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Episode #017 - Inge Hunter - Entrepreneur & CEO
75 Plays1 year ago
Today's guest is Inge Hunter, a serial entrepreneur who has founded multiple businesses in various different industries. Inge has had quite the journey, from being homeless as a young adult at 17, to founding multiple successful businesses, with her latest company Clue Content, leveraging AI to help content creators.
In this episode, we discussed what is like to be a women in a male dominated industry, how to actually get started in the world of creating your own business, key skills that have helped Inge as a CEO and a successful entrepreneur, how to overcome imposter syndrome, and much more.
You can find out more about Inge's work below:
Ingehunter.co.uk
@ingehunter
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Transcript
Who is Inga Hunter?
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to Perspectives. Today's guest is Inga Hunter. She's a serial entrepreneur who has founded multiple businesses, ranging from a mobile bar to wedding planning, to her latest venture, which sees her leveraging AI to help content creators with the latest trends and algorithms to help boost their chances of success.
How did Inga overcome homelessness to become an entrepreneur?
00:00:20
Speaker
Inga has had quite the journey from being homeless as a young adult at 17 to founding multiple successful businesses. In this episode, we discussed what it is like to be a woman in a male-dominated industry, how to actually get started in the world of creating your own business, key skills that have helped Inga become so successful, how to overcome imposter syndrome, and much more. A hugely insightful episode discussing some of the questions that I have not really heard asked before. There's a lot of business and entrepreneurship podcasts out there, but they don't tend to go in the real introduction elements. They're already kind of when the business is established.
What makes Inga's entrepreneurial journey unique?
00:01:03
Speaker
So it's really interesting to hear actually how you get started from ah an idea or a seed of an idea to actually launching your own business.
00:01:13
Speaker
Inga's story is varied and interesting and her approach to business and entrepreneurship I believe has a great crossover into everyday life, regardless of if you are an entrepreneur or not. So, without further ado, Inga Hunter.
00:01:50
Speaker
Inga Hunter, welcome, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. So I know you were a
How did Inga's first business come to be?
00:01:56
Speaker
serial entrepreneur. You got creative entrepreneur of the year in 2023, started and founded multiple businesses ranging from you know a range of different industries as well. So I want to just kind of go back to the beginning. I know you've had quite a journey from starting out with kind of homelessness at 17. So maybe if we start there and starting with your your very first business venture, can you talk us through that a little bit?
00:02:21
Speaker
ah Yeah, so you're right. I've done quite a bit. I started my first one when I was 17. I was a young homeless person um living in a homeless girl's hostel, and I needed some to make some money. And there's lots of different ways to make money in that kind of situation, but um I chose to make money by selling cocktails on the street. So I used to... Well, I mean, everyone knows how to get hold of alcohol when they're younger.
00:02:48
Speaker
so And so I used to shake up Long Island iced teas and and put them in milkshake cartons, drag them around town in ah plastic bags and sell them to people who are waiting in line for the nightclubs. I sell them for like sort of 15 pounds. 15 pounds is a lot now and that was sort of a good 13 years ago. So that was my first sort of way of making money i wouldn't call it necessarily a business even though i guess the the i don't know the definition of businesses to exchange service and goods for money of which i was doing but it was definitely more just to make ends meet make a little bit of money um but over time that did grow into a mobile cocktail bar which i would classify as my
00:03:38
Speaker
quote-unquote first business where I used to go and Around corporate events event weddings all that kind of stuff and sell same sell cocktails, but at least do it over the bar with a license Do it properly do it properly. Yeah, well, it sounds like the the 15 pounds is kind of what you get in London these days worst I never had was ah it was like 64 pound five Jaeger bombs I really I wasn't sitting on a chair, but how'd I be sitting on a chair? I probably would have fallen off the back that point. It was um yeah, pretty ludicrous, but I but so you So that first sort of venture, so to speak, let's call it a venture, sounds like that was kind of born more out of necessity rather than a real sort of desire to start a business.
00:04:20
Speaker
Oh, definitely, yeah. I've always, if I look back through like proper childhood, I've always like figured out ways to make money like I would put on talent shows or I went round the village selling raffle tickets, that kind of stuff. So I've always been interested in ways of making money, but and it was definitely out of necessity. So to give a little bit of context, you do get um you do get benefits when you're homeless, you do get paid money, but you also have to pay in the homeless also was for like board you have to pay and the tokens for the washing machine and it's not free so after all of those things i only had about four pounds a week left to live on but i was still going to college which i could have either chosen to walk an hour there and walk an hour back or it was three pounds sixty for our return on the bus so i had to go to college five days a week but i only have four pounds and i you know the maths doesn't add up so
00:05:17
Speaker
yeah definitely out of necessity. um And and and the the first time I did it actually was out of necessity but also jealousy I think. So I come from Cambridge and in Cambridge they have these big May balls so it's kind of proms but they are massive. I think the Trinity one is the second and biggest party in the whole of the world and the tickets are upwards of 300 pounds, you have to be affiliated with the colleges to go, um and all the universities will queue up outside of the and the balls for about an hour, maybe an hour and a half before. Everything inside of there is free. I mean, I've snuck into a couple before. They are insane, like ever-pouring champagne, punts filled with beer, and
00:06:06
Speaker
But in the queue, they all want alcohol. And I used to sit and I used to watch them getting like, getting in the queue, queuing up, talking to their mates. It'd all be really, really lovely dress. And I knew I was homeless and I'd just, you know, sit and watch them all queuing up and genuinely sit and think, Jack, how can I make some money out of these people?
00:06:29
Speaker
They've got all the things I don't have. um But they all, and you know, I'd see them all sipping from a little whiskey flask or something. And I thought, that's what I'll do. I will sell them the alcohol that they want um and I'll make money out of them. So definitely necessity, but also a little bit of angry jealousy mixed in for good measure, I'd say. It wasn't a choice, but and it was it was needed.
00:06:57
Speaker
So so when you you said you went to college then after that and then you were starting your mobile kind of proper events business following the following the the original sort of venture we just talked
Why did Inga choose entrepreneurship over a traditional career?
