Ep.61 A Masterclass In Defying Stereotypes: How Jordan Brompton Built A Nine-Figure Green Energy Empire

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0:38They make it easy to order what you need from tech and cleaning supplies to everyday essentials, all at low prices and with helpful tools like spend tracking and tax exempt purchasing for eligible organisations. Because when your operations are smooth, your impact can be bigger. Visit business.warmart.com to get started. Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 is Jordan Brompton, my energy. Jordan Brompton, one of my idols. And she's ended up running a nine-figure energy company. The fact that she walks into any room, breaking every single stereotype, she's one of the most impressive people I have ever, ever met.

1:10So in November 2016, we started MyEnergy, and it's been a bloody whirlwind ever since. We started in our shed, so now like a 65 ,000 square foot factory. Indirectly, we invented smart charging. I mean this in the least offensive way possible. If I met you and you were like, yeah, I own an energy company, I would be like, oh! I've grown up with nothing. From 13 years old, I started working. My dad graft. I grew up on a scrapyard. I did Zumba instructing, I've worked in bars, I danced in nightclubs. God, you've lived a hundred lives. Especially with a name called Jordan and they'd expect a man to walk into the rooms.

1:41You know, I don't get invited to the golf course. Why would a woman have a job? It would be ridiculous. It drives me fucking insane. I've nearly been bullied out of my own business. Every day is a challenge. Every day you've got imposter syndrome. Every day you don't think you deserve to be there. I think as women we just torture, torture, torture ourselves. I'm winging it like my terrible eyeliner. So what is the big end goal?

2:09what is up guys and welcome back to the podcast today we have Jordan Brompton who is just one of my idols she is an incredible entrepreneur and I think the reason I'm so obsessed with her is the fact that she walks into any room breaking every single stereotype and she's so unapologetic about it and she owns it and she's just so impressive she owns an enormous an IPO level energy company I almost feel offensive sounding like so surprised but I think we're so ingrained into expecting women to do certain things and those women who do those certain things to look a certain way and to act a certain way and all of this and Jordan just comes in and she just like debunks all of this.

2:54She's so incredibly impressive. Her story is absolutely unmatched in terms of tenacity, the background she's come from, getting obsessed with the whole world of energy and renewable energy and making people self-sufficient. And I mean, she's been a dancer, she's been a hairdresser, she's worked in bars, and she's ended up running a multi-million, nine-figure energy company. And I hate to sound surprised, I really, really, really do, but I think that's exactly what stereotypes do to us anyway I just need you to hear Jordan's story what she's done how she's got to where she is now and just her unapologetic attitude we were talking before the episode and I was like yeah I always feel like I need to act like this or whatever it might be like this to for people to take me seriously or not dress like this etc etc she's like I just play into it like I literally do everything that I think is going to make them take me less seriously and she still just wins and I think it's so impressive and I think she's my new idol so anyway I hope you really enjoyed this episode I think you really really really will she's one of the most impressive people I have ever ever ever ever met and as always if you do enjoy the episode please make sure to rate and subscribe and follow the podcast on whatever platform you are listening or watching it on that really helps us enables us to get amazing guests so thank you so much and as always have a wonderful day

4:17Jordan Brompton is the co-founder of MyEnergy, one of the world's fastest growing renewable energy companies. With a turnover of over£70 million and 400 staff, it's safe to say MyEnergy is turning heads in the renewable tech space. The company's huge success started with the invention of the Zappi charger, the world's first solar charger for electric vehicles capable of using 100 % renewable energy. It began as an idea over a bottle of wine with her business partner and now drives tens of millions of sales each year. However, my energy's journey hasn't always been plain sailing. I wanted to sit down with Jordan to get to the bottom of what it's really like running an energy company as a woman.

4:51We discuss how she's scaled the business, the obstacles she faces on a daily basis and why it's important to learn your weaknesses as well as your strengths. Now my energy's CMO, Jordan gives a realistic view into the whirlwind of being on the front line of a startup in an often tumultuous industry. I am so excited to share this episode with you. I'm very excited to have you here. Thank you so much for having me. I want to get straight into it. Firstly, I always ask guests for just a little bit of background on themselves and their career. So I'd just love to hear like right from the very beginning, I guess school type of time, what were you like and where did you think you were going?

5:25So I was pretty useless at school. I was like, I loved the social aspects of it, but I was just never very academic. I was always into the arts, singing, dancing. But growing up in Grimsby, there was not very many options. I was very lot sort of like C's D grades um going to university was just not an option it was not something that you grew up aspiring to do in my sort of hometown um so I like left school not a clue what I wanted to do but I wanted to be independent from my parents because they're super hard working I understood the value of money and I didn't want to put any extra pressure on them because they already worked hard as it was and had my little sister so I think I like from 13 years old I started working I was whether it was a paper round or whether it was on the Sunday market down at the beach selling scooters I was just grafting to have my own money because I always wanted to travel but then I was also a home bird which is totally weird so I'd want to travel but I'd want to come back and I'd want to get a bit of culture but I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do as I said I grew up singing and dancing but then at about 16 I just lost all my confidence stopped going on stage stopped doing anything that was sort of like performing arts and it was I think it was after I'd come down for an audition in London and um the girls sort of locked me in the toilet and said like who's that who's who's that geek from like up north or whatever it was like a very clicky London crowd and I come down for a dance audition and I went back home and I was like I am never going to London ever again you piece of shit oh my god Yeah, so I was like, that's my career over.

