This week, our Founder & MD, Denise, was interviewed by Jess Sharp for Sky News’ Money Blog!
Jess is speaking to several women who are succeeding in their respective fields and Denise was delighted to be asked about the challenges, the positive experiences and the advice I can now give other entrepreneurs.
If you think appearing on Dragons’ Den means Denise was handed success in business on a plate, you’d be very wrong.
The 51-year-old’s first memories are of sharing an “airing cupboard bedroom” as a child – and it was this childhood that instilled in her the ethos that if you want something, the answer is to work harder.
She grew up in a little town near Glasgow in a two-bedroom council flat with her mum, dad and three siblings.
“Money was very, very, very tight,” Denise said. “I don’t remember having a TV or a wardrobe.
“We always laugh that my first bedroom until I was 10 was an airing cupboard and an airing cupboard that I shared with my sibling.
“We didn’t have a lot of money but it was a very happy childhood.”
Denise said that back then she was quite shy.
“I didn’t enjoy school, I was bullied and I felt out of place. I just lived for dance and for performing arts. It gave me so much confidence and transformed my self belief and self-esteem,” she said.
Years later and working as a dancer for Butlins, she took £200 and set up Razzamataz to bring the same opportunities to other children across the country.
She was 27 at the time and already had a successful career as a dancer, performing on cruise ships around the world, in pantomimes, and on the West End. She wrote some posters and put an ad in the newspaper to get going. “I didn’t really know anything about business but honestly it didn’t cost me much. Maybe I spent a couple of hundred pounds starting the business, so that’s not bad,” she said.
In the beginning, she would travel to a different location in Scotland every evening to host a class, but when she started “running out of days in the week” she looked at a franchising ethically. In the same year that she appeared on Dragons’ Den, Denise had two miscarriages and fell pregnant with her first son, Callum. She actually discovered she was expecting as soon as she got back home from filming the show. “We always laugh now that he has been on Dragons’ Den because he was in my belly,” she said.
Referring to her failed hair and beauty business, she said that a company that’s set up without passion will not succeed. “It failed because I thought it was going to be easy… it is not easy to run a business. You have to have a lot of passion,” she said. “I’ve seen people go into business and they start getting quite bitter, counting up how many hours they’ve worked and how much money they’ve earned.” She warned that you’ll work “the hardest you have ever worked in your life for nothing” at first – but it will all pay off eventually. “You have to be patient. If you expect your business to make you a return and make you money overnight, then don’t do it, don’t run a business,” she said.
“Nobody gave me anything on a plate. I had absolutely nothing when I started out.”
Read the full article here: https://news.sky.com/story/money-blog-consumer-skynews-latest-13040934?postid=7977776#liveblog-body
