Your Dream Business

By Teresa Heath-WareingBusiness Entrepreneurship Marketing

Your Dream Business episodes

January 27, 2025Overcoming Social Media Challenges with Karen Cureton: Tips for Authentic Engagement
In this episode of 'Your Dream Business Podcast,' I talked with Karen Cureton, a multi-award-winning social media trainer and speaker. We tackled the common dilemmas businesses face with social media, from engaging effectively to overcoming the fear of visibility. Karen shared her journey from corporate sales to helping women in business grow their social media presence, demystifying the process with actionable strategies. Tune in for insightful tips on building relationships online, maintaining authenticity, and consistently engaging your audience for business growth.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST
Overcoming the Fear of Visibility: Karen shared practical tips on how to conquer the fear of being seen online and why embracing authenticity is crucial for building trust with your audience.

Building Relationships Through Engagement: The importance of genuine, consistent interaction on social media was emphasized as a way to foster meaningful connections and grow your business.

Simplifying Social Media Strategies: Karen broke down actionable steps to demystify social media, making it easier for businesses to create a strong online presence and maintain consistency.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
Connect with Karen Cureton on LinkedIn, Website, Facebook, Instagram
Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript
If you are in business, you know that social media is something that we have to do. Some of you might love it, and some of you might think it's a necessary evil, something that we have to do. And some of you might feel like you're not doing it at all, and you really should be. But you might be thinking, why do I go to all that effort of putting all those posts out when it's just tumbleweed?
And people talk about getting clients from social media, but it's never really happened for you. Well, today's guest is addressing all of those things. How do you show up where you actually do engage with your potential customers and turn them into clients?
Hello, and a really warm welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? I always love it when I can bring you guests that I know really well and today's guest is no exception. Karen Cureton has been working with me for the past 12 months.
She's actually been in my world a very long time as a voyeur and a lurker which you will hear more about people lurking on social media and she's watched me for quite some time and about 12 months ago she started working with me and it's just been an absolute pleasure to work with her. And as you'll hear in the interview, one of the things that I talk about is that I encourage everyone [00:02:00] I work with to increase their visibility by getting on podcasts, by putting themselves in front of other people's audiences and putting themselves out there.
And Karen obviously came to me and said, well, could I come on your podcast? And I was like, of course you can. So it's really lovely to have Karen come and join us today. Karen is a multi award winning social media trainer and speaker, and she works with women in business to inspire them to grow through being visible on social media.
She is not your typical social media trainer. She is an ex pat Geordie with over 20 years experience in corporate sales. But for the last decade, she's focused on helping women in business navigate the social media maze, where she is passionate about ditching the jargon and creating a safe space to learn.
Karen has a program called Social Media for Grown Ups because as Karen shares in this episode, she was not of an era where she grew up with the internet and therefore her passion lies in helping other women and people who have had the say, where social media [00:03:00] isn't second nature, isn't something that they grew up with, and help them demystify what it is like and get on it.
We have such a cool conversation with some really good actionable takeaways for you. So at the end of this episode, I summarize some of those actionable takeaways, but we're talking about how to show up, how to get engagement, how to be proactive with your engagement and how to feel. like a real human being when you're on social media and how to come across as a real human being so that the people you're trying to interact with know that and they know that you're not some spammy horrible salesperson who's just trying to jump in their DMs and irritate them, which we've all probably had experience of.
Well, I certainly have had loads of it, but most of all, it was just a really lovely chat and so lovely to bring it to the podcast. So without further ado, here is The Awesome Karen. Karen, a really warm welcome to the podcast. How are you doing?
Karen: I'm really good. Thank you. The sun is actually shining, so I'm happy. I'm [00:04:00] happy.
Teresa: Actually, you're not wrong. It's, it's a little bit, a little bit blue sky here. Obviously, if you're listening to this and you're not British, then you might find it weird that we just immediately talk about the weather, but that is obviously our MO, like, you know, we talk about weather. Karen, you have been in my world for some time, which is lovely.
And What was super interesting was we, one of the things I do with my students and clients is we talk about visibility and it's what happens whenever I teach people the visibility strategy of getting in front of other people's audiences, they then get really nervous to approach me because I've taught it and you sent me.
In fact, you had heard someone I'd interviewed and you were like, I'm never gonna ask to come on the podcast, didn't you?
Karen: Yeah, true.
Teresa: But you did it and you're here, which is great. I, because
Karen: no, I message to you and said, I'm putting my big girl's pants on and I'm gonna apply.
Teresa: Yes. And look what happened. So
Karen: there you go.
Teresa: If someone is sat there thinking, oh, I'm too scared to do that, [00:05:00] just do it. You just never, never know. And actually, I. Love what you do. And obviously, I've been watching what you do for some time and even in my world for some time. And I think lots of people are going to resonate with this conversation. We are talking about social media, but you come at it from a different angle.
Now, obviously, if someone's listening to this, they can't see you, Karen. So maybe let's start with why you come at the angle you come at.
Karen: Well, I come at the angle I come at because I didn't grow up with the internet. I am a woman who grew up, I don't even want to say what decade, that's really scary. But I grew up, didn't grow up with the internet.
I grew up when my old boss used to send me faxes on a Sunday night with my reports and stuff like that. So I came to social media, I was still a really early adopter. I was on Twitter, God forbid that, Ooh, don't get me started on that, but Twitter was where I very first started [00:06:00] because I was in a sales role.
I was sales director for a national house builder. Absolutely loved what I did and then was stupid enough to have a kid, you know, who does that? And then I started looking at, I didn't want to go back into the corporate world and I thought how can I attract new clients? Because I didn't have a big budget, I didn't have lots of money and I came at it from a perspective of, do you know what it is? everything that I've learned about selling high end properties. which is where I worked. It was about building relationships and social media is exactly that. People forget, like we just say, it's, if you forget, it's called social networking and you build relationships with your future clients. And so I started looking at it as a woman in business with very little budget.
It didn't grow up with the internet and thought, do you know what it is? I [00:07:00] think this could be a goer. I think it could be absolutely a goer. And that's what, 14 years ago.
Teresa: I think, I think this, I think my audience is probably a little bit split in a sense of, there are probably some people listening to this, like, yeah, I love social media.
I'm great. I'm good on it. It's brilliant. And then there are some people who are like, I just can't get my head around it. And how, If you deal with people who, like you said, didn't grow up with the internet, didn't grow up with social media, you know, we all know that when we look at, you know, your children are older than my daughter, my daughter's 15, and how old are your boys?
Karen: My son's come, he's 19, he's 20 in May.
Teresa: Well, it's so second nature to them. That's all they know. So how do you go about encouraging someone who didn't, they didn't grow up with it, they don't even necessarily like it? Like, some people don't, you know, it's not their thing. Like, how do you encourage them to [00:08:00] actually even consider it in the first place for their business?
Karen: I think, I think there's two things there that I want to address, which is I, I assumed because I'm the wrong side of 40 that it was just people who didn't grow up with the internet. But I actually trained a young woman last year who was a personal trainer. and she said, I absolutely hate, hate social media.
I'm terrified of it. And I think whether you are her generation, younger, I'm actually coaching a young woman who's 18. Who's working at a dad's business, doing the marketing, and I'm coaching her to do the social media for that business. She's terrified. So I think. We almost need to swipe the age thing out.
I think it's a thing where people lack confidence. They're fearful of judgment. And then it's the donor looks silly. [00:09:00] You know, I remember the very first time I went live. Back in the day, I went live on Facebook, I was absolutely bricking it. And I planned it all out and I did it and I thought I'd done a decent job.
Then this horrible woman messaged me and it's the only time in 14 years somebody's done it. And she messaged me, oh, I thought your lighting could have been better. I thought you could have done this, could I? And I just responded and went, thanks for your feedback and blocked her. But my point is, I said this to a lady, well, just before Christmas and she said, I really don't like social media.
I know I need to be there. It's a necessary evil. And I said, well, your options are you are the pay somebody to do it for you, which is never the same as your voice. No, never the same as your voice or you learn how to do it. So what I do is I bring in my old sales tools and I say, well, what if. You learned this stuff.
What if you then signed up, [00:10:00] say five new clients in the first six months, what would the value of that client being to your business? And how would that make you feel? Well, I'd feel great. And I think it's that it's like. You know, I'm an introvert extrovert. I know you. I'm quite comfortable chatting away and I will chat away, but I'm also the person that flew to Australia and didn't speak to a soul.
Yeah. I'm not sociable in that way with people I don't know. And, and in social media, I, I do that. I think I dress for work and I think I'm putting my, my work avatar on, which is confident Karen. And so I'll say to, to clients and I'll say to your listeners. Take a step back for it and think about how you'd feel if you get the results you want, but I think it's, it's take it to the point that what we want to do is build relationships first, because we forget if we walked into a really [00:11:00] smart shop.
for me, it would be a handbag shop. We walked in there into Mulberry and it would go, can I help you? And you go, don't touch me. Don't touch me. Whereas actually I went to Mulberry before for my birthday, I went to Mulberry and this lovely woman came up to me and said, she says, Oh, you've got a Daria. She says, Oh, she says, Oh, it's one of my favourites.
And we ended up talking handbag. She built a relationship with me.
Teresa: Yeah. And I think. That's the key thing. I think often when people are scared of social media or don't want to do it, they're not thinking of, which was always the problem in the first place, they're not thinking of forget the Forget the, the actual, you know, platform itself, it's about, that's all it is.
Like it just happens to be a different way of doing it. It's the, the essence of what you do doesn't change the, the building, the relationships that have in the conversations that doesn't change. It's just the format in which you put that out, whether it's in person, whether it's something [00:12:00] else or whether it was on social media.
But I guess people really get hung up with the, the actual mechanics of using social media.
Karen: Yeah. Yeah. And I think, I think it's about one of, one of the ladies I worked with about five, six years ago, she said, what I need is a workable way to do this stuff. And I think, you know, I, I have, I, I, in my head, which can be quite, crazy at times.
I have four things and I try and keep it really simple. I have four things that I think we need to learn and we incrementally, it's a bit like, you know, when your daughter was learning to ride a bike, she wouldn't get on that bike and go straight to the end of the street and back without falling off. We build up, we build up our learning.
So I'll say to people, if you think about the foundation of your, knowledge starts with the plan because we still have a plan for our businesses. You know, I have my big flip chart in my office where I have what I'm doing month by month, what I want to do in my business, [00:13:00] what I need to do to get there.
Your social media activity should be just the same. So you start with your foundations, your planning, what, where do I want to be this time next year? What do I want to be doing? Then you build up by the next layer. It's almost like a cake. Next layer of super chocolate icing, let's call it chocolate icing.
And then that's the juicy stuff. That's your content, that's your imagery. Maybe creating reels, going live. Some gorgeous branded imagery. Understanding that and then building up again by then starting to build your audience and then engage with them because that's the piece every time I go to a networking event, somebody will say to me, Oh, I'm paying my VA to do my social media, do my social media.
And I said, well, what's she doing? Yeah, well, she's posting. I said, and who's engaging, who's talking to your audience and, and it's a bit like if we [00:14:00] shouldn't just hit a tennis ball at a wall, it would be very exciting that's posting on social media, not actually, let's get to be hitting that ball back to us and talking.
Teresa: That's a great analogy. The whole, you know, the difference between playing tennis with a partner and just banging it against the wall. Like, you know, you're not getting anything back, you know,
Karen: like boring. It's boring. You know, I remember when I very first started on social media. I was in selling mode. I wasn't, I was in almost in that panic, you know, that fight of like, just sell to them, just put stuff out about how you can work with me.
And then I took a step back and, and I'll do this now. I would actually urge your listeners to do this. Do an audit of your last 20 posts. How many of them are building a sense of your personality? How many of them are authority positioning you? How many of them are talking about your pedigree? And what your clients say about [00:15:00] working with you, how many of them give you a sense of what results you can achieve and the difference you make and your differentiation.
So I'll say, take a step back, have a look, because actually quite often when we all start, we all start with selling because that's the easy thing to do.
Teresa: Yeah. So, okay. I've got questions coming out of my head. Okay. So. Firstly, what if you are literally getting tumbleweed? So what if? And I think this is the mistake that you kind of touched on and, and, and we can talk more about is that just the posting thing that I'm posting, I'm showing up and doing the thing and I'm getting nothing. Let's talk about that first.
Karen: I would strip it all back to basics. So I would say, okay, who do you want to attract? Because majority of us, a lot of us offer services. And I think there's a thing around positioning our expectations. How often does somebody need what we offer? [00:16:00] Now, if somebody was buying the pen.
That's really easy. You know, I buy loads of stuff on Instagram for the cats, you know, it's what I do. It's, it's an easy quick sale, isn't it? Yeah. But if you have a service, I would take a step back and think about, are you clear about who you want to work with? And will your profile Your bio resonate with them, regardless of platform, and my ethos is very much around, it doesn't matter which, you said it before, it doesn't matter which platform.
Mechanics are different, but actually the principles are the same. Your bio, your profile. needs to be something that's going to resonate, it's going to talk to that person. So I would say if you're sitting there and you're getting nothing happening, do a bit of a family and friends test with your bio, ask people, your friends, people that you trust, what do you think I do?
Who do...
50 min
January 20, 20255 Myths About Launching That Are Holding You Back From Your Most Successful Launch Yet!
What if everything you thought you knew about launching was wrong?
When it comes to launching there are so many beliefs out there about what it takes to have a successful launch—beliefs that might be the very thing holding you back.
In today’s episode, I'm going to challenge some of the most common assumptions about launching and uncover what’s really standing in your way. If you’ve ever felt stuck, overwhelmed, or unsure if you’re ready to launch, this episode is for you.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST
Big audiences aren’t a must – You don’t need a massive following to successfully launch your business. Focus on building a loyal, engaged community instead.
Perfection is overrated – Waiting for everything to be flawless can delay your launch. Take practical, manageable steps and launch even if things aren’t 100% perfect.
Keep it simple – Launching your business doesn’t have to be complicated. Focus on clear, simple strategies to achieve success without overcomplicating the process.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
Join my Masterclass
Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript
What if everything you thought you knew about launching was wrong? There are so many beliefs out there about what it takes to have a successful launch. Beliefs that might be the very thing that's holding you back. In today's episode, we are going to challenge some of the most common assumptions about launching and uncover what's really standing in your way.
If you've ever felt stuck, overwhelmed, or unsure if you're ready to launch, this episode's for you. Let's jump in. Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host, Riz Heath Waring. An international bestselling author, award winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast.
I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you're in. In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus, we'll be diving into some mindset tools and [00:01:00] strategies that keep you focused, motivated, and motivated.
And are gonna stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you're in the right place. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. How are you doing this week? One of my goals this year is to increase the podcast downloads.
It was kind of a goal last year, but I didn't focus on it as much as I needed to. So this year is definitely going to be the year. And I was doing some research. And do you know that around 70 percent of the people who listened to this podcast have not subscribed to it? So I'm wondering if you'll do me a favor.
If you currently don't subscribe to this podcast, I would really appreciate it if wherever you're listening to this, you hit that subscribe button so that it tells Apple or Spotify or whatever you're listening that you like this content and hopefully we'll share it with others. And my commitment to you is that I am going to work really hard this year to [00:02:00] create the best podcast that I can.
I'm going to bring in the best guests that help you move your business forward. And I'm going to work really hard on my solar episodes to make sure that you walk away with real tactical, strategic advice that helps you move the needle in your business. So that is my commitment to you. And all I ask in return is that if you haven't already, you hit that subscribe button.
Okay, let's get on with today's show. Today, we are talking about the five myths about launching that are holding you back. Now, when it comes to launching, it can feel really intimidating, especially when you're stuck believing one of these myths that simply aren't true. So today we're going to bust five common myths about launching that might be keeping you from achieving your launch goals.
If you have an online business, you might be thinking that you can't launch or your launch isn't going to be successful because of one of these five things that we're going to be discussing today. And I want to either reframe them in [00:03:00] your mind or just give you the facts about it and that it actually isn't true.
So let's get started with the very first one, which is a really popular one that I see. Myth one, my audience is too small. Now you might be thinking, I need, tens of thousands of followers or people on my email list in order to do a successful launch. And let's be honest, the more people you have, the better the chances your launch is going to be.
I'm not going to deny that at all. However, stopping a launch or not going into a launch because of the size of your email list is not something I would recommend. You see, when we get to some of the later myths, you will realize that launching is about learning and You can do that with a small list without doubt.
The other thing that's super interesting about having a small list is often your list is more engaged than a big list. So the other day I [00:04:00] was, I was actually taking part in someone else's online day. It was over the new year and they happened to mention on the live call. So it was a zoom call, how many people had registered for the event.
Now this person is a big YouTuber and they had 100, 000 people register for the event. But what was super interesting is their turn up rate was about 16, 000 people, which I know you're probably sat there thinking, I'd give my right arm to have 16, 000 people on my email list, maybe. However, when you work out the percentage, which is very easy in this case, that's a 16 percent turn up rate.
Normally, if I was doing a webinar or if I was doing something where I get people to join and I want a turn up rate, I would hope that that turn up rate would be more like 30%. So sometimes when you have a small list, you can actually get way better [00:05:00] percentages In terms of your engagement, your turn up and your purchases, then sometimes if you have a massive list, it's not about the size of your list, it's about the quality and how engaged it is.
And often those smaller lists can be more engaged. And just because you have a small number of people on your list doesn't mean you shouldn't launch. The people on your list are as likely to buy if they're on a massive list as if they're on a smaller list. They don't know. Someone on your email list has no idea how many people are on your email list.
For all they know, you can have 100, 000 people on there. So it makes no difference to them as to whether they're going to sign up, join. Get engaged with the launch that you're going to do of the size of your email list. I've had really brilliant success stories with members that I've worked with and clients I've worked with who have had a small list and they've launched because one of the things that they can do, which you can't do when you have a big list, is you can do a lot more personal [00:06:00] outreach.
You can do things like personally DM people, follow up with video messages. You can have one on one conversations with these people to understand more about them. When your launches get bigger and when your list gets bigger, it gets a lot harder to do that. And actually the reason I want you to launch with a smaller list is because now's the time you get to learn and practice.
Imagine doing your first ever launch to a room of 10, 000 people. That would be terrifying. And if you messed up, you're going to mess up in a big way. This is why you should be doing it. So your list is never too small to go ahead and launch. Yes, the truth is the bigger your list, the more you might end up with more customers.
But the, but the fact of the matter is there is no size too small. Okay. Myth number two. I'm going to give away too much of my content. This is a really interesting one. And one that is often a [00:07:00] conversation that comes up in my coaching sessions with my students. How do they know what to do in something like a webinar or a challenge or a bootcamp so that they're not giving away too much information And to make sure that the balance is right because what we don't want to do is we don't want to waste someone's time.
We don't want someone turning up to our launch experience and actually all we do is sell to them hard from the minute they get on to the minute they finish because that's not going to engage anybody. But also what we don't want to do is we don't want to you. Bring them into our launch experience, give them so much stuff that they need to go away and do some of that stuff and actually feel like they have no need to come and buy the thing we're trying to sell to them.
The truth is we need to give them something. We need to give them some content. We need to give them a quick win or an understanding. And I think this is more key. We often talk about share with them the what and the why and not the how. And I think that still stands. I think you [00:08:00] need to demonstrate. what it is they need to understand why they need it.
