go against my pricing and against them believing in my ability, whether they think that or not is another matter.

2:33And then I think now I'm doing my own thing, I can just be proud of who I am. And also I've just found my voice and realised that, you know, it's important to speak the truth and it's important for people to know that. And actually that connects me with a lot of people because they can see that you can be a mum um and have children and be a founder um and yeah it's full on so do you feel I'm sure it is and I definitely want to ask how how you do it all which you know with everything you've got going on and four kids I'm sure everyone is wondering how on earth you do it um but it's interesting to hear do you feel that you kind of you've reached this point in your career where you've got enough confidence to share the fact that you're a mum of four or do you think that there's more of a movement now where people can embrace more of that authenticity obviously you've got a big following online as well and that authentic voice that you definitely have shines through I think it's a mix I think um it's really important to obviously be authentic and be yourself and it can be really difficult to do that when you're doing your own thing and you don't have stakeholders and potential clients and I feel like I can say what I want and there's not going to be any comeback and if there is then I don't care about being associated with those people anyway but I remember when I had clients you know I probably couldn't I would feel like I couldn't talk about my mental health um and say that I was struggling or I'd had a wobble because I'd be thinking well what are they going to think about me they're not going to think I'm capable and so I do think and often I get dms from people who might be trying to raise investment or they might be working in a business and they say what you said really resonated but I actually can't share those things because if I do I'm not seen to be capable so I think I'm in this position now where I can you know share how I feel and share what I want to share and I've got that it's an amazing privilege to be able to do that I think when you're working for someone you maybe don't or you need the clients or you need the money from investors you can't be telling people like the truth of what's really going on out there those anxieties I think are so valid and I think so many of our listeners would resonate with that especially mums I'm hearing a lot of these stories as well the worry of what other people think especially if it's clients as you say I mean what was your process because I've read about you kind of going on a bit of a journey yourself through you know you have had your success so it does make it easier to be more vocal about these what you're a mum before and everything else but was there anything else that helped you kind of find that confidence and be able to be authentic?

5:07I think you know I was successful when I was quite young so we set up our business when we were 25 and we sold we had various businesses some successful some failures actually the failure was like a real you know I never told anyone about that we went on Dragon's Den and I'm confident to talk about it now but at the time I didn't because I felt like it was a failure and that business failed on Dragon's Den and I sold my business and even though I'd been really successful and made quite a lot of money not huge amounts but you know enough to be able to angel invest and do you know do great things um I didn't tell anyone about all of those things so like none of my children's friends parents would have you know my new friends would have known about my past like they didn't know I'd been on Dragon's Den they didn't know I'd had successful businesses I just kept it all very quiet and I remember when I sold my business I had a very short stint at Google which didn't last because I realized I was never going to see my family and then whilst I was there in that six weeks we sold another one of our businesses so I didn't need to desperately work um at that point and um so my student at Google didn't work then I basically decided I'd do consultancy but I didn't really I wanted to work because I love working but I didn't really know what to do which sounds silly but um do I do business growth do I do consultancy for marketing because I'd run a media agency I've been like a sort of you know you do a bit of everything when you run a business you know because you've run a marketing agency you do the new business you look after the team you're doing maybe some of the work you're doing I was like really into all the finance I was trading currencies because we were buying media across multiple territories so I didn't have this kind of like expertise where I could be like I'm a SEO guru or I'm a whatever and I remember at one point I had one client that was half a day a month or something they were paying me 500 quid a month and I just thought I'm getting paid 500 quid a month I've got all this incredible insight what is going wrong like why am I not got loads of clients but I really didn't have any confidence because I hadn't ever told myself when I sold my business that I'd done amazingly well and it's much more congratulatory is that the right word now like people are much more like celebrating things I remember everyone just saying just be really humble whatever you're brought up to be humble so it didn't you know it didn't sort of celebrate that um and then I had a call with this mindset coach and I was like I just haven't got any clients and I just and he was like well why aren't you telling everyone about like what you did and I was like oh you know can't do that kind of that's really embarrassing um why don't you tell everyone about the successes you've had because actually if you don't tell them they won't know you can help them and that really like flicked a switch because I was like I want to help people I want to try and share all the things I've learned and actually by being quiet and not telling people what I'd done I was just expecting people to know I was kind of waiting for people to be like oh Emmy you're amazing can you come and help us without actually telling them that I could do that um so that was really interesting he really helped me change my my mindset and also he was like you must tell everyone about going on dragons then that's amazing the fact that you got onto dragons and the fact you got accepted by google even though you know because the fact that I went to work at Google and then it didn't work out that was another massive notch my confidence because it wasn't them it was me I said I can't stay here but I'd made this such big thing in my head about getting a job there and it was going to be my ideal job and I was going to be so happy and it was like you know the best job it for someone working in digital and tech this big brand and then I felt really embarrassed that I hadn't managed to like see it through um and people would be like how's your job at Google going and you're sort of like oh it hasn't worked out and I don't know I just felt like though that kind of really not my confidence also when you have babies um maybe I'm speaking I'm not speaking for everyone but speaking for a lot of people I know when you have babies it does not feel confidence because you're like out of the work scene and then you sort of go back and you feel like you've been out of it and you've like maybe lost some of your connections or you've forgotten or things have moved on and you're suddenly like feeling like oh I'm back in this place as a different person because I've got a child you know and all these different things going on in your head and you do you just you just lose your confidence so I think actually um after selling my business I definitely wasn't confident that's such a surprise to hear because you come across as someone who's so confident I feel like I found it again you found it now but obviously you've had to you've grown through what you've gone through is what it seems like and it's such an important message to share and just having you as a role model to other women because even as I'm listening to you I can think of individuals that I know firsthand who've gone through exactly what you've gone through this is a story we hear over and over very briefly on the subject of role models I feel like there's so many other things I want to ask you but I heard about you having a female role model quite early on in your career a lady called Anna yeah that's amazing she we actually used to work around here What a coincidence.

