Ep. 77 '"F*** Everything I've Ever Been Told": How Katie Lopes Got Over £1.5m Debt To Build Stripe & Stare

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1:32Katie Lopez is a woman with resilience. She is the founder and creative director of sustainable underwear brand Stripe and Stair, but her journey to get there has been anything but smooth sailing. Katie has faced more than your average setbacks, and today she tells me about the tools she used to overcome finding out that her husband, and therefore herself, were£1.5 million in debt, a relationship breakdown at the same time, and a heartbreaking loss, and to come out on the other side with a growing company and growing self-confidence. She says, I didn't have the confidence in myself until life tested me and I had no choice.

2:07Her story is incredible. She is incredibly open about it and a real testament to the fact that sometimes you just have to put your big girl pants on and find a way through. I cannot wait for you to hear her story and what she's learned from it. Before we get into this episode, please go and follow and rate this podcast. It is not something that you naturally do. I never go and rate and follow podcasts until I realized how much it helped the podcast to be able to continue and to be able to get amazing guests on just like it does for this one.

2:37Thank you so much for joining me. Thanks so much for having me. I'm very excited. As I do with everyone, I want to start at the very beginning. I would love to hear a little bit about what your life was like growing up. Yeah, sure. I'm not particularly exciting. I grew up in Devon in the middle of nowhere. Proper sort of rural kind of wild childhood. The doors used to just open first thing in the morning. I was one of four. I don't think we wore shoes. It makes us sound like we were really feral. My mum will get really upset, but we just had freedom, you know, so we just used to run around. And if we didn't come home for lunch, it was no big deal.

3:10We were just out and about. So really independent, but free spirited and a lot of fun. I had two big brothers who kind of teased me incessantly. And yeah, we all just grew up as a kind of like bundle of children and dogs and all of that sort of thing. And did you ever think at that age or at any point kind of when you're at school that you were going to be an entrepreneur? Absolutely not. I'm quite a lot older than you. I'm 47. And it was just, well, I will get onto the women in business later, but it just then even more so than now, you just wouldn't have thought of it as a woman growing up. I wanted to be a doctor or an actress or god knows I had no idea basically but I was obsessed with film and cinema so I knew I was also really interested in doing something in production but there were a couple of telltale signs that this might happen I set up a video club at school you guys won't even know what do you remember do you know what I mean by a video I went around school and I got everybody to tell me what was in their VHS collection at home and then I had a basically a rental service so I'd be like Netflix you invented Netflix well it was blockbuster video I think and then they invented Netflix so that was my little entrepreneurial school project and the other thing we used to do is we lived next door to my grandmother and she had this beautiful garden and I used to so on Sunday afternoon she'd open it to the public so all these people would have to walk past our house to get to her garden and my sister and I would set up a table outside our house we'd go around the house and collect objects and put like a sticker on saying 50p so we're basically selling off our parents entire contents of their home to these people who were going away like these beautiful china bars.

4:43So I think there was something there in entrepreneurialism and retail, but I didn't, there was no grand plan. I haven't quite pinpointed it yet. Less scalable selling your grand market. And got in quite a lot of trouble for that. So let's talk about your move into TV. Why did you want to get into TV? So I did uni in Newcastle. I did, I loved psychology, actually. That was what I studied. I was one of those people actually who probably shouldn't have gone to university because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do but I did know that I was desperate to work in film and TV I just love that whole set culture so every uni holidays I would be a runner literally I would in those days nothing was digital so being a runner meant you literally were carrying tapes of film around Soho from one place to the next I was just trying to get a break into the industry I'd rather have worked in film but I got offered a job in a TV station so I took that instead I just wanted a foot in the door and I said I'll come and be a PA for you for a year as long as you get me a job on a set at the end of it.

5:43And how did that work out? It was good it was good they did actually but I but weirdly I sort of transferred to Australia so I did a year with working for this lady in television and then I'm half Australian so I wanted to go and live in Sydney and they had a sister company there so they got me a job on set over there. And why did you end up leaving TB if it was something that you know at the beginning you thought was so much. I know I at the end goal. So I started in TV as typical like production assistant researcher and then I got offered this really big promotion. I would have been like the youngest producer I think at Channel 7 at that time and I'd worked so hard to get there.

