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NotOnTheHighStreet.com Founder: Rapid Success Lead To My Darkest Days - Holly Tucker | E92

August 09, 2021 / 01:25:59

This episode features Holly Tucker, ex-CEO and founder of Not On The High Street, discussing her journey from being diagnosed with a brain tumor to building a successful online marketplace. Key topics include entrepreneurship, personal struggles, and the importance of creativity in business.

Holly shares her early experiences, including her work ethic and the challenges she faced as a woman in business. She recounts pitching Not On The High Street to venture capitalists and the skepticism she encountered, emphasizing the need for resilience and determination.

The conversation touches on her personal life, including her divorce and health issues, which forced her to reevaluate her identity and purpose. Holly discusses how she found solace in creativity and community, leading to the establishment of her current venture, Holly & Co.

Holly also reflects on the lessons learned from her time at Not On The High Street, including the importance of surrounding oneself with supportive people and the need for a balanced approach to business and life.

Throughout the episode, Holly emphasizes the significance of serving others and creating a fulfilling work environment, ultimately aiming to inspire small business owners to pursue their passions.

TL;DR

Holly Tucker shares her journey from health struggles to founding Not On The High Street, emphasizing resilience, creativity, and the importance of community in business.

Video

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early twenties i was diagnosed with a brain tumor that was the first knock down holly tucker ex-ceo and founder of not

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on the high street holly's story is mind-blowing we go and pitch the idea of not on the high street to

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the land of vcs who would tell us that it was lovely that us women wanted to create a crafts website but

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really there was nothing in it and i just said well we're actually going to change the face of retailing

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funny enough it's not craft website we tried to build a marketplace with

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no tech experience but we knew what we wanted and so we found someone who built the technology that ebay were

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building in america and we just relaunched and we nailed it how could i smile or laugh

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i found myself becoming a different version of me one of the lines at hollandco is bringing colour to grey and i think i

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was turning grey

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holly tucker ex-ceo and founder of not on the high street one of the uk's

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most loved brands but a real pioneer in its space at its time holly's story

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is mind-blowing how she rose from someone that had no experience didn't have huge amounts of capital at a

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time when women in business especially women in tech had it harder than anybody else

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she built an online tech company that went on to be worth hundreds and

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hundreds of millions but her story isn't straightforward it's riddled with pain

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divorce heartbreak turmoil and having to reinvent and refine

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herself time and time again the fundamental life lessons

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that she shares today and that she unpacks for us are life lessons based on problems that

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we're all going to experience in our lives it's a real joy to bring you this conversation and i want to thank holly for her

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openness her intellect and her incredibly inspiring personality without further ado i'm stephen barlow

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and this is the diary of a ceo i hope nobody's listening but if you are then please keep this to yourself

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[Music] i always start in the same place in this podcast because i think it provides the greatest amount of context on a person

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so i i'm i'm somewhat sort of bored of asking these questions but they're so incredibly foundational to

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who you went on to become because everything from you know the start of your journey till now proves

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that you are clearly an outlier in every way so tell me below the age of 18 what were the

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factors that went into making that person that went on to become this person

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well um i was nicknamed holly hurricane and that was because i couldn't

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wait to get to the next stage so when i um you know turned i think it was

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12 i persuaded my dad that i needed to get a job in a pub cleaning it so he would wait outside in

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the car park at five o'clock in the morning i don't think i'd do this for my son by the way anymore but he would wait outside the um the pub and

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would um pick me up after my shift i went on and then i just continually

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worked when my friends weren't working i um decided that you know i needed the

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first mobile phone you know one of those bricks i think it was one to one i think that it only worked in the m25 and

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um and so i was just continually pushing it to be grown up or to be out of childhood

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i think and so why um because i was in i think and still am

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today incredibly excited by life i i really wanted to juice life and i was

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ready to work and i think work has always been um an incredibly important thing i

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remember at 15 um becoming an intern for publicist advertising agency um on

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bake street so as my friends would spend the summer out in the you know getting up to mischief no doubt

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i would be traveling up to bake street to spend my summer working and i did that when i was 15

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16 and 17 and it actually and ended up being on the day of my a-level

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results my mum waited around the corner and i went for a job interview on the same day i was getting these

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a-level results in the morning and i got a job as the junior junior team maker at publicis advertising

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agency ra and that i now call my sort of university of life um and then my mum got me in the

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car and we went to pick up my a level results where i thought up until about a year ago i got a d

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in business studies i actually got an e and that was just ironic because that was

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the moment i started work i celebrated my 18th birthday in the office and i've been working ever since i'm 44

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now and so i think that that says a lot about who i was i was just so eager to be in

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the big wide world um i remember my parents going on holiday and i was living at home and i mean

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again if my son ever did this to me i just um rented a place with some

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friends in halston because i was working um in in bake street um and just moved out i just packed up

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the car and drove the car and text my parents to say mom dad i've

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moved out um i'm living in holston which they weren't necessarily thrilled about um at what age i must

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have been 18 yeah 18. um so that is how that has been me i was

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dyslexic didn't find out um for my exams i am

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definitely someone who has to work hard to achieve um and always been creative

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so that has been a constant in my life i studied art uh at a level

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and i created this huge sculpture that they had never had someone do before called tom dick

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and harry and they actually cast it in bronze and had a crane pull it out of the art studio and had to take the windows

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out and that it's still there today at my school um because i i always go for it i suppose um

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so yeah that was me you know but i'm so when we say before the age of 18 you know i was in an office at the age

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of 18. um all my friends went to uni um and as i said i did this university

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of life thing um that work ethic was it at all influenced by your parents when you say you're excited by life but

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was there an example set by your parents about work ethic

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um i think you know i was always fascinated by my father's

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role he was a financial a cfo at general electric and he traveled the world and i was

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always fascinated with what he did my grandparents all had you know their

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own businesses and i was fascinated by that my mother had a small business

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um when i was younger i think that always you know how we get our money was always

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placed um we didn't have you know we weren't we were fine

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but money and where we got our money was always spoken about so i i very quickly realized you work

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to live so that's what happens and so if i wanted to go out i needed to work

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for that money so that has just that was always part of me

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so you know maybe that just led to me just continuing to work because that meant that you lived and um

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so yeah so i i think that but my work ethic you know again we were talking off air you know i give

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it my my all you know i lose myself in my work um it is me

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and so that's an interesting thing as you get older so you you work at publicist until you're 20 years old

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i i yes i worked there until i was about 21 years old and then i got head-hunted to move to conde nast uh

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meantime i managed to marry my childhood sweetheart again uh hurricane holly was in a hurry

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uh so i bought a place i got married um i need some more context here so your

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childhood sweetheart you met him when he was we were 14 14 yeah yeah okay you're both

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14. yeah yeah and we got married uh at 21 and um divorced by 24.

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and so it was an incred my early 20s were a very very difficult period of time of my life because

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i had built up since i was 18. you know i had built up this life in this world and of course you get married then right

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and you know you're gonna have children and you've got a property in chiswick and you know you're all

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there and then sort of life pays you back or gives you i don't say pay you back

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that's the wrong way gives you an interesting lesson which is be careful to be in a hurry all the time just because you want it

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and you can get it doesn't mean it's right and so we found ourselves as natural human

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beings developing in our personalities and things and realizing that we weren't destined

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to be together forever um meantime i was diagnosed with a brain tumor and that was fine it wasn't fatal um but

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it had a lot of side effects so at quite a young age at sort of 23 24-ish i

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was dealing with a lot full-time job um all these sorts of things and i again i look

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at my son who's about to turn 17 i think all right wow holly you were young to do all of this so in my early 20s a

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lot of things changed for me um and i had to slow down i had to

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lose full-time work i had to become freelance i had to concentrate on my health i had to

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get divorced um and so yeah and that was the first knockdown i would say i've had two of

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those in my life um and that was the first one and it was pretty painful

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you find out at 20 through 24 years old that you've got a brain tumour how did you find that out i was just

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very poorly i put on a lot of weight and i was uh just not functioning correctly

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and in the end um with all pushing it because also also a young girl going to

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the doctor and pushing it with all the scans we found out but as i said it was it was livable with and um you know and

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that's something that's fine um but it caused just a huge

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amount of turmoil and um that's not to say i think my marriage would have ever lasted

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anyway but it just created turmoil and i now think back to how tough your

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early 20s are you know i don't think i would repeat them um i think it's quite a difficult

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age you're meant to be grown up you're just still a kid i'm trying to work everything out at the same time yeah absolutely well especially you the

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situation you'd put yourself yeah exactly exactly yeah but you just think the world's against you

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and now i just realized it was a it was a great kick up the butt and so you go into freelance work you're

