Strategy & Tragedy: CEO Stories with Steph Melodia is the best business podcast for curious entrepreneurs. Hosted by Top 20 Female Founder, Stephanie Melodia, Strategy & Tragedy features candid interviews with entrepreneurs who have scaled - and failed - their businesses - sharing their lessons in entrepreneurship along the way. From Nick Telson-Sillett who achieved financial freedom after selling DesignMyNight (on The Wildest Exit Day in History™) to Emmie Faust, the founder of Female Founders Rise, who opened up about her breakdown on the road to discovering her mission in supporting female founders.
This is one of the best podcasts to listen to if you're looking for educational and inspirational content on Spotify, Apple, Google, Amazon, YouTube or watch the clips on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, or YouTube Shorts.
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In this episode, Stephanie Melodia interviews Alex Pitt, host, 'Build Your Maverick Business' Podcast.
SM: Full disclosure: my next guest is not only an inspirational businesswoman but also a dear friend of mine, so this is going to make for a bit of a fun episode! Alex Pitt, welcome to the show.
AP: Oh my god, hi babe! It feels so bizarre to have such a formal introduction like we were out for breakfast last week. That would have been wonderful as I walked into the restaurant, could you imagine every time we meet up for brunch, "Here she is!" with my entrance music? It would be amazing!
SM: We’ll do that next time.
AP: Glad you’re on board, thanks!
SM: Well, as you can tell, we are good friends. We go way back, so this is going to be a super fun episode. So, Alex, we first met a million years ago. I’m going to count many years at this point, and we first met when you were working as a graphic designer for a fashion brand.
AP: That’s right.
SM: I’ve known that you’ve always been super entrepreneurial, so when did the entrepreneurial streak start to come out? Did you have any side hustles at the time while you had the day job? Just going right back to the beginning of our friendship.
AP: I mean, are we going back to the beginning with our friendship or the very first entrepreneurial streak? Because that was when I was about seven.
SM: Oh, okay!
AP: Yeah, I mean, honestly, it’s been in my blood for a long time. The first time that I decided I wanted to start a business was when my dad took me to Hobbycraft, bought me a packet of air-dry clay, and I made little teddy bears out of them. I decided I was going to start a business selling little bears that I made that were themed on different countries. It might be a bit problematic now because there were a lot of stereotypes involved, but I decided to call them "Around the World Bears," and they all fell apart as soon as I made them.
SM: See, this is why I need to have you on my podcast because I did not know this all the time we’ve known each other. That’s amazing. So you were seven at the time?
AP: I was seven at the time. I was entrepreneurial from a little kid apparently. I did this. I still remember talking to my mum in the kitchen about my pricing strategy. She was just like, "Okay." Yeah, I did them, they fell apart, my heart broke. But yeah, I think I’ve always known that I wanted to do my own thing. I think I’ve always been a little bit difficult to govern, I suppose. The rebellious streak. Yeah, started from a young age. So I think I always knew that I wanted to be my own boss because that was like the end goal, right? Knowing that you can wake up every day and decide. You know.. plan your day that was like true success to me. So yeah, I had so many side hustles throughout the years. I had (in fact, this is when you and I knew each other) - I had a brand of handbags that I designed. Which faithfully all fell apart as well because I went to a dodgy factory so you can see a theme starting to emerge here.
SM: Oh, so you had the teddy bears fall apart, you had the handbags fall apart. I mean, this is the whole ethos obviously of strategy and tragedy. We'll get into the highs and the lows and teddy bears breaking apart and handbags breaking apart.
AP: I just can't talk about the teddy bears anymore, it's too raw. I love, well obviously we'll get stuck into all of that as well.
SM: You've also just reminded me obviously with the themes of entrepreneurship and podcast - I think you actually recommended to me called this is gonna unlock a memory for you TGIM?
AP: That doesn't exist anymore does it?
SM: Yeah, so sad.
AP: I used to love that. I listened to it on my way to my nine to five, and I was just like, fuck this, fuck everything.
SM: Because this is taking us back to that era of when we first met. You work as the designer for this fashion brand, and it was when this kind of, you know, things were starting to really bubble away and we're both listening to TGIM along with lots of other podcasts and for anyone who doesn't know, not to plug a non-existent podcast, it's not around anymore, but TGIM was all about founder stories and I remember one about ice cream.
AP: Oh, the gelato one. I remember that because it was like some weird ASMR stuff and they kept saying "gelato" in this really thick voice, and I was like, "Don’t like it, don’t like it." That was a great podcast, though.