6:21The thing that put me off was I'd had a lot of female bosses and so I was kind of on track to the executive producer role and I was looking at these women and the sacrifices they were making in their personal lives. Just remember one boss constantly on the phone to her daughter saying sorry darling I'm not going to make it you know and I was like these women work so hard and they're just making so many sacrifices it's like you can't have both in this industry so I turned that job down my boss literally couldn't believe it because he knew how hard I'd work for it um and I said I'm I want to I want to go and do something different and I want to be able to control my life I don't have a family I wasn't didn't even have a boyfriend at the time but I said at some point I do want to have a family but I also want to work super hard so what is a life that I could create for myself which will give me the opportunity to do both.

7:04And what did you feel the job that would be able to give you both was? So because I'd been living in Australia, my sister was there at the same time, we just felt there were so many amazing Australian brands that weren't available in England. Why we decided to do fashion retail? I just, I still don't know. No, it's not a lifestyle business. It is not a lifestyle business. It's terrible. I know. And now whenever we talk about retail, I'm like, oh my But we knew that going in, like we were quite smart. We did not smart, clever, but we know we'd done a lot of research. We'd done business plans and all that kind of thing.

7:37We knew we had to find a subsidiary business to back the retail because that was never going to make us hugely profitable. Right. So we were always looking for something to back it with. We knew that we'd find something, but actually the retail then ended up doing better than we thought it was going to. Right. Some years it was profitable. Some years it broke even. Some years it made a loss. So it was like that constant, oh, I think we can get there. I think we can get there. I think we can get to a really healthy profit if we just do this and that and that. But actually, then things like the credit crunch happened in 2008.

8:06And it was like, this is very, very difficult. So at this stage in retail, you were running your own business? Yeah, it was great. It was really hard work. It was on the Kings Road in Chelsea. Between 2004 when we opened and 2008, times were so good. You know, London was really flourishing. We had such an amazing customer base. We used to get people like Sienna Miller coming in all the time. And Kate Middleton came there actually the day after she got engaged. So like real moments like that. She didn't even call her head to say, I'm coming and close the shop. She literally wandered in with her mum.

8:37And we were like, you're now the most famous woman on the planet. And you're just doing your shopping like everybody else. So low key. So there were real moments like that. And it was exciting because we were always looking for brands that you couldn't already get in London. So we were the first people to bring Zimmerman into the UK. rag and bone we were the first London stockists so there were real wins and fun times like that but then 2008 happened and I was like it's going to be very very tough now but what I had started to do was sell a brand of lacy g-strings from America you'll probably know the one and they were famous for being the world's most comfortable thong right and women were coming in and buying armfuls of this product and I was like what is going on here because they weren't cheap they 18 pounds, a little rolled up ball of lace.

9:22But women would buy like 10 at a time. So then I got really interested in underwear. And I was like, well, the more research I did, I realized that actually underwear, it's probably a bit like what you do. Once women find a brand of underwear, they're more loyal to it. They go back and buy the same thing again and again. So that really interested me. And I love the simplicity selling fashion. I love the simplicity of an underwear that's non-seasonal, really simple sizing, not lots of skews. So I was like, well, it's great that we've got this thong, but we're British and we like a pair of pants.