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you're separated from this partner you've learned the lessons there hopefully yeah um you've understood the

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situation with your health yeah you didn't have to have an operation no no you couldn't have one no yeah i was i asked that particular

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question because i actually found out last week that one of my one of my best friends has a brain tumor and i and i was intrigued by the array

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of emotions that you felt in that moment and i asked that question from a supportive friend standpoint as how you support

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someone that's that's um found that out i think she's 24

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24 and she found out that she found out two weeks ago that she's having she had a brain tumor and they put her into

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an operation the next tuesday wow because of the severity of the situation so she's just come out of the

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operation last night oh i really wish her well i mean mine wasn't you know it wasn't that serious so you

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know that was something that um i was very very lucky about

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but i think one of the things was is that i had to find you know twice in my life i've had

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to find out who i am again because when you pull your identity into

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something else that's not yourself or or it becomes your identity i think we all do that in relationships

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sometimes you know that you are married or you know that's what i did as a young girl so then when it all fell apart who who

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who am i and that was a really difficult moment for me and slightly the

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thing that saved me was going back to my creative roots you know if i hadn't gone to the university of life i was going to go and do an art

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degree so creativity sort of saved me and i i went on to

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you know create vegetable wreaths which again i just always think you know the story needs to be sexier than the vegetable race but there it was

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and i i built this wreath and i went down to my local high street to try and sell it and i was just freelancing at

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that time in publishing but this was allowing me to be creative in the evening why vegetable wreaths

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though um you know it it was just i needed to be creative i love

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i love interiors and i've always you know at the age my 14th birthday present was a

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subscription to the world of interiors um so you know that has just been something i have to have a creative

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environment to exist in so my home right now as a shrine to not on the high street i had to move house to get bigger and bigger

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homes just to hold what you know you can imagine um what i'm surrounded by and so um

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that was just glorious for me you know why not um i just did it and then that was this

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path that just opened up to me because i realized that i needed to sell these

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things because i was going to obviously become a millionaire you know for reinventing the wreath because that's what need was needed in

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the world and i realized that actually there wasn't any local fare that i could go

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and sell it so again if you dream it up you can make it happen so i created the first chizz at christmas fair with 200 stalls so that i

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could get the best store you say that like it's so simple because a lot of people

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a wouldn't even they would have had the reef idea and never done anything about it and then when they realized that they

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couldn't sell it anywhere they would have never done anything about that as well but there's clearly something that underpins that perspective that okay

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well that doesn't exist so i can create that and yeah well that doesn't exist i'll create that to support that that's my dna

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that's what i'm doing now holly and coats what i did at notton high street i don't just because it doesn't exist

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doesn't even bother me it's actually just part of the fun of building i'm i'm

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i love building i love it about the risk um well what risk because

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um you know what was going to go wrong there people weren't going to come to the fair i knew that they would i knew that

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they'd like my wreaths because they were good i didn't see risk you know i i

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i just went into it and i created this event and it kicked off it was amazing sold all my

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wreaths hated wreaths by the end of the thing was not going to have that career but now i was going to have a fair

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career i was going to put on events so i quit my job um and told my dad who's my

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be my cfo not in the high street and his cfo at holly and co and just said right that's what

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i'm now going to do and so i delivered all the wreaths got rid of that out of my household and i then um created these events

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and put on 20 events around london with small businesses and that was

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almost you know again a pretty bad existence because i was on my own putting on these

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events it was you know pouring with rain one day you can't control the weather you can't control the football being changed you

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can't do anything but what it did do is it made me realize

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um my total love for small businesses and what they

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create because i curated all of those stalls and i could see that there was absolute hidden treasure

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that no one else had discovered before and so the town hall roof i suppose was the prototype

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to not on high street i want to i want to go back to something you said a second ago which was about that moment where

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you kind of lose orientation your marriage has ended because i just think so many people listening to this

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either have gone through that are going through that or are going to go through that moment where they have a significant life change

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which completely makes them unanchored from what their like purpose is and who they are and um

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i'm fascinated by how long that process lasted for you and what advice you'd give to someone

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who because i experienced it a little bit when i like left my business or actually the first time i experienced it was when someone made me a really big

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offer for my business and then i went home that day and like mentally spent the money and i thought well then what who am i

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yeah who now like yeah because your whole identity was attached to this business so you might say like

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what advice would you have for someone um that's going through that sort of like loss of direction because there's been a significant life

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change and they they don't know you know who they are or which way to go anymore well it's actually something

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that now i have a word for um whereas at the time it was a sort of

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process when i consult with small businesses um and i i don't now do one-on-ones but

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um in my book for instance it's called a brand heart and it's basically i believe that a

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business has a heart and everything has to come off it you know that's the pumping organ that

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everything should come back to now you as a founder need to understand what should go into that

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heart and it actually should be made up of you so i think what i did was i went back to

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so what makes holly exist what makes holly alive and through that process which was about

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a year um and my second one which will come to probably

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you know lasted two or three years was um creativity was one um discovering

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um creative folk um my the my community who was i meant to

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belong to um building entrepreneurism um

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all these elements were coming through i was lucky um in my life at the end of the first

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this year i actually met my partner who's been my partner for 18 years and i got married

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and locked down so now he's my husband um so i was lucky to find somebody

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um and he did a lot of cheerleading for me you know sort of because when you're in

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that place you don't really um you don't have a perspective on

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anything that you can give anymore and so i think that's another incredibly important thing is to surround yourself

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with people who adore you and are willing to tell you what makes you um what makes the sun

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shine out of you you know what that is and so i was lucky to have that but that brand heart like the who is

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holly just cutting it up into five pieces and say okay if there were five things i've got to concentrate on

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to bring to restore me what are they um but it's a pretty painful process

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what role does patience play from in all of that process well none at the beginning i mean

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zero patience hurricane harley i mean do you want to mean now i've got a little bit more you know

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actually i'm enjoying that getting older and just having a slight um listening more um

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not running so fast um and picking up the cues along the way which i think i probably missed the

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first time around so i'm actually really happy to become more patient i mean we'll put

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it in perspective you know i'm you know i i'm uh very ambitious so but i am actually learning to listen um

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to listen to the world a bit more and even even though you've cut your heart into five pieces there to dissect

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who you actually are um that doesn't necessarily mean you know the

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the path as in in terms of like the business idea that's going to get you get you there or the career but you you

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know the fundamental principles of what you're looking for yeah and then what you need to do like experiment do something yeah just

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well actually that's not what i did for not on the high street but it is what we've done for holly and co because um

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that was the you know that's the point isn't it you learn i you know from not on the high

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street holly and co i have learned i don't want to do it all again as i did but not in high street so i

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don't want a final destination when you take vc money on you have some final destinations that you

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you know you've turned right and not left so always your course of direction will be to the right with holly and co what i

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loved was not not having that and also being able to

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um you know when people said so what is holly and co i could barely explain it i didn't have

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an elevator pitch i didn't want to fall into that actually i think that is the beauty of what i

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was looking to do but i did have a brand heart i knew that we had that i didn't have the final destination but i have

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the coordinates of a few places i know to go and i know that i am you know i know the

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direction i'm heading i always call it like an anchor you know i've got an anchor in the future i've got the rope that i'm holding and

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that rope will change change it will pull me to the right and left but i am anchored

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um yeah and um and i'm enjoying that that's what i'm really enjoying so i've got a we've got to go through

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this um this uh not in the high street story because i when i was reading um about your journey up until this

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point and the experience you'd had in you know working on you know creating a

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a market or affair for for these small businesses and then to go from there to trying to create a e-commerce site

00:22:28

in the year that you did i thought was just madness and i think about entrepreneurs coming into the den and um

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one of the questions i always ask them is like have you got tech experience yeah who's who's got the technical sort

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of competence within the team show me what you know yeah and from looking at what your journey opened to that point you didn't

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have any of that stuff yeah no none how beautiful is naivety well yes delusion it is awesome

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you know i look at it you know before when i was in it in it you know i thought oh my gosh

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there's so many things that we need to have done before now i look at it and i think could i just bottle up that naivety and

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just take a swig of it every single day you know naivety is the thing if we had known

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really that we were creating one of the first marketplaces in the world you know at that point in time

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there was ebay and amazon amazon was still selling books ebay had you know your socks that you

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got for christmas and the you know the title was one two three grandma's socks um

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uh etsy hadn't launched yet um we were basically looking at uh you know

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like many businesses start a human problem that we were experiencing and thought we could

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create a solution and all we needed to do was take all those small businesses that were under my town hall roof

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and just put them on this thing called the internet and then wouldn't it be great if you could