SM: Great. Things like that, at least for me, they definitely influence and open up my eyes to entrepreneurship. Obviously, you had that streak from a very young age. You always had that rebellion to you, wanted to be your own boss. You always had that as the driving force, but I think with some of those other things, they started coming out. This podcast, these other stories were like, okay, how can we actually start to make this a reality? So would you say that your handbag business, was that your first? More kind of grown up 'Hide Sustle'. You're making it a thing - I'm committing to it.
AP: I love that, I've just coined that now. I think the first yeah, I guess so. That was like the first, let's call it the real business. That was the one where, you know, I went out and learned what a limited company was and learned I had to get an accountant and someone told me something about taxes and I was like, what's this fresh bullshit?
SM: But, you know, they don't teach you that in school.
AP: Yeah, exactly. The government knows how much money you owe, but you have to guess. And if you get it wrong, you go to prison. This is the reality. It's not just about going out, being brave, selling things, and making a profit. There's other stuff involved.
So that was the first real one. Yeah. I'd had other little things. This was actually the second handbag brand because the first one I bought a load of stuff from China. Guess what happened? They fell apart. It was embarrassing because I'd already sold them. People came back to me and said, "You know that bag you sold me? The handle fell off. Can I have my money back?"
SM: Oh, I didn't know that. Was that under the same brand or a whole new one?
AP: No, this was when I was working at the fashion brand where we met. I wanted to make some extra cash because the brand said they had no money to pay me enough to move out of my parents' house. So, I decided to sell handbags. It was fun, but after refunds and shipping costs from China, I didn't make any money. But I always gave it a go, waited for everything to fall apart, and then tried again.
SM: I'm sure you don't beat yourself up over it. It's a common story - the first pancake in business. You need to apply what you know into the real world. One of my favourite quotes is, "A plan is great until you get punched in the face." You can do business studies, MBAs, read books, listen to podcasts, but you need to go out there and put it into the real world. You learnt a lot from that first experience. Was there anything else you learned from that first pancake?
AP: Absolutely, you can call it that. It would be a deformed pancake, the one you throw at the wall in a rage. I learned that it's not a case of "build it and they will come." When you learn what actual marketing is, you realise you have to find your ideal clients. Even after three years with my most recent business, I'm still learning. You try, create something, put it out into the world, test it, tweak it, and put it out again. Procrastinate planning is a big mistake - faffing with your website, recreating your products, spending weeks on a brand without knowing if anyone wants to buy it.
With all the love in the world, the first pancake is going to be shit. You might look at all the work you've done and think, "Well, that didn't work out." But it's just the first pancake. Try again, try again, try again. Keep going until it works.
SM: I think that will resonate with so many listeners. I think we've all been there, where perfection or fear of rejection leads to procrastination. It takes bravery to put it out there and see how people respond in the real world. So, would you say one of the big lessons you've learned is constantly refining and tweaking?
AP: Absolutely. I feel like that's spoken about a lot in the tech world with products. But it applies to everything, including physical goods like handbags. For example, with my most recent business, we developed a framework for understanding a client's brand by asking creative questions like, "If your brand were an animal, what would it be?" Initially, some questions didn't work, so we binned those and tried new ones. It's about testing, refining, and not overthinking every single detail before putting it out there. It sounds like a lot of people struggle with fear of criticism. What if people tell me I'm wrong or stupid? That can make you want to hide away.
SM: I can say with confidence that this usually comes from an inner critic in your own mind. Often, we're our own worst enemies. If others criticise, it's usually a reflection of their own inner critic. I've seen a quote that says something like the people who watch and criticise the most aren't doing well themselves. On LinkedIn, for instance, those who talk to me the most about my posts haven't posted in months.
That's great advice for the listeners. If an inner critic is holding you back, it's likely your own voice. And if others criticise, they have their own issues. Fast forwarding, you started with handbags and physical products, and continued your creative career from there. And then when was it that you went fully into your own business, where you packed in the day job and committed to your own company?
AP: So this was, I don't want to call it a soft easing into running my own business, but I quit my day job about five years ago. I did that to go freelance, to be a freelance designer, which I did. It was fine. I mean, it was all the stress of not knowing where your pay check is coming from, plus the extra stress of working with lots of clients instead of one boss. So, I say it's fine, but it was actually kind of awful. I did that for a year and a half, and then we went straight into the pandemic in 2020. I was kinda miserable.
Then I came across this business coach, and I told her that monetarily, I did quite well. I was getting invoices paid, but I couldn't work out why I wasn't making hundreds of thousands of pounds doing this job. She asked me, "Alex, how committed are you to being the best graphic designer in the world?" I thought about it and realised that sounded awful. I didn't want to be the best graphic designer in the world. She then asked, "Why are you doing it now?" It was a moment of realisation for me. I didn't have to do that. So, I had to think about what I really wanted to do. I discovered that I enjoyed creative direction and never wanted to be a 'bum in seat' kind of person. I wanted to be managing, building, and thinking more. So, I decided to launch my first grown-up real business, Strange Creative Studio, a design agency. I called it Strange because that's who I've always been - an absolute weirdo.
