How to establish your brand's voice: Millie Kendall OBE, The British Beauty Council

With research showing 90% of marketers agree that brand language is vital for business success, your business needs to speak confidently and clearly. Given this, I wanted to learn from an expert on how you can differentiate your brand’s voice in an ever-crowded market. 

In this episode, we hear from Millie Kendall OBE, renowned brand builder and founder of the British Beauty Council, Brandstand Communications and Ruby & Millie. With a 30-year track record of launching and marketing beauty brands, Millie founded the British Beauty Council in 2018 to nurture talent, growth and development within the industry. 

Keep listening to hear why Millie thinks a brand voice is critical for any new brand and how to begin defining yours. 

Millie’s advice:

• When branding your product, it is not just a question of logo
• Vitally important is that the branding should show the ethics of the company
• The brand identity will always represent the values of the founder (if a product is taken over, the brand identity is precious)
• When establishing a brand identity, try putting in a box the ten things in your home you value most - and then identifying what they have in common.  Your brand should reflect who you are, your DNA
• Imagine your customer is yourself
• Do your research, and be sure you know your audience (as well as your competitors)
• Then the tone of voice will come naturally, followed by the name, the packaging, the style
• These things will generate trust and loyalty in your customers
• Your brand voice will evolve over time, and rebranding can occur spontaneously
• It is important to be clear and authoritative
• If you believe in the efficacy of your product your brand voice will be strong

FF&M enables you to own your own PR. Recorded, edited & published by Juliet Fallowfield, 2023 MD & Founder of PR & Communications consultancy for startups Fallow, Field & Mason.  Email us at hello@fallowfieldmason.com or DM us on instagram @fallowfieldmason. 

Let us know how your start up journey is going or if you have any questions you would like us to discuss in future episodes. 

FF&M recommends: 

• LastPass the password-keeping site that syncs between devices.
• Google Workspace is brilliant for small businesses
• Buzzsprout podcast 'how to' & hosting directory
• Canva has proved invaluable for creating all the social media assets and audio bites.

MUSIC CREDIT Funk Game Loop by Kevin MacLeod.  Link &  Licence

Transcript

5 How to establish your brand's voice with Millie Kendall OBE, Founder of The British Beauty Council

[00:00:00] Welcome to season 10 of How To Start Up, the podcast helping you start and scale your business with advice from entrepreneurs on what to do now, next, or never when scaling your company. This season, we're focusing on all things brand. So you'll hear from a series of amazing entrepreneurs on what they've learned in their own journeys.

hosted by me, Juliet Fallowfield, founder of the B Corp certified PR and communications consultancy, Fallow, Field and Mason. Our mission is to enable you to earn your communications in-House with a long-term view.

[00:01:00] 

Juliet: hi Millie. Thank you for your time today on How To Start Up. It's wonderful to have you on. Before we get into everything around brand voice, I'd love it if you could introduce yourself and a bit about the background of your career.

Millie: Yeah, so, um, my name is Millie Kendall. I'm the current CEO of the British Beauty Council. Um, I also jointly own, a media agency called Brandstown Communications, in print and digital comms for beauty brands. I've tried to dabble in other topics, but beauty is my true love, so I'll stick with that.

Um, because I seem to be quite good at it, hopefully quite good at it. And previous to that, I was one half of a makeup brand called Ruby and Millie that was in about over a hundred boot stores. Selfridges and Harvey Nicks as well. before that I launched brands like Aveda Lockean, tweer man, [00:02:00] um, ura into the UK from sort of throughout two decades from about 1990.

And before that, I was a hairdressing assistant and I washed hair for a living, but never really made it onto the shop floor successfully. You would not want me to cut your hair ever.

Juliet: Well, it sounds like beauty has been with you as a great love throughout your entire career, but with that, we all know that branding is so important in the beauty industry, but as I find in the work that we do with clients, brand. It's a very interesting topic of discussion and it can often be linked to ego in a way because a lot of people will want to look at their logo or their website and their branding and then they don't think further than that in terms of their brand.

 Given this episode is all around brand voice, how would you define a brand's voice? [00:03:00] Um,

Millie: communicate to the consumer what you stand for. And I think branding has changed quite a lot. And oftentimes you're not necessarily aware of what that brand stands for.

You're buying into a brand logo, for example, because You feel like it adds gravitas to you and your style and who you are. So I think over the past sort of few decades, to be honest with you, I feel something sort of a bit lost.

