E24: How to start a business with Emilie Bellet, Jinesh Vohra and Lisa Picardo
The following is a transcript of our monthly podcast, The Pension Confident Podcast. Listen to episode 24, watch on YouTube, or scroll on to read the conversation.
PHILIPPA: A very happy New Year to you and a warm welcome to the first episode of Series Three of The Pension Confident Podcast. It’s January now and, of course, many of us will be thinking about resolutions for the year ahead. So what if your resolution is to be your own boss?
Have you ever dreamed about it - setting up your own business? Maybe getting a side hustle going where you’re the one in charge? But then, of course the doubts creep in, don’t they? Has your brilliant business idea really got legs? Where’s the money going to come from? And what about all the admin and legal stuff that you’ll need to tackle? No question, getting your micro-business off the ground can feel really daunting, but it’s not impossible. And understanding everything that’s going to be involved is the best place to start.
So today we’re going to explore the very first steps you can take on your business journey if 2024 is the year you decide to take the plunge. I have three entrepreneurs with me, they’ve all made that leap themselves. Jinesh Vohra is Founder and CEO of Sprive. That’s an independent mortgage platform that aims to help customers become debt-free faster. Hi, Jinesh.
JINESH: Hi.
PHILIPPA: Joining us for a second time on the podcast is Founder and CEO of Vestpod. That’s a financial education platform specifically for women. Emilie Bellett. Hello, Emilie.
EMILIE: Hello.
PHILIPPA: It’s nice to have you back.
EMILIE: Thank you.
PHILIPPA: And this last guest from PensionBee is not only the CCO, she’s also our third entrepreneur. She’s the Founder of childrenswear business, LittleCircle. Her name’s Lisa Picardo. Thanks for being with us, Lisa.
LISA: Thank you for having me.
PHILIPPA: Before we start. Here’s our usual disclaimer. Please always remember anything discussed on this podcast should not be regarded as financial advice or legal advice and when investing your capital is at risk.
The idea
PHILIPPA: Now, we’re going to hear all about your own startup experiences in a minute. But first, I think I’d like to know about that moment you all stopped dreaming about your ideas and actually committed to making them a reality and getting them off the ground. I mean, what prompted that? Was it a conversation with someone? Was it redundancy? Emilie, what prompted you to think ‘OK, I’m going to do it’?
EMILIE: I can think of one very specific moment. I had a meeting with a financial advisor who asked me, ‘where’s your husband?’, when I wanted advice on my own finances.
PHILIPPA: Wow.
EMILIE: So that really, you know, started my research and discovery of, you know, ‘how can we help more women become financially independent?’.
PHILIPPA: Yeah, absolutely, I completely understand that. That’s amazing isn’t it? In this day and age!
EMILIE: Yeah it was really annoying.
PHILIPPA: Yeah, really annoying! Jinesh, how about you?
JINESH: So I was at an investment bank and I was there for 14 years and always was focused on trying to progress through getting the next promotion. And then randomly a colleague of mine grabbed me and said, ‘do you want to have a conversation?’, and he basically told me he was leaving the firm and he was going to start his own business. And he was like, ‘we should have a conversation to see if we want to do something together’.
And that kind of led us to after work, sitting in the cafeteria, brainstorming business ideas. And we churned through a whole bunch of ideas and within a five-month period, we then came up with the idea for Sprive and, and now here we are today.
PHILIPPA: So it was the notion of being your own bosses rather than an idea?
JINESH: Yeah, exactly. We actually artificially came up with the idea once we were focused on deciding that we were going to do something together.
PHILIPPA: That’s interesting because I want to ask you later on about people who are in that situation - they know they want to do it but not quite sure what, but we’ll get to it. Lisa, how about you?
LISA: I think I’d long had that, sort of, ambition of one day running my own thing. I had a couple of, sort of, catalysts really. One was that my boss, who I absolutely loved, left. So it meant that I didn’t have to resign from him. Two, I was sort of in my 30s and I’d just had two children and being at that moment really made me reflect on where I was. Did I want to be doing the same thing forever or did I want to take that plunge?
First steps
PHILIPPA: Well, I mean, now we’ve got a sense of what sort of businesses you launched, should we start with first steps? What were your goals? Because I think this notion that we want to be our own boss is one thing - you sit down and think, ‘OK, we’re gonna do it’. Did you sit down and write a list of what you were hoping to get out of it or was it just, ‘I’m going to start this business’?
JINESH: I don’t think at the time I had a big goal in mind. It was very much a journey. And I think sometimes when you set yourself big goals, they can be quite overwhelming. So, I’m a big firm believer of focusing on the next kind of main task that you need to achieve and then start chipping away. So if I think about going back to the beginning, we were kind of trying to find the right idea and it was almost going through a process of validating ideas. Once we felt like, ‘OK, we’ve got a good idea’, then it was like, ‘OK, what do we need? What’s the team that we need to have, the founding team to be able to have a good chance of making the idea a reality?’. And then it was like, you know, ‘should we start talking to investors? Do we need to start talking to people in the industry?’ etc. And so one by one, we were kind of focusing on what was the next kind of step we needed to take. You keep doing that...
