Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction

00:02:18: Steph's career background

00:05:39: Specialism versus generalism

00:06:50: Deciding to go it alone

00:09:16: The steep learning curve of starting a business

00:11:04: Working with friends and family

00:12:36: Pride in the team

00:15:01: Making time for yourself

00:18:01: Importance of support and a good business plan

00:20:55: The pressure of hiring staff

00:24:01: Steph's career advice

00:24:36: Final thoughts  

Interview Transcription

Sarah Ellis: Hi, I'm Sarah, and this is the Squiggly Careers podcast, where every week we take a different topic to do with work, and explore the ups and the downs, some ideas for action and some tools to try out that we hope will help you to navigate your career with that bit more confidence and clarity.  It's National Careers Week at the moment in the UK, and that's inspired us to have four different episodes this week.  We've had four Squiggly Careers conversations that we hope will give you a window into someone else's world of work, and they have been so varied and brilliant and inspiring, so I'm so glad that we decided to do something a little bit different. Our conversations this week include Helen talking to Jim MacLeod.  He's a Royal Navy Rear Admiral, who shares some brilliant examples of Squiggly and staying, in perhaps a sort of organisational structure, that that might not feel that easy to do that in.  I talk to Eric Sim, who is a real inspiration.  His career story is full of resilience and bravery, from starting out working with his dad, aged 10, selling street-food noodles, to becoming an MD of an investment bank.  He now runs an organisation called The Institute of Life, definitely worth listening to that.  And then finally, you'll hear Helen talk to Simon Mundie, a brilliant BBC journalist, and he talks a bit about progression and how to create, not wait, for career opportunities to come your way. So today, you're going to hear my conversation with Steph Douglas, the Founder of Don't Buy Her Flowers.  I followed Steph on Instagram for a while, and I really appreciate how honest she is about the realities of running her own business, and how it works and at times doesn't work with the rest of her life.  And, she shared some career advice for our latest book, You Coach You, which really just made me laugh.  She talks about, "It's okay to have beans on toast for dinner again", and that really resonated with me.  So, I hope you enjoy listening to our conversation, and I'll be back at the end with some useful resources, if you're thinking about exploring where your career could take you. So, Steph, thank you so much for joining me for today's Squiggly Career Conversation.  I'm really looking forward to learning more about the twists and turns of your career so far.

Steph Douglas: Awesome, thank you for having me.

Sarah Ellis: So, I'd say, "Let's start at the beginning", but I really am going to start at the beginning, but we'll speed up quite quickly.  But I'd love to know, when you were growing up, can you remember ever thinking or ever being asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"; do you ever remember feeling like, "I'd love to be a ballet dancer [or] I'd love to run my own business [or] I'd love to be a scientist"?

Steph Douglas: I definitely didn't have any interest in doing my own thing, so that was completely out of the blue.  But no, I loved writing.  Even when I was really young, I can remember being probably in the equivalent of Year Two or something, and writing a ten-page story and it getting pinned on the wall.  I loved writing, and I think I thought journalism, or something like that, would be a good place to go, or a TV presenter, that was the other thing that was in my mind.  I used to do a lot of that in my room on my own, you know, imaging yourself introducing Top of the Pops and stuff.

Sarah Ellis: What was your first job, and how close was that to TV presenter/journalist?

Steph Douglas: When I was a teenager, I think I just really wanted to get working and earning money, but I used to get an allowance, so I was quite independent in a way for a kid.  I had cleaning jobs.  I used to have three houses in a close that I used to clean for when I was about 14.  I stacked shelves in Boots, waitressed in a coffee shop with one of my really good mates, who now works at Don't Buy Her Flowers, on a Saturday, and then was also doing the cleaning, so I did quite a bit.

Sarah Ellis: So, though you may not have thought about doing your own thing, that's quite entrepreneurial, that initiative to think, "I want to be independent and I want to take initiative".  So, when you started, what was your first that you might consider your proper job, or when you felt like perhaps you were like, "This feels like this is my career [or] maybe I've chosen now to be in this industry"?

Steph Douglas: So, when I was at uni in Cardiff, I was in my second year, and it's probably the only sensible thing I did, I went to a careers talk, and it was the Government News Network, government communications, basically as it was, which doesn't exist now; and they were talking about all the skills you needed to do press office and communications working in government and I was like, "That feels like those are skills that suit me".  I literally went to one talk! I applied to the Cardiff office to do, I think it was about three mornings a week doing a couple of hours, so I did that whilst I was at uni in my third year, and it was cutting clippings from newspapers, so it was very much very, very junior press office type stuff.  And then I applied to their Bristol office, so straight from uni, I went into work in communications.

