Episode 301: Navigating Challenges and Achieving Success with the Style Sisters
Success in business is not easy. Entrepreneurs must learn the ropes, face challenges, and seize opportunities that come with entrepreneurship. Gemma and Charlotte, also known as The Style Sisters, have a remarkable journey of starting and growing a successful business that offers a unique approach to organization and style.
In this episode, Gemma and Charlotte talk again with Adam Stott in another Gold Circle event about how The Style Sisters have built an empire from their passion for organizing and styling. They offer valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities that come with entrepreneurship, and their success serves as inspiration for others looking to start their own business.
One of the most important themes that emerge from this episode is the significance of passion, determination, and staying true to their values and vision. Gemma and Charlotte highlight the importance of working hard and pushing themselves to achieve success, even if it means working for long hours and making sacrifices. They also emphasize the importance of staying true to their core values and vision, even in the face of challenges and setbacks.
Show Highlights:
- How The Style Sisters worked with Love Island with wardrobe
- Working tirelessly even staying till 3 to 4AM at clients’ houses and sacrificing personal time
- What helps Charlotte and Gemma create products that cater to their customers’ desires
- The belief that every “no” leads to a potential “yes”
- How The Style Sisters manage to have down days and to experience disappointments
- Expanding their team and collaborating with more influencers.
Links Mentioned:
Book: Style Sisters: Helping you live an organised & stylish life
https://www.amazon.com/Style-Sisters-Helping-organised-stylish/dp/1529347254
Check out their website at style-sisters.com
Get your Business Growth Secrets SUCCESS PLANNER for FREE and profit like a pro: https://adamstottplanner.com/free-book47315172
Adams website: https://adamstott.com/?el=Pod
Watch the Episode on Adam’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/adamstottcoach?el=Pod
Connect with Adam on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adamstottcoach/?el=Pod
Join Adam’s network on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-stott-coach/?el=Pod
Business owners: Monetise social media, get more clients, increase your following and make more sales: https://socialmediamonetisation.com/unlockfb?el=Pod
Coaches, Consultants and Speakers: lower your marketing costs, increase ticket prices and get more high ticket clients: https://personalbrandunlocked.com/fb-event-reg?el=Pod
Transcript:
Please note this is a verbatim transcription from the original audio and therefore may include grammatical errors.
Adam Stott: So why don’t we just start off talking a little bit about, you know, how did this business idea come up? What were the foundations of it and how did we then take that from an idea to get an out to market and, uh, going on to achieve the success that we had?
Gemma Lilly: So Charlotte and I went to school together.
We were childhood friends, but we were Facebook friends. We weren’t massively close. And we left school and both fell pregnant around the same time we were 21. Mm-hmm. And kind of bonded over that cuz we were the first in our friendship groups to fall pregnant. So it was kind of like cementing that sort of journey together and kind of pushed each other in each of our careers.
I was fashioned, and did a lot of styling. I had my own boutique. Charlotte was interiors and we kind of just used to really egg each ch on throughout that. We were both very, very similar. And I ended up selling my business. Charlotte was kind of winding down her interior clients and we were both really frustrated and it was after an evening out, we kind of thought, why don’t we just merge our talents and create Star Sisters?
Charlotte Reddington: And to be honest, we didn’t have like massive startup, we didn’t have loads of money. We thought, what can we do? Using our talents, using our skill sets and our motivation and our determination to set a business up. And it kind of just, it just worked. It was just, we we’re always like naturally as even as children, we’d be tidying up, making things look good.
Like I could look at a room and be like, I need to rearrange that. I can’t relax in a space like I have to. It’s just in us, I think. And I think I found my other person, which was Gemma, that was on the same wavelength as me, and it just worked from the get
Gemma Lilly: go. It’s the same type of weird, like I don’t think anybody enjoys tidying up probably as much as we do.
It’s not quite normal, um, than you, maybe that’s same type of weird, um, And yeah, it was just kind of, as Charlotte mentioned, we had no money to invest in a business and it was kind of like, what the hell do we do? We’re both extremely fidgety, really driven that we can create a business from, and we kind of ended up writing down our skills and kind of thinking, right, okay, well we can just offer a service and that we haven’t gotta invest money into that.
Set up the Instagram. One afternoon and a friend of ours who’d seen that, we’d set up the Instagram account and bear in mind, there was nothing on this Instagram account at the time. It was, we looked quite bad. It was really band. Yeah. Um, A Love Island had put out a shout, a shout out for somebody to come and help with their wardrobe.
And honestly, it was like the stars aligned. We always say it. And we just felt, do you know what? Solid, let’s just reach out and, and the work, like
Charlotte Reddington: anything, and someone can just say No, can’t they? And the more nos you get, or you’ll lead to a yes, won’t you? So we just thought we’ll give it a go. And then she actually just said, yeah, why not?
And we’re like, oh, brilliant.