6:58And because I was too young and like vulnerable and ginger and geeky and just, I don't know. So I thought, right, well, that's not a vibe. So I just got stuck into work. And yeah, left school, tried college, tried law. I did like a year of law, which I found interesting. But I was like, I'm not academic. So it's starting to get hard and I just don't get it. I just did what the teachers told me I could do, which was hairdressing or travel and tourism. so I picked hairdressing went and worked in a salon for a bit but I was allergic to every product that I got like dermatitis up my arms and up my neck and I was like so this isn't for me either I'm so sorry that's also such a niche thing but I'm also very happy about it because I feel like loved it and I won't be where I am now but I've just always had an interest in business even though I've had no one to really I guess the closest person that I've had to look up to in business is my granddad so I've grown up in a real um male dominated family even though my mom's super feminine like my dad had like 13 brothers and sisters they're all very like huge minor Yorkshire men with big hands big outside jobs and he used to buy and sell cars and just a total dell boy really and I used to I've grew up on a scrapyard watching him up north like hustle and then my dad graphed and my dad used to say to me whatever you do kid don't matter about being academic you're a great communicator you've got great common sense and not a lot of people in this world have got common sense so lean into that he said whatever you do you'll be fine as long as it's something that you enjoy because I hate what I do my dad used to say to me I hate getting up at five in the morning driving to a job that I physically hate surrounded by idiots that I hate still working with them so soz we should have him on I know he's very inspiring I'm really liking so he said to me just do whatever you enjoy do whatever you want and they've always just been so supportive of whatever I've wanted to do and I've been like a social butterfly that's flitted into every job tried everything I followed my mom I did zumba instructing I've worked in bars I danced in nightclubs so then I went full opposite you've lived 100 lives I have actually I traveled the world and then I came home met the love of my life and who I'm married to now I've been with him 13 years and I went and I thought what am I going to do need a little admin job I rocked up and it's my now business partner Lee it was his little bit setup that he had and it was in like a shed and it was him and five or six other staff hand soldering these little devices there were like now what's called our Eddie product which was a power diverter so anyone that had solar panels could essentially keep all the power in the home by diverting it to a hot water tank we parted ways briefly because he had two other shareholders at the time that just didn't want to put the money back into the business or grow it and I just I said to Lee it's such a shame I didn't meet you at the beginning of this because I'd have loved to have partnered with you because I think there's true potential in this brand like in in your products and in your brain yeah so if you ever want to do something in the future like let me know and we parted ways for a bit and I went and set my own business up called Spitfire Distribution it was a cycling distribution business where I was buying parts from France and selling them to the UK what types of parts like chain rings and ceramic bearings and things like that and then clothing for bikes yeah and it was because I had a French friend who ended up being my business partner who used to cycle in France and he got these few brands and I said I'll sell them to the UK because I've just been doing that for leave for these little gizmos I was like how hard can it be let's set up our own business but then I realized very quickly that I hated being a distributor because I was getting squeezed from the French with the supplier and I was getting squeezed from the customer and I realized that it was going to have to be super high volume right to not make any money whereas when I was with Lee and he was manufacturing these little devices I'd learned that you could control your destiny your margin your costs he just didn't have the best business partners at the time to take it to the level that it needed to be and also the solar market crashed which meant all the feeding tariffs were took so his poor business he went through a right nightmare he had to close all that up and then in 2016 he come knocking on my door and was like that business is all boxed off now gone do you want to do something together only thing is I don't have any brand rights any manufacturing equipment I'll have to redesign it actually nothing but I'm here yeah but I'm here my brain's here and your love for the actual industry and passion for what you wanted to do before it's hopefully still there yeah let's do something together and I was like yes that was like my moment where I was like finally because the cycling ain't doing it for me yeah no matter how hard I try I had a pink bike off and I was like biking around the country and trying to sell these freaking chain rings and I was like oh just just not yeah I've got to sell too many of them so yeah that the rest is history I said look I'll join you so we registered the business in June 2016 I said but I'm not starting until I've like got my wedding out the way because that was in September my honeymoon and then you've got me fresh like I'm all yours but let me just get this period of my life let me get spitfire sorted yeah so in November 2016 we started my energy and it's been a bloody whirlwind ever since it was like that you know when you've got that gut feel that something's gonna work yeah and because you I'm passionate about it I knew I could sell it and I'd fell in love with the industry and the whole concept of being off-grid like taking somebody without being a total hippie that's living in the woods that's like connecting some old rusty solar panel together and building whatever and fires I thought we should be able to be off grid in the modern day right like use technology to be as off grid and as energy efficient and I just love that whole yeah so for people who might not know anything about that I'd love to know because I don't think when you walk this is one of my favorite things about you I don't think when you walk in a room so if someone was like I'm gonna guess 10 things that this person is obsessed with I do not think in that top 10 they would be like little gizmos that connects people to being off grid and therefore having alternative uses of energy yeah and I want to know what you love about this because I am obsessed with the fact that we always see online now like all of the most glamorous businesses in terms of like what to start what looks good and all of this and you're here running this enormous energy company having just been like loved the gizmos I did I love tech but you know what it boils down to I'm actually a bit of an anarchist like you're expecting no I wasn't expecting that I'm a total conspiracy theorist I'm a total anarchist and I like the idea of decentralized power in any capacity like I don't like the power of money of our energy of our food of our water supply of whatever it is I don't like it being in the hands of like a few people right and so explain the concept of off-grid so off-grid basically means that if you're generating your own power you don't have to pull as much power from from the actual grid right so yeah the national grid so you're basically taking yourself as off-grid as as possible so in the UK it's quite complicated to go completely off-grid you've got to stay grid connected but I like this idea of being virtually off-grid so you've got solar panels in your home and what my energy does is just help you consume and divert that energy wherever you want it so that you're not sending it back to the grid you just essentially your own little pocket of energy yeah which is obviously great for the environment great for the environment supports the grid like the grid love it because that allows then more large renewables onto the grid it gives us energy security as a country so if all the people that can have solar panels on their roof or a little turbine or hydro if they live next to some water if they can get themselves as off grid as possible we are actually energy secure as a as a country which is in the current climate obviously very important so I'm just like I've just got a fascination with it and I fell into the industry and at the time there was no women in it like when I joined you know I've worked in solar now for I think it's coming up about 14 years or so and there was no women in it at that time it was very like you know I had to traipse around Europe traipse around the UK set with my little roll-up banners at trade shows and stuff I had to know my stuff technically because I'm dealing with electricians I'm not dealing with like women and just I just it was it was hard graft at the beginning but that's the time that I love as well like that building the brand that start up that hustle that not knowing if you're going to make next month's paycheck keeps you going yeah you have to aren't you you've got no choice I know I always think that entrepreneurs are like a special type of weird in the way that we're like this makes me feel alive and it's like you could just you could just not a few times I was like why can't I just get a job at Tesco and be happy about it and then have my weekends and why am I doing this to myself because it's freaking hell but no it's you know it's paid off and the rewards have been amazing and I mean it's stressful but yeah but worth it and so right at the beginning when you two sat down together what was your concept for my energy for what you were starting and what you were building so we were starting with what we knew which was the very first product that Lee had ever designed which was our ready product so we was like I am going to design it now just it's going to be like the seventh version of it because I know it inside out I'm going to do it amazing and let's do it for the German markets the German market's just about to take off and I was like yeah I'm here for that like I know how to sell it I know the tech inside out I've got customers that I can already go to I've got you know loyal friendships in the industry that I can go straight to and say me and Leah partnering up so give us your money we had customers that were buying them in advance before we even had manufacturing equipment or whatever like helping us bankroll that are now business partners in other parts of the world so I had a loyal few customers from relationships that I'd built before so I was like let's just get stuck in with the Eddie product but it was when Lee was driving a little Nissan Leaf at the time and I remember him saying I've still got export like I'm still exporting to the grid so he's like the Eddie is heated my water by midday and then I've got all this power and I'm exporting it to the grid it's not going to my electric car and I said my my god mate get cracking get in that shed and don't come out until you figure some out is running off the hot water yeah somehow literally like I want that I want three miles from the sunshine no fuel ever again I'm not paying for fuel ever again so getting that shed and that's when Zappi was sort of sort of born yeah and Zappi just like oh my god took us to next level because it just turned out that all the electric vehicle drivers of that time which weren't very many but there was quite a few most of them had solar panels so it was and most of them were like dying for this product which we didn't even know it was just by accident that yeah we saw a problem and solved it and and indirectly we then invented smart charging as it's known today we were the first sort of in the world to think about balancing the grid balancing the home if even if you don't have solar panels like if you've got an electric shower on a kettle on and all these different things like just reducing the power to the car because otherwise you're going to get your main fuse pretty hot and right grid responded to it customers responded to it electricians loved it so it was just it just took off and and what was lee's background so lee's an electronics engineer he was self-taught originally then he went to uni and he's had like um jobs at ericsson and places like that he's had multiple he had a little company where called big cat where he was making um electronics for cars like um little boy racer stuff he's always been tinkering he's like a tinkerer and we're both Grimsby kids like he's just worked his way up to in an absolute top dog that he is now signing 30 million pound rounds yeah casual little just a little casual you know just a drop in the ocean really yeah not a lot not a lot where did do you kind of get that matter of fact like tenacity in terms of just getting on with things and just figuring it out one thing that's good when you like when you are brought up in somewhere like Grimsby not surround you like I hardly ever came to the city I had no external import no analysts telling me to do this no people checking the data no people no one doing the market research because if they had they would have told me not to do it yeah it's too hard my first my first um instinct was to get online I was like trying not to give too much away but build the brand and build some contacts online and through LinkedIn and things like that but I guess I looked and my first point of contact I thought it turned out that one of the market leaders in EV charging because there was a few other like electric vehicle charge points that were around but they were just what we call dumb chargers so they were just putting full power to the car regardless and these companies were making a mint because the government was giving away a grand for every charger even though they cost about 25 pound to build we opened one up and we were like the electronics in them are so minimal there were like caravan hook-up points why are there none on my road then so the government was like throwing money at this point it was called the olev scheme and we didn't have a charger at this point and i said let's go to who's winning in this market space at the minute and say like we can make your tech smarter can we put our zappy in your product and do like a licensing thing i tried everything at the beginning to get the brand off the ground and I just got doors slammed in my face this one I remember this one company actually saying to me why why why should I help why should I help you I don't care about the environment I don't care about the grid I just want to sell units and he looked at me and he went you could be a competitor one day so what and I was like no not not one day like I am going to be your competitor now you've just tracked me like that yeah you will see me again yes goodbye it was honestly like that is what yeah so I left the office like well that's fine that's his opinion whatever and then a year later I saw him um at one of our customers because I'd gone to what I thought right I'm gonna look at all your customers mate and I'm gonna jump on the back of it with the product so I went to all the electricians I thought I'll start with the solar installers because they're the ones they're a target market so I was like contacting every solar installer in the country that I could find online telling them about our tech and then I was like okay so how do I get in front of more electricians through the electrical wholesalers so then I started knocking down the doors of the electrical wholesalers and saying the CB market's going to happen and take off in a big way why don't you sell our products and um it didn't want as easy as that I got a lot of no's got you know some people said yes and just it just started like snowballing but I guess a real big catalyst and a big point was there was a there was a youtube channel still is called fully charged and they've got like a million subscribers and it's people all interested in electric vehicles and renewables and debunking all the myths that you'll see in the property like loads of propaganda at the minute about the industry yeah so you can go there for like actual studies and talks from professionals that are saying that you know about cobalt and mining and where the energy is coming from and all that you can get all the actual information so I knew that they were going to be at an event up in Orkney so I drove in Lee's Nissan Leaf which only had 55 miles range up to Orkney which is a long way by the way and I had to stop 12 times to charge I didn't even make it to the first charge I ran out and I rolled in like downhill to the charge and then I got there and obviously it didn't work because this was like seven years ago right before the infrastructures is what it is now and I met Robert Llewellyn the guy who owns the YouTube channel and I just said to him look I've got to show you our tech and he just fell in love with it and he said I'm going to do you an episode when I do an episode on it and normally don't do episodes on like tech and things like yeah but he was like but this is so innovative and just so needed and that you know that day our website that I built broke and the phone began to ring and it just we manufacture all of our products as well by the way so we are completely vertically yeah so we'd gone from i was hand soldering them myself like packaging them walking them to the post office