10:06Yeah, very close here. Do you feel like the amount of female role models has changed now? Do you feel like women have more, less or the same women to look up to now? I was talking about this earlier with someone about having role models. We've got to be able to see these women from all backgrounds, all sectors, all verticals, all ages doing amazing things so that we can see that it's possible. if I look back I think it was quite unusual because also the other interesting thing was that her husband worked for her so she was like in charge she was pregnant and would bring her baby into work and would just like leave it on the floor in a little you know fur rug she was nails running a very successful very profitable business and her husband was behind the scenes and he used to come do all the finances and the accounting and stuff which was kind of like at the time like the other way around it would normally be like the women doing all the um you know the PAYE and the stuff like that so I think she really did inspire me but obviously at the time I didn't realize that and I remember telling her that I was going to set up a business like hers and she was a bit of a weird thing isn't it to tell your boss and she said something like oh no you're not you know you're not Emma you wouldn't but basically she was saying something along the lines of like you'd actually be bored doing this you know you need to do something else and I probably would have been bored doing what she did but she was very successful and the thing that I learned from her she treated us so well so she paid us really well whenever we used to go away she used to put us up in these amazing hotels like um hotels that aren't actually so amazing anymore but at the time were like you know the five star like the coolest hotels and the reason that I know this area because we're in Shoreditch now is her um first office was here she bought an office here actually um ages ago and she used to take us out to these really cool restaurants that we'd never be able to you know we were like in our 20s so we'd never be able to afford to go there and we used to go for really nice dinners and have amazing cocktails and like I was just like wow you know this woman's amazing and so now today for women do you feel like that number has grown across I think there are I just think they're way more visible I think maybe the those women were there but we weren't aware of them because we know we weren't on social media then this was like I don't know 20 must be I'm 45 now so this must be in over 20 years ago we didn't have any of that kind of thing um so it really was just like do you know someone yeah who you're working for i don't remember there being anyone else but um you're super lucky to have that experience i was yeah she sounds amazing i want to meet her i did actually track her down on linkedin i think recently when someone had asked me and i was just like i just wanted to let you know that you know you're amazing yeah amazing and you touched on dragon's den as well which is something else i wanted to briefly ask you we're going to get into female founders rise your exit angel investing those are some big topics I want to try and make some time for as well but just because you were talking about Dragon's Den before I this is probably a coincidence but you are now my third guest on the show who's been on Dragon's Den and just so happen all three of them have all been women so again it's probably a coincidence but I wonder whether there is now that you are the third female guest I'm interviewing who's been on Dragon's Den you know of course I'm wondering is there something there i wonder whether it's almost you know easier to go on dragon's den and pitch even though it's a four hour it's a grueling process but does that seem more attractive to women than going to vcs i don't know but it's just i don't know because i think um with dragon's den um for us it was 20 years ago we went on 20 18 years ago so it was a totally different program to how it is now um i think now they often go and source founders and businesses to go on based on you know they probably want to have a good mix of business types and people and all that kind of stuff um at the time it was really new dragon's den and i just thought it might all be a bit made up so i just applied on a whim and actually the business that i applied for wasn't making any money and wasn't doing anything and i literally just remember doing it as a bit of a joke and i put in that we wanted 300 grand and we were valuing the business um so we wanted 200 grand and we're valuing the business at two million or something like that I mean I had I didn't even know how to do valuations this was just like take a total piss take and then for some reason we got on we had an interview and we got on and then I was like I need to make this business that has never made any money that's like six months old be valued at two million pounds how do I do that and my background is actually so I did economics accounting and law at uni so like numbers is like my forte so I managed to create these complicated equations which I also managed to remember and they didn't show this in the um