Gemma Lilly: So we went along and that was honestly, that was the catapult for our business cuz she obviously shouted about it. She was so pleased with the service and it just kind of spiraled from there. And I think within. Three months, we’d got 10,000 followers on the Instagram and it just went, it was just going up and up and up and
Charlotte Reddington: it, yeah, it was just madness.
But when we first started, it wasn’t just like, oh, we’re just gonna be organizers. We had our, it was a game plan if we’re honest. It’s kind of, we had the style sisters laying there and it was a lifestyle brand. Anything to do with your life. We wanted to cover it, making it an organized and stylish life.
So really for us, I’ll weigh in. Was organizing and it’s a talent of ours. It’s got us where we needed to be to then expand into other avenues.
Adam Stott: So when this, uh, love Island reached out, you know, when you went and reached out to them and you went after ’em, did you know what our thoughts in your mind?
Well, we haven’t got nothing to offer ’em. We dunno what our product range is. You know, how, how are we gonna, actually, when you went there, Was you like, what am I gonna do? Or did you just, it’s, it’s,
Charlotte Reddington: well, it’s just us, our energy and our service to make that, that wardrobe. That’s, we honestly, people would laugh at us.
They’d go, well, you’re seriously, people are gonna pay you to go to their house and clean. And we’re like, well, people get cleaner, so why would they not have us over to make it a better space? They didn’t
Gemma Lilly: understand, did they? I think for us it was kind of growing. The social account was our game plan at the time.
It was like, do you know what if we get celebrity clients, that’s gonna help grow our business? Put the shout out there and kind of our game plan was make us noticed by doing something carry we enjoy and then once we’ve get big enough, we can then create this lifestyle. Right. We used to carry a board, probably is. Big as that.
Charlotte Reddington: Bigger. Bigger. I made it of mdf, made it at home with like, we’d paint it all, spray paint it. It’s actually so sisters, but we would take that everywhere. Everywhere. It was like every, every celebrity would turn up to their house and go. The deal was they’d get a discounted price. If they had a photo of us and they would post us on their Instagram, that was the deal.
So they’d stand with us and they all did it. Yeah, they all stood there with us. And then the Daily Mail would pick it up and it wouldn’t just then be anywhere they’d see. It was us. It was all about the branding, getting recognized in the marketing, to
Gemma Lilly: be honest as well. One point. And where did that come from?
Adam Stott: Like our
Charlotte Reddington: brains.
Gemma Lilly: Well,
Adam Stott: look, I I actually love that answer. Like, cause it, it’s simple, right?
Charlotte Reddington: Well, it to work in PR years ago and you, it’s all about.
Gemma Lilly: Being loud. It’s about being loud. Yeah. With a be fool. Yeah. Just, and
Charlotte Reddington: making people remembering you and thinking, oh, who are them two girls again are, they’re popping up again.
Who are these two girls? Who are these two girls? And that’s what we wanted to be didn was pop bang, bang,
Gemma Lilly: bang. That’s at one point we were in one week we were at Vicky Patterson’s Mad Holden’s Fern McCann’s. It was just kind of like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Yeah. And it kind of just made so much noise.
The dating now wardrobe. Oh, everyone asks this, everyone. That’s why they get us in. Yeah. Who weren’t messy. The messier the better, to be honest. Like we were like this’s gonna be fantastic before and after. Yeah. Make it more messy.
Charlotte Reddington: We’d stay till like three, four o’clock in the mornings at people’s houses.
Like we’ve got children, we’ve got boys that are now 13, they’ll be 14 this year, and I’ve got another younger son that’s eight, like they were younger back then. It’s a lot of sacrifice that we would literally work our butts off. We’d get home and we’d be driving home a motorways. Exhausted. Eating junk food, living off sugar.
Yeah. And just neglecting
Gemma Lilly: ourselves really. Nearly died as well in one at one client’s house. When we went to Vicky Patterson’s in Newcastle, Newcastle, Newcastle, it was like three, cuz we only had that day to do it. And she was like, girls, you can stay as long as you want. We that fan. Brilliant. Let’s just get the job done.
Finished about three in the morning. It was one of the hottest days of the year. And we’ve pulled into, I was in charge of booking the hotel. Obviously we had no money in the business at this point, so it cheaper than it was 30 pounds. I think it was cheaper. I think it was 21 pounds. There was one for 30.
And I was like, oh, there’s another one for 21. We’ll save that nine pound, um, booked that I should have known. And we honestly turn up to what can only be described as a concrete prison. And we drove into, or immediately we were like, what have we done? There’s a multistory
Charlotte Reddington: car park and the lights only went on when you drove on that level.
So they just kept going off the lights and it was pitch black. We were delirious.
Gemma Lilly: We pulled up and then two boys started walking towards us. Shirts off, like menacing mi. Oh, it was right. I was at Charlotte Run, grabbed our stuff. Bearing in mind we had literally had worked from. Nearly 24 hours, like grueling work, lugging suitcases, up and down like knackered hadn’t eaten.