00:07:08
Speaker
about there. So at what point did you realize actually entrepreneurship is probably more in line with what you wanted to do rather than maybe follow the traditional route of going through college and you know getting like a more comfortable safe career that sort of thing.
00:07:24
Speaker
and I don't know if I ever made the choice really. So going into, I still did college, still finished college, still went to uni at the same time as having a business. um I chose to study business management and marketing ah because I thought it would help me with my business. It didn't. and But I, I don't know if I've ever actually made that choice. Someone asked me the other day if I if I liked being an entrepreneur. And I found it such an odd question because I don't think I know anything different. So I've never really had a job. but I mean, I did work behind a bar here and there. I worked to the waitress here and there. But every time and I did that, I'd find that I would try and ah find ways to like challenge myself to get more tips or, you know, find ways to help the company. I conducted my own ex interviews
00:08:18
Speaker
tell them exactly how they could do better. So I think more recently, I've thought, you know, definitely in the past year, scaling this particular company that I've got now has been really hard. And so there's definitely been times where I've thought, Oh my God, I'm so experienced now I could go and get a job, well paid job.
00:08:36
Speaker
I could go and have the house that I want, the car that I want. um I wouldn't have... What comes with business ownership often is a weird credit rating um because of the ways you pay yourself. um I could definitely do that, but then i I'm not very good with being told how to do things. I'm not very good with direction.
00:08:58
Speaker
So it's a long winded answer to your question but I don't know if there was ever a moment of thinking this is what I'll do because it's all that I've ever done.
00:09:10
Speaker
That's fair enough. we i've I've had a previous guest on one of my most recent ones. He was he wass a project manager and he went through the whole you know work through, uni, always wanted to be in his dream job which was within aerospace and he did that for a number of years and then he just said he was just getting to the point where he wasn't really feeling very fulfilled and and so yeah just thought that was something more to so what he could do. so He ended up just quitting that completely, completely pivoting, changing tact, and he's opened the gym. So he's gone the complete other direction where he's kind of thrown himself from that really comfortable position into something that's, you know, uncomfortable, a bit more unknown. And so... it's interesting to hear how actually for you it's not really been a conscious decision it's kind of just something you think you've just kind of evolved into yeah whereas for him it was very much a ah conscious yeah this is not working for me i'm going to try going out on my own rather than you know escaping the corporate rat race as they as they call it grass is always greener sometimes i think this would be so much easier if i had a job but think i'm an unemployable to be honest and
00:10:21
Speaker
So in terms of your the rest of your business then, just give us ah a bit of a high level. um We can touch upon your kind of current venture at the moment, but from the the mobile bar events, you've spanned quite a few different industries. What was next?
How did Inga's business evolve over time?
00:10:35
Speaker
Yeah, so at the mobile.
00:10:37
Speaker
ah The mobile bar turned into an event playing company, simply because I would turn up at events and they weren't organized. So I would be rocking up at the bar, nothing else would have necessarily been done. So I sort of started to fold in event management on the top of that.
00:10:53
Speaker
an event and planning, that naturally sort of turned into wedding planning because of my preference for working, you know, I'd rather work a couple of really, really cool weddings a year rather than working lots of corporate events over and over again. i and But by the time I was doing wedding planning, I already had a baby and I had my second born and I was able to find really, really well-paying clients, you know, oil brokers, daughters, they drop 500,000 on a wedding. and People already started to ask me, you know, how are you doing that? I have lots of good context in the wedding industry. How are you getting those kind of people? um So I started to teach people in my peers in the industry how to
00:11:42
Speaker
leverage social media as a way to get clients in and that naturally grew into consultancy because I realised I could make more money out of consultancy rather than doing the weddings and also it was you know weddings are what you're always working at weekends.
00:11:58
Speaker
and Whereas consultancy I could work during the week. So I had, my last wedding was in 2012. And since then I focused on consultancy, digital marketing consultancy. And in the past year and a half, so January of 2023 set up my current company, which is Content Creation House. So even though it feels like it's all little bits here and there, they've all kind of sort of blended into each other as we've gone.
00:12:31
Speaker
yeah So I was going to ask about when you're launching like your next kind of venture, they do seem sound like they've kind of rolled into one, which is quite nice.
How does Inga handle imposter syndrome?
00:12:40
Speaker
In terms of, we hear a lot with people when they're trying to either maybe go for a new job or maybe try and start something new. There's obviously that imposter syndrome that creeps in with a lot of people. I'm sure you've experienced it at some point. I've definitely experienced it when you think, okay, I don't, I need to get to a certain level before I can actually go ahead and and crack on with it or would launch it or apply for that next role. In terms of your next roles and your next kind of companies, did you feel that you were well equipped to then start them or did you feel like that was still an element of that imposter syndrome but you just kind of had to get on with it anyways? It gets to a point for me where it feels like I can't not do it and so I will always
00:13:25
Speaker
With each company, if you look at it very practically, they've always begun six months before I've announced them. So I will always, sort of six months out, start to get, well, a bit longer than that, to be honest, start to get a feeling like I can do more, I'm a little bit wasted here, I get a little bit... bor I would suppose of what I was doing because it's not challenging me. um And then around about six months out, I start to kind of talk about it on socials, talk about it to people, maybe start to write a few things down.
00:13:55
Speaker
um and then which gives me the the kind of confidence today that as soon as I press go on that next business, there's already a market for it, there's already an audience for it, there's already, um I already have the skills and the ability to do it because i I never have moved into the next business without knowing that I had clients waiting to pay me for the next business. um And if there's no clients there, I won't do it. Like for example, I did try and set up a,
00:14:27
Speaker
off the back of the mobile cocktail bar and i tried to set up a cocktail box subscription so you pay months a day you get they'll sort of you'd shake them up on your own um and little mini shaker at that would come your house once a month. But and no one was really interested in it, not enough to make the kind of money that I wanted to make from it anyway. And so even though I kind of played with the idea, I didn't end up doing it because there was no customers sitting there. So I think each time it's not really been a case of imposter syndrome or knowing on whether or not I can do the next thing. It's definitely been a case of I'm bored, let's see if this thing will work. um And if people are on their role with me,
00:15:12
Speaker
and then I'll do it. Yeah, yeah that's interesting because one i one of the questions I had was, at what point do you know that you want to start a new business? At what point do you know that actually it's time to move on from from something? Because I think, again, that's that's a place where people get quite stuck, ah not just in so business, but in career. you know You're looking at career progression as well.