Juliet: Yeah. Yeah.

Millie: be part of a tribe or a community.

So I think that people are just buying branded goods because they think it says something about them. Whereas they're not really looking into what the brand is trying to say about itself. And I feel like that can be quite confusing sometimes because I think that [00:04:00] brands, should be able to, show their ethics and their efficacy.

That's what I want from a luxury brand. For example, I want ethics. I want, you know, standing. I want to know that everything they do is good for the people, for the planet, for profit. You know, I want to know that, there's depth to what they're communicating. I think that some people will just buy brand just because they like the logo.

So

Juliet: this sounds like brand is so much more than just the logo. And when you're looking at a business, you have words and images and the two need to marry up. They need to be consistent. They need to talk to each other. But I found a lot of founders get distracted by the image and they don't think about the words and the story and the community and that ethical part behind it of how you, SEO through your communications.

Millie: Do you know what's a really interesting, I think, sort of case study in that regard is that if you look at Chanel, and there's a TV show on at Netflix about Dior, and you look at Chanel's [00:05:00] alignment with Dior, Nazi party during, during the war and how the effect that had on her brand at that time when she was trying to reinvent, whether that's true or not, there are two sides to that story, obviously.

But I think there's a lot to be said for efficacy and values. in a brand identity. And I think you're right. I think a lot of times that gets lost and there's a lot of damage in that. I mean, if you look at like founder led brands, particularly in the beauty industry, oftentimes when they get bought for the big bucks from a larger corporate organization or FMCG, the brand loses its identity as the founder is sort of slightly ousted because You know, the, the, the company want to take the brand in a different direction or whatever it may be.

Juliet: So the actual voice of the brand has left,

Millie: the voice, the values. everything that was the founding principles of that brand, even if the [00:06:00] corporate or parent or new owner, you know, whoever, whatever you want to call it, even if they try to emulate it, oftentimes it's a real struggle., without that founder, you have to, as a new owner, align yourself so well with the values of the founder in order to make it work.

Juliet: And it's that voice of the brand, of what the brand stands for. Because obviously when you found a business, you know what you're trying to do with your business and you have your vision and your mission and your purpose. You find your way with it and it can change and evolve, but establishing that brand voice, how important do you think that is to do before you even think about packaging, distribution, marketing

Millie: I think again, that goes back to efficacy because why would you start a brand if you didn't want to start something in your own DNA, if there wasn't a purpose for it, what's the purpose for starting a brand, starting brand, just because you want to start a brand seems sort of quite vacuous and a bit vain really.

Um, if you want to start something because, or you want to create something because you feel that there's a gap in the [00:07:00] market or something hasn't been happened or you've got true innovation or, you know, there is a real need to find a solution to a problem or there has to be a sort of raison d'etre.

And I don't, I sometimes find that brands are just launched and there really isn't any reason for its being. And it just doesn't seem to manifest into anything particularly exciting or go going places. So, so I think that, you know, I often find when I talk to people about branding, the brand should reflect who you are.

And I used to have a designer that would ask me to put 12 things of my own. Things from around my house or work into a box and they would design the brand based on that. Me in a box. Yeah. So rather than me say, Hey, I want it to be blue. If I then took 12 things from my house, put it in a box and gave it to them, and everything was orange, then there would be orange, not blue.

You know what I, what I say and who I am are two different things. So I always think it's really important to kind of like [00:08:00] put in a box 12 of your favorite things that you love at home, and then. See what that looks like

Juliet: Um,

Millie: in this sort of almost objective place, you know, photograph them, pin them up on a board.

Cause I think that's really identifies who you're, what your brand will look like if you're going to build it in your own DNA. And then I think that, generally we sell to people like us ourselves. So our customer. is ourselves in a lot of ways. 

Juliet: We're fixing a problem we found that we've come up against and 

Millie: Yeah, 

Juliet: we build the solution.

Millie: exactly. And what you don't want to do is to go too far out of your sort of realm of comfort, you know? And you need to create something sort of in your own identity. It's kind of like being God.

Juliet: But also you need to be so sure of what you're doing because you're going to work all hours at God's ends. You resolute in your value of what you are doing.

Millie: I would say be 80 percent sure of what you're doing. I just

Juliet: 80. Why [00:09:00] 80?

Millie: 100 percent sure or happy with what you've done.

