How to manage a portfolio career with Nnenna Onuba, Founder of LBB Skin

The Department for Education found in 2022 that 63% of UK adults hold multiple roles, demonstrating the extensiveness of the portfolio career. However, how do you create multiple roles for yourself and, importantly, ensure you deliver across them all? 

To answer this, I wanted to hear from an experienced portfolio career holder who manages several roles at once - as an M&A growth expert, angel investor and advocate for inclusive leaders Nnenna Onuba founded her first business, LBB Skin, in 2018, & has since built a mergers & acquisitions consultancy and the leadership & inclusion advocacy organisation 100 Allies. Nnenna also holds directorships with organisations including the British Beauty Council and the Royal Veterinary College. 

Keep listening to hear Nnenna’s advice on separating your different roles and effectively balancing competing demands on your time.

Nnenna’s advice:

• You need plenty of life experience first
• You must know yourself and what you’re good at, so you can hone in on your strengths
• You need to be the sort of person who enjoys continual learning
• Tackle the tough creative tasks at the beginning of the day when your energy is highest
• When you are relaxed you will be more creative
• Accept that as you age your energy levels may alter, and different times of day will suit you better
• Stay innovative
• If you mentor others you will learn from this
• Attract people with different skills to your own
• Don’t be afraid to delegate important things and trust others
• Additionally, surround yourself with people who inspire you
• If you tackle uncomfortable jobs you will get better at them
• If you are properly self-aware you will be more observant of others
• Try to do even one small thing that makes a difference

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.

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. 

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

Transcript

Juliet Fallowfield: [00:00:00] Welcome to season 11 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. This season, we'll be hearing about all things productivity from amazing entrepreneurs sharing how they've hacked theirs. Hosted by me, Juliet Fallowfield, founder of the B Corp certified PR communications and podcasting consultancy, Fallowfield & Mason. Our mission is to enable you to master your own storytelling, whether that be via PR or podcasting, all with a long term view.

Juliet Fallowfield: The Department of Education found in 2022 that 63% of UK adults hold multiple roles, demonstrating the extensiveness of the portfolio career. However, how do you create multiple roles for yourself? And more importantly, ensure that you deliver across all of them. To answer this, I wanted to hear from an experienced portfolio career holder who manages several roles at once.

Juliet Fallowfield: As an M&A growth expert, angel investor, and advocate for inclusive lean As an M&A growth expert, angel investor, and advocate for inclusive leaders, Nnenna Onabu founded her first business, [00:01:00] LBB Skin, in 2018, and she has since built a mergers and acquisitions consultancy and the leadership and inclusion,, and the leadership and inclusion advocacy organisation, 100 Allies.

Juliet Fallowfield: Nnenna also holds directorships with organisations, including the British Beauty Council and the Royal Veterinary College and the Royal Veterinary College. Keep listening to hear Nnenna's advice on how you separate your different roles and effectively balance the competing demands on your time.

Juliet Fallowfield: It's wonderful to have you on How to Start Up today. We're going to talk all around productivity, which I know can be a blessing and a curse. But before we get into that, it would be wonderful if you could introduce a little bit about yourself and your business background.

Nnenna Onuba: Fantastic. I'm pleased to be here. My name is Nnenna Onuba and I wear a lot of different hats, but I'm going to keep it tight today. I'm a beauty founder. I'm an M&A and strategic worth adviser

Nnenna Onuba: I'm an angel investor. I sit on the few non exec boards, including the British Beauty Council, Royal veterinary college [00:02:00] and Cheltenham ladies school.

Nnenna Onuba: And I'm continually discovering more and more of myself.

Juliet Fallowfield: Amazing. Well, congratulations, first off, cause that's an impressive list and your LinkedIn is something to behold. Today we really want to talk about portfolio careers. Cause I think a lot of people, especially coming out of the pandemic, see another way of working and living. And the fact that you don't have to just sell your soul to one business for life anymore, in any shape or form.

Juliet Fallowfield: For you, when we were talking to you about coming on the podcast, we wanted to talk about productivity and I've had a lot of pushback from people going, that shouldn't be celebrated. It's not something that should be heroed, you know, busy fool. And you came back saying, I'd love to talk about portfolio career.

Juliet Fallowfield: So what, how would you define a portfolio, say that again? how would you define a portfolio career?

Nnenna Onuba: that's a good question. Look for me it's about making space to really do multiple things because we're not one thing, or at least I realised that I'm not one thing. I have different interests, but I also have some skills. Right. So my starting point for me is like my passion, [00:03:00] right. And then lead from there. So that's, that's sort of in a nutshell, the definition part

Juliet Fallowfield: So having a variety of different interests and

Nnenna Onuba: and being

Nnenna Onuba: able to, yeah. And being able to really go from there. So, like I said, I start with my passion. I haven't done this for very long. I say I've done it for six years, so I'm still figuring it out myself. And prior to that, I worked, I did a certain thing for about 15 years. And I think in that sort of very straight career platform, I discovered a lot of things, or I understood a lot of things about myself. And I think one of them is I realised that actually, if I'm really passionate about something, I do an incredible job. Like I do an incredible job and my personal, my personality type is that I will apply myself. And so I thought, look, I have evidence from my historic career where I did work, not necessarily on things I cared a lot about. And I was extremely productive at it. And so I guess in this portfolio world, I was like, what could it look like if I actually went after things I have a lot of passion about, but I'm still using the skills that I'm quite good at. comfortable and confident I have, wouldn't it be so much more amazing? So that's really how the journey [00:04:00] started. And I keep, it keeps evolving.

