Ep. 123 How To Curate A Career You Love By Taking Every Opportunity With Irene Agbontaen

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1:33irene agbontine is someone whose career is defined by being the change she wanted to see back in 2018 she was working in selfridges and becoming increasingly frustrated at the lack of clothes on the market for taller women so she took matters into her own hands and founded ttya which stands for taller than your average the brand saw monumental success being worn by huge celebrities like kylie jenner right from the beginning however irene says it was never about her brand instead it was about opening up a conversation about inclusion. One thing that really struck me throughout Irene's career is how much she built this career block by block.

2:07She's now in a full time job. She still has this business. She's still been really, really committed to her journey and what she wants to change about the world. What I really wanted from this episode is to show how much you can really build your career from a number of different things that you're good at by really just saying yes to opportunities she is such a good example of that I honestly like just just wait till you hear her whole career trajectory and how she's made each decision I think it's really well it's very inspiring for me and I think that it is really empowering to know how much you can decide your future by saying yes to opportunities by working hard and by just kind of saying yes and figuring out the rest after before we get into the podcast if you could just go and rate this on whichever podcast app you are listening to this on.

2:58It makes a huge difference to the podcast and the types of incredible conversations we're able to have, the types of guests we're able to get on. So no, it's probably something you don't think about. But if you could just go rate it now or follow it, it makes a huge difference. Thank you so much.

3:17Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited for this conversation. Me too. I feel like we're gonna have a lot to talk about. We're gonna get into the gist bips. So always start I always always always start with early life and I would just love for you to paint us a picture of like what early life looked like for you. Yeah for sure I am South London born and raised still am at heart and I think for me it's been so interesting over the years because I've seen so how South London has morphed and shaped every element of my life if I'm really going to be honest um I come from a West African household I'm Nigerian so I always say I'm like UK via Lagos um but my mom's Nigerian my dad's Nigerian um I grew up with my mom um I'm the eldest of four kids and I know it is a lot I'm like you know what I'm saying girl that's why I feel like I'm a bit of a control freak if I'm honest because I've been like a micromanager of like my siblings life for like the rest for their whole lives but um I think it was you know seeing how much my mum worked so hard and it's installed in me sometimes good things sometimes bad you know I think her interpretation of what success is is very much like you know academic being a doctor being a nurse you know that's a very typical I would say Nigerian upbringing like success is you know equals academic career you know so I think for me also it was like they success to them was also being a hard worker not necessarily a smart worker so just like working hard to provide sending money back home you know helping all their family and friends back home it wasn't about like thinking about okay I'm in the UK how do I build and leverage here it was always like with a short-sighted intention of like this is just a pit stop and I'm probably going to end up retiring back home obviously it never really happened and I think there's still time if she wants to move back I'm sure she will but I think it was growing up it was always the mentality of I need to work hard I'm supporting my mum and my parents and my other siblings back home so every month I work and I send money back home or you know my I'm gonna you know my my gran is building a house okay I'm gonna work send money back home so my gran can do that that came with its own kind of push and pull because she never had the mentality of I'm gonna be stable here what opportunities are here for me should I be getting on the property ladder really early it was just like you know we lived in a council estate let's just make ends meet let's just get by and I think that mentality with her hard work always kind of in the back of my mind I always wanted more like I always used to me when I grew up I grew up on an estate which was my first interaction of community everyone used to knock for you like can you come play outside you know everything that we used to see the people that had money were like people who sold drugs and like you know people our community leaders were people that we saw had money and so for us we were just like okay like he's got a new car you know he has always the freshest garments um but the community is what held each other up and even our style sense of like like cna and like kappa bomber jackets and like you know rope chains and like in being inspired by like 90s hip-hop I think for me growing up seeing that where I were on the streets on the roadsides also empowered my creativity I didn't realize it at the time but now when I look back I think it did but I think that real sense of community of growing up on a council estate like and having everything that you need within arm's reach oh my mom's working late tonight our community babysitter was a lady called auntie wilma and she used to um basically babysit all the kids locally we all went to the same school um so she was almost like the community hangout spot everyone used to hang outside her house all the kids used to hang inside her house so you know for us there was that real sense of community growing up and it was just like okay that shifted for me I would say as I got older when I started in the workplace because even at college I went to SFX which is a South London college and I think most of my friends after we left school either went to SFX or they went to Christ the King those are the two kind of real colleges South London deep-rooted colleges where most people kind of divided and conquered and I think now like when I look back there was like Tiny Temple wasn't went to SFX it's like so many people that came from that real humble South London beginnings and a lot of us had similar paths because we all ended up at the same college and even going to uni I went to a very popular uni I went to Kingston uni but then some of my friends went to Brunel some went to Luton so there was that very like sense of community like you know we had ACS crew which was like African Caribbean society at all the different unis so like you know we would drive to Luton to go Club M and then they would come to Kingston to go to the works and I would go Brunel for like you know ACS raves but again it was just that real sense of community and people traveling to see each other and I'll be honest I grew up um predominantly in Clapham and Brixton so I never really um saw the race divide I would say until I really went into the workplace just because in the area that I lived it was heavily Nigerians heavily Jamaicans um you know I remember Brixton KFC would be like Jamaica Central, Peckham would be Nigeria Central.

8:50So, you know, growing up for me, my school was a very diverse school. My college was a very diverse college. Even at uni was very, very diverse. I would say it's only really when I went into the workplace and you would start to see that there was a bit of a shift. And, you know, for me growing up, we didn't grow up with like, you know, exponential amounts of money. Like, you know, we just lived to get by. So as soon I was as I was old enough I remember my my neighbor come running to my house when she got her NI card and I was like mum I need to get my NI number like I want to be able to work and then it was like healthy competition and then she would run over and knock me I got my driving license I'd be like how do you get a driving license I need to get my driving license so we were like very very like independent women from a very young age but also equally we knew that everything that we wanted in life we had to work for so retail was a lot of like students second job and you know I I grew up working in, you know, on the high street, you know, understanding retail, understanding like merchandising, understanding how you made something look good for customers to want it to be desirable.