in the thing but like I just flipped the whiteboard over and I was like do you want to see how I got here and it came out as two million pounds and they're like oh okay um and we got we got the funding but they actually gave us 200 grand for 30 percent so I said 200 grand for 10 percent yeah so at the time it was the biggest single investment ever um I also dragged my business partner on there um but he really didn't want to go on Dragon's Den and he was totally not up for it at all and it was kind of my little project that I'd it's kind of a long story but anyway he he definitely wasn't up for it I was up for it for like initially just to sort of scope out is this thing real and then we got funding um not only did you get funding but you obviously made history by getting the biggest amount at that point yeah I think since then there's obviously been people that got more but um yeah up until that point anyway from the outside looking in it almost seems as though linking back a little bit to the confidence theme which might be a recurring topic as we continue the conversation but it almost seems as though your confidence has kind of gone on a bit of a u-shape in terms of this high confidence at the start of your career you had this female ceo this boss you kind of looked up to you had that confidence to go on dragon's den and sell a business even though it wasn't revenue generating yeah that was like amazing you had all that amazing stuff and then it almost from the sounds of it kind of dipped with some of the failures the google experience maybe the the kids and now it's kind of like you're going back up and finding it again yeah i think running a business is very wearing tiring as we know um and so that was like right at the beginning when i was 25 like oh you know we're invincible we can do anything and then we had the recession in 2008 and then you know your your team end up leaving and going to someone else and it's like feels hard you know and you have all these things it's like constantly being sort of slightly worn down and then you add children into the mix and you know some of my children slept really well and some didn't and then you add in you know various other things um going to google that not working out and then also after that I did set up another business with someone and that didn't work out that was like another knock to the um thing and then actually I did my consultancy for a long time and I obviously then I had that session with the mindset guy and finally I sort of got my mindset sorted but still I wasn't doing what I loved.

17:06I think the last year and three months has been when I found my voice and found my confidence because to cut a very long story short I was ill for about a year and a half mentally and physically just had all these things going wrong with me all the time and so I basically had a bit of a breakdown and I had long COVID and a whole and the perimenopause like a mix of everything all came together I moved my family to Wales that didn't work out I moved them all back so moving four children like schools there and schools back and my husband lost his job twice and had had an accident before that and then we had COVID and like I literally was like a shadow of my former self Jesus Unable to do anything really actually Like not even go to like a dinner party Or go to a client meeting I'd be having like a sort of a panic attack I didn't realise it was a panic attack at the time Wow And then finally Last So not the summer we just had So now like 18 months ago I got I finally found a doctor who helped me And made lots of changes I did a post about this actually on LinkedIn yesterday made lots of changes to my life and started therapy anti-anxiety meds stopped stopped doing my consultancy sold my house in wales that i'd bought when i sold my business started investing in female founders which has been amazing for my life my brain my like you know energy set up female fans rise so i kind of like changed everything and that i've slowly got better and i've kind of come out the other side and i'm now doing my my what i love you know this is my true passion it's what I want what I always would have loved to have done if I knew I could and it's just happened so I feel like well I'm so happy to sit with you now you're out the other side I'm sorry you went you went through all of that but lovely segue into female founders yeah got there in the end you're the perfect you know guest of course for many reasons to be on the strategy and tragedy podcast but Jesus it sounds like you really went through the ringer there so I'm sorry to hear it but again glad that you're through it I think we all have these struggles don't we and I remember the very very very beginning like when I was first saying to my friend who's a naturopath like all these things going wrong she said something's going to come out of this and it's all going to be worthwhile and it's hard to believe it in the moment and also that I didn't expect it to be like 18 months of not feeling right and thinking I was getting better and then suddenly something would happen but like now I'm like I can see everything that's happened to me has led me to where I am today.