Juliet Fallowfield: I bet it does, there's never a dull moment. And I, I feel like I've sort of really conflicted because a lot of people are telling me niche down, be a specialist in one thing and do that really well and you become known for that. But my brain is telling me, I love communications. I love podcasting. I love mentoring.

Juliet Fallowfield: I, And being self employed. Because it's not about the money, it is about keeping my brain happy, and I'm learning more, and I'm challenging myself. How do you balance out that becoming successful from a revenue perspective versus maybe spreading yourself too thinly? And then the other part to that is time, but we'll come on to that in a minute. It's really hard, isn't it? 

Nnenna Onuba: It is really hard, 

Juliet Fallowfield: do you feel as long as you're fulfilled and you're doing right by the work that you're doing, that's fine by you. And if some people think that you're spread too thinly, or I mean, the expression is a jack of all trade, a master of none is like, well, I know I can be a master at being a mentor and I can be a master at communication.

Juliet Fallowfield: So how does that sit with [00:05:00] you?

Nnenna Onuba: So, for me, it's one of the things, again, look, I'm 44, right, so I have a lot of evidence behind me about who I am and what I like and etc, etc. So, what I, a lot of evidence tells me I'm really, you know, focused. I do stuff, I'm

Nnenna Onuba: Reliable, etc. So what I've started to really focus on is managing my energy. I have core skills.

Nnenna Onuba: So even though it seems I'm adding all of these things, it's still building on some fundamentals, right? I'm really good at finance and business. That is where my expertise lies. There are other things I keep learning, right? Entrepreneurship, building a business, et cetera. And cause I'm also very curious.

Nnenna Onuba: And I think this education piece And the dynamic environment are things that I know I really enjoy. All of my work has always had that element. So I'm not, when I think about it in that way, even though it seems like I'm doing different things, I'm not actually straying too far from that foundation. And when I think about my work as well, so niching down, I agree, right?

Nnenna Onuba: Like you have to have skills that you're [00:06:00] expert at. Because that is what you can transact with, right? That's people pay for expertise. No one's paying for someone to be wishy washy. Anyone can go to and we're in chatGPT days, right? You can

Nnenna Onuba: be an expert really quickly. So again, you need to know your thing.

Nnenna Onuba: So I think those things matter. Having like a core base. But leaving yourself, for me, that portfolio career living is about leaving some flexibility to still discover, because as human beings, we're constantly growing, you know, challenging ourselves, evolving, and also the environment we're in is evolving. So

Juliet Fallowfield: And they all feed each other, presumably, as well, like you're learning all the time from these sort of Venn diagram is real. Have you found that that gives you ideas to bring back to other parts of the business?

Nnenna Onuba: Absolutely. And there are, even though, I have rappers, big rappers, right? The two big circles are finance and business, right? M&A, selling businesses. And then the other rapper that exists today is beauty. So even though I have different hats and I shapeshift every [00:07:00] conversation when I'm being a mentor to a founder I've invested in, you know, I'm learning from them as much as I'm advising when I'm selling a business from an entrepreneur who has achieved so much that, you know, this is the ultimate exit, right? That every entrepreneur dreams of. I'm learning so much as well in understanding the business about how it was built and how to be an entrepreneur. When I sit on the board of the British Beauty Council, we're looking from a more holistic perspective. But there's a lot of evidence and research in terms of being able to articulate the value of that industry that feeds into all the other work.

Nnenna Onuba: So it's a little bit connected. And so, again, that's why I said there are big circles so that I don't veer too far out. And let's look at my work, for example, my non exec work. So one of the things I realised, and I think it's important to understand because there's a lot of logic,

Nnenna Onuba: To how my portfolio career came about I set out I came into beauty as a founder, right?

Nnenna Onuba: So I knew I was going to be dealing with really small businesses at least for a [00:08:00] while in the beginning and I was like, but I have all this expertise. It's about big business and big and I was like I'll be remiss to discard that. And so actually taking on these non exec roles were also exposed to different types of people who think differently and bigger organisations was a way of keeping that relevant, but in a new sector. So again, I'm still learning and the mishmash. I mean, gosh, this is my power is that I've been exposed to so many different types of businesses, so many experienced people who I learned from constantly. And I keep evolving. It really excites me. It really excites me.

Juliet Fallowfield: And your mental Rolodex of, I think we're quite similar in that way, that dot connecting exercise is like, well, that person over there is an email marketing expert and this person over here has got a beauty brand that needs email marketing and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, it's sort of feeding all that time and we're both talking a lot with our hands and that, when you said the word energy, it really resonated because it, that's what gets me excited.

Juliet Fallowfield: That's where I get in that flow state [00:09:00] and that have normal profit or whatever you want to call it, that extra bit that's just more than just doing the work. For you, what, what, What does energy mean to you? is it?

Nnenna Onuba: Oh, it's everything. It's When I say it's everything really is everything because I realised I'm sure everybody has experienced this, right, where you have a bit of work and it's taking you a long time to do it. Really? It just doesn't feel natural. One of the things I realised and that's what the portfolio bit allows me to do is because I have choice Right and i'm an entrepreneur so a lot of things i'm doing i'm driving as opposed to it being pushed on me of course some stuff is pushed on me because you have teams etc, right that you're accountable to or shareholders. So, so, so one of the things with my energy is I've learned systems about how I work. For example, I'm extremely productive at the start of the day. I was like, Oh God, how can I wake up earlier so I can capture more of that hyperproductive time? And so I do all the hard things, all the strategic, all the creative work has to happen at the beginning of the day. And then the rest of the day starts to [00:10:00] shift, right? I'm not saying it's always that way. Of course I can find creative and productive moments. I'm saying optimums, right? So that's, I've hacked it in that way. So the rest of my day will be more chatting, going out, having meetings, et cetera, or switching to more administrative tasks.