I stopped doing what I was doing in the freelance years, which was very beige, the vanilla ice cream of personal brands. I was putting it out there, and no one cared. I was going to networking events with beautifully designed, very boring business cards that ended up in the bin after they left. No one talked about me. It was all a bit flat.
So, when I started Strange, I went all in. Our website was the most goth, glitchy thing in the world, with pictures of people with tattoos. I targeted brands like Doc Martens and Marshall Amps. It was the most fun I had, and I loved every bit of it. I've just started rambling about Strange and forgot the question.
SM: The beauty of podcasts with friends!
AP: It feels like we're back at breakfast. But no, it was magnificent. It was three years of my life that I wouldn't take back for a second, but like all things, it ran its course.
"Authenticity has gotten lost in this sea of sameness online. All it really means is showing up to work as you would show up to anything else."
SM: We'll get onto what followed that in a sec, but before we do, there are two main points I want to come back to. One is your point about being vanilla and flat. We're both in the branding and marketing space. I love that your ethos is now based on being your true, authentic self. Can you talk a bit more about the importance of that? Authenticity is such a buzzword, so how does it genuinely help your business? I also want to discuss the business coach thing, but we'll park that for a minute and come back to it.
AP: This is making me laugh because this is exactly how we do our normal chats as well. It's like, right, we're going to come back to that. It's like we're doing a little itinerary of things because we're probably not going to see each other for a few months since we're always busy. So let's just get through everything.
SM: No, so what was the first one? I've already distracted myself.
AP: Magpie brain.
SM: The authenticity.
AP: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And how that connects.
SM: Why is it so important to build your maverick business, being such a rebel, being your true self? Why is that important?
AP: So the reason it's so important, I think, is because there is so much noise on every single social media platform. No one needs to be told that. There's just a lot out there. And if you, like a lot of us do, sit and doom scroll through LinkedIn for any length of time, it's just, like, the best quote I've ever heard about LinkedIn in particular is from a peer of mine who said that it reads like a country music song. Like, my wife left me, my dog died, this, and you just think, oh, fuck. This is so boring or it's really, really, really boring. Like here are the KPIs for running a business. You just, I just want to jump off the top of this building. This is the most boring thing I've ever read in my life. And that's just the reality of what LinkedIn is like. It's so much of the same..
SM: Unless you follow me, guys.
AP: Oh yes, obviously that goes without saying, present company excluded. AP: But when I started Strange, I started putting things out there. All I would do was talk about what I am interested in or what the business was doing, and I would talk about it like I'm talking to you now, you know, or like I was sat in a pub with a pint of neck oil chatting to my mate about what I do for a living. That version was absolute gold dust because people are doom scrolling and then they see this goth, sweary girl talking about pints, and they're like, oh, thank God for that. Something refreshing and new and interesting, and it just cuts through everything. So the word authenticity itself has suddenly gotten lost in this sea of sameness online. But all it really means is showing up to work as you would show up to anything else.
SM: I love how you mentioned even with copywriting because I feel like your day job professional career before was creative graphic design, very visual. And I feel like we can so often overlook what we sound like in a brand as well. We've done a lot of work on tone of voice. What do you actually sound like? And it is funny. You're describing that LinkedIn newsfeed and I feel like we can all imagine it's just, it's like chat GPT. We're all sounding the same. It's that classic formulaic tone of voice, whereas if you just write how you would speak normally, what you would actually say, as you say, it's so refreshing. That was the key. That was exactly what I was thinking when you were describing that. Refreshing is the key word. And I would actually throw out there as well, I think where business is so tough, and we'll get into, we'll reopen old wounds and stuff in a second as well, where business is so tough, that authenticity, I think, helps get you through those dark days, those tougher moments, because it's, you know, I guess it's that passion that brings you through.
SM: And then the other thing as well, before I forget, I wanted to talk to you about the whole business coach thing because we've both worked with business coaches, and I feel that we both come from the same perspective of, I don't know about you, but I used to think it was a bit pyramid scheme-y.
AP: Oh, really? I always thought it was a bit woo woo. Yeah, like not very tangible, not very real. You wouldn't see any results. You might just have a bit more of a skip in your step. I was like... "Is that worth it?"