19:43Amazing. Yeah. Well, welcome to here where you are today, sat with me and telling me about your amazing story. So Female Founders Rise, I want to congratulate you not only on such a great initiative, we'll hear more about it in just a sec, but also to congratulate you on the fact that my LinkedIn feed, you mentioned LinkedIn before, are absolutely full of other women who are female founders who are part of the tribe who are sharing their voices their stories and it's all because of you they're all tagging you they're all tagging female founders rise there's this big movement so big pat on the back huge kudos for that thank you you've grown it to a community of 2 000 members and i read that you said that the reason why you set it up was because in your words as a woman it's different what did you mean by that line exactly it's really tricky because quite a lot of people ask me that and actually I was talking to a female founder yesterday and she said it's just so different isn't it as a female founder so I think when you're a female founder you know it's different there's lots of things I think obviously we know that only two percent of VC funding goes to women um so the funding side is often more difficult um we also often set up different kinds of businesses so maybe some more more purposed businesses um but I think what I was trying to say like as a woman it's different is you do get treated differently I remember um my investors and my board treating me differently you know if you're upset about something it's like oh you know you're hormonal exactly um you know you're not really allowed I I remember crying in a board meeting and then I had a session with this coach and she was like you just can't do that you've got to be nails if you do that you're seen as weak you know this is the second time I've heard you say nails what do you mean by that you've got to be nails could be like really like you know hardcore and you know and I'm one of those people it's like if someone upsets me even if it's at work that would make me cry you know I've cried quite a lot of time at work like if a if someone's aggressive or horrible to me like I can't be like put on this like I don't know exterior where I don't care because I do because like my work is a part of me and something in particular happened which really upset me um when I was running my business and I basically I think I did cry um and I just remember then having a session with this woman and she was like if you go in like that they will just totally discount you which they sort of were a bit you know a bit like oh you're just a woman oh don't worry about I mean, she's probably just having a bit of a bad day kind of thing.

22:17When actually, like, what they done was really quite serious and horrible. And it really did upset me. Have I gone totally off tangent? Not really, no. But you are making me think of the translation of, you know, the same. Oh, why it's different? Why is it different as a woman? Yeah. And then I think also there's the thing, like, a lot of us will go on to have children. And obviously, I am a mum of four. so I'm very since I had my breakdown my husband has taken on 60 to 70 percent of the work with the kids which is amazing it's like the tables have totally turned but before it was like as a mum you just do everything you know he was off traveling and it would be always like I would do it and what I've noticed actually which is really interesting is the schools always call me yeah so like as a mum you are the one that first port of call you're the first port of call yeah and I'm always one that they email I'm like hang on a minute I'm co-parenting with my husband can you um so I think and and actually just the way that my children are and I think many children are is that they turn to their mums often first because you know you might have been with them on maybe this is going to change but like historically you've had maternity leave you've been around with them more the dads have been off at work I know that's probably going to change with the hybrid working all of that but um there's definitely that pull and then obviously you know often we do more of the logistical type things so if you look at the school whatsapps it's most of the mums who are on the school whatsapps doing all the logistics doing all the organization i've actually come off the school whatsapps and i said to my husband you can go on i think he's on it now and i bet they applaud him what a great dad but it's interesting so i had to i made the decision to come off that and that's like i know that axel my little one probably doesn't get invited to all the birthday parties because they can't find so actually sometimes i'm like you tracked me down so you obviously want him there but he we're not on that big like and I will miss out on things but also for my own mental well-being I don't want to be on those whatsapps but that's just an example like as a woman you often we know the stats show that we're negative not negatively that sounds but you know we're more likely to care for our ugly parents and the children and that load falls to us so of course it's different and then we do have our hormones and we do have you know the way that we are it we're different yeah we're different to men you know we're both great but being a female founder and also I know there's so much work being done by so many people to change things but the way that historically we've been treated in the past is not the same I've sat on advisory boards where I've been totally ignored by other men um who just look at me and they just like I've sold my business I'm more successful than most of you sat around this table but you don't actually want to listen to what I've got to say.

24:58So I can really feel the anger rising within me. And I'm having to make, I'm so angry at you, Emmy, how dare you. I'm having to make such an effort with myself to calm it down. I can feel my blood boiling because I'm fully aware of the stats and the situation. And I, of course, completely agree that as a woman, it is very different for many, many different reasons. but for our own mental health and to save conserve our own energy i'm going to focus the conversation on how things are changing yeah and focus it back to female founders rise and how things are changing you mentioned a few statistics there that i will touch on very briefly so you did mention about less than two percent of uk vc funding that goes female founders let alone when we get into the racial side of things as well uh female founders report sorry female founders forum report that came out in December showed that there was 2.3 percent in the first half of 2023 and then of course we've got the new legislation with angel investors as well so you're an angel so you know that we'll get into that too but you know the numbers are bleak and it does look like things are getting worse dare I say the numbers are not painting a pretty picture but you have had a ton of momentum and success with female founders rise so what are some of the impactful things that you're doing what are some of