FEMALE FOUNDERS
things like going to the dentist or having my hair cut felt like an impossible mission because I just couldn’t take my foot off the gas of growing the business. At first, I was looking for investment to be able to throw money at the problem, but as soon as people thought I might consider selling I started getting a lot of offers. I was lucky in that I had three offers on the table at the same time, so was able to heavily negotiate my deal. It also helps that I negotiate for a living! My biggest advice on exit strategies is to have more than one deal on the table and be very clear about what you want. Sometimes an exit is just really a break, or like me, it’s because you want to try doing something completely different, so you need to negotiate the terms that will allow you to do what you want to do after you sell. What were your biggest challenges? My biggest challenges were always staff related. We just had such a hard time finding the right staff with the right salary terms, in addition to providing them serious career progression in a small team. Motivation is so important, and you need to spend enough time on your team. Although I truly loved my team and everyone I have ever hired (I still hang out with my first employee who hasn’t worked for me for five years!), I was terrible at prioritising ‘employee engagement and 10
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management’ in lieu of chasing the best deal and securing the next client. Although in the end this helps them because we can pay them, it’s not ideal for their personal development. I noticed that early on and paid quite a lot of people to help me with executive training to fill in the gaps I wasn’t doing. Most important lessons learned? Self-awareness is important and money isn’t everything. Even though we were making tons of cash in the later years
“SelfAwareness is important and money isn’t everything.” of my sponsorship agency, I always look back on the days in my bedroom slogging it out with fondness –and that is because I personally love the start-up journey. I love learning and failing, and the challenge of it all. It was so obvious to me that I fell out of love –not with the work or people –but of the lack of challenge Slingshot gave me towards the later years. I also was spending a significant amount of time on things I wasn’t particularly great at (management), rather than spending my days doing the things I was (deals and new business). Now that I’m in the early stages of my new ice wine business REBEL Pi, I am loving it. Very little sleep, but the
challenge it provides is what keeps a smile on my face. Did being a young and ambitious woman help or hinder? Both. It takes a lot of energy to grow a successful business in such a short space of time, and fortunately as a person, I am like a robot. But being young also helps. I also am a big fan of being a woman in business –and truthfully, I have probably gotten exposure on the speaking circuit because they needed a woman on the panel, rather than what was coming out of my mouth. So in some of the areas where it can be a negative thing, I also think there are some other opportunities that you get – you just have to be very adept at seeing the opportunities and not let the negatives get you down! What are your next plans foryour exciting new business? We’ve just received a Silver Medal in the International Wine Challenge which is HUGEand proves our product is truly exceptional. Our focus is nowgetting the trade (restaurants, bars and merchants) to believe that I am single-handedly going to turn the category around and get people ordering sweet wine, particularly ice wine. Therefore, mywiderfocus is educating the general population to what they are missing out onand getting everyone talking about ice wine! With Christmas coming up, the fact that you can purchase a luxury gift online for someone and have the bottle hand delivered to their door just two days later is