Charlotte Reddington: Hottest day the year as well, wasn’t it
Gemma Lilly: England match? Was it? We run up this step, we tried the fire exit door. It opened miraculously where the angels were definitely watching us, you hear running after us. We were pan in. It was petrifying and then that was it. My mind’s like the hotels in on it. The hotel’s in, in on it, home.
Charlotte Reddington: we, we ended up driving home, we drove to another travel lodge and slept in their car park and then felt really sorry for ourselves and took a photo and sent it to, sent it to I to Vicky Instagram and Vicky go, oh, like New Castle isn’t good for us. And she’s like, oh my God, last, like, she was so sweet.
But yeah, like we’ve had experiences and we are gonna save it for the memoirs, I think. Yeah, there’s, there’s been loads of funny experiences. But we love what we do and I think that shows, I think they can see like everyone’s houses we go to, if it’s our clients going on, we meet, they’re like, your passion for what you do does
Gemma Lilly: shine through and you need it.
Like, to be honest, it isn’t a glamorous job. It’s a, it’s a good job and we love it. Otherwise we wouldn’t do it. It can be. Bloody hard work. And I think if we didn’t love it, it’d be very, very easy to be like, what the hell am I doing this for? Yeah. What’s the pointly? So I do think passion, uh, is gonna be the drive of your business cuz you need it.
Because you, you are gonna have shit days. There’s gonna be days when you think, why am I doing this? So you need that passion. Yeah. To.
Charlotte Reddington: And I think what’s nice where we are in a duo, if one is having a shit day, the other one can boost the other one up. And your energies can sometimes be a little bit off. And if one gets a bit hungry and angry at the other one, you know, you usually kind, you’ve got each other to bounce off of and when throw
Gemma Lilly: sugar ass,
Adam Stott: So you went on this journey and gone and started the business. You went out, got the first client. Um, I just showed just. Out in the other room, the pillars. Right. And it was really interesting cause it got it straight away and they went, oh yeah, we’ve done this one. This is the one we’ve done the most. Which is the branding. Right? So they said, this is what we worked on. Um, which I thought was really interesting. So you put two and two together, you’re like, we want celebrity clients. And you use that to grow your social following. Um, those celebrity clients, then did they recommend the other celebrity clients? Is that kind of how it worked? Because who were some of the big, you’ve worked with really big names, haven’t you? Yeah.
Gemma Lilly: Who were some of the other people? We’ve
Charlotte Reddington: got Rita Ora, uh, Rio Ferdinand, Amanda Holden,
Gemma Lilly: Jamie Oliver. Uh,
Charlotte Reddington: uh, Cheryl, Marvin, hues with them regularly with them. We’ve
Gemma Lilly: done pretty much everyone.
If we’re on it, it’s like UK. We obviously, without blowing our own trumpets, we, if we weren’t good, it doesn’t matter how much someone recommends you, you know how much they shout about you, they’re not gonna recommend you. It’s that personal thing, and I think being in someone’s wardrobe. Is such a personal thing.
You build relationships, you build bonds, and they can see we are passionate. We do go that extra mile and we work hard, like we genuinely love it and. The thing that keeps us going is that end goal. The end goal is to have this lifestyle brand. You could, there’s only seven days in a week. We can only do seven potentially clients a week.
Yeah. It’s never gonna push more than that. So it needs to be bigger than the clients, and we need to be bigger than just the celebrities that we do. We need to be a name for ourselves as well. So it was kind of just riding towards that goal, I think.
Charlotte Reddington: And that’s when two years ago we got the licensing deal.
Yeah. And I think that’s when it kind of the, the brand and the business. Took a change. And it wasn’t just all about the organizing anymore, it was about the products we were bringing out and then the shops and the being a licensor and everything. So it’s just, it’s, it’s the, it is a brand.
Adam Stott: Now, how does it feel having had that conversation with the two of you, made a piece of N D F with the stock Sisters to then be getting stocked in major retailers just a few years later?
How do you feel about that journey?
Gemma Lilly: We’re still catching up. Yeah, if we’re honest, because we’ve been working on it two years, but it’s not actually, oh, it’s only just recently launched, so there was kind of this gap where we were two girls being silly in a wardrobe. Just doing what we love. And then it kind of got bigger than we probably ever, we obviously always had big visions for it, but it happened really, really quickly and, and
Charlotte Reddington: lockdown happened as well.
Don’t forget right smack bang in the middle. And that’s when we wrote the book and it kind of, we was on this massive, massive incline. Then it just, the whole world stopped. And I think everyone was in just that we couldn’t, we weren’t together, we weren’t living
Gemma Lilly: together. And obviously our business is being together.
So how you create content and, and that our business in the beginning was us. We were on the Instagram, we were giving people access to clients that people that they hadn’t, you know, seen their messy drawers and stuff like that. All these celebrities that were un, you know, normally untouchable, now we are giving you access to their messy wardrobes.