Sarah Ellis: So, from having that experience at a very young age, you said you were only 21, what did the next few years then hold for you in terms of your career; is that something you kept doing, or did you start to squiggle in different directions?

Steph Douglas: So, I did the press office side of it for a while, and then in doing that, I got involved in more marketing; it was still under government stuff, but more marketing campaign stuff.  They had FRANK, which was a drugs campaign.

Sarah Ellis: I remember.

Steph Douglas: Yeah, so I was working on that in the Southwest, so that was for the Home Office, as part of this role, and I started to see more opportunity in that.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, you think the difference, the choices about specialism versus generalism in our careers I always think are really interesting.  And I think, perhaps stereotypically, there is a sense that you maybe start off in your career more specialist, and then as you progress, you become more generalist.  But I do hope now that we're breaking down some of those barriers of, you have to do certain things in certain orders. I am more specialist in my career now than I have ever been.  I did get more generalist, and then I've chosen to get more specialist, and I think people often feel like they have to put themselves in one of those boxes like, "I'm a specialist [or] I'm a generalist", whereas actually I think often, it's a bit more about following what you're motivated by or what you find meaningful, and sometimes that looks more specialist or more generalist.

Steph Douglas: I think it probably makes you better either way, that you either have an expertise in one area; or if you do the generalist bit, then you can see how the other bits around that specialism work.  So, I think it obviously benefits to have both.

Sarah Ellis: And when you're reflecting on your career now, so in terms of where you are now, and we'll talk a bit about what you do day-to-day now, what do you look back on and think, "Wow, that was actually a really brave decision that I made"?

Steph Douglas: I think it was choosing to do the business on my own.  I'd had the idea, so I'd had my first baby, I'd received loads of flowers and I very quickly saw that that was a trend, that was what people buy for somebody who's had a baby.  And now I know it's what people buy for lots and lots of occasions, and there's gifts that can be more thoughtful. So, I had this idea and I went to work, I had another baby and went back to work, but I was talking to people as if I was almost looking to do it with somebody else, and I had a good friend who's still a really good friend, and we talked about it.  And one of my husband, Doug's mates, we had conversations about it, because I think I just felt really nervous to do that on my own.  It was like, "I can't possibly do this on my own, I need someone else, I can't do that". Actually, I ended up realising that I had a lot of the skills that I knew that I needed, and I couldn't quite see what were the gaps.  And I don't mean at all that I know everything, but I couldn't quite work out what it was that I'd need for that other person, because I didn't know at that point what it was to run a business.  Now I've got a team and a lot of them are better at lots of bits than I am, but at that point it didn't feel quite right.  And I had two small children, so I was thinking, "I don't know yet what my pattern's going to be, my working pattern, and if I'm doing that with someone else, how is that going to fit together?"

Sarah Ellis: And I'm imaging, in those early days, were you doing everything?

Steph Douglas: It makes me appreciate even more my team, because you can identify something that needs doing, and you know that someone else is responsible for getting that done, and that feels really good when you've done it yourself.  So, the first couple of years, I was mostly on my own.  About nine months in, I had somebody packing boxes, because I realised that as it was growing, I was spending all my time packing boxes, so I wasn't looking at the big picture, I wasn't looking at what goes next, and someone was like, "You shouldn't be doing that". Then also, about a year in, one of my best friends was saying, "You need a PA", and actually I was like, "I don't, but I do need someone to do all the customer services", and that was again a good move, in that I was becoming so in the detail of customer services, which is quite stressful when it's your own business, it's so personal.  Now, I have a team to share it all with.  My brother is our Head of Operations, so he's very much in the business and has equity and that kind of thing, but I know it was right that I did it on my own.

Sarah Ellis: Has there ever been a time when you thought, "This is not for me", or this felt too hard, or what have been some of those, we sometimes call them the "knotty moments"?  Within your Squiggly Career, there were always those knotty moments and I think, certainly in my own experience of running your own company, those often get described that the highs are higher and the lows are lower.

Steph Douglas: I think that first couple of years, it's just such a steep learning curve.  And also, because I was on my own, I didn't know what to expect.  Like I said, I never thought I was going to be some sort of business owner, and it took a while to learn that you need to stop and reflect on where you've been and what you've achieved. Actually, I've got a friend who's started a business about a year ago, and he was like, "I need help, because I can't stop.  I just feel this nervous anxiety the whole time about what I need to do", and I was like, "You have to stop, you have to be able to stop and go, 'Look at all these things that I've done'", because he's doing really well, his business is growing great, so it's almost an additional pressure that you really don't need.