9:54So all of that, obviously, I didn't know what was waiting for me later on in life. But just having those kind of real humble retail beginnings, I would say, really set me up for TTYA later on in life. um and then again like because I always had to kind of facilitate for myself to work and and be able to kind of support myself um I used to like do the door at a club night you know and just to get by make some money um but also like build my network and I think that was the real foundation for me where I really started to see the intersections of fashion and music and lifestyle and how they all came together what was because you've you've painted a picture of a few different versions of success you've said that success for your parents was like being a doctor or a nurse and success for your estate was whoever had the money so you said a lot of the time that drugs were involved with that what was when you were coming generally out of education in your mind what would success have looked like for you in the future what were you working towards I think at that time transparently I was just working towards getting good grades I wasn't really thinking that far ahead and I'll be honest with you I think my upbringing of seeing people come people go um I lost a lot of close friends you know to the road life so I never I've never ever really wanted been one of those people that's like I need a five-year plan I need a 10-year plan I've always never been like that and I'm still not really to this day like I've always kind of worked with a short short-sighted thinking of just like okay at that time success was getting good grades because I wanted my mum to be proud I know the sacrifices that she had made and I knew she would be disappointed if at the end of like going to college or going to uni my grades were just not great you know and she would I know she would feel that personally of like I've failed as a parent so at that time success was just getting good grades making my mum happy and then being free to basically go do what I want and when you looked into your future in terms of career was did you have any idea of what you kind of wanted to do at that time I didn't if I'm going to be 100 % honest I didn't I did like retail because I was using retail as a way to support myself through college but I was always good at science academically I was always good at science I did a science degree I did a forensic science degree so academically I was very good at science and I will say like probably CSI gassed me to feel like I really thought that like that was like where I wanted to be like CSI um but it was I would say academically I was just thinking about how do I just get past this moment and get good grades I didn't think oh this is my end goal this is my dream job it was just like I kind of like this and I kind of like retail because I was in the retail space and I'll just figure it out when I'm done so what was your first full-time job my first full-time job was working at selfridges yeah on the shop floor yeah I was doing part-time while I was studying and then when I finished uni obviously that summer you don't have anything to do so I went full-time and I was doing like visual merchandising I was doing um stock take so I would always be in selfridges when it was empty which is usually the best times so I know that still now like the back of my hand I worked there for five and a half years um but I interned a bit at the merchandising department so they used to do all the windows displays um they were in charge of like how the product looked and i think those early days working in that department showed me about like how i think it was all about like lylan scott at that time and just like polonics and like you know kanye was having his resurgence with like ralph lorence so it was like very much polonic driven and how like you could display something in a way like a baggy polonic is pinned at the back and everything's tweaked and nothing really looks like how you think it's gonna look those Those were the early days of like me really understanding how merchandising and creating your brand and visual identity is important to how well your brand sells.

13:55And when did you first start to realise that you wanted to start a brand of your own? After I finished Selfridges, I met, there used to be a really big fashion trade show called Bread and Butter. It used to happen in Barcelona back in the day, Berlin and Barcelona. not and my boyfriend at the time used to read complex magazine and he used to get it delivered to my house and I remember used to see all the covers it was like very hip-hop inspired but you know very a mix of like sports lux meets high fashion my boyfriend at the time used to get it sent to my house and that magazine for me was a the first time that I had seen music and high fashion really um hand in hand i think kanya was on the cover it was very much giving high key low key uptown downtown right and i remember going to this trade show and they had a stand at the trade show and i walked up to the lady on the stand and i was like um i would love to get into styling i've just been like kind of assisting and doing a few little styling bits in london doing visual merchandising at selfridges i would love to get into styling more on the editorial side do you have the contact for the fashion editor and she turned around and she was like oh it's a good thing that you're speaking to her then you don't really need the contact what is it that you want to do and her name was Anoma Yai Whitaker and to this day like she's been my biggest advocate my biggest supporter she gave me my first opportunity my first job in fashion and she was basically like would you come to New York to work for me she's from East London she was a Londoner she moved to New York when she was 19 and she was like you just remind me so much of me like when I was trying to have my first hustle get on the ladder for the first time so if you're prepared to like move to New York I'd love to email you like a task to do and I was thinking yeah right like as if she's going to email me so I was like yeah cool like I'll email your assistant she was like yeah I'll put you in touch with my assistant and you can just email her I was thinking yeah right yeah she's bluffing me off um but she did she did she she put me in touch with her assistant they sent me some bogus tasks to do something to do I remember I think at the time with like Levi's and the buttons on the jeans or something and like researching it and she basically gave me an opportunity to come and work for her um come an intern for her in New York and I moved to go and work for her and that's how I left Selfridges in the end um and I moved to New York and she was a fashion editor complex and you know that was my real first like starting from the bottom now we're here job like it was getting the bagels getting the coffees you know you know prepping all the suitcases for shoots staying up really late and I remember being like you know like when you're away from home everything at home seems so much more fun like everyone was Facebook those days so like everyone on Facebook was like in Dalston like having the time of their life and I remember being like I'm so lonely like there's no one here um but I remember thinking like the reason why I'm here is to learn you know and even she picked up on it and I remember one day we had just um done a cover shoot and she was like I don't really feel like you're feeling it And I was like, it's not that it's just that I have a community back home and I don't really feel like I have a community here.

17:00So it's a bit difficult for me to integrate. And it's cool that everyone wants to be my friend because I work at Complex magazine. But who do I stand for outside of that? And she was like, I'm going to tell you something that no one really knows. I'm pregnant. Obviously, we work with a lot of hip hop artists. I can't go to them shoots no more. Like there's too much smoking, like there's too much going on. so I'm gonna need you to really lead on some of those shoots and like go to events and represent for me so every invite she would get I remember like I went to this huge like run DMC party on behalf of Complex you know and so in that way I started to build up my community and that's why New York will always have like a special part in my heart because I remember I moved there and I lived off like dollar pizza I was still paying bills in London I still had my phone bill I never really disconnected so it was like every I now became my mum it's like I was living in New York but then sending money back home just to keep the bills, just to keep myself going, but never really understanding where this was going to lead.