the achievements that you've managed to to have in the past kind of year or so one of the things that I want to do is try and focus on the positive things that we can do to change so it's almost like how can we rally all these women together to come together and work on and men rally men as well I mean it's great we've got lots of men who want to support as well but in terms of like one of the things we're doing which we've just launched is a personal branding challenge for women so we've got 250 women who are basically coming and learning about how to build their personal brand offline and online so it's offline would be going on podcasts and doing talks and stuff like that but often before you get the confidence to do that you need to just start sharing your voice and content online and even that is very scary like of course it's scary the first time you do it so bringing together women to do it together in like a community in a sort of safe place that's what we're doing at the moment that's incredible to see all these women suddenly starting to share their voices and share their passions and their expertise and through that they'll find investors and they'll find strategic partners and they'll find clients and they'll find great team members and things like that um so i think it's really and you know sometimes i was like looking at the stats and i remember at the beginning i'd be like i actually can't change that stat i literally can't and then i start thinking what is the point of me doing this because i'm just bashing my head against a brick wall then i did speak to a guy and he said it's a marathon not a sprint i spoke to another guy today and he was saying this is a 30-year thing you know and i realized like i actually can't change it there's like unconscious bias there's conscious bias there's not enough female vcs there's legislation's being changed there's also the fact that um you know less women historically have set up tech businesses and people want to invest in tech so we need to get more women into tech but that's going to take time we need to go into schools and and show girls that they can be successful you know role models um also women are more likely to build purpose-led businesses because you know like me with female founders rise I'm not hoping to make loads and loads of money I just want to do something that has touched my heart and is more impactful so I think it's about trying to focus on the good things and also I feel like if we keep telling women they're not going to get funded it's kind of like it's even more off-putting yeah it's more off-putting and so this conference that we just did was just really like having women talking about their stories how they raised 500 grand um one of them literally raised 500 grand while she was having a baby and like her baby was really young um and another woman has had bootstrapped and then she'd found um an angel collective and then she'd found family office so you know we all know that it's hard but being constantly told that um is not always helpful and actually like what can we do to actively change it what annoys me is that some of these policies in place to supposedly change it I actually don't know how much weight they have might get myself in trouble for saying this because I haven't said it publicly yet before um but and I might have my facts wrong so I will wait for the haters to um to tell me off caveats out the way yeah caveats there's something called the invest in women code yeah and every year it's celebrated that more and more people are signing up to the invest in women code but the number of the amount of money going vc money and money in investment going to women is barely changing and when you look at that investing women code anyone can sign up to it it's all anonymous data and it doesn't actually tell you whether these people have invested any women it's actually translating into the cash yeah it's all like hidden so it's like anyone can sign up you might as well just sign up put on your website i've signed up to the invest in women code you don't have to do anything about it you don't even yeah it's just it's a tick box and that those are the kind of initiatives that really annoy me and i said i spoke to this woman from the government and i was like first of all there's not enough women in government supporting female entrepreneurship um and entrepreneurship in underrepresented founders and secondly what is the point of something that's just totally pointless it's just a box tick that doesn't mean anything it's not going to make any change i don't want to see people ticking a box to say i mean i'm on the investing room code i want to see the hard stats i want to see you proactively coming to my events which by the way we don't see many vcs coming to and investors and i'm still not sure and maybe it's because they don't believe that the women at our events are investable i don't know what it is maybe they're too busy but if everyone's saying they want to invest in more female founders you have to do a bit of work to like go and find them yeah because you can't just pay lip service no yeah and so that annoys me but Anyway, try to stay on the positive, try to showcase, just raise more awareness to female founders.

30:56I mean, I think the more female founders that we can see, the more that we can hear about the businesses they're running, the more that we can buy from them, the more that we can support them, the better. And in turn, also prepare them to run long-term, profitable, sustainable businesses, which is what we're trying to do so they can understand the different funding options. Because VC funding is not for most, is for hardly anyone. but because there's not because there's confusion and i was confused and most people are confused unless you really understand bc funding you wouldn't understand that it's only for companies that want to be do 100x do 100 times otherwise you're going to fail venture returns yeah exactly so most people don't want to have that kind of a business yeah but we need to educate people about all the different kinds of businesses you can have and the different ways you can get funded and also help people to build a long-term profitable business because that's where the financial freedom comes in for women key words that are directly picked from my very next question actually so it's almost like you read my mind is I did read about your mission being empowering women to achieve that financial freedom through entrepreneurship and as you know we both know having run our own businesses it isn't for the faint-hearted it is incredibly tough you know that's one of the purposes of this podcast as well is exactly that the education sharing more stories because it is overly glamorized I guess you've kind of already like half answered that question at least anyway but entrepreneurship being so tough and notoriously risky why for you is that still the route that you're shining a light on for female founders to achieve financial freedom I think for female I think for women in general being a founder is only for a small number of