Juliet: no. And that is definitely a question of when is enough and that metric of success of what, have I done my brand well enough or have I succeeded, like every business owner will have the same imposter syndrome and that's a part of the drive, but with your experience with the British Beauty Council, which large companies do you think have strong brand voices in your opinion?

Millie: Tilbury, definitely. I mean, Charlotte's brilliant, yeah. Absolutely

Juliet: Because she is the voice, she is actually speaking about the brand. Yeah, it's her personality through and through.

Millie: Absolutely. I mean, actually really Lisa Eldridge is my French. A lot of the makeup artists do that very well. And so did the hairdressers. I mean, Sam McKnight, the sort of cheeky names on his products,

Juliet: Yeah.

Millie: reflect him, his sense of humor. Um, the products smell like his garden, you know, uh, that's what I mean about pull your DNA into that brand.

I think it's [00:10:00] so effective.

Juliet: To know you quicker and understand your product faster, which ultimately in this very crowded airspace today is a very big blessing.

Millie: That's probably the most, I mean even, God, somebody sent me Larry King's hair products the other day. Absolutely brilliant. Looks beautiful in my bathroom. I love everything about this product. They smell great. I love the tubes. You know, I think if, and I can immediately think, Oh, I really want a haircut with Larry.

It makes me think that. So pour your DNA into a bottle. That's

it. 

Juliet: well, that's it and that builds that loyalty and that familiarity, I think, and it's not confusing where you've got so much consumer choice and we talked to lots of clients about owning their PR and where they say, but it's the most amazing skincare product on the market. It's like the market doesn't know that yet.

Would you say they should do first when looking at a brand's voice? Because we often, as we mentioned before, see people go into design mode and 10 different iterations of a logo and their brand [00:11:00] colors, but for their voice of how to establish what their brand tone and voice is going to be, other than the 12 elements of their personality in a box, are there any other hacks that you would give them of go for a long walk or talk to your grandmother?

Millie: I think, if you've got, a brand name, tone of voice, packaging, what, what is in the product, etc. You've got all of these different elements to make up your brand. I think you need to go with what you feel most comfortable with and what pops into your head first.

Juliet: Well, we do a lot of work with clients about, do you know who your competition are, have you done your market research? Cause we can go.

Millie: How many don't? Often

Juliet: Yeah. They blindly think they've done something that no one else has ever done before. But someone, I remember when I lived in Australia, someone said this, they said, it's the shark you can't see that bites you.

And so the first thing we do is look at the market and look at where they're positioned and who they're trying to talk to. Cause it's one thing trying to say what you want to say, but it's another thing making sure you're speaking to the right audience. And with brand voice, I think that's so important to, [00:12:00] Then once you know your audience, work backwards as to what they want to hear and does that gel with you.

Millie: the audience at all, they've just come up with an idea and they're trying to reach an audience that is not akin to them. The great thing about someone like Lisa Eldridge is she's built up a YouTube following of over a million followers, so she already. had an audience. Caroline Hirons already had an audience.

They know their audience. So therefore when they're building their brand, they are almost, it's creating a product in their DNA that suits the audience that they've already got. Very difficult if you don't have an audience. I once had somebody come to see me and they were like, we've developed this piece of technology.

It's completely new. It was like a Nespresso machine for skincare. So you could get your skincare sachet. So a little pot pod thing every day. You would, you would read your skin with a telephone, with an app, and about three days later, I got an email and somebody else had got exactly the same thing.

I mean, they can't have both come up with it overnight. Someone was obviously selling them the [00:13:00] technology saying it's completely bespoke to you. They hadn't done the research. So, you know, it's very unusual that you are, it's really difficult to be the first to market with something. And you don't always have to be the first to market with something that's completely innovative.

You can sort of slightly reinvent the wheel, but you don't have to completely reinvent it. And so doing your research is really vitally important, really important.

Juliet: I think where you can gain that market share is being one of the best in the market and where we look at PR talking points. You've got your unique talking points as a brand, but then you've got your market talking points and you could be a leader in that market. But you, you would agree with your competition on quite a lot of these things because you all recognize there's a need for this product.

But in terms of differentiation, how much do you think a brand voice needs to be unique? Or could it actually be quite similar to competitors

Millie: Well, I mean, I think that, I think that's an argument for, you know, when Lisa Eldridge launches [00:14:00] a tinted moisturizer or a foundation, There are thousands of foundations on the market. Why am I buying Lisa's? One is I trust her voice. Two is I like the packaging. Uh, I believe the product is a good product.