17:55But it did give me that real like editorial experience. And it allowed me to like build my relationships with PR, like understanding how that whole pulling works like behind the scenes in fashion. But it also made me feel like I don't really want to work on the editorial side. I just thought there's no money here. Like I don't see this being like a longevity moment. I think it's really cool that I get to work with like, you know, we shot a Pharrell cover and we shot a Kanye cover and we shot a Jim Jones cover but I like the side of like the unexpected I like working with musicians so how does that feed into what I want to do but ultimately I traveled so much equally so also for me it was like I travel a lot I like going away with my friends I never have anything that fits growing up even when our school introduced that the girls could wear trousers I never had trousers that fit me so everything think was always ankle swingers wrist swingers you know and I would say because I worked in Selfridges I found a way to kind of navigate my style it was always men's double XL it was always like a 36 waist jean and then I'd get it tailored to fit my waist but it would be super baggy like Aaliyah was like the style guru of all style gurus because it was like you know masculine meets femininity feminine am I saying that right femininity um but at that junction she would always wear like super backy tommy hill figure and like you know like an oversized like carl can i jacket or waistcoat so i was like as a tall girl i never had anything that fit so i would always be wearing men's clothes and i remember that was the first time that i was like oh it's so annoying that when i'm packing on these shoots i've always got to be thinking what am i gonna wear or like in new york they had like big and high and mighty and and like going to these stores that were just so tacky and not cool but trying to like make it work you know and I remember thinking after that like I think I need to like start my own brand but I never had the confidence to do it so I kind of just parked it here and then recession happened in New York and they were basically like we can't afford to pay you to stay here anymore you need to go home and I remember before I left New York I'd applied to ASOS and they gave me an interview when I came back and then I went to be the fashion stylist at ASOS and then it was as seen on screen so it wasn't then the big conglomerate that we know it to be now um but but starting at a business that early and starting at econ business that early now I'm morphing my shops shop retail skills I'm now morphing editorial and now I've gone into e-commerce and I would say that you know ASOS was probably one of the market leaders at that time of ripping off like celeb dresses and like being like this is seen on victoria beckham get it for nine pounds like this has been seen on sherry cole get it for eight pound you know it was very much that but also like the rate that we would shoot in that studio we'd shoot like 90 to 100 looks a day at asos that's insane it's insane like you know and then the models are catwalking all the models but it was it was literally fast fashion that's where that name came from um but again i think asos now gave me the skills of setting up an econ business and what that looked like.

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22:37so you obviously had the original idea and you had the concept that it was going to be for people who were tall and generally weren't able to find you know the options elsewhere at least definitely not the ones that still looked the way you wanted them to look and you obviously then went to ASOS I'm really interested in how at what point you suddenly decided do you know what I'm actually going to do this because there's obviously a big difference between having an idea I think we can all get really stuck on having an idea and we can all go around telling people our business ideas over and over and over and not doing them is not doing them yeah so I'm really keen to hear at what point you actually just thought I'm gonna go for it why you thought that and how you kind of leaned in and actually walked with them do you know at the point when I've really thought that okay this needs to happen was actually working at ASOS because all the models are tall and everything you don't you don't realize when you work behind the scenes just how much everything used to not so much anymore I would say but used to get retouched so the jeans were never long enough but we had a technique on a way to fold them and then they would just photoshop them longer and photoshop the crease out the the tops never fit but they would always extend them and I remember thinking if these girls that you know are doing e-com are working in the modeling industry can't find clothes that fit then it's it's bigger than just me because I you know like I hadn't worked in modeling I hadn't worked on that back end but I was like these are tall girls these are girls that are just as tall as me so I was like wow there must be like there's so many models and that was the first time when I thought actually there must be a market if I can source out where all these tall girls are why don't I just like make basics that they can go to shoots with and they can just have leggings and a long sleeve white vest I mean white tee and a white vest that fit their body that they wouldn't necessarily always have to like retouch and then I was like okay if we shoot all the time then maybe if I supplied lots of econ people basics for tall girls and they won't need to retouch so much so that's really where the idea when I thought okay there must be a customer for it when it transferred into me thinking about okay how do I cross over I had unfortunately but fortunately I had a car accident and when I got paid out from that car accident I was like I've always wanted to go to Asia I've always wanted to sort I know that you know I read up about Guangzhou it's like the hub I just thought let me just go like let me just see and I used that money I went to China I went to Hong Kong and I was like trying to like find suppliers not very successfully I'm going to be honest but I was so inspired because I had been and I had tried and I remember saying to one of my friends who also worked at ASOS at the time I'd been like I think I'm going to leave I think I just want to just do my own thing now and she was just like I work on the buy-in side maybe you could just meet with some of our of our manufacturers and see if they can do your units because your units are going to be significantly smaller than what they're used to and i would say they gave me a list of maybe like 50 suppliers and i would say 49 of them said no that my units are not going to be enough they're obviously used to like you know working with the asos the top shops the h &ms of this world who are also and i'm sure you can relate like they're ordering like you know 100 000 pieces they're just like no yeah no so so they were all just like no and then there was one supplier who was in greece and she was like i think you're onto something here i only do jersey so maybe you should just start with jersey and then let's just see how it goes so i was like okay i found the supplier let's figure it out guess we're doing jersey guess we're doing jersey and that's what i never came into this thinking i like i remember like when i did my business plan i had tailoring I had jersey I had footwear I had bed I had you know home interiors I wanted to do my own like bedding and then when you start to speak to suppliers slowly and slowly those categories get smaller and smaller and smaller that's what's so important though because I think that what you didn't do at that point is go okay cool well it's not what I want it to be so I'm not going to do it at all I think that like I go on and on and on and on about when you're starting a business you've got to start with your minimum viable product which is like you've got to go to the earliest stage of what represents your business sell it and start to get to know your customer because you won't get to know them until you're actually getting to know them like until you're seeing returns until you're seeing what they think about things until you're seeing what they don't like what they like all of this and actually what you did there was like first of all I'm so impressed that you took that money and like and just were like I'm gonna go to this place I've heard of in China to actually like find the supplier that says a lot about you but then from that point being told no and no and no and no and being given one option it would have been very easy at that point to be like cool actually I don't think this is gonna work because it doesn't look like the business I thought I was starting and actually the fact that you said yes to that opportunity at that point is literally the reason your business ended up existing because you're obviously just like okay well if this is what we can do let's do it let's learn and let's go from there yeah exactly and I think at that time I was just happy that somebody had said yes and somebody actually believed in my idea she was like I think you're onto something let's make some samples and let's see how you get on so I took those samples I had no money like I was you know figuring it out I had some friends at ASOS that they used to shoot like ASOS used to used to be really great like if you wanted to like do press shots or test shots they'll let you use the studios on the weekends so I remember being like to the girls I kind of want to shoot like a lookbook on some models but obviously if I say it's a lookbook they're probably going to say no but can we just say we're doing a test shoot um and we did a test shoot and I shot it on and I shot it on some of the girls and I shot it on all of the like really like all the girls that I knew at ASOS that would sell 20 ,000 units of a dress like you know my friend Jamie Gunn at the time was like the ASOS model you know and she was five foot eleven again everything was photoshopped on her so I was like let me just shoot with Jamie and my friend Natalie Solomon at the time let me just shoot with them too you know and let's just see how it goes and I remember shooting a lookbook my friend was a graphic designer she made it look all nice and fancy and then I was like okay I guess I gotta go and like find some supplier like find where I'm gonna sell this because again I wasn't really thinking oh direct to consumer let me just set up the website let me just try and find my customer because I had essentially been raised in retail of course my go-to was like I need to get it into a store and no one's going to care about what I'm selling unless I get it into the best store because I was like I'm just this girl from South London who's decided to store a brand for tall girls why are people going to care about this thing and what year was this at this time this was 13 years ago now yeah so that was also very much within like like earliest earliest d2c brands were beginning 2010s or a little bit earlier but like it very much wasn't seen as the thing to do at all like you had to be co-signed by a wholesaler or a retailer and you had to like that was brand if you weren't that then you were kind of some like no one trusted searching up a website and putting your card details in and all of that you were kind of like oh yeah it's weird to buy something directly exactly yeah it was tough And at that time, also, I remember the supplier had said the minimum units that we can do, like bare minimum, were like 50 units.