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shop from you know lily bell and shop from the letter room and put it into one basket well of course okay well we got 20 grand

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so let's build a website for 20 000 pounds and we found someone who could do that

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big watch out there and funny enough three days before launch

00:24:09

uh we realized that they couldn't do that you know that there was no checkout but because again there was no

00:24:15

experience we had already told the whole world with a microsite that was counting down the days to launch

00:24:20

and all the press that we were very able to get um that we were launching on this

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specific day the third of april so this 20 grand where did that come from well the

00:24:31

the startup um that sophie and i had so i i uh the story is that basically after

00:24:38

your local fare had a three-month-old boy called harry um with my now husband

00:24:43

frank and i realized that i couldn't ignore what i had witnessed when you put a

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group of small businesses together that are like-minded and bring together discerning customers

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there's something that happens there the high street was dying and i needed to do that but i knew i

00:25:03

didn't want to do it alone after your local fare which was my fair business i couldn't do it alone so i just wrote to

00:25:08

my old boss sophie from publicis so she was my boss saying you know

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i basically don't think there's anyone else on the planet that has the into my yank you know is able to

00:25:21

rewrite the english dictionary um and can be that person

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and so i wrote to her and i still got the email and it says you know i want to bring everything that's not on the high street

00:25:34

together but i had a terrible beater name and uh 24 hours later she said yes

00:25:41

because she was that customer too she wanted to find the curious the discover the small businesses and

00:25:47

things but i had a three-month-old baby that wasn't going to stop me and so we

00:25:52

went on this journey to build it and as i said you know we tried to build a marketplace with no

00:25:59

tech experience or retail experience but we knew what we wanted and so we

00:26:05

um pulled together a few savings we were both with young children our

00:26:12

husbands were working to pay for the mortgage um we got a loan from a bank very small

00:26:19

loan and we remortgaged our homes slightly both of us so i think we came to it with about 80

00:26:24

000 pounds thinking that we had contingency in there i mean everything and funny enough

00:26:32

uh we didn't have enough money but we launched on the third of april with no check out

00:26:38

to our shopping site um why was there no checkout well because funny enough ebay couldn't even

00:26:43

build a multi-partner checkout with one basket you know no one had yet actually done that

00:26:50

technology so and i remember naively calling you know calling ebay just picking up the phone

00:26:57

to ebay thinking i don't know who i'm going to get through to ebay hey hi is that the cto you know that stuff you're

00:27:03

building there's any chance uh i could have it too because we're dealing with a company in

00:27:09

cornwall who uh has led us down um so we didn't you know this hadn't

00:27:15

been built yet this this this functionality and so we launched we called it a press

00:27:22

preview and we just pivoted and we were uh on something called daily candy which

00:27:27

was huge at the time we were on the daily mail front cover all this sort of stuff it was great so we got all the traffic but no one could

00:27:34

check out um but you know as mother lions that we were

00:27:39

and i always liken businesses to being a parent

00:27:45

something that in my latter years was frowned upon by the vcs because actually i do believe

00:27:52

that when you have that spirit of a parent you can lift a car off a child when you're a founder and

00:28:00

literally you're launching a shopping site with no checkout what are you going to do and so we found someone who in two weeks

00:28:08

built the technology that ebay were building in america um and we just relaunched and and we

00:28:13

nailed it did you run out of money in those early yeah yeah totally we ran out money we launched in

00:28:20

the april and we're running out of money in the july um because funny enough technology costs

00:28:26

a lot of money especially when it's never been built before and um and so we had to go and raise money

00:28:34

and that was one heck of an experience because if you want to take yourself back to 2006

00:28:42

when we know one percent of vc money right now goes to women what do you think the statistic was then so we would pack up our

00:28:49

personalized bags we get on the tube no money for taxis we would knock on the doors

00:28:55

with meetings you know that people knew someone who knew someone and we go and pitch the idea of not on

00:29:01

the high street to the land of vcs who pretty much a hundred percent would tell us that

00:29:09

their wives did the shopping in their household and that it was lovely that us women

00:29:14

wanted to create a crafts website but really there was nothing in it and i just said

00:29:20

well we're actually going to change the face of retailing funny enough it's not a craft website

00:29:25

and that continued right up until the christmas and we were now paying our staff on our

00:29:33

egg credit card checkbooks we were my parents remortgaged their house twice

00:29:39

uh sophie's parents uh lent us money i mean it was dark dark days i mean not in the high

00:29:45

street was definitely on its last breath but the issue was it was working

00:29:51

you know it hadn't been working up until that point we used to have a bell that you would ring when there was a checkout of 30 pounds

00:29:57

and we were taking 10 and this bell would ring every second day and we were just thinking my god

00:30:02

this is just hell but just as we were really running out of money the bell just kept on ringing it was

00:30:09

happening because it was christmas and people wanted great gifts um so that was an

00:30:15

extraordinary journey but one that ended well because we found someone who understood what we were

00:30:21

building um and by the february 2007 we got our first

00:30:26

round of investment how long did that take to find that person so from when you realized you had to

00:30:32

start fundraising to the point when you the money hit your bank let's say well

00:30:37

it must have been uh eight months um but when we were

00:30:42

pitching it was just before christmas and i remember just telling them we hadn't got our first set of accounts yet

00:30:48

you know we were there and i remember my father being in the pitch meeting

00:30:54

and um you know we were putting what we were doing there obviously avoiding the conversation that

00:30:59

we were paying the staff with our credit card checkbooks you know like everything is fine oh my gosh that you

00:31:06

know it's like every time you raise any money the graphs only go you know through the sky and how you're

00:31:11

going to do it will work it out but it was an amazing moment and uh tom tightman who was the

00:31:19

investor had just written the first check for lastminute.com and he saw what we were trying to do and

00:31:25

he actually saw the power of female uh female purchasers

00:31:30

and that whole world and so um we did the pitch and he he you know he

00:31:36

played with rc he basically said that's great thank you so much and we packed up and we left and

00:31:42

my father said i'm so proud of you both knowing that not in the high street just died that we hadn't got the money

00:31:48

and it was finished because where our homes were on the line it was it was finished and just as we pressed

00:31:54

the bell for the elevator he said actually do you have a moment and he bought a bottle of champagne and

00:31:59

and that was it our destinies changed but that was how close we were um but you know we

00:32:06

definitely turned right that meant we got our first vc fantastic and then

00:32:11

um you know we started building not on high street and it was growing very very quickly

00:32:17

was it ever going to fail in your view i know you came close but was it ever going to be not at all never isn't that funny never never never

00:32:25

you know at the same time that we were running out of money i was buying every single euro for the whole world so we couldn't pay

00:32:31

for the heating so we had coats on between you know 9 am and 2 that was the coldest period in our

00:32:36

office and then the because the whole building was being knocked down but we just kept our office

00:32:42

so we had no boiler no heating but i was still buying the urls across the globe and and to this day

00:32:49

i think it's one of the most fantastic businesses um but never would it fail ever

00:32:56

because you know you as a parent you know if your child had any issue would you

00:33:02

not think that you could overcome those issues absolutely and that's the resolut

00:33:07

resolute that you need to be in business it's why i call not in high street my first business baby

00:33:13

holly and co my second i love them as if they are my children um and they will get my my full

00:33:19

attention what is your favorite flavor of heel jack berry my favorite flavor of fuel is

00:33:27

banana berry used to be my favorite flavor and i saw someone tweet the other day they said um because puel is now in tesco's but

00:33:34

the only flavor in tesco's is the chocolate flavor they were sort of demanding tesco's put the um

00:33:40

the berry flavor in because that's steve's favorite it's not my favorite flavor is clearly banana now those are the ones i look for the most

00:33:46

what does huel do for me i mean i've talked about this extensively but for me i get that a nutritionally

00:33:52

complete diet in 60 seconds and in the world i live in that is a that is a remarkable thing and

00:33:59

this is why even before they became a podcast sponsor i was buying heel to my office

00:34:04

um every single week you know and the funny thing is jack who's the director and producer of this podcast

00:34:10

he tried cure once he was like yeah yeah the guy is addicted to hill he's a fiend

00:34:15

for you now because once you see the impact it has you understand the convenience you understand it's nutritionally complete

00:34:21

for me it's life-changing and that's why hula is a bit of a it's a bit of a cult once you try it you can't go back

00:34:28

you just said there that you know the company was completely out of money but but i i could tell that you also didn't believe it would fail which is a

00:34:34

bit of a contradiction to some degree but well because it was just money yeah and you could you could figure that

00:34:39

out i don't know how yeah but you know you know money is just this

00:34:45

you know okay so if we got the money and the hard bit really is doing the doing isn't it it's building