And then your course or your, um, membership or your coaching program will give them the how in detail. For me, one of the webinars I've done in the past is around the five steps to building an email list. I talk them through what those five steps are and why those five steps are really important. But what I'm not doing is showing them how to do those five steps.
Now, if they wanted to take those five steps and go and research them and go and do them themselves, then absolutely fine. No worries at all. Those people are going to do that anyway. They weren't ever going to come and buy my thing, but at least I'm giving them something to go on, but I'm not giving them everything.
Bear in mind, like I said, it's the what and the why, not necessarily the how. Myth number three, my product isn't ready yet. Now, you may have heard in the online space, sell it before you make it. And I have done [00:09:00] this a few times, including the last launch that I did back in December, which was a very small private launch to a select number of people.
And I didn't have the product ready at all. And I sold it on that basis. However, like I said, one of the things that I did was that it was with a very small group of people that I had worked with on a, I'd done a workshop with them over four sessions. And they had got to know me and understood how I worked and my knowledge and all that sort of thing.
It was much easier to offer them something and say, look, it's not ready, but it will be by this point. I think there's nothing wrong with that. As long as you deliver, as long as you then say, this is what you're going to get. And this is when you're going to get it. And the people that bought it back in December bought the course that I'm selling, they, the people who bought it back then got it for a much cheaper price because it wasn't ready. So it's almost like you're having to buy something before you see it and [00:10:00] before it's built out. And therefore you're getting the benefit of a cheaper price because of that. One of the reasons I really like is this strategy, not always, but one of the reasons for me personally, I like this strategy is that it pins me down when I say I'm going to sell something new or do something new. So for instance, let's take YouTube and I know it's not selling it, but I'm I've been talking to you for a while now, if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, about starting YouTube.
And it is a huge intention for me to start YouTube. And it was last year, but things got very busy and I had to push it. And then I'm having conversations with my team about whether I need to push it again, which I really don't want to do. But as I've not promised it to anybody, and as I've not sold it, and obviously I won't be selling it, it's YouTube, but as I've not made myself make a commitment, I can push it.
And that's the same with launching a product. If you have already sold the product, then you have no choice but to get it done. And but to ensure that you are [00:11:00] doing the thing. However, if you think I'm going to get it ready and then sell it, you might not ever get it ready. The other thing is You want some help in getting that product really good.
And sometimes creating it with your customers is a really good way of doing that. You haven't just spent the last six months creating a product to put it out to the world to realize no one wants it. Or they want it and they get it and it's not in the right format, or it wasn't quite what they thought.
So sometimes you don't have to have that product completely ready. You need to understand what's going into that product. So I was able to tell them the outline of the modules. I was able to tell them what templates they're getting. I was able to tell them the structure of the calls they were getting.
However, it wasn't actually done. until the new year. So if you haven't created your product and you're thinking I've got to have my product perfect before I actually get it out there, this might be the sign that you've been waiting for to go ahead and start to sell it. [00:12:00] And again, this is where small audiences can be good because you can have those conversations with people.
You can keep it quite tight and You can really kind of help them understand whether it's for them. But maybe this is a sign that you've been waiting for to get on and get that product launch. Myth number four. Everything has to be perfect. Now, I am a perfectionist through and through. I look at other people who launch and bearing in mind I don't
talk about launching and teach launching and do launching for a living. And this is very much my wheelhouse. And I look at the biggest and the best people launching and I in my head go, I need to be as good as them. I need my sales page to be as beautiful as theirs and as orchestrated as theirs. I need the funnels, the emails, that all of those things, I need it to be perfect.
But the truth is they never started that level. You might look at my stuff and think. I want to look like Teresa's, but I didn't start at [00:13:00] this level. I started at the pages that weren't perfect. The funnels that weren't a funnel, the webinars that weren't really well structured and kind of the way they are now, it was so different.
And I think thinking something has to be perfect is an absolute nightmare. When we try and make it perfect, We just don't do it. We just don't end up doing the thing because it never will be perfect. Things I write today are still far from perfect, but it never will be perfect. And I know that. The other thing that I mentioned earlier is I want you to understand that Every time you launch, you learn something.
You learn, okay, I did that and I didn't like it. I did that and I did like it. That had no effect. That did have an effect. And while you're trying to make something perfect, and while you're waiting for it to be perfect before you do anything, means you're not doing anything. And it also means [00:14:00] you're not learning.
So there's a saying, which is a little bit cheesy, Like, but it's, you know, I think it's useful, which is you either win or you learn. So you never lose, you never fail, you learn from it. And that's how I learned to do some of the things that I've done. That's how I know what works, what doesn't. That's how I know what converts well on a page and what doesn't.
Because I have gone through it so many times. I have shown up to a launch on a webinar and one person has shown up live. I've had launches literally fall on their backside and no one bore. I have had people that have come along and gone, this was the most amazing webinar ever and didn't convert. I have had Every type of launch you could imagine a boot camp, a, um, challenge webinars, open houses.
I've done them all and none of them have been perfect. Not one single one of them. So if you are waiting for it to be perfect, you are never ever going to do it. The [00:15:00] key thing that you can do on every single launch is track it, track everything that you're doing, whether you track it and go, God, I hated that, or that's a terrible result.
Still track it, still think about. What can you learn from that thing? And the other way to think about it, if this is helpful, is the person that you're trying to help on the other end, they don't need it to be perfect. They need the help now. If you're thinking of doing a challenge to get people motivated to, I don't know, start movement or finally clear out their wardrobe or whatever it might be, that person who you're trying to help, they don't care that it's perfect.
What they care about is that actually, I just want you to help me get motivated to do that thing. And by you holding back because you want it to be perfect, you're doing them an injustice. You're not helping your perfect customer. You're not helping the person who's out there who needs your help show up.
Do it the best you can, knowing it's not going to be perfect, but you're going to learn from it every [00:16:00] single time. Done is better than perfect, and learn from every single thing that you do. Fifth and final myth. Launching is too complicated. Now, people believe And I'm not going to say that they're wrong, that there are many moving parts to a launch and they're going to mess it up.
And the truth is launching can feel really overwhelming and I get it. However, this is where you have bits that come from everywhere and you're trying to piece together different things. And also when you're looking at someone else's launch thinking, I need to do that. I...
22 min
January 13, 2025Boosting Visibility: Using Awards and Books to Grow Your Brand
In this episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast, the wonderful Sophie Milliken, MBE, the founder and CEO of Moja, is chatting about the importance of getting noticed through awards and writing books. Something that makes many people uncomfortable, we discuss why winning awards matter and the common mistakes to watch out for when you are nominated for an award. Sophie also talks about how writing a book can help boost your business's visibility. Plus, we share tips on how to tell if an award is legit or a scam, and how to make your submissions stand out. If you're a course creator, coach, or membership owner looking to grow your brand, this episode is full of useful advice and strategies.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST
The Power of Awards – Winning awards can significantly boost your business’s visibility, but it’s important to submit thoughtfully and avoid common mistakes like submitting for the wrong categories or ignoring the submission guidelines.
Writing a Book for Business Growth – Writing a book can be an excellent way to increase your visibility and credibility, positioning you as an expert in your field while attracting new opportunities.
Spotting Legitimate Awards – Not all awards are created equal. It’s crucial to be able to differentiate between genuine awards that will add value to your business and those that are simply out to make money off unsuspecting participants.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
Connect with Sophie Milliken on Instagram or LinkedIn
Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript
Teresa: Have you ever thought about going for an award or been put up for award and didn't get it? Do you wonder whether it's worth the effort because sometimes we have to go to a fair bit of effort in terms of putting a submission in and convincing them why we need to get it? Or maybe you don't even think about going for them in the first place because you're thinking I'm not good enough to win an award.
In today's episode, we are talking about the importance of getting visible and specifically around awards and winning them, how to know whether they're worth it, how to know what you should look out for when you're putting together an award submission, and And some of the common mistakes that people make.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast.
I'm your host, Theresa Heath, wearing as always. And I just want to thank you so much for spending the time with me and listening to this episode of the podcast. It really does genuinely mean the world to me. Obviously I sit and record it on my own when I do solos and things. And sometimes you can feel really disjointed from the people listening.
So I just want to say a big, massive, thank you. I really appreciate you being here on today's episode. I am talking about. One of my favorite areas, or one of my key [00:02:00] areas that I talk about, we're talking about visibility and how to become visible. You, if you've listened to this podcast before, we'll know that this is a big thing that I teach.
It's a big thing that I talk about because if we're not visible, if people can't see us and they don't know that we exist. exist, then they're never going to be able to buy from us and becoming the go to expert is really important in terms of growing an online business. And that's exactly what we talk to today's guest about.
Although we do talk about it in a slightly different way. Today I'm interviewing Sophie Milliken. Sophie is an MBE. I mean, that's like so impressive. And the founder and CEO of Moja. I think I've said that right. It's M O J A. She worked with entrepreneurs and senior executives to amplify their personal profiles and become the authority in their industry.
As I've said, this is very much in my wheelhouse, which makes this a great conversation. She's a multi award winning businesswoman [00:03:00] and a proud mom. She also enjoys supporting the North East region where she lives in the UK. and is a co founder of City Ladies Networking, a networking group for women in business running a monthly breakfast events in Newcastle, London, and Paris.
Very fancy. So, Sophie came on to talk about visibility and we kind of ended up going down to like roots or two rabbit holes, which I'm super glad that we did because these are two things that we've not really talked about before. And the two areas of visibility that I don't talk a lot about because these aren't my zone of genius, but they are for Sophie is we talked about award winning, which yes, I won some awards, but I wouldn't say that I'm an expert in award winning things.
And we talk about writing a book and how these two things can be huge for your visibility and help you show up as the go to expert. So when it comes to [00:04:00] awards, we talk about are they worth going for? How do you know if you are good enough to go for an award? What should you look out for? And what are some of the common mistakes that people make when applying for awards?
And then from the book point of view, we talk about what it takes to actually write a book. She's written three. We talk about how long it will take and what it will do for your business and for your visibility when you have a book. So this is a really nice rounded conversation about two areas that Sophie is really, really smart in and gives some really good insight to both of those things, whether you're looking to go for awards or write a book, I still think you're going to find this a really interesting conversation in terms of getting visible and how important it is for your business.
So without further ado, here is Sophie. Sophie, welcome to the podcast.
Sophie: Thanks for having me on.
Teresa: My pleasure. I'm excited about today's conversation because we're talking about something that always makes me cringe when I say it. [00:05:00] When someone says about my business and I say I'm a personal brand, it always makes me feel like, like my ego is all on show there.
Like, yeah, I'm a personal brand. Like it just feels horrible. However, Well, we're going to get into this about why we need one and what it is. And that's the thing, but let's start with what do you describe a personal brand as?
Sophie: So I have this love hate relationship with the term personal branding because it's just bandied about all the time now and people are always going on.
You've got to have a personal brand and you see all these personal branding coaches pop up all over social media and it's just become a bit of a thing. So I think what people, a lot of people think is is just doing a banging LinkedIn post or an Instagram post that does really well, and you get loads of likes on it, and that's kind of what people associate with personal branding.
For me, the social media part of it is actually the very last bit, because A [00:06:00] social media post doesn't really last for very long, whereas all the other stuff that I think underpins someone's personal brand will be around forever. So I often say to people, you know, Google one of my clients, for example, and all the stuff that pops up should be stuff that we've helped to put there.
And it might be things like an award win. It might be that they've spoken at an event or Or they have a new book out, or they've got a podcast, or they've been on someone's show, or they've been on TV. So all those different things that will raise someone's profile, make them more visible, which they can then talk about on social media.
Teresa: Yeah. And in my experience, this becomes a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy in this fact of you have to, and I think this is where people get the mistake or make the mistake. They think it just happens. They think that I wake up one day and just get an award or wake up one day and get invited on a podcast.
That is not the case. What they haven't seen behind the background is all the work that's going into it. But the more you [00:07:00] do, the more you put out, the more people invite you to do things. Is that your experience?
Sophie: 100%. It's like a snowball effect. And the way I got into this as a business is quite interesting because I had my first business was a graduate recruitment and employability consultancy.
So we used to design assessment materials for big employers like JP Morgan, Marks and Spencers. And then we did some really cool stuff with the universities to prepare students to get graduate jobs. So it was super niche. And when that business really took off and started doing really well and scaling up massively was when I was doing all of these activities.
However, there was no plan. It wasn't intentional. It was a mistake. So what happened was actually that I Uh, had a co founder who was a bit more shy and retiring than I am. And he was afraid of the limelight, I suppose. Whereas I, I could see that by being more visible, it created opportunities. I just didn't really [00:08:00] realize that there should be a strategy behind it.
So one of the things that I did when he exited, exited the business was to have awards as part of my marketing strategy. And they were good quality awards, which have fantastic communities. So they weren't scammy ones, which I warn people against. They were good.
Teresa: This is a whole question I'm about to ask, but let's go on.
Sophie: It is. It is. And, and what happened with that is we start getting shortlisted for stuff. And then there was it, there was this one year where I literally won everything that was going. It was got to the point where it was a bit embarrassing, if I'm honest, but it all paid off. And to be fair, we, we had in that the business was flying.
It was really successful. All these things were happening. But then what happened is I was saying yes to more things and it was this snowball effect. So my first book came out and I did a couple of book launches. I got offered two TEDx talks off back of this book launch. I'd never even watched a TEDx talk at this point.
Didn't really know what one was, thought I did, said yes to the first one. Then figured out how I was [00:09:00] going to do it. And literally it was the most scariest thing I've ever done in my life. But then off the back of that, I got offered a column in a magazine and I got, you know, all these things that happen and you'll have experienced this.
You know, when you do one of these things, five more opportunities pop up. So this was, you know, it just made my profile really high. And then what the beauty of it was, because there's a bit of a, so what question to this, like, why are we doing this? And what happened was. I was then rocking up to sales meetings with prospects and they felt like they knew me because they'd seen me at various things and they'd seen that I was sharing I'm at this thing on LinkedIn or whatever and it just made the conversations really natural and really easy because they felt like they knew me already when they didn't.
So it made sales really easy and it created more fun opportunities. So then fast forward a few years and I sold that business and stayed on And then decided I wanted to leave and I couldn't operate in my old industry anymore because I had 5, 000 [00:10:00] restrictions as to what I couldn't do for a period of time.
And I was chatting to a friend and said, she said to me, what are you going to do now? And I said, I've got this idea. Don't really know what it is or what to call it, but I feel like there's a process in all the stuff that I did to raise my profile. And I feel like I can do that for the founders. And that was how my current business Mojo was born.
It was just this random idea and it is now growing into, into a full offer. So that's the, the long version of that story. But I think it's, it's interesting, isn't it?
Teresa: And it's super helpful to understand the difference this can do for someone's business, because sometimes it does feel a little bit frivolous and, or.
On some of these things, which I have to say is like most marketing that I talk about, you're not going to necessarily see the results on day one or minute one. You, this is like, I liken it cause I'm a big gardener. I grow my vegetables. My audience know this. I'm obsessed. But anyway, this is like planting a seed.
You know, I have to plant the [00:11:00] seed. I have to love it. I have to water it. I have to make sure it's warm. It has enough light. I have to nurture it in those early days, even though it's doing nothing. All in the hope that at some point it will bring me tomatoes. And if I do it properly and I keep putting that time and effort in, then it will reward me having the summer.
But what happens in so much marketing and in things like this is we go, yeah, I didn't say anything. Like we're waiting for the instant result. There's no instant results. So we just assume it's not done anything. Okay. I want to talk about the awards thing because it's very interesting to me. So I have won a couple of awards.
I have won a most professional female speaker, which quite honestly gobsmacked me because I was like, of all the things I've been told most professional, I'm not sure was one of them, but I want a female speaker award, international female speaker award. And then just literally last week, I won role model of the year for digital women, which
Sophie: congratulations.
Teresa: Thank you. And it feels like a really [00:12:00] lovely award to win because like being told you're a role model is kind of amazing for my ego. It loves it. So those awards, very honestly, uh, the digital women awards, I was nominated by other people, but in order to actually put yourself in for the award, they contact you and say, you've been nominated for these awards.
And it was actually about four or five awards. And then I just went for two that I thought were the most, you know, kind of like a chance of winning, not even chance of winning, but ones that mattered to me. Like some of the others, it's like, actually, they don't matter to me and what I do. And then I had to submit a whole thing as to why I think I would be a good person for that award.
And the other award was just a submission. So I submitted my thing and it feels sometimes like, is this a bit. Like, and obviously with lots of awards you have to pay to go to the event and all this sort of thing and, and some awards you just have to outright pay to be part of them. How do we know whether it's worth doing Incredible and how do we know [00:13:00] when it's literally just a, a kind of tick in a box.
Sophie: A money making scam or a tick in a box. Yeah. So I have a few things that I would advise people to look out for. So I think awards should be part of everybody's strategy. I think there's an award for everybody at any stage in their business, whatever industry they're in. But there are a lot of scammy ones.
So if I was advising someone to put a strategy together, I would advise them to look for the whole year, to look at what's going on across the whole year. So they're not having any panics around, Ooh, there's a deadline tomorrow, I'm just going to put this thing together so that they can really think through it.
And also I would say, don't apply for everything. Choose specific ones that you know are more likely to, to deliver some kind of benefits because the reality is if you are writing your own award entries, it takes ages. It's like doing a really good quality job application. You can't just do this scattergun thing where you put loads out and hope that one of them sticks.
You've got to spend the time [00:14:00] if you're doing it yourself. And this is why a lot of people pay us to write their award entries because there's actually a skill to it. And sometimes it's quite hard to step out from your business and look into it. and come up with the stories and the stats and the evidence that a judge is expected to see.
But if I was, if someone, if you said to me, Oh, there's these awards here and I'm not sure whether I should apply for them. I would say, well, go and have a look and see who the judges are. Are they credible people in your industry that you either know, or you can see that they have a credible bio, for example.
I'd have a look at who the previous winners are. And again, same thing. Do you know who they are? Are you impressed by them? Can you see why they would have won? I'd be looking at things like, are they expecting you to pay to enter? Now, there's a bit of a caveat on this because some industries that is just the norm and it doesn't necessarily mean that they're scammy.
So you might need to delve into that one a bit deeper. There's other things that I really don't like about awards where Wandswear, it's a popularity [00:15:00] contest and they expect you to go and get people to vote for you, for example. So I tend to steer clear of
Teresa: Because who's got the biggest audience? That's who wins.
Sophie: Yeah, it's just weird.
Teresa: It's a numbers game. Yeah.
Sophie: Yeah, I find that bit strange. Or Wandswear, you have to be at the awards ceremony to have a chance of winning because yes, you should want to go, but it shouldn't be a requirement to even be considered. So there's a few things within there that I think will will help you see if it's a bit of a scam.
The other thing is that people should absolutely steer clear of ones where you get an email and I get these three or four times a...
46 min
January 06, 2025 2025 Goal Setting for Success: A Step-by-Step Guide
In part two of my review and plan series, I provide a step-by-step guide to setting goals and creating a marketing plan for the year ahead. I’ll guide you through the importance of reviewing past performance, setting SMART goals, and breaking them down into actionable steps. I also cover the significance of creating a consistent content calendar and leveraging various marketing channels to reach your target audience in 2025.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to
Apple podcasts
or
Spotify
and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
Connect with Teresa on
Website
,
The Club
,