And people were loving, like loving it. But then in lockdown, everybody became an organizer and everybody became an interior designer. Everyone started getting a home account. So we really, really needed to elevate our business and think quick because. Everything that we’d kind of was riding on. Yeah, everyone suddenly started doing it themselves.
So it was in it. And as well as Charlotte mentioned in the beginning, we used to be able to get a post. We used to get paid and we used to get social coverage. We were laughing. Really? That was, for us, it was like, it was well worth us doing a discount cuz that really is, what is your advertising? That that’s what we saw our celebrity clients as advertising.
This is advertising us, this is advertising our business. But then people clued up and were like, well what’s the point in me doing all this? I can get paid X amount for a po. And it just, the whole, our strategy needs dynamics
Charlotte Reddington: changed, massively changed.
Adam Stott: And I’ve actually seen that with a lot of. In this circumstance, which is really interesting, I’ve seen a lot of people come up with a, a product, a niche that’s hot in the moment.
Ride the wave up. Then it goes down. Yeah. And they’re not able to actually recover because they don’t pivot. That happens more times than you’d imagine. Yeah. I saw that during the, the initial e-commerce boom, the wedding products, things like that. You’ve seen the, you know, all these different types of small gifts type businesses, you know, lots of different people went up and it went away.
What I liked is that you then transitioned, didn’t you? So how did that come about? I. Talk about the, there’s a few things I wanna talk to you about, actually, the book as well. Yeah. So talk about writing the book in lockdown. What’s that done for you? How’s that impacted
Charlotte Reddington: you? Well, Gemma thought it would take like a week, and she’s like, we’ll
Gemma Lilly: pump that out in a week.
I’m very good at English at school and I do tend to love an essay. You can’t shut me up when I get started. And I was like, this is fine. It’ll flow out.
Charlotte Reddington: I was like, gem, no. Like I think this is gonna take a lot more than that. Like we went on holiday, actually went to Santorini and we were like, we’ll just sit around the pool, we’ll write a few chapters.
It just really wasn’t like that. So, and I think where our job is so visual and so practical, physical and physical, like putting that into words is really difficult. Like Mary Kondo does a similar thing to us, but hers is just all written and if I’m honest, switch off. You switch off. I need pictures. I need to see what I’m doing.
I need to know how to fold. I need to see how that’s gonna look. I’m vis. I’m a visual person, but we, it did take us a
Gemma Lilly: while, didn’t it? Yeah. Around it. Then we sort of broke it down and Yeah, it was a process. It definitely wasn’t easy, but I think we’re so proud of
Charlotte Reddington: it where you’ve got publishers, we’re very, we’ve got a vision for things, but we’ve got publishers and there’s rules and res, you’re not allowed color, you’re not allowed photographs.
You’re not allowed this, you’re not allowed that. And we’re like, but we need that. And then they’re like, well, your budget, we’ve only invested this much into your book. An illustrator’s gonna cost X amount. And in the end we were like, we will put money in. This book needs to be right. This is our name on it.
It’s not your name. Anything we do, we wanna be proud of it. Like it’s our brand, it’s our baby. And I think we kind of had a little bit of a battle. I do. I do find that as we’re getting bigger, you kind of. You, you’re afraid to say no to some people, but sometimes
Gemma Lilly: you have to. You don’t wanna ruin that opportunity.
I think hindsight’s a fantastic thing. Obviously, it comes from experience, but we said yeah, we, I mean, we’ve always said no to things that don’t align with us, so it might be a sponsored post. If it doesn’t sit with us, we won’t do it. We don’t care about them. Obviously, we care about money, but we don’t care about money enough to sort of jeopardize our values as a business.
So we will only do something we are genuinely passionate about. And the same goes for clients if we don’t. Like the vibe of a client, we just won’t even go there. It’s gonna be more ag than it’s worth. What’s the point? We wanna enjoy our job. We are good at our job. So,
Charlotte Reddington: and I think you actually have to do, listen to your gut and your intuition.
Like, there’s been times where like, oh, I don’t think we should do this. We all go and let’s do it. And we do it. Think, why have we done that? There’ve been nothing but a nightmare. You know, we, we
Gemma Lilly: do have, we’re slowly learning. Slowly. Yeah. It’s very, very slowly. But even with the licensing in the beginning, We didn’t know what it was stupidly.
We didn’t do any research, and actually in hindsight, probably wouldn’t have gone down the licensing route because it’s brought a lot of good opportunities, but we have had to compromise. They’ve been restricted on certain things. Until you get that first, it’s really funny because. People wanna jump on you and what you’re about, but they’ll only invest so much, which is understandable, I guess.
And until you have a good reaction to that, then they’ll invest more, and then you can start to do it how you really, really wanna do it. But. For us, we probably should have had that down bit.
