Celebrating Female Tech and Circular Economy Founders on #IWD2022

I want to first congratulate all the incredible women who've taken the step to build a business based on the re-use economy. It feels a bit like homage to our mothers and or grandmothers, who knew little else. To bring these values back to the world hasn't been easy, but everyday you get up and show everyone how it's done, so take a bow, you've earned it!

Starting a purpose driven business

Starting a business with people and profit at heart can be a very tricky game to navigate. As people who want to do good, we tend to sacrifice profit for purpose, but it shouldn’t have to be that way. 

In my first year of business, I didn't charge not even one cent for my coaching. I put first the goal of serving, and practising my trade, as well as doing the market research and really understanding what people really wanted and needed. 

That investment in time is bearing fruit today in Where Ideas Launch - The Sustainable Innovation Podcast, and in my courageous career club - career transition course, as well as my business incubator for startups.

Once I understood the market and the clients that chose to work with me, I could really go after the business I wanted to build.

Here’s what my amazing cast of super women have to share about building innovative businesses. Each represents an episode of my podcast, so if you want to dive into one of these episodes you are welcome to!

Happy International women’s day!

Sally Dear, Ducky Zebra

I think it’s great being a woman running and starting a sustainable business. I’ve been amazed at the fantastic network of people, yourself included, that I’ve come across, and people are so open to collaborating and supporting one another. In terms of advice, I’d say Believe in yourself. Know what your purpose is, or the problem that you’re solving.

 And stay true to that, collaborate and connect with other like minded people, and in particular, other people that are at a similar stage in their business journey to you. And so I’ve been really fortunate and I found a number of people that I can speak to and share ideas with and learn from as well. Get used to working outside of your comfort zone because you can do it. And finally, have fun and enjoy yourself because you’re going to be spending a lot of your day doing it. So you need to love it as well.

068 Breaking Gender Bias Thread by Thread – Where Ideas Launch

Karen Adams, Kaia Clothing

I would say harness your courage and do it and get on mission, get all in, don’t tinker around the edges and don’t align with any organisations that aren’t fully converted towards sustainability. Just don’t dilute your cause.

You have to go all in and your network, you have to surround yourself with people who are all in because if you try and hybrid it, it doesn’t work actually is what I found to my cost. Because if you network and you harness yourself to people whose values don’t reflect your own, there will be a crash at some point in the cost. So I’d say guard against that.

066 Making A Design Statement – Where Ideas Launch

Lola Fernandez, Green Cloud Nine

Yeah, I would say that the first step would be to look at yourself internally and understand your purpose. Why, why you want to do that, and what is driving you because this is a long and hard path. There are good days, but there are many nightmares, very many dark times and sleepless nights. 

So you really need to be very convinced why you want to do this. If you want to just do it for money, you can forget it, you need to have something a lot deeper, that that is driving you.

And that’s what is gonna keep you that’s why they were disconnected, especially when those dark times come that you say no, no, okay? Today has been bad, but they know tomorrow’s gonna be better. And you can, you can continue. 

And apart from that, keep going and don’t give up. Many startups fail because they give up too soon. If they continue for two more months or six more months, they could be successful. But mainly they add, they go through frustrating times, and they give up and are too early. So determination and purpose, I think, are two key elements. Perfect.

065 Green Cloud Nine – Where Ideas Launch

Tessa Clarke, Olio

I have several pieces of advice. So the first one is to make sure that you are solving a real problem. And a problem that you are really, really passionate about is this, your life’s calling life is far too short to be working on something that isn’t sort of your life’s calling. And there are so many massive problems out there that need solving yesterday, that I think we all need to kind of stand up and kind of get going. The other thing I would say is very much linked to that is to stay focused on the problem that you’re trying to solve. And do not allow yourself to fall in love with your particular solution.

Because it is almost inevitable that your solution will not be perfect when you first launched into the market. And it might actually be completely incorrect for the problem that you’re trying to solve. And if you just stay really, really focused on the problem you’re trying to solve, then you will be able to test and iterate your way to a product that will solve that. The other thing as I’ve already touched on, I recommend that everybody reads the book The Lean Startup by Eric Ries and also a book called the Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick, which is all about how to do that kind of early market research.

 And then I think the other thing I would say is to reach out and build a peer group, connect with other people who are going through the same journey, it can be extremely lonely. Unless people are kind of going through it themselves, it’s really hard to understand what the entrepreneurial journey is like. And also, it’s much quicker learning from the experience of others than necessarily having to experience every single mistake yourself. Absolutely. Yeah, the final thing is to enjoy it. Right? Like, make sure you enjoy the journey because you will never reach your destination. That’s something else that I’ve realised. So enjoy it while you’re doing it. 

064 Share More, Waste Less – Where Ideas Launch

Nicole Broad, THe Fruit Moth

Okay, I’m going to firstly go with Instagram because specifically for a product-based business, I think you have to be on Instagram and do collaborations. I remember us having a conversation in January. Put your face behind the brand, geez, put your face behind the brand. 