Sign up to Teresa's email list
,
Instagram
,
LinkedIn
,
Facebook
or
Twitter

Transcript
There is a reason why some of the most successful business owners in the world goal set. That reason? Because it works. Because having a direction that you are going in is so powerful. Not only does it give you something to aim for, but it also really helps to keep you focused. One of the things that business owners struggle with, and I'm sure you have too at some point, is the shiny object syndrome.
It's so easy to get distracted by other things, to think, oh, that's the thing I should be doing, or that's the direction I should be going in. But when you have a clear, set path that you are heading down, and it's one that aligns with you, and it's one that you want so much, it is going to help you stay focused, stay on track, stay on goal, and keep you motivated throughout the whole year.
And that's what I'm teaching you to do in today's episode of the podcast.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. As always, I am your host, Theresa Heath Wang, and I am very grateful that you have decided to join me today. I never take that lightly. I am so honored that you are spending your time with me. So thank you. I appreciate you being here today.
We are [00:02:00] talking about goal setting for 2025. This is part two in a two part. podcast episode that I've done. The first part was episode 382. So if you haven't listened to that, then I would suggest you go and take a listen to that first. And then this is the second part. And to go along with both of these parts, there is a download.
So if you go to teresaheathwaring. com forward slash 384, the numbers. then you will find a link to the download. If you listen to episode 382 and you click the download there, then it's the same download. You don't need to re download it again. Okay. So in part one, we focused on reviewing your 2024 and some of the questions that I ask myself every single year.
And in this part, we're going to be looking forward. We're going to be looking at how do we actually goal set? What are the goals that we set? How do we do deep dives on and how do we plan our marketing for the rest of the year? So again, get the workbook if you [00:03:00] haven't got the workbook, because basically I'm walking you through what is in this workbook for you to do yourself.
So the very first thing I talk about is setting the goals. Now, when I do. this for my clients and my members. I take them through a number of different activities. One is the questions that I asked in part one, episode 382, which was reviewing 2024. The next thing I tend to do with them is go through a Wheel of Life exercise, so that we can look at where things are right now and where their life is right now.
And then I actually took them through a meditation. So I did a future them meditation, a visualization of thinking forward, what will life look like at the end of 2025. And then I use all three of those things to help us start to set goals. Because when you have all this information kind of in front of you, you're able to see Some of the things that kept coming up, and even if you don't do the meditation, you don't do the [00:04:00] Wheel of Life, you can go back and look at your 2024 review, and you'll start to see, actually I didn't do that, and that's important, I'd like to make sure I do that, or I did do this, but I'd like to improve on it.
This is where you're able to come up with your goals. I normally suggest that people have anywhere between 4 and 12. goals for the year. I wouldn't have more than 12 and I probably wouldn't have less than four. Sometimes people think, well, I've just got one goal to make money and that's fair enough, but actually there are some other goals that you can put in there.
And in terms of the goals, you really do want to try and think big and think ahead and put some kind of dreams behind it. You don't want the goal to be like, yeah, I'll definitely get that. You want it to push you a little bit. And in the workbook, one of the things I show you is the smarter framework from Michael Hyatt.
We've had Michael on the podcast before. We'll link to that episode. It's one of the best episodes or one of the most [00:05:00] downloaded episodes, if you haven't heard it. And maybe you want to just. hear it again, then we will link to that in the show notes, but basically his smarter goals go through things like specific that it needs to be simple, sensible, significant, measurable, meaningful, and motivational actionable.
Start the goal with an action verb to be verb. Risky. Don't make it too easy. You need it to be, to stretch you. Key times. It needs to have a deadline, a time trigger, or a frequency. Exciting. You need to get excited when you think about it. And relevant. Make it appropriate for your season of life. And this is super, super important.
And actually in last week's episode, if you didn't catch that with Nikki, we talk about seasons of life and how that affects us and our business and what success looks like for us. So there's no point in you saying you're going to work really hard in this season. You have got other things in your life like [00:06:00] children or aging parents or something that is going to get in the way.
Maybe this point in your life is not the time that you can do that. Maybe this point in your life is exactly the time you can do it. So bear in mind, where are you in your world and then start to write your goals. What do you want to achieve? I tend to write personal and business goals every year. In fact, I tend to find it easier to write the business goals than I do the personal ones, but it should be things like Well, not should be.
My stuff is like how much money I want to earn. Like, how much do I want to grow my audience by? Do I want to focus on something new, like doing YouTube that I've talked about before? Do I want to travel new places? So, one of my goals last year was to go to new places with my daughter and my husband. And I ended up traveling to the Philippines, to Japan, to Canada, and America twice.
All new places. So that was amazing. So totally [00:07:00] tick that goal off. It was awesome. And that's probably not going to be one of my goals for this year because the season I'm in at the moment is, I want to really focus in on making some money and I have a new product that's coming out. So I need to focus on getting that right.
So yeah, so write down your goals. Like I said, in the workbook, I've actually given you spaces for eight. You don't need eight. You can have more. You can have less. It's entirely up to you. Then the key bit is once you've decided your goal, I've given you a sheet called the goal deep dive. Now I'm going to go through it briefly here, but really this is kind of where you do want to get this download because it breaks it down on a sheet and I give you an example.
So the things that we look at with the goal deep dive, and this is how you get from having a goal to actually how on earth am I going to achieve it. So the first thing on the sheet is your goal summary, which is basically the thing that you've just written down. Then I get you to break this down into three mini actions.
So taking that big goal, what three actions could you break this down into? So the example I give in the workbook is [00:08:00] if you want to build your email list to a thousand subscribers by the end of 2025. So the three mini actions I've put down is you could run Facebook ads through the year. I could have three different lead magnets and I could make sure that I post about joining my email list.
Then the next step is take each of those three actions and give me one next step that you can take. This is where we're turning that goal into the actions. And one of the things that is so key and important here is a goal is great. But you can't always guarantee that you are going to achieve that goal.
What you can guarantee is the action you take. So for every goal, we want an action attached to it. Let's say your action, your goal is to get a thousand people on your list. You can't guarantee that you're going to get a thousand people on your list. What you can guarantee is what actions you can take to help that goal.
become a thing. So if by the end of [00:09:00] quarter one, you have taken some of these actions and it is not giving you the result you wanted, or it's given you a better result than you wanted. Now, you know, either I need to change up some of the actions or I need to do more of what I'm currently doing. And you can pat yourself on the back, regardless of that number of people on your email list, because well done, you took the action and now you have something to do.
Measure and you have something to review. So this is why taking the goal to the action is so, so very important. So next three steps. So in my example that I've given you in the workbook, I talk about that you're going to, or one of the things I'm going to do is plan when I will run ads and what kind to run the other action.
The other next step from the action that was have three lead magnets might be to review your lead magnets and come up with some new ideas. Next step for the action that was make sure I post about joining my list. I will add posting to my email list to maybe my habit tracker. [00:10:00] Okay, next thing is how will I know when I've achieved it?
Well, this is a pretty simple one because it's basically I'll know because I've hit a thousand. And then how will I feel when I've achieved it? And this is really important and it maybe sounds a little bit woo, but honestly, when it comes to, we don't like, We don't want a thousand people on our email list just for the sake of having a thousand people.
It's to do something. It's to get somewhere because the more people we have on our list, the more chances that we can grow our business. So how will I feel? And take a minute to think about this. How will I feel when I've done that? So I've put here in the example, I'll feel proud and happy that I'm growing my business.
The next section, which is key, is how might I self sabotage? Now, setting your goals is great. Setting your actions is even better. Sitting down and giving some time to how you might mess it up yourself is key because whether we like it or not, self sabotage is a thing. And I should [00:11:00] imagine that when you reviewed 2024, there was probably some stuff on there that you were like, Oh, I could have tried harder or I could have done something different.
That's why we do this work preemptive. That's why I am asking you to sit and think how might you self sabotage some of this. And then, the next box to it is, how do I prevent this? Like, what can I do to prevent this? So, I've given three examples on this worksheet. So, I think I don't have enough budget for ads.
Well, my, how will I prevent this? I will make sure I keep money aside for ads no matter how little. This is an investment. The self sabotage in terms of the lead magnets, not posting back my email list, worrying that I might be annoying people. How can I prevent this? I'll remind myself that I'm in business and I'm there to serve, add it to a habit tracker.
And then I might find myself procrastinating while trying to create new lead magnets. So how will I prevent this? I will break it down into smaller tasks and give myself a reward as I do it. And then the last section on this deep dive for your [00:12:00] goals is where are you starting today? In business, it's really easy to get distracted by other people because when other people have successes and share it, which is amazing.
And I celebrate them. Sometimes we can find that we compare ourselves and think, Oh my gosh, they just celebrated getting a hundred thousand people on their list and I'm trying to get a thousand or whatever it might be. So the reason I've put this last section in is because I want you to remember where you started and celebrate the move that you've had.
If you've not read the book, The Gap and the Gain, I highly recommend it. It's a really, really good book and it really helps you realize how far you've come. And instead of at the end of the year going, well, I've only got 900 subscribers, not a thousand. And therefore I failed. You'll look at the, the gain that you've had.
And in my example, on the worksheet I've put, my list is currently 350 people and I have one lead magnet, which I don't post often. So. And then when you're doing your review, either quarterly or at the [00:13:00] end of the year, you can look, okay, that's where I started. Have I improved? And you can celebrate that improvement no matter how big it is or how small it is.
Okay, that's how we deep dive into the goals. The other things that I've included on the workbook for you is then going into KPIs. I've just given you a sheet where you can basically track numbers. Some of the numbers you might want to track are things like the size of your email list, your sales, how many, uh, If you do things like clarity calls or sales calls, how many of them you have and what your conversion is, you might want to track things like your social media followers, your engagement.
Obviously, I would track things like my podcast downloads. If you've got YouTube, you can track that. So I've just included a sheet for KPIs just so that you can track them throughout the month, uh, each month for each, for the year. And then we talk about marketing. I've broken it down into a very simple marketing funnel of free content that is short and long, gated content that is [00:14:00] your stuff that's in your list or maybe on a Facebook group, and then sales.
And what I want you to do is I want you to make a note of what you're planning on doing for each of these sections, because there is a reason why all of the people that you look up to Short form content, long form content, gated content, and then they sell something. It's because it works, and yes, it takes a bit of work, but unfortunately, no longer are we just business owners, we're content creators.
On the form, I have given you space to decide what you're going to do from a social media point of view, what you're going to do from a long form point of view, What you're going to do from an email point of view, i. e. when you start emailing or if you are emailing, how often are you going to do it? What you have from a lead magnet point of view.
So I would list what lead magnets I have. And if I want any more, I've also included a section for other people's audiences, because if you've listened to me for a while, you'll know this is a big, big [00:15:00] section that I talk and teach on. And then the last section is just other. So anything that I haven't included that you're doing, it could be something like networking.
It could be events, whatever that is. But the aim of this is to go through and list what you're going to do and then list how often you're going to do it. I want you to make a commitment to yourself because as we know, That horrible word consistency really is the most crucial thing here, but each of those things, how often are you going to post on social media?
How many emails are you going to send out? How often are you going to blog or podcast or do a video on YouTube? I want a slight kind of word of warning here. If you're saying monthly for long form content and email, I would really highly encourage you to try and do more. But on the other hand, I'm also going to say, I don't want you to set the bar really high and then fail and then beat yourself up.
If you've not done a blog before, if you've not, [00:16:00] if you started YouTube or if you're starting something and you're like, I'd love to do it once a week, but actually you're just not sure, then go for every other week. And then as you know, and as it. helps and, and as it gets easier, then you can up it. I don't want you to fail.
I do want you to do something more than once a month because once a month really is not very often. It's 12 times a year and it would be great to try and do more than that. However, I don't want you to set yourself up to fail. And then the last thing I do is look at the first six months and decide you've got all of the marketing that you're going to do consistently as you go through.
But some of those things like creating a new lead magnet. Or if you launch, which obviously I do, when are you going to launch? When are you planning on maybe putting a new product out there? Whether you're planning on putting a new lead magnet out there. So it just take a minute to go through the first six months and just sort of pencil in when I'm going to do things.
And then at a later date, I then go through and do it more detail. And I actually do it in Asana and we [00:17:00] really plan out what's going to happen. Okay, this was a short and sweet episode again, and I really was flying through that document. So if you haven't got the download, obviously you can take notes as I was talking.
That's not a problem. You don't have to get the download, but the download will certainly save you some time. The download is available at TeresaHeathWearing. com forward slash three eight four. I really hope you've enjoyed this episode. I really hope that you are ready to go and get 2025. However, that looks to you and achieve what you want to achieve. I am excited that I am here doing it with you and I have got you every single step of the way. Have an amazing week and I will see you next week.
18 min
December 30, 2024 Redefining Success: Balancing Business and Motherhood with Nicky Elliott
In this episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast, I’m having a very candid and meaningful discussion with my guest Nicky Elliott, a female entrepreneur and founder of the Wilder Collective. We delve into themes such as the personal definition of success, the influence of societal expectations, and the challenges of balancing business with motherhood. This episode highlights the importance of flexibility, changing perspectives, and the evolving concept of success, with both of us sharing personal anecdotes and practical insights for female business owners navigating similar journeys.