00:15:33
Speaker
They kind of go well well, you know, I could do it at this point But I may go to stick on another six months or another and that turns into another year before you know it you've You know, you've done another two three years where you could have actually pivoted and and made it maybe progressed I wonder if you've already thinking about it though that you already should have done it Yeah, you know by the time you're thinking about it is Maybe a little bit seeds seeds already been planted. Yeah, otherwise you're only gonna get more and more people like, fall more and more out of love with whatever you're doing because it's already in your brain. Has there ever been a time where, other than that sort of content box you said which didn't quite work, has there ever been a time where the grass paps wasn't as green on the other side and you maybe had a few regrets from doing that? and Yeah, also when I went into
00:16:25
Speaker
um
00:16:29
Speaker
So when I went into event management, and that's why I moved quickly into wedding planning, because going into event management with corporate people, I'm not a very corporate kind of person. um I don't even know the words that come out of their mouth sometimes. And so trying to... Don't think they do after time leaving. Okay, fair.
00:16:48
Speaker
So trying to mould myself into that didn't work. and But also I'd say much more recently in my um consulting company,
00:17:02
Speaker
And a lot of people will talk about sort of passive income in consulting world. You know, you set up, you can consult, but then you should also set up like membership. You should also set up ways to make money, lots of money for your knowledge out of lots of people and deliver it once. um And so I've done that and I did it quite successfully, but I had a membership and It just didn't work for me. So I did have a membership at one point where I had over 500 people on it and I was teaching people weekly how to use Instagram or we'd have like co-working sessions. This was before reels were really like taken over. But it didn't really work for me because I like seeing the impact on people's businesses. If I can't see that or I can't see the impact that I'm having or
00:17:57
Speaker
just generally having 500 people pay for a membership and only seeing maybe 10 of them maximum turn up every week, it just felt really disingenuous to me. So that was also very much one that, yes, feels like a great idea at the time, but just didn't work for me and my way of working.
00:18:16
Speaker
So even though everyone would say, why would you shut a membership down like that? You know, 500 people all paying you 20 quid a week, like it's nice money. But if it's not something that's interesting for me, and to be honest, it did take me quite a while to shut that down because the money was all right. But just over time, if you know it's like, it if that seed's already planted in your head, if you know it's not right, you could keep going, keep going, but it's just not going to be right over time.
00:18:45
Speaker
Yeah, like I understand with with that. In terms of, would would you say it goes back to like your core, maybe your core, I don't want to use, like you said, core for it, I don't want to use core for terms, but let's say for the sake of this one, court like your your core values, for example. so your do you have certain values that you maybe set out or perhaps it's it's your moral compass so to speak where you kind of go actually is a goal to make money because a lot of obviously businesses are designed to make money at the end of the day. um Businesses can't operate without profits but
00:19:22
Speaker
ah what How do you find that balance between actually, like you said, the money was really good, but it just didn't feel quite, you know, it felt quite disingenuous for you. Was there kind of a cutoff
What core values drive Inga's ventures?
00:19:32
Speaker
point? Was there kind of a core value where you're like, actually, this is not kind of what I set out to do? Yeah, definitely. I think, it's a good question. No one's really asked for that before. I think definitely um one of my core values is actually making a difference. So I've personally, I know it seems weirdly arrogant, maybe ridiculous to say, but I don't find it hard to make money. So it's because I will always know how to go back to that hustle mentality. That's where I've been brought up from. Like I know if I need to make money, there's that phrase isn't there. A drug dealer doesn't ask for money every day, but they still can buy drugs. And so I know how to do that. But what makes me really interested in something is seeing the impact that that has long-term. So for example,
00:20:20
Speaker
now with my current company very quickly it makes money it made money but the actual difference that I want to see is to impact other people's businesses in a productive way. I want to see that by what I'm doing it can help people grow their own companies. I fundamentally believe that the ultimate act of freedom is to own your own company and I know that other people will feel that too but um and yeah Yeah, that's nothing new for entrepreneurs, I'd say. But um also one of the big things that I want to do long, long term is to make enough money so that I can sell the company, turn around and invest in in um the type of people that I was in the homeless shelter with. So I think if I think about my core values, it's most definitely to see the impact that I've made. Even if that impact, going back to selling cocktails,
00:21:16
Speaker
on the street to people who are queuing up outside of their proms, outside of nightclubs. The impact is still seeing like the glee and the you know the naughtiness feeling on their faces. you know i could I could have sold those cocktails. The need was so high I could have sold them for 60 quid a cocktail if I wanted.
00:21:37
Speaker
i But it's the challenge that I really like and the challenge of making a difference and the challenge of the impact that it has. um And that's why even in this current company, you know, within four months, it was making money. So I decided, do you know what? I'll start building up technology because then I can have a real impact and take down the whole of Facebook. um But yeah, definitely, definitely the core value at the end of the day, it's all about how much of an impact can I have rather than how much money can I make?
00:22:07
Speaker
But money helps when you want to make an impact. You can't do things on charity. Yeah, yeah I've um I can definitely attest to that. I think it sounds like authenticity is a key for you then and I think ah with a lot of content creation obviously you're in the content creation space now with a lot of that stuff you can immediately see the people who are authentic and what they're doing versus the people who are just out there to kind of leverage your maybe your uh
00:22:38
Speaker
Maybe you're naivety, maybe it's something else. um you know Obviously, everyone when you say to someone, you could make more money doing this, then you know it's it's always a very hard proposition for people to turn down and go, well, why wouldn't I want any more money? And there are people that, for them, money is not everything and it doesn't matter too much to them. But at the end of the day, you do have to have a sustainable living. As you say, you can't you can't sort of grow and live off charity.