SM: I just think maybe it was that time as well, during the pandemic as you describe it, where it felt like every Tom, Dick, and Harry was a coach. And I just feel like there were a lot of wheeler-dealers and people that were kind of, you know, maybe pulling the wool over your eyes and stuff. But we both found amazing coaches that helped us with our businesses. And that anecdote that you just shared, one of the huge, valuable things that I found working with a coach is simply being asked those questions that we've never asked ourselves. So what you just described there, what was the question again from your coach?
AP: How committed are you to being the best graphic designer in the world?
SM: Like, had you ever asked yourself that question before?
AP: No.
SM: Like, it never even crossed your mind.
AP: No.
SM: And it was confronting you with that and making you realise, oh, actually, maybe not. What were some of the other benefits that you found of working with a coach? How did it help you in your business?
AP: So many. I'm literally just trying to go through a Rolodex in my brain of all the ways that coaching has helped me. It's not even just working one-on-one with a coach. It was actually like talking about podcasts that we introduced each other to. You sent me "Unfuck Your Brain" by Kara Lowenthal, which was my first introduction to what coaching was. And that blew my mind. Like the idea that your brain is a muscle that can be retrained just like anything else.
SM: Yeah.
AP: Just as an overview of how much it's helped me, what I didn't realise was that our brains are malleable. But also, how much we hold ourselves back without realising it and draw up these kinds of... we think there's a brick wall when there's just a little mound we need to step over. There's a more straightforward path to success where we convince ourselves that there's no way through. You've told yourself that you can't do this thing, that you can't possibly put yourself out there, that you're not able to. I remember saying to you once, "Yeah, but I'm just a bit shit at marketing." And you were like, "Well, yeah, you are if you tell yourself you are." I was like, "Damn, this girl with the wisdom."
It's stuff like that, right? The idea of being able to retrain your brain. And if you hit a wall, not thinking, well, this is just as good as it's going to get or this is just because I'm not good at it. It's, what am I telling myself? One of the biggest things it's helped me with is around money mindset. When I was freelancing, there were some things I would charge 500 quid for and be living on ramen noodles, not able to pay my rent because I would write down how long it would take me, how much it was actually worth, and I'd look at the figure and want to vomit on my shoes. I was like, absolutely not, let's just halve that and halve it again. I attached so much worth to that figure. If I try and charge that much, they're going to think I'm greedy or that I'm taking the mick. It wasn't true. It was just my relationship with money that was really, really not healthy.
SM: It's so interesting. I mean, we all know that the stuff we tell ourselves is so powerful, but applying that specifically to this money mindset topic, which I'm so happy you brought up because it's such an interesting one to get stuck into. Thank you for sharing some of those thoughts that went through your mind when you put those high prices because it could be anything, right? The voice in your head was saying, "They'll think I'm greedy" or whatever else.
SM: I think with pricing as well, there's so many different ways to slice that cake. So how did you overcome the money mindset? I know for you, this goes way back from your upbringing. Let's share a little bit more about that and how you overcame some of those limiting beliefs.
AP: Exactly like you say. No matter what your relationship is with money, it comes back to your upbringing and the stories told by your parents, guardians, or anyone. This is going deep now, but I was raised Catholic and there is a lot of stuff in the Bible about rich people. Like, they are all going to hell, apparently. I had this idea that being very wealthy meant you were very greedy, that if you had too much, it was immoral. You were literally going to go to hell if you had too much money. All these things, but then also the stuff you hear from your parents, like "money doesn't grow on trees." It all adds up, and all these things tell you that money is really scarce, that there isn't enough to go around. So whenever it comes to pricing something, it's not just, "Okay, it's going to take me X amount of time," or "I think the value of this product is X." You think, "Oh my God, people are going to think a certain way about me. I feel a certain way about myself because of that number on a page." One of the best quotes I heard about money in general is, "Money is maths, not drama."
"Money is maths, not drama."
SM: Oh, I love that one.
AP: So that was like, I think, just taking the drama away from it and seeing it as currency and a commodity. Because if you look realistically, money was a replacement for back in the day when you would trade some goats for some wheat, and everything got a bit complicated. How do you weigh it all up? Shall we just bin this off and have a universal currency? That's all it is. It's not moral. It's not evil. It's not good. It's not anything.
SM: It's so interesting, but my mind, I know we always go deep, but my mind just goes... you know me, I cannot help myself. I'm such a geek. I go to some of that philosophy, like what we apply to it. As you say, you break it down. It's so simple. I love that you've broken it down in that way. Money is maths, not drama. But all the emotion, all the connotations, the reputation, all of this stuff that we put on it overlaid onto this thing. And what I would hazard a guess at is that where it's so uncomfortable, this discomfort comes up. I would imagine that into working with a coach, you wouldn't have gone any further with it. You wouldn't have even sat with that discomfort. You wouldn't have fully acknowledged it, right? It's just like, "Oh, it's messy. I'll just do this and shut my eyes and cross my fingers and hope for the best." Is that true? Did your coach help you work through some of those money mindset limiting beliefs?