Sarah Ellis: That's interesting, because we sometimes talk about, when you think about your resilience reserves, what contributes to you being resilient and topping up those resilience reserves?  I think often, it is other people play a really big part in that.  So, being confident enough and brave enough sometimes to ask for help, sometimes realising that you don't need to do it all by yourself, and I think that transition of letting go isn't an easy one. You're further into your business journey than certainly we are, but I've noticed that when you get other people to support you, which you know is a good thing and you really appreciate the skills that people bring, there's also that letting go that you have to do, because you did it before; and part of you, you're so committed to it, because it's yours and you've created it.

Steph Douglas: I know people say -- because there's a lot about not working with friends and family and the stresses that involves.  But I think because, as I say, my brother is Head of Operations, two of my oldest best mates since I was 11 have worked in the business for a few years, and my Head of Marketing I used to work with, so we were friends, they have a drive that might not be -- I don't expect them to live or die by it in the sense that I might, but they are committed, they are so committed.  They have this drive and passion and excitement watching it. The last couple of years, the business was mad; overnight, 600% up on the year before, which was amazing, but also massively challenging, and they were all in it with me.  I don't know if I could find that just from anyone.  And there will be people obviously who work like that, but I don't know how I would have even started to find that.  And also, you could bring someone in and then get into a couple of months and they don't have that same drive.  I think that's really helped having that.

Sarah Ellis: I think you've started to touch on it, because you can hear it as you describe your experiences, what are you most proud of in the past seven years?  What do you look back on, and you said you've got a lot better about thinking about almost the successes; we call them the very small successes that you have day-to-day, week-to-week?  We need to get better at spotting and shining a spotlight on those very small successes; but generally, when you sit in the here and now and you press pause, what are those things that feel like they bubble to the surface in terms of those proudest moments?

Steph Douglas: I think for me, it's probably the team and how we've developed.  This business has grown piece-by-piece since the beginning.  It was me packing in my spare bedroom, and now there's a warehouse with a forklift truck and they have to have a forklift truck licence; it's very different.  But we've done it incrementally step-by-step, and the team have done that as well, and a lot of them have been around for a good few years, so they've evolved with it. I think, what I do feel particularly proud of is that we've got people in the business who I don't think other people necessarily saw their potential, or they didn't see it in themselves.  So, you have someone who joined to do six hours a week of packing boxes, because she was a freelance photographer and that was her passion.  And she's now our creative who does all the website photography, she manages the website, she does loads of the social media stuff and materials and all that stuff.  And because we're looking at someone's CV going, "They've got loads of other stuff on here", and that's actually throughout the business we've got that. During especially the first lockdown, we had a load of people who came in, who were either furloughed or their jobs didn't work with the pandemic, and we obviously needed more people for packing.  So, they came into packing, but you'd see a drive in them, or look at their CV again and go, "They've got all these skills which might mean they've never done this job", whatever, corporate sales, but you could see that they would be able to do that. So, we've ended up with this team of people who are in it because of their drive and skills and the culture, who they are.  And it's not always easy, because managing people has become a massive part of my job, and there's always something because we're all human, so there's things going on for people all the time, and it might be something really personal.  That is work and life, and it's very hard to completely separate them. Seeing that, being there and seeing the team and knowing that they're really in it, and they are doing things that they might not have done otherwise, I love.  I was talking to my husband about it last night, and that makes me really proud, and I want to be able to reward them and I want them to feel good about their jobs.  And, I try and sit down with everyone, and it's something again I didn't have to do a couple of years ago, because the team was really small.  Now, it's sitting down with everyone and just having a bit of time and including everybody.

Sarah Ellis: That's a really good answer and it's so nice to listen to, because it's such a brilliant example as well of the not being too fixed about what someone's done before.  And how do you look after you?  So, one of the things I observe, and I don't think this is unique actually to people running their own companies; I think sometimes that's a mistake to think it's more full-on, or it's more always on if you run your own company.  I think people have just as full-on jobs in organisations.  But I do think all of us have that challenge of feeling like we are probably more always on than we've ever been before, that there's more in our lives that we're trying to make work and fit together at any one point in time. I interviewed a brilliant clinical psychologist at the start of the year about resilience, and I said, "If you do one thing, what's the one thing you should really do?" and he did talk about the importance of doing at least one thing every day for yourself to look after your own mental health.  We spend a lot of times doing things for other people or to build our businesses, but what is that one thing that's for you; and so many people when we ask that question suddenly have that realisation that, "I don't have that one thing that's just for me"? But I'm just interested to hear a bit about, there must be times where you have felt super-stressed and overwhelmed, and you've got three kids, and there's an awful lot happening, so how do you look after you?