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Teresa:
What does success mean to you and how do you define it? Have you been in the trap that I have where you've looked at someone else's version of success and measured yourself against it and then felt really rubbish because you hadn't quite hit the mark or the bar that they set and is it okay to change your mind to define success as one thing and then to change your mind to another thing and how do you get so clear on what it is that you want, that you are so bloody minded in the fact of, I don't care what anybody else thinks of me or my business.
This is how I define success and this is what I want. Well, these are some of the fascinating conversations that I have with my guest on today's episode of the podcast. Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host, Therese Heath Waring, an international bestselling author, award winning [00:01:00] speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast.
I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you're in. In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus we'll be diving into some mindset, tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated, and are going to stop you from getting in your own way.
So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you are in the right place. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. Okay, you are gonna love today's episode. When I record interviews, I batch, so when it comes to doing the intro and outro, oh, I don't do an outro anymore, but when it comes to doing the intro, I go back and quickly, like, fly through the episode to remind myself [00:02:00] of what we talked about.
And I literally listened to the whole episode with this one because I was like, oh, wow, we talk about so much different stuff and it's such a good conversation. And not only that, I think it is the most perfect episode for this time of year. So at the point this comes out, it is the 30th of December, and this episode is actually sandwiched between a part one and a part two, all around reviewing your year and goal setting and that sort of thing.
And I would love to say that I planned this, but I didn't. The universe just obviously, like, made this happen because this episode is so, so perfect for this time of year. Today, I'm interviewing the very lovely Nicky Elliott. Nicky worked in events for over 15 years and founded her own agency in 2011 before having her children.
On her second maternity leave during the pandemic, she knew she could not return to a full. hour. That's right. Daily [00:03:00] commute and spend so little time with her kids. So she started a unisex kids clothing brand after riding the waves as a product based business, investing a lot in it and losing it. She used her platform that she had built to share stories about amazing female founders that she had met along the way.
She now has a podcast where she has women's stories from early memories right the way up to present day, which I have already been on. So we'll make sure we link to that in the show notes. And what her listeners can learn from them. And in 2024, she launched the Wilder Collective, an online community for female founders and freelancers to share their journey and support each other.
Nicky and I have such an interesting conversation. Like I said, I went back and started listening to it to get the main themes that we talked about, remind myself of some of the stuff and therefore obviously let you in this intro know. what is coming up. We talk about so many different things and we generally talk about, if I had to kind of sum it up, [00:04:00] this would be very much an episode of what it's like to be a woman in business and in the world and what, how we define ourselves and how other people define us and success.
Like that's a really kind of short summary of what we talk about. We talk about the fact of the success is the main theme. And, and I don't know whether you know, but there's a good reason this podcast is called Your Dream Business, because I am very much of the opinion that you get to decide what your dream version of your dream business looks like one of the things that we talk about in this episode is especially in the online industry, there is a big push to having people who, you know, have seven figure launches and, and have eight figure businesses and all that sort of thing. And almost defining success as that, that money is the only measure of success.
And my opinion, which has never changed for all the years that I have been doing this has [00:05:00] been that you get to define it. If it means working less, if it means earning an okay salary for not much work, then brilliant. If it means taking the summer off, great. Like whatever this means to you, that is your version of your dream business.
And that's what I want to empower you to do. But also we talk about how it's absolutely fine to change your mind. Because we go through seasons of life, and in those seasons of life, different things are important to us and different things matter to us. And actually, I have gone through various different seasons of life since having my business, of which I talk about, and, and I have changed.
And sometimes that has not helped me in the sense of, I don't know, I guess, In the last year or two, I have been much more confident and happy to say that I want to earn good money. And I want, and I do see money as one of the measures of my success. And really, it's about the case of having [00:06:00] no judgment for anybody who feels like that, or no judgment for someone else who doesn't feel like that.
It's just different, and we can all make our own decision as to what that success looks like for us. So we talked through that. We talked through some real kind of fairly deep conversations about bringing up children and up my own. I share quite a lot of my own personal thoughts around this and my own personal thoughts about.
schooling and starting businesses and that sort of thing. We also talk about how it's fine to want to talk about money and how it's fine to change your mind. There is so much packed into this episode. I think you're going to get so much from it. It really was a great conversation. And I think, like I said, I couldn't have planned it better.
I didn't plan it this intentionally, but I could have planned it better to be at this time of year. So I hope that you are, if you are listening to this over the Christmas break and over the new year break, that you are sat doing something nice or just chilling out and listening to this. We would love to know what you think.
So [00:07:00] please do go ahead and DM us or tag us. We would love to see that. Okay. Without further ado, here is Nicky. Nicky, welcome to the podcast.
Nicky:
Thank you for having me.
Teresa:
I'm excited about today's conversation. We're actually doing a bit of a podcast swap, so I'm going to be on Nicky's podcast soon ish, depending on when my episode comes out.
Anyway, just check both of them because, you know, it's hard to say. There's a lot of planning that goes involved in podcasts. It's a lot of work. So anyway, so I'm excited about it. And also you sent me my questions the other day, and I'm really excited about answering the questions because your podcast is a bit different to the questions I'd normally answer.
So that's very exciting. So we'll just. you know, leave that there for them to come and find it.
Nicky:
Yes. I'm looking forward to asking them.
Teresa:
That's very cryptic. You will need to go and look at Nicky's podcast next. Okay. So we are talking today about redefining measures of success, which is a very subject, very close to my heart, because I think in the [00:08:00] online industry, we often define success as a seven figure launch or a six figure launch or something like that.
But something happened to you that helped you redefine success for you. So can you just take us back to that point where you went, hang on a minute, I don't think this is right anymore.
Nicky:
Yeah. I mean, as is the case for a lot of people, I think when I became a mom, A lot changed for me. And it wasn't like a sudden moment, but it was more like a, that was part of what happened during this process.
So I had my daughter and I went back to work. I used to work in corporate events for 15 or so years. I was in quite a senior ops role running a group of people. Companies. So that was my big job in inverter commas, if you like. And that had a decent salary. And it was based in London, and I was commuting in and out of London.
And then I had my son at the beginning of 2020, [00:09:00] which obviously was the old Pan D. Yeah. And I was on maternity leave through the pandemic and. did what a lot of people were doing. It wasn't unusual. It wasn't peculiar to me. I had a big reevaluation reassessment and felt that having two kids now rather than just one meant a balance tipped even more sort of away from that role I'd had.
I had a four hour daily commute, two hours each way, which was really challenging. So when I was doing that with my daughter, I was out of the house before she was even up. My husband took her to the nursery. I would pick her up at six o'clock, chuck her in the bath, chuck her in bed. No quality time. And my kids are school age now.
And you know, I just wanted to have more time with them. So I started my own business for the second time because I had started an events company in my previous career. I started a unisex children's clothing brand. Because I had a daughter and a son and got very caught up in [00:10:00] issues around the way they dress and kind of got on my soapbox a bit about that and launched a clothing brand, which I absolutely loved.
And it evolved into a women's wear brand. And I did that for a couple of years, but it was in a really, really challenging marketplace. And Over the course of doing that, I'd met other amazing female founders running their own businesses and had created this kind of network for myself. And that was when all of these conversations started happening for me about measures of success.
And I started thinking about what success looked like to me because I had gone from the big job and a high five figure salary to zero pounds a month income, which I appreciate is a privileged position to be in. My husband and I talked about it. We did a lot of belt tightening. So it's not like we were swimming in money and it, and it came easily, but it was possible.
But with that, I had to completely change what success meant to me because with, with a startup, especially a products based startup, [00:11:00] you don't make any money and you don't make any money for a while, but that doesn't mean the business wasn't successful, wasn't selling. You know, I had sellout collections.
I had really, really loyal customers. I had all five star reviews, repeat customers. So that was when it started shifting for me. What is success? Because We're all fixed, fixated on money and status. And on the status front, I had also dropped down, you know, feasibly because I'd been in this big role now amongst my friends who are all in their late thirties, early forties, they've all been in their careers for 20 years.
We're all starting to progress. And I suddenly put myself to the bottom of the pile. Yes, I'm CEO, but I'm also tea lady. of this one person startup operation. So on the money and status front, I really had a just a huge, huge reassessment and it was all part of that, that big journey, really.
Teresa:
So I feel like I'm about to jump into a very deep question. I've [00:12:00] got so many comments on that, but I just want to ask you one thing. Why do you think it is so inherent to us? Because I was exactly the same. I worked in corporate. I got made a director at the age of like 30 something early thirties. My title meant everything to me. I was probably horrible. Like I was so up my, my own ass, like, because I was like, I'm a director now.
Like, oh God, it was awful. Why do you think it's so important to us and do you think it's. Just certain people that it's important to or where do you think this comes from?
Nicky:
I think it's important to almost everyone and I think it we are all a product of a capitalist system and we are sold to and sort of talk to from all angles at all hours of the day.
And it's impossible not to be influenced by that. We also grew up [00:13:00] with parents who were billionaires, who were making more money than their parents before them. And we were growing up with films like Wall Street and, you know, people who were successful, were making money, those two things went together, like success was money and status through that lens.
And it's really, really hard to unlearn that and unpick that if you, if you don't question it. you will just carry on on that path. And I was on that path. And of course I still get caught up in that. I still get caught up in, you know, what my friends might be making or because I'm a human being who exists in the, in the world in 2024.
But It's like I have to check myself on that front. So yeah, I think it's a societal thing. I think there is so much noise, so much external stuff, what we grew up with, what's still around us now. I do hope it's starting to shift a bit, but these things take a lot of time [00:14:00] because I can exist in an echo chamber where people are like, yeah, I agree. I agree. But of course that's a very, very, very small part of the world and actually out there people are still measuring success on, on money and status. So. I get it, but I think, yeah, it goes very deep.
Teresa:
And do you know what, I was debating whether to say something because you were saying that, which shames me a little bit, but I think it's important.
The very, my, my daughter, who's 14 going on 25, as they all are, she has a boyfriend, a new boyfriend, I say new, he's been a few months now. And my question to her was what do his parents do?
Nicky:
Okay.
Teresa:
Like, isn't that? ridiculous, right? Like, even though I have gone through a similar, and I'm still going through similar stuff in terms of, and I think we evolve this all the time, you know, in terms of what's important to us, but isn't that awful?
Like [00:15:00] that, that was my measure. That was my, you know, not are they nice people, not are they got good values, not any of that. My immediate way that I could very quickly in my head, make an assumption about them is to know what they did as jobs.
Nicky:
Yeah. I mean, it's not surprising. And I don't think you can beat yourself up for that because. It is a way of creating a picture of someone in your mind. It's certainly not the whole picture, as you said. My husband and I had a, had a conversation about a school dad just last night about the fact that he does a manual job and the assumptions that we had made about him and how the way he communicates is really incongruous with how he appears.
And, you know, people are putting certain things out into the world. So, it is difficult. And again, generationally, we are all defined by what we do. You know, I talk about this all the time. We talk about, you know, what do you want to be? And we mean, what job do you want to have? But we're tying our entire identity to what we do for work.
So it's not surprising that you asked her [00:16:00] that question.
Teresa:
Yeah. Yeah. No, it's not. And I do, you know, Part of me, like I said, as we just said, I thought, do I even admit to that? And I'm like, well, no, I, you know, it's important that we do because then that's a point where I can go, okay, yeah, no, probably that isn't the best idea.
So that brings me on to another question then about your children. And okay, again, I'm going to talk really personal stuff, but I think it's really important. So in my family, in my aunties and uncles and siblings and like the kind of extended family, I am probably the only person who has their own business, right?
And I look at the world in an entirely different way to the way they look at it, right? And it's almost kind of weird and hard and makes family occasions very uncomfortable for me. Because one, I turn into the biggest shelf on this planet, which, I mean, unpacked that. for starters, which no doubt I will at [00:17:00] some point with my therapist.
But I tell you this massive show off, but two my mindset, my thought, my everything is completely different, right? And I'm not saying mine's right. There's wrong or vice versa. It's just different. And my thoughts when it comes to my daughter, is very different to my ex husband's thoughts because he is in a traditional role, traditional, like, you know, got a job, working a job, and obviously I am not in that space.
So when it comes to my daughter, my opinion of traditional education, my opinion of getting a job, my opinion of life experiences is very different to my ex husband. So I'm interested as to In all these conversations of, like, success and life and, you know, the kind of patriarchal, I can't say that word properly, like, you know, go and get a job, sit in your nine to five, do your job.
49 min
December 23, 2024 2024 Wrap-Up: Reflect, Learn, and Plan for 2025
In this solo episode of 'Your Dream Business Podcast’, I’m guiding you through a year-end review process to reflect on 2024 and prepare for 2025. As part one of a two-part series, I reveal the questions I use with my clients to evaluate their current year, laying the groundwork for future planning. I’m also sharing the importance of tracking sales, expenses, and marketing efforts, and learning from both successes and setbacks. PLUS there’s a free workbook to assist you in this evaluative process.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to
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and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