22:49up the hills in the local village where we started in our shed so now like a you know i don't know six we're just building a 65 000 square foot factory with all the latest manufacturing equipment in so we can churn out millions of these things around the world yeah no more soldering for you no and so that obviously hugely started to take off what what kind of size was your team at that time that was probably about 15 16 or so people by that point right and how did that feel to suddenly be managing 15 16 people were they were they in office side or were they doing the manufacturing yeah it was office and manufacturing it was all very hands-on yeah it was like orders were growing and momentum and right everybody was doing a bit of everything and you know when you're starting up you hire people you know you'll hire anyone who's willing to help you right you don't hiring on skill you're hiring on help me like family and friends and just begging people to work for you and pulling in the family and the husband and stuff on Easter buying holidays and stuff to get orders out and it was wild but I found the hardest part going from about that size to probably about 40 50 because it had gone from feeling like everyone felt like there was family to then all of a sudden you're trying to put processes and procedures in and bring people in that are qualified and it starts I went from I remember going and that was when I was pregnant I remember going through a really hard time and a really hard transition of going from like friendly family startup fun vibes to all of a sudden this is getting a bit too successful and people turning and being a bit weird and then somebody just oh the politics yeah it was hard work but now I think once you've got over like the couple of hundred mark of people it's a fully functioning business it's less like personal it's more yeah I definitely have found that that transition between being like four people in a room to being like I mean we're only like 35 people I'm finding this stage so hard in terms of people and team and actually being able to like work out exactly the types of people we need exactly like the types of processes we need what's too much what's too little how do you incentivize like innovation within the team whilst also putting things in place to mean things that don't go wrong it is just I mean I think I'm finding it the hardest I've ever found it in terms of people at the moment for exactly that reason it's normal and it's the hardest stage I think once you get through that growing yeah except you said it's fine when you get to a few hundred and I'm quite far away from that and I'm having a tough time Jordan do you I think good management good management is key like you need your core like a team because that's what I found I call them my a team yeah and that's like getting that right is a blessing and I've you know it's like anything in relationships you kiss a few frogs you go you get it wrong a few times I've had the imposter syndrome where I've let people come in and be really corporate and I think well I trust everything they say because they're better than me and then it's gone horribly wrong for the culture and yeah we've had a bit of we've just done a culture session because I feel like we've got a culture war where it's old world versus new and it's like I'm wanting to run it really like liberal and relaxed and trusting and then there's some that I want no processes procedures it's black it's white there's no gray area but I'm like yeah and also what I find tough is that it's so management style is so specific to who you're managing and the types of people you're managing but in a bigger organization you can't run things based on the person because I've always managed people differently whether I know like whether it's like a you know I always think it's best when it's not like a trust relationship and it's on the type of thing where you can really easily just be like you're that you're essentially I like people to be able to act self-employed within an organization because if they feel trusted I'm not micromanaging it's better for me it's better for them all of that but then there are also you can't hire fast enough and therefore not everyone you hire is going to be like that and not everyone thrives in that situation so as much as you can say in the interview process like you know how good are you at like this type of thing and whatever it might be and then also it's not always good to have all the same types of people too and so it's I found it so hard to adapt my leadership and management style both to manage people correctly but also to be like we've all got to have some sort of homogeneity in terms of like the way we do things otherwise it's just it's chaos it's chaos it's hard work and I don't think there's any like right or wrong way of doing it.