And I was like, “Oh, I just don’t know, I don’t like having my photo taken.” And now I’m like, half of my feed is my face. And people buy into that. Like, I think it’s so important, especially for a small brand, especially for a sustainable brand. People want to see who is making these things, people want to see who’s coming up with the ideas. And I get customers now who are genuinely my friends. Last week, I had a customer send me a bunch of flowers, When she found out I was listed on Not On The High Street. I genuinely think it’s 80% the person and 20% the product.

Obviously your product has to be amazing. But if you’re not there and there’s no face to the product, you’re just any other brand really, life people are buying into you. 

Also just be kind and nice to people!

049 Side Gig Success – Where Ideas Launch

Lakshmi Malhotra, Reshamdor

Though I’m very new in the entrepreneurship world, I will share my experience in the past few months. I think the first thing that I learned when I moved into starting my own company was when we work in the corporate world, everything is very structured, right? There are well-defined processes. 

However, when you move into entrepreneurship, the first thing is you have to do everything on your own now. So it was a difficult task for me. But what I learned in the last six months is that don’t hesitate to reach out. Don’t hesitate to ask for help. And then keep following up. What is needed is persistence, continuous follow-up. 

043 – Slide Into Slow Fashion – Where Ideas Launch

Beck Baines, The Ink Bin (ask Becky for a quote)

The world is ever changing and some sectors of business are not ready for the huge changes that need to be made in order to work towards a greener future. If I could give one piece of advice to Ecopreneurs it would be to have the confidence to be different, be dynamic and challenge the status quo… and to do it loudly in order to inspire others to follow their path.

035 The Ink Bin – Where Ideas Launch

Cathy Mears-Martin, The Eco Protection Squad - ask cathy for a quote

My best bit of advice is believe in yourself and don't compare. So easy to say but very valid! You will get knocked back or fond people may not be on that same page as you and criticise - sometimes not constructive. You know what you are working on and what your bigger picture is, don't doubt yourself. But be kind to yourself too - if you are having a lot of doubts, you may need to step away from the moment and get some fresh air / new perspective.

025 The Eco Protection Squad – Where Ideas Launch

Claudia Gwinnutt, Circla

My biggest advice is, you’re gonna hear “No” so many times, and there’s going to be people who don’t believe in what you’re doing. They’re going to give you a million reasons why it won’t work. And it comes in a day for people who run a company, they want you to accept that it’s just not gonna work. But I think if you’ve got a really great idea, and you’re finding a way to test that, and you really believe in it, you’ve got to have just a really hard skin and believe in yourself and be able to pick yourself up. Because there’s gonna be great days when you get invited onto a cool podcast, and then you’re gonna have days where no one buys your product the next day, and no one is interested, and everyone’s telling you that it’s not going to work. And finding a way to get that kind of thick skin to keep going and believing in yourself, and being patient with the process I think is my biggest piece of advice. 

018 The Milkman for Beauty – Where Ideas Launch

Antara Chirpal - Maya Weaves 

Handloom is an expression of a weaver’s feelings... when he is happy,when he is sad....just like a painter where he gives life to his feelings, through his painting. They add a pinch of their life  to their creations and that makes them priceless…. Communicate your emotions with your product or service and make your customers feel it, like you do :-) 

017 The Plight of the Artisan – Where Ideas Launch

Fiona Mehmet, AllthingsFI

I’d probably say don’t do it for the easy option just because you’d like the challenge and do it because you’re solution-driven, you’re mission-driven. And just make sure it’s something that aligns with you because you can still be (I don’t think everyone’s cut out for self-employed business) an amazing leader in an employed position. And you can lead from that space as well. So I think you can be a leader either as self-employed or sole trader or you as an employee as well. So I think, just really figure out what you want first, and be clear and and move forward with whether you want to be a sustainable employee or a sustainable business owner as well.

014 Sustainability Down Under – Where Ideas Launch

Mathilde Jakobsen - Fresh.Land

So one piece of advice – that’s difficult, but I will try to compress it. First of all, I think it’s really important that you believe in yourself, you believe in your intuition, and you believe in your ideas because belief can move mountains. So what I mean about this is that when Fresh.Land started out, no one believed we could do a kind of a food tech platform without owning big assets and trucks and warehouses and bringing fruits just in time, no one believed in that. But what we have done is basically proving them wrong.

Because if there’s any theoretical possibility, it is possible. You just have to insist and insist and insist. And I believe that perseverance is the strongest predictor of success. It is not your skills, your abilities, your network and so on. It is your perseverance, because if you don’t let anyone bring you down, you will eventually succeed. So that would be my recommendation, continue and don’t let anything come in your way.

011 Fresher Food Fitter Planet – Where Ideas Launch

Roz Edwards

Yeah, so one thing that I think we can all do, which perhaps we don’t, is just constantly be on the look, if you haven’t already got a product that could be circular. Just keep your eyes peeled, because there are things out there that nobody is actually doing yet. And when you find that thing, Build on the idea and develop a product or product and service suite around it. Now I do so many different businesses based on the same basic idea, mannequins for rental!

069 Waste to Wealth – Where Ideas Launch