CAREER PURSUIT

So when the difficult stuff started coming in … Write a 30 -page business plan and five-year cash flow forecast? Ok. Go and pitch to 200 people? I’ll give it a go. Formulate a sun cream from scratch? Fine! Where other people who quite often have more experience, more skills and better business ideas have quit, I’ve kept going. I’ve had failures, of course. Along the way some things didn’t work out: some of the products have changed; my initial names for the company were rubbish; I didn’t get into some retailers; and some investors just weren’t keen. I had a Dragon’s Den audition when I was 38 weeks pregnant. An intimidating environment at the best of times. I had to go with a note frommy GP confirming that I was safe to be there! The two-minute pitch in such intimidating circumstances went really well. I managed it in one take. No notes, no PowerPoint. I remembered every word as I passionately spoke of Toddle. The truth? It was way too soon for me to be there. Looking back, I’m surprised they took me seriously. I had to turn up with samples, and I hadn’t managed to get them in time. They told me to come back when I was further along. Since then the successes have started coming in … a private investment of £ 200 k − more than I ever would have got in the ‘Den’. A launch into Joules; passing 20 k revenue on Amazon; winning Entrepreneur of the Year; winning Pitch It Wales; our first export order, when the products passed their testing and got universal approval in consumer tests; completing our vegan transition, receiving PETA approval and the Green Growth Pledge; when we reached 6 , 000 followers on Instagram. All these wins make it worth it. And there have been enough of these little wins to keep me going. C A R E E R P U R S U I T 25 2 0 2 0 So, it doesn’t matter who you are, or where you’ve come from. I remember pitching against someone in a competition who had an MBA from Cambridge. I had huge imposter syndrome, but I won. I beat him. So against the odds, and how you might ‘look on paper’, you can do it. The only thing you need is the resilience to just keep going and, somehow, when it’s hard, to believe in yourself.