AP: I think she kick-started it. Definitely, she saw the way that I was freaking out when I would show up to our sessions. After I decided that I was going to start Strange, because suddenly you're not doing a few hundred quid's worth of work. I was putting together packages which were like five figures, and everything about it made me so uncomfortable and feel like such a fraud as well. And I would say, "I can't possibly charge that much money." And she would say to me, "Why not? You know what you're doing. You've got the experience, you understand the theory. Can you help them?" And that was the most important thing that I think she drilled into me: Can you help them and are they willing to pay it? And that's all it is. It's not, "I'm cheating people, I'm being greedy, I'm getting too big for my boots." It's just, this is how much this service costs. That's it.
SM: And you're also not holding a gun to anyone's head either, right?
AP: Exactly. I'm not extorting that money. They can choose to pay me or they can just leave. They can switch off Zoom. That's the end of it. But she definitely sent me down a route of looking into this because I realised that was my Achilles heel. That was where I tripped myself up the most. I was massively undercharging. I was really busy all the time, and I was very poor, which drained my energy, which stopped me from growing my business. So then I went off and discovered Denise Duffield Thomas, who still to this day is just one of my favourite people to consume all of her content.
SM: Good old DDT.
AP: Good old DDT, which is hilarious because, like, for anyone who doesn't know who she is, just go and have a quick look at her Instagram, and she is just like the antithesis of everything that I am. She's sunny and light blue and seashells and blonde hair and starts all of her videos with, "Hey gorgeous," and I'm just here like, "Yeah, I love it." All of her messaging is amazing. It's just like, "You deserve to make as much money as you want to make. It doesn't make you greedy. It doesn't make you evil. It doesn't make you immoral. It just means that you can actually enjoy your life. Why wouldn't you want to do that?" So yeah, I've binged everything she's ever done, but I found myself now in this place and it's been a journey of four or five years to get this far. So please don't think that I'm just like, "Oh yeah, I learned that money is actually quite wonderful, and now I'm here." It's been a journey.
SM: I'm so, so happy that you say that as well, because that's also been something that's been on my mind just because, coincidentally, like massive coincidence, I have been announcing publicly a string of all these different amazing things within the space of like a week or two, which is just, again, massive coincidence.
And it's really played on my mind how I'm very aware of how those things can look on social media and the picture that you paint to the outside world, obviously more on the marketing side of things. And I do want to remind people exactly as you say, overnight success takes a thousand nights. We didn't just wake up and click our fingers, and whether it is overcoming those limiting beliefs, readjusting your money mindset, tangible achievements, it takes time. I think it always takes longer than you want it to.
AP: Absolutely. And I'm an impatient cow as well. So it takes even longer than I want it to.
SM: So for you, I'm really glad that you shared some of those really practical recommendations as well. What was her name? Denise Duffield Thomas. So her Instagram. Did she write a book as well? She’s famous for the book.
AP: She wrote the original book called "Lucky Bitch." And then she did a follow-up book called "Get Rich, Lucky Bitch," which is the one that I read. And I was just like, oh, this is amazing.
SM: So we've got her Instagram, her book, working with... you can find a great coach. Was there anything, obviously, it's taking you time as well. Was it just kind of that repetition, being exposed to those sort of mantras and things that helped you to readjust?
AP: It was, and I think also, obviously, it's all about mindset and adjusting your mindset. But I think having the attitude going into it, I always think of it like, if you imagine you've got a really, really sore back and you go to a masseuse, you have to really go for the knots. So you can't just do a bit of mindset work and be like, now I feel lovely. You have to really look at the worst habits, the stories that you're telling yourself, all the bits that make you uncomfortable. Those are the things that are going to propel you forward. For me, it was the money stuff. Because every time I looked at figures on a page, I just wanted to cry and hide under my duvet. And now it's got me to the point where I went from wanting to throw up about 500 quid to doing my first 10K months in a business. And to only have a few years in between those two things. This is what I mean about being very impatient. I was just like, I'm going to read every book. I'm going to listen to every podcast, and I'm going to smash this shit out of the park.
SM: Well, congratulations.
AP: Thank you so much.
SM: Well done. I'm so happy for you. And yeah, I love it. I mean, you also just, I feel like we're both such quote obsessives. I just love these. Sorry if any listeners are sick of all these cliché quotes and stuff. But you also made me think of like, how is it? I always, as much as I love them, I always butcher them. Why do I put myself in this position? But something around like, well, you have to... What was it? You have to go through... No, what was it? Grow through what you go through.