00:23:04
Speaker
So i think it's definitely something that i try and do as well with what i'm doing rather than getting people on that i just think are really popular and and just maybe controversial but more people i think can add value to what you know maybe i'm trying to do and and just to just sort of give us a bit of a personal anecdote about you know being a bit more I try and keep it authentic as well. I try and do it as things I'm interested in and then hopefully that comes across in what I'm doing as well. Whereas I think for some people it's kind of like, if you pay me 200 pound a month, if I can give you the the the top tips of the day for day trading and and stocks and shares. And there's it there's a lot there, either the Facebook and the ah and the YouTube ads that keep popping up for some reason. Get away. I mean, that's what I used to do. How was you, was it? It was me.
00:23:53
Speaker
It's always like two blokes that Kiwi's like, I've just been through my five a.m. run, I've put some trades on, let's see how they're going. Like, no, you do not go down that route. So going back then, just thinking about your current venture versus your first, let's say your first, let's talk about the mobile one to begin with, let's say your first venture. Is there anything that you kind of know now that you think would have been useful to know when you started out?
How important is team building and networking in Inga's success?
00:24:25
Speaker
good Yeah, um...
00:24:32
Speaker
definitely you can't do it all by yourself. So um with this current company, it's mostly equity funded. So I knew right from the get-go, if I'm gonna do this, I need a team around me to do it. If I wanna go and do it big and have the biggest amount of impact, it's gonna have to be equity funded, um which isn't always right for most people, but even if it's not right, definitely figure out a way in which you can have support. It might be a co-founder, it might be,
00:25:00
Speaker
Even a board of advisors, even if you're not really going for, even if they're not putting money in, just getting people around you who you can share the thoughts with, share the process with, share the ideas with, um and most definitely do not do it all by yourself. you're not i like There's a lot of arrogance, I think, when you start up, definitely in me anyway, that I'm the best person to do everything, and I'm absolutely not.
00:25:29
Speaker
Most definitely, i'm in most cases now, the worst person to start doing something. I'm great at coming up with the ideas, but actual execution isn't great. So definitely put people around you that you can um lean on that are better than you. Even if that means just asking for a little advisory board because you don't have money to go with anything but just a board of people around you and also work on your network. So I was very arrogant when I sat at the mobile cocktail bar um that
00:26:05
Speaker
I didn't need to network in this space. And again, I guess it kind of plays into the whole corporateness. I was like, no, no, I don't need to network. I'll get the people will inquire, the things will come in by themselves. And I used to, the first amount of bookings I got was just from people, the bars where I used to get alcohol from would get people coming over the bar asking if they could do their event. And they always just said, no, but they'd pass it over to me.
00:26:33
Speaker
that low and behold was a network that I arrogantly sort of misjudged. But also then once I get to the events, I just set up, serve, do it, go home instead of working on the network of the people that were in the room. Whereas this time round and definitely with business this business, um and I've grown up over the years to understand that actually your network, even if you don't think someone's got something to give you at the time or there's like an exchange of value there. Don't ever dismiss people, don't ever think that you are in a place where you can't spend time with someone or you know don't
00:27:17
Speaker
ever make a judgment on someone because you never know what point that might come to an amazing point of fruition just because you focused on the network instead of being arrogant that, you know, all my marketing will do it for me. But yeah, definitely get people around you and work on your um network.
00:27:37
Speaker
Let's say that your your network is your net worth. It's very true. yeah All about who you know, not what you know as they say as well. It is very true. I think the monetary thing is quite an important point as well because there are, you say about obviously delegating to people and you're not the first guest to have said that before we had a ah Chuck Merlin McCormick, he runs a car dealership and in London and he offers a range of different services and that was one of the key things he said if ida if I could have gone back I would have started delegating a bit earlier because I kind of got to the point where it was all under one brain and it was almost you could always kind of suffocate in the growth because you're there's only a as a <unk> a physical capacity of what you can manage in a day or or a given working week even if you're working every hour under the sun which obviously isn't isn't sustainable for everyone at least long term
00:28:31
Speaker
He said, yeah, if I had delegated but earlier, then perhaps we could have even grown to this point even even quicker. So it's ah it's a good point. But I think monetary wise, you're saying at what point would you start investing in that sort of like reaching out to people or maybe putting some money into getting these experts and these people that that you think are going to help grow it earlier? Do you think there's this there's a good kind of there's a good point in which to do that or do you think that comes quite organically and it's normally quite obvious at that point when you go well I'm starting to make maybe a little bit of money or do you think it's worth putting some money in upfront even before you started getting the money back sort of thing and then hoping for for that obviously there's risk in doing that
00:29:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think you definitely, I wouldn't go for it straight away. I think you've got to understand whether or not you've got something that people want to buy there. So I would highly recommend like hustling for the first three months to figure out whether or not people are going to buy your stuff before you start to get people on board before, even if you're not asking people on board money wise, you're still asking people on board timewise.
00:29:39
Speaker
i'm So before asking for that exchange, you need to know that there's something there that you can grow. um But then after that, um definitely if you can see massive kind of growth potential a good market in it, then just try and go for investment because investment manages, it allows you to grow companies in a way that you can't do on your own like so with what happens with an investment in that you are the best person to communicate your business and you are the best person to communicate your thoughts and if you have the money behind you to have the people that are doing the do to do the do
00:30:23
Speaker
and you can go out there and continue to just communicate, then it enables the company to grow a lot quicker. instead of you Because what can happen very quickly, and what has happened previously in my other companies, is that the idea works, people buy it, but then you have to deliver on that idea whether it's a service or a product. And so you end up being caught up working in your business rather than on your business. And your job as the founder and CEO is to more work on it rather than in it. Future growth rather than sort of current keeping the lights on so to speak. Definitely.
00:31:02
Speaker
So I'm going to go a little bit off tangent, but in terms of this has always been something I've been interested in and never really found a good answer to because I don't imagine it's very specific to each individual business. And there are numerous business podcasts that tell you about growing clients, scaling, all this sort of stuff, but I've never really heard anyone talk about actually how do you even get started. So when you've got that initial idea from, I've got something that I think could be valuable, could be a product, could be a service that we've said, what are the first few steps, just high level, how do you go from actually having that idea to the conception of the business and securing that funding? What what does that look like for you?