people it's really hard you've got to have it's not for a lot of people and for some people working in a big corporate it's the right you know way and they can make money and then they can invest in female founders they can spend their money with female founders i think um for me what i would love to see is the female founders that are running their business running a long-term profitable sustainable business so that sometimes means you need funding and sometimes it can be customer funded especially if like like us you're running a set you were running a service-based business I think what I've seen for myself is that I have financial freedom so I can invest in female founders I make I have my own bank account I don't have to ask my partner like what I spend my money on and I hear quite a few people that might be in a situation where they want to leave their partner or change their circumstances and or even make an investment and they don't have that financial freedom so I think if you can run a long-term profitable sustainable business which as we said is not necessarily easy that does enable more money to go into the hands of women and also running a business itself is like great sort of business financial knowledge isn't it yeah absolutely well I'm a capitalist Capricorn so this completely speaks to my heart as well and I do think that women in order to be fully empowered they need to have money I'm more and more especially with these interviews I'm doing more people that I'm speaking to that's becoming more and more apparent to me which is again where that anger rises when I do read those reports and especially with the new legislation on the angel investors as well which is definitely going to have a drastic impact but again I love what you're doing let's keep it positive stick with the positive so you're in a position now where you're able to angel invest and you set up female founders rise um you've successfully had three exits um so i want to come on to that sort of chapter in your story as well with your previous businesses and kind of what you learned from each um what i'll just frame before i ask you the question is some interesting research came out recently that showed that the more businesses that a founder had gone through the the higher the likelihood it steadily increases of success when they set up their next business so for example after the first one the chance of success increases by 10 after two businesses it's 19 after three it's 27 all the way up to 10th business which goes up to like 67 but like you're i must be on that one now you're more than half you're more than half as likely to have that success so with that research as the backdrop to my next question what lessons have you taken from each exit to improve your chance of success for the next company that you started given that you are a serial entrepreneur so sort of exited a lot of the same kind of time so I suppose I can just share my learnings about running a business and also maybe like what I did in the past I'm maybe not going to do again so um I think the biggest learning I've had from the breakdown and from being ill is that my health and well-being is critical to success and I I need to just that has to be my number one priority with female founders rise so I never want to grow female founders rise to the point where it's stressful for me um and like for example last week before the google event i just committed to i have to do yoga hot yoga every single day i took the day off before the event to do loads of you know which previously i wouldn't have done before i was ill i basically just pushed myself so hard i would never have a break i would like read i never read fiction i'd read business books all the time trying to better myself even on holiday i would be listening to podcasts as I was going for a walk business podcasts how many business podcasts can I watch how many webinars can I watch like constantly like feeling like I'm not enough and I don't have enough knowledge and never taking that break for myself and then on top of that um you know being a mom trying to do everything else so I would say my biggest learning which I feel like a lot of businesses fail because of founder burnout huge number because it just all gets too much and it becomes this like noose around your neck and I think that happens even more so if you take VC funding and angel funding because you also just have to answer to other people so what I kind of love about female founders rise and I want to keep it this way is if I'm having a shit day I could just shut my laptop or I could you know go away and I haven't got loads of people breathing down my neck because I just because I've been ill I don't want that again I've had that in the past and I know how it is and I know how all-encompassing is and I remember when we're trying to sell our business and we were on holiday and I just couldn't relax you know like you're working all the time then you can't even relax on holiday because you've got a call in saying oh well someone's going to leave the company and like actually if they leave the company is the business are they still going to buy us and I can still remember it now it's just like you never are able to switch off as a founder it's incredibly you'll know this it's incredibly difficult to switch off it's your passion it's always there it's like it's all I want to talk about what I want to do and I think that sometimes it's just too much so I'd say that's like a big massive learning for me is I have to prioritize my well-being and basically say no to lots of things and you know now I have got to the point I get so many requests I have to just sometimes ignore them and that goes against my like trying to be polite and nice to everyone um I just physically mentally can't do them so that I suppose that's the mental mental and physical well-being do you still struggle to say no if you ignore some of those requests is it easier for you to simply ignore than to say no well I've got I've got a trick now that I have a out of office on LinkedIn which I pay 50 pounds for LinkedIn premium and it says I'm really sorry I'm getting too many messages which is true here's a link to sign up to female founders rise so if they do want to sign up they know where to go and I'm helping them and if they don't and it's something else I don't feel rude and I'm actually telling them the truth I cannot answer all these messages there's just too many so then I don't feel so rude um but yeah I think it's that setting of boundaries isn't it and we're so driven to succeed and make money and make impact and we're we're all you know if you're a founder you've got this big dream and this vision and you want whatever you're doing to come to life and be successful and we can push ourselves so hard and just keep pushing and pushing and even when you're getting those signs you're pushing yourself I mean I remember I was having a lot of signs flickery eyes all the time you know just a lot of things were not right obviously I had long COVID and other things mixed in but there's a long time eventually your body