30:02She was like, if you can just get someone, get a wholesaler that would do the minimum quantities, I can keep sampling for you. We can figure it out. So going back to my Selfridges shop floor days, like their ethos, you know, like when you have your like staff training, their ethos was we are the one stop shop for every type of woman, you know. and I remember like from working there I don't get me wrong I knew all the buyers like you know so I remember setting that meeting and being like this is supposed to be the one-stop shop for every type of woman I can't shop here there is a hole in your strategy it doesn't make sense I have the solution it's not adding up so I went I went into that meeting so confident because I was like I know how to get from the service lift on the other side of the building to here like I know what they need so I was so I went into that meeting so confident I was pitching to a room full of men and I remember thinking they were like really like tall girls can't find clothes is it a thing and I was like okay homework on your train journey home when you're just traveling look to see if you see any tall girls and just look to see where their jeans stop look to see where their jackets stop just have a look and let me know and literally like two days later remember Gary messaged me and he was like I saw a tall girl and she had ankle swingers and she was wearing three quarter length boots so her ankles weren't sticking out what do you need send us the line sheet then I was like what's a line sheet then I was like what's a line sheet and then I was like okay I need to I guess I need to put a line sheet together so it was very much I was figuring out things as I was going and you know at the beginning I was like trying to figure out you know how this thing was really going to work but then selfridges gave me my first order yeah it's amazing selfridges to give you your first order my first order was in selfridges and it launched on there and bearing in mind all of this time two years has gone since i've graduated and my mom's just looking at me like j-o-b much like a serious j-o-b not like working on the shop floor or like figuring things out because in between i went to work for sharmadine at WA just to like obviously get some money on the side I was doing like club night so you know this wasn't my be all on end all like I still had bills to pay I still I know people always ask me all the time like you know am I losing focus if I'm doing too many things and I just remember thinking I couldn't afford to lose focus but I also couldn't afford for it to be my only focus you know I had bills I had like you know things that I needed to take care of so I would work you know on the weekends I would work at you know from 9 p.m to 3 a.m in the club and then I'd work on TTYA from nine o 'clock until I had to be back in the evening so I would structure my day in a way that allowed me to prosper I would say but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it because it's not it's not everybody that is built to like do free jobs and still like come home and be dedicated enough to write that business plan to figure out what a line sheet is to like you know build the back end of your business so I will say I had to work to be able to fund myself but also like I was meeting customers I was still keeping up with my community like you know I worked for you know a club night called Yo-Yo which was in Notting Hill Arts Club for a very long time and that was really like I said the intersection of where you know West End back then you know it was mixed groups hard soul shoes they didn't really play much afro beats or or hip-hop music so this was the first club night where it was come as you come as you are express yourself um you know and it was started by two guys Seb Chulia Greenslade and their resident like DJ was Mark Ronson so like every night you know every week sorry it was a Thursday night the club fit 250 people we'd have 1500 people outside and I was the door girl so everyone wanted to be my friends so that they could get in but I remember like seeing brands like Trapstar coming in hustling putting in their t-shirts and pizza boxes giving it out on the night you know like we you know launched didn't we are always first single so all the artists used to perform and then like it was almost like a marketing stop on their press tour but for us it was just our club night and we were having a good time but what that also allowed me to now think about is when I was doing my brand seeding like I could get things to people so even if I had one or two samples when I was working in the clubs I could still give them out and distribute them and then the vice president of Marriott used to come to our club night and was like listen I'm opening this hotel it's going to be like the go-to it's going to be like Studio 54 you know in London it's going to be it's in a hotel it's going to be called the edition I want you to come and work for me and I was like okay sounds good as long as I can work nights I can work on TTYA in the daytime and then I can work in the club at night and so we moved from yo-yo to the edition and then we ran the basement and we curated the nights and I did everyone from Alexa Chung's birthday party to you know the new cause drop for Jordan and Nike but then all the talent VIPs would stay at the hotel so I would hustle the door boys to like put TTYA packages in the room and then I think Kylie Jenner were one of my t-shirts and then that's when it really blew up when I first launched in Selfridges.