What are the essential steps to launching a business according to Inga?
00:31:47
Speaker
How do you sell it or how do you grow the conception and idea of the business? So how do you launch the business, so to speak? So obviously we're at the point where we've got the idea, we're thinking about turning it into a business. How do I go from that idea to actually, this is a business and I can start then selling to people. So just before we get to like actually selling stuff to people, you maybe need to secure some funding. What would that, what would that look like? How, what would your sort of steps be?
00:32:14
Speaker
So yeah, i'm a lot of people miss the boring step of the business plan and um they go straight for going out there, which means that you neglect all of the really boring financial bits.
00:32:31
Speaker
So before you even go out there, you need to know whether or not your company is going to make money for you. And so I would always recommend is it can be done on a big piece of paper. It can be done on a spreadsheet or whatever, but before you actually launch your business, you need to go through all of the finances of the business and how much money you're going to make, how much, whether, because that's all, if you go for investment or anything, that's the only thing they care about.
00:32:57
Speaker
i What the market share is, you need to do a lot of research, you need to pull together all of the things that will tell you whether or not this company is going to make you a salary and how quickly that's going to happen and it's beyond that if it's going to make a profit. So you definitely need to pull that together which i'm is it very boring, but needs to be done. So I would always start six months out before I launch a company. The first month is most definitely, you know, the idea comes very quickly. The first month is most definitely all finances. The second month is most definitely brand, mission, values. How am I going to position what I'm going to sell? Because there's no new ideas really. You might have a different idea, but it you you can research as how it sits in the market.
00:33:45
Speaker
um And then sell it for free. So before you've even sold it, sold it in within those six months, try and sell it for free. If you can get people to, and I know that that sounds ridiculous, but a lot of the times people will take something up for free, but it's whether or not they do it. So if you've got a product, they might have it for free, but then observe whether they use it. If you're doing a service, give it for free and observe whether they actually do the thing that you're telling them to do.
00:34:15
Speaker
And if they do it and then they get to a point where they can't live without it, then you know that you've got something to launch. So finance is brand, if you can sell it for free. And then by the time that you get to the point at which you're launching, if you've sold it for free anyway and people are telling people you've already got something to launch off the back of it, you've already got a brand, you've already got finances set up. And then if you do want to go for investment, you can genuinely day one turn around to someone and say, right, here's my finances.
00:34:45
Speaker
here's the market, here's the brand, and here's the what people think and how they can't not have it in their life. Yeah, that's awesome. it' ah I would say there's there's a lot of there are a lot of businessy podcasts, and obviously i'm not my this is not about business, so so to speak, but I have struggled to see where actually that that getting started. Everyone's always focused on once you've already started to selling it, how you're marketing it, and all that sort of stuff, but it's that first kind of initial stage, where i think which which I think puts a lot of people off as well because they just don't know how to start. If you ask with most businesses or new ideas, people get really put off by, well, I don't think I have the skill set to do it, which is going to go back to that question I asked you earlier. But again,
00:35:32
Speaker
what how do I start? People don't know how to get started. So I think just having that initial kind of pipeline or roadmap to actually bringing your product to life can really help. I think giving people just an entry point into it's the world of entrepreneurship and and business. I'm also say really keen to understand obviously you founded a lot of companies and been CEO of a lot of companies as well. What do you think have been some of the key skills that you've drawn upon that have really helped you in in those sorts of positions of being sort of CEO.
00:36:11
Speaker
Really figuring out what someone's problem is. So when you, and I'll take it back again, but when you observe someone they're stood in a queue waiting to get into a nightclub, the problem and isn't that they're waiting to get into a nightclub, the problem is they're not having fun yet. And a lot of the times at that age of fun equals alcohol.
00:36:29
Speaker
Um, with my current company, the problem isn't that people, um, don't know how to market their companies. The problem is that it's expensive to film videos and they don't have the time. So solve that problem. It's always, I know it sounds very, um, and you listen to log the business podcast. People will always say it's the problem. Um, but people say it's the problem, but never identify the actual problem. You have to really understand.
00:37:00
Speaker
what And I think this leans on like looking into your own personal experience of things and understanding what pisses you off the most. and i solving that problem you know when they they looked at the tubes there's this sort of case study where you look at the London Underground look at the tube time and the times it takes to get to places and they wanted to make the tubes quicker but actually the problem wasn't that people needed to get there quicker the problem was that people just needed the knowledge so they put the tube maps up so that people could track where they are and then they got less complaints. It is genuinely figuring out
00:37:42
Speaker
the problem and then how crazy idea how you would so solve it. So our technology, for example. The problem now with social media is that everyone just wants to go viral. No one friggin knows what to post and everyone's just guessing and it costs a lot of money to to guess. So do you know what? I'll make loads of technology. I'll make technology that analyzes everything in the same way that you would do with the finance or the health care and we'll just figure it out. If you've got enough data, you can figure out what to do. So I'll build that.
00:38:12
Speaker
um So and if you look at the way that Facebook was built, yes, Facebook was built. to compare people but the thing that really really kicked it off was relationship status because he understood that fundamentally everyone's problem at college is that they want to get laid, they want to understand who they can be with, they want to understand where people are going to be and whether or not it was worth their time to try and pursue someone. So that relationship status was a thing that really really like that expanded Facebook so it's
00:38:45
Speaker
Yeah, figuring that out and then having the guts to go with it. And like I said, if you can sell it for free and it solves the problem and then that people keep using it, then you know that you want something.
00:38:58
Speaker
and Would you say that you're very analytical in the way you approach stuff then? or is it Is there any sort of, if we're talking about fundamental skills, how does that link back to your problem solving? Is it being able to extract that information from people through communication? Is it your ability to analyze data? What would you say your strengths are in that sense?
00:39:20
Speaker
and Yeah, a little bit of data. I am a bit of a nerd when it comes to data, so I am quite analytical. But I think um it's probably more of a personal thing that people would have to learn. but I think I'm very good at understanding what people are actually trying to say rather than what they say and out of their mouths. um And I think that comes from my own sort of turbulent up and down history and then ending up in homeless situations. You really, really have to understand how to read people very quickly, especially when you're in sort of dangerous, quite vulnerable positions within those homeless situations. so
00:39:59
Speaker
i'm Definitely understand people will always say what they think you need to hear, but actually in people's body language or in the things that they emit from saying, there's much more to be understood. So trying to really shut up and listen can really help come up with those ideas. I think it's that's more of a skill that has to be learned.
