IWD 2023: FEMALE FOUNDERS ON OVERCOMING THEIR BIGGEST CHALLENGES
According to The Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship by NatWest’s CEO Alison Rose, female-led companies represented one-fifth of all business in the UK in 2022, up from just 16% in 2018. There were more than 150,000 enterprises created by women in 2022, and the biggest leap in new women-led companies was amongst 16-25 year olds.
It seemed obvious that we should showcase and celebrate female founders in honour of International Women’s Day this year, so we asked female founders to tell us the biggest business challenge they have faced, and what they did to overcome it.
Here is what they had to say!
Rebekah Clark, Founder of Happy Marlo
Rebekah and Ora
It’s natural to ask others for advice when creating something new, but I quickly found this paralysing rather than helpful. So many conflicting opinions, all strongly held, which was overwhelming, confusing, and clouded my own judgement. Luckily for me my brilliant mentor, Rachel Neaman, suggested that sometimes when we don’t know what to do for the best, it’s ok (and perhaps necessary) to pause, reflect, and restock, which is exactly what I did. This gave me time to fall back in love again with my original concept, whilst remembering that building a sustainable business is a marathon, not a sprint.
Happy Marlo is an emotional wellbeing company empowering children and their grown-ups.
Pinar Akiskalioglu, Founder of TAKK and Punk Business School
Pinar Akiskalioglu
The weight of responsibility I felt towards the people I brought on board. What will happen to them if the company doesn't exist next year? It was very hard to shake the feeling that if I failed, it wouldn't only be me failing, I'd bring other people down too. I was able to overcome this by talking openly about how scared I was, by sharing my hesitations with my team members. By speaking about this, I came to understand the team and the climate I created had much more potential than the company itself. This helped ease my worries.
TAKK is an ethical beauty care business aimed at fighting plastic in landfill, beauty hype and big brands' focus on excessive consumerism; and Punk Business School is a new type of business education aimed at creating more empathetic and intuitive business leaders.
Eloise Skinner, Founder of The Purpose Workshop & One Typical Day
Eloise Skinner
The biggest challenge I faced starting my business was gathering the courage to continually share my business concept for feedback - especially at the very beginning! In a corporate career, you can feel quite protected when it comes to sharing your ideas - you might have to only share them with your team, or with senior management. But when you're creating a new business venture, it's so important to get your ideas out there for evaluation and comment from your potential users - and the more critical they are, the more helpful it can be! It can feel quite intimidating to seek so much public feedback, but it does get easier over time - and, ultimately, it means you end up with a better product or service.
The Purpose Workshop is a social impact consultancy, helping individuals and businesses navigate a sense of purpose.
Janan Leo, Founder & Managing Director at Cocorose London
Janan Leo
Finding the balance between optimism and reality; wanting to believe I could create a UK-first – the foldable shoe – and achieve sales…but knowing I had to eat! Getting through 3 ‘limbo’ years (devoting every leisure hour to Cocorose London, whilst still working), was tough. Fate forced my hand eventually and I prayed. Despite many battles, recession, Covid and balancing kids and brand, it’s been my career apex. Amazing people propped me. It was dig deep or cry, at times. But passion drove me on and I’ve empowered women to ditch heels and Cocorose it in comfort. Pride is my payback.
Cocorose London offer comfortable and stylish women's shoes by Janan Leo, including ballet flats, trainers and incredibly practical foldable shoes!
Laura Rudoe, Founder of Evolve Organic Beauty
Laura Rudoe
One of the main challenges early on for me was achieving “escape velocity”! When you are a very small business it is very difficult to have enough time to do everything you need to do but you don’t have enough money to employ someone to help you! As soon as you can find that first key hire you can then leverage your time and those first few people who joined Good Ventures were critical to growing the business.
One of the key success factors was getting the packaging and positioning of the products right. Early on, our products were packaged in recycled milk bottle plastic. This was very green but it didn’t look very premium. Once we aligned the look of our products with what our customers were looking for, growth became a lot easier
Evolve Organic Beauty offers a range of natural, sustainable, skin, hair and body care products made using the finest, carefully selected ingredients.