Nnenna Onuba: And sometimes, I also find when I come with high energy, I'm my most creative. That's things happen quickly. My younger version of myself, I'm just going to, cause I'm sure we have other questions. My younger version of myself defined it as, Oh, I definitely work under pressure. So I need

Nnenna Onuba: to, I was like a lastminute.com type person. It was

Juliet Fallowfield: Well,

Juliet Fallowfield: we were taught that that was good and that you should learn to be under pressure at all times and then you're productive and it's like, it's not healthy. 

Nnenna Onuba: Exactly. I mean, there is a fine mix, right? Because but again, It's that understanding of you and how you perform and actually how you then use that to create something that's a little bit balanced. I didn't want to, you know, I left investment banking because I didn't want to work in that almost constant state of pressure because actually I was like, like that stress, that's lizard brain type thing. When [00:11:00] I'm relaxed, I'm in my natural flow. Everything feels easier. I'm my most creative. I enjoy my work. My conversations are much more organic. And I'm my best self. So I just almost constantly trying to achieve that type situation. I hope that answers

Nnenna Onuba: how I think about energy. 

Juliet Fallowfield: Absolutely. And I think a lot of people said you're either lark or an owl. I'm like, I might be both and that's not good either. But when you're doing something you love, you want to do it more. And in that flow state where you've got that good energy coming through and that you're feeling like you're, you're firing on all cylinders, it's satisfying.

Juliet Fallowfield: You get job satisfaction. Who wouldn't 

Nnenna Onuba: And I'm going to add, I'm going to add one thing to that, because again, it's back to this, we are not one thing. And we evolve also as individuals. So I've for sure, in my younger, early working years, my twenties and probably early thirties, I was much more of an evening person. Like, you could not, like my day, we worked long hours, and so, like, I'm not really a human being until about 11am. And then I would go late [00:12:00] into the night. I don't know when the flip happened, but it happened.

Nnenna Onuba: And I realized, huh! 

Juliet Fallowfield: What actually changed for me when I moved to Australia and I started going for runs at six o'clock in the morning, I was like, I have to go to bed at 10, it's not an option. I flipped then.

Nnenna Onuba: I've always exercised. So in fact, my gym session happened at the end of the traditional work day, right? So we were done with meetings, clients had shut down their computers and we were about to do the real shift. And then I would go to the gym then and then come back a little bit rejuvenated and do like my final bits of quiet work. And so almost what I described in the morning happened for me. In this awkward, really late evening hour, and it just, again, I don't know, it just shifted at some point, but I think actually it might have been when I left corporate and started to sort of flow more naturally. With my energy, I love to wake up.

Nnenna Onuba: I'm really weird. I love to be outside. I love to I really look forward to hearing the birds chirping away in the morning and I only seem to hear that [00:13:00] really really early before the day starts and I think maybe that's where it started. I've never really thought about it

Juliet Fallowfield: I think you've tapped into the circadian rhythms. I had a fascinating conversation with Dr. Russell Foster that's written a book about sleep and how we circadian and is about a day that we're on a sort of, sort of 24 hour clock, but not all of us are 24 hours and not all of us need seven hours or eight hours.

Juliet Fallowfield: You could be a three hour sleeper, you could be a 12 hour sleeper, work out what you need without an alarm and you're good. But every single guest on the podcast has said, you've got to know yourself to be a good founder.

Nnenna Onuba: see it again.

Juliet Fallowfield: Sorry, the irony is not lost. I keep losing my voice. And the fact that if you know yourself and how you work and what matters to you, you'll do better by your team, better by your clients and better by yourself and you have that autonomy and people are like, oh, you can take endless holidays.

Juliet Fallowfield: It's like, that's not the autonomy we're talking about. It's, I can choose to work in a way that works for me, which means that everyone else that gets to be, Part of this will benefit as well, you hope. And I think I very much struggle. I mean, I'm early doors in this, but I was like, I'll just keep working.

Juliet Fallowfield: I'll just work and work and work harder, harder, harder. I'll be more productive. I keep saying that in inverted commas produce [00:14:00] more and therefore it will benefit. And I burnt myself out. I was exhausted. I wasn't sleeping properly. I gave up exercise. I gave up meditation. And I know that you mentioned the book, Ikigai.

Juliet Fallowfield: And I was given it a couple of years ago and it's the only book I've read more than once and I've underlined it and I've given it to friends and I absolutely bloody love it. It's incredible. What did that book do for you? Did it shift any mindsets?

Nnenna Onuba: Absolutely. Like, I don't know what you call that category. I call them the growth books. And I've been on a little bit of journey. So something you said really resonated, which is actually self mastery. I think it's the absolute power. If there's anything people should focus on the most in their lives is can understand who you are, what you I think you have a lot more control because you can tell people your story.

Nnenna Onuba: You can tell people your narrative. And actually a lot of the complexities that I think we find in interaction is actually that lack of understanding. And I guess it's what we also call confidence today, right? Because no, your narrative is not my [00:15:00] narrative. This is mine, know, and that is essentially what's, what it is.