PHILIPPA: Step after step?
JINESH: ...Step after step, yeah. There wasn’t a big goal for me.
PHILIPPA: Because the business is really interesting, it’s about helping people pay off their mortgages faster than they otherwise might. Do you want to just tell us a bit about it?
JINESH: Yeah, sure. So it’s essentially an app that helps homeowners, like you said, pay off your mortgage faster and save on interest and we do this in a few different ways. So one is we help people set aside spare cash and with one tap, you can essentially make a mortgage overpayment. But you may obviously all know that mortgages have become much more expensive with interest rates rising, so not everyone can afford to put spare cash towards their mortgage. So then we work with a lot of top-tier brands like ASDA, Amazon, M&S, Waitrose, Uber, the list goes on. So every time you shop with those brands through the app, you get extra money towards your mortgage within 15 minutes of the shop. Again, with one tap, you can pay that towards your mortgage.
PHILIPPA: And when did you launch?
JINESH: Just over two years ago.
PHILIPPA: Yeah, it’s not long, is it?
JINESH: No, not long.
PHILIPPA: Emilie, you said, it was really annoying being asked what your husband thought about your finances. And I think we all understand that. But, what were your other specific goals around being your own boss?
EMILIE: So, life was pretty full-on. I was working evenings and weekends and at some stage, I wanted to work on something different. I wanted to work for myself. I wanted to have more independence. I think you can have this thing with entrepreneurship. But of course, there’s a lot of trade-offs.
PHILIPPA: Sure.
EMILIE: But I think when I set up Vestpod, I had this really big mission. And I think when you start a business, it’s important to try to solve a very big problem that will help you, you know, on this next goal, this next stage and carry on the journey. But I had then smaller goals, as you said. So, you know, how could I break it down? And I started Vestpod in a very simple way. I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to learn about personal finances. I’m going to meet as many financial advisers as I can and try to help women in the process’. So I started writing about personal finances and I started literally from my kitchen table writing a newsletter about money. So I think this early goal, something really small that you can achieve and move to the next thing that helps you validate your idea. I think in the early stages trying to test your idea a little bit.
PHILIPPA: I’m interested in the idea that it’s so easy to fall in love with your concept, isn’t it? We have a thought that, ‘yeah, this is great. It’s gonna be great, it’s all going to go really well’. So I’d like your thoughts on how do you stress test your idea? I mean, obviously there’s research and development, but I’m thinking more around understanding what it might be. Are we talking about a side hustle? Are we talking about a micro business? Are we talking about something that in the future, you want to see floating on the stock market? I mean, how would you suggest people set about that mental process?
EMILIE: With Vestpod, I wanted to try to see if people would pay for my services and would pay for a product. So it was trying to launch, you know, a basic product - the easiest thing possible. And one of the first things we launched was just a class for 20 people teaching personal finances. And I was the teacher so that was a massive learning curve for me. But I, you know, put up this Eventbrite page, you know, designed the logo and tried to get people to actually sign up to this course. We had a lot of people signing up, a lot coming from finance, which was really weird for me - having all these people coming from finance wanting to learn about personal finances. That was really stressful, but at least that validated the need for people to actually want to pay for education. So I’d say talk about your idea, try to get some feedback. There’s a really good book called The Mom Test. So trying to get honest feedback about your idea is hard because your parents, your friends, your partners will tell you ‘it’s amazing what you’re doing’.
PHILIPPA: Yeah, Lisa, how did you do that? I mean yours was around preloved clothing for kids, wasn’t it? How did you market test the idea?
LISA: I totally agree that I think what you do need to do is you develop that idea and then you, you know, you should tap into your networks, you should go and talk to as many people as you can. And I think the more you do it, the more you kind of get that elevator pitch straight in your head. For us, we tested it out, we spoke to magazine editors, we spoke to customers, we spoke to, you know, all sorts really to get that feedback and make sure that we were actually pretty confident before we went live.
PHILIPPA: Yeah, I mean, it’s true to say that you three were all well-connected. So I want to get into the heads of people who just don’t have your sort of networks. And I want to ask you, Jinesh, if you were thinking about that, from the point of view of - you weren’t working in the sector you were in before. How would you have set about working out whether your idea was really viable? And how would you set about looking at the competition?
JINESH: First of all, treat it as a little bit of an academic exercise. And so very much go into, like, ‘how big’s the market? What’s the competition? What are the challenges they’re facing? How do we be different? How do we enter the market? How do we make money?’
PHILIPPA: And you did all this online? You went and looked at the competition?
JINESH: So yeah look at the competition, download the products and just get a real sense of like, can we do something different? For example, talking to customers, we built a waitlist of - not building the product - but theoretically showing them what the product might look like. And 2,000 people signed up to the waitlist saying ‘I’d love to use this product’. And another example is talking to investors and asking ‘have they seen anyone else build something like this? What could be the pitfalls?’. And even doing things that are quite cheeky like talking to people who are the competition technically, and understanding how their business works and trying to get a little bit of intel.
PHILIPPA: So presumably you didn’t tell them, at that point, that you were thinking of setting up Sprive?