00:40:29
Speaker
We'll say ah two ears for listening, one for speaking. That's it. that That ability to read the room is actually something of I've had as well with you know dealing with senior stakeholders in in the role I'm in as a career and you know having in my earlier sort of career, I'm still quite early on in my career, but the sort of earlier days where I you know would perhaps just kind of try and push my own agenda, not really fully understand, you know even though I wasn't very a duet
00:41:01
Speaker
being able to read the body language being able to read the room actually in the winter as you say shut up and listen and kind of back off and go actually stop trying to push which i thought i you know i thought was in the right i thought i was pushing coat cold hard facts but sometimes you do have to just bite your tongue a little bit and actually understand exactly as you say what are they actually trying to tell you and then to to now trying to tailor my approach that i actually will They're asking this, but they're, what's the kind of, is there a hidden message in what they're trying to ask? Are they trying to, you know, trying to extract more information than they're really directly asking for? And and yeah, it's definitely a skill. And I think it's, it's one of those things which you don't, I never really picked up on until people would tell me. So, you know, our colleagues around me who were saying, oh, well, you know, you could tell by certain body languages and the way they were that wrote that, they weren't quite after that information. and
00:41:56
Speaker
It was a good learning experience because you don't you don't really look out for that stuff unless you know about it or at least unless you've got something to relate it to. So I then look back at those experiences and go actually, oh, now that you've mentioned it, I did kind of notice X or I did notice Y about that person. And um you know I feel like I'm a lot more, yeah, personally, I'm a lot better at picking up on that stuff now than I used to be, but it's obviously still a work in progress. so I think having that comparison between actually living the experience and then have someone tell you something different, you're like, oh, okay, yeah maybe not this. Sometimes you have to let it be quiet longer than you think is necessary because after a time someone will always fill the space and they often fill the space with what they actually are trying to say.
00:42:46
Speaker
Even if it's like, God, I wish I had a drink. Ah, that's what you want. That's what you want. That's what you want. Oh, I wish content didn't take all my freaking time. That's what you want. Yeah. and I think, as as humans, it's quite difficult for us to null gap fill. I think it's a real, again, it's another skill to be able to go actually. You don't have to say something, and they there's a yeah someone I've listened to a few times has said you don't actually have to have an opinion on everything. It's perfectly okay to not have an opinion as well.
00:43:18
Speaker
Whereas I think if you get in a room when people you do notice when people start gut feeling and what that comes out of in the mouth is sort of 90 90 percent waffle a lot of time and then 10 percent is like a nugget there which you can use. Yeah.
00:43:32
Speaker
but sincely So you're you're also very heavily, obviously heavily involved in tech and tech, typically quite a male-dominated
What challenges does Inga face as a woman in tech?
00:43:40
Speaker
industry. I know you've spoken with various different, on different articles about this, but wanted to just ask, because I've had a number of different, sort of quite quite incredible women on the show. We've been various different guises. They've been nutrition coaches working in, again, very male sort of dominated spaces.
00:43:58
Speaker
ah automotive industries and then you know some some other people as well. and They've all had slightly different experiences but I'm really obviously interested to know what your experience was like working in a male-dominated industry. and Yeah well it continues so it's frustrating.
00:44:18
Speaker
um
00:44:20
Speaker
ah is It's a hard question to answer because it relies a lot on lived experience and so if you're not a female or female presenting, sometimes it can be hard to understand the opposite side of it. But it's is nothing, what I find and especially so in tech and also around Cambridge, which is a very kind of dubbed the Silicon Valley of the UK, it's very, very tech heavy, um is that there seems to be a lot of like, for want of a better phrase, like dick swinging. And I'm just not here for that. So I am in tech and I'm building out technology, but I don't know how to code. And so a lot of the times what happens
00:45:11
Speaker
in what I'm doing is that you... People ask you to prove your worth a lot. So they will ask, you know, when I'm on a panel or when I'm speaking at a tech event, pete I'll come off and people ask questions. And they always inevitably, there's always people that ask specific technical questions about the the stack I'm using or the language that I'm programming my tech in. So if that genuinely, I don't even, I don't know what they're asking me because I have a CTO who manages all of that. um And I find that even sometimes the,
00:45:44
Speaker
females in the tech space are caught up in um to the the technicalities of the tech and often not looking at the wider um the wider implications, the wider kind of sphere of what tech means in the real world. um and and i'm So I find it very very hard as well sometimes when you know when i'm on the panels or when i'm talking and i don't have a tech experience and a tech background but i am building out technology i think some people especially because it's more male dominated some people work really really hard to get to spaces where they um where they are on the panel with me where they're speaking or something and there's some very very intelligent people that are in the
00:46:33
Speaker
male-dominated space you have to be super analytical and so I think sometimes other people find it hard to see um a female and especially a female who's not got a massive tech background take up space that they perhaps feel that they're a little bit more worthy of because they have done the education and they have and I can completely understand it. They've done the education, they've built things themselves, they've messed around with technology and built it out um simply because they might have a little bit more of an analytical more um
00:47:04
Speaker
sequence driven way of approaching the world which tends to be a little bit more masculine and and so sometimes I can find that I get a little bit of a backlash sometimes um And it comes in the form of sort of mansplaining or me expecting to to do things. And then I end up looking a little bit like an idiot because ah sometimes I'll say, listen, I don't even understand the words that are coming out of your mouth. And then there's, how are you building out technology if you don't even understand what an AWS is? So I'm not building out the technology my team is. And I think sometimes the difference between
00:47:45
Speaker
sometimes the male dominated industry and the female dominated industry, sometimes females can understand that it's more of a collective that comes together to, you know, if you look historically at women, they're much better at coming together as a community, um working for the collective of the community, you know, if you think about right back to like, and to gather a stage, whereas a met men are very good at being singular minded, going out,
00:48:10
Speaker
finding the meat and bringing it back. um And so the conversations that I have in the spaces of tech, you can see that in the mindsets of very much like, well, the person must be the best person that does it. I don't understand how you can have a collective that achieves the same thing that I'm achieving as myself. um So it's a, it's a funny one. I mean, even i'm building out tech for example but even brin winning the Great British Entrepreneur Award of in the creative industry that other people up for it they were all men and I was the only one female in the creative industry um and actually securing investment for technology and specifically AI technology only 2% of funding in the UK has gone to women and that 2% you can see is normally sort of absorbed by the lady that owns Starling. so
00:49:04
Speaker
um every aspect of what I do unfortunately ends up being a little bit more male dominated. It just means that I have to prove myself a little bit more and then thus by proving myself it all then gives me a little bit of complex or maybe I'm not the best person for this. But then I have to remind myself that maybe I am because I'm the person that's on the stage rather than them. this So weird one. That imposter syndrome creeping back in.