Ellen Chew, Founder of Rasa Sayang
Ellen Chew
I started Chinatown’s Rasa Sayang in 2008. Beginning a business in a foreign land and winning people over to a new cuisine and culture wasn’t easy. I won’t deny that I’ve suffered a lot of downs to climb up to where I am today. Luckily, with the support of my other half, and a strong and dedicated team, here we are 15 years later and last year I opened the crowning achievement of my F&B career so far, Shan Shui in Heathrow Terminal 2. It’s all really quite unbelievable at times, but I never take it for granted.
Rasa Sayang in Chinatown takes inspiration from the bustling hawker scene of Malaysia and Singapore. The myriad spices and ingredients reflect the region’s rich history of travellers, spice traders & merchants from all over the world.
Kathryn Bricken, Founder of Doughlicious
Kathryn Bricken
Doughlicious started with me in the kitchen, and I had total control of the product quality, appearance and taste. I am a very picky person and love having control! As we grew, I needed to learn to trust others to do what I had always done myself and know that they would not let me down. I overcome this anxiety everyday with amazing top to bottom communication, training and great energy with the whole Doughlicious team. Also, they must love cookie dough!
Doughlicious offer 100% real ingredients in their award-winning gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan desserts. Available via Tesco, Waitrose, Ocado, Costo and Whole Foods.
Lucy Goff, Founder of LYMA
Lucy Goff
When I first had the idea for LYMA, so many investment companies refused us based on our price point. They saw no place in the market for a medical-grade supplement and refused to believe people would invest this much in their health. In the end, after much deliberation, my husband and I took a huge risk, and we decided to seed fund LYMA ourselves. We launched and sold out in two weeks. All the investment companies that had turned me down, contacted me again wanting to change their minds and invest. I refused them all and we have never looked back since.
LYMA was founded with a mission to change people's lives by inventing and leading the WellTech™ industry. For IWD, to support the #ChangeAGirlsLife campaign by The Prince’s Trust, LYMA will donate £25 from the sale of all Starter Kits.
Tamlyn Edmonds, Founding Partner at EMM & Networking Nuance
Tamlyn Edmonds (left) and Kate McMahon (right)
The biggest challenge, my business partner, Kate and I, faced when starting our business was breaking into a relatively male-dominated area of law, white-collar crime. There were few women practising in this area, and even less with their own law firm. We often found ourselves being amongst one of only a handful of women at conferences and marketing events. We didn’t have the networks that others had and so we had to work incredibly hard to build our reputation. This is why now, we have introduced our own mentoring and networking site, to help other women within the legal industry.
Tamlyn Edmonds and Kate McMahon are two of the three founding partners of the award-winning law firm, Edmonds Marshall McMahon, and have recently launched Networking Nuance, an e-mentoring solution created to help women in business and law.
Melissa Day, Founder of Niroshini Cosmetic Acupuncture
Melissa Day
I was my biggest challenge. It wasn’t until I realised what I was fearful of, turned out to be my superpower – failure. This changed perspective, helped me to enhance my offering and to reach new audiences because I was now open to trying new ways of doing business and even taking risks. Of course, I made some mistakes along the way but I’ve realised that it’s ok to make mistakes and to fail, as long as you learn from these experiences. With this mindset, I am fully prepared to take on any challenges that come my way.
Niroshini Cosmetic Acupuncture provides a “non-surgical” facelift and all-women "Luxury Transformative Retreats". As an Integrative & Preventative Medicine Practitioner, Melissa also offers talking therapy via Zoom.
Liz Sebag‑Montefiore, Director & Co‑Founder, 10Eighty
Liz Sebag‑Montefiore
My own personal challenges have been around how I manage to combine being a mother, wife and running a business - dealing with the household and juggling those given things do conflict. You realise you want to do two things, but can only do one. I thought it was important to highlight on International Women’s Day this year that my husband and I discussed how we could both share school work equally given that both our jobs are important, which made a big difference to me. Here’s a call out to all working mothers – as we all know the challenges we’ve experienced!
