👇 Get connected with Bay & her business
Follow her on LinkedIn
Check out Bay’s Kitchen
💡Some ‘A-ha’ moments from the podcast
Find inspiration from support systems and others around you who have started businesses
“I [was initially unsure] as I have no experience in the food industry…but my sister pushed me to do it. She told me that the founder of the kitchen products she was using, was an accountant and had no experience in the food industry either. She turned to me and said, if he can do it, why can’t you? So that was my challenge!”
“Do reach out [to established founders]…you won’t always get responses and their inboxes are crazy. But most people will be willing to give you some advice”
Investors are part of your business - use them for advice, and not just think of them as someone you need to appear perfect to
“I learnt so much in two days [from a food seminar] and it was pretty much again from previous founders. Other big learnings happened when we first got an investor in…it’s a shift where you now have someone to answer to - one of the biggest learnings was to not shy away or hide from investors. Make them a part of your business!”
Starting a business is not easy - you need to make careful financial trade offs
“I was quite careful with money. When I first started, I didn’t take a salary until the first investor came on board (3.5 years later). I moved in with my parents and worked a part time job with a friend of my parents - she gave me the flexibility to work on it. Money all went to product development, and when we had the product, money went towards marketing until I felt there was excess for me to earn”
Customer interviews/surveys are great sources of potential customers, but you need to keep them engaged until your solution launches
“One of the first things I did was market research to see if people wanted these products. I worked with a market research agency to come up with a survey. We ran some Facebook ads to put the survey out there, and got 500 responses. But that was 1.5 years before we launched our products. So, our challenge was to keep them engaged - blogposts, free advice and help, keep them updated on products,…”
Building a team (at the right time) is a great lever to live a ‘balanced’ founder life - you can then focus your energy on the most important things!
“That first hire was very important to me, because that meant I could actually have holidays. I had someone who could do things for me, and that is when I started to get my work life balance back…I could then properly become a founder than trying to do every job under the sun.”
💬 Bay’s advice to women who want to build businesses on their own terms
“You need to have the passion for what you are doing…because the roller-coaster journey is insane. If you don’t have that passion, when it gets hard, that’s when you will want to give up, especially in the first year or two when it is really tough”
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