9:54There was no one making a super sort of cool, soft, sustainable pair of knickers for every single day. And it was also a time we were beginning to understand the damage that fashion was doing to the planet. So I was trying to find a sustainable fiber that could do all of that as well so I just started doing little production runs I got my mum to make the first prototype on her sewing machine because they can't sew sorry mum and I used to go to Asia a lot for sourcing trips so just sent it to a factory that I'd met and said could you make some samples and it literally went from there we do small production runs I'd sell them through the store what do you like what don't you like every single day to our customers and then the new production run I'd tweak all the changes so that went on for about quite a long time about six eight years but by the end of it it became our best-selling thing in the store really and then alana weston who was the chairman of selfridges deeply passionate about sustainability she got given a pair and literally her office called and said how quickly can you come and start selling selfridges so i was like hmm and the retail was so hard it was so so hard as we've just talked about you know by the time you've paid your rent your staff your cost of goods there's nothing left over and you're working seven days a week and i had small children at this point and it was just unsustainable I then spoke to the ShopBot buyers which is a big American retailer and said you American women don't wear knickers do you all wear thongs and she was like actually no the younger cooler customers they're actually pivoting more to a fuller brief shape it's kind of cooler because technology's moved on so you can get it without the VPLs and stuff so it was at that moment that I really realized that I had something that was globally scalable with volume appeal and much more simple than what I've been doing and this at this point was this called Cheek Frills so the early prototypes it was called Cheap Frills we were actually got picked they were put in the VNA um because they were doing a retrospective of women's underwear and how women's rights have mirrored trends and underwear that's so interesting it's so cool so we were next to a corset and it was like that's the past and this is the future honestly when you're making just like a fun pair of knickers and the VNA call you up and say can we put your underwear in our exhibition you're a bit like why would you want to do that but yeah so that was a cool moment but yeah so then Cheap Frills was um the early prototype stage and then we i mean honestly people don't believe my story we then got sued for trademark infringement see we'd done all the tests all the checks the company trademark checks and had the all clear but it was still going through the actual formal legal process but we'd already launched it so that was a huge learning is we then got a letter from this company in austria saying you're too close to our trademark cheek anyway a very long very long story short the lawyers said you'll win but the problem is is the people we were fighting had bottomless pits of cash right so I wish I'd given up the brand name sooner that was a real lesson is know who you're up against I think if some if you get into a legal wrangle even if you might be in the right if they've got lots and lots of money there's not a huge amount you can do about it that was why we then started Stripe and Stair is because then it was we had to start with a new name and a new team and all of that sort of thing it was a really bad moment because it was also the moment that I was getting divorced and my personal life was basically disintegrating at the same moment I think the universe is very funny the way that everything does seem to come at once it's never sort of go through periods are really calm and chilled and then suddenly it's like yeah what did I need to learn here when it rains it pours exactly so you're at a point where you've developed a prototype your business is growing you're getting a huge amount of kind of success and recognition for it and it feels like you've really kind of probably struck gold in a certain area I knew I had an amazing product yeah I knew that to the very depths of my soul because anyone who tried it said it was the best most comfortable underwear which is the best thing to hear running a business even if it's a touch wood successful one it's still fucking tough so yeah no having that absolute belief in what you're doing is essential and at this point when you kind of feel like everything's very much on the up I know that kind of the rug was completely pulled out from underneath so the trademark thing was happening yes basically I had the week from hell so on Sunday my father died after a long battle with cancer Monday I found out my now ex-husband had been living a financial lie and we'd sold our house to fund his business so we were in a rented house that basically didn't have a roof over our heads and I was like one and a half million pounds and debt and then on Thursday I was at my father's funeral and I got a call saying your house has been burbled like top to bottom so yeah people always do that face people are like really is this girl just demented like is she making this up because that just can't be real and you do you're like why me what why has this happened to me why do I have to go through this and but yeah yeah no that's that's it was a lot it was a lot but I am actually grateful for it which sounds strange because I think these are the moments where you find out who you are what you can do so I want to touch on that because I think that you know anyone who's going through something that really feels like rock bottom will definitely appreciate it I think that you know you can expect some things to happen but I can imagine your ex-husband husband at the time saying this is what you think the case is actually this is the reality how did that feel when you were told that it was just total shock there'd been a few red flags probably along the way but I really I just I trusted him so deeply and he'd been in finance that was his world so he kind of ran I feel like such a naive, stupid woman for saying this now.

15:37And it's my big lesson. I've got a 15-year-old daughter and I'm like, Connie, you take responsibility for your financial life every step of the way. I think it's probably quite different for you. When I, growing up, it was definitely a very patriarchal household, you know, like, not that my dad ran the house, you know, he was an amazing man. But, you know, the man did, was in charge, basically. And so I kind of grown up with that and from like quite an old-fashioned English background, probably. I actually once remember my father turning around to me and saying well I'll leave everything to the boys but you're expected to marry well I literally said that to me and I look back now I'm like oh that's weird um but I just yeah I trusted him I just trusted him I thought he had it and he didn't and I think probably because he was in the city in I think 2008 had a real impact on him probably mentally and he went from having a very solid the person you could trust with your life to that not being the case maybe he felt like he couldn't provide for us I don't know because he wasn't open about it and he pretended everything was fine so you found out that you were 1.5 million in debt from his doing that's tough to swallow I can imagine it was really hard it was really really hard because we were living such a lovely life and the children were at lovely schools in London but so yeah it took about two years I would say to rebuild and get to a point where I kind of felt back to normal.