Liz co-founded 10Eighty in 2012 - a strengths-based HR consultancy focusing on leadership and management development, career management and outplacement.
Amanda Armstrong, Co-Founder of Yomira
Amanda Armstrong
Timing! Launching an international luxury travel brand in the autumn of 2020 could not have been more challenging! We had just got the wheels turning, started a PR campaign and were heading into a strong yachting market when the whole world essentially entered a ‘no travel’ Covid lockdown. It was time for a big dose of ‘Positive Mental Attitude’, to completely focus on the core pillars of our brand and use the enforced ‘downtime’ to our advantage. My business partner and I reviewed our business plan, adjusted and re-adjusted our short-and medium-term strategy and now coming through the other side of Covid, we could not be stronger or in a more solid position to capture market share.
Yomira is a boutique superyacht agency focusing on the charter and lifestyle requirements of international superyacht clientele.
Sian and Sophie Kosinski, Founders of Sophie James Mayfair
Sian and Sophie Kosinski
Covid and the lockdowns were a big challenge for our business. Before Covid, we operated solely out of physical retail stores and our online presence was limited, so when lockdown happened, our customers had no way of smelling or purchasing our products. We quickly build an e-commerce website but needed a way for customers to sample our products in a cost-effective way. That’s when we created ‘The Discovery Set’, which contains all 8 of our fragrances in miniature candle form. Customers could now discover our products from the comfort and safety of their home, before committing to a full-sized product. These sets were a great hit, and we sold out three times in the first six months!
Sophie James Mayfair is a luxury home fragrance company, founded by a mother-daughter team. The brand offers the highest quality scented candles and diffusers, hand poured in the UK and free from toxins.
Joanne Koukis, Founder of Outpour
Joanne Koukis
My biggest challenge was trying to reject voices of older or male authority especially when entering a male dominated world, such as wine. When I was a girl all the men occupied positions of power and I was told to respect and listen to older, successful men. When I started my company, men in tech, business and wine importing told me that I didn’t understand, that I should do what they tell me to do, or I would fail. It’s hard to listen to your business instincts and tune this out but it’s essential. These voices are frequently wrong, and no one knows my company and what is best for it better than me and those who work in it.
Outpour is a new female founded wine shop and community by women, for women. An exciting place where all types of wine lovers can come together to experience one of life’s pleasures, building knowledge and enjoying one of the finest things in life.
Jacynth Bassett, Founder & CEO of The Bias Cut
Jacynth Bassett
Coming from a legal background, I had no experience or contacts in fashion, retail or media. So, I had to think laterally and creatively, and work out ways I could use the skills and contacts in my wheelhouse to my advantage. I also did legal work to raise enough funds to start the business in itself, and I hosted talks and events in law firms & banks to build a following; volunteered at a fashion-led charity shop; and I networked relentlessly to build up my contacts.
The Bias Cut is the first age-inclusive multi-label premium womenswear online shopping platform, leading the way for social change with the aim to cut through ageism in the fashion industry.
Iti Malken, Founder of Level Up by Iti
Iti Malken
The biggest challenge I faced when starting my first business was the fear of failure. I felt like I had to wear many hats and often at once which was overwhelming! Navigating this was hard and it is understandable why many entrepreneurs have a fear of failure and quit when they hit an obstacle.The failure rates of new businesses are high, so you won’t be the first or last person to fail and it’s important to remember that. You will definitely gain invaluable experience and build your resilience as well as develop new ideas if you embrace your fear of failure and keep going even if you have to take a different path. Having worked with many mentors myself on my business journey I would recommend finding a business mentor, someone who has extensive experience in the field that you want to operate in. You will gain invaluable insights, a roadmap for your business and essential support along the way.
Iti Malken is a self-development expert for women, and the founder of Level Up by Iti. Through her signature 4-Step Level Up Method, Iti helps high achieving women reach their full feminine potential, taking quantum leaps rather than linear steps towards their career, business, or relationship goals.