"You have to grow through what you go through."
AP: Oh, I like that one. I love a rhyme.
SM: Grow through what you go through. Well, that's it. You have to get through that, work through those knots, go through that discomfort, look at the spreadsheet, get to grips with the numbers, and it's not going to be nice the first time. But the more you do it, the more comfortable you will get. You just have to grow through what you go through.
AP: Nice. I'm going to remember that one.
SM: I love that. Okay. Amazing. So, we're warming up and getting to another super interesting chapter in your entrepreneurial journey that made you not only question whether or not you want to be the best graphic designer in the world, but actually your whole identity around being creative, being a designer. So share with us, listeners, your epiphany that you had quite recently and how you've completely changed up what you're doing now.
AP: Yeah, I mean, this one is even just a little bit harder to talk about because I'm still in it at the moment. I'm still right at the beginning of this new little chapter of mine.
But yeah, so I've been running Strange for a few years and it sort of ticked along. It was obviously like this amazing start and I was having such a good time and then it kind of plateaued. And it wasn't growing. It wasn't getting to more people. We weren't taking on more clients. We weren't getting to where I wanted it to be.
And as per with everything up until this point, I wasn't immediately thinking, well, we need to do more marketing. We need to do this, that, and the other. I was just like, I know what I'm doing on all those fronts and I'm putting myself out there to an extent. But I don't think that I'm doing everything that I can to grow this business.
So why is that? And that's when I had to have, like, you know, long, hard look in the mirror, a bit of like a taxi driver moment of just like, what are you doing? Why isn't this business growing? And I had this one call with a client and they, up until this point, you know, they had always been lovely. They hadn't done anything to upset me.
It hadn't been like a complicated relationship or anything. And I got in this call with them having sort of had radio silence from them for a few weeks and we just delivered a website design. And this guy came on the call and he said to me, okay, cool. So yeah, let's just chat this through. I mean, obviously you know that we really don't like anything that we've seen.
And I was a bit like, okay, like not, you know, it's not the first time that I've had a client say, we want to go in a different direction. And I was like, okay, cool. Yeah, talk me through. What sort of how do we want to change this? And he said, well, we're going after investors, and this is too fun. So can you make it more corporate? And I was just like, oh, yeah, there's the problem. I'm suddenly doing the complete opposite of what I wanted Strange to be. Because I went through like all of the mission and values kind of assessment that you do when you first start out.
And I came up with this idea and it wasn't just for the company. It was for myself that I wanted to help the underdogs, the mavericks, the renegades of the business world to carve out their place. And I was like, oh, you're not it. Like these very, to be perfectly honest, quite privileged people who already had everything in their arsenal that they needed to build successful businesses.
And while they were perfectly nice, that wasn't who I should have been helping. So, yeah, it was like a real, like you say, an epiphany and a wake up call. And I was like, I've been doing the wrong thing to try and get this to the right kind of why, you know, the mission was right. The way I was going about it was wrong.
So I realised that I shouldn't have been running a design agency because the only people who could afford those services weren't the kind of people that I needed to help. It was the people who hadn't started a business yet, or they were just starting out and they were really confused and lost, and they just wanted to make some more money to like, you know, hang out with their kids more at the weekend instead of working all hours, or people who had a dream of starting their own business.
But every single bit of information that they consumed was just full of jargon and really confused them. Or it's that really sort of sickly sweet girl boss. So she slays kind of thing. And I was like, okay, well, what if I completely binned off this thing that I've been working on for the last three years and try to help those people?
And so that's what I did. And it still makes me feel a little bit sick saying that out loud. I'm just going to take this really profitable business and just throw that out into the ocean and start again. And so that's where I am and I started my own podcast and I go on every week for 10, 15 minutes and I swear my tits off, as you've noticed, as you know about me from various, it is called Build Your Maverick Business, quick look to camera, Build Your Maverick Business, and it's obviously right at the beginning of this new little chapter, but I am working on a book I'm working on courses, on memberships, on everything that I can to do as many low ticket things as I can to help out those people who are just trying to get their, their rebel empire off the ground, if you like.
SM: It's exciting.
AP: Thank you.
SM: I'm excited for you.
AP: That's the first time I've said this publicly, by the way.
SM: Here we go. We heard it here first. Strategy and tragedy exclusive. You heard it here first. I love that. And that, you know, definitely resonates with, again, the ethos of even just like. This podcast to the reality is, is that building running a business is so hard.