will be your body basically says this is enough you have no choice you're having a year where you can do absolutely nothing yeah um but and I feel that happens a lot with founders because we just we're not we're not taught are we like how to look after our well-being and actually you you know you're you're so driven and then you've got these people behind you like you've got your team who are like you're responsible for your team your investors there's just a lot it's so stressful and I can definitely attest to that being um a very clear pattern because even just on this podcast it's become a very recurring theme with other founders other guests the you know health is your health is is your wealth you know all those cliches they are cliches for a reason it's come up time and time again so as much as we're at a disadvantage because of our gender I do also recognize that we're both well-spoken fully abled white women I do have a fake posh accent by the way which is a different story I'm definitely not upper middle class whatsoever um what are some of the privileges that you recognize that have helped you get to where you are today yeah and when you just said we're disadvantaged because we're women I think we also do have the advantages but they're just not necessarily celebrated I was actually talking to someone the other day who was saying that he feels that um companies run by women well we know that companies run by women are actually more like to be more successful but he was talking about like the culture of the company and how that's a sign to growth and to um to doing but like better long-term growth and if you can measure the culture of the company and he was saying he really wants to measure the culture of companies run by women because he thinks that it's much stronger and that ultimately that leads to more growth so but yes I have definitely had privileges I mean I grew up in an amazing family with um my dad who's a doctor my mum who's a nurse I'm one of four siblings I went to private school for quite some time even though I was very unhappy and ended up having to leave um and then went to state school and I loved it but my parents were like we lived in the middle of nowhere in Herefordshire and they felt that the biggest thing they could do for us was to put us through private education so I obviously had that um and I think growing up in a loving family with two parents we grew up without a television so we had this very like you know what's I don't know but just very wholesome yeah you know like out in the countryside lots of games board games my mum like around my dad around we you know obviously because he sent us to private school we didn't have loads of disposable cash but they made that decision to do that so I think that would be the main thing that I got an incredible education very very loving family um this kind of very sheltered upbringing um and then that enabled me to go to university and then you know you've got that network effect haven't you the people that you meet at those private schools at the university um they then become your network which inevitably opens doors and and helps you on the way from there yeah um amazingly you're paying it forward now so i want to try and squeeze in a couple of quick questions towards the end here because annoyingly we're running out of time i knew i would have tons of questions i wouldn't be able to ask you but i know it's just kind of warming up i know this is why i wish we had a few hours and but paying it forward to kind of segue onto the angel investing piece very briefly so you angel invest yourself what do you typically look for in potential deals obviously you focus on female founders yeah I only invest in people so well actually um when I sold my business I did do a 50k investment into a VC fund I didn't know what a VC fund was at the time this is what I was saying to you like you don't know you don't know but I was helping I was saying thank you to a guy that helped me um with um something that had happened in my business and he'd really helped me and I was like there's 50k put that in your fund thank you actually in that fund there's always meant to be one fund returner and it's going to be a female founder of a retail business I say it's going to be I hope it is because we've already had some money um because they do the sort of secondary sale so we've had some money from that um so that's really interesting um I need to start wearing her clothes more actually um you able to name drop what's the meet me and em do you know me and yeah um so that was just a total coincidence they invest in her and right at the early stage and she's now doing really really well so they we've had like a partial sale but we're still part of the um the ongoing um and then i did a couple of angel investments before i was like i'm going to do angel investing so what happened was i was reading all the stats about women getting no funding and I was like this is just ridiculous doing my head in um at the same time I'd been ill and I decided to sell my house and I thought with the profits that I'd made so I bought the house in Wales when I sold my business because I wanted to have something to show for my hard work that didn't work out because we moved there and then after that I just wanted to like move on and we I made about 80 or 90k um in the selling buying and selling of the house so I decided that that profit I would put into female founders um I think I've actually spent more than that now because it's just like I just love it so much I can't say no to anyone but um I had like a year so um I think I sold it last October and what's your investment thesis now what do you look for so I have invested in about 25 30 founders I like to do a real diverse mix um but most of the time it's something that I'm passionate about so a lot of it would be around health and well-being um one of them is an app for um the creative industries for young people getting to creative industries and obviously I used to work in media marketing so that makes sense um there's a lot in well-being um and then also some of them quite random like there's this lady called Yanwin and it came through one of my angel collectives and she runs a robotics company and I know absolutely nothing about robotics so I was like okay I'll just do like a couple of grand I think I did like one or two grand um because I'm like through that I will learn and also like I want to see women doing these amazing things and then I invest in a company called Jude which is all about um in the sort of incontinence market I mean I probably described that totally wrongly but she's sort of disrupting a whole area of the market that's like never been talked about and um I actually just gained that came through an angel collective I literally watched the video and I was like this woman is incredible I just actually put 11 111 pounds in because I often do the symbolic yeah for me I quite often do the 111s is that the angel thing yeah well it's not it's I think it is that but I read somewhere when I was really ill not really ill that's an exaggeration