27:12That's not what I wanted you to say. I wanted you to give me tips and then all my problems will be gone. We can offline. I'll see what the real problems are. Yeah, so fair enough. And in terms of that, I guess, going from, I mean, how many people are you now? I don't actually know. I think it's about 400 at the moment. We've had a bit of a wobble this year because the energy crisis and the cost of living. We were growing at like 200 % year on year. and then we just hit this massive slowdown because of the cost of living crisis of course and because all the subsidies were cut for evs and it's all being politicized now the whole world signed up to this like the whole world's doing it and now by by us reversing it we're just we are just literally destroying this country in any economic advantage that we could have had yeah we was doing so well like we're leaps and bounds ahead of like the us even yeah in terms of like tech around the home and evs and ev charging and it's just we could have really grabbed hold of it and been a leader of as our little island as off-grid as possible it's just just who cares anyway we'll just keep doing it yeah like the cars have made the switch we'll carry on consumers have made their minds up most most of them even though the media is not helping so much at the minute yeah fear mongering and the propaganda and but you know i just think how can it how can it be wrong you know yeah literally you know what it's like you live in the city just just not having the fuel like pumping out the back into the atmosphere you know and it's so energy intensive to produce fuel like to drill it out the ground to then turn it into something that we can use to then burn it into the atmosphere yes making a battery isn't the isn't completely emission free but once it's with you yeah and it's no more emissions after it and you can recycle it after it's not even like we were super close to the deadline and then they were being like we're going to add a two-year grace period so that you can do x y and z it's not even that like it's literally just like a flat switch where you're so right we could have been leaps and bounds ahead and we as a country we are getting political but like we as a country very much need some sort of angle where we can be like actually no we do you know we're leading in this we're leading in this and actually that's because we've set targets which mean that we have to lead in this and now look where we are this is amazing like we you know are way ahead in this specific area as you said ahead of the US that's amazing like it's specifically that like with all the with the cost of living crisis and with this many crises over the past few years like we never had this intense amount of whether it's like recessions COVID crisis over and over and over again what a time to start a business yeah I know brilliant I know what I should do make myself more insecure um but yeah it's exactly that type of thing and it's like it just doesn't I mean it just doesn't make any sense at all you as a business when you get that type of news that obviously you've planned to change to ramp up production to account for the increase in demand I can imagine that's a lot of your business plan over the next few years how have you adapted to like when big news like that comes in how do you even deal with that it was so hard so the slowdown as being awful because it meant that we were too top heavy with and you can't just turn off your suppliers so if you've got like um hundreds of thousands of components on order to manufacture your products based on the market growth rate that was happening last year and the year before and what everybody's predicted and then all of a sudden it slows right down you've got to recuperate those costs somehow up until that point we were a self-funded business we'd got some investment 1.8 back in 2019 we raised 1.8 million from angel investors right and then we'd been growing off our own profits ever since we've been completely profitable which is unbelievable and then this took a massive din in our cash flow um we had to let some staff go it was honestly the worst most brutal time experience i've ever gone through as a business owner because it's all i'm stressed even when it's going good right like i find it high pressured and stressful and it's not like i just i'm living my best life i'm always under pressure and stressed but when it's like going the wrong direction all of a sudden and you're having to like lay people off or let it was just savage but we seem to be over the hump of that and we have just closed out on a round which i mentioned to you we've raised 30 million which is nice which is unbelievable yeah like The market's uncertain.