Steph Douglas: I think probably it's pretty boring, but I think it will be eating well, trying to make sure you sleep, so switching off by a certain point, and exercise.  If I'm doing all those things, generally my head is just a bit clearer and I can cope.

Sarah Ellis: I think when you make conscious choices about your time, you feel very differently about it versus if you feel like it's happening to you.  Often I think sometimes, it's like a creeping effect, where because you do add things on, suddenly it's all-consuming, but you feel like you have no control over your time.  I think the relationship between how controlled we feel about our time, how in control we feel about our time, is a really important one, so if you've made choices about going, "Okay, I'm not going to do that thing [or] I'm not going to get involved in the school run, I'm not going to do that, because I'm spending time over here". I worked a four-day week before I had my little boy, and I work a five-day week now.  So everyone always thinks that relationship is going to be the opposite way round.  I'm like, "No, I need to work a five-day week at the moment to make our business work, and we're a small business that's growing quickly, and also I love it", so I'm unapologetic about the fact I'm now working five days, because that's what I want to do, that's my choice.

Steph Douglas: And that works for you.  And in the same way, if somebody does want to be at home five days a week, that shouldn't be a discussion for anyone either, that's completely an individual choice.

Sarah Ellis: I suspect a lot of people who choose to listen to this will be people who maybe know Don't Buy Her Flowers, or certainly have perhaps read about you and the business that you run, and perhaps themselves have their own business idea.  You know lots of people have that, a bit like you were saying, you had the idea when you were still working and you started to talk to people and you were exploring and investigating it; so, I think lots of people sit around with that idea in their head, and that feeling, that moment of where you decide to go for it or go, "This is what I want to do". What advice would you give to people who are listening who have maybe got an idea, but are just not sure whether to take the plunge, because I think it often does feel like such a big deal moving from being employed to starting up your own thing?  You always hear those stats, and I never know if they're true, but everyone's like, "80% of businesses fail in the first year".  It's like, "Well, if we really wanted to scare people away from running their own thing, that's a great stat to start with!"  So, what advice would you give to people?

Steph Douglas: I think passion is really important, because it will consume you.  If it's going to go well, it will consume you.  And I suppose, in that same stretch, support around you and knowing that.  So, that could be your partner, or it might be friendship groups or something, and you don't need everybody to know what you're doing.  I very much kept it to quite a small group.  There were a couple of mates, one ex-colleague, Doug.  I don't think I even really spoke to my parents or anything, because you don't need lots and lots of opinion.  If anything, that might slow you down, because then you start hearing things.

Sarah Ellis: Too many thoughts, yeah!