It's so difficult and it has been so overly glamorised and not only that, but to your point on privilege, which is so interesting is again, what you see on social media is one picture that's painted. You don't know the realities of there may be privilege behind closed doors there. There may be well off parents.
I think it's funny as well on the whole investment front where, um, you know, you've got the labels of like pre-seed, Series A, Series B, and you go on the early stage. One of the really early stage rounds is called friends and family round. And I remember hearing somebody on a panel actually say like, what the hell?
Like we don't all have rich friends and family that can spare us like 10, 15K to go out and test and like live out our dreams because we want to be our own boss. So I love what you're doing. There's definitely a huge gap in the market. There's definitely a huge audience there for that. So watch this space.
SM: See what else comes of this? Build your Maverick business. Amazing.
AP: Thank you.
SM: Who do you look up to in terms of entrepreneurs? Are there any that really inspire you?
AP: Oh, I'll tell you one person. It's anyone who I see out there who is really being themselves and not trying to paint any kind of picture. And there's one person who I think anyone who likes the cut of my jib will know, and it's Sophia Hilton.
SM: Oh, I've not heard of her.
AP: She owns a salon and has a business course. She's like a version of me. I just love her. She's got, I think, 300,000 followers and talks very candidly about what it's like to run a business. Just as an example, she put a post up the other day saying, "Stop telling me that I'm inconsiderate or selfish if I don't reply to your DM. There's 300,000 of you and one of me, so fuck off." I was like, yes, queen.
SM: I'm surprised I've not heard of her. Should I have?
AP: Go and follow her after this.
SM: This is immediately on my to-do list now.
AP: You're welcome.
SM: Amazing. We haven't really covered a lot. I mean, we covered a little bit of broken handbags at the start, but obviously, strategy and tragedy, the highs, the lows. I believe that some of the best lessons come from the biggest mistakes. Can you share anything that's gone wrong for you that's really taught you a big lesson?
AP: So, when it comes to making big mistakes, I think you know all of them because we've been friends for that many years.
SM: I've lived through them with you.
AP: You've lived through them with me. You've had me calling you up, sobbing down the phone like, this client is such a bastard.
SM: Oh, so horrible. And you question, why? Why are we doing this?
AP: Yeah. Like, literally, why? It would be so easy.
SM: Sorry, because you've just taken me back to those phone calls. Honestly. How easy is it? In those moments where you're like, it would be easier to just have a job, like, you know what you're getting. You said before about going into, sorry, I'm stalling. But you going back to your early days of freelancing, you don't know where that first pay check is going to come from. You've got that anxiety as well as trying to do a good job, market yourself, and if you take a holiday, you're missing out. And you think back, because we have both had normal jobs, to the cushy comfort of going to someone's office. You've got your holidays allocated, you know what you're going to get paid at the end of every month.
AP: Yeah. And the monotony of going to work in the dark and coming home in the dark. Then you remember that side of it. Jeff from HR coming over to chat because you've taken one too many holidays or came in 10 minutes late.
Again, I'm stalling my own answer now, but I did a podcast episode recently called Choose Your Hard. The example I used is that I've been trying to do Couch to 10K. That's a lot, but I went out and did my first run and it was awful. I wanted to collapse. Then a few days later, realised that walking home with my shopping was getting easier. Running is hard, but not being able to breathe when you're coming back from Sainsbury's is also hard. Pick your poison kind of thing.
SM: Love that. Sorry, I just realised. This is my brain. 10K as in 10 kilometers, not thousands of pounds. At first I was like, oh, Couch to 10,000 pounds. That's an interesting idea. Oh, 10 kilometres, okay, we're good.
AP: You are such a true entrepreneur. I do love you.
SM: Money, money. Miss Capricorn here. But yeah, choose your hard.
AP: This is it. We both know that starting your own business is really difficult. You are going to have those moments where you have to call someone and say everything is terrible.
SM: And it feels horrible by the way, as well. Like imposter syndrome or whatever. I'm just taken back to those memories of being on the phone with you and I'm like, what am I doing? Why? Why are we doing this? Is this really worth it? And in a service-based, client-facing business, those client interactions, for me, give me that bellyache. The worst. It's horrible. You just want to end it or run away from it.
But then you remember, choose your hard. I think for me, sorry, we're going off on a tangent. We're still stalling to get onto your proper answer. Depending on different listeners' journeys into entrepreneurship, I know you've got the classic 16-year-old dropout from school who's never had a real job and always sold something. But we've both had normal jobs. We've had that comfort of the paycheck at the end of the month and going into an office. You know what your job is, you do it, you clock in, clock out.
For me, at least, I don't know for you, but during those really dark days and horrible moments, it's easy, you know what it's like to have that safety and comfort. Should I just get back onto the interview treadmill again?