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Transcript
This is the perfect time of year to review how your year has gone and get ready for 2025. I am giving you all the questions that I ask myself and all of my clients and students so that they can review their current year and get ready to plan the next year. This is a two part podcast episode with the second part coming out on the 6th of January.
This first part is about reviewing what you've done to date, and then part two will be about planning for the following year.
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business podcast. As always, I am your host, Teresa Heath Waring. Now, this episode is coming out a couple of days before Christmas in 2024, so I'd never like to do a super long episode around Christmas, only because hopefully you're taking time off, you're enjoying a bit of downtime, and you're not necessarily in business mode as such.
However, for me This time of year tends to be a really, really good time for me to work on the business. Now, I have to say I'm pretty good at working on the business because that is [00:02:00] kind of what my job is, is working on my business. However, obviously at this time of year, it's really good because one, during Christmas and New Year, no one expects anything from me.
I never have any calls booked in. I never have any kind of stuff where I have to be on camera. And then, It's really good that when your brain starts to relax, that maybe you start to think about things. And what I wanted to do was create an episode that maybe you could do over Christmas. And I've actually put together a bit of a workbook for you.
So if you go to teresaheathwaring. com forward slash 2024, you are going to find a download where. All the questions that I'm going to be giving you today and also 'cause this is gonna be part one of a two part podcast. The next part to this two part podcast will come out on the 6th of January. So if you go to choose wearing.com/ 2 0 2 4 the numbers, [00:03:00] you will be able to find the workbook where I list all the questions I'm gonna talk to you about today.
And I list the exercises that I'm gonna talk to you about in part. Two on the 6th of January. Okay. Hopefully that covers that. So let's start with the questions I ask myself at this time of year. The very first thing I do when I work with anybody from a goal setting, strategic planning, marketing plan point of view, we start with these questions first.
The very first thing I get them to do is tell me what their total sales are for the year. Like, this stuff is really important that we know our numbers. I don't know about you, but I track mine every single month. I have a spreadsheet that basically takes all the information from all the different places, even though obviously I use Xero and things like that.
It just puts it on a spreadsheet in a way that I can see it much easily, and it tells me what I've made each month or what I've turned each month. It doesn't tell me the profit. Well, that particular spreadsheet doesn't. And the other thing the spreadsheet does, which I, [00:04:00] is one of the questions that I've put in the download for you is what products and services did you sell and what percentage did you get from an income point of view?
That is really important when understanding and analyzing your business, because You could basically have a product that you love and actually when you do this exercise it makes you no money or a product that you pay and it makes you loads of money and it just will help inform you for thinking going forward what you want to do.
The next question that we look at is we list all the main expenses. So in an ideal world, we want to know what are we spending out each month as well. And those are kind of just done as like overview numbers more than anything. Okay. So these are where the real questions come in. What went really well in 2024?
I asked myself this every single month. I have a productivity coach. She doesn't [00:05:00] like being called a coach. So she calls herself a productivity mentor, but basically she helps me be productive. And in fact, I've done a podcast episode with her. So we will tag that in the show notes with the amazing Louise Miller.
And we do this every single month. So every single month we have a call where I go through and I list out everything that went well in that month. So when it comes to doing the end of year stuff, it's really quite easy for me to go back and go, well, what did happen? I highly recommend that you do this, that you ask yourself every single month, what went well, because you will be absolutely amazed how much you forget.
The summit I did was this year, and that feels like it was three years ago. And that was a huge success for me, my business. It was a lot of work, and it would be so easy for me to forget that it was at the March this year because so much else has happened since then. So list down everything you can think about.
And the other thing I would say [00:06:00] is this doesn't have to just be business. It can be personal as well. We are our personal brand. So, or we are our business. So make sure that you write down as much as you possibly can in terms of what went well this year. When I do this in a group activity and I do this for my members, my clients, anybody who works with me in any capacity gets invited to a strategy day, which actually at the point of recording this, I'm actually doing tomorrow on the 11th of December.
One of the things that's really good is I get people to share what wins they've had that year and that really helps other people go, Oh yeah, I did that. Oh yeah, this thing came up. The other advice I give you is to go through your camera roll or also to go through your calendar. Both of those things really helped me go, Oh yeah, this is what happened this year.
Next question. What didn't go as planned this year? Now you'll see that I don't write what went terribly this year because The truth is it just didn't go as you hoped or expected it to go. [00:07:00] This section, people normally find really easy because they find it so much easier to berate themselves than actually celebrate themselves.
So I'd almost want you to not give yourself too much time on this because otherwise you will just keep going like with all the questions and all the things. So for me, it's a case of like, what's the main things that didn't go as planned this year? Then we look at what did you learn from this? This is the beauty of when things go wrong is we learn something every single time.
People think that like the thing in business or the one thing that you can do wrong in business is fail. No, no, no. The one thing you can do wrong in business is inaction, is taking no action. Because when you take action, you either win or you learn. And the things that didn't go so well, in 2024, [00:08:00] you will absolutely have learned something from them.
You might learn, I don't like doing that thing and therefore I won't do that again. You might learn, actually, this was the result I got, but I think if I change this or tweak this, I would get a better result. This is the really important bit of that previous question in terms of what didn't go so well.
It's what did I learn from this? What can I take from this in terms of what didn't go so well? So what did you learn this year? The next one, what do you plan to do differently in 2025? And this can be really generic or it can be really specific. So we obviously in part two, I'll go into the specifics of goal setting and things for next year, but This can be, do you need to show up differently?
Do you need to overhaul stuff? Do you need to create something new? Like, what immediately comes to mind when you think, what do I need to do differently in 2025? Again, [00:09:00] it could be thinking like, I need to bring in my morning routine, or I need to take more time for me, or I need to get more organized. Now I hear people say that one all the time.
And I have to say someone I have coached for years and years kept saying that to me. And in the end, I had to say to her, maybe you're just not an organized person. We can't all be organized. Like that isn't, you know, there's a reason I have a productivity coach to help me be even more organized than I want to be.
So like, don't try and change fundamentally who you are, because that might be basically you setting yourself up for a fall. Okay. So what do you plan to do differently in 2025? So then. We look at the marketing specifically. So the next questions that I ask are what marketing have you done in 2024? Now, again, just a quick note on this.
If you would set yourself a goal to do YouTube, in fact, that was one of my goals later in the year, I was going to start YouTube and life and work got in the way and it didn't happen. And I'm not going to berate myself about that. I'm not going to be [00:10:00] angry about it. I'm not going to think I'm useless or stupid or any of those things.
I'm just going to go, I didn't do it. And I can write, what did I learn from that? Well, it wasn't the most important thing at that point. And then I can kind of debate with myself, is it still important? And do I want to bring it forward to 2025? When it comes to what marketing have you done in 2020? 24. I just want you to be really realistic about what did you actually do?
So I could put in there that I consistently put a podcast episode out. I was consistent ish on social media. I consistently put emails out. Again, this isn't to go, look how amazing I am or look how terrible I am. You're basically, what you're doing at the end of every year or what I do is you're drawing a line in the sand and you're going, that action got me those results.
What if we do different action? So then we look at what worked and what didn't. So for instance, I was really consistent in the podcast, which is brilliant. And you are listening to this, which I am so, so grateful for. [00:11:00] But in terms of growth of the podcast, it didn't grow particularly this year. Now, was it one of my main objectives for the year?
No. So I'm not going to beat myself up about that. I'm just going to go, okay, that's interesting. I didn't do anything different and therefore it didn't grow. So. When I go, what worked and what didn't, well, what worked was I was really consistent. What didn't work was we didn't have any growth in the podcast because we didn't focus on the podcast.
Like I said, these questions are only meant to help you think, they are not meant to judge you. The beauty of doing this is that you're learning and we can change. The, the person who doesn't even go to the effort of doing this are the people who are the most unlikely to make any changes in their business.
So spending some time thinking and going through these questions is really going to help you move forward in your business. And then the last one within this review section is what marketing do you want to do in 2025? And this isn't any detail. This is just your [00:12:00] initial thoughts based on what you've just written down in that previous section in the, what marketing did you do?
What, what, what didn't, what do you want to take into 25? Just notes, because in the second part of this podcast, so the one I'm going to do on the 6th of January, I'm going to take you through a bit of a marketing plan and how I do that for the next year. Okay, like I said, this is really short and sweet.
If you are listening to this before Christmas, I wish you a very, very Merry Christmas if you celebrate it. I hope either way you have a chance to sit down, recoup some energy back, reflect, enjoy some time with your family. And I will see you in the next episode.
13 min
December 20, 2024 Start-up to Scale-up with Channel 4 Ventures: Shaping the Future of Diverse Businesses and Empowering Entrepreneurs with Vinay Solanki
In this final episode of my special Channel 4 Ventures series, I interviewed Vinay Solanki, the founder of Channel 4 Ventures. He explains their role in supporting diverse businesses through media for equity investments, with a focus on fostering innovation and inclusivity. Vinay shares his personal journey and the challenges of creating opportunities for underrepresented entrepreneurs. We also discussed the importance of providing access and support to boost new products and services, especially those that address real-world challenges. It’s an amazing episode full of content for entrepreneurs, start-up founders, and anyone interested in the intersection of media investment and social impact.