16:58What's normal? But you know what I mean? Like, it was two years of, I think I was in shock, actually, for a really long time after, like, two years. I can't imagine. Like, I don't think we're programmed to get through anything like that. It really was too much. Yeah. And how did you emotionally get through that? There were moments when I really didn't. I think there was never going to be a quick fix. I just remember all my friends and family around me just looking at me like, fuck, how are we going to help her? Like, what can we do? And there was just nothing that anyone could do. So the only way forward was slow and steady, making a lot of very tough decisions.

17:35I moved out of London, which is why I've moved back to Devon, because I had a support system there, much cheaper with the small children. My brother was really sweet and had a house that we could live in. I was so lucky, so, so lucky that I had an amazing group of friends and my family, big family, they pulled me through, I think. Obviously, you talk about how that's changed your outlook on relying on someone financially or kind of expecting something to be taken care of that you don't, you know, you don't have oversight over. What tangible things would you tell yourself or your daughter in order to make sure you had that mindset, like at the very beginning of when that happened?

18:17I think it's accountability. It was probably too easy for me and not fair on him as well in a way to just expect him to run everything. And I should have made sure I knew what was going on and not just blindly trusted somebody. Knowing where the truth is and what's going on and making sure you've got visibility on everything because it's your life, it's your children's lives as well. Also trusting your instincts. I think there's a part of me probably that is from this very old fashioned family which probably slightly thought that men knew better than women. awful to say and you're 20 years younger so hopefully your generation is a little bit more savvy and confident I think in their own abilities I don't think I had any faith I think I genuinely thought the menu better at that point it had sort of been brainwashed into me that men are the sort of clever ones who take care of things whereas women just uh there just and if they do have a nice job it's that's great good for them but it was a real like fuck you universe fuck you everything I've ever been told fuck everything I was yeah fucking angry I was like how I'm actually quite clever quite capable I'm not like a genius or anything but I'm perfectly capable of running my own life but I hadn't had that belief I don't think right and there's an element of that as well that it's kind of you felt that because of what you'd been told you were doing the good thing like you were doing what you should be doing like I was mid the house was always lovely the children were always having a lovely life I was working though and thank god for that but I wasn't the breadwinner.

19:42I wasn't the main earner in the house. It felt like I had two jobs at once. It was really for long. You were always trying to be like, make sure he's had such a hard day. Poor him. What does he need for putting everyone else's needs before yourself? And so how has all of this changed your mindset? I think when you're faced with no option, literally no option than to get up and make something happen, you just do it. And it's slow, it's steady, little baby steps, nothing to major all at once but it's made me believe in myself it's made me find out who I am it's made me trust my instincts it's made me realize how much more capable I am than I ever thought I was because now I've got a 15 year old who's so happy taking over the world god she's confident I'm like where did you come from probably growing up with you going through that they're all like it I'm like they do not take any shit from boys from nothing that's so they have that internal like real strength and self-belief it's it's amazing to see I love it and then I've got an 11 year old you know and they're really happy children they just normal just you know touch wood no big traumas have come out from all the drama yet but they seem really on it and good and then obviously I've got Stripe and Stare which I'm so proud of because it's been so much easier you know you take your learnings from the first business you've had and really like there's a lot of mistakes I think you can avoid second time around The market's uncertain.

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22:54And so did you start Stripe and Stare up from scratch after the trademark situation? so moved to Devon and then started stripes there in 2017 and how did you have the kind of ability to while going through that to start a business from scratch as well because it's not just that you found out that your husband is 1.5 million in debt and therefore you are as well it's not just that you've obviously very tragically lost a family member you've also lost your business from you know yeah that was that was sort of going on in the background so that took about another year to kind of unfold. So I tried to make that work for another year after.

23:33But actually, I wasn't in the right headspace to even attempt to make something work. I was still in like trauma and shock. And then dealing with this other big legal battle, this big legal battle on top of everything else that was going on. It was too much. It was too much. I shouldn't have tried, but I did. So did that. But then after Sheep Frills, I said, I do not ever want to see another pair of underwear ever again in my life. I'm fucking sick of knickers after all this drama. talking about the universe again it's funny sometimes it goes for you even after it just got against me an angel investor came to me and said if you ever want to start something up I've been watching you I'd really like to back you an old friend who I'd worked with was not enjoying her job as an MD she'd actually just left and we had a cup of coffee and I said look I've got this angel investor but I don't want to do it all by myself because I've been through all of this I'm still like recovering from everything that's gone on right but I knew I could do the sales the PR the marketing all of that side the product I don't know how you do both actually I'm really interested how you balance your brain because I then I think if I'm in that world I find it really hard to be in the financial operational world so that's why I needed her to kind of be my rock someone I could trust with my life I think after you've been through that sort of trauma more than ever people that you know you can rely on that's how we found it basically really small basically 70k of investment we did that on purpose we someone actually then offered us more we were like no no no we just want to do things organically slowly then her husband died in his sleep sort of just after we decided to found the business so it was really weird I think again the universe brought us together because it was my kind of healing working in that very small gentle way and that's what she needed to help get her through the trauma of grief as well so it's just weird that we were both went through these amazingly terrible tragic things but we kind of had each other we had the business but the business did exactly what I wanted it to do it allowed me to be a mother to my children and therefore all the important moments it allowed me to work really hard but completely on my own terms when I want to work I ask sometimes stay out really late but it means I can go to a netball match the next day or whatever so it's been a real healing cathartic part of the process I think the success of Stripe and Stare and building your confidence back up and providing a better future for the children.