The color range is amazing. The communication of what she's developed. I find the video content appealing, the imagery appealing. And so it doesn't mean that her foundation is the most superior. There might be others that are equally as good or, or even greater. I don't know, it depends what you're after, but, but the fact is, is that every detail has been, has been thought through.

Juliet: Trust is there,

Millie: and trust is there, which is so important. Again, it goes to values and efficacy for me. I, I align with her values, her specific focus on makeup artistry [00:15:00] and getting that just perfect finish. And I believe that everything she does, she will do with integrity. And I think it's really important

Juliet: when we're all short of time and we want the decisions made for us, I think, especially in cosmetics, but definitely not limited to this, when there's trust built with a brand or a business or a service. I know now I've, I've worked in a coworking office the last three years, all my band of brothers have got me onto taking more protein into my diet and like, I'm not going to be that person that's taking protein powder.

But as of yesterday I am. And I surveyed them. I did my research. Brands, Instagrams, I looked at their values. One of them was B Corp, so that was a big thing for me because that stamp of approval, B Corp, it was already there. Looked at the pricing, looked at the packaging, looked at how easy it was getting to you.

I had to do all of that, but now that I'm on a subscription with them, I'm probably not going to reevaluate that for at least a year, so that trust when you get that in, but that brand voice that came through referrals, it came obviously originally from the founder and then the founder to the team, the team to the [00:16:00] packaging and the copywriting and the.

Consistency around that and then to the client. That to me is a really good success story when you're getting hit by that same brand from so many different touch points. And with that leads me to my next question of how dangerous is it to evolve a brand voice or change it?

Millie: Well, I don't think that it is particularly dangerous in a way true brand voice will always evolve because we are as human beings always involved evolving. I think the wonderful thing about having your own brand is it can evolve. I mean, the British Beauty Council, for example, you know, it's evolved, but it hasn't changed.

I think there's a difference between the evolution of a brand and completely changing it from, you know, black to white, white to black, whatever. Um, it, it's, you know, our brand voice was raising the reputation of the industry, enhancing education, investing in innovation. Uh, we, we had this sort of mission statement that I still use [00:17:00] to this day, really, even though times have changed, that was pre COVID, pre Brexit, pre Russian war.

I mean, it's not, we've evolved, but we've grown and we've developed, and we're much cleverer at it. And we're much more succinct at saying who we are and explaining it in a A very, very short space of time because people are more time than ever. And it's

very clear. Yeah. We've taken out, for example, the amazing, Robin Derrick, who used to be a creative director of Vogue created our logo, but he created it with these strap lines in between the British beauty council.

When it was small, you couldn't read it. And actually it turned out sort of two, two and a half, three years down the line. Somebody asked me what it said, and I couldn't even remember it. So I was like, get rid of it. So we got rid of it. And no one's ever noticed. 

Still the same logo just certain things have been, have evolved. And I think that that's a wonderful thing about being a brand owner and creating a brand is you can evolve your brand. For sure.

Juliet: [00:18:00] yeah, it's a blessing and a curse because where you've got so many decisions to make on a minute by minute basis. And then you're like, Oh, should we redesign our brand? It's like, is that the best use of our time

Millie: No I never approach it like that. Somebody sent me an email the other day and said, as the leaders of legislative change in the beauty industry. So I said, oh, that's our new strapline, leaders of legislative change in the beauty industry. It doesn't normally, I don't normally sit down and go, let's rebrand this.

Normally someone will say something, and like the penny will drop and I'll think, God, I must've been thinking about that it's sort of. Oftentimes, it's a bit of an opportunistic move in a different direction that kind of does change,

Juliet: when it's ready. 

Millie: Yeah.

But I've never sat down and gone, let's redesign everything.

It's never really worked like that. 

Juliet: I interviewed Julian who founded Create Academy about vision, mission, and purpose, and that was so interesting because he's, I think, four years in and your vision and your mission are kind of these bedrocks, your business, your purpose is [00:19:00] now incredibly important. That's coming up.

And up and up more often than it ever has done, but your brand voice, I think is a sort of a layer on top of that bedrock where it can evolve and change and grow.

Millie: I mean, I guess the thing is with the British Beauty Council for me, which has been quite challenging, is I remember when I met with Caroline Rush from the British Fashion Council, when we first started the British Beauty Council, because we're a sort of, Born out of sort of sister organization. And she said, this isn't your company.