Charlotte Reddington: Well, we’ve got really good, like we’ve got nice taste and obviously nice taste costs money. Then when they see how much money things cost, they’re like, well, no girl, she can’t actually have real gold on that.
You can have gold planted. And we’re like, oh, okay. You know, like we, you, you have to make a lot of sacrifices and compromises. But again, me and Gemma, we didn’t come from like big lavish. Like lifestyles growing up, we always had nice tastes, but not the money to fold it. So that’s what we wanted to achieve for our lifestyle brand was making nice products, but an achievable high street price
Gemma Lilly: so everyone can have it.
It’s actually really hard. It is hard getting paid at that market, getting something where we used to, prior to entering into this sort of next chapter, we used to be like, why didn’t they just do that without that and change that? And actually now we’re understanding that the more sim, it’s like with our candles.
Yeah, it was a very simple vessel, but. You wouldn’t believe how many changes we had to make to get a simple vessel looking nice because it’s ill in the details. Like even the guy that’s making them said every time you’d come back and make a tiny change, but I can’t even note. And then he said, and once I did it, I noticed the difference.
So it is, Trying to make something quite plain and simple, which is our branding. It’s actually harder.
Charlotte Reddington: I mean it is quite surreal. Like we Aldi, we do shop in Aldi and I would go and get all the Aldi candles. They were like the Joe Malone Drupes years back and then thinking, oh my God, in August are, we’re gonna have a massive standin nest old sister stand with our candles in there.
Been sold at 4 99. A candle, they’ve got a little smell hole at the top so you can smell ’em without opening the box and ruining the packaging. All these things we are fault of and it’s going ahead and it’s gonna happen. Like there is, it is sometimes we do feel like we leave. I’ve walked double lives. We are like amazed, aren’t we?
We’re like, oh my God. We’ll be
Gemma Lilly: folding pants in someone’s wardrobe then on on the, doing the morning the next day. Like it’s very humbling to be honest. I love it cuz we are the client as well as the other side, I guess. And. It, it, it’s nice cuz you sort of, kind of still in touch with what people want. And I think the insight that we’ve had, which has been a huge U s P for us, is we can see what is in our clients’ homes.
We know what they want, we know what they buy into, we can see everything that they get sent, what they, they love. Yeah. That they get sent what they don’t love. So we’ve got a really, really unique insight. To not just celebrity clients, but exactly. Everyday clients as well. And there’s so many similarities and the things that they enjoy, Don enjoy.
And that for us is invaluable as a business because now for our next chapter, we are gonna take all that knowledge and now put that into products that we create.
Adam Stott: Brilliant. And social media has been a massive thing. So you’ve done well with influence. Yeah. For in a big way. Which I think is really important.
But, but also you’ve really showed up yourselves. And put a lot of effort into your social media. So I think when I spoke to you on a podcast, one of the things that I was most impressed by is the lack of fear. You seem to have been able to put fear to one side and just attack
Charlotte Reddington: things. Yeah, I guess so. I think we both did drama at school. Like I said earlier, they can only say no. You know, up years, years ago to do like acting and modeling and stuff. He’d go to his auditions, no, no, no, no. Then you’d get your one little job and you’d think, oh, actually, I kept turning up and I’ve got something in the end, I just think it’s just our personality.
Gemma Lilly: No leads to a yes, in our opinion, at the end of the day. Yeah. And if they want it, fantastic. If they don’t,
Charlotte Reddington: oh well And also if it’s not meant to be, maybe that wasn’t your path. Something else is waiting for you. That is the right thing. And you know, like sometimes things happen being, oh, that’s happened for a reason.
Like we didn’t do that that time because that come in, you know? So
Gemma Lilly: I think, but I’ll be honest, like hiding behind an Instagram account is a lot easier to reach out to people. Cause you think it’s not actually me. They say no. Oh well, like. It’s through Instagram. Charlotte’s really, really good in person.
I’m a bit more shy. Um, I’m fine talking unless, unless she has a drink. Unless I’ve had a drink. Don’t see,
Adam Stott: don’t see me. Have you had a drink today? No.
Gemma Lilly: No. Yet I’m getting better. No, I’m right in this and talking about what we do. But for instance, Charlotte bumped into Michelle Hues in a now shop once. And that is how she actually, we actually got her as a client cuz she gave her a card and she rang me.
She said, I’m gonna give her a card. I said, oh, rather you than me. Cuz I certainly wouldn’t have done, I think, I couldn’t do that, but now maybe more so. But Charlotte is very, very good at being ballsy in the moment. Didn’t you throw a card at a Spice Girl over a dj? Yeah, she was DJing
Charlotte Reddington: and Mel C and we were like, Mel, do you want us organize your
Gemma Lilly: wardrobe?
Charlotte Reddington: Like DJing my headphones on?
Gemma Lilly: Like yeah, we’re like, take our card. Every opportunity, like any opportunity. I mean, we don’t switch off. When I say we message from the minute we open our eyes to the minute we go to sleep, we could do this, should have done this differently. Oh, what if we did this? Like it just is.