25:46For about the first two years, we did go very, very slow. But then it just grew sort of beyond our plans, projections, everything. And we got some analysts, some men to run our KPIs. And they were sort of blown away by retention rates and AOVs. We began to realize actually we had something really mega on our hands. So at that point, we did take on quite a lot of investment, but we were ready for it then. We felt like we knew what we were doing enough that it would really help to scale the business quicker. And what do you feel like was the biggest turning point in the business's growth? We were quite right place, right time because it was all about comfort.

26:20And the other thing in 2008 when I first started researching and developing the product, you had Victoria's Secret at one end, you know, very male gaze-y, really uncomfortable. Could you look at the runway shows now of all those perfect figures and everything and it's just like, how was that only like… Yeah, how did that ever happen? How was that ever okay with a man in a suit with grey hair at the front, like going, look at my ladies. Look at my angels. My angels. and then you had Mark Spencer's at the other end, which was uber comfy, but dressed like your granny, like your Bridget Jones pants.

26:49So that was why the knickers, I was like, why is there nothing cool and comfortable? Like the same way Tala, you know, you've thrown your leggings every day and you're kind of set. It's the same with our knickers. It's like you just want to put them on, and women have better shit to do than worry about. Wedgies, VPL, uncomfortable pants. Me Too happened just as we launched, so I think that was another seismic shift, and women kind of like going, what the fuck? I'm still dressing for a man. and I'm still doing all this. I think we realized we weren't quite where we thought we were. And then COVID, I hate saying COVID was good for us, but we were selling comfort.

27:21It was online. So we were able to keep trading. The first three or four years, we couldn't keep up with growth. We couldn't keep up with demand. Then we also did a lot of podcasts. Actually, weirdly, we sponsored a lot of podcasts, which really no one else knew about podcasts, but because I was an avid podcast listener, I was like, well, we need to start sponsoring podcasts. so we did a bit of that and no one else was doing it so the rates were really cheap so that just made us go boom like we worked with dolly alton and pandora sites which was really fun and then firm cotton because i didn't know about paid marketing i didn't know that i should be paying google or meta or whoever all of my marketing dollars but so i we were doing fun stuff with it rather than that so it was a really happy good time and how did you spot those opportunities I always followed what I liked.

28:08I'm really into manifesting. And when I was going through my shit, podcasts actually were a really big part of the healing process. I listened to tons of Oprah, Super Soul, Fern, Happy Place. So listening to those kind of inspiring women really helped on the journey. So we started off really small. We'd just gift. We had no paid influencer. We wouldn't be able to pay influencers to talk about us. We would just gift people that we liked and followed and said, if you like us, talk about us. But if you don't, don't. And so it just snowballed from there. And eventually it was like, right, it's time to take the plunge and invest in something.

28:40And the first one we did was the high-low. I remember it was£16 ,000 to sponsor four episodes. And it was so much money for us. We'd never spent any money on marketing at all. But I was like, I really think this is going to work. I really love this podcast. And I think everyone loves Dolly and Pandora. So, you know, you've got to take a few risks as well, haven't you? We didn't bet the house, but it wasn't far off betting the house. And I'm interested in how you managed to get back that need to take risks mindset when obviously you'd just been through something so that probably felt like the result of someone else's risk gone wrong.