It's not your business. Can't just do what you want. But the fact is, is that the voice is still mine. And so sometimes when we are posting things on social media or whatever, I'm very factual and very fast. I don't use a lot of ands, ifs and buts. I like, you know, don't put too many the, don't put the over, you know, 20 times in a sentence.

I'm very clear. I like to be very forthright about stuff. And it's like authoritative.

Juliet: recording,

Millie: straightforward, no sort of skirting around the issue, get straight to the point. And so actually the brand voice [00:20:00] is mine. And it does take some time for new members of the team to pick that up. So they'll send me a draft of an email they're sending out to their patrons or something, and I'll go, ah, just fluff, fluff, fluff, take that out, you know.

So

It's 

Juliet: not on the brand tone of voice. Yeah.

Millie: tone of voice. I think tone of voice is really important, I think that's where Charlotte gets it so right.

Juliet: You know what to expect and you're not surprised when you see a new product launch that's a bit cheeky because the brand is a bit cheeky and actually I have to say I'm wearing a full face of Charlotte Tilbury makeup because I absolutely love it because it

Millie: I mean,

Juliet: all the boxes.

Millie: I don't actually have any makeup on today. A little bit, but, but generally speaking, I'm always whatever. I mean, yeah, we all do. I mean, my 17-year-old daughter and I'm 57 and we both wear it, even though British Beauty Council isn't my brand, I've developed the brand and it is in my voice. When it, when there is a new CEO, whoever that might be, at some point, the brand voice might change and evolve a bit, but it will always have elements of me in it. [00:21:00] It can't not,

Juliet: What would you say were the biggest errors that you have seen in people getting brand voice, um, Wrong. It might

Millie:  Generally speaking, when people come and they ask for a bit of consultation, if I don't feel like they really are that brand, I can't, I mean, okay, here's a prime example.

We ran a competition in 2019 called the next British beauty brand, and there were certain precursors to coming in to presenting the brand to us. One is you have to have been in business for a year, a registered organization, company, whatever on company's house. So you have to be a bonafide organization and you have to stock in the warehouse, like ready to be able to sort of distribute the product.

wider than where it was already. And we had about 10 brands come to pitch and the ones that were really, that really worked were the ones that had a really good backstory. You know, they were really emotional. You could really kind of, [00:22:00] you could feel that that brand was going places. One guy came in and you could tell he was from some corporate entity and they had developed something and they wanted to tick a few boxes.

We are so and so friendly, we are so and so friendly, we are this friendly, this friendly. Everything was friendly. We're, you know, environmentally friendly. We're LGBTQIA friendly. We're this or that. He was so just a marketing guy at some large company, trying to create the next, I don't know, Diziac or Shake Up or whatever.

The sort of, the new sort of hot brands. And it was just so obvious that they were just, ticking boxes really.

Juliet: no soul to it.

Millie: You know, no efficacy.

Juliet: I absolutely love this cause we often say to clients, you are your own best storyteller because you have created that brand and owning that and being passionate about it. I think that, that passion that comes through from brand owners and business owners, and you know, we work with lots of service based businesses as well.

It's so true that, that soul and [00:23:00] personality, especially at the beginning, it drives everything, 

including how people understand it.

Millie: even if you look at something like MAC Cosmetics is now owned by Estée Estée Lauder for years and years and years and the two Franks, Frank Toscan and the other Canadian, two Canadian guys who developed it. The brand was really about freedom of expression. Even to this day, that brand still reeks of freedom of expression. Whatever that

Juliet: go to it for that. 

Millie: yeah, and it's so still there in the brand DNA. I mean, Lauder are very good like that with, you know, okay. There are sometimes hiccups with founders and things, but you do get, you do get sort of, you know, Jo Malone, Bobbi Brown, you know, even a Aveda. Um, and I worked for a Vader for a long time and or like lived and breathed that brand.

It was his, you know, everything about that brand was so. Well thought out, but I

Juliet: And on brand. 

Millie: on brand.

and I think still stay, you know, Lauder to do that very, very well. They keep the [00:24:00] community close and they keep the brand identity real. It evolves, it's gone from being.

The two Franks in Canada, to global domination, to, being a lauder linchpin. But you can still honestly say that brand is about freedom of expression.

Juliet: and that's what I think a lot of people kind of get tripped up on. It's like, we need to be on brand. Hang on, but we don't know what our brand is yet. So it's doing that work at the beginning and not hurrying it and not being so quick to market that you've forgotten to do that initial research.