AP: I think back to it every now and then. I remember what it felt like to go to that job every day. And I would spend every day wishing that I could be where I am now. As much as it's horrible, you get the extreme highs and the extreme lows running your own thing. Working nine to five, it's either monotony or shit. You don't get the thrill of making your first sale. You don't get that feeling when you hit a monetary goal and think, oh my God, this is amazing.
SM: Thing is though, I did get that. You just made me remember the first job I worked at where we first met. I remember landing the first client for the business. Oh my God, this is more for us than any listeners here. The very first client that I won for this agency was mywardrobe.com. For any listeners, that's a throwback, TBT throwback for any listeners who are into fashion. If you've heard of Net-a-Porter, this might be a throwback for you. Mywardrobe.com, now no longer around, was how we connected. My client there went on to be your boss at the next company. Sorry for the tangent, but I remember landing that first client. The adrenaline rush was incredible. You were saying there aren't really highs and lows with a job, but that was a real high for me. I was so excited. I kid you not, I had to run out of the building and do a lap around the block because I was so pumped. The whole office was laughing. That was my entrepreneurial taste. I won the client for this agency, got a cut, and was remunerated accordingly. For me, it was like doing the MBA for real. But for you, it was more monotony or shit in the nine to five.
"The only thing that I do wish that I could have done earlier is start working on my mind, but more importantly, stop being such a bitch to myself."
AP: Exactly. I liked getting a taste of that life while still working. For me, it was all these little side hustles, creating a brand, designing, building websites, doing photography and art direction. It was building something from nothing. That's why Strange made a perfect first venture for me. I took businesses with nothing and gave them something tangible.
SM: We didn't get into definitions of success and failure, but entrepreneurship for you and me is freedom combined with creativity. To have an idea, build it from nothing, put it out there, tweak, refine, and have the autonomy while doing it.
AP: Exactly.
SM: So, let's come back to the last question I asked you half an hour ago. We usually end the episode on big tragedies - the highs and lows. What's a big fuck-up that's taught you a big lesson?
AP: All the mistakes I've made, doing the wrong thing, not having a happy client, going down the wrong route and having to 180 and try again. The only thing I do wish I could have done earlier is start working on my mind and stop being such a bitch to myself. I always joke that my inner voice has a name. I call him Colin.
"I always joke that my inner voice has a name. I call him Colin."
SM: Oh, do you? That's great because I don't have a name for mine.
AP: Can you not say it on camera?
SM: No! Apologies to anyone named Colin. I don't think I know any Colins. So, why Colin?
AP: It's a silly story, but it gives insight into why I am the way I am. When I was a kid, my dad was tucking me into bed, and I was convinced there was a monster in the room. My dad checked everywhere and said there was no monster, but if there was, imagine he's called Colin because nothing called Colin could be scary. A little slug in a pink cowboy hat. So, when I discovered the book about naming your inner voice, I named mine Colin.
SM: That's hilarious. Why a slug in a pink cowboy hat?
AP: It just seemed fitting. My fiancé is on board with this too. I was saying something self-doubting, and he whispered in my ear, "Colin, if you dare be mean to my fiancé again," shaking a packet of salt at me. It's a system that works for everyone.
SM: I love that.
AP: I wish I had weeded out Colin earlier. Yes. I would have gotten further faster and enjoyed it more. It would have been a roller coaster instead of a train off the edge of a cliff.
SM: Is it "The Time Traveller's Wife"? There's a film about time traveling, and they teach at the end to live the day as you normally would, then go back and do it again without changing anything. The idea is to enjoy the ride without the anxiety and stress because you know how it turns out.
AP: I love that. Oh, I like that. I love that.
SM: And I think that's a lovely way to wrap up this episode on a high note. Alex, thank you so much for making our podcast dreams become a reality. We've gone from under the duvet in my bedroom...
AP: Yeah. Which sounds a bit wrong.
SM: Take that how you will. We actually get onto that story; we just talked about it off-camera, didn't we? But leave it; there's the intrigue for the listeners. Thank you for living out the podcast dreams. A pleasure to have you, of course.
AP: Pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.
SM: So, listen to Build Your Maverick Business Podcast.
AP: Build Your Maverick Business podcast. Follow me on Instagram, on LinkedIn, if you like, and look forward to some sweary ramblings with some business advice dotted in between.
SM: Sounds like a good time to me. Thank you so much for listening. Don't forget to subscribe and tune into the next episode.
Strategy & Tragedy: CEO Stories with Steph Melodia is the best podcast for curious entrepreneurs and ambitious founders. Learn from those a few steps ahead of you in these candid interviews of the highs and lows of scaling and failing business.
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