Nnenna Onuba: So with Ikigai, what I really liked about that, and again, the move. About six years ago for me was, you know, not organic. It was extremely intentional. And I realised that I had proven a lot of things about who I could be in my career and achievements, et cetera, et cetera. And one of the things I realised was, was important to me was meaning, purpose, et cetera. And so that book for me, what I loved about it is it started to help me understand, right? And almost work towards something which is my ultimate, my ultimate goal in my work life. 'cause work will always be important to me and probably borderline a workaholic on some level, right? And so I was like, my ultimate goal is when my passion and purpose and the work that people value. And you know, will pay me to do are almost one thing. And so the whole idea of Ikigai and this, you know, what is your [00:16:00] passion? What will the world pay you for? That's where I was like, Oh, I really, really like this approach of thinking about things. And let's just keep pushing them together so that I can get there.

Nnenna Onuba: It's a journey. I'm still working towards it, but 

Juliet Fallowfield: Well, you've 

Juliet Fallowfield: launched 

Nnenna Onuba: .

Nnenna Onuba: about. 100 allies. Do you want to tell us a bit about that?

Nnenna Onuba: Oh goodness. 100 Allies is like my whole life. So, when I say it's my whole life, and that's why I describe it as it's a journey in my life where I will continue. I'm someone who is unable to see a problem that connects with me and where I think I have a solution that can be applied and then I walk away from it and I'm passive.

Nnenna Onuba: Of course I manage my energy so I don't take on more than I can chew. Or at least I try not to. So 100 allies is a I guess in the simplest way of describing it, our mission is to lift everyone towards leadership. And it's really about turning potential into success. And it's built [00:17:00] around, so again, I always say, you know, diversity is not just how it looks. It's how decisions are made. So this whole focus on how leaders are made, especially in an industry like the one I'm in, which is a consumer and a people industry, where actually to lead and build businesses effectively, you need to have a strong cognitive sense of your consumers. And so for me, because I wear all these different hats and I've come to beauty by way of engineering and accounting, investment banking, you know, so there are lots of, oh, I'm also an immigrant, right?

Nnenna Onuba: So I, came from Nigeria and I moved to the UK almost 24 years ago. So my perspectives and intersectionality is, it's so unique. And so six years ago and the way I came, I was like that fresh perspective in this industry that I found and I love. I was like, look, I observed that look, it seems to me like a lot of companies have the same blind spot. Their consumer is evolving. They all wanna [00:18:00] grow. Yet they're sleeping on lots and lots of opportunity. And mostly because the people who actually know how to unlock the opportunity authentically, we're often not in the business, in the wrong role, or unsupported and quietly quitting. And I was like, this is ridiculous, right?

Nnenna Onuba: You're missing out on business opportunity from this from, from, from very homogeneous. And so that's where 100 allies was born from. I was like, look, because of my intersectionality and also because of the experience that I came with, which is as a woman from a lower socioeconomic background, a woman of colour, you know, I navigated many only spaces and there were some strategies that accidentally and this is what I love about my life is so many things organically have happened and have taught me and so accidentally

Nnenna Onuba: there were some, you know, sponsorship, executive coaching the power of believing in someone's potential as being things that really allow people that you might not ordinarily code [00:19:00] to be successful, to show some element of what potential can look like, that power of believing. And so that's really what we're doing in 100 Allies.

Nnenna Onuba: I know that there are lots of unseen talent in our industry and people who have ambitions and was like, look, we can scale opportunity and actually it drives growth. And that for me is a mission I'm excited about. So

Juliet Fallowfield: Well, congratulations. It's huge. You've mentioned lots of the pros about having a portfolio career, but what are the cons? What are the negatives? Are there any?

Nnenna Onuba: there are, there are, there are lots and

Juliet Fallowfield: Oh, nothing's perfect. I think we should be honest about 

Nnenna Onuba: No, absolutely. So, I think for me, it's the biggest one, and I have to keep, again, it's, you know, I have lots of, it's that feeling sometimes of starting again, it's like, oh crap, you know,

Nnenna Onuba: in 

Juliet Fallowfield: yes. That new girl at school feeling of, Oh, we're back at the bottom.

Nnenna Onuba: It really is. And it has been, but it's also, again, it's driven a lot of growth because I've had to figure out how I make it work,

Juliet Fallowfield: You like a 

Nnenna Onuba: challenge 

Nnenna Onuba: beginning. And I don't know, I wish my life was easier. I could do with that, but hey ho, [00:20:00] you know, growth tends to come on the other side, so I embrace it. So, you know, it's again the same, like in a new space, right?

Nnenna Onuba: Where, whereas in finance and investment banking and the way I was doing it, I had established networks. I had built the judgment muscle, right? So there were lots and lots of things that suddenly I find myself in this new world. Let's take entrepreneurship. I joined as a founder. I was everything I was doing was new. Everything was like, Oh God. And so again, it made me really, really hyper focus on the things that helped me in surrounding myself, but really experienced people, really talented people. And in a way, we talked about 100 allies, but it's so linked because in that search for, how do I build that network that allows me to, you know, almost compliments this lack of muscle, which now has developed massively.

Nnenna Onuba: You know, I'm not where I was. I have more established networks. But there are still moments where I still feel quite new. But again, I'm someone who really [00:21:00] thrives on learning. I do. I think my goal. Worst situation is when it's stagnated. I will

Nnenna Onuba: add a new project, and sometimes that's what these new projects are.

Nnenna Onuba: It's a way of staying constantly innovative, and, and, and really, I don't know, feeling fulfilled.

Nnenna Onuba: The other thing as don't you, to it? You get a bit addicted to that high of, Oh, I didn't know I could do that And now I can. What else? And my team, our own worst enemies were like, we're just going to redesign the website because we don't know how and it's going to take some time. It's going to make our brains hurt.