Is there anything you would have done differently when creating your brand? For any of the hats that you've worn with Ruby and Millie, with the British Beauty Council, with Brandstand?

Millie: No, not really. I don't think there's anything particularly I would have done differently, mainly because a lot of the mistakes I made or what made the brand better. With Ruby and Millie, the only thing that I would have changed would probably have been the contract side of everything, the sort of legals.

That was, that was quite challenging for us as the brand started to develop and grow. Because Ruby and I were in a much weaker position. [00:25:00] Now I'm a lot older, I would never have signed that contract. 

Juliet: you don't know what you don't know at the 

Millie: I don't know what you don't know, but in terms of the branding and the you know, it sometimes I think I Fire a little bit too soon with things So I would have to say I had a brand called beauty mart a shop called beauty mart Um branding was very much like and my business partner and I have a very similar taste And we, we created this idea for a shot.

We wanted it to look like a Brian Ferry album cover with like a little bit of Japanese drugstore thrown in. And we wanted everything black with neon and, you know, but, even with Ruby and Millie, you know, it was way ahead of its time. I, I don't ever look back on things and say I regret them.

I might have put them in a different order. That might have worked better, you know.

Juliet: goodness, experience is what you get after you've needed it. So you can always look back.

Millie: And I think you have to take success in different measures, measurements. So, you know, [00:26:00] Ruby and Millie was a huge financial success, but really the biggest success story of Ruby and Millie for me was the concept behind the distribution of that brand and how we did a deal with Boots up front, which nobody ever knew.

I mean, even people at Boots don't even know that. And they poured all the money into it. So it was like, 7 million pounds was put into that brand up front. And then we sold it in Harvey Nichols and Selfridges so that everybody assumed it was a premium brand that we developed, that we put into Selfridges and Liberty, and then we sold it in Boots.

And now that seems like quite a common distribution model, but back then nobody launched in Selfridges and Harvey Nichols, and then went into boots. You just wouldn't have a brand in those two different environments. So even that part of the brand, the fact that the brand was developed to be a sort of very nice premium looking product that was sold in a mass environment, even the pricing of the brand, was quite unique at the time.

Because you only had premium and you only had mass. So, [00:27:00] so even that part of the brand is quite important. Yeah,

Juliet: I've spoken to a lot of founders, not just on the podcast, but generally, and you ask them is like, what mistakes would you go back and undo? It's like nothing. Cause it's got me here today. And it's so important to have, to learn the hard way sometimes. Um, and it is hard work, but it's rewarding. 

Millie: I would have slept more. That is the one thing that I think I would have I

Juliet: Oh, don't. I had the privilege of interviewing Russell Foster. He's I think the head of neuroscience and sleep at Oxford University. And he's like, you're running a red light on your business if you don't get enough sleep. That's really shocked me of, you have to put your life vest on yourself first before your business, because if you don't exist, the business certainly won't.

He's a sweet, sweet man. He gave me a very sort of big warning of.

Millie: Telling off. It's really difficult. It is really difficult. If there's one thing I could have done, the one thing I would have changed, I would have slept more. That's it. Absolutely, 100%. That's the only thing I would have changed. I feel like I've missed 10 years of my life because I didn't sleep[00:28:00] 

Juliet: Well, you're very busy because you've got so many different careers going on at the same time, which I have huge admiration for on next season's about productivity. So I might have to have you back on and ask about how you manage it all. 

Um, but something we do is the guest before, which was Lucy Cleland, who founded the magazine Country and Townhouse.

She had a question for you and that was, how are you going to differentiate yourself from your competitors? And this is quite tricky because the British beauty council is its own thing.

Millie: Yeah, we don't really have any competitors. I don't know if I've ever done anything where I've had

competition. 

Juliet: alone. Yeah.

Millie: That's the thing is, to develop something that is truly unique, therefore you don't have to worry about that of course.

Juliet: yeah.

Millie: I still look at lots, we just launched a membership, uh, platform, but actually I looked more at things like Soho house and what, how they manage members, 

Juliet: Or looking at asymmetrical competition or, or similar functioning. Yeah.

Millie: I tend to do that. I tend to look at brands that I think have had great success that aren't [00:29:00] necessarily operating within my space. So for Ruby and Millie, I was really attracted to danish design and food packaging when we were developing the sort of style of the brand, and I hired a fashion PR, not a beauty PR to manage the public relations for the brand.