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Teresa:
Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host, Therese Heath Waring, an international best selling author, award winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you're in.
In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus we'll be diving into some mindset, tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated, and are going to stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you are in the right place.
Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to the Your Dream Business Podcast and our fifth and final episode in this special series that I'm doing. with channel four ventures. We have had some [00:01:00] phenomenal conversations during this week and these episodes. We started off the week with Nikki Wicks, who is the CEO and the creative director for body coach, also Joe Wicks, his big brother.
We then spoke to the amazing Sam, who is the founder and CEO of Stellar insurance. We had a conversation with Tom who. knows everything that there is to know about investing and is a super smart man. And then yesterday was the awesome Grace who starting her business in university and talked about how she hustled in those early days and just went for it regardless of what the outcome could have been.
And today we are finishing off with Vinay. Vinay founded and runs Channel 4 Ventures. It launched back in 2015 and is now the number one media for equity investor in the UK. Media for equity is an investment activity that swaps media and for shares in typically [00:02:00] unlisted companies like a venture capitalist investor.
Binet is highly entrepreneurial, thoughtful and a seasoned digital media executive across many transactions, projects and sectors and geographies. Prior to Channel 4, Vinay led Getty Images European digital business development activities. Outside work, Vinay is a single parent to a teenager and enjoys cooking, running and music.
He has a degree in law from UCL and an MBA from Imperial College London. Okay, you know how on Tom's episode I said I felt really stupid? And I felt a real bit of imposter syndrome talking to someone who is super smart? Well, that exact same thing happened when I interviewed Vinay. He is such a nice guy.
And actually, what was so lovely is right at the beginning of the interview before we started recording, Vinay was like, We had a conversation about being a single parent and, you know, managing children in families that are living apart. And, and it was [00:03:00] really nice because it really kind of, you know, found some common ground, which was awesome.
And then when the conversation started, I was like, Oh man, this guy's smart. And I guess. He's in an industry that I'm not in, so he's obviously going to be super, super smart about that. Binet helped me understand and better explain what the role was that Channel 4 had in not only the research, but what they are going to be trying to be doing going forward to ensure that more diverse businesses are being invested in.
We also talked about how Channel 4 is a perfect, in my eyes, perfect company. to do this, given that the channel itself, the media that it puts out is very diverse and they're very proactive in that world. So it felt like a perfect fit. This conversation did push me a bit in terms of like, understanding and really [00:04:00] getting to grips of what this was all about.
And I think it's a really nice one to finish the week on because it kind of sums up what they're doing, why they're doing it, and what the opportunities are. And there are some really exciting opportunities. So if you are listening to this, if you have listened to all of the episodes this week and were like, I need to know more about this, then This episode is really going to help you understand more about what it is that Channel 4 Ventures are actually doing.
It has been my pleasure to have these business owners, these entrepreneurs, and these experts on over the last five days. I really hope you've enjoyed this special little series within my normal podcast. I have loved being given the opportunity to work with Channel 4 and being given the opportunity to speak to some of these amazing business owners, and I really hope that you have taken some awesome stuff from this.
Cheers. But without further ado, here is the final interview of the week. Here's Vinay. Vinay, welcome so much to the podcast. How are you doing?
Vinay:
I'm doing very good [00:05:00] today. I'm excited to be here.
Teresa:
I am really excited to have you here and to get going with this conversation and topic and this wider discussion that we're going to have about this part of the world, which I've left it, anybody listening to the beginning of this, like, what are they talking about?
What is she talking about? So let's just start by you explaining who you are and what you do.
Vinay:
So I'm Vinay Selanki and I work at Channel 4. I've been there, I'm very close to completing my ninth year. And I've had one job here in that time, which is to, I was the first employee into Channel 4 Ventures, which was called the Commercial Growth Fund at the time.
And put very simply, we. We use the benefits of our nationwide broadcast, um, linear and streaming, which reaches 50 million people a month. Uh, we give that to startups in, in exchange, um, for equity instead of cash. Um, and it's, uh, it's honestly, it's a truly fascinating job and I'm very lucky to have it.
Teresa:
[00:06:00] So you've been there nine years, so is that when it started, you were the first employee?
Vinay:
Yeah. So prior to me joining the channel for was talking to a German peer around the model, they spent about two years investigating it, and they decided to go ahead with it. And then they hired someone to head up the activity. And that was me.
Teresa:
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So the reason I came into your world or you came into my world was because of something new that Channel 4 Ventures are doing that was kicked off by some research.
So which way do you want to play this? Do you want to talk about the research that you did first, or do you want to talk about the new venture that you're doing?
Vinay:
I might do neither. I might talk about how, how, like, how the dots connect between the, both the research, a little bit of my lived history and, and, and, and how maybe all, all of it sort of hangs together.
So I grew up in Leicester as a, as a kid and I [00:07:00] grew up in a, a very. you know, very basic underprivileged set up where, you know, and those shaped my formative career experiences when I went into investment banking in my twenties. And I could see challenges at that time. So I had a lucky break at some point, which I got to university and, And I've lived, sat and lived with experiences where I felt, well, firstly, I couldn't even talk about what I'm talking about for a decade or two, right?
So the, so, and those experiences shaped very clearly people who, my perceptions of people who are in the club or outside the club, when you think about venture, and those are very big topics and we don't need to go into them now. When I've had the, if you then think about Jonathan Ventures and its core role, we've been, we are a minnow and like to remain a minnow in the investment world.
And, and through the asset class that we have, and, you know, we syndicate our investments with all of the investors. And it gives me an extraordinary insight into, um, how it works, how the deals put [00:08:00] together, who's in the deals, the cultures, the sub times, types of deals coming through. And it's very evident to me that if, if you step back a bit into the, the challenges around, say the UK economy or the challenges around the innovation economy, or specifically the challenges in the consumer economy.
And I'm going to deep dive here, um, slightly the consumer economy has seen a lot of investment come into it. Much of that investment is predicated on the efficiency of marketing costs, of course, and if you look at my investment model, which doesn't put in cash, it's about getting access to 50 million, up to 50 million people, marketing costs.
So, so, and I believe, and I hope to have some more research on this topic. Consumer companies are not flavor of the month right now. And one of the drivers. For investors is marketing costs. And I think, you know, the lean startup, I think was written in 2011. Right. So, but it's still a guide that guides the kind of, how can I say the [00:09:00] incumbent thinking in the company, you know, book says don't spend anything money on marketing in 2011, it probably would have been correct.
I need to check on this, but like, it's, it would have been correct at the time. And it's, you know, that time I don't think, you know, TikTok wasn't a thing, it didn't exist. Right. So the, the. I believe what you're seeing right now with the proliferation of digital platforms and the number of, is that the costs don't translate to scaling up, which is turning consumer investors away from consumer.
And then if you come back to my broader argument and some of the observations I'm making in my lived experience, it's very clear to me that if, if you, if you use the following analogy and the data that we did in, so Channel 4 Ventures, is providing marketing to a range of businesses. It has a different capital structure.
And when I think about, so, and you know, we could just look at that from a straight financial lens, or you think about what is our role in the ecosystem? So that's point [00:10:00] number one. But if you think about a deeper point, if the data shows both the VCs and the founders are coming from the two streets of London or two streets of the UK, there's 98 other streets to go for.
Could that spark innovation? And I think the things that we, the things which I hopefully will have some research on soon is that I think I kind of anecdotally observed very consistently that Many of the consumer businesses coming through target people who are affluent target people who are, you know, the products that are sexy, that, you know, in wellness, fitness supplements, et cetera, et cetera.
I'm glad to see there are some bigger, you know, I'm definitely seeing more female founders. I'm definitely seeing like different solutions coming out, but what if, what would happen if you create more access? Uh, to the 98 other streets in particular, and there's two arguments to that as a media investor, you could say, we, we are solving for the marketing [00:11:00] challenge that the specific cost of digital marketing, but we will write very large checks potentially to create most brand companies, but I'm interested in the things that may not be that sexy.
Like, but, but go to the heart of some of our clear challenges in our education, access to education, actually access to skills, age, living well as you age, staying at home, home modifications.
So living well, living, living, you know, that targeting people clearly, like, you know, the, the, the, the sectors that are like still underdeveloped, like women, there's a support to service of women, but also, yeah, the list goes on.
There's not still not enough. And I think we can, and that might mean we back different kinds of businesses from that are not necessarily getting the attention from the incumbent venture capital industry, Um, but, but, you know, with obviously [00:12:00] aligned to creating shareholder value here, what's really interesting about all this is as a government owned entity, all the profits go into a clear purpose, which is different again, to the lens we can look.
And I, I wonder if there's more room for modern fight that.
Teresa:
You've just said some things there that actually hadn't struck me up until this conversation that I had been looking at this and obviously at the point we're interviewing this, I've already interviewed some of the interviews to come. It's weird, like I constantly work in a, you know, am I in the future or in the past?
What struck me was. I had been focusing on or I'd been thinking about the opportunities that the business owners have not been given because they might be, you know, a female or someone of color or someone who didn't have the educational upbringing that, you know, or whatever some of the reasons are. But one thing I didn't think about until you just said it was [00:13:00] the products that are coming forward.
So not only, you know, Is it, and obviously I'm saying this in my own words, but not only is it better for the world to be able to give opportunities to people that possibly haven't had them or haven't had them as much as they should have to date, but also the products and services that are bought to markets are the people who are are trying to access them who are trying to get some of those things or need those things in their life aren't getting them because and like you said it's kind of understandable that it almost becomes like a self fulfilling prophecy of someone lives a certain style of life when they're you know looking to invest in something to make money they're investing in things that they know or things they know will sell so That for me is fascinating because like I said, I hadn't actually stopped to think about the consumer products that are being sold.
I just thought about the people who are being invested in.
Vinay:
Yes. I think I'd like to do more research on this topic. Um, but like, I think [00:14:00] we will have inherent biases. Um, and, and, um, that's the nature. We shouldn't judge it, you know, it's just aware of it.
Teresa:
Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think that's the thing.
And I think what I want to kind of conveys from what I've seen from channel four ventures so far is. there is no judgment. There is a, we've seen something and we would like to take an active role. You know, you're controlling what you can control because this is a much bigger beast than anybody. But you as Channel 4 Ventures are controlling what you can control and you're trying to do something different.
So let's just touch on the, on the research and just some of the stuff that you found from the research and then how that confirmed what you had already experienced.
Vinay:
Yeah, the short answer is that the research findings did not surprise me in the slightest. It's been the least surprising, you know, and you can look back to, you know, my personal lived experiences, the, I [00:15:00] believe he took a straw poll of people, you know, either at the event or, or, you know, people who read the survey, you know, I'd be surprised.
I mean, I did, I did recall some people were really quite depressed and, and I understand that too. It's shocking on the one hand, but the.
Teresa:
Not on the other.
Vinay:
No. Yeah. So look, I felt sad when you met, um, for the people who found it shocking But the, from my lived experience, it's not shocking at all. Yeah, based on the, I think it I want to go away from the judgment lens on, on that.
I think the, it's also very understandable why this happens. And again, you need to create space for why it happens.
And look at that quite compassionately, I think. And if you do that, then you can then spin quickly to, this is an opportunity.
Teresa:
Yes.
Vinay:
Really big opportunity.
Teresa:
Yeah.
Vinay:
So, and so then that gets into much deeper commercial arguments around those, all right, like new products and services.
[00:16:00] And we think the UK is a net exporter, net creator of products. It's lingua franca, it's, it's been a top of design forever, right? And, and right across the UK, and of course, London is a world class center for, for that too, of course, but it's, it's spreading, spreading out. We have extraordinary cross functional capabilities where we bring, we can combine both, you know, branding, design, science.
Building. Yeah. We have capital markets. Those are conditions that should continue for us to create new visionary consumer companies right across the board. We, we, we do it with companies like Dyson, but there's no reason why future entrepreneurs shouldn't be inspired by, by the, the, the heritage we've got here.
It's also our history, links to our history. The fact that we, we, we've, we, I think genuinely, like we, we, we have certain traits, which are the end of the world, frankly. Mm-hmm . [00:17:00] And it links to our history. I am part of the fact that we have a verbal village here. . Uh, that, that leak, that allows us to continue that, but like, and you know, I, so with the lens I'm putting on is you can, we can really dial this up if people give more access and hopefully we can find the new James Dyson's.
And I really believe that because we've got it all here. Right. So,
Teresa:
yeah. And one of the things that came through on having the...
35 min
December 19, 2024 Start-up to Scale-up with Channel 4 Ventures: Overcoming the Challenges of being an Underrepresented Founder with Grace Ubawuchi
Grace
Ubawuchi is
the trailblazing founder and CEO of the award-winning cocktail brand Xin and Voltaire. Grace shares her inspiring journey of creating a disruptive offering in the food and beverage industry, leveraging her youthful fearlessness and problem-solving mindset to over come the
challenges of being an underrepresented founder.
Grace shares her approach to securing investment,
demonstrating how persistence and creativity can open doors for entrepreneurs.
It is a must-listen for any aspiring entrepreneur.

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Transcript
Teresa:
Hello and welcome back to another episode of Your Dream Business podcast. This is the fourth. episode in the special Channel 4 Ventures series that I am doing. [00:01:00] And today I am interviewing Grace. Now, Grace is the founder and CEO of award winning cocktail brand Zinn Voltaire. And for years, Grace has been dedicated to pushing boundaries and redefining the cocktail drinking experience, harnessing innovation in food technology, science to create a disruptive offering in the world of F& B.
Now, the thing that struck me the most when interviewing Grace is She's in her 20s and it made me feel very old being a 45 year old woman and having only started my business 10 years ago. But what was so fascinating about her and what was so inspiring about this conversation and something that I have seen all the way through with, you know, Tom, the conversation yesterday, Tom almost said something identical.
Sam says or something almost identical the day before was they identified a problem and they thought. Why isn't someone fixing this? And this is exactly what Grace did. She saw a problem [00:02:00] that she wanted to elevate the kind of cocktail experience and where you could access cocktails and what they were about.
And she couldn't understand why anybody wasn't doing this already. So she decided that she would fix it. And what was just amazing was imagine Now, I have stepchildren who are 21 and 27, I think she is now, and my daughter is 15. And if you are a parent, you will know that, like, they get to that age and they think, like my daughter thinks I'm an absolute stupid idiot and she knows everything.
She's way smarter than me. And also they take different risks or they're not bothered as, as other things. It's like. I think as you get older, what I'm trying to say is as you get older, I think you get really conscious of like, okay, what if this goes wrong? What will happen? And I think what was one of Grace's best advantages is that she was young.
So she thought nothing of just thinking, right, I'll [00:03:00] fix this. I'll make this. I'll do this. She talked about, the stories of how she guessed people's email addresses and just reached out to them. And when you find out some of the companies that she was having conversations with, and some of the people that she was in front of, it's wild to think that she just thought, screw it, I'll just send them an email.
And I think sometimes as business owners and as humans, we don't want to take that risk because the thought of being told no, the thought of being turned down, the thought of being ignored. And I think her age helped her have that. And I think also there is, one thing I talked about her and, and And Tom, I felt the same, was like, their brain must work in a certain way that makes them just go, let's fix this.
I think there are lots of people who wouldn't think that, that wouldn't look at a problem and think, how can I fix this? There's a lot of people that would just moan about the problem. And both of them really inspired me from, they just went, how am I going to fix this? And I wonder whether there's like a certain trait or something in [00:04:00] those, people that they have, their brain works in a certain way.
Anyway, I digress slightly. So we talk about the random emails that she sent and how she got in front of some huge people. She also talked about the fact of how she basically pitched the product when there was no actual product. She hadn't even done a prototype to a massive company and how she got through the door, which was fascinating.
And then we talk about the fact of, did she know she needed to start. Did she know she needed investment from day one and that and what like? I think it's really interesting the businesses that kind of go day one, I need investment and the ones that don't even think about investment being an option where she knew she had this amazing idea and she had this brilliant company thought, but she needed money to get started.
So she knew from day one, she needed to have investment and how she went about finding that being in a world where. She didn't know that existed. So it's a really fascinating conversation. I found her super inspiring. I think you'll [00:05:00] love her. I did. I thought she was awesome. So without further ado, here is the lovely Grace.
Grace, welcome to the podcast. How you doing?
Grace:
I'm good. I'm good. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited about this.
Teresa:
My pleasure. So am I. So Grace, let's start off just for my listeners. Tell us who you are and what you do, and how you kind of got to do what you do today.
Grace:
Amazing. I've always found that to be the hardest question. I feel like now it's such a philosophical thing, but briefly, so I'm Gracie Ubawuchi, obviously I am the founder of Stina Walter's Pair. We are an avant garde alcohol brand, and we make what we've referred to as high proof sorbet cocktails, which are essentially high proof frozen cocktails. I was lucky enough to work with a very inspiring woman called Nina Mettier.
For about two years to develop our products. And I think we have a really incredible range of flavors that we're proud to put out into the world with some more coming, of course. So how did I get here? Uh, putting one foot in front of [00:06:00] the other. I was a uni student. When I, when I started and now fast forward, like seven, eight years, it's well into well, not well into my twenties, but almost 30.
Yeah. For me, it was just by inquisitive nature. I loved cocktails and like you do. And I wanted more, I wanted more outside of the bar. I wanted to be able to have it in all the different occasions that you do and you find yourselves in. And so for me, it was. Well, who's doing it? And I found nobody doing it.
And so one person who was at Diageo at the time said, why are you asking us to do it? Why don't you just go do it yourself? And so I thought, actually, yeah, why, why don't I just go do it myself? And, and yeah, now here I am doing it myself, but luckily with an incredible team of people who are, who are kind of the foundations of the business.
Teresa:
So, I love the way you talk about, you know, yeah, I'm just doing it myself. Like, I definitely think there is something in someone's [00:07:00] brain that either has that or they don't. Like, lots of people don't think like that. Lots of people don't go, Oh yeah, no, why isn't this thing like this? Or let me change that.
Let me create something. And also to be in a business that is like, this doesn't seem an easy thing to get into. When you first thought, okay, do it myself, had you already got people in place that you could talk to or what were you doing at uni just out of interest?
Grace:
So I was studying business and international relations. So I was on my second year and to, do you want me to dive into the question? Because I think, yes, to be honest with you, yeah. Basically, for me, it was quite, I've always been a problem solver, so I called myself at the time, which seems so silly, but I called myself a solutions provider, which was whenever I see an issue, it would frustrate me to just bang on about it, right?
I just [00:08:00] loved, so what's the solution here? Oh, you know, this is going wrong. So how do we fix it? And so I've always been that person. And so for me, I hated when I didn't have an answer to everything. And so if I didn't have one, I just went out and found it myself. Cause I just, I think, I think that's the naivety that you find in young people.
We, we kind of just feel like the world is our oyster and we can just do everything. And And so I think that was the thing because I wasn't so concerned or I didn't even really know what the potential issues were. It was just like, Oh, well, I'll just, I'll figure that out on my, on my journey. And so, yeah, that was pretty much how I, how I did it now, how I physically did it.
I didn't know anybody. I was coming at it as a consumer. And so, you know, I had a love for cocktails and it was like, well, who do I need to know? to be able to answer this question for me, who's doing it? So who owns all the cocktails and all the alcohol brands out there? And so once I kind of started going down that Google wormhole, [00:09:00] I couldn't fight myself out of it.
And so, and this is something I don't actually shout about. I used to guess people's emails. I was actually very, very good at it. And so I would construct an email and say, okay, you're the person I need to know. Okay, cool. Use LinkedIn, find out who they are. And just write them an email and be like, Hey, you know, you're who I need to speak to.
Do you have a moment? And crazy enough, they did. And they, they actually made time for me, which was, I think about it now. I'm like, these are some of the busiest people in the world at Diageo, at Beam Suntory, you know, and they made time for me and I'll never forget that.
Teresa:
And that is huge for so many reasons. One, there are so many of us in business that would it. One of the biggest things that I deal with, with my, in my world and in the coaching I do is the fear element, that fear that holds us back, that stops us from doing those things, that puts us off [00:10:00] sending that email because, oh, we can't find the email address or they probably won't read it.
Oh, then definitely not going to reply. And I love that. The thing that you came in and said is that you just did like an almost an and I hear what you're saying in terms of an age thing. I'm 45. I have my daughter's 14 and my my stepchildren like in their 20s. So I get the like where they come from of Oh, no, I just this should just come to me, right?
Like I just expect But in this instant, that is such a superpower because you just went, well, why couldn't I, why shouldn't I, you know, why couldn't that, why wouldn't that person respond to me? Was there any part of you that was like, no, I'm super scared to do that? Or what if it didn't respond?
Grace:
I think that, okay, I'll tell you a little bit more about me in the way that I think when I had my surgery, when I was younger, I wasn't afraid until I got into the operating tables that, oh my God.
They're going to cut into my hand and like [00:11:00] things like that. I have a very delayed reaction. I only have a look at the opportunity and then when it's time to actually do it, I'm like, Oh crap. Now I actually have to talk to this person because they, you know, they've given me the opportunity. And I think that's the thing.
It's like. Be careful what you wish for. I don't mean it to sound so ominous, but because you might get it, if you do, can you, can you handle it? And so for me, it was like, oh, right now I, you know, the last thing would be that they don't respond, right? So I don't actually have what I went out to go and get, but I'm the exact same as when I sent the email, right?
The best thing that could happen is that they listen and they respond. And so my motto at the time was, if you don't try, you don't get. So you might as well try because you might. potentially get what you're asking for. And, and I think that was the thing. So I didn't have the nerves when I was doing it.
It was only when that call, and this was before Zoom. So thankfully they couldn't see me. They didn't know who I was, you know, it was [00:12:00] just a phone call. And I think the earliest call I had was like five in the morning when I, there was an investor. in Australia who was open to having a conversation with me and I was like, Oh my God, now I have to have this call and it is a stupid time and I, so I would write a script that I was going to say and I was so nervous and I would read that script and they were so kind to listen to me from the beginning to the end and I realize now that actually that was kind of my training from the very beginning, you know, to be able to, to be able to have those conversations and be, to be open and confident in them.
Because I was like 21 during these conversations,
Teresa:
which, you know, like that blows my mind from a Well, at 21, my brain was not working that way, but like, you know, that you were able to get in front of these people and hold these conversations. And would you say they took you seriously? I don't want to assume and go, they took you [00:13:00] seriously.
Grace:
Yes. If anything, I would say my entire career was built on this particular way of working. So I got my investor from a cold email. You know, I got business. from cold emails. And so actually they did take me seriously. If anything, I'm talking the president of like these huge organizations who would get their whole innovation team, like there'll be four or five people on the call.
So they definitely did. And now that I think about it, I'm like, that was such an opportunity. Yeah. I wish I had, you know, I do, I guess I do have these opportunities now. It's not so daunting, but you know, when you're 21, you really don't know who you're speaking to. And you, you don't have a clue how serious it is.
Teresa:
A good thing in some ways, because you'd never have done it if you had. You'd have been like, no way, too big.
Grace:
But I knew, I knew what was working against me. And I think that's what I always knew, which was I lived in [00:14:00] Manchester. No one's going to find me here. You know, I don't have any presence. I don't have any experience.
And I, I needed to put myself in positions of opportunity. And the only way to do that was for me was to create my own opportunities. So it was kind of breaking those walls down. I, I think it was until like two years later, I realized these people had PAs. I didn't even realize they had blockers because I was directly sending these emails to them.
So, yeah, I'm glad they took me seriously because I think it instilled this hope for a future that had, had they not done that, I think I would have probably quit. Because you realize that actually in life, you know, unless people help you on the journey, you, you kind of, Don't believe that there is something to, to like look forward to because that hard work is kind of going nowhere.
No one's receiving it. No one's kind of really taking it in a way where they, they take you seriously. So I'm kind of glad that they did. I think [00:15:00] so. There was someone who asked me at one point, how do you know our president? And I was like, how am I going to tell them? I have no idea who he is. Can I guess to be wrong?
And then it's okay for me to say now, because you know, many, many years down the line, But back in the day I was like, I don't want to tell anyone because they're going to think I'm a crazy person.
Teresa:
Yeah, like, how did she even get here? Like, you know, we've just let her into the world. She's in like part of our world and no one actually knows how she got here. That's brilliant. So let me just talk about the, the business and the investment side. So did you pretty much know straight off the bat you would want to grow this business to a point where you needed investment?
Grace:
Yes, and it was from the very beginning because there's, like I was saying about the email thing, one of, when I got the idea that this was something I wanted to do, I was like, well, who would buy it?
And I was on a flight actually with British Airways and I saw that they had all these spirits and all these wines. But they [00:16:00] had no cocktails and as a uni student, our definition of cocktails at the time was really Jack Daniels and Coke, right? That's just a mixer, but that was our cocktail. That was us getting a mixer and mixing it and that's how we were doing it.
And so, you know, I felt like that's all they had, but they have all this sophistication and all this budget. Why are they not doing anything? So what? I sent, I reached out to Kelly Stevenson at the time and she, she received me with open arms. She was like, this is what we need. Cause I, I basically saw it as a portfolio.
I was like, you have this, but you don't have that. And I'm sure you're having the conversation about how you get from A to B and how you get this cocktail solution. I have your, I have your solution here. Like this is, this is an incredible product. It's a frozen product and you just need to add alcohol to it.
That was my first iteration at the time. Flavored ice. Yeah. And so you have your cock, you have your spirits, I have the flavor, let's work together and make cocktails. And so she was like, yes, come in, you know, and I went right to the top. It was British [00:17:00] Airways letting me into a meeting kind of almost two months after I decided I was going to do it.
And she's telling me numbers of like, we have 90, 000 footfall and, you know, we, oh my God, I only have 90.
Teresa:
And to this point, there wasn't the product.
Grace:
There wasn't even a product. So I had to then find, you know, my parents were nice enough to kind of gimme the money to, to go create this, this, this prototype.
And then within a month I had a prototype to go to the, to go to the meeting. So it, it was literally like, okay. She said, yes, now I need to actually go make the product. Yeah. And so I got into the meeting and it was like, this is something. And this,...
31 min
December 18, 2024 Start-up to Scale-up with Channel 4 Ventures: Empowering Underrepresented Entrepreneurs with Tom Adeyoola
In the third episode of the Channel 4 Ventures series, I interview Tom Adeyoola, an entrepreneur and co-founder of Extended Ventures. We discuss his journey through the creative industries and his experiences in raising investments for his startup, Metail, where he secured £25 million. Our conversation delves into the challenges underrepresented founders face in sourcing investment, the emotional nature of early-stage funding decisions, and the importance of expanding the funnel to include diverse founders. This episode is ideal for course creators, membership owners, coaches, and anyone interested in understanding the dynamics of business investments.