Juliet Fallowfield: And they actually said to me, I need another brain hurt project. I was like, I love this. Okay. Let's think of something. But I definitely hit that in sort of year two, year three, where the learning curve at the beginning had been like this, it's like, I don't know how to build a website, I don't know how to use Xero, I don't know how to negotiate terms, all of that initial lovely admin setup stuff had be done.

Juliet Fallowfield: And I'm like, now what? Like, Oh, I kind of miss the learning curve and the trajectory. And then, you know, you expand the business and you change the business and you do do things differently. And you, you become an addict to that in a good way, I think, because then you're growing and [00:22:00] learning.

Nnenna Onuba: absolutely, but we come back to that thing we talked about at the beginning, self mastery. So in this, allowing myself the freedom to experiment, but still fail fast. I'm also learning, because I came in with a lot of assumptions around what entrepreneurship looked like, around who I am as a worker, I wanted all this autonomy, but actually I learned that there were aspects of the previous work that were extremely important around how I'm effective.

Nnenna Onuba: You know, I really believe that. Bounce off having smart people sharing ideas. You said you learn from speaking. I share, I learn from actually teaching and socialising

Nnenna Onuba: the things I'm working on with people. But the other aspect of mastery, I also understood that there were certain things I thought, I was like, I'm crap at that.

Nnenna Onuba: I have zero business doing that. So actually now in sort of thinking about teams and people who compliment my own superpower, A I'm understanding where my strengths lie with more clarity. So I can really [00:23:00] like hone in and try and choose those all the time, but the ability to now bring in really smart people around me, people who are smarter than me, who are better and more qualified, et cetera, which allow us to, you know, move faster.

Nnenna Onuba: It's it's incredible. Incredible.

Juliet Fallowfield: and it's totally okay and a very good thing for any founder to recognise what they're not good at because if they try and be good at something that's not flowing and not comfortable, don't do it. It's just, you waste time and you go down a rabbit hole where you're just feeling frustrated. So yes, there's some things learning the hard way and there's other things actually you're better off asking an 

Nnenna Onuba: expert 

Nnenna Onuba: Indeed, a friend of mine said something, he's an investor, very experienced investor, and he's like, I'm going to tell you what my number one sign of a good founder is. It's The best founders I've seen are able to delegate very important things. And I was like, hmm, okay, that will be a goal.

Juliet Fallowfield: Yes,

Nnenna Onuba: get delegating away.

Nnenna Onuba: But

Nnenna Onuba: it really does free you up. 

Juliet Fallowfield: Yeah, and risky, chunky things that [00:24:00] have meaning and it's fine to delegate stationary order, but I actually quite like doing that. But the really big thing. So when Francesca and my team's like, I'd like to redesign the website. Which is our, you know, our home. People discover us through that.

Juliet Fallowfield: I was like, great. And the, her and Sam have rewritten it, designed it all themselves. And I looked at it, I'm like, great, signed off. And they're like, what? I was like, trust you. You know it better than I do. Brilliant. It was thrilling to see how good they were at this. And I was like, you're better at it than I am now.

Juliet Fallowfield: Fantastic. One thing I wanted to ask you is about time in the sense that it is so precious. It is finite. How do you manage your time and how do you compartmentalise those different roles that you have in your career?

Juliet Fallowfield: Do you have hacks or is it just natural to you?

Nnenna Onuba: Time, time is extremely important, right? It's, you've just said it's the most precious asset that we have. So I think it's really essential to manage it wisely and avoid wasting, I keep coming back to energy, right?

Nnenna Onuba: And so how do I manage that? I [00:25:00] create structures again, you know, as an entrepreneur, you do have to create structures that just allow you to help manage things.

Nnenna Onuba: So like I just said for me, continuous learning and not just, it's so important in how I grow, develop, especially in the world we live in that's constantly evolving. And so I'm regularly in my industry anyway, I regularly read trend reports, informed reports, stay up to speed. I try and surround myself with a lot of inspiration. So I talk to people who I learn from constantly, who inspire me. They're the ones I follow on social media. I've done a lot of auditing, I think in the pandemic of things that really wasted my energy or depleted me.

Nnenna Onuba: Love 

Juliet Fallowfield: an audit.

Nnenna Onuba: No, but it really is, because I realised, and this was like a hack, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's almost the energy hack for me was, I started actually keeping a little diary of how my engagements, especially my most frequent engagements made me feel and I started to see patterns, so I could see that there were actually some spaces that I was in [00:26:00] that didn't fill my cup, and I was just like, actually, we need to spend less time here in those environments. And so I think I've just been gradually moving into high vibration, and I'm already a very optimistic can do. So I kind of like, yeah, where am I, where am I trying?

Nnenna Onuba: Let's just go find them. The world is already hard enough. It's already ugly enough. It's already, it's already, it's already. I'm not really a moaner. Of course, everybody needs to make space for, you know letting stuff off, but I'm more of a, okay. And so then what's the action? So I was just like, I kind of want to be with those people who are

Nnenna Onuba: much more let's just get on with it. We can  We can drive change in our own little way.

Nnenna Onuba: So that, for me, is really important. I think we already talked about energy management, and there's one more I think that's extremely important, which is actually embracing the discomfort. So in terms of how I work, I was like, naturally, again, let's look at everything as a spectrum, right? I'm much more on the, naturally, in the more introverted end. And if you, Over time, I, I just, as an entrepreneur, I [00:27:00] didn't plan it, but I was like, I'm going to have to do things that I do not love. Public speaking, going out and networking, da da da da da,

Juliet Fallowfield: your own PR. Yeah,

Nnenna Onuba: Like, talking on LinkedIn, I was like, kill me now. So. 