And so I tend to look outside of my industry. So when we developed the British beauty council, a lot of the , elements of that, that we've adopted are from the fashion council. So that's how I tend to look at my competitors. They're not normally operating in my space.

Juliet: I remember once it was one of the, it was my previous employer to the one that I'm in now, which is obviously my own business, but the graph diamond family, they, I went down into the workshop and I saw this new machine. I was like, well, guys, what's that? And they're like, Oh, it's this. Crazy laser from the dentistry industry that we're using with jewelry.

Are you, but you don't need to know about that. I'm like, are you kidding? [00:30:00] That's an amazing PR angle that was just that cross pollination. I remember at Chanel, they used to look at, I think it was a NASA at foam in materials in rockets to help foundation become bouncier or something like that. So you can never not learn from someone else

Millie: I think, I think it's really interesting to look sort of across the aisle sort of outside of your sort of your, your industry. Some of the most interesting products have come from outside of our industry. You're right. Some of the technologies you look at like this seaweed and peptides and, the lasso therapy and things that have come from the ocean or come from, they just come from different, Parts of the world, different places, I don't necessarily develop things that I have a natural competitor within my space.

So that's never really been a challenge for me.

Juliet: And what would be your question for our next guest?

Millie: I do have a question. When do you know that you're ready to scale up? And I think that's [00:31:00] really critical because. I have a lot of brands coming through my door that have borrowed a bit of money from friends and family and they think they're ready to scale up and I, I don't think they are.

I'm no investment expert. I really never raised investment in, that sort of traditional way. When do you know that you're ready to scale up?

Juliet: It's a really hard question because it is another job and anyone I've met who's gone through a raise or look for investment or try to grow faster, it becomes another day job where you've already got 20 adding 

Millie: That's the other, yeah, that's the other thing. So when you are raising investment, you are being taken out the business to raise investment. As a founder, what do you do? You replace yourself. You can't replace yourself. You're the founder. So,

Juliet: those magic hours and that's where I think sleep becomes so, so precious and it's not protected because it's one thing it can go. 

Millie: You can really lose sight, you can [00:32:00] really lose sight of your mission because you're sort of busy trying to sell yourself. The other thing is that you're always at that point, that sort of, Start up to scale up point. You're always in danger of pivoting your brand too much to please an investor.

And that's what I mean about the branding thing. Evolve your brand, don't change it. Because what happens is, is that an investor will say, well, I really like your brand, but I think everything should be move. Let me go back and make everything move. And the next guy go, yeah, I don't really like the move, but I think everything could be square.

Juliet: and they don't know, you know.

Millie: It's like, it's that sort of slightly. Yeah.

Juliet: And when you, I think a lot of people said that as well, when they have investment, it's like, they've suddenly given themselves a boss. Whereas previously when you're self employed, you don't have one and you can miss that senior support, but with investors, be careful who you're taking investment from because they will have an opinion and they will want to be heard and then it's the management of those stakeholders.

There's another job there. So

Millie: A [00:33:00] massive. I had a business and there was a gentleman on the board. I call it, you call him a topic creep. He's just lean back sort of waving his tie. And he. He used to make my business partner cry every single board meeting he made her cry. And we'd take an investment, not much investment, in fact, he didn't even really have the right legally to sit on the board.

He was there in an observer capacity, but he never shut up. And one day I just called him up and I said to him, do you know what? I'm going to just let you know right now that you are not invited to another board meeting. But as well, I think you might've overstepped the mark. You can't say that to me. And I said, do you know what?

I've actually done my homework. I've checked the legals. Yes, I have. I am well within my rights to ask you not to come. And by the way, you make my business partner cry. I don't want you in the room. And I never saw him again. It was great.

Juliet: go you. I love 

Millie: You do have to sometimes stand up for yourself a bit. Or stand up for someone else, you know.

He was

Juliet: Yeah,

Millie: horrible to her. Absolutely

Juliet: have heard this a lot. It's, uh, people say to me, if you can hang on to a hundred percent as long as possible and it's still growing, do, because be careful who you take [00:34:00] investment from. It's a whole other, that's why we did a season on investment because it's such a topic where people are like we don't know what we're doing

Millie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Juliet: Thank you so much for your 

Millie: No, 

Juliet: Millie. I

Millie: so much. Really good to chat. I love chatting.

 I really hope you've enjoyed this conversation, you can find a recap of all the advice so kindly shared by guests in the show notes, along with our contact details.

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