Sharmadean Reid founded WAH Nails as a side project in 2009 – now it is a huge global well-known business.

In this episode I chat to Sharmadean about productivity and distraction. She has a brilliant Guardian column called Bossing It where she answers modern work questions.

She wrote two WAH nails books, delivered global pop up nail salons for 100s of brands, created a product line with Walgreen Boots Alliance and was awarded an MBE for services to Beauty.

So now she is building a new way to book beauty online with her new company Beauty Stack.

We talk about what she’d learned from starting businesses. Sharmadean’s also working on a new campaign with NatWest which is all about helping small businesses be the best they can be. A big focus is on helping small businesses do more with less and improve their productivity through the NatWest Productivity Blueprint.

The medium article I reference in the opening section of the interview is called “Growing Up Too Fast — Or Why I Closed WAH Nails Topshop”.

Soundbites I love from this episode:

“Why not write a completely new rule for how we determine success?”

“Create your own pic ‘n’ mix from other people’s successful bios”

“You can’t copy someone else’s path”

“Being productive doesn’t mean being chained your desk the whole time.”

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