Juliet Fallowfield: don't worry. My team made me turn the camera on about two years ago for the podcast. I'm like, don't make me do that. It's like, no, we need your face on Instagram. I'm like, Oh God, okay fine. I'm doing 

Nnenna Onuba: Exactly, doing Instagram lives. I was like, goodness, I did not enjoy it, but I've done it. And again, one of the things I realised is from doing, stretching, doing the uncomfortable things. The only way it's like I exercise, the only way to get better is keep doing it. And the more I do it, I don't know, it's not even a stress.

Nnenna Onuba: You know, it's like, yeah, okay, I'll do it. And I built that muscle and I was like, but now it's an additional skill that I can turn to. Of course I manage it. Right. But even when I go to big networking things, I have to contain my energy. But even in those spaces, I very quickly gravitate to the conversations that fill my cup.

Nnenna Onuba: I like to be inspired. I like to learn from people. Right. I don't really do gossiping or any of those reductive type things. [00:28:00] So I find myself in those spaces looking for those pools, but still navigating and I'm high energy anyway. So I think I also energise spaces I'm in anyway.

Juliet Fallowfield: Well, a hundred percent. We've just reminded me where we met and it was the British Beauty Council breakfast when they were launching their new this year's September event. And yeah. You were incredible because you, you would, what I'm normally at those events going, Oh, hi, you do this. You need to meet this person.

Juliet Fallowfield: I've just met her and dah, dah, dah, dah. It was live LinkedIn that you were managing within, I met 15 people within 20 minutes through you that I had just met myself, it was incredible, but you could see that energy and everyone was attracted to it because you were like ding, ding, ding, ding, dot connecting, fixing people's problems.

Juliet Fallowfield: It was amazing. So you, you found your calling. It's.

Nnenna Onuba: I don't know, but I, like I said, I think I work better when I really enjoy what I do. So

Juliet Fallowfield: Yeah, yeah. And I think, I think that's something I didn't realise. I worked 20 years for other people that I was good at and I was doing well at and I never questioned it because it's what I did. And I [00:29:00] found myself redundant. I was like, if I'm really honest, I didn't really love it. And I'm so much more me now.

Juliet Fallowfield: Than I was before. And I'm so grateful for the redundency because I would never have left. I think being in that rut of being told what to do and just assuming that's all you're capable of is normal. Like, why would you question it? But now having that freedom of thought and that freedom of like, well, no, I don't want to work in a corporate office five days a week.

Juliet Fallowfield: And I want to work and travel and dah, dah, dah, whatever else that might be that, that has value to you. And I think we're lucky coming into this later in our careers because we've had experience from other companies of how not to do it. And it's interesting seeing entrepreneurs in the early twenties, cause I feel like they haven't worked out that well, don't do it that way.

Juliet Fallowfield: Don't do it that way. They're, they're just going in. I'm going to try it this way. So I'm, I'm grateful for that experience, but I don't think I'll be going back anytime soon.

Nnenna Onuba: Oh, God, you've just, you've just nailed it. And I think this is actually something that I found it's very common among women, like I'm going to be going over [00:30:00] the more confident later in our lives. Because we also have a lot of evidence, right?

Nnenna Onuba: The self doubt that takes 

Nnenna Onuba: up 

Juliet Fallowfield: proven track record of success. 

Nnenna Onuba: Exactly. This is a swearing show. I saw, there's this Nigerian author called Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. And I saw a little snip recently that she was sharing. She's the same age as me or maybe just a older. And she was like, you know what happened when I got older? I looked into the bag of fucks. And there weren't just any. And she was like, of fucks to give, that's it. And she

Nnenna Onuba: was just like, there weren't any left. So she was just like, I'm just living my life. And again, I think it's a really neat way of again, coming back to the self mastery. I think if you know who you are, you can again, just to manage so many other things around you. You can create spaces that work for you. You can communicate even to your teams. Think of how, When we think about the most effective leaders, actually when I think I start to break it down, the most effective leaders have a [00:31:00] high sense of self awareness and awareness of others. Because again, when you know yourself, it's almost like listening, active listening. You're more able then to observe what's around you and notice what needs to shift into where and you're not worrying too much about your ego, etc. And you can better serve the world around you without depleting yourself, and that is, I think, a really powerful thing that I think more people need to focus on.

Nnenna Onuba: But again, when I think about the luck I have, you know, and I think I hear this with you too Juliet, is that we've been able to, and it's a fortunate, not everyone has this, but being able to make space in our lives to at least go on that journey of self discovery and mastery. And it's a journey, right?

Nnenna Onuba: We keep, we keep learning, but it's definitely worth it in my opinion. Okay.

Nnenna Onuba: 100% and 

Juliet Fallowfield: there's no end to it. I think that's the other thing is like, people are like chasing, chasing, chasing something. And it's like, no one's going to come around and pat you on the back and go, you've made it. As long as you're in that. And that's, [00:32:00] I've been very bad at being present in the now and appreciating the journey.

Juliet Fallowfield: And I'm constantly trying to fix a problem, but actually I fixed that IT problem today, or that was a really annoying glitch on the website, but that's now overcome like the little things and celebrating those successes of. Go us, we did that and being proud of it because you are going to be thrown a million different obstacles, some big, some small, but that's part of it.