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Transcript
Teresa:
Hello, and welcome back to this special series of the Your Dream Business podcast, where we are teaming up with Charmful Ventures I'm bringing you some phenomenal business owners [00:01:00] talking all about not only how did they create their businesses, but also what experience they've had in getting investment for their own businesses and the journey that they've gone on.
Today, I am interviewing Tom. Tom is an experienced entrepreneur, executive and board director across the creative industry companies, private and public. He grew his fashion technology startup, Metail, to exit raising 25 million pounds. Tom is also the co founder of Extended Ventures, which uses insights to improve access to finance and outcomes for underrepresentative founders, and now sits on various boards.
Boards, including Channel four and leading independent schools, St. Paul's. He's actively involved in investing and policy co-authoring a labor startup review. Can I be completely honest? I felt so stupid talking to Tom. This guy is so smart, right? And he. Like [00:02:00] the stuff he's done, you know how some people are just serial entrepreneurs.
That's what I got from him. I'm just looking at my notes and I literally have written fingers in many pies. He has done so much stuff. He's involved with so many things. He has been in non profit. He sits on steering boards. He is a massive expert in this space. And, and I was like, I don't know that I was intimidated by him because he's such a nice guy, and the conversation was great.
And I have to say, if I'm being completely honest, this whole series that I'm doing is feeling very intimidating because it is an industry in an area that I don't understand enough about, and I feel like I'm getting serious imposter syndrome of like, who am I to bring this to you because I don't understand it well enough.
However, I think sometimes when it comes to, and I've told you guys this before, like if I'm interviewing someone on a subject, I don't know, I become even better at [00:03:00] interviewing them because I am like, okay, no, explain this to me. And now I need, yeah. Like I really kind of delve deep because I'm coming from a place of, I don't know what you're talking about, or.
I need to understand this. So I hope that's the way it's going across, not, Therese doesn't know what she's talking about. But Tom was so smart, he's such a nice guy, but it really was Like I said, he's, he's super smart. I felt a little bit intimidated by what he knows, the experience he's had. And sometimes I fail like my little teeny tiny business over here is like laughable to what he might be doing, but you know, there's scale in everything.
Like, and I'm sure Tom would look at someone who runs a multi billion pound company and think the same. So, you know, different people doing different things. But one thing that was super fascinating was we talked about how people go into business when their family doesn't come from an entrepreneurial background.
His didn't, obviously mine didn't either. We talked about how he has two sides of him. So [00:04:00] interestingly, he went to Cambridge because he got a scholarship, but he does not fit in the white wealthy man box. And that was super interesting for him. And he said a couple of things in the interview where.
Because he went to Cambridge, people almost saw him as a white, wealthy man, which is really, really interesting. I've written here again, he was so smart and fascinating. And we talked about the fact that I assumed investment came from smart people who looked at facts, and it's not an emotional thing or a connection thing.
But that's exactly what he said it was. He said a lot of investment comes from connection and emotion, which is why there are very few people in underrepresented societies that are white. getting investment because the people who have got the money to invest are becoming connected with someone who is like them.
And then we talked about how he's driving change in this space. It's not about backing businesses that aren't good enough, but being open to [00:05:00] businesses that wouldn't normally get funding. It's a really great conversation. I think you're going to love it. Like I said, see how stupid I signed on. Hopefully I hold my own as an interviewer, but You're really going to enjoy this episode.
Here is the awesome Tom. So Tom, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you on.
Tom:
Thank you for having me.
Teresa:
My pleasure. So let's start because you're, I feel like you have many things in many pies to do with what we're doing here and this conversation. So let's just start with you explaining to the listeners who you are and what you do today and kind of how you got there.
Tom:
Sure. So, so my name is Tom Adeyula. I've been in the sort of startup space around the creative industries for over 25 years now. So I've worked in various startups from sport to telco to film, TV, Pirate Jets. I even managed a friend's band for a while as a, as a side hustle. And then I [00:06:00] ran my own fashion technology startup.
for 11 years, which was very sort of high IP focused around computer vision, but originally was inspired by some research work that was done around replicating antique ornate statues. And it was all around trying to solve the online clothing fit problem. So I, I, I've been in that space for a long time, I've seen a lot of things and fundamentally I'm inspired by trying to solve problems and disruptive innovation.
I sold that company in 2019 and subsequently I've invested in a few startups specifically trying to look into sort of, Climate change, positive society, overlooked spaces in terms of how I focused. I also co founded a non profit called Extend Ventures, which is about using insight to improve access to finance and outcomes for underrepresented founders.
I also sit on the steering board of the Startup Coalition, which is the voice for startups in [00:07:00] the UK. I co authored the Labour Startup Funding Review for Rachel Reeves, and I also now sit on the board of Channel 4.
Teresa:
Wow. I'll just end with a wow, because that is crazy amount of stuff. Like, that is, to me, what that says is you are absolutely an expert in this space.
Like, you can't and wouldn't have done all the things that you've done if you weren't very knowledgeable about this space. But I just want to go back really quickly, just for my own curiosity, how did you get started? In creative startups, like what? What did that look like? Did you come out of college and get a job or?
Were your families entrepreneurs? Like where, how did that happen?
Tom:
No, so both my parents were immigrants to this country. So my mom's Norwegian, my dad's Nigerian. I was sort of fortunate enough to get a scholarship to an independent school, was bursary funded through, my dad worked on the buses, my mom worked in day nurseries.
So there was no sort of entrepreneurial bent, if you [00:08:00] like, there. But I was, yeah, I was, a good student. I was really interested in lots of different things. And I, I, I sort of followed all the opportunities that was given to me at school. And I, I recognized that it was a real sort of privilege in the sense of my sister went to a comprehensive.
I ended up at an independent school. I went on to Cambridge. She didn't do a level. She didn't go into university. And I think. Like, going through school, in, most of the time I felt like I was a jack of all trades and a master of none and I envied people who had a singular passion about a specific topic, but I was interested in everything, I wanted to try everything.
Um, and I did economics at university and the gravy train would have been into banking and I did some internships, but I found it really boring, like, and I didn't really see the sort of like societal value of just pushing paper about, and I wanted to do something a bit more interesting. I originally started as [00:09:00] a management consultant.
And it was very focused around pharmaceutical sector and I, I got a good grounding in how to do spreadsheets and analysis and all of that, that good stuff right at that time, the internet being was happening and there were lots of like really cool startups starting and it felt like it was a moment where.
you could get involved and it sort of didn't matter who you were. And there was no sort of like fixed hierarchy or structure. And with a friend, we, we were getting meetings with potential investors as, as, as kids straight out of university. And it seemed a really exciting space in the end. We felt that what we were trying to do, we were too late to the party, but through the experience of, of getting involved in what was a really exciting sector, commercial director, a company called Sportal, which is a big sports internet portal at the time, um, he, he saw me and he, he sort of, Tried to hire me and [00:10:00] ended up joining that company and sort of working directly for him pre vetting deals and then running all of e commerce across the websites because we ran the websites for AC Milan football club, Juventus football club, which we ran Euro 2000 football championships.
We had run the websites for South Africa, rugby America, sorry, Australian rugby, et cetera. And it was early days, but a real sort of like world west type environment. And. It was still too early, but it was that thing where if you solved a problem, you were just given more. So it felt meritocratic. It felt exciting.
And it, it was, it was great for someone like me where I felt like I could do well and I was rewarded subsequently. So that, that, that got me sort of going in terms of the entrepreneurial types of companies.
Teresa:
I love it. One thing that's really interesting about your story and fits so perfectly, hence probably why you're doing what you're doing today, is that [00:11:00] you almost had, when we think about the investment into businesses and the type of businesses that get investment, we, one of the things that came out in the report was the fact of the.
you know, predominantly white males were the people who were getting them and well educated white males. So, you know, people who were going to the likes of Cambridge and places like that. and mixing it. And it was almost like, and I guess I can say as a bit of a boy's club, you know, if you're in, you're fine.
If you're not getting in is really hard, but you had two sides to that, that coin almost, you had the side where you went to Cambridge, you had that kind of in, but also, you know, You have the side where you weren't brought up and I can't, and this, this isn't the podcast for it, but I would be fascinated to see how you got on at Cambridge as a scholarship student and, you know, and, and, and, well, obviously at school and, and mixing when [00:12:00] your lifestyle didn't necessarily match up with some of those other people's, that would just be for my own interest.
So we won't go to it today, but. You had the other side where you didn't come from a hugely wealthy family, you know, you came from, I guess, a fairly working class family, you know, you, your family were immigrants, like, and that's kind of the, the, the interesting part of this is that in one way you fit really well, and you would be like, tick the box, yes, you would be in that world, but in another way, you don't fit well and you don't fit in that world.
So how was it for you, I guess, coming into the world of venture capitalists, coming into the world of, you know, startup businesses and, and seeing both the sides of that coin.
Tom:
Yeah, I think, I mean, I think that's really interesting. Like if I think about my time at school in university, I would say that There were only ever two black kids in the school at any given time.
And yeah, whereas, so I didn't have any black friends. Whereas my sister [00:13:00] did, cause you went to a comprehensive and it was actually way more mixed. And then when I went to university, it was the same. So, and I actually, one of the, the other black kids was also Norwegian, Nigerian, and he, he became a friend.
Fake IT person and is, you know, that his character is what the intranet at Channel 4 is named after in terms of Moss from the IT crowd. Yeah. And, and I went into IT proper. Um, but it, it was that sense of like, I was part of this network of privilege, if you like, and, and to some extent, I remember having a board meeting once with somebody in my startup and they said, Oh, yeah, that the problem with your management team is that you're, you're, you know, you're white and middle class.
And I was like, that's interesting. So that there's a color blindness here. And you haven't recognized as well that. My CTO went to Comprehensive in Bradford, um, is working class background to me. My CFO is from Hong Kong, but you've basically, because we speak well and highly educated, we've jumped into a sort of [00:14:00] different stratosphere in terms of how we've viewed.
Yeah. But even still, I would say that, you know, and I'm quite diplomatic. I would say I've got quite EQ so I can see and understand how things happen. And even so, like it was, It's trouble for me to get money in the UK, I would say. So I went to sort of different avenues to try and raise money. I ended up raising about 25 million for my company, but more than 20 million of it came from Asia.
Like I went to where the money was very directly related to the problem. So trying to get people who are so motivated by the problem you're trying to solve that it's just a very straightforward conversation, which isn't about, yeah, am I investing in. Yeah, they can see past the who you are, because I think the difficult thing always is like, can you generate some sort of relay relatability with the investor on the other side of the table in a conversation?
And what is unfortunately true is that the investor in a conversation when you're meeting them [00:15:00] has made that decision where they're going to invest in you or not within five minutes. So before you ever get out of the deck, so if you're spending that first five minutes trying to relate and there's no common ground, it's, it's very difficult to get past that.
So, and you're going to have much shorter time to present ultimately is business because actually an investment in the early stages is an emotional decision, but that's the bottom line. And as, as a business grows and you become. More established, it's a decision based on metrics, financials, and so on and so forth, but in the early stages, people are investing in you, and the vision, and if they don't connect to you, it's not going to happen, and fundamentally, the, the sort of sphere of people who have money is, you know, biased in one particular area, and, Hence, where they're looking for some sort of [00:16:00] person to work with, they're sort of looking within a meritocracy, as you might call it, rather than anything else.
So what's, what's, what's the way in which, which they can connect, connect. That's not to say that there are people who are more open than that, but in general, the people are thinking about their own money. They're trying, they're going for the path of, you know, least resistance really. Yeah. Who am I going to be able to, you know, have a relationship with over five to 10 years?
Teresa:
Which was a super interesting conversation that I talked about with Sam on her interview where we talked about the fact of like, In my head, very simply having never gone through anything like this and probably never will, because my business is based on me as a personal person, and I can't see how it would ever be that type of business.
And I'm not sure I'd want it to be that type of business. But one of the things we were talking about is I assumed that it was very factual, that these smart people were [00:17:00] looking at. stats and facts and maths and going, that makes a good business that doesn't make a good business. And obviously, what is coming out in these conversations with you is it's not done on that at all, or not to the degree it should be.
But also it's that, Like you said, you know, they are looking for people who look like them. But the problem is, the people who aren't getting the funding, they can't find people who look like them to A, show them that it can be done, and B, go out and have those conversations with them. So, obviously, this is where Channel 4 have come from, and this is where their untapped has come from, in terms of like, okay, how can we help this?
But what's your thoughts on that, in terms of that as a strategy? Like, you know, How well do you think it's going to work? What do you think about it?
Tom:
Well, your point about the facts, I think the thing that people don't realise is they think that people use facts to say yes. It's not how it works. People use the facts as a reason to say no, whereas everything is about an [00:18:00] emotional connection to generate BS.
So that's all about how you connect and how the vision is. So whenever I'm talking to founders about how they present themselves, it's all about finding that story, that vulnerability and connecting as a person and making sure you can try and find that. And you're, you're looking, you know, do the research in advance about the investors, try and find that.
That, that personal hook, because it's all about the emotion, say yes, in fact, all about why to say no, or that's, that's...
32 min
December 17, 2024 Start-up to Scale-up with Channel 4 Ventures: Gender Equality + The Power of Resilience with Sam White
In this episode, I interviewed the brilliant Sam White, founder and CEO of Stella Insurance. We discussed Sam's journey into creating a female-centric motor insurance business, her challenges as a woman in a male-dominated industry, the difficulties in raising investment, and her unique approach to resilient entrepreneurship. Sam shares her experiences of starting her first company at 24, her struggles with financial institutions, and the innovative solutions she employed, including a media for equity deal. We also talk about gender disparity in business funding and highlight the importance of supporting diverse entrepreneurs.