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32:31No one's really been getting checks. And for you to just work out you need money a bit ago and come into essentially at this point and get it is amazing. amazing we also got super um supportive bank like we had some help from the bank as well and give us a revolving credit line of 30 million so we've got that you know we've now we're now well capitalized and ready to to grow because we're looking at other markets as well and we've got a list as long as our arm of other products that we want to bring out but all of that's like you know we've had a bit of a hold obviously on recruitment for a long time and the team are all stretched and so we're ready to just take that pressure off everybody and yeah take a breath and go again because it's been a really intense six seven eight months yeah no I can imagine I want to talk a little bit about being a female business owner having raised funding as a woman obviously we've discussed you have a male co-founder so the stats slightly different however they're still not great yeah how have you found the process of I guess we'll talk about raising funding first did you feel like there was anything you were up against in terms of like walking into a room as a very feminine woman being like I ran an energy company I mean I guess you have the numbers that speak for themselves now I yeah I didn't really like we so we were gonna IPO before before the war happened we was gonna IPO and we was had everything in motion to go and we'd been on the glory parade we'd been around meeting investors we've got the pitch nailed we were on this mad trajectory where we were growing 200 % year on year and if we'd have got that over the line it'd have been great personally but it would have fell off a cliff not long after and share prices and then who knows what would have happened so I'm so glad we didn't IPO when we did but we knew that we were going to need cash and not our own like organic growth even though organic growth has been impressive it was like we need some extra help if we want to do all the things we're going to do so let's switch to private equity and then it's been they won't mind me saying it's been hell It's been a really difficult journey and I've learned so much through this process.