Juliet Fallowfield: And that's so exciting because you can, you, you, who is it? someone said to me, Oh, you've been under a lot of waves, but you've learned how to swim really strong and you can get through them. And I was like, Oh yes, I'm a strong swimmer. Finally. Yeah.

Juliet Fallowfield: I love that. I can't swim to save my life. 

Nnenna Onuba: Tried many times.

Nnenna Onuba: I was like, okay. 

Nnenna Onuba: career 

Juliet Fallowfield: wise. You're fine, I think.

Nnenna Onuba: No, no, no. But of course I'm playing. I'm playing. I understood the point. I understood the

Nnenna Onuba: point. And I think it's a powerful point, actually. You're absolutely right. In fact, I think there was someone who shared it and he talked about it in terms of mountains. And they realised that lots of people who seem to have this thing, and there is a thing, where there's a lot more chill, calm, work, value, purpose, et cetera, have often faced some form of adversity. So almost a check type moment, and, and, and now they're on almost the, ah, okay, all of this is nonsense, there is a better way, and let's now start to find that slightly better way that is also more valuable and invaluable.

Nnenna Onuba: Thank you. To others or more values driven. Let's put it that way. And I think it's a journey. But again, you talked about young people who become entrepreneurs. I meet so many fantastic young entrepreneurs who I think, Oh my goodness, I wish I had half of the confidence you have today at your age, but also recognising that actually this is one of the roles with experience that you can play, which is why I'm so proud. I'm such a big advocate of mentoring and sponsorship is that. My experience can help you, right? So if you can make space, obviously, to listen I will advise. I'm not trying to replicate. And that's every time I talk to entrepreneurs, I was like, look, advice is exactly just that. Advice to you. You still make the call on as to which advice you take. So actually keeping space to have that diverse perspective that are different to yours is so important, especially if you keep coming back to consumer businesses, right? It's It's diverse out there, so

Nnenna Onuba: you've got to kind of do that in house as you're building, but yeah. How

Nnenna Onuba: Do you have any 

Juliet Fallowfield: tips and tricks around your prioritisation of tasks? Because in my old career, it was just he who shouts loudest.

Juliet Fallowfield: And now I'm like, no, no, it needs to be, yes, I've got 10 emails that could be replied to you in half an hour, but actually [00:33:00] I'm better off spending an hour proactively doing something that hasn't been started yet. So how do you work all that out for yourself?

Nnenna Onuba: do I prioritize? 

Juliet Fallowfield: It could be instinctive given that you've been working for a few decades or

Nnenna Onuba: yeah,

Nnenna Onuba: so I think with me, I'm, I'm, I'm really quite organised and highly productive. And also, in fact, let me, let me, let me give, let me give credit where it's due. I come from a background of investment banking and M&A, which has always been transactional. So you move from one deal to the next deal to the next deal.

Nnenna Onuba: Sometimes you're doing multiple deals at once. They're very complex. It requires a lot of project management to be able to, and the banker is basically like the chief manager, of the whole deal, because we have the most to lose

Nnenna Onuba: outside of the 

Nnenna Onuba: client. outside of the client, if it doesn't complete. So I would say that I sort of built that muscle there of around being organised.

Nnenna Onuba: But also, and I create my own structure, so I put in deadlines sometimes where I can see, 100 Allies is a good example, right? Because it's a mission, you can be very in your head. But I do put, alright, so, this is the deadline. I communicate it to people so that they hold me accountable.

Nnenna Onuba: [00:34:00] I'm sort of a good girl in that way.

Nnenna Onuba: It's to let people down, let people down. And so I will deliver on it as soon as something happens it goes straight in my diary once I make a commitment. Otherwise it's not going to happen. Deadlines and prioritizers, prioritisation, my non exec work. Luckily, you know, the base commitment is you're going to attend this many meetings and you're going to have to read papers beforehand.

Nnenna Onuba: Those are scheduled well in advance. So I can also schedule time to look at the papers, et cetera. And I just continue sort of with those sorts of hacks and then, but again, all of this is managed around the energy points that I came to, which is just managing it a little bit. And one last thing as well that I would say around prioritisation. I think it's also a journey, right? So I would say that early, say in my beauty journey, where I was really in high learning mode and I had to create lots of, I was saying yes to everything, yes to everything, asking like, come mentor, and so again, but that was necessary. So I would [00:35:00] say that the boundaries and the prioritisation, et cetera, around there were slightly more loose, but then from watching my energy, you know, I can see where I'm like getting close to burnout. And I was like, okay, okay, now it's time to put some boundaries in place. So for, I'll give you an example. I love meeting new founders. I love hearing about innovation. I love hearing about who's breaking things and rebuilding them in more efficient ways. But, and I could spend all week just talking to people and learning what like AI is my new pet project.

Nnenna Onuba: It's like, what? It's like, but one of the ways I was like, I can't do that. So again, structure looks like Friday afternoons. I, 30 minute slots. And if you come into my existence, let's find a window there. And that's when that happens. So it's just a very practical example of how I still find that mix. And another one I do is Mondays, for example, my Mondays, I typically don't put meetings in there because it's my one 

Juliet Fallowfield: day

Juliet Fallowfield: No meeting Monday! You have it too!

Nnenna Onuba: I don't know where I saw this. [00:36:00] I'm pretty sure I didn't come up with this. 

Juliet Fallowfield: In what you're building?

Juliet Fallowfield: So money aside, what does success look like to you?