35:16At that point obviously like that is an incredible journey and I think that one of like the big things that ties this all together for me hearing this story from you is like there was never an opportunity that you didn't take like you are very clearly the type of person who will see something that someone else might not see as an opportunity and you're like this is an opportunity like even you moving from one club night to another and then somehow getting your things in the celebrities like hotel rooms like that is a it's it's a risk to take it's an opportunity to take that a lot of people wouldn't have seen the opportunity to do where do you think that came from in you the hustler I think seeing hustling growing up like you know like you said there's always an opportunity I'd never look on the bad side I always think okay like this isn't where my end goal is going to be but this is where I am now and how how does this opportunity service me and and and I say that not in a two-day way of like 2d way sorry of just like oh I need to use this opportunity to my benefit I enjoyed working the club nights it actually like you know being a solo founder is quite lonely you know like you know I would work all days on my own so working in the club at night time was almost my community and was a way that like for me to express myself and like to connect with other people and like build and they were almost like my my night time fam I would say but also like yes there was an opportunity but I was only able to get that opportunity because I was friends with everyone from the head chef to you know the room service boys like everyone was my equal everyone was my peer like everyone worked as a community together it wasn't just like oh I only need to be friends with the VP and not speak to anybody else it was actually like the people on the ground and that's why I always say like even now for me it's always grassroots up like it's always one foot on the ground like what are the kids doing like what's happening on the streets like always one foot connected to community because that's what's kind of built and shaped every opportunity that I've had across my career but also for me it's allowed me to be like okay these are the guys that are really going to support me when I have nothing compared to like oh everyone always thinks okay networking is networking up to people that can mentor me or people that are in really important positions but I always say don't forget the people that are around you that can also support and help you.

37:35Yeah no absolutely I think that's really really really important. What was it actually like day to day? What were some of the first challenges you really came across? It was really hard day to day. I think one of the first challenges, I remember my first order, my first Selfridges order, my mum drove me to the Selfridges warehouse, which was in Birmingham at the time, because they have a set window that you can deliver the product. And if you miss the window, they charge you. So I was so scared because I didn't know how you deliver it on time and deliver a pallet load of product on time. So my I got my ASOS order my first ASOS order it was so big that it came on a boat and um I didn't realize that basically you have to ensure your from when the product goes onto that boat until your brand um it goes enters your your wholesaler's warehouse you are liable for that bit in between and I didn't know that at the time I just thought my my factory makes the product and they deliver it to where it needs to get to sorted on that journey some of the products had got damaged some of the boxes had got damaged by water so by the time they had got to ASOS they were they they couldn't be used and they had to be destroyed and I remember thinking oh my god I haven't fulfilled my order they're gonna charge me what am I gonna do I'm gonna I didn't I didn't anticipate having that buffer for this product and again because my supplier had been with me from the beginning so she had done my first order 50 units per style to now I'm getting thousands of units per style she'd seen my journey and she said you know what we'll remake the product and we'll send it to them but you need to get your insurance sorted girl you know and honestly for me that was the hard slap of business of knowing that you have to know every element of what's going on and also never assume I assumed that it would be covered by both entities I didn't inquire so now it really taught me the hard lesson of like never assume but also just like I always say there were so many hard lessons or hard times but I do genuinely think like the way that my life has always panned out it's almost been like a domino effect like one thing has turned into another which turned into another which has opened another door so now like and it's very easy to say in hindsight but I do welcome the challenges because I think at the time when you're stressed out you don't realize that the challenges are actually the best bit because they make you a better business owner they make you a better manager they make you a better co-worker and you need those things to happen to be able to morph you into the new version of yourself so when I look back now at that time I was just like oh my god and I think it was like 250k's worth of product I was like what am I going to do how am I going to cover it like you know but like overcoming that I would never make that mistake again now and I think when you're a solo founder you do every element of that business you are merchandising you are buyer you are designer you are marketing like you know so it's great because when you do employ people or you freelance or ad hoc whoever you need as and when you have worked in every single department at every level yeah it's so true and And I do think that like that part of being a founder, you almost don't want to rush.