JINESH: Yeah, I was just like, ‘I’m a customer, I have a mortgage etc.’, and just trying to get intel because the more information you have, the more equipped you’re going to be, to be able to succeed. Once we came with the idea for Sprive, we then spent six months validating the idea. And it was only until I felt like we properly validated the idea that I actually quit my job and started Sprive. But then we had some really good signs where we had investors who said - we had a powerpoint and they were like ‘can I invest in the idea?’. We even had people in the mortgage industry who were seasoned CEOs who were like ‘can I invest?’.
And the network - I didn’t really have that network because my network was within banking. So I had to put myself out there and create that network. And so, you know, for anyone listening, saying ‘I don’t have the network’, I don’t think you ever do. I think you have to really go out there and build that network from scratch.
PHILIPPA: And how did you do that?
JINESH: Now, what I’m doing, and it’s probably the top tip that can give anyone who does start a business, is to post on social media every day. So I use LinkedIn as a platform and I’d say it took me a little while to start doing that, but that’s really transformed my business in terms of, it’s helped me connect with investors, helped me get new customers, helped me secure partnerships. The power of social media is incredible.
PHILIPPA: That’s really encouraging. Because obviously LinkedIn, it’s available to everyone, isn’t it? And there’s loads of tutorials as well online about how to get the best out of platforms like that. So it’s not like you have to start from scratch and without understanding what you’re doing.
I want to talk now about business plans because this is what everyone always talks about. And when you read into it online, about what your business plan should look like, the range of opinions you get is just huge. So the first question I think I have is how detailed should your business plan be when you start, Lisa?
LISA: I mean, I think it really depends on what your own expertise is because I think there will be, you know, some people will come from finance and, like myself, will be very sort of au fait with building business plans. But you’ll have other people who have a terrific idea and a concept and actually it’s not their bread and butter doing the finances. So then, you know, perhaps for them, what they need to do is sort of buy in that expertise or team up with someone who has it. But I do think it’s important. I think it’s really important to, sort of, have the discipline of writing your business plan in words and then trying to translate it into numbers. So I do think you have to try and I do think you have to be on top of it. But you know, you’ll learn and you’ll evolve and grow.
PHILIPPA: So, in many ways, it’s about getting clarity on the idea for yourself as much as for anyone else. And obviously these business plans aren’t set in stone, are they, they develop? Because the other thing is when you start, I mean, the data you have, the ideas you have about how much money you might spend, how much money you might make, it’s all estimates, isn’t it Emilie? So how useful is a business plan with lots of numbers?
EMILIE: You know, a few numbers, we call it back of it, ‘back-of-the-envelope’. And it’s trying to see, you know, if I build this business, how am I going to make money? How much is that gonna cost me? There’s a good tool called the Business Model Canvas that you can download online that’s free and that will help you identify stuff we’ve been talking about like your key partners, your competitors, costs, revenue, and try to sort of map out what your business is going to look like. And it helps you, it’s a little bit like a framework. So it doesn’t need to be very detailed. But of course, as you progress with your idea or you’re looking for funding, you’ll look to get into the details. When you have - sometimes when you have a very complex business plan, it’s very hard to get the big picture and you may get confused about, you know, where the money comes from and stuff. So sometimes it’s quite good, even when you have these big business plans to come back to something very simple and be able to explain your business plan to someone who’s not part of the business.
JINESH: What I’ve found with startups is all the ideas that you have, they’re all assumptions. And there’s a lot of curveballs that come your way and nothing really goes to plan. So spending a lot of time, you know, creating this big document is probably a waste of energy. And what we did is, what I’d call a business plan is a PowerPoint. And every time we did research, I’d document it and summarise what I’d learned. So if I’d done lots of analysis on the competition, I’d then say, ‘well, what did I learn through all that hard work that I did?’, and I’d try to summarise that on one page in the PowerPoint.
PHILIPPA: That’s a nice tip. I’m wondering, I mean, obviously you need to plan. No question. But I’m wondering whether there’s a danger of over-planning so that you actually never get started because you’re constantly thinking, ‘oh I’m not ready, I’m not ready!’.
LISA: I mean, you can never know everything. What you can guarantee about business planning is that it won’t turn out as you think.
PHILIPPA: Everyone says that, yeah. It’s quite worrying!
LISA: So I actually think it’s really about knowing ‘what could good look like?’ and ‘what could bad look like?’.
JINESH: The one thing I’d say is that numbers don’t lie. So, I’ve met founders who spent two, three, four, five years of their life. And if they did the upfront work on paper, they’d never have made money. So I do think it’s like, at least on paper, being able to like, say, ‘OK this thing can work’, obviously then you’ll have curveballs. But if on paper, the business will never work, then you shouldn’t start the business.
PHILIPPA: Don’t start the business. Can I just ask you about partnering up - because obviously we’re already understanding, there’s a lot of work here. So, I mean, Lisa and Jinesh, you partnered up but you didn’t, Emilie, is that right? You started up on your own?
EMILIE: I started on my own.
PHILIPPA: What are the challenges of that? I mean, obviously you can see that it’s your idea and if it goes really well, it’s all yