Startup Scaling Secrets

Speaker 1: [Music] hi I'm Melanie bar welcome to the she builted experience with Melanie you're here because you want to experience the life and business that you crave join me as I talk to women who have successfully built it a career and business that they love we dive into the topic of how they built it and talk about everything from Having the courage to make career leaps to the details of how to lead effectively create successful teams Implement strategies for growth and Infuse Tech innovation magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy so let's dive in Stephanie melodia is an entrepreneur VC Scout thought leader and podcast host she is humbled to be in the UK's top 20 most influential female Founders hi Stephanie thank you for joining us today you are the owner of the brand marketing agency Bloom and have been named one of the UK's top 20 most influential female Founders tell us about Bloom and about the pivotal moment when you decided to make the leap to launch and grow your business thank you so much for having me Bloom is my agency I set up about five years ago and it's been a roller coaster in that time as I'm sure all of your fellow female entrepreneur listeners will attest to it's been a crazy crazy ride we've had some highs and lows and we've won awards and amazing clients and produced some fantastic work that's had National coverage I set it up 5 years ago it was November 2017 to to be precise and I just went for it I always had this kind of entrepreneurial streak I wanted to build something of my own and for me this was an easy way to get going with starting up and running a business building an agency starting one up is not very Capital intensive to be honest with you I actually started the business with a 2,000 investment which was on my MacBook which we're currently doing this Zoom podcast recording on um and that was actually par business present from family friends partner as well and a little chunk of money as well to my accountant just to get everything set up and get the business Incorporated so it's a very easy entry into it it's not a product based business I don't need lots of warehouse and space and product to actually shift it's a service-based you B2B business I met some amazing Founders just as the whole Tech thing was booming in London as well so really kind of exciting time I thought let's just go for it let's see how it goes and enjoy the ride that was going to be my question did you have a background in marketing before and do you remember that moment where you said I'm going to do this yeah I've now got to a point in my career that I am confident enough to be completely honest and totally transparent with your listeners I actually do not have a degree in marketing which is insane I don't even have a University degree I did acquire a full scholarship study art history in Madrid he it got the highest kind of score in the country and especially for a non-native speaker as well in Spain and I just was like this is just not for me I actually couldn't bear the fact that I wasn't earning money and that somebody else was paying for everything having a scholarship you know not even paying for my tuition my dad was paying for my student accommodation I hated it I hated that feeling I was I can't I can't take it so I quit and I got three jobs I quit I dropped out no one could believe it you know the herione Granger of the class dropping out of University what's happening I just threw myself into working I didn't have any connections I didn't really have family contacts anybody close completely built up my whole my whole world my my whole contact base from scratch and this was also the tail end of the last recession and eventually got my foot in the door at the age of 22 at a boutique design agency and just worked my way up and I was like a sponge I just soaked in everything I possibly could and I couldn't work hard you know I was in the office by 7:30 in the morning I'd leave the same time at night obviously I appreciate there's a whole anti- hustle culture at the moment but this was the early days I was there for a good four years a good chunk of time um and became a big fish in a small pond because it was a very small tiny Boutique agency from there went into advertising after a few years of working agency side I just had this huge itch to work client side I really wanted to go go on the other side of the fence not only did I succeed in transitioning from agency side to in-house but I transitioned from UK london-based creative companies to a chinese-owned technology business which at the time was the world's top 10 global app developer and had the world's leading Beauty Tech platform so it's really after that I kind of it was a bit of a box check I had an amazing time in all of these positions I learned the real Catalyst for me setting up on my own the really big motivating factor was actually seeing how other people were running or mismanaging their own businesses and honestly that gave me more encouragement than anything else because I honestly just thought if you can do it then I definitely can it's great that you gave yourself permission to make changes throughout your career and really follow your passions and what you wanted to do instead of saying in something that you thought you should do yeah I forged my own path I think perhaps from the moment that I decided to drop out from University I just need to do like what's right for me because that was a really pivotal like I know we're going back quite a while talking about kind of college days but it takes a lot of confidence to do that and it set you on the course to have a very successful business and you could have made a different decision it's so important no matter what stage of life we're in you have a passion for building early stage high growth Tech businesses what advice do you have for early stage and Tech Founders today I'm building my own company with blue I always talk about this double exposure in business I'm building my own business while I'm helping others to build theirs been reading some great books recently where this line keeps coming up which is basically around a business plan never survives first contact with your customers and there's so much changing in the world all the time there's so I mean even if you just even look at social media and the constant algorithm updates and new channels and different coming up my advice would be you're the one paying the most attention to yourself more than anybody else you're the one that is thinking possibly overthinking you're the one that's doing all of the strategy the planning and everything else and I'm definitely not undermining that or saying that that's not important but I'm more on the fence of the execution put it into action see if it works you can always course correct just get it out there and depending on your business see how your Market reacts to it and use that as you your real data your real findings one more piece of advice actually that I would definitely give which I think isn't talked about enough these days is to listen and pay attention to your gut instinct I think that's another thing you know talking about getting you a business out there to the market testing it out you talk about yeah okay that's data that's great you get it back and there has been an overreliance on data on numbers in recent years you can't lie with numbers I get it I've got some amazing analysists around me but there is something to be said for that entrepreneurial gut instinct if you believe that there's a demand if you feel like something's going that direction if you're passionate about something then for me it's it's honestly as valid as as the numbers that can back them up you're so right our instincts are so important most of the time they're right and Tech is changing so fast and you mentioned being in your head we can be in our heads and not go forward with putting something out there so you're right about the action and the course correction it's not fair to paint all of One gender with the same brush but if most of your listeners are like us female Founders I do think that purely through social conditioning and the way that women have been brought up we do see a lot more self-doubt coming up look the guys doubt themselves as well we all have the same Hang-Ups we all have anxiety we all care about what other people think about us so I would be too gendered about that point but it is worth mentioning if who's listening to us at the moment this is why I think there's a lot of women in particular that are overthinking that's stressing that's back and forth that are very very cautious that are assessing all of the risks which is great which is also why betting on female Founders as external investors VCS they're a better bet they actually bring much higher Returns on on average than their male counterparts exactly for those reasons because they are more cautious they do a lot more risk assessment and everything else so again it's not a bad thing but just don't let that stop you from taking action is the point so don't don't use the strategizing and the planning and the market research and the thinking and the vision boarding don't use that as a comfort blanket to not take that action you don't necessarily need need all that data and all the numbers to give you that push if you're naturally an instinctive person which I am which is obviously why I'm the one blowing that on pay attention to it it's there for a reason so true and you're so right what is your approach to leadership and management and what qualities do you think a leader should have in order to

Speaker 1: that's interesting to think about using emotional intelligence to be able to go in the direction you want but also be able to step away and think this is a transaction and these are facts yeah it's so interesting to think about it in that way a common theme Here coming out isn't there what do you like the most about what you do and can you share with us one of your favorite client success stories what I didn't mention in my little life story at the start is that when I dropped out of University I did go back into education after picking up those three jobs um which was actually art school and specialized in illustration so I come from a very creative background as well anyway so the reason I just preface that with my answer is ultimately at the moment in my work where I have the most pleasure what brings me the most Joy is when I'm doing something creative so when I can and as minimal it can be something as Tiny as working on a proposal to a client you know working on the details of the pitch deck through to something bigger in terms of brainstorming a new ad campaign for one of our clients for example anything that I feel like I'm creating that really gets me in that state of flow which I love it is tricky doing that kind of during the day there's definitely room for me to be stricter on identifying what are those needle movers in the day what are those rocks of time where the Pebbles and the sand then kind of fit around that I'm still working on it we're all we're all in a a work in progress I would guess it's that way for most creative people because you get lost in a project and it's fun and it's going to benefit your business yeah you're right actually it's probably a combination of kind of being creative being a night ow different sorts of things but you're right it's just that feeling of I can't get into the flow if I know that I've got a meeting in an hour or if I've got this amount of time I just feel too Shackled to be honest it's also important to know if you're a night owl or a morning person too and to tailor your day around that it helps so much I mean that goes back to the self-awareness Point even things like that is knowing what time of day you work best so for me my team clients they know not to book anything with me before 10: a.m. because I don't exist before that I exist but it's more transactional like don't ask me to do anything too creative exactly exactly yeah you are in the top 1% in your industry and network on the world's number one professional networking site LinkedIn tell us about this and how has it helped your business it's amazing all those sorts of things accolades Awards you know even think I'm super proud of the fact that our website is ranks pretty much first search result if you search anything that's that's relevant all those things they genuinely happened organically just to to be super clear about this they didn't happen by chance they didn't fall in my lap lar obviously plays a part in this I definitely worked hard to get to where I am no shadow of a doubt but it wasn't something that I necessarily set out to do I didn't kind of sit down and think oh I want to get in the top 1% of my industry on LinkedIn it was something that does go back to this point of that self-awareness getting into that state of flow doing the things that you love because you're just doing them you're doing them naturally so these things were genuinely a byproduct of just doing what I loved so with LinkedIn in particular you raised that particular statistic was just because I knew it a priority you know primary channel for for our business as I said we're be to be organization or a marketing agency for startups and scal UPS I knew that it was important I also really got into a great rhythm with LinkedIn because it was happening while the other social media platforms are chopping and changing keeping you guessing and it's like every single time you bloody open the app something new's come up or something's moved so LinkedIn is a nice kind of comforting stable you go back into it you know what to expect it doesn't keep you guessing and the other huge thing as well is that it's much it's easier to manage in terms of coming up with good content and prescheduling it ahead which is something I do which is something I'm super transparent about every Sunday night I'll kind of recap the previous week I'll schedule ahead for the week that's coming up and it frees me up during the week to focus on the community engagement piece the responding to messages accepting requests commenting etc etc and I don't need to think about what to post and particularly as I was just saying when your days are so busy and you're on calls and meetings and everything else you can't just suddenly be like oh now I've got to come up with something witty interesting to put on LinkedIn we didn't need to always have gorgeously edited manicured photos that were being up on we didn't have to be video editors and learn how to do a choreography and a dance to publish a LinkedIn we could just schedule out the things that we were interested in things that would be informative educational genuinely valuable and helpful for our audience schedule it ahead and forget about it so those are some of my tricks in the trade that I share with with LinkedIn obviously these things are always changing always updating say as I said these accolades and stuff they're great but you've got that old ad age you've got to enjoy the process to get there it's so important to have a plan and it just goes to show that you're very good at what you do and do you help your clients do this on LinkedIn as well yeah absolutely it's really interesting actually it came up very organically through our clients so because they're like Steph you're every we always see it every time bloody open LinkedIn you're you're on the feet always your face and stuff and get you know they're always like wow you're so acable different things and it does give off I guess an impression of being successful so yeah it was a client actually from a few years ago it was like could you do a bit of a workshop with with our sales team could you just sit down and run through your process and what you do which again was just something that came very naturally to me and something that I DIY kind of made myself I was like okay yeah sure and it was actually off the back of that where I did a bit more research a did a bit more digging around was like okay what what am I actually talking about here like let me actually back up all these things and very interestingly over time it's it's snowboard a little bit so it's gone from one client to the next and and every single time I do these team workshops with our clients they always get updated and improved um through what I'm learning I use myself as a guinea pig and I see what's working and what isn't I Implement those learning St I'm like look this is what I've seen work for me this is what I've seen work for our clients and this is what I'm reading about in the space as well yeah it's great to have that impact for people magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy which we've talked a lot about today that you're doing what brings you Joy what is one way that you make sure to find and live your joy each day ah great question I love you this is what I love what your podcast is all about for me Bloom has afforded me a level of freedom and flexibility that I never had before in previous jobs so the fact that I can come and travel out to the Canary Islands which is where I'm currently sat and still tune in and do this podcast with you or if I've stayed up kind of late one night and I don't need to worry about kind of being up at the crack of dawn the next day then I've got that freedom as well so freedom of both location as well as time brings me the most Joy money is great we all need money of course we all need to pay the bills and there's all things that we want to splurge and treat ourselves to from time to time but really beyond that when you when you've got enough and you're fine beyond that there's just a point where the money side of things just becomes greed so if you put that to one side or if you're not particularly greedy it is ultimately that freedom and flexibility is is what it is all about such good advice that from our entire conversation you can see that you're doing what you're supposed to be doing and you can tell that it brings you so much joy from just our conversation thank you you have built an incredible business and are experiencing so much success congratulations can you please tell us how we can find you well LinkedIn I think number one that's mention and the great thing is that my name is is pretty unique which is very helpful so if you do type in my name and it is the consistent across all social media platforms so I would kind of share a piece of that advice with your listeners as well if you are on social media if it is possible to have the same name the same handle across different channels then please do that but LinkedIn number one so Stephanie melodia mention that you've listened to this podcast episode and I'll happily connect um and Instagram would be my my number two and that is step melodia on Instagram I would love to connect with any listeners and would love to hear what's resonated with you and what's stood out or anything that you even disagree with I'm always open to having an open discussion so please do get in touch thank you for joining us today I'd love to hear from you reach out to me at hello Sheil it.com on our Sheil it website or at Sheed on social thank you to my editor Rich stalino who always makes us sound good until next time let nothing stop you from experiencing the life and business that you crave [Music]