40:58I think it's really interesting because I have a business course and I remember like someone asking being like, don't you need to make these mistakes yourself? And I was like, do you know what? First things first. I was like, I think it's incredibly important for the people who've been through it to share as much as possible because I can help you on a thousand things for you not to forget. And there will still be a hundred that you do forget. that you didn't think about and I didn't tell you and all of this that will somehow slip through the cracks and you're going to end up paying for it and you're going to end up learning and like I think this is why first of all this is why I like to have these conversations because I think as many issues as we can clean up for anyone doing their research when starting a business that we can stop happening to them perfect but like rest assured I promise you you can read every business book under the sun do every single course and like you will still be slapped in the face like five times a week and you're just like okay yeah literally just like this is fine this is fine everything's on fire um but it is so true and I think that you would have learned so much within that time that also enabled you to be better at every single part of the business and every other job you go into like there's so much beyond just doing that business that building those skills quickly which you do so fast for an entrepreneurship is incredibly important yeah for sure and I think that even just learning the fundamentals of just like you know I didn't know how much retailers like mark up your cost price so even just being across that and like understanding the business of retail now morphed into when I started working with talent and music and like you know like now doing merch deals and like now doing like you know behind the scenes or doing pop-ups with artists now you my retail experience is what has allowed me to be knowledgeable and like have an expertise in that area so people are now looking at my expertise because I've been through it and I've done it like you know and most retailers at that time were marking up times 2.5 times three so I always used to tell I always used to tell my family like if you go into a retail shop like how you know how much that thing really costs you know divide it by three or divide it by 2.5 you'll know what they bought it for and then you can probably work out what it actually costs to make you know um but then it's transferable skills and i think now you know setting up ttya and like even going into ttya talks it was exactly for that reason of what you've just said of like i wish i had more people around me then that were doing what i were doing that i could ask obviously we were like pre-social media age right facebook was probably our biggest platform at that time but you know now it's so easy everyone's so accessible at that time people weren't accessible you had to think about how am I strategically going to get into that event to speak to that person or how many times can I guess what this person's email might be let me see if I can find their colleague who's got their email on their Twitter page and I can like try and figure out what their email would be like it was real hustling season I would say which the kids maybe don't necessarily have as much now things to do but that was also part of the thrill and the chase it was just like you just have to figure it out and there wasn't a lot of people that looked like me or were doing what I wanted to do that I had connections to to ask so everything was that I was I would say I was that DIY entrepreneur I was like do it yourself just figure it out so when I started TTYA talks it was literally a platform so that I could be like well this was my first collaboration this is how they screwed me over this is what I learned your lawyer is your best friend and so is your accountant like you know like really like giving tangible takeaways it wasn't just like oh I started my business and we made x amount in year one and it was very much like actually this is where all the fuck-ups were and actually this is what i've learned and also here are other peers that may not be at cmo level but are doing pretty well here are my peers i can also give you some further insights and then that's how that was born yeah no and i think that's so important and such an incredible idea in terms of like i believe so strongly that actually teaching people and telling people what you went through like it's how I save myself from a like you know a thousand mistakes as I've said still made hundreds more but like it makes such a big difference I'd love to hear the thought process behind being like okay now this is the next stage of my career because I think a lot of people see their careers as very one-track minded and I think we can probably learn from you there yeah for sure I think it's also important to note that I think it's okay to transform I think there's lots of transferable skills that you learn from point a that will get you to point b and i've always i would say because i worked in nightlife i'd always kind of worked at that intersection of fashion and music lifestyle and from working at the clubs the talent used to come to me and be like irene throws the litters parties can you do my album launch party then it was like oh then it evolved into i think i want to do merch or like how do i build my brand you've built a brand how do I build my brand so then you think light bulb moment actually there's so many skills that I've learned from like building my brand and and understanding the logistics on the business end actually there's so many transferable skills I could put into talent and business and the real kind of switch over time for me was actually COVID because a lot of my business and we're speaking about the real side of business right so like a lot of my business had been through the wholesale kind of template right so what that did was when I did try to push the DTC people were so used to like going on to other platforms to buy TTYA that I wouldn't really get as much orders through my own platform or I always had to think about doing maybe another colorway exclusively on my site that wasn't available in Selfridges or on ASOS to actually get the consumers to come so when covid hit those suppliers over time were doing a lot of the other bigger retailers so when covid hit my even before covid hit a lot of the times i had to be flexible with my timeline because if a bigger order came in for a bigger conglomerate i went to the back of that production line know how that feels girl so then when it came to covid basically they were just like we don't really have time for these these you've you've grew the business steadily but we kind of really don't have time to do it in a time frame that you need it in and obviously everything shut down at that time and I was just like I had maybe recorded one episode of the podcast before like with Leomi and I was just like well actually everyone's at home now so maybe I'll just chat to all my friends on zoom and record it and make it a fun time and at that time then you know obviously with the with George Floyd and a lot of that kind of you know resurgence in like what it means to be a black founder how the black community are seen in a commercial lens what what the black community are going through via the corporate lens you know brands started asking me to maybe like do I have an opinion on this or can I speak on you know we were going through our whole Instagram live phase so I would join loads of different lives and like have loads of different opinions on things and then for me it started to open up my world a bit more like a lot of the talent that I had worked with I'd always kind of maybe consulted with them before like a project oh I've got this album coming out can you help us with this or you know how to do this lit event can you help us with this and so I hadn't really formed as a business identity it just was kind of just like oh I'm just like helping this person do this or I'm just connecting this dot over here or you know if someone was coming into London they'll be like Irene's the plug you need to call her she can get you whatever you need kind of vibe so then when Covid came a lot of people were just lost including me I didn't know what I was doing was I now an influencer I was on Instagram 99 % of the time I was trying to also figure myself out like what am I doing and it's so crazy because I actually had probably the most in light and you know we know a lot of people passed away a lot of people weren't able to see family members but Covid for me was a time where I was actually able to stop there was no such thing as FOMO, everybody was inside, everybody was in their house, everything came to a halt and I think Covid for me was a real like mirror in front of my face like who are you?

49:17Like you know you've built this brand, you're helping talent here and there but what do you actually want to do and also how are you going to make money? Because right now this business that you're doing is not going to be sustainable because none of the factories are open so we're gonna have to we're gonna have to morph girl we're gonna have to figure it out and I will say with TTYA I have always I am literally my mother's child so even though I had this whole business going on I was always like consulting here or like you know I would do like huge focus groups for YouTube or go and do like huge like consultancy for like Nike and some of the bigger brands right and like allowing them to understand community or you know I'm a tall girl I don't fit into this space this is the you know you're excluding this narrative like you need to be more inclusive in this way so then now TTYA became more than just a fashion brand it was actually a voice and a platform for me to be like well I come from the excluded girl we're never forefront we're never thought about I come from an excluded group I am the black woman who usually is in the bottom of the hierarchy pile what does that mean what is how am I lending my voice to that how am I supporting my community God has blessed me with the opportunity to be at the forefront of culture with my brand but actually there's a whole heap of people behind me right now you do have that social responsibility to be able to speak for so that allowed me to morph into entertainment because and it was it was it was authentic and it was organic but also for me it was a way to make money I needed to make some cash dollars and right now all my factories are closed we can't meet up I've got to be thinking of other ways or to generate revenue you know and it was a difficult time you know that first two year that two year interim of COVID if we want to call it that but it was a difficult time and I decided to take a full-time job at that time because I felt like I kind of wasn't really hadn't really figured out the factory element to produce clothes the podcast was doing okay the live the live events of me bringing my community together couldn't work in real life because we obviously we had you know social distancing etc so I was like given the opportunity to take a job to basically do what I was doing for my brand but just for other people and I was like okay I get to work with talent I was kind of already working with outside of this ecosystem and I can see where there's opportunities for growth with that talent I also get to learn my voice to like be the person that I wish I could like I had when I was younger in those rooms you know at c-suite level now I was like my title needs to be this I need to be able to do this I need this a b c d if it's going to work for me and you know they gave me everything that I needed they gave me the setup that I needed but also for me it allowed me now to be have that seat at that table and be like well in the last five years I've seen that you've only worked with this kind of influencer and you know not every day doing power to the people but also like understanding how grassroots culture impacts the music industry impacts fashion impact style you know so you know being that voice at that table to think to say have you thought about it this way or maybe you should think about this not everybody with a million followers is the answer like there's actual people who don't have a million followers that are just as impactful to their communities you know so actually sometimes let's think through the lines let's make sure that things make sense whereas I think when you work in like really corporate ad agencies or music agents or like everyone's kind of engineered a bit to think the same way so like for me it was just like now being in this social corporate climate but still being my true authentic self yeah no I think there's so many ties of like your story and how how you've taken all of these opportunities but how you've like made yourself so completely yourself like rather than squashing these different parts of who you are in order to make yourself a businesswoman or in order to make yourself you know go and do this full-time job or like whatever it might be rather than doing that actually growing all of the parts of you that make you you by taking all of these opportunities and then presenting it back and being like cool so I don't fit in this box and that's the good thing like that's exactly why you should hire me or that's exactly why you should work with me and I think like that feels to me at least from an outside perspective like what you've done through all of these different industries and I think it's really really admirable I also just think that like you're so clearly not afraid to not just take opportunities but to as you say transform and like change trajectory completely or not even completely because I understand that it's building on these different things but I can imagine why lots of people being put in your situation and having the factory issues and all of this would would be like oh no if I take a full-time job then I'm failing at my business or I'm not doing this was there ever a point that you thought that and how did you overcome that because it feels like you went into it so confidently and I just know I know my mind and I know what I would think despite the fact that you've got like the most incredible job and I think it's really easy to let what other people think of us and our own career trajectories change what we actually want.