00:34:51

it so i always just knew somehow this will work out i mean of course you have your terrible dark days

00:34:58

but i knew it was going to work out how could it not were you on to something and i knew that

00:35:06

that level of optimism in upon reflection of your career of the last you know couple of decades how important

00:35:13

has that optimism been that just like unexplainable unjustifiable i don't know why but it'll just it will

00:35:19

all work out optimism because you've also because because you've employed a lot of people seeing the opposite that sense of like catastrophe you know

00:35:26

that catastrophizing oh no we're a [ __ ] you know that kind of oh yeah oh man i've i've kissed a lot of

00:35:31

those frogs um yeah wouldn't you say that that's a common denominator you find

00:35:37

in entrepreneurs 100 i mean even in team members someone so i've i it's so i say i can't

00:35:43

explain it enough i one example i always come back to was um i was flying to brazil and obama was

00:35:50

speaking at the same time as me um on the same stage as me just like i'm speaking just after me

00:35:55

and i thought well obama's here i'm a speaker he's a speaker can't i meet him and someone that was

00:36:01

working for me at the time went oh no i asked somebody and they said no sick as a [ __ ] if they said no ask

00:36:06

someone else and just keep asking and then they're like no no steve we've been asking and they just said no so i'll do it then and i

00:36:12

i sent some emails and within 30 uh within 30 emails someone comes and

00:36:19

grabs me goes come and meet obama yeah and i just think there's always a way there's always a way

00:36:25

and your life yeah and my life is testament to this upset this like there is a way or there's a way that's

00:36:32

you know what i mean there's a way where i have to work harder you know what i mean and i don't i don't allow for this other outcome

00:36:37

which is that oh no we can't i've never allowed for the other outcome ever

00:36:43

and it's actually my entire battery is powered by that and i am told i radiate it

00:36:51

so when you're around me you get hooked on to that and that's can be a really good thing

00:36:57

because it drives people in those dark days when actually the entire world is telling you no

00:37:03

and i'm saying yes and so it's an amazing thing and i think that optimism and actually

00:37:10

now as i said getting older it's actually i i would say there's optimism and now i

00:37:16

also have gratitude that's powering my battery you know i worked out my 40th birthday i have 29

00:37:22

000 days on this planet because i'm and as another golden thread that i'm sure you recognize as

00:37:27

efficiency i'm freaking addicted to it so i needed to know

00:37:33

so you know this life i just need to schedule this a bit so you know so i've got 29 000 days oh

00:37:39

[ __ ] it's not 29 000 days it's 14 000 days because i'm 40 right okay and

00:37:44

so that has also led to a countdown till i die

00:37:51

so that also has fueled this optimism and and [ __ ] it mentality because if today i am going to change

00:37:58

the world which i can it's even fueled even in in a better way

00:38:03

actually i didn't have that not in the high street because that was just you know fire fighting and

00:38:08

optimum was that that that that fuel but now i think i have gratitude

00:38:15

powering that even more and that's been in a beautiful beautiful stage of my life

00:38:21

that is amazing and you're right you so you're you're in survival mode and now you're now you've got choice now i've got

00:38:27

choice and a bit of you know the battle scars are there and i have an appreciation that you know i

00:38:35

can give everything and all but i need to make sure that my time

00:38:40

on the planet is also for me too because i do believe i'm here to serve

00:38:46

and i've again i can only say that now in hindsight but if i am here to serve i need to also

00:38:52

serve myself that sense of by the way i completely um resonate with

00:38:59

this um this focus on the amount of time we have left i wrote about it in my book at very

00:39:04

long length and you i think somewhere behind me there's a little sand timer somewhere on there there's usually a sound timer i don't know it seems to

00:39:12

walk around but because i wrote about it in my book at such length people started buying sound timers and and uploading them online and the

00:39:18

whole point of the sound timers it's one of the things that really allows me it reminds me of time it's like one of the ways we can see time happening

00:39:25

just by turning it you see your life moving away and it's that important reminder just like get on with it and focus on what

00:39:32

matters you mentioned um you now feel like you're here to serve

00:39:38

do you think that comes from understanding your own power yeah i think so i think so i

00:39:45

i would have found that really difficult to tell you 20 years ago but now um

00:39:53

i have been through it and done it and i also know that my optimism helps

00:39:59

people and i can see the effects and i can see you know what we brought up and not in the high street

00:40:06

was full of it you know i used to have people come in to the office um from other businesses that we

00:40:12

would hire they literally could feel it in the air they were uncomfortable with it

00:40:17

it was optimistic it was creative it was emotional and they were like this place is so

00:40:23

emotional and i'm like yeah and they're like uh we need to stop that and i'm like

00:40:28

we're never stopping that and i think that that's what i've realized is that that is what

00:40:34

i can muster up you know i i listen to one of my favorite songs is cloud busting by kate bush

00:40:41

and when i listen to that song i feel like i'm whipping up a storm

00:40:46

and that is my power but what i try and whip up is very positive and good for the soul

00:40:54

good for small businesses good for and what are small businesses they're founders with dreams you know

00:40:59

i love that and so um that is why i've writ potentially that

00:41:05

is now my job description um for the rest of my life is to build something that i can pour

00:41:12

that in and be efficient and so amplify it so not build an empire but be really smart and amplify that

00:41:20

feeling out to other people and help them there's an irony in that that you're talking about whipping up a storm and

00:41:25

your nickname's hurricane holly yeah actually i've never even said that

00:41:31

before and so yes i like that link that just happened there slightly different meaning now it's not

00:41:36

necessarily about urgency and more about i guess just power but yes exactly yeah yeah two different weather

00:41:42

types yeah yeah so take me back so that you start not on the high street it starts moving

00:41:48

you've got the vc money things you know team is small things are agile

00:41:53

typically the most fun times yeah yeah the team was small um myself sophie

00:42:00

i hired my sister um who was just going to help me out for a summer uh she still works for me at holly and

00:42:06

co so that's been a good 16 17 years that we've worked together now um

00:42:12

hired then her university friend her university friend came and coded the site

00:42:17

that but you know it's that beautiful moment that you're just literally do you have a pulse and do you breathe

00:42:22

okay would you like to come and work for us you know i was talking to somebody the other day um and he said it's that wonderful

00:42:30

naivety where you get in a car in the cab and the taxi driver is really really chatty and so you almost go and offer them a

00:42:36

job because it's just this moment where you need soldiers you know that's that time isn't it

00:42:41

you don't need the skill we need power and um we need energy and we need commitment

00:42:47

and we need you not to have a high salary that's the that's that moment in time

00:42:52

and so that was what it was and you know we were growing at 2 000

00:42:57

we were trying to keep up with it i call it like that speed train with all the nuts and bolts of flying off and you're

00:43:03

you're at the driving seat and there you're going and as you said with optimism that

00:43:09

energy is just infectious and so we just were growing

00:43:14

so rapidly so we were going from a hundred thousand pounds ttv to

00:43:20

a million the next year to two and a half million to six million now keeping up with that

00:43:26

and also remember in a marketplace you have two clients yeah i always laugh at people that

00:43:32

moan about having one client like try to you know you've got your customers and you've got all the

00:43:37

small businesses which by the way you are only as great as their ability to keep up with 2 000 growth

00:43:44

some of them are growing at 5 000 because they're the hot product and so it's that coaching of that group

00:43:50

of people to keep up with you meanwhile you know the swan to the customers and the swan to the uh

00:43:58

partners which we called them partners from day one you know they weren't sellers we were only as great as they

00:44:04

they were and that was that beautiful shift that we were creating in this world we were we were respecting small

00:44:11

businesses they would get a media pack that cost us way too much i think about five pounds per thing

00:44:16

but we wanted them to know how talented they were we curated from day one which now

00:44:24

you know uh is a word we use a lot back then it was not a word you know why aren't you accepting everybody

00:44:31

and we would be no we're turning away 90 percent of everyone that joins even though they're paying adjoining fee and

00:44:37

we're eating baked beans and worrying about the mortgage we're not getting paid a salary we will

00:44:42

turn away 90 because one day our brand will thank us for it and it did it very very much did

00:44:50

you talk there about hiring and that flipping hiring process at the start which i know very well and i i've joked

00:44:56

about on this podcast before like walking into pride and the guy selling the bags was like jonathan a director i was like yeah

00:45:01

and then like i had some guy on facebook he's called ash one of my good friends now and he even laughs about it he was on job seekers allowance he'd never done

00:45:06

a job in his life i made a marketing director and i was 18 and i was just like [ __ ] it you know like