Steph Douglas: Yeah, and I had loads of people say, "I don't know about that idea".  "Well, I don't need to know".  I believed in it, and I had a group of people who did.  So, I think that support's really important.  But also, and again this is a bit of a boring tip, but I think writing a business plan, I personally found it really, really helpful, because my background was very much brand and marketing.  I had no understanding of retail, finance, scaling.  There were huge gaps in my knowledge that if I hadn't sat down with those -- a business plan that's got headings that you've got to fill in, basically, then it made me think of things; or, speak to somebody who did understand those things, like Doug works in finance, so he's been amazing at that part of the business. So, it just made me have to think about it, and it's just a really lovely document to have.  I found mine the other day, my first business plan, and actually it's not terrible, it wasn't that far off like, "That's good, yeah".  But I think it feels like quite a historical document in a way.  So I would say, you don't have to write it down, but you've got to consider all those bits, because you'll also then spot where your gaps are, so that then tells you what is going to be your first, and I say hire, but it might be a friend who gets involved for a couple of hours a week.  And I think that's another thing that's really important. The thought of hiring anybody felt so massive that I think I did put it off for slightly longer at each stage than I needed to, but actually there's loads and loads of people who work flexibly or want flexible work and want to do a few hours, or they have the skills, because previously they worked in a job and had a full-time job, or whatever.  There's this whole pool of people who are brilliant.  That is really important, I think, because then it's not such a big deal.  If you think that first step, "I need to hire somebody and it's a full-time job and I've got to pay a salary and a pension", and all that stuff, that's too much.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, we've been the same.  Everybody who's come and worked with us has always worked flexible hours.  Sometimes that's freelance, because people are really keen to stay freelance; sometimes they want to try out working together.  So yeah, not putting that pressure on yourself to feel like, sometimes I think particularly because we all come from probably an employed world first.  There are some people who've only ever worked for themselves, but I think most people have worked in an organisation first, and so you see one model; you see one model of a way of working. One of the things that we used, when you talk about a business plan, it reminded me, in case people are looking at a free resource, we used Lean Canvas, and you can download a lean canvas for free, and it's got seven boxes, exactly as you've described.  So, it's got seven boxes to fill in, and I remember Helen and I filling in those seven boxes, when we'd both still got full-time jobs, and realising that we didn't know the answer to at least half of those boxes.  We were like, "I don't know that one, to be honest, not really thought about that".  It made us ask ourselves some really important questions. I think the other thing that really helped us when we were making that decision, because I think you were saying you felt like you maybe held on too long before employing people, I think we both held on too long to our corporate lives, because we were so committed to them.  We probably had proved the idea, then couldn't let go for a bit, that idea of letting go of an old identity that you'd spent quite a long time building up.  I think the thing that really helped us, was any way you can find, when you're starting something, to prototype, "Does the idea work?  Does the concept work?  Are people going to buy it?" For us, we were in the position, which I think like yourself, we've not taken any investment; you're building it from scratch.  The cashflow bit, which we knew very little about, has to kind of stack up, it has to work, because you're not getting any cash from anywhere else.  You have got to be able to, certainly in our case, we have paid ourselves from day one, and we've got to be able to pay everyone else, and we feel very responsible for that.  Is that still true for you for Don't Buy Her Flowers?

Steph Douglas: We've had some loans that we've paid back at different points, essentially for cash flow, but that was something I really didn't understand.

Sarah Ellis: Same as me!

Steph Douglas: But that was the thing that my husband had to really sit me down a number of times at the beginning, and it would lead to huge rows, because I was like, "We'll just buy up loads of stock so we're not going to run out, it's fine", and he was like, "No, that's not how it works".  So, yeah, it's a big learning for sure.

Sarah Ellis: And, just to finish our time together, we always ask all of our Squiggly Career guests the same question to finish; now, you have already given us a bit of career advice for You Coach You, and you've given everyone loads of advice as they've been listening, but if you were to leave people with one either bit of words of wisdom, or just an insight or an idea that you found really helpful in your career, what's the final thing that you'd like to leave our listeners with?

Steph Douglas: I think it's probably a point that I've already mentioned, but I think especially for women, but I guess it does work for everyone, you can't run a business and do everything else you did before.

Sarah Ellis: So, Steph, thank you so much for joining us today on Squiggly Careers podcast.  I've wanted to chat to you for ages.  We've sort of known each other from a distance, I feel; that's the joys of social media!

Steph Douglas: We went to an event that was just before the pandemic.

Sarah Ellis: I really remember because, and maybe you'll find this funny, but I remember being quite intimidated by you, because we were sitting next to each other and you were describing your business, and we were definitely much more towards the start; and I remember thinking, "She sounds like she knows loads more than me, I feel like she knows all the answers".  I was scribbling down some things thinking, "I need to get better at this business thing!" Very nice to reconnect two years later, and I would encourage everybody listening to follow Steph, follow Don't Buy Her Flowers.  I follow them both on Instagram, and I quite like seeing behind the scenes of Steph's world, which is fascinating.  You get to know maybe some of the people that you've heard about in today's podcast.  And also, you can see behind the scenes of her business as well, which is always really interesting to see.  So, thank you so much for joining us.

Steph Douglas: Thank you, thanks so much.

Sarah Ellis: Thank you for listening to today's podcast.  If you're inspired to explore how you could develop in different directions, there are lots of free courses and learning on the Government Skills for Life website.  We'll put the link in the show notes, but it's just gov.uk/skillsforlife, and there are so many different things there, I was having a look today before recording the episode.  You can do things like basics of coding, you can learn about green skills. The courses and the learning are all run by real experts in their area.  I recognised lots of the universities or the training providers, and the majority of the courses can be done remotely; so hopefully, free and flexible, which feels like a pretty good combination.  But that's everything for today.  Thank you so much for listening and we'll be back with you again soon.