00:49:30
Speaker
Yeah I mean as I bloke I still bonk my head over the club at least once a week so we know it's not. When you already spoke about the male obviously the sort of not many people coming through it as women.
00:49:47
Speaker
I noticed that I did a mechanical engineering degree so I noticed there was 10 maybe 15 women on the whole course. I think it's evolving a bit more now where I think there are more women getting into tech and I think you've obviously got the whole white women in science and engineering movement which is really good as well. um ah I fear that sometimes people take the opposite stance and go to the point of trying to make it a tick box exercise, which I do think is the wrong way to do things as well. um You see it a lot with
00:50:23
Speaker
put yeah very much pushing people who may not be appropriate for the job but they kind of get it anyways and and i don't think i think if you can do the job the job should go to who can do the job the best and i think it shouldn't detract from Yeah, it's ah it's a definite difficult way to put this, but whoever's good enough at the job should get the job. And I think i when people do, the companies start doing this kind of box-ticking exercise and you end up with people in positions where they shouldn't be, this is for both, this is for men and women.
00:50:59
Speaker
It makes it incredibly difficult for people who are genuinely wanting to progress and do well to be able to get to the right positions. And I think you when you've touched the point there about delegating, that's obviously where that comes in now where you're saying, well, actually you don't need to know everything to be able to do your job. There is a question I would say off the back of that then is if you if you do find that someone maybe listening is ah in a similar position where they are kind of having that person talk down to them or maybe try and belittle them by tripping them up with some sort of technical stuff or something similar. What what advice would you give to those those people?
00:51:41
Speaker
um' To be honest and come back with it with honesty. So I will say, I'm really sorry, I don't understand the words that you've said. um And if they want to continue, there's a difference then between an asshole and a nice person.
00:51:58
Speaker
If someone wants to continue belittling on me because I've said, quite honestly, listen, I don't understand what you're asking me here, I don't understand what the question is, and then they want to continue to be tricky, then it's not whether or not they are the right person in the role or whether they've got, they're just an asshole.
00:52:17
Speaker
you know some If you're a nice person and someone any lo yeah um so someone says to you, oh I don't understand that, and then they come back with um exp explanation or different questions or just more more to give, then you know that that's a nice person. So don't be afraid to be honest with yourself.
00:52:39
Speaker
And be honest with the person who you feel like might be belittling you because sometimes in that, you know, I've off the back of that made some of the best connections I've had because I've ended up speaking with people who understand that, okay, this girl knows what she wants to create, but she doesn't understand the technicalities of creating it.
00:52:57
Speaker
um this would be a really interesting thing to get involved with. So don't be afraid because it will just it will whittle out the arseholes and you'll just be left with the people around you that are there to support you and are genuinely interested. Certainly you might come across as belittling in the first place just because of your own way of looking at it but if they're genuinely interested and they've asked you the question and you've come back with honesty and they continue to be honest with you and are still genuinely interested then actually the initial question wasn't glittering in the first place. It was a question that I might have taken in the wrong way. mem So definitely
00:53:35
Speaker
um Yeah, definitely just come out at it with honesty. But I understand as well, I'd love to touch on what you um said before a little bit in the tickboxing exercise, in that sometimes if you do find that you're the only person there, so so a lot of the time I'll find I'm the only person like on the panel or speaking at an event, um the only female, let alone, you know, and it's all white and I'm the only female.
00:54:02
Speaker
and And even if I ah sometimes even if I am a tick box exercise just to get a woman on the stage I like to think that it's a you can't be what you can't see kind of situation and so if there's other women who are interested in you know maybe listening or maybe just see on LinkedIn that I'm speaking at an event then when it's something that they would have loved to have done and then they see that someone is there doing it. It's the whole... It's that phrase that I always come back to, like, yeah, you can't be what you can't see. So trying to sometimes...
Why is diversity important in business?
00:54:39
Speaker
be a little bit more, not necessarily in job roles, because I understand, you know, job roles, you have to employ the right person for the job, but perhaps in there the visibility of the company or the way that you set up um events or the way that you do, even your career fairs and things like that, the way that you attract people into job roles definitely have a, you can't be what you can't see and attracting more diverse talent gives you such further, like,
00:55:04
Speaker
game plans and attracting everyone who thinks the same. i mean So definitely, yeah, I i agree in as so with a slight tweak.
00:55:15
Speaker
Yeah, I did a very good job of butchering what I was trying to say, I must admit. but you did it now i i got yeah It's not so much like ah I don't think everyone is just, and I just want to be explicitly clear, it's not that I think that women are put in because it's a box sticking exercise, but there are cases where yeah they may not be good enough for the role but they do get put into this position which I think is unfair for both really because one you kind of you put them in a position where they may not have the ability to develop or they may be kind of put out their debt which is not always a bad thing and that you know if you're throwing in the deep end a lot of the time you can need a single swim but it's more of a case of you know just making sure
00:55:57
Speaker
the The interest of fairness, you know I don't ah don't look at two different people. don't look I don't see the the men versus women thing. I see who's got the best ability to do the job and there are. you know like My manager's a female and she's a pretty formidable woman and I wouldn't really want to get on her bad side but she's because she's very she's very astute and very good at what she does and I take a lot of lessons from that.