00:45:11

yeah but you're like what's the worst i don't think i think this could work out right imagine if it does work out

00:45:17

that the taxi driver is going to be amazing funny enough it doesn't necessarily work out that way

00:45:24

almost never so but it's just i think the interview process when you're that naive is literally would you work for me

00:45:29

and they go yep fine you've got the job yeah or is there salary low enough that's actually double bonus

00:45:36

yeah yeah absolutely yeah it's it's a crazy thing the hiring process has been

00:45:41

again on reflection something i'm learning right now to do is that would probably be one of the

00:45:49

most beautiful points of building holly and co is my team and investing heavily in the development of each one

00:45:56

of the souls that i think are life is with me now not on the high street it was the soldiers you needed

00:46:02

the energy and then you get into the next stage don't you where actually those people by very nature

00:46:09

can't stay with the business because now you need skill and there's that awful moment where you're having to let people go for the

00:46:15

first time and bring in skill and to bringing skill you now need to interview don't you and

00:46:21

you now need to be able to know even what the skill is that you're even looking for as you're running at 200 miles an hour

00:46:28

and then it goes into that's next stage where you're now looking for the people to run the people

00:46:33

who you've just hired you know and that process for me was not something i could spend enough

00:46:39

time on i mean we interviewed absolutely everybody until the point that we had a c-suite

00:46:44

and um i always remember my father saying that 90 of my role as ceo

00:46:51

should have been the people 90 of my role was not the people because

00:46:57

how on earth could it be i mean you know you were the next race was happening or we were going

00:47:04

international or you know we've decided to double the company in a year

00:47:09

and now on reflection when i look at that oh it's the people so with holly and co

00:47:15

i've now got a good group of people that i believe are life as and i'm happy

00:47:21

to say that because what i believe is that they don't even know how great they are and i'm going to shine

00:47:27

their diamond until it completely shines and that's dealing with their personal side

00:47:32

that's dealing with their professional skills that's dealing with their whole self um and that is something i'm fascinated

00:47:39

by and i think i'm potentially going to build one of the most incredible teams

00:47:45

um that i've ever been lucky enough to manage and you've

00:47:50

learned those people i just everything you said then i'm not i just agree with it all i agree with every single word because i

00:47:56

went through the same exactly the same journey of hiring anybody bringing in skill

00:48:01

bringing in a bunch of people that had done this job for 20 years to tell me what to do and i got out the way

00:48:06

and i let them run the team and do all the hiring for me but then i also had the reflection three four years in that in fact this whole time what i actually

00:48:13

was was a recruitment company and that was my sole responsibility yeah and then you look at all the people

00:48:19

there and you go to the kitchen that i i would and i would you'd be getting a cup of tea and i

00:48:26

wouldn't know the person to my left how terrible is that and also that you realize when you get that c-suite in

00:48:33

because that's what we need to do because we've now got vcs and we need to get the the huge company cos and the cfos and

00:48:41

all the seas um i call it um in that they just then recruit the carbon

00:48:47

copies of themselves so suddenly you've got an entire organization of many

00:48:53

you know of those people and actually my gosh suddenly the pendulum swings so for not in the

00:48:59

high street remember we always used to say you know we've got our marketplace hat on one day so that is about trading the site and

00:49:07

understanding what customers need and then we've got our retail hat on which is the brand because we're not in

00:49:12

the high street we're not ebay we're not amazon we are not on the high street we are that beautiful mix

00:49:18

because we know our customer and so that was very interesting because actually what you need and require

00:49:25

to be able to curate unique products and unique companies is creativity eyeballs taste

00:49:33

all these things that are unable to excel you cannot put you know many times i've been asked can you just

00:49:39

please tell me the process between a and z of a great product and i'm like you see

00:49:44

you even asking me that my dear means that you don't even understand what makes a great knot in the high

00:49:50

street product so that was the difficulty is that suddenly you would get too much of the

00:49:56

processing too much of the operations everything was a meeting everything was a powerpoint everything

00:50:04

and that room for creativity and life and entrepreneurial spirit started being pushed to the side and

00:50:12

that was a very difficult period in time you know we were you know still growing so

00:50:17

incredibly quickly um so it was a difficult moment to try and balance

00:50:23

that state of growth and tech issues and operational issues and funny enough hr

00:50:28

issues when you have enough people um with that need

00:50:33

to be what i call truffle hunters now you know people that can really find the most unique amazing

00:50:39

small business that will create the next bestsellers did you find yourself at war with the business you

00:50:44

created um

00:50:51

i i loved it so again if i look at being a parent

00:50:56

i loved it but i didn't enjoy them right now you know i found them difficult to live

00:51:02

with you know and that's what i would say it's you never lose your love you never lose the but actually what was

00:51:10

happening was the process had become so big

00:51:15

that the core of what i loved founder titus you know the duracell

00:51:20

battery you know that is why founders are unbelievable should never be moved from a business

00:51:27

whatever should maybe take a new role that's okay because actually they don't enjoy the role of the operations

00:51:34

but that sort of duracell battery when you take it out of a business you know it i'm sure you've interviewed

00:51:40

many people that you something goes the customer even knows it everyone knows it

00:51:46

and so that was that's just been a brilliant uh lesson for me but also a lesson that i

00:51:53

now pass on through holly and co you know holly and co is all about me being vulnerable with the truth

00:51:59

and hopefully inspiring other people that when they're growing their small business and they think they're going to

00:52:04

hire the next person that's going to be the silver bullet a there is zero silver bullets in business but b

00:52:10

it doesn't work without you you know for all your defects and all your faults and all your weaknesses it just doesn't work

00:52:17

without you and was there a moment where you realized that you'd have to take a different role

00:52:22

within the business yeah i suppose it got to that point where um 200 people five vcs i was chairwoman

00:52:30

and ceo um and things were changing you know i was

00:52:37

you know 15 meetings a day running to the loo with my pa who would then brief me as i

00:52:44

was in the loo on my next meeting to go into my office where it was already set up

00:52:49

to be countlessly doing board meetings you know one board mini team would finish and we'd be preparing

00:52:54

for the next board meeting um and basically being

00:53:00

at at a stage where in any given day did i do anything

00:53:08

that i loved you know my new book is do what you love love what you do you know i brought up this business that i loved

00:53:15

but every single day did i actually ever do what i loved and there was that moment

00:53:22

where i needed to make that decision um and it was a pretty

00:53:28

goddamn painful one where i sort of realized i'd lost myself you know i was um i didn't look like i

00:53:36

looked today you know i was in the tube dress with the high heels on double spanx on

00:53:42

i was a she man you know i needed to be that person i was brought up remember i

00:53:47

was 28 when i started i was i was brought up through not on the high street and experience that's all my reference point was and so

00:53:54

i knew i needed to dull motion and you know drive this and be this person and um and i think i was

00:54:02

probably in reflection tired of not being holly

00:54:08

could you feel it yeah yeah yeah yeah but i didn't know at the time like you were just saying i was just in the

00:54:15

motion i was a hamster in the wheel you don't know any different you know you just exist don't you and

00:54:20

your whole purpose is to fuel everybody else and sort of you you realize that when you're not there

00:54:25

things go off the rails and so you have this sense of responsibility and every night i went to sleep

00:54:32

um i would lay on my pillow i would have my son as my responsibility i would have my

00:54:38

home i was the main breadwinner of our home but i would have the thousands of small businesses that if i

00:54:44

go wrong ever you know a lot of them 50 of them relied on that this was their

00:54:49

only income their husbands had quit their job you know they were doing million pounds two million pounds a year like

00:54:54

this was my responsibility and the staff were my responsibilities i had this heaviness so how could i be light

00:55:01

holly how could i smile or laugh i you know i i found myself becoming a different version of

00:55:08

me um one of the lines at holland co is bringing colour to grey and i think i was turning grey did your

00:55:15

partner know that frank yeah yeah you know definitely knew that we were in a catch-22 though you know

00:55:22

when you bring up a business that's providing the only income there's no way out you know

00:55:28

how how does this go somewhere because my ambition you couldn't stop me i was on the

00:55:34

hamster wheel i could see everything you know i always have to be reminded what year i'm in because i can see what the future is

00:55:40

i know what it is so why i just need now need to make it happen that's the the part so you know we we nearly didn't

00:55:48

survive a few times during that um time you know being an entrepreneur and having a relationship

00:55:54

is a very very difficult thing because and having a young child you know harry was three months old when i

00:56:00

started not if the nanny didn't arrive he was put under my desk you know i remember at the age of two he

00:56:06

was under my desk he had a dvd player you remember where you actually put the dvd and you open the screen and you put

00:56:11

the headphones on what sits in ribena and i would just sort of shuffle them in there and there used to be a