34:38And in terms of being a woman who kind of owns this company and from the original, I guess you were originally starting to be a leader, how have you found that being a woman has impacted people's, I guess, perception of you as a leader? Yeah, it blows people's minds, I think, especially because it's in this industry. like you say it seems to like it's a conversation starter and it's interesting it's like me and my husband have just been away and we've been in um in Dubai and people always say to him I'm like what do you do like they ask them right yeah it's natural to go to the man why would a woman have a job yeah I mean ridiculous and it's all people lead with it don't they're like what do you do and blah blah but being a woman I don't know like I actually just hate that we have to still talk in 2023 about being a woman in business we said just also for context before we started recording this is literally exactly what I said I always feel so almost like horrible that every time I have like a really impressive woman here I'm like but being a woman yeah and it's like you do get dressed differently and in I notice it in sales and things like that you know I don't get invited to the golf course you know it's fine but it's my invite because that would be weird and might cause problems like at home you know I don't know I don't know yeah um it's just not the same when you're a female leader you don't get it's still a little bit of a boys club yeah but I've never felt any of the guys treat me with any disrespect really even in the banking world and when I've been raising cash and when I've got amazing investors I've got amazing like males around I've always had a lot of men around me and I guess growing up by a very male-dominated family I've learned how my dad's always taught me how to handle myself and I really recommend getting into bar work when you're young because then you just meet every type of walk of life don't you and being a dancer I'm very street smart and learned how to read a room and read body language and don't get me wrong like people especially with a name called Jordan as well because back in the day someone would email me and they'd be speaking to me and they'd expect a man to walk into the room so when a blonde with a pink blazer with a black aldi walks in walks in it's like it puts them on the back foot because there was expecting a bloke until you know now we've got pictures everyone people sort of know now but in the early days when I was starting off I used to see people physically like disarm when I walked into a room like oh what I'm expecting that yeah um so there is like there's there's a bias and there's you get different and you might get judged but I don't just find it from the blokes I find it quite a lot from the women as well I think it is I really think that is very true and I always say I think we all have underlying preconceptions and biases that I even find like I even find like in myself you know when you're talking to someone you're like oh yeah like like I mean this in the least offensive way possible if I met you and you were like yeah I own an energy company I would like as in it's so it's terrible that that's even in but I would be like oh yeah amazing that's really amazing but it's so in our heads yeah we are so especially like we talked about the fact that you like you've deliberately lent into the fact that you're a very feminine yeah like a certain way yeah exactly I've not toned it down people have tried to make me tone it down I can remember yeah I've been through that I've had one guy that I'd never say his name but I'll say it to him I appointed him he was one of our first big hires and he I remember him saying to me I think you should change your profile picture because I don't think it's very appropriate is that like the that what we want to portray and I was like how dare you I'm just literally a boy show nice yeah and it was like what's up with it never say would he ever say that to his male boss he just exactly like people do say things when you're a female or when you're a little bit more because I am very open there for everybody super like warm engaging like welcome people in and I do people take chunks out of me and people take chunks out of me because of my kind nature and as well and I find like I'm a bit of a punching bag and I am probably the most judged of the c-suite and I'm judged internally I'm judged externally but then when you get into the nuts and bolts of it like I'm also I am also really respected I'm just unconventional I think people don't know what to what to do with it and they're battling their own social conditioning and but I get through I get by it I get my knockbacks I get chunks taken out of me I build myself up I mean you can ask my my EA she's the closest to me Lindsay she sees it on and my husband they probably family and that they see me roaring behind the closed doors when I've had a day of it but I always just like manage to pull it together and I'm like an elephant I don't forget so if someone's like took a chunk out of me or made my energy feel not nice I remember that and I'll always sort of not get my own back because I'm not like malicious but I won't let it go I'll make sure that it's nipped in the bud and I'll make sure that it's been made clear that you've made me feel like that and then we'll and I don't hold grudges and then I'm yeah and how have you manage to I guess build that muscle of like a thick skin and being able to take that type of behavior whilst also remaining authentic to the fact that you want to be yourself I don't think I'll ever have thick skin I don't think I'll ever be used to it I think I'll always struggle and that's why I fear quite you know I fear doing stuff like this because I think people come at you so easily these days especially online I don't understand I'm ready yeah you know like they come for you and I just think I do sort of hide and but I've had a moment where I was like it was literally an epiphany recently I was laid in the bath and I sent a TikTok video and it just summed it up where I thought oh my god that is so true don't let anybody shrink you because they're uncomfortable with your energy and your way of like leading and I and it was just such a pivotal moment that this film like popped in this little clip popped into my life and I was like you know what I'm not shrinking myself anymore I'm always unapologetically me but I'm going to be a little bit more unapologetically me because I guess I have shrunk myself to suit society and to suit everybody internally and to everybody externally and I know I'm not a crazy person I know I don't run around I'm not like you're not a bad person yeah why do people feel that they can be this way with me but they wouldn't dream of saying something like that to Lee and I've I've just woke up from it I'm like I'm not standing for it anymore yeah and it's been a recent thing so I have to it's a constant battle that I've and it will slip as well too because I feel like I've had that realization a few times where I've been like yeah I'm gonna storm down the path and I'd like yeah do you know what I never say something like that so if I do say something I really mean it and no one should take advantage of like yeah you know because I start putting this wall up around myself where I'm like actually for everyone new that starts I'm going to be really clear that I'm really stern and like all of this and I'm like it's just so far from who I am and it doesn't do me it like I then go in to the office feeling like I'm putting on this act so that I will be taken seriously and it's like no I can be kind and it is your duty to receive it in the right way and do your job and then if that doesn't happen that's fine it's not the right thing for either of us but I'm not going to change my like entire personality to suit your needs yeah as a person like I'm running a business but it's also society's needs as a whole like we really need women to like I've talked about this before how the fact that we we need women in order to be liked we need them a not to be successful but fine if we can remove that if we want to like a successful woman we need them to be like violently humble and self-deprecating like we really need them to be like to basically qualify their success in a way where we're like no you wouldn't actually want it because these are all the like bad things about it like we like to make other people comfortable with our success by saying it's not as good as it actually is and like that's a big thing that we need but then from leaders and we also need women to be vulnerable we need them to share all the shit things they've been through like we require that of women for to predicate their success for their success to be like worthy we need to have known they've gone through all of this I always say that like I know the background to every single female founder within like every single female founder in the UK if I know about them I know their background I know what type of education they've been through I know all of this because we need to to be able to somehow be like oh yeah do you know what they do deserve it yeah or whatever it might be or to be like oh yeah but they came from this background or whatever it might be whereas every single man that is an entrepreneur I don't know anything about their background if I do it's probably because they're so famous and so successful that we're like yeah cool but we never concentrate on their background we never concentrate on where they came from like as in we don't need to in the same way but then I'll stop my rant soon maybe then for leaders we ask them to be the opposite we ask them to be strong and not show their vulnerabilities in the same way we ask for them to be able to like ring fence and put on like this persona and all of this so then we're saying well to be a woman you need to do all of these things and to be a good leader you need to do all of these things and unfortunately they're mutually exclusive so unfortunately we can't have any likable women leaders like it drives me fucking insane because when you think about it you're like okay but you're asking for the two completely different things so I've got to go into a room and I've got to be vulnerable but I've also got to be strong and show none of my weaknesses but then i've got to be really humble but then i've got to be sure of myself because i've got to show that i deserve to be here and all of this defensive yeah don't be too emotional about emotional it's just business and don't be too this and don't be too that and i don't have the bandwidth i know it's it's freaking intense it's uh it's mental torture at times and it's just not what you need on top of running a business you don't need to be going home and thinking if i mean it's a good job with strong characters because i could i could have quit a few times i've nearly been i would say I've nearly been bullied out of my own business in the sense that I've thought this is just too much I'm just this I've not got this in me why am I feeling like this and no one else is feeling like it why am I and women are quite good at graciously walking away as well because I've also almost found myself at a point where I've been like I'm going to be like gracious in this and just be like do you know what this isn't the place for me yeah and it's like no this is my place yeah but that's the turmoil and usually it's when I'm in the bath and I'm doing my self-care bloody sundays i'm like yeah no i built this freaking thing i'm staying i'm and i'm growing it because if it's not me it's someone else and i've built the done the freaking leg work and then i'm gonna let someone in and swoop in no i'm not gonna yeah so i'm like pull yourself together get a grip stick your little ipads on like de-escalate the puffiness and go again the puffy get the led mask i'm like this sat with everything all my okay every day is a hurdle every day is a challenge every day you've got imposter syndrome every day you don't think you deserve to be there every day you're thinking should I be this type of leader should I be that type of leader it gets easier with age like I'm 34 now I know you're only a baby I think when you get into your 30s you get a whole new level something switches in your 30s where you care less and less and less what people think and every year that goes by it's starting to become more and more of a power but I still I still I think I don't know whether it's hormonally I don't know whether it because that plays a massive part in it I don't know what you know I've started getting my blood's done regularly because I want to get on top of that and just get to know my body on a cellular level a little bit more because I find stuff like that interesting but I think you know if I like it does play a factor into it because if I'm like do you want or something before a board meeting I'm a freaking wreck like an absolute wreck like board meetings I get myself so worked up but it's because I want to do such a good job and I want to be so equal to the blokes that are in the room that are calm and collected and I want to know my I want to know my stuff I don't want to ask me a question and me not know but then again I'm having epiphanies all the time last board me and I thought what does it matter if I don't know the answer and also if they are someone else and they didn't know the answer I don't think they would doubt their entire capacity no they wouldn't but I I do it's just so I think as women we just torture torture torture ourselves because of and we're going through evolving times aren't we we're going through a totally different generation to what our parents went through to what our grandparents went through we're like carving out this whole new technological world we've got all this information online and everything we've just got a lot to deal with yeah in general without throwing in like you know multi-million pound businesses with 400 staff and that's all amen that's what I have to say good night so I don't know the answers you come into your podcast for some lovely inspiration I don't know what I got nothing to give you I'm winging it like my terrible yeah I know I know and I think that is the truth to be honest as well because I think every single person is very much winging it and there's little bits of advice you can take from everyone but I think realistically the true amazing entrepreneurs are the ones that are winging it to the extent that obviously entrepreneurs all the time if you don't have the answer you still do it like and I think that's the constant thing is it's like I'll sort it out later there's nowhere to hide you can't bury your head in the sand for too long when you are the owner of the business it is you yeah but I think one thing I would say about um one thing