00:56:22
Speaker
now i don't look at her and go oh she's a woman so maybe she's not like not like great at what she's doing because you've got to just look objectively and see are they doing the job that they're meant to be doing yes or no and you know it's uh it's been more of that argument but i did a did a good job of making it sound like i made myself sound like an arsehole which is good it's like watching kim's kardashian's kid up on doing the lion king when you know those talented actors that could have done a better job. Yeah, yeah yeah ah it's it's more of a more of that point really. but And then just one more point really would be to go back to if you could give, and well if there's one thing that you would wish more males would know about
00:57:05
Speaker
being a woman in the in different industries and in the position with the experiences you've had, what what was one thing that you maybe wish more men understood about being in that position or at least being a woman in in tech, for example, or just in in business in general?
00:57:22
Speaker
I'm sure there's a few things. Yeah. I mean, there's the obvious childcare, rearing responsibilities, different and ways that we process emotion. One thing I think is missed a lot in these conversations is understanding that think they understand it, but I don't think they understand it in a work placement setting. If you talk to me on the first week of the month, you're going to get a much different response than on the last week of the month because of my own hormone cycles. And so I think sometimes
00:57:56
Speaker
um I think if you want to understand a woman in business, understanding that there are cyclical personalities to a woman is very important. i I personally, like I hack mine and I know a lot of like elite athletes that will hack their hormone cycles to be able to perform better at different times of the month. And I will only do certain activities at different times of the month. I only show up at different times of the month, but often
00:58:28
Speaker
There's genuinely generally the third week of the month. If you tell me something that's slightly going to touch on my imposter syndrome, slightly negative, I will hold that so much heavier.
00:58:41
Speaker
than I will at any other time of the month. And so sometimes understanding that um ah someone might have, you might have said something one week and then the next week it comes across totally different. It's probably nothing to do with you. And it's probably everything to do with the moment of which that woman is in. If you want to get into the depths of it,
00:59:06
Speaker
If you tell me something in one week it will absolutely break me and the next week I'll be like, yes, fine. Yeah. It's, it's an important point because I had a ah nutritionist on and we would talk about the same sort of thing about, uh, it was more on obviously a ah fitnessy perspective and dietary and to saying like some women can be really, really react very differently at certain parts of their cycle. Some can run hotter, so they end up burning more calories in certain parts of their cycle. There's some people that are stronger or some people that are weaker. So there's a lot.
00:59:39
Speaker
there's a lot more to it and i think i'm going to do a bit of a spin-off series with a couple of sort of experts in those fields to try and learn a bit more about it because i do think it's still a bit of a I think it's one of those because it's a little bit still a little bit of a taboo topic. men kind of well I don't want to talk about that. like this ah which which ah But it does have a big impact and I think it's important to understand from a colleague and perhaps as ah you know to support your partner in a better way. kind of Understanding different parts there are things that you should and shouldn't say.
01:00:13
Speaker
Um, it's, it's an important thing to learn. And I think we can make our lives a lot easier as men if we just kind of were a bit more, um, bit more in tune with that to be able to say, you know, actually, I acknowledge that maybe I said the wrong thing at the wrong time and you know, you it's upset you and, but yeah, we're but also on the women to be able to understand how to communicate it better. Yeah. I don't think it's only on the men, you know.
01:00:40
Speaker
No, not at all. I think it it's it's a two-way thing, but I think it's always been one of those things where it's there's a lot of things where I think there's a bit of a bridge that needs to be built between men versus women in a lot of different things, be it communication, be it the hormone side of things as well. And I think and that's something that I think would be quite an interesting little project to work on and yeah and see how we evolve
How is AI transforming content creation?
01:01:03
Speaker
with that.
01:01:03
Speaker
but okay so Final point, really, I just wanted to wrap up with is your stuff on the AI, really, you're looking at using leveraging AI and what you're doing now to... It's predictive marketing, isn't it? And yeah identifying what what the next kind of trends would be in terms of content creation. How how has AI changed the game for for what you're doing?
01:01:29
Speaker
Oh, massively, massively, massively. Before um AI, we couldn't do what we are going to do. So, I mean, we could, but it would cost me bazillions in data research and data science um wages.
01:01:45
Speaker
And also, um so we're using AI for its analysis capabilities. So it has the ability to analyze vast amounts of data in an arguably unbiased way in a fraction of moments. um And so when you're working with huge amounts of quantities of data, I feel like at the moment social media is the one last Wild West version of data, but it is the most raw. So the kind of things that you look at when you're, again, it goes back to what you say or what you actually want to say. So what people say they're interested in, and then you look at their feed on social media and you realize they're actually a totally different person.
01:02:24
Speaker
because that's what they've been scrolling whilst they are sat on the loo or in bed you know when they are their most truest versions of themselves. understanding um Understanding that as a data set is going to be vastly valuable but before AI we would have had to rely on lots of people who would not be able to analyze Data in a with real-time data in you know the most accurate and quickest way and also you get human bias come in and sometimes when you're looking at data that like that you're gonna have to look at it without the bias and You know for example you could post we figured out and found with our technology which is something that you would know anyway, but categorically and You could post the same thing on two different days and simply because it was three degrees hotter on the second day, it would perform much better. So if we can understand why that happens in marketing, we can understand how best to um allocate our money as a sort of globally, really, um and understand people much better. um And I would have been able to do that without AI.
01:03:34
Speaker
Amazing. Okay. So if there's anyone who wants to find out a little bit more about what you do, and perhaps look about yourself or your companies, where would be the best place to have a look? Well, it's all Clue content everywhere. So all of our socials on the website, and then just coming to find me really, because like I said, I'd talk about things maybe six months before they happen in the company. Get your shares in. Yeah, sure, if you want to.
01:04:00
Speaker
if you want to know what's happening. I sort of verbally spill things on TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram. So yeah, come find me. Awesome. And that's, I'll put the links in the show notes there so people can have a look. ah yes But yes, brilliant. Well, thank you so much for your time. It's been hugely insightful and may really enjoyed the conversation. It's been really good. Thank you.