00:56:17

program called mr british where she used to talk about putting the baby in the drawer when mr president that was what harry was he was under the thing

00:56:24

because being a woman and a mother no you know the kid doesn't come to work even though

00:56:30

i was the boss but it was their mindset no we are tech female entrepreneurs we have got to be a

00:56:37

certain way um and so that was very challenging and it puts a strain on relationships um

00:56:44

and so that has just been difficult you know you know the downs are very down dark

00:56:51

dark days when you're running out of money you've got to raise again but the business is going amazingly

00:56:56

you have no choice let's do it again um and you know your family takes a toll and

00:57:03

that decision to sort of change your role that's not a decision that's made overnight that's a slow sort of grinding down and other

00:57:10

conversations up until that point with the board and with other people and with frank or yeah

00:57:15

there was i mean it was a bit of a storm of lots of things i can't quite

00:57:21

remember what was going on at that point in time but it was you know another christmas was coming up it's

00:57:27

going to be double what that is coming in um a very full c-suite

00:57:32

managing that group of people um being at you know now vcs are really

00:57:38

waking up you know what we're doing where you know i think we were at 100 over 100 million ttv

00:57:45

you know this was starting to become something it was about internationalization so doing it all again but in other countries

00:57:51

and um there was just this point that that needed to probably not be my existence

00:57:57

in the future so um ripped off the plaster

00:58:02

and did it and decided to get a seasoned ceo to come and replace me

00:58:09

um sophie had left the business at this point a few years before so i was why uh her children were at a

00:58:16

different stage of life um were older than harry so again as a mother it's okay when they're little and she

00:58:23

gave me that great advice you know don't worry you've missed his first steps he won't remember but when they're doing their jesus

00:58:29

season a-levels they freaking need mom and um and so

00:58:35

she you know i realized that i was again i thought i could do it all and i

00:58:40

i just now in hindsight in my father had left a cfo two years before that so i was sort of

00:58:47

on my todd i was now this woman with this group with these feces and um

00:58:56

you know you're always plagued with the imposter syndrome and i think that i allowed that to ha you know

00:59:04

determine a few things in my life now i look back thank goodness for that because what i'm doing today i have

00:59:11

never felt more powerful i've never felt more holy i've never felt more

00:59:16

colorful i've never felt more of a founder than i do today and i'm in complete control

00:59:24

but when we go back to the story of the two times in my life that i lost my identity

00:59:31

might i not rip the plaster off if i'd known what i was going to go through because i'm sure you've had people

00:59:37

describe it it is not funny losing leaving your business if we

00:59:43

relate it to a child how does a mother walk away from his kid you know talk to me about that process

00:59:49

yeah it's a very very hard one i think actually so many more people need to talk about it because i think it's like a bit of a

00:59:56

dark secret like it's it's that thing we're all bound by certain things all this sort of um our ego is at play

01:00:04

here you know there's so many our shame are all those points and i i wish

01:00:09

more founders spoke about this moment it's your entire identity goes now now i

01:00:16

had built i was just you know hi what do you do i'm the ceo of not on the high street

01:00:22

really you know uh when you wake up in the day it's all those emails it's all it's all

01:00:28

that responsibility the pressure on your shoulders wake up the next day

01:00:34

what do you do um you just forget to even say you found

01:00:39

not you know you were the founder of norton high street you're but you're nothing so i had a couple of years that were

01:00:46

maybe two three years two years dark years where you know at stages i couldn't get out of bed

01:00:52

um but you know when i had to do it all again you know i had to look at my brand heart

01:00:58

i had to surround myself with people who could raise the phoenix out of the

01:01:05

ashes um but it was difficult you know i i couldn't go

01:01:10

to events with small businesses i would you know break down i would have to

01:01:17

leave i i couldn't see people that i knew i i couldn't meet socially with people

01:01:23

because i just didn't know who i was um and it was just a very difficult time

01:01:28

in my life how old were you at this this time well i must have been uh 39

01:01:37

no forty fourteen and what you're describing there in terms of symptoms sounds

01:01:42

like depression that phase is actually what i think it is sounds like is um what what i think now i think it is

01:01:48

is grief grief yeah i went through i went through the seven stages of grief

01:01:54

i um it really was a loss you know that was what i was and

01:01:59

especially as i'd always likened it to my child you know i had harry my real baby and i had not nice street now i wasn't

01:02:06

with my second baby so how can a mother do that to start with

01:02:11

what happens when i'm not there it's going to fall and i'm not going to be there to pick it up so it was a very very difficult process

01:02:19

but as i said you know i went through total grief i i i got

01:02:26

counselling i surrounded myself with great people

01:02:32

i instantly had to start building you know it was the only thing i knew in my head um so six months

01:02:39

later i my sister uh was employed by norton high street

01:02:45

she left someone else left who's now my other co-founder and we would sit around my kitchen table

01:02:51

um i decided to ditch the heels so i threw away every single pair of high heels i owned

01:02:57

um today i'm wearing glitter trainers and i have done for five years to really say that actually you can be a

01:03:04

very powerful knowledgeable business woman and wear glitter trainers and actually this is holly

01:03:09

and so slowly i started peeling the spanx off the heels i slowly started rediscovering

01:03:17

who holly was i had some cheerleaders around me who would remind me on the darkest days

01:03:23

and i knew that creativity like it had done with the vegetable reese was there as my savior what i

01:03:31

had to be is holly again and holly is only holly i think with a business within her you know uh

01:03:37

and when i say business and what i'm trying to rediscover with holly and co and trying to put it out there is

01:03:43

actually it's not just business i believe creating a business makes you

01:03:48

happy and actually um striving for happiness i think that when you can control your

01:03:55

own destiny you can work around your family when you can be your most creative self

01:04:01

when you can answer to nobody when you can dictate all of these things where you live what you do

01:04:08

that is a real source of going for happiness and so actually people do ask me why are you

01:04:14

freaking obsessed with business holly like redefining business what is it about business i'm like it's not about

01:04:19

business business is a tool and a key business is just the thing the vehicle

01:04:25

to get all these other things and that is why holly and co sort of had to exist

01:04:31

i did say to my husband never again you know because he couldn't do what i

01:04:36

mean it's huge the whole family goes through your storm you're whipping up but

01:04:42

my yeah yeah oh yeah but when you give them

01:04:48

enough glasses of wine and you can sell anything to anybody you can definitely tell them

01:04:54

so my sisters uh carrie my actual sister gabby who left not in the high street

01:04:59

and has become almost like an adopted sister but with the founders of holly and co they basically said you can't ignore

01:05:06

your bird's eye point of view that you had that is unique to not in the high street you saw thousands upon thousands of

01:05:13

businesses grow from nothing to where they are today because all i was obsessed with was the

01:05:20

common denominators the they all felt alone and yet they were going through the same thing

01:05:25

and i remember when we built not in the high street naively i thought we could have a

01:05:30

consumer site but i knew very quickly that they would need a b2b site because as they were growing

01:05:36

they would need the tools so i said to myself well we'll build two sites when we launched norton high street

01:05:41

obviously that didn't happen um now that b2b site was on the agenda not

01:05:48

in the high street every year for 11 years and uh actually now i think

01:05:54

that holly and co is my b2b scratch that i've itched

01:05:59

but when you talk about business normally it's done in a certain way in a 2d way in a greater way and my plight was to

01:06:08

help the dreamers we have a phrase dream dabble do at holly and co i want to help the

01:06:13

dreamers become doers and i want to help the dreamers go for it and i want to help the doers never give up

01:06:19

and so that means you need to give business a facelift and so that is what i'm trying to do is

01:06:26

create a bubble an existence for these small businesses to live in where i sort of with the my knowledge

01:06:34

have created a world where i answer the needs you know you don't need to have a business plan

01:06:41

you need to have a plan you know one day you might need to have a business plan to raise money but you need to have a plan and the

01:06:47

second you take that you pop that balloon people start coming alive

01:06:54

and so that is why holly and co was where my sisters say you can't

01:06:59

ignore that and that was the moment holly do you know how much knowledge you have in your head that you need to share

01:07:05

and there's the this of service part that came through and i think as i rose from those ashes

01:07:12

as my wings became colorful service was written on my back and that

01:07:18

has now allowed me to put myself out there as quite a private person but because

01:07:24

i'm of service it doesn't matter what i feel it's what i can do for others

01:07:30

and that has just been the again that's the fuel in my duracell battery that just gets me up every single day

01:07:37

quick one i've recently made a purchase i've bought myself a tesla cyber track it's not here yet

01:07:43

they're still not to be delivered and the reason i decided to do that i sold my range rover sport and i ordered a