There’s not a switch off point because for us it’s like we have to keep going. We can’t waste the system. Yeah. No one
Charlotte Reddington: else is running it for us. It is us and then everyone’s like, I bet you’ve got a massive team. And we’re like, nice us. We’ve got a girl called Evie that helps us now. She’s amazing. And apart from that, that is it.
Like I think we’ve got, not trust issues, but it’s more people not having the same
Gemma Lilly: vision as us. And, and it’s not even that we are the business. Yeah. You can’t, it’s it, when you’ve got a product, you can grow your team. Anybody can sort of follow guidelines to do what you need them to do when you are the face of your business.
Yeah. There’s no switch off. You’ve, they people want you, they’ve bought into you. They follow you. It’s very hard to transition over. I do feel to hand quite
Charlotte Reddington: a bit over the last five years, I’m not gonna lie. And we look back at the videos, don’t we? About every year and we just hit our five year milestone and I’m like, whoa,
Gemma Lilly: we had so much energy back then.
It’s just like,
Charlotte Reddington: it’s just, the business has just taken a massive turn. And even sitting here now talking about it
Gemma Lilly: it, it is just, Yeah, you just, we just do, we
Charlotte Reddington: just keep going and keep going and turn up, do what we do and then you kind of sit back and it is, I think you do should, everyone should take time just to sit back and reflect on where you are going and what you are doing.
Just have a minute. I’ll say that.
Gemma Lilly: Don’t really. I think it’s really hard. No, listen, we are so blooming, grateful, like honestly, so grateful. And it blows our mind that tidy in someone’s wardrobe has gotten us to this point and we get messages all the time. You’ve inspired me to set up. You’ve inspired, but that again, is wonderful and we wanna share that knowledge.
We wanna see everyone do well. We are very big cheerleaders of people succeeding, but it does put pressure on. Subconsciously to do the next thing, be different, create. We don’t wanna copy, we always wanna be creating something fresh. And then have you had
Adam Stott: some moments where that action taken. Just wasn’t showing up for you.
What I’m trying to, you know, we’ve got obviously lots of different businesses in the room. We’ve got some businesses that are really big. Yeah. We’ve got some businesses that are smaller. Um, I think that, I think for the bigger businesses, you know, what you’ve been saying there with the celebrity aspect is if you are a bigger business in this room and you haven’t leveraged that, that would be a great thing for you to look at.
Leveraging, you know, how can you go and really build the brand through other people, which you’ve done a great job on. And we talk a bit more on the social media in a minute. For the other, for businesses that are more startup. I think that action taking is incredibly important. Has there been some moments where you haven’t took that action, where you haven’t dwelled?
Or is that the two of you bouncing off each other? What? What advice would you give to people to just get out there
Gemma Lilly: and do it? Um,
Charlotte Reddington: we’ll be honest, we do have down days we’re only human. It’s days
Gemma Lilly: where like, ugh, no, we’ve had some flops, we’re not gonna lie. Yeah. Like we’ve put a lot of energy into things.
We’ve done a few collaborations that we had really higher expectations for. Yeah. And there’s extra pressure because we want that to do well, it’s not just for us then it’s for other people. Yeah. And it wasn’t. Again, we’re talking about restrictions. We, if people listen to us, then it would’ve been brilliant, but because there’s always restrictions, we’ll make that sofa slightly smaller and it’s, we was doing a sofa collaboration and it was fine. It was done well, but it wasn’t quite that. I mean, we had. A series of serious background. Oh no.
Charlotte Reddington: Like the, yeah, because we had the launch party and was ready to talk about it. Then the queen died and then we, no one could post for like 10 days cuz it was seen it as being insensitive. So then the kind of hype had
Gemma Lilly: gone and then we had F ups with the pr and it was kind of like the world is against it.
Us, every little thing that we try and do, we’ll have a lockdown. Yeah. Or the queen will die or something. A a pivotal moment for our business and we’re like, But you’ve just gotta keep going and you’ve just gotta think, do you know what? Yeah, it’ll be the next thing. Otherwise we could look at that and be really defeated in certain instances, and it might put us off from ever collaborating again.
Adam Stott: How do the two of you handle that disappointment as well? When you’ve got
Charlotte Reddington: each other. Just mow and, and my husband’s like, oh my gosh, Charlotte. Sharp
Gemma Lilly: up. No, we’re fine. No, what we do, you just make the best of it. 10 days later we posted and, yeah. You know, that’s all you can do in that particular
Charlotte Reddington: moment. You just turn it around, don’t you?
And you just at that bad point and you think, okay, how can we make this into a good point? And just, you
Gemma Lilly: just gotta, you’ve gotta keep going and not be put off. I think there’s been so many instances, honestly, where we could have gone, you know what? I quit. I’m not doing this anymore. I would rather just sell a product.