Nnenna Onuba: That's a really big question, isn't it? But it's also easy for me, right? Because it's sort of where this journey started. It's really about impact. It's about whose life I've changed as a result of my work and how I've made the world a better place. I, I already told you, My portfolio journey began with the goal of sort of aligning more purpose and meaning into my work. So success is about building something that really feels, A, aligned with those values and drives that purpose. And so again, I'm on the world of, on the path of sort of creating that all. I want to have led a meaningful life but also I want to create wealth around what I do.

Nnenna Onuba: So again, managing those two is an aspiration. 

Juliet Fallowfield: To be able to put people and planet above profit and there's no shame in profit. You can do more good work if you've got a successful business to help that work happen.

Juliet Fallowfield: So yeah, I've, yeah, it's really interesting. And what would your question be for the next [00:37:00] guest?

Nnenna Onuba: thought about it, I thought about

Juliet Fallowfield: Would you 

Nnenna Onuba: huh? 

Juliet Fallowfield: Would you like to know who it is? It's sort of cheating, but I can definitely find out because 

Nnenna Onuba: Okay. Okay. Yes, but I can go with that. In fact, tell me after

Nnenna Onuba: I give him a question so he doesn't influence how I think about it. So I think my question, recently I was on a chat and someone asked something. In the world we're in today, we often focus on big systemic problems. But what is one small action or contribution that you could regularly make to improve a mission that's important to you or to the world? And what's that one thing, was actually the question. 

Juliet Fallowfield: I've invented a job for myself, like, I'm good. It's okay. But they, seeing the world, the business world from those two lenses it's.

Juliet Fallowfield: A lot of people are like, well, how many people do you employ and what's your turnover and are you going to exit and these big ticket things that define success and for me, it's like, I like going to work every day and I can change my commute if I want and there's little things that have a big impact and it's those little things that all add up to, is your brain happy?

Juliet Fallowfield: Are you living a healthy lifestyle? Are your team happy or clients happy? Like those small things I think are so much more important than the big ones or they feed the big ones.

Nnenna Onuba: I'm going to flip this to how, say, practically for me [00:38:00] that plays out because it's something I'm doing now. So I live in a world because of where I'm a female entrepreneur, I work in finance. I'm often seeing this, oh god, female entrepreneurs, there's no funding available. Like life is so hard in the early stages when you're building. There's no capital, there's no resources, there's no, there's no, there's no. And I was like, hmm, these are all big problems, right? So when it's like so big, how do you even grapple how you think about addressing it? And actually, reflection for me was like, but there are actually practical steps, right, that we can take. So if you say you care about female entrepreneurship, frigging bye from female entrepreneurs, right? So it was like, let that be your one action or motivation. I then, in fact, more recently, my last LinkedIn post was extending this a little bit. I found myself, I'm an M&A advisor, but I've also been on the bootstrap solopreneur journey. Understand how immensely difficult and how little love. And that also fuels [00:39:00] my passion. There isn't that early. It's still risky. You haven't found product market fit. So people don't quite love you naturally yet. And so, And so I was like, what is the, I was like, ah, a lot of founders would come to me in this sort of distress moment, I've been building my business for a few years. I've been building my business for a few years. I'm now tired. It's not working. I need to look after my own mental health. And I would give a little bit of advice, but I was like, look, the challenge is, you know, small businesses like this are not good bets for me as a, a business woman who needs to make a living

Nnenna Onuba: to take on. So as much emotional empathy I have for the situation, I just can't be, cause also my fees, you just can't clear it. Even if you took any money out of this, you're going to hand it all to me. Ethically, that is a bit problematic for me. So I found myself. Saying no, but giving a little bit of advice, so I won't leave you with nothing, or I'll direct you in. So one of the things I recently reflected on, again, because there was another instance of [00:40:00] this, I was like, ah, But I could, I could create an e book, right, where I put some nuggets down that are applicable to this group, where at least as a first step, Because most people think I find a buyer, but I was like, no, find the buyer is only one step. It's like one step. I'm not even the most frigging important one, actually, in how you sell your business. And so I was like, okay, I have all this knowledge. I can put this down. So I did this little campaign on where I was like, look, if I get a hundred people email me and say that they care, cause I'm not going to do it if no one cares. And I'm not on any savior type mission. And so if 100 people email me and tell me they care, I will take the time to help them. I'm going to create this book as a little manual, and I priced it at a hundred pounds, right? Just to put this in context, my usual fee is like 3000 times, so I'm not, like, trying to, like, over profit from this,

Nnenna Onuba: but at least it's accessible.

Nnenna Onuba: And I was like, that is a one little thing that I'm doing to actually combat this barrier of financial inclusion, financial barrier to financial inclusion of SMEs [00:41:00] who are a part of that community. So I was like, ooh, that's interesting. So when I said the What's your little thing? It's almost in that same, because we moan a lot about all the problems of the world, but I think if we start to enter into that, I can be part of the solution mindset, it's quite transformational.

Juliet Fallowfield: I love that. Thank you so much, Nnenna. I've learnt so much and always enjoy chatting to you and I'm so 

Nnenna Onuba: And you too, thank you so much for inviting me, I really enjoyed this chat.

Juliet Fallowfield: Oh, me too. Thank you. No, honestly, thank you. Right. Let me quickly. Bye. 

Juliet Fallowfield: 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, we'd love it.

Juliet Fallowfield: If you could rate and review or share this podcast, because it really does help other people discover it. To incentivise this a little, I would very happily offer you one of our PR guides on how to share editorial coverage legally. Just DM us or send us an email, hello@fallowfieldmason.com with review in the title and we'll share it on.