that's helped me mentally physically and again women feel so uncomfortable talking about the successes and they have to tone it down where everybody else can you know go over the top yeah do you know what I occasionally do you know I've got the pink cowdy I think I'm going to enjoy my car I get I get like comments thrown at me and stuff but I think I've grown up with nothing I didn't come from a wealthy family I've not been handed nothing I put my own savings on the line like I'm not taking that away from anyone that you know has had it handed to them because I think still you've got a graft even if you've been handed a wedge of cash even if you've been handed a business it's not a freaking given but like I can hold my head high that I did physically have nothing and it's I've had no easy way of making it so I think I am going to enjoy the final things in life and you're not going to take it away from me and you're not going to make me feel like shit about it and I also try and like be a bit more it's not like I'm showing off and being flashy extra flashy and showing things that I buy but I will go on holiday yeah and I'll have a nice thing about me yeah I will have a luxury holiday and I will have a nice car yeah soz shoot me yeah I'll buy a nice house but one thing that gave me my physical sanity back and I can't stress it enough to a female founder or to founders is take some money off the table whenever you can yes I have been told this could you talk about that a little bit because I'd love to hear more of that from you when covid hit i was living in a little house i just had my daughter the pressure was building because we had a full manufacturing facility with orders that we couldn't keep up with and then covid hit and i thought i didn't know if we was going to have to mothball the business lay people off none of us knew what was going to happen and i literally i thought i can't have put my whole life saving into this any money that i had and when i say life saving i mean like i took 20 grand that i had in a house out or borrowed a loan against it and put that's all I had and I was like I cannot let this cannot fail and be left with nothing like me and my husband and my little I can't I just I was like literally terrified so I went to my original investors and I said I know the business is worth something now like I just want to sell a bit of my shareholding I've seen a house that I want it's just going to give me the comfort that I need through lockdown with my new baby you're not pushing every day yeah it's my dream house I'll be like just I'll be really good yeah just give me the money and um it was a bit of a it was a bit of a they had me they had me really because it was at COVID they were like well you know the pandemic's hit and we don't know where the business and there's a risk and luckily like I always think like if you do feel like you're getting a bad deal negotiate a claw back so that if the business is worth more money you can have some of your shares back or you can have some cash back so I negotiated that in as well which ended up being worth a lot of money and was yeah freaking godsend so I I negotiated and I took some money off the table and I bought my dream house in an in the area where I've grown up where it was always totally aspirational to live and it just changed mine and my immediate family my husband and my daughter's life it set Bonnie up and I thought do you know what now anything that happens now really doesn't matter because I've done what I more than what I ever dreamed I could do and now I feel like the rest of it's fun and I've still got my sharehold I've still got some shareholding and that um I think if I'd have gone through what I'm what I've gone through in the last year skin still with no money off the table because I think people think that if you've got a successful business that's turning over the business turns over 70 million I don't take anything out of it other than a wage I'm not taking dividends I don't take profits out of it it's all getting plowed back in and I think people have this perception that oh wow they're turning over 70 million she must be loaded it's like no I had to sell some shares to live the lifestyle that I'm living now but if I hadn't done that I think I'd have quit I think I'd have had a mental breakdown I think I'd have ended up a nervous wreck I don't think I could have gone through what I've gone through if I didn't take away my financial worry yeah I had at the time and it's not even possible for some people but if it is if you get a slight opportunity you've got a shareholding you've got the business that's worth some value just look into it yeah and I've just seen things turn so fast you just never ever know you can be like on on the open think this is it for for life now this is fine I'll just ride this wave yeah you don't know what's around the corner like there's so many macro factors that just I mean it might be different in your sort of business because you've got such a huge name yourself and following I think you'll always be successful with your brands I think you'll always be successful I think that's for sure I don't know because you've got your you know you've got your name you've got your social yeah you could I feel like you could spin up a million businesses if you want you're so early in your career I'm like it's amazing to see but I just think if you've got that one thing and you know and it's sort of like a trend or it's an industry that's politicized or especially if it's in politicized it's um it's risky it can be risky yeah no I can completely completely imagine I just want to talk briefly about again this is one of the things I hate talking to women about I want to talk to you about having a baby yeah no it's fine talk to me about what was your kind of decision and timeline and thoughts at that time in terms of like I want to start a family yeah I've um I've been so me and my husband are just so like we were so content and so happy with our lives but it was like we just made the decision that we were gonna try um even though I was like I don't know how I'm gonna do this but we'll figure it out and it's that naivety I think at the beginning and we were happy either way for starters we've been together for ages and never actually had a scare or anything so it was like we didn't know if we could or not right but we'd never actively tried and we just said if we fall then it's meant to be but if not our life's ace we're so happy regardless so you know if it's not meant to be it's not meant to be so we didn't put any pressure on it turns out I fell pretty quick um like like straight away so I was like oh okay we're doing this then shit myself um and then the business was really every single year the business is it moves at such a rate of knots I think like three months in my energy terms is like a year that's how quick things happen it's like dog years and um it was so freaking busy at this time and I just released this little book that I did about for children um teaching them about renewable energy and um and all renewable planets and what I think getting it into the kids psyche younger and younger not terrifying them to death is important so I just finished this book and I was about to go down and do the the launch of it in fully charged and I was loading the van and I was 32 weeks pregnant at the time and um I thought I said to my friend Darcy I said I think uh the baby I move much today and it moves quite a lot and she went no it's fine it's just because you're getting bigger and um you're you know it's just got less room to move and I'd little cut off shorts on I was at that cute pregnancy stage I was like hmm wrong my husband I said I don't think I felt the baby move today and I burst into tears and Mike said let's just go get you yeah let's go get you checked well two hours later I'm in emergency c-section and she's she's here so I was like wow so she was eight weeks early and I was not prepared didn't have everything sorted I was doing a deal at the time so I was then doing a deal from intensive care because we both needed transfusions and it was fucking heavy um so my start was just utter madness I it was one of them flippant decisions that if we fall we fall if we don't we don't and I did and then it was chaos but now she's totally fine she's here and one of the um best things that I have done as well from taking some money off the table is retired my husband so Mikey no longer work so that has taken all the guilt and pressure off me because I tried to manage it all and I thought I was gonna break down yeah because I he had a job and it was like he'd get up at seven in the morning he won't be back till midnight he was an overhead linesman and it was like that job ruled over mine because there was no leeway there was no flexibility yeah it's a shift so I'd be driving across town like with the baby I was like breastfeeding stuff at time pumping trying to run the business get to meetings do board meetings break my back trying to get back for the little while I said I can't I don't know I don't know how women do it I don't think I can do it it was such a so something's got to give and I said um we've made we've made a bit of money like why do you have to work and it was just like it's going to make me feel so less guilty it's going to put less pressure on my family and again I feel like I have to always caveat this with it's such a privilege and not everybody can do that and they can't and I appreciate that and I'm so lucky but that is because I took the initiative at the time grew the business took the initiative to take some money off the table and make my life I just try and make my life as stress-free as I can outside of the things that you know anything that I can control try and take the stress away anything that I can't control then I'm at least yeah able to handle it that little bit better so my husband's a full-time dad is a freaking amazing dad and they come and I also have decided not to put her in school so she's not um she's not in school she's home school she's got a tutor she's just turned four and she's got a tutor two days a week um so she's got one-on-one time with the tutor doing all of the primary school work and then they can literally because we've got offices all around the world yeah I'm down in London a lot more they can come with me so it's just like I've just made life work yeah and how was that conversation in terms of like had you already kind of had that type of idea in terms of no it's just I literally live day by day yeah I have no like I have I'm mad at manifesting I'm actually like really good at it like I'll and it's it's not like before manifesting was a thing and cool like before you know when the secret came out that yeah yeah freaked me out because I actually read it like I invented this guys I did I read the secret I read the secret and it threw me off my game for a bit yeah because it made me consciously think about it whereas I've been naturally good at living like that being positive projecting and then I read the bloody secret and it threw me off I was like now I'm consciously trying yeah and now everyone else is doing it too and now I've got to share with everyone else's manifesting share the abundance yeah so rude my abundance mindset is for me yeah so no he was like god he was freaking well up for it because he was working up poles in the freezing cold yeah he's like the most he's got like no ego is the most supportive yeah um guy in the world most amazing man and he's just he's just so supportive of me sees what I go through to get this business where it is more than anybody so he's just I couldn't do it without his support it truly is like a team effort so he was just like if we can afford to do it you think we can afford to do it then yeah and I was like the the money that you're making the time that we will save is just far more like valuable and the the pressure that it'll take off us as a couple and yeah it's just so much better than like things I'd rather instead of buy another car or buy another house or whatever it is I'd rather invest it in us and our you know peace of mind and yeah and how has your mindset changed since having a baby obviously still running like a multi-million pound company it does change like your whole perspective on life and everything just changes it just naturally does something cellular in you changes to the point where you're doing everything for them now you are you're literally thinking about their future thinking about I think about making it as comfortable as possible try and give her the best experience at every age she's at and you just see the world through their eyes and want to leave a bit of a legacy for her want to leave her options yeah um want to leave her a planet yeah that'd be that'd be good the planet was in I want to leave her a nice country yeah I care I care about our country I care about our planet I care about big things and that's a bloody weight on of its own I try and fix it all but it's just it just drives you more than ever you just become really like tunnel tunnel visioned and less when you you can be selfish when you don't have a kid you can just yeah I'm my own baby all the things you were saying about your child there I was thinking that's what I do for myself yeah but that's good you're good do that while you can stress-free existence yeah yeah but it's so true and I always think about that in terms of like this is why you know wanting to talk to you about like that kind of decision and all of that because it fucking scares the shit out of me because I think as a founder you have to be able to operate from a almost entirely selfish mindset not in terms of like founders are selfish people but like you work in a quite maniacal way like I definitely do and I can do that because I have an incredibly supportive partner and I don't have any dependents yeah and like worst comes to worst I can get some doggy daycare but you're like you'll make it work you'll blow your own mind you'll make it work and it's not as scary as you think it's just it just adds a whole element of magic to your life that you didn't even realize you was ready for yeah and it adds a level of maturity that just something goes in your brain that's just but society is bonkers because you you find the part you find a nice partner it's when you're getting married you get married you then when you're having a kid you have a kid then it's when you're having a second when you what you've got to give them a sibling it's like you give them a fucking sibling can I just have a freaking break if I'm honest now I'm going through the pressure of do I I'm like 35 in April and I'm like god's sake if I am gonna have another one I'm gonna have to have it soon but then I'm like but I've got so much on and I don't even know if I want to.