01:07:48

tesla cyber truck was because i want the vehicle that i drive to be run purely on sustainable energy and

01:07:55

that's also why we were so keen to have my energy become a partner in this podcast so we can start talking about sustainable energy

01:08:00

and one of the great pioneering products that my energy have created is this thing called the zappy which is

01:08:07

so discreet fits on the outside of your home and allows you to charge a huge list of electric cars

01:08:12

including my cyber truck so when my cyber truck comes i'm going to put this on the outside of my house and this

01:08:19

will charge it which i think is just amazing this is britain's number one best-selling solar ev charger

01:08:25

and it's beautiful and i can't wait for my cyber truck to come just so i can have a play with this you refer to holly and coz being a good

01:08:32

life business yeah well i i referred to it being a good life business but

01:08:38

i also want to abolish the word sme you know i think that there's a whole new language that even needs to come

01:08:44

into business um and i'm not talking about businesses who want to float on the stock exchange

01:08:49

i'm not talking about tech businesses i'm talking about 99.9 of all um businesses in the uk are small

01:08:56

and medium right i'm talking about that when the founders sat around a kitchen table in their slippers and has come up with a great idea now

01:09:03

they find themselves with 50 people i want to always remind them that they were the founder

01:09:08

with slippers with that crazy idea and that i hear them and i see them and i feel them

01:09:15

and i want to create something for them so the good life it sounds very personal

01:09:24

because um i really you know i'm of service i care

01:09:30

about people enormously you know if i feel emotional when i talk about it

01:09:35

um i want them to have the best life that they can have

01:09:41

and i i really would live in gratitude because i'm experiencing it and i want others to

01:09:46

and i think i could be the key so that is my power and so one of the

01:09:52

things i say to people is you know they're not comfortable calling themselves entrepreneurs they don't want to be an sme hi my

01:09:59

name's julia and i'm an sme they don't want to you know so i say you look you run a good life company

01:10:04

you balance your creativity and your need to drop off the kids and pick them up and have family life

01:10:11

and take august off right with your ambition profitability growth

01:10:17

and your own little empire building you know those are the two things that you balance and that's a good life you're not

01:10:23

looking to get nekkar island at the end you've already and what i always say to people is have you ever looked at where you want to be when you're 80.

01:10:30

you know it's a lot of people don't by the way no one so if you want to be in your business

01:10:36

you know right now my son's working at hollyon coast training as a barista you know he was three months old he's

01:10:42

nearly 17. he towers above me as this strong man that i thought i was going to [ __ ] up

01:10:47

definitely as a baby i'm so proud of him he has his own business

01:10:52

you know that is the good life i have brought up the next generation that needs to understand entrepreneurism

01:10:59

do i i want to exist in a world where he could be by my side in the future

01:11:04

where these group of this team that i've got can work with me for 20 years where my husband where i take fridays

01:11:11

off and i go on a date with my husband that's what my good life looks like and

01:11:16

so that is where you know i can see myself at 90 here

01:11:22

but i do ask people have you looked at the future because you by looking at the future understanding that last point

01:11:29

you can work backwards because it's normally not all the riches the lamborghini the the you know all that thing that we

01:11:36

we we see don't we sunday times rich list you know is that is that really where we're heading or is

01:11:42

it a world where our mental health is stable we're with our family for as much as we can get when our health is good

01:11:49

um where we're creatively fulfilled we're changing the world even if it's just your town

01:11:54

you're doing something and um and that is why now people call themselves a good life business

01:12:00

and that requires as you say like a real change in narrative because instagram and that external voice is

01:12:07

telling you build hire more people make more money and and what i love about what you've

01:12:14

said there as well is you you're you're centering so a lot of the when you ask a business um or their objective is a

01:12:21

lot of them will fall into the trap of and simon sinek talks about this saying we want to be the best or number one and just at the

01:12:29

very end of my time at my business i stood in front of all of my employees in the office and said and explained why

01:12:35

um why we we had to remove that terminology from all of our um from all of our internal and external

01:12:42

comms because um those it views life in our journey as a um

01:12:50

a finite game like we'd get to the number one on the scoreboard but then what then and if and because there's nothing then

01:12:56

once you're number one or you're big or you've made whatever there's nothing then we try and shift the company towards a direction where we viewed it as like an

01:13:03

infinite game where um there isn't a scoreboard and we're trying to create a sustainable life for ourselves

01:13:09

and our company that could theoretically last for many many many decades and when you start viewing your business

01:13:15

and your employees in that way that they might that they could be here for 30 years all of your decisions are

01:13:20

different and your goals are different but it's tough when you have vcs of course of course and so that's it's impossible

01:13:27

and that's what you you then you know you're a chameleon aren't you and so you you will behave a certain way

01:13:36

so with holly and co that's the liberation i have where i understand the value of raising

01:13:42

someone up to the highest point of their lives personally and professionally they are rock stars they've never and they

01:13:48

they know that holly and co was the reason for that they were set free of anything they asked and they're going to

01:13:54

be there for 20 years and they're going to grow so many businesses neglect history as a

01:14:00

really really valuable tool you know what you've done before and what has worked and hasn't worked is

01:14:06

incredibly important um i actually do value the the um the want for people

01:14:14

to become um sort of the the champions i suppose and so

01:14:20

that is now the destination why i don't have the elevator pitch i mean who am i pitching to you know

01:14:27

what why i don't have the destination i have an anchor that anchors my 90th birthday i have an

01:14:34

anchor which is my vision but i don't have to define it yet

01:14:40

because i want to be around for that long and how on earth we know as an entrepreneur you don't you can't tell me what's going

01:14:46

to happen next year you know we we ca we can have a course we have her best intentions and we can think that these

01:14:52

people are going to be the a game um and so that has been the beautiful point and that is the knowledge i'm

01:14:59

trying to share with this community trying to help them understand that

01:15:04

they're not a cookie-cutter business they don't need to be they shouldn't be um and that that's what i'm hopefully

01:15:11

leading by example for me a really pivotal point and what you're saying there was either we had this guy in my business who used to ask

01:15:17

this really annoying question when we were growing he should say um but yeah what's like the purpose of social chain

01:15:22

and he was just asking me that question like what's the what's the what's our purpose what's our purpose and i thought he was a bit

01:15:27

a bit of an irritant because we're trying i'm just trying to keep this thing alive purpose is paying you yeah it's making

01:15:34

sure i can make payday this month then next month and that was my purpose yeah but they got to a point where i did

01:15:41

start to reflect maybe five years in on like what what is this what am i doing this for

01:15:46

um and that's when i went away that i think it was a christmas time and i and i sat down and said what is

01:15:51

the what is the purpose of this company and i came up with this www.thing where i was like um

01:15:57

work welfare in the world these kind of three components so the work we do and the standard of work

01:16:02

we do for our clients and i broke that down into a set of goals and values uh welfare was really about the team and the family that were

01:16:09

working here and then the world was the wider impact that we have because of our existence on the outside world

01:16:14

and again that broke down into a set of goals and objectives about the environment and about philanthropy and that gave us all this kind of www

01:16:21

dot set of values and meaning in the world and that's the thing that pushed me towards realizing that i had to make a

01:16:27

company that was sustainable one not that one not one that was driven for the stock market i

01:16:33

had lost control of the company because there was i owned a small percent by this stage

01:16:39

there was board members that were triple my age i was still the ceo but a lot of it's

01:16:45

lip service when you don't really have control right they want they need to keep you happy because you have a lot of influence over a lot of things um but i

01:16:52

couldn't steer the company in the direction i wanted to and you have different objectives there's a

01:16:58

lot of people 95 of people in the board are trying to make money just more and more money by any means necessary and you're trying

01:17:05

to be this founder that's got these dreams and visions of beauty and talking about purpose and values

01:17:11

yeah and it it's just nonsense in that environment and i realized that's why i resigned last year i

01:17:17

realized that the way that i wanted to take the business in was not possible i no longer had that control because starting at 21 giving up that control

01:17:24

you can't get it back you can't and now you you have got the war scars you've got the battle scars

01:17:31

and then what's so fascinating and i'm excited for you is whatever's next you've had those hard

01:17:38

lessons and potentially what you'll build next is going to be your good life company

01:17:44

where you can start resetting some of those things rewiring for yourself and we're lucky to

01:17:51

be able to do it again you know that's the amazing thing but you know it's never do you care

01:17:57

still about the business um it's still my baby like

01:18:03

i remember i saw someone on a competitor on linkedin the other day just like they had like um they'd paid to

01:18:10

take us our name on um seo oh yes yeah yeah you're just like oh you were really looking for serious chamber