when I wasn't well I read this book by Gabby Bernstein which is called the universe has got your back and she talked about um how often she would see like 11 you know 11 11 on her phone when that's a good sign and I maybe I was just not clutching at straws but I was just like when I read that and then I but then when I would see 11 11 I'd be like oh that's a sign everything's going to be okay so I was getting these signs that everything is going to be okay so then it's like a lucky thing so now I'm almost like well if I don't do I quite often do like 1111 or 2222 and then I sometimes feel like if I don't do that I almost want to do that because I'm like I want the founder to be like to be okay and just to pick up on something you mentioned before about even investing a little bit even just through that education process just to plug one of the other episodes which was with Andy Iyem the founder of Angel Investing School who's so amazing so if you're listening do go and check out that episode as well but he talks a lot about that you know he says you know angel investing can be one of the fastest ways to lose money there are actually more benefits in terms of that education exposure everything else so I just wanted to to highlight that additional benefit quick penultimate question I'm gonna have to really choose carefully but I'm very curious while we're still with the angel investment topic is do you ever get any negative backlash from the guys at all do you ever get any male founders give you a bit of attitude because you won't look at them it's interesting like so i very clearly say that i invest in women and i still get lots of men contacting me so they obviously haven't done their research so that's not great i mean research you must just do your research yeah um most of the time when i say i only invest in women they're like oh that's cool you know great well done i think like you know sometimes it'll be like oh why why do you need to do that and it's just like i actually can't be bothered to have a conversation with you so that's good so that's kind of the worst that you get it's just most of the time i think most guys that are raising investment have got the message that it's easier for white men than it is for underrepresented founders so they kind of know most so hashtag not all men yeah um but i'd say most founders are kind of aware of that so they don't normally um come back and maybe they do but they're not saying anything to me yeah yeah good to hear all right final question which is a tradition on this show it's called strategy and tragedy for a reason because often the best lessons can come from the biggest mistakes or tragedies you've kind of touched on this with your wellness with your health so you know maybe that's part of the answer but what's one big tragedy that's taught you an unforgettable lesson well let's not talk about the health we talked about that a lot I think and it's not a big tragedy like I mean it's not a tragedy but it basically took one of our companies under which was when we went on Dragon's Den we had a compare an online comparison site for online gambling which was the industry that I worked in when I first left uni not not an industry I love but you know you just get into it and um I didn't know anything about search engine optimization this was 20 years ago everything like digital was like a bit of a dark art we were we were at the forefront of digital but we were learning all the time and we use a search engine optimization agency which we paid quite a lot of money to to help us and I found them by basically seeing who was like the best speaker at this event in America so I was like right in America this guy's talking he's the keynote speaker he must be really good so he was really good but he was really good at also the dark art of SEO and at the time there was a lot of like no one understood how SEO worked and especially in the sort of some of the more unregulated industries I mean let's say like hardly anyone understood digital so it was all a bit like wild wild west and basically to cut a very long story short we got them to do our SEO we didn't exactly understand what they're doing we kind of understood what they're doing we didn't understand that it wasn't allowed in you know we knew that it was a bit sort of not great um but everyone was doing it it was just like this is what everyone was doing as a world or the west anyway we got reported to google by someone by a competitor and we got penalized in google which meant that they reduced our rankings from like number one and number two to like number 50 so basically just lose all your traffic overnight so we were running a business we were hiring people we were making decisions based on i think at the time our income was like 20k a month or something and we lost all that overnight and the seo agency were like don't worry we can do and we can change it all around and they kept telling us they could do things to rectify it after three months still not rectified so my lesson from that was like never ever well first of all never rely on one channel that's you know don't just be like and get if you're trying to build a growth business and you know you can't just be like i'm only ever going to use email marketing or only ever going to use this you've got to have a mix because you can't rely on one thing because you only need the algorithm to change or facebook suddenly chuck their prices up or whatever um but i think the main thing was is that you've got to have even though you use experts you've got to have an understanding of what that expert's doing and you have to have some understanding of like something that's so critical in your business you've got to understand it you can't just be like there you go you do it because essentially we lost our whole business because of that i'm smiling just because not obviously that's horrible news it's fine i mean i didn't really enjoy that business anyway I was like I don't want to work yeah it's all good but um coincidentally that's actually pretty much the exact same answer that I had on a different interview which was with Nick Telson Sillat the co-founder of Design My Night and it was around the same time as well around 20 years ago and it was a very very similar story in terms of wild wild west did you say digital was new and that over-reliance not only one single channel but on an agency being outsourced not fully clear what was happening they were doing something which I believe was called like black hat techniques yeah that's the same thing right black SEO yeah exactly so such a coincidence yeah kind of the same thing has come up again Emmy I'm so genuinely sad to say that we are out of time because as you said we are kind of just getting warmed up and stuck into it but thank you so much for coming on the show for making the time in your super busy schedule to come on and share some of your story it's been a pleasure to have you thank you and thank you so much for listening I really hope you've enjoyed this episode please hit that subscribe button if you haven't already and tune in to next time