29:13I think I was so motivated. The business had to work because it was all we had. It was all we had. It was our way out of everything that had gone on one day only. I still don't own a house, but that's like my dream is to buy our own house and that sort of stuff. It had to work. So I had to grow it quite quickly and we had to take some risks. Do you know what? I don't know where that confidence and trust that that was actually going to work came from. I have a theory. Tell me. If you'd like to hear it. I would love it. So two things. I think that part of it is that probably you're truly and intrinsically an entrepreneur.

29:47And that's what entrepreneurs do. And I think entrepreneurs end up as entrepreneurs, whether they like it or not. So, you know, you've said many times that you wouldn't have thought of it as a career and that you believe at that point you'd been told by society that we needed to rely on men and your job was in the house and like all of these different things. You still found entrepreneurship. So I think that says a lot. The second thing I think is that when you hit rock bottom, your mindset shifts so completely in terms of what is a risk and what isn't a risk. And instead of that being a risk, it's the opposite.

30:19Not doing those opportunities is the risk. That is so funny that you say that because probably my biggest fear, and this is since childhood, has been not finding out what I'm made of. How funny now that all this has happened to me with that. But my biggest fear would be getting to 80 and going, oh, what if I tried that? Like, what if I'd given it a go? My grandfather was a tennis player. In his day, he was like one of the best tennis players in the world. He won like Wimbledon and all that kind of stuff. He was a news agent by day and then he'd go and play tennis in all of his spare time. but he had so much drive and the kindest most charming man you wouldn't know it to meet him but that stubbornness and that doggedness and that determination and I wonder how much of it has come down from being surrounded by that kind of yeah I also think it's ingrained in you as well I think that it's like there are a lot of people who would have gone through what you went through and given up there was a moment to someone else I'm just gonna go to Thailand and read books and eat noodles for the rest of my life.

31:16Honestly, it was a proper consideration. We used to run through my brain all the time. Tomorrow might be better. Tomorrow might be better. And that really kept me going. Sometimes I tell my story and I actually end up apologizing to people. I'm like, it's really not that bad. I'm fine. You don't need to worry about me. I'm okay. Because it's so out there. Like I said a bit earlier, I'm really grateful it happened to me because what would I be doing now if it hadn't? I wouldn't have found out all of these things that I was capable of. And there's still a long way to go with Stripe and Stare. We're not anywhere near there yet but I'm so proud of all we've done like we've got a team now of 30 is reading your stats of your female workforce we had our team days yesterday just the most amazing group of women and we have like a culture that's so different the other thing about tv is I worked in an office where men used to call each other I'm actually not going to say the c word because I hate it but they used to literally be that rude to each other and like chuck mobile phones at their heads and things like that.

32:10I know. I know. But we're just, it's just such a group of inspiring, positive, amazing women. We're B Corps. So, you know, we really look after everybody. We hope we do our best to anyway. And the planet. So we feel like we're changing the world a little bit. Yeah. So I've found huge purpose in it, which I wouldn't have got if I hadn't been through that. But I'm still a bit like, why did I have to go through quite so much drama? Could have taken that down by 50%. Yeah. Maybe I've just reframed it in my head to help kind of like understand it and process this a bit I now get total control over my life I know a lot of women my age who are dealing with ex-husbands who are like quite controlling with finances and lives and sort of mess them around with schedules I am so deeply selfish I am in bed watching Netflix by nine o 'clock what I want to watch on Netflix I eat what I want you know I've got my children I can bring them up how I want and everyone's always say oh have you met anyone new and I'm like fuck that no I just like being selfish at the moment and just controlling my world and so with that in mind because you say you obviously were brought up in a way where certain things were expected and a certain life was expected how would you have brought yourself up differently hopefully I'm doing it with my daughter it's about that self-worth and self-belief and believing that you are just as good as any other person in the room you're not better but you're certainly not worse you know we're all equal everyone's got their strengths everyone's got their weaknesses you will have something in you that you're great at and you just need to find that and you will be better than anyone at some things but it's about knowing that you will have those skills and to believe in yourself you have to work really hard which i was always happy to do and always wanted to do but yeah it's about just the self-belief the the accountability, the confidence to go for what you want.