54:34No I think for me TTYA will always be a part of who I am like I literally you know it started off as you know taller than your average and it I am she and she is me it was two in one it was a package you know and even if I'm more even when I morphed into my into a full-time job it was still carved out that I could do my company like you know they knew that that was again I am she and she is me you know so but I think it was important that within TTYA the ecosystem allowed different bits of the business to flourish at different times so when I could no longer produce clothes and we came back out of the whole like you know social distancing I could go back into doing live events but rather than just like making it a closed room it was more about like okay this is now kind of morphing into mentoring you know and thinking about legacy of the brand and what that's going to be you know it is essentially I'm giving tips and tools but also I'm creating a space where there's community where I'm giving back information but also you know I don't necessarily have the time to mentor 100 people one-on-one but if I can provide a safe space for them to come once a month or like feel free that they can tap into this or ask me this or figure out this along the way then that bit of the business is gonna is gonna is gonna excel at that point you know so okay cool I haven't made product or I haven't done this for a while but things always come back in heats and waves like you know I didn't do product for almost two years and then during covid I remember going to ASOS and being like hi guys me again you know um so can we talk about shoes you know and like throughout that whole time being at home because I had the time to think even though I was morphing into this new role I was still designing the shoe collection because I was like there's girls like me who are like size 42 and above that don't have shoes so like now I've got to do up to UK size 15 shoes and I put out a shoe collection with ASOS and it sold out in a week you know so it's like sometimes it's also having the faith in those partners and that's why I said ASOS will always have a like a special like no I'd know like you know bigging anybody up in particularly but they will always have a special place in my heart because they allowed a space for me to be confident and come with ideas and execute the ideas I didn't have coins to go and do like shoe molds and design a whole I was just like I think we should do this you have the infrastructure to do it can we do a TTY collab and it worked you know but also if it allowed me to test ideas not on my own cash doiler you know so and then that's still fed into like now you see the whole resurgence with like you know wmba and like we look at like amazing athletes like you know angel reese and like you know i i am almost in awe of those girls because they own that tallness like it was nothing i'm just like the confidence that they all eat like they all ooze and like they've made tall women cool like people look at them and just don't think oh there's the big friendly giant or go and stand at the back of that photo they look at them as business entities they see them as entrepreneurs they're looking at them as experts in their field they're seeing tall like the third or fourth thing down the line whereas I'm like this is so amazing because I'm like oh my god there's a whole new pool of women now you know and I guess working in entertainment does give you that access now because you are seeing the other side of the coin and I think TTYA I was the founder I was the talent I was front of house so I knew what kind of deals I wanted I had broken terrible deals for myself at the beginning and learned all of those mistakes but now that gave me the flex to be able to broker amazing deals on this side and also like know what we should be asking for you're thinking about it as talent yourself you know you want glam you want grooming you're thinking about you're thinking about all the things as if I was talent or when I was talent what would I want and And now I'm in a really lucky position.

58:28I get to do front of house and back of house simultaneously. Yeah, but you've made that luck. You can see so clearly how much you've curated a career for yourself that doesn't fit in one box. And I think that it's so, like, I get terrified all the time. I'm like, am I this? Am I this? Am I this? And then I'm like, oh, got to be more like this because I'm technically in this and all of that. And it can hold you back so much. Yeah, I agree. And I think that you're such a good example of like, don't let that happen. Like you don't need, unless you want it, you can want that and you can run with it.

59:01But like, do not let yourself be put into a very specific box and then say no to everything else around that just because you're in that box. It doesn't make any sense. And I think you're such a good example of someone who's like truly molded and curated your own career. The market's uncertain. Revenue's tight and hiring on hold. That's why results-driven companies are using Upwork to keep work moving. Go to Upwork.com today and start hiring proven freelance talent fast. No bulky overhead. No rigid long-term contracts. Just the right expert right when you need them. Work smarter and faster with Upwork.

59:38Go to Upwork.com now and find your freelance expert. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com. Post a job for free and get started today. very quickly before we end i just want to touch on um homeownership because you have very impressively bought two properties on your own that is like incredibly impressive um but you've also shared a lot of that journey what's made you want to share that journey and want to share the reality of being especially a black female solo homeowner like statistically I know like that's so incredibly important to share and talk about and like be like actually it was like this and actually it was like this where did you get the idea to kind of just be like completely transparent about it all I think it came from again my community like the girls my my my school my I have like I would say like my creative friends um that I work with and like and in the entertainment side with me and then there's like my my my childhood friends that I grew up with and I went to school and I went to college with a lot of my friends I went to grew up with did some of them did go down the academic route and a lot of them had properties six or seven some of them have with their partner some have done HMO some are landlords some are just doing you know just had bought their own but they had inspired me on that side to be like they kept saying to me this thing that you're doing this renting that you're doing you need to you know you need to jazz up that's like it's quite an nigerian thing to say you need to jazz up like you need to like you need to come on to this side now so they inspired me they were always pushing me like when are you going to get your house like you should save this let me introduce you to my broker let me introduce you to and i remember like when i was looking because i was like i'm really struggling with a broker the first two brokers that i went to um they were male and they basically said to me that i should wait till i get a partner to think about it's going to not look good as a female on my own trying to buy a house i should maybe think about when literally like they should they were like you should maybe think about because you're um if you combine incomes you know your threshold of what you're going to be able to borrow is going to be a bit better i get that like we were all we all know maths right you don't need to say it's going to look bad and it's more because they could see you know like when you meet them they can see your face and they can see your face so they're like trying to like you know moonwalk backwards you know combined income and they were basically saying that it's not going to look good you know as a woman and then like again through conversation speaking more with my friends and being like guys I'm really trying to do this thing like can you help me or like do you know anyone can you introduce me who's your broker and they introduced me to my broker she was a female female boss like badass she was like my whole career has been about helping female entrepreneurs like women who are bossing it like I live for it you know and she was very much like you need to do a b c d e f g you need to like stop spending so much on Amazon you need to your accounts need to be cleaned you need to like you know she was very much like step by step you need to do this you need to do that let's like work on this let's work on that and my first place I bought um on the exit side of Covid and I bought somewhere that was a little bit further out outside of my comfort zone still in South London but a little bit outside my comfort zone but allowed me to make the space my space I gutted it you can go and you've seen the videos you can go and have a look at it but um it was I remember like when I had such a terrible experience with builders like honestly like the whole process of buying a house if that even just like being let down like going through properties viewings like you know like that whole up down emotional roller coaster of actually physically buying a space.