It’ll be a lot easier. It won’t be easier, but you know, it’s a different kind of hard, um, why did you not quit? Because we just, we’ve invested too much. Yeah. We’ve. And we
Charlotte Reddington: do wanna see it grow. Like we’re so passionate
Gemma Lilly: and we can see end, we can see the potential end in that end goal. It’s, it could
Charlotte Reddington: be huge.
Like we are on that path and the, the vision we’ve got and it, we just, it’s just you. I think it’s about getting the right team behind you to help execute
Gemma Lilly: it. You know, we, I think what we should have done in hindsight, which is really valuable. I think is, we should have got PR really long time ago that the right PR can be really, really good for your business.
I’m not saying it’s essential, but if you’re gonna invest in anything at a certain point, yeah. Markets, when we were getting the coverage that we were getting, we should have invested in pr and had we had someone say, girls at that point, you’d really benefit from that, then it could have really elevated our business.
Yeah, even bigger. Um, so I think there’s been certain points and, and silly things that we should have got someone on admin, like PA maybe that could have run the mess, like mess taken control of the messages that we were getting in dms and emails because that got seriously neglected in the beginning.
[00:26:10] And I think it’s all them little things that we were kind of overlooking. Because we were just doing the job, we were filming or we were in people’s houses, that the actual running of the business ended up getting neglected. But we should have just given up control a little bit in the beginning and had someone doing the mess.
You know, the emails
Charlotte Reddington: a little bit of laying out with it, then got more work properly. Coming in, in hindsight, looking back and even things like tv, we’ve had so many TV production deals that have come on, come on board, and we get so close it being commissioned and then it doesn’t, something else happens.
But you know, like we, we always say like, it, it is, if it is coming to us, it’s gotta happen at some point. Like something will happen at some point. So we just, so we just keep going, just wear the journey. We honestly, we’re like a flowing river. It’s kind of, so I can describe it as like we start here, but it takes diverts and then changes and we’ll plan our week.
Gemma Lilly:
That’s right. We’re like we’re gonna, we’ve just bought, not booked, done a lease and another new office. We are never in the office ever. Every week we’re like, we we’re gonna have an office day this week and we are gonna do this, and we’ve got grand plans, and then it all gets blown outta the water because something will come up or an opportunity we can’t miss and we kind of just, Go with, like you said, week,
Charlotte Reddington: which was bad for me back in the day because I was very diary.
If it’s in the diary, it’s in the diary. Like I didn’t like change. I was like, is that, no, it’s got an appointment, it’s gotta happen and that. Then I’ve gotta change it to pencil rather than being in pen now. But I don’t even have a diary. It just goes in there. Cause it’s probably gonna change. So it, I’ve had to change a lot as a person, haven’t I?
Yeah. With the business and be a bit more adaptable.
Gemma Lilly: Whereas I’m a bit more scary,
Charlotte Reddington: I’m a bit more like the mummy one. I’m like, come on, gem, are you ready? And then she’s like, yeah, I’m nearly ready. Like it’s we. We are ying and yang. Like we’re very similar but very different.
Gemma Lilly: We’ve got different ideas. We always say Charlotte’s the bulldozer.
She’ll go in and kind of turn her room upside down and I’ll go in and. Finger space and make it all really delicate and nice and yeah, it just works.
Adam Stott: So in terms of your social media, right, you’ve, you’ve really shown up on a huge following on social media. You know, you’ve, you’ve done very, very well on that.
Do you wanna mention about some of the things, not necessarily the influencer stuff, cuz that’s helped build the audience For sure. Some of the things that you’ve done to really show up and cultivate people’s interest. If you do check ’em out on Instagram, they’ve got really good, um, certainly worth looking at your Instagram and what you’re doing.
Do you wanna talk about some of the, the content creation that you do, some ways that you really bring people in? What advice could you give to the people to power up their social media in a nice way?
Charlotte Reddington: I think people like to see who’s behind a brand. I’d like to, I think people like to see what they’re investing in, if they’re buying into product.
Who, what made you start that business? What made, like, you know, just seeing a bit behind it. Cause I think people then relate to it and it becomes a lot more personable.
Gemma Lilly: Yeah. I think content, social media is hu, I mean, it’s blooming demanding cuz really overnight everyone’s had to become content creators, videographer, photographers, videographers.
It is such a, And it’s not cheap to hire someone to do that for you, especially if you’re just starting out as a business, but creating people’s attention. Spams have got really small, so we, you know, the snappier reels always better. I think just being on present on the social, I mean, we have dips where we are kind of really all or nothing will be.
Constantly on the social and then we kind of disappear for weeks on end, and that’s our downfall. Like we need to make sure we’re staying cons. Consistency is everything and it can be really, really gutting. Sometimes you put a lot of time and energy into creating content and it doesn’t really get much love and it’s.