01:18:16

and i was looking at the new [ __ ] yeah yeah and then you're almost like who's not looking at that

01:18:22

yeah yeah you wanted to call someone yes why is yesterday there was a tweet on social

01:18:28

chains twitter and i was like and i i posted to the managing director of the us i'm like yeah someone needs to step in here and

01:18:35

clarify and i literally took a screenshot i'm like i would if i was there if

01:18:47

you know it's it's a interesting um world that we're living in at the moment

01:18:52

i think what's beautiful for holly and co is we are we are right in the zeitgeist

01:18:59

of what people are feeling so um you know when we're all looking at

01:19:04

you know the freelance economy when we're all looking at the changes remember not in the high street was built when the high street was declining

01:19:10

holly and co is here when we're all valuing mental health is something that we do talk about um changing the world purpose our

01:19:18

environment all these sorts of things and so that is what i'm excited about because we are

01:19:24

able to pivot able to move um and we're building something that is at the time that people need it

01:19:30

um we're going to have a lot of displaced people and they're going to need to be entrepreneurial and they're going to

01:19:37

need to probably have their own businesses and that's what i hope we can do is provide them with the the

01:19:43

guide i suppose and that's brings us to do what you love love what you do

01:19:48

yeah yeah it's an amazing experience i'm a dyslexic so um writing

01:19:56

you know i remember not in high street so if you had to check all my emails that wasn't probably great because that

01:20:02

meant that i definitely thought i couldn't and remember she could rewrite the english dictionary so it was probably the wrong person but

01:20:08

right person at the time um i didn't write until four years ago when i started my

01:20:15

instagram account holly tucker and i now write a post every day but i

01:20:20

would have to get my founders to check the post because you know i couldn't do it

01:20:25

and you know again they raised me up they said actually you can write so fast

01:20:32

forward how on earth could i write a book so during lockdown one um i created something called sme sos

01:20:39

actually for my community so i went live every day on instagram to try and demystify the news to try and

01:20:45

be there for them literally just be there every 10 o'clock every morning i'm just going to be here for you and we

01:20:50

can just do this together but what they didn't know i was also writing a book in the morning first thing

01:20:55

and it was one of the most beautiful experiences ever because people liked

01:21:02

who i was and how i wrote and um yeah there were loads of spelling mistakes and d's were bees and all this sort of

01:21:08

stuff um but it was a wonderful experience and it allowed me in a book to

01:21:14

almost put down everything we've spoken about today bringing color to gray being passionate

01:21:21

your energy you don't have to be great at the p l you have to be great at being you and

01:21:27

we'll figure all the rest out at another stage um that you are the founder that you're

01:21:33

the heartbeat brand and purpose is one of the most important things that you can

01:21:38

put into your business and so they're micro chapters because all the small businesses that i

01:21:43

uh virtually mentor don't have much time so you can pick it up kids can be screaming you can read a

01:21:49

micro chapter we created a exclusive product range so every micro chapter has a

01:21:55

almost merch that goes with it but obviously all the 50 small businesses that work with me

01:22:00

actually do what they love and love what they do which i just love that circle it's a color book which was funny

01:22:06

because business books normally aren't color but of course it had to be color and

01:22:12

it's um yeah sunday times bestseller and i'm super proud of it and i hope that now writing

01:22:19

books will be part of my life until that age that we speak about where i'm

01:22:25

gonna wear lots of jewelry big glasses and drink lots of wine

01:22:31

it's such a beautiful book business books aren't usually like this they're usually quite exclusive in the way that they're

01:22:36

created and the way that they look and then never color so you look at it and think ah work yes you know what i mean well that was the

01:22:42

whole purpose for the creative bunch um that our small businesses you need to be able to love it and it

01:22:50

you know it needs to be it needed to speak to you um and so many it's been helping

01:22:55

so many people it's just insane and so um yeah it's just one of those moments in

01:23:01

my life that i can't believe i get to be this lucky and i i imagine because the same with my

01:23:07

my book did you did you realize it would be that rewarding because the effort to

01:23:12

create it is oh it's a lot but then when you published and you got it out there and you felt the wave of

01:23:18

inbound yeah i didn't at all i didn't even realize you know it's like everything isn't it

01:23:23

when you're doing something you're not actually you're so fast forward you're like oh i've written that

01:23:28

book i really hope i get another b you don't actually think about the moment actually the book is born

01:23:34

you know so you're all you know up to that point and then you slightly move on you know you know and then the books

01:23:40

launch you're like oh my god i've written a book look at that person oh that was me yes i remember that and because of

01:23:46

covert and timings and things like that but the you know the process is not an easy one right when the editor comes

01:23:52

back and goes could you just insert that um thought into that paragraph thing you think really really does it

01:23:59

really necessary um and yeah so it's just been wonderful and and as i said having people the amount

01:24:07

it was shared it was as if it was the community's book and that i never explicitly said that to the team

01:24:13

but that's exactly what we wanted it needs to be the book that represented the good life businesses

01:24:19

that someone was talking their language and so that has been uh really humbling what a

01:24:25

wonderful sort of demystifying both book but also conversation today it's been an absolute honor to meet you and to have

01:24:30

this conversation with you and you're right you're one of those people that i think culture really needs right now someone that's been there and done it

01:24:36

come out the other side and said hear all the things that are [ __ ] up about the system and don't make the mistakes

01:24:41

that i made or fall into the traps that i fell into and i think that's um that's going to liberate a lot of people but as you say

01:24:47

it's going to lead them to a much better life so i thank you for that because i think we need more people in society that um

01:24:52

are willing to fight that fight and it feels like such a selfless one even though it must be selfish to some degree because it's giving you such a huge

01:24:58

sense of purpose right yeah well i i can't believe this gets to be my life get to meet you

01:25:04

yeah i'm a big fan of this podcast can't believe i'm on it um i was just saying that i was so

01:25:09

nervous i've only been on a few i'm very good at talking to others i'm so interested in other people's but i i'm not very

01:25:16

you know i don't do this very often so um it's been an absolute honor to meet you and i wish

01:25:21

you um your good life business in the future well i'm going to let you know and you're going to have to help me maybe yeah some advice

01:25:28

thank you so much

01:25:45

[Music]

01:25:58

you

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Episode Highlights

Holly's Tumultuous Journey
Holly Tucker shares her inspiring story of overcoming a brain tumor and personal struggles.
“It was a great kick up the butt.”
@ 11m 22s
August 09, 2021
The Birth of Not on the High Street
Holly discusses the inception of her groundbreaking marketplace, despite lacking tech experience.
“We could create a solution.”
@ 23m 39s
August 09, 2021
Building a Marketplace
With no tech experience, we launched a shopping site without a checkout option.
“We launched on the third of April with no checkout.”
@ 26m 32s
August 09, 2021
The Journey to Investment
After months of pitching, they finally secured their first round of investment.
“That was how close we were.”
@ 32m 06s
August 09, 2021
The Power of Optimism
Despite running out of money, the founder never believed the business would fail.
“Never, never, never. It was just money.”
@ 32m 25s
August 09, 2021
Building an Incredible Team
Holly reflects on the importance of nurturing talent and personal growth within her team.
“I'm going to shine their diamond until it completely shines.”
@ 47m 21s
August 09, 2021
The Pain of Losing Identity
Holly shares her struggle with losing her identity as a founder and the emotional toll it took.
“It was a very difficult process, but I went through total grief.”
@ 01h 01m 54s
August 09, 2021
Creating a Good Life Business
Holly discusses her vision for a new kind of business that balances creativity and personal life.
“I want to create something for them so the good life sounds very personal.”
@ 01h 09m 24s
August 09, 2021
The Good Life Vision
She envisions a life filled with family, creativity, and mental health stability.
“That's what my good life looks like.”
@ 01h 11m 11s
August 09, 2021
Shifting Business Narratives
She advocates for a shift from competitive to sustainable business practices.
“We viewed it as an infinite game.”
@ 01h 13m 09s
August 09, 2021
Purpose-Driven Business
She emphasizes the importance of purpose in business beyond profit.
“You don't have to be great at the P&L, you have to be great at being you.”
@ 01h 21m 21s
August 09, 2021
A Colorful Business Book
Her book breaks the mold of traditional business literature with vibrant design.
“It's such a beautiful book; business books aren't usually like this.”
@ 01h 22m 06s
August 09, 2021

Episode Quotes

Key Moments

Building a Marketplace00:07
Life Lessons01:49
Creative Roots12:55
Naivety in Business22:53
Optimism in Adversity35:13
Identity Crisis53:28
Good Life1:11:11
Purpose1:21:21

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