1:03:24And then when you're renovating it, connecting with like builders and make like, I used to have to like, like ask my male friends to be in the house when they would come to view because the price that you get when you're there by yourself, but it's the prices that you get when you have a male friend present, two very different prices. I'd put like a building degree on the wall. I'd be like, this is my, this is my property degree. No. And even like working with tradesmen, like trying to get tradesmen to like do a job. I remember like, I looked into underground heat, underfloor heating and I was like called a very well-known like plumbing company can you come and give me this quote on this they gave me a tentative quote on the phone came to the house he was like looking around who's your partner around I was like stupid I used to be so naive no it's just me all of a sudden that quote went from 700 quid to three and a half thousand pound we need it's a two-man two-day job you know I was like I looked at and the thing is I always used to do my research I used to go on YouTube.

1:04:21I used to watch videos on videos. I used to watch people doing it themselves. So then I was like, no, like, you know, this is the flow and return. You just need to do this. You just need to do that. I don't know why it's a two man, two day job. He was like, okay, I'm just going to go to my van to like, you know, check in with HQ. I didn't see that guy again, you know, but it was just things like that of just having to always have like a male presence. And then when I did have builders, like I fell out with my builder that was doing my extension. Like I don't feel like he listened. He was never on site.

1:04:49Like he outsourced the job. Like he outsourced the job to a third party. He was never there. Like, and my partner at the time used to say to me, like, just calm down. Like I know you're a micromanager, but just calm down. Like sometimes in building, things don't go to plan. Like if they say they're coming today, if it's raining, they might not come. I'm expecting you rain, sleet, shine, snow to be at my house at 8 a.m., you know? So there was a lot of that, like understanding how different industries work. But also for me, I very much always felt like I wasn't really being listened to or if I say I want something this way no this way is better but I'm like but I don't want it that way I want it this way and I'm paying so surely you should listen to what I have to say but I think my second property was a lot easier to manage because I had so many mistakes and I learned so much about the industry on my first one um and then my second one was just a buy to let so it was literally again another reno rented I've got tenants in there now which is interesting I'm a landlord which is crazy um but I also for me when designing my second home I was like I want to create a space that I would want to live in yeah because so many when I was watching so many like videos people being like oh don't be too like personally attached don't get emotionally attached to your rental property like just do the bare minimum get your tenants in and make your money back and I was like but I remember like when you're at uni and you move to halls and how scary it is you know when you move out for the first and I was like I want to create a space that kind of looks like my house but feels warmly and maybe not done to like the same spec but yeah feels like I would want to walk in there if I don't want to live in it that's not a space that I'm going to create and I feel like that's what the energy that I put in and like literally it was on the market for a week and it was gone you know so I think again being a landlord is interesting has comes of its pros and cons but also I think fighting for your voice to be heard and not be afraid to say like when you're not happy with something i literally fired my builder halfway through the build i was just like i know this is going to cost me more money but i'm not having no one to suspect me you know so again it was just like that constant fight but also i was just like i'm not gonna have no one to suspect me so so my money i know it really makes you like honestly renovating somewhere makes you re-evaluate a lot and like get very very clear on what you are and aren't okay with like i'm yeah it's such a journey like remember i was like oh it's gonna be years till i do that again do you know what i did say that when i did my first one i was like i am not looking to animate this but then an opportunity came presented itself and you know you don't say no opportunity i couldn't resist so i was like oh my god it's so cheap the kids didn't want it like i want to take it so my second one didn't happen on purpose but i'm glad that i did it again it was an opportunity presented itself and i just thought well yeah might as well i know you're good at that and so before we end i'd love for you to share the best piece of advice you've ever been given the best piece of advice i think i was ever given is i would probably say don't be afraid to ask for what you want i think when it goes back to like my first ever collaboration that I did for TTYA I was just so happy to be there whatever money they were paying me I was doing maybe six or seven jobs in that partnership I was just so happy to be there I didn't really see my value in what I was bringing to a partnership and the best advice someone gave me is don't be afraid well it was two things in two parts it was know your worth know your value but don't be afraid to ask for what you want and because I was just so happy to be there I was so scared to be like this is wrong but yeah I don't want I don't want to lose the opportunity and I just think whenever you do a partnership but if the two people in that partnerships need to be have a mutual understanding and should if the if the understanding is growth you should both be growing at the same rate your business can't stay here and it's a part it's a collaboration or it's a partnership and another person's business is here it's not a collaboration then it's not a partnership so I would just say like know what you're bringing to the table is Is it your community?

1:08:53Is it your insights? Is it your network? Is it your, you know, is it your design? What are you, is it your IP? What are you bringing to the table? And don't be afraid to ask for what you want. Add a couple more zeros because you'll be surprised. People always say my budget is this, but surprisingly when you'll be like, well, this is my bare minimum I'll do it for, suddenly more money comes into the budget. So don't be afraid to ask for what you want. I think that's such good advice. Thank you so, so much for joining me. This has been so good. I feel like it's a very like it's one of those episodes you're going to listen to it on a walk and come back and you're like right to work thank you for having me this has been so fab I've been like listening to this podcast for years so I'm just so happy that you have invited me on so no not at all it's our pleasure keep shining sis this is a beautiful platform you've created so thank you so much for having me Thank you.

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