All about the, it will pay
Charlotte Reddington: off. It’s all about the algorithms as well. You’re working against this, this computer robot thing. You might, we’ve spent hours on this reel, I think now looks banging. That’s gonna go down a tree. Everyone’s gonna love that. And then it’ll get like not as many likes as we thought.
And we’re like, what? Then something else will go up with, with halfheartedly put up and it’ll get amazing response and you just, it’s nothing
Gemma Lilly: but no rhyme or reason, consistency. So then, But if you suddenly have that pivotal moment where something really hits it, people will then look on your social and see a backlog of stuff.
And I just think stay consistent. Yeah. Even if it feels like it’s not getting much love, it will build towards that bigger picture and, and just
Charlotte Reddington: making your grid look nice and, and not going off the subject. Keep it about what you are doing. Make it look aesthetically pleasing cuz people will instantly, as much as people say, oh, I don’t really care.
They do, they look at something, if it looks a little bit. Off or a bit not quite on your brand. They would go, oh, they will switch off from it. They’ll go to someone else. It looks a bit more snazzy and a bit more esthetically pleasing,
Adam Stott: and you two as individuals showing up on it. You know, how did you, how did you feel about that in the early days?
And I think it’s a,
Gemma Lilly: we kind of just needed to jump on the opportunity. Like if we didn’t do it, then it was kind of just, you’re getting all these amazing celebrity clients. You’ve got access to something that people don’t get access to if we don’t grab this opportunity. And just kind of, we had to not give a crap, let’s be honest, all these days that we were
Charlotte Reddington: literally like, Wearing hairs tied up in the most oldest gym kick covered
Gemma Lilly: in dust and, and we just felt so it like, yeah, we don’t care.
What we care about is building this brand, getting those numbers in engage. But people love
Charlotte Reddington: it. I think people like to see people being real, if I’m honest. I think when we are all dolled up and being extra like perfect and prim and proper, I don’t think it gets as much grab. I think people actually like the real deal.
Yeah. Like they kind of like to see the high, they like to see the highs and the lows and make them feel that you are just a human as well, which we all know it’s more
Gemma Lilly: relatable and especially doing what we do it. People like to think, oh my wardrobe’s that messy. Oh, I can create that. And I think it’s finding that thing in whatever you are doing that makes.
Customers or clients relate to what you’re doing that grab that kind of, I think
Charlotte Reddington: what, it was really lovely, gone a bit off subject, but we, we did the ideal Home show exhibition and we spoke there and then this lady come up to us with our book and she had all little post-it notes on different pages and she was like, girls, this is like my Bible.
It’s helped me get through so much mentally. I’ve just started a new relationship and I’ve got she, she just said, you’ve helped me so much and for us we think this is just a little book we put together, but. It’s really helping people. And for us, that’s what we love. We are people pleasers and we just like to help people.
And that’s kind of, that is probably the, the fundamental thing of our business is to help people and, and, and people being grateful.
Gemma Lilly: Cause that’s our best bit, best bit better than being paid is I’m like a child. I’m like, come and see what we’ve done. Opening the drawers, the door like and show that is the best bit.
Charlotte Reddington: And then, and, and seeing that they’re happy and like how the, the energy is lifted in a room and you’re like, oh, we did that. Just like we did that by using our like common sense, our skills, our ti like, it’s like, to some people it’s not groundbreaking for, but for some people it is
Gemma Lilly: really life changing.
But then we’ve had. Clients that probably just, yeah, they wanted their wardrobe organized or they’re home organized, but they weren’t too bothered by the mess. Like it wasn’t getting to them until after. And then they come in and they’re like, oh my God. I did not realize how much that was weighing me down.
Yeah, and there’s such a mental aspect to what we do, which is why I think it’s so powerful and people resonate so much and people are obsessed with it now. You know it’s a proper thing now, isn’t it? Everyone’s into organizing and because it can elevate your business, even if your business is nothing to do with.
Your home or being organized. Honestly, the power in decluttering and detoxing can just elevate you so much within whatever area that you’re doing business. It’s time, it’s, it’s subconsciously it will be weighing you down 100% and by it motivates, it’s a motivator clearing out. It kind of motivates you to sort of sort all areas of your life out once your home life.
Sorted. You think, oh, I can go and tackle anything, but
Charlotte Reddington: it’s like stagnant energy. If it’s just kind of sit like you’re in your office, for instance, you’re like, oh, having a bit of down day and you’ve got all paperwork everywhere and it’s a mess. If that was all organized and put away, you would feel in a better mindset, probably more positive, and your business might run a lot more differently.
Because you’re in a different head space.
Adam Stott: It definitely does make a difference without a shadow of a doubt. I’ve, I’ve found that whenever everything’s in a mess, sometimes you just need to take a moment and have a clear the decks. Right. For sure. Look, I, I think that the journey’s been amazing. I’m gonna open it up for a couple of questions, uh, from the audience, but for, for two girls that had an idea, Went out, forced its hand, made it happen.