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Transcript
Teresa:
Hello and welcome back to the Dream Business Podcast. This is episode 378, but it is number two in this special series that I'm doing with Channel 4 Ventures. [00:01:00] The first episode, which I aired yesterday was with Nikki Wicks, who is the brother CEO and creative director of Joe Wicks The Body Coach.
And I loved that conversation, so I would love to hear what you thought of it. Today, I am interviewing Sam White, who is the founder and CEO of Stella Insurance, a female centric motor insurance business that's unapologetically led by women and designed for women. Now, this conversation was really, really good.
I was super inspired by Sam. We had conversations around the fact of Why would you even get into insurance in the first place? I'm laughing saying it, but like of all the businesses that people set up, surely insurance does not seem like the easiest thing. And it doesn't seem like the most simple, it's a really heavily regulated industry.
What makes someone starting a [00:02:00] business want to go into it? We talk about the fact that She was 24 when she started and that she loved solving problems and she was frustrated with some of the things in the industry. So it was her own kind of need for an answer that made her create the answer herself.
We talked about how difficult it was for her as a woman, not only in this industry, but also to try and raise money and the difficulty that she had with financial institutions. And then we looked at what makes her resilient. How is she motivated? How did she pick a really difficult industry and go on to make a really successful business?
I think you're going to be super inspired by this. I really loved her frankness. I really loved her direct conversation. It was a wonderful conversation. And I think that you are really going to enjoy this episode. So without further Here is the amazing Sam White. Welcome Sam to the podcast. How are you doing?
Sam:
Not so bad. Thank you for having [00:03:00] me on.
Teresa:
Well, thank you for giving me your time. I was just saying to you before we hit record that I don't think I've ever interviewed anybody who's in insurance or certainly not set up an insurance company. So I am fascinated about this conversation.
Sam:
So nobody ever, when referred to insurance,
Teresa:
think about like the entrepreneurial world, there's not many that, you know, go, this is the route I want to go down. So let's start there. So how, how is the big question and why did you decide that that was the business you wanted?
Sam:
Yeah, look, it's something that gets said a lot in insurance circles. People would say, nobody actually chooses to go into insurance. They fall into it. I think my path was probably quite different in the, I set up my first company when I was 24, um, and really just because I couldn't stand the thought of working for somebody else.
I realized I was unemployable at a very [00:04:00] young age. Young age. And so I didn't really care what I got in. So as long as it meant that I could work for myself and be independent and not have to kind of live by somebody else's rules. So the first business that I set up wasn't actually in insurance. It was around insurance.
I set up a business supporting insurance brokers with their motor claims. And the only reason I did that is because the only job I had. previously was in that sector. So it was what I knew and it seemed like a safer landing point. And it kind of evolved from there.
Teresa:
So 24 is very young to start a business.
Was that something that had always been on the cards? Was your parents, were they entrepreneurs? How. Did you get into that?
Sam:
Yeah, look, we, uh, my mom had had her own business when she was younger, so there was probably some kind of seeding of that, that mentality as, as a [00:05:00] child. But I think, you know, as a teenager, I used to go out washing cars in the neighborhood to make money.
I always had that energy about me of wanting to create something in the moment out of nothing. And I, I didn't like, you know, I had Saturday jobs. I had a job in Gregg's actually as a, my sort of first paid employment and I didn't get paid a lot and it was very, very hard work and I hated the rigidity That kind of structure.
So I think I was always of a mind that I wanted to push out against that, that kind of framework.
Teresa:
Yeah. And I think I always, I used to joke, and I don't say it so much now that I'm like an accidental entrepreneur, because that was never, I wasn't one of those people. I follow rules really well. I love being patted on the head and being told I've done a good job.
So the fact that I now have my own business is mind blowing. And again, I could never go back to [00:06:00] it. But I think like, if you've grown up and had that kind of passion, what Because again, even though you'd had some experience in that industry, that doesn't seem like a particularly easy industry to get into.
It feels like there's loads of legal stuff and you've really got to know what you're talking about.
Sam:
Yeah, it is. It's heavily regulated. It's also extremely Male dominated, which I talk about a lot. It's, you know, it's financial services. So the majority of senior decision makers in the industry and male, it's not necessarily an industry that really attracts entrepreneurs either, because it's seen as a very capital intense area and therefore it, it puts people off.
For me, I just like solving problems. And I, I kind of, I'd, I'd started because I'd started working in claims, I kind of understood the industry almost under the, the [00:07:00] hut in terms of some of the challenges that the market has generally. And as I'd started to build out a claims business and work with insurance companies, I was getting frustrated that there was things that I wanted to change.
That I couldn't change because I wasn't in control of that part of the process.
You know, it's funny you talk about the accidental entrepreneur. My personal belief is that 90 percent of us are accidental entrepreneurs, but some are better at lying about it post being successful because, you know, I, I, I don't believe in this really thing.
Cookie cutter, clean plan that plays out exactly as you expected it to. And it's one of my big objections to sort of traditional VC is, uh, they, they, they tend from my experience of them to come from the big consulting firms. Come from a financial background. [00:08:00] So you sort of CFO mentality that says that everything works on a spreadsheet.
Then real life happens. And, and, and that isn't how most businesses that I know and entrepreneurs that I know, and I've met a Tom that have been wildly successful. And when you're sat at that after dinner party and you're chatting and you really get to the honest nub of it with them, they've all had that rollercoaster of experience where they thought they were going in one direction and then they had to go in another and the pain points and the trauma and all that stuff.
And it kind of flies in the face of the. The way that we expect them to present when trying to raise funds, the two of them really kind of fit together very well.
Teresa:
No, and I think, you know, this is where we look at like people's zone of genius. And I think to be an entrepreneur, to come up with those ideas, to have the guts to go out there and do it, to be [00:09:00] brave, to be scrappy in those early days, like they're not necessarily the, the spreadsheet type skills that you would have necessarily.
So, so one thing that I really want to understand is when you decided to start, when did you start Stella Insurance?
Sam:
So Stella Insurance I launched in 2020 actually in Australia. Um, but I, I had the backing of my own successful businesses in the UK that I'd organically grown to be able to do that, to even be able to go out and check out the market and say, is this something that, um, I could do, uh, was possible because of the business that I'd built previously.
Teresa:
Okay, so you hadn't necessarily had investment in those other businesses, not because you had grown such a good business and had such a foundation that enabled you to kind of flip onto the potential new business. So had you got [00:10:00] investment from day one in that business? Did you literally start with, I'm, I have investors for this?
Sam:
So with the Australian business, it was the first and only time I had any kind of investment. So part of it was my own investment. So I, as what I said for myself with, with Stella was, I really want to do this. I really love the Australian market. I love the potential of what we're going to do with this business, but for this, because I've done the organically grown like freedom services group had got up to 20 odd million pound of turnover and it was profitable.
But it is, you know, blood, sweat and tears, lots of falling over and face planting the mat and getting back up again. And I said, I, I want to experience building a business with funding and backing and what does that look like? So I got a small amount of local VC funding. And I put money in and I also actually interestingly [00:11:00] did a media for equity deal, which was my first experience of the whole media for equity dynamic.
I did a deal with Bauer Media at the time across all of their female magazines in Australia. I got sort of 15 million in inventory across their now magazine, Marie Claire, et cetera, to launch the brand. But it was a, I'm not doing this by myself again. I want to have somebody in on board day one.
Teresa:
So there's a couple of things I just want you to clarify for me.
So when you talk about the media deal, can you just explain to listeners what you mean? What does that look like? What is it?
Sam:
Yeah. So look, there's, there's many different ways to skin a cat, as I like to say. And over the years I've learned that bartering in business is really helpful. So you can't always, getting debt into a business, getting traditional investment is unbelievably hard, particularly if you don't fit the classical, Mold.
And what I've learned over the years is that you can [00:12:00] exchange things. So if you know that you're providing a service that another bigger business has a requirement for, you can sometimes do a deal where they may help forward fund you in order to be able to get more of what they want from your business, from a supply chain viewpoint.
Um, media for equity is, is for me, is a bit of a bartering system where You've got a company like Bauer who have various media businesses, whether it be magazines, radio, etc. And they will have inventory that they are selling to other companies. And a media for equity deal is simply saying, is it me paying you for it?
I'm going to give you some shares in my business. And in doing that, you're, you're playing for the long term. So you get, you're going to give me some of this space. You're going to help support the marketing of my business. But you accept the fact that I'm not giving you cash day one, I'm giving you a share of [00:13:00] the business and hopefully we'll all win together in the future.
Teresa:
So I'm assuming then for someone listening to this and maybe thinking about, you know, straightforward, we'll give you some money for a percentage of our business. And then this type of investment. What would you do? Is there one that's better than the other? Is there a reason you chose that one? Would you have rather had the straight money if you could?
Sam:
Look, there's lots of different ways of looking at it. I can only speak to sort of my motivation. At the time, the deal metrics were more favorable than I would have gotten a straight cash for the equity deal. But also my mentality was, If, if you just purchase the media, it's an exchange, it's a financial exchange, but it's done.
You've spent the money, they're gone. If it's a media for equity dynamic, then they only get that return if you're successful. So one of the [00:14:00] motivating factors for me was the idea that there was skin in the game on both sides, that there was, there was a sort of active interest in being, um, in the business being successful and being able to do that.
But the, the other factor was. I think the media world is probably more open minded to different types of entrepreneurs than the financial world. And I had had a terrible time of it trying to raise money over the years. In, in my previous businesses, my, my original bank manager, when I set up on my own, when I was 24, the first thing he did was remove my personal overdraft.
And that kind of was a pattern across the, the entire time, whenever I've engaged with financial institutions, it's just not, it's not been good for me. So, I kind of, you know, their engagement with us because we were a fresh brand, we were doing [00:15:00] something different and interesting. They were excited by the possibilities of what we wanted to do as, as a business.
And it was a very different response to the response that I'd had before.
Teresa:
And that is so interesting and kind of really nicely brings us onto the work that is being done with Chavarron Tapped is that one of the, when you think about investments and people who give investments, they tend to fit a very small, box and the people that you had like this TV box and then the people that they're giving investments to.
And that was one of the most shocking things about when we went, um, at the time recording this, it was last week. I knew the stats would be bad. Like as a woman in business, I knew that. The people getting funding would be low when it came to anybody that wasn't necessarily a white male, but I was gobsmacked.
I mean, from your point of view, obviously you weren't [00:16:00] surprised because you've been in it, but what were your thoughts about it?
Sam:
I wasn't surprised. I mean, it, it was even worse than I thought and I had a fairly low opinion. So it was, it, it was kind of like I was, I'm just, I'm a bit embarrassed for them.
So like I'm a part of a lot of female entrepreneur groups and some incredible women doing phenomenal things and, and the thing that I've found in my experience of dealing with. Female entrepreneurs is they often have like a societal lens as well. So they're not just building businesses that are good for them.
They are trying to build businesses that are good for everybody. And this is a consistent theme that I kind of come across. So. I, I look at them and I go, why on earth wouldn't we be backing the, these incredible women? And for, I think, you know, the Rose review pointed out that if we backed female entrepreneurs in the same way that we do men, there'd be another 250 billion [00:17:00] in the UK economy.
So I look at that and I go, this is like, it just doesn't make any logical sense. So yeah, the stats were hugely disappointing, but not surprising. And having got a small amount of investment in Australia, but then trying to do a series A after really successfully scaling the business, you know, to a substantial number of customers and turnover and being very close to profitability.
And systematically failing in that endeavor, having been told that we were, like, perfect profile, perfect, you know, incredible this, incredible that, I kind of, I kind of wasn't going in there with an expectation that the stats were gonna surprise me, put it that way.
Teresa:
Yeah, and I, like, it just, for me, I work, I would say, probably 90 percent of my audience are women.
And, I think we're starting on the right foot anyway [00:18:00] in getting in a business and the day to day things of running a business of, you know, I had a, in one of my groups, there was a conversation going on that the husband was ill or the children were ill. And the assumption was the wife would just go and pick up the childcare, even though they were speaking at a really big thing online.
And the husband wasn't very happy about the fact that actually he might have to take the time off, you know, and he had the real job or the proper job and, you know, and, and I think so, burst off straight out of the gates. You're dealing with that. And of course, when it's in your head as well, and society saying, you know, The successful people at the top, the people who have the biggest business that, you know, the, the people who we should look up to are not, they don't look like us.
And obviously this wasn't just a male female thing, you know, it was very much a, you know, an ethnicity thing as well. Like if they're not seeing those examples and obviously this is what untapped is there to do. It's to, to try and help bring. a more diverse portfolio of people who [00:19:00] are being invested in.
How are we meant to, like, how did you keep fighting, keep, like, going back up there and asking the question and trying again and building, like, where did that resilience come from?
Sam:
I mean, look, there is no safety net for me. So there isn't another option and I am deeply passionate about what I do. So you just do find another way.
And...
32 min

About Your Dream Business

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Hi! I’m Teresa if you are a business owner who is striving to build a business and life you dream of on your own terms and doing something you love then this is the podcast for you!