34:01If you told me I would be running my own business, I would have been like, I can't do that. I can't do that. How would I do that? Like that anything is possible. And I hope my daughter really sees that. Actually, it's one of the big things that we do as a business is when we partner with other strong female voices, like the Dollies and the Pandoras, I always make sure that it's somebody that I would want my daughter to aspire to be because it's that achievement and pushing yourself you'll know Brené Brown I'm a big believer in all of her books and about the arena and getting in the arena and getting your the shit kicked out of you and otherwise I'm not really interested in hearing what you've got to say so that's what I want to see in my daughter is somebody who's happy to go out in the world to fail to get things wrong because she will to get the shit kicked out of her but then just to keep getting up I always say that I got my poor children I'd have the Brené on the walls and I make them practice gratitude at dinner I just want her to be brave enough to fail I think a lot of women have that fear of failure certainly women of my age a lot of my friends are like gone oh my god and how you do what you do what if it doesn't work and I'm like well it will work because it has to and I just have that deep to my soul belief that it will it's so interesting because I do think again it's we've been taught as women to fear failure because of the way we see women who do fail I think that you know our view in the media of women who fail our view of entrepreneurs like female entrepreneurs we can all name the big ones who have been over every single newspaper of a kind of like I told you so type press like the men just can't wait to say I knew she couldn't do it right but it's also of our own making because we put them on a pedestal because we cannot believe that a woman would be in that position subconsciously and we big them up and we say this is a person who has it all and the second they make a decision that wasn't the right decision which is not only likely but required of for example an entrepreneur we take away all of their value because of one single failure which is why we're so ingrained to be terrified of failure and actually I hadn't thought about it that way but I think you're right that is why I think it's so important to see women failing publicly and for it not to need to be gracious for it not to need to be in a kind of accepted way, but for that just to be part of the narrative.

36:20Yeah, and that's why my cheap frills part of it is interesting because I have been through business failure as well as personal failure. Women are less tolerated when they fail. Or maybe other women are also quite competitive, I don't know. Maybe there's a part of us that we're jealous and why didn't I try that? Yeah. No, I don't think that's true actually. I mean, I would argue that's probably because we're taught that there's only a few spaces at the top and so we're taught that we need to stamp on other women to make sure that we're the one of the ones. It's also all that language stuff, isn't it?

36:48I remember someone once saying to me, oh, Katie, you're the most ambitious person I know. And it wasn't meant as a compliment. Right. I took it as one. But I know it was for a man. It certainly wasn't meant as one. I know that you're passionate about the female entrepreneur statistics as much as me. Everyone always says to me, oh, you're passionate about sustainability. And I'm like, no, actually, I just feel like sustainability is something that if you start a business, you should be doing. It's just part of the process. whereas my deep to my soul passion is women supporting women having each other's backs truly believe like we rise by lifting others I wouldn't have got my business off the ground if my mum hadn't given me free child care I mean I would have been screwed and weirdly being an entrepreneur is sort of the perfect job for a single mother because you can pick and choose your hours but also women just don't have the confidence I think that's a big part of it to take a risk to take a chance and so what advice would you give to another entrepreneur or another woman that's trying to build their confidence that it's slow and steady there's no secret magic bullet to being an entrepreneur it's just a lot of hard work a lot of resilience I'm such a believer in resilience well obviously given what I've gone through but I think there was a Harvard business review that said actually 90 % of success is grit and I believe in that because it is about who can get up the most and keep going yeah even when it knocks you because it will knock you god the stairs not perfect there's still tons of knocks that come in but I'm much better at dealing with that stress and just not getting caught up not losing sleep over it just finding a way through it and I've made sure to surround myself with people who balance out my skill set where we can lift each other up if someone's having a bad day there's someone else to pull you out of it you know just surrounding yourself with the right people do the work really hard work make sure you've got a product you really believe in never be shy to ask a question particularly found female founders because I think we all want to help each other and we all want to help new women coming through right I mean I always say to my team if you ask a question what's the worst that can happen if someone says no like so yeah it's interesting actually when I was doing the knickers and I think because I'm like you not from a formal fashion background I think in some ways that was helpful for me because I couldn't understand why there were all the heavy elastic seams and underwear which is what gives you the VPL and the wedgie and all those things and so the actually I spoke to about two or three factories at the beginning and they said well you can't design a pair of underwear that's going to stay in place and not fall down without those elastic seams I was like well if you put the lace like that and you do this flat lock stitch I think you can so I actually had to persuade a factory to even sample it I was like why do you just sample it and see if it works and that's where it all came from I was like this is perfect because you don't get the digging in And so that's why it's, yeah, I got a lot of no's as well.