1:00:52I've just signed a 30 million pound round. Yeah literally I can't. I've got to spend 30 million pounds and make it into 90 million. I'm ticking little clocks going like this and I'm like no I just then I'm like but society puts a pressure on it so you can't just have a only child and I'm thinking but of course you can that's all. Yeah of course you can. So what is the big end goal? Well I didn't think I'd have achieve as much as I've achieved if I'm honest I think um I think I'd love there's a part of me that's itching to try and crack America so I think if we could take my energy over to America that would be fun I just want to decarbonize as many homes as physically possible my next immediate goal is I want a million connected customers in the UK because that would mean we've got seven gigawatts of flexible power and what and drax is our biggest power station at four gigawatts so i think that that would be pretty cool it's like a nice little target to have um so that would mean that you had more power than the national evil grid all the power yeah perfect um yeah that just so that we can do it and balance the grid and i always said that we'd throw a drax party and that's sort of like a mini goal there's more products that we want to release there's new markets that I want to enter Spain, France, Italy So no time for any time off then?

1:02:21No, oh god no I'll just make it work I wouldn't want time off though to be fair Yeah it doesn't sound like you operate that way No Well what a good place to end Thank you so so much for coming on You are absolutely incredible I can't say anything more than that I'm clearly just lost for words I'm so impressed I think you're the best as well so I can't wait to just watch your life and career just keep going I think you're amazing thank you and now we're in love