39:29And so do you think that entrepreneurship is a truly viable option for women who've really been through it, as you say, left with a huge amount of debt, a huge amount of kind of... It's so hard because I'm aware how privileged I am. You know, I had contacts and I had my mum to help with childcare. But I'm part of this group. And a lot of the chat on there is, what are we going to do about these statistics? this one two percent depends which piece of research you believe either way not great let's call it two let's be generous yeah but what are we going to do about this and i asked our vc why don't you invest in more female businesses it was actually a woman she said we're desperate to we're desperate to the problem is is we get a business plan lands on our desk first thing we do is take the numbers and we halve them and then we go right if they do 50 of what they say they're going to do is it still going to work the problem is as women before they send it in because they're risk averse they've already done the halving so by the time the VC does the halving again you're down to 25 percent so what business is going to work at 25 percent of their projections not many as we know the average investment into a female lab business returns 50 percent more so but because it's been set up in this patriarchal way the investment system I think it's very much a man's world so that means that because the halving process that goes on probably more cautious by nature but still take the right risks i don't know how to say it without sounding kind of sexist i mean i've definitely like face this myself i mean one thing we say every time we talk to investors is we will hit every single number we say we will and we can say and so yes we can take the projections up for you but we will hit these numbers we would rather surprise exactly yeah and What we've done every single year is we have over-delivered and we have hit every single number we've said we will.

41:26And we've said you can talk to any single investor who we've worked with and they will tell you. I've heard that from so many of my investors. I look forward to getting your report because you're going to surprise me on the upside. Right. And the problem is with then with the VC world, especially in this kind of traditional, more US-based VC, all of these types of things where people are being given tens of millions at pre-seed stage before they've even got tested an idea. It is all based on imaginary numbers, obviously, with some guesstimation. I do, however, not think it's women's fault. And I do think that there is an element of it where the...

42:05No, it's not our fault at all. It's the pressures we put on ourselves, our lack of confidence. Yeah, but even then that sounds like a women-inflicted issue. do i i mean i you know there will absolutely every time i talk about the kind of funding thing and people are like not trying to be rude but is there an element of it that like women aren't trying to go for this funding as well it's like oh this could account for some of it it's not going to count for 98 percent of it and all of this there's a really interesting ted talk some researchers sat in on investment meetings so you know the entrepreneur going to a vc or whoever and saying invest in me the language that was used that was negative in the female meetings compared to the male meetings it was off the charts women get asked all these negative questions what are you going to do if it fails what are you doing to protect the risks whereas the men were all being asked questions like positive like you know just just just completely different so yes it is there's an intrinsic bias yeah people don't even know what's going on I was thinking about it a lot yesterday because as you said I had quite the experience yesterday with um mainstream media and investment and men.

43:15And as part of that, I was really thinking, because, you know, I do understand that there will be part of it that's kind of like fewer women are going for funding and we need to address that and like all of that as well. But I also think that like, it's so classic that when we're, that's our defense, when it's like, if you make something really terrible for someone, like if you say, you know, you're not going to be able to do this, you're not going to be able to do this, you make this, you don't invest in anyone, you make the statistics terrible. And then you're like, why aren't women going for this it's like okay yeah you can't make an environment terrible and then be surprised that people aren't able to drive in it because also people can't take that risk because it is too much of a risk whereas if it is less less of a risk for men to go for investment like full stop no it is so we can't say that it's because women aren't going there when we're saying don't come here we're not going to give you any money I don't know I think about it a lot obviously I just I don't I think about a lot too and I don't know how to fix it and how to change things so the Rose review I thought was really spot on with this women have so much more family pressure on them they're not in a position to take risk often whether that's looking after small children or elderly parents or running the household the child care I think is massive like if I hadn't had free child care I wouldn't be able to do this I know that they've reduced the rates and things but it's nowhere near it's nowhere because it's the burden of it still massively falls on the the woman in the house and if you're a single mother it's 100 on you and then it's the confidence and I think god you're going to be amazing for future women my children my daughter's age because it's I don't know if you could see it you can be it that's 100 true so I think the more of us that are out there working together to show the next generation coming through what's possible and that we're just as good as men and that we probably will return 50 better on your investment and actually we do return 50 better yeah so maybe actually we're better do you think So maybe you're just scared.

45:05Maybe you're scared it would make you too much money and you won't know what to do with it. Taking your jobs. Well, I think that is a perfect, very frustrating, but perfect way to end. I think we could talk about this all day. I know. I just want to find a way of taking positive, I think we're people who like to see results, probably. But anyway, we will find a way to change these numbers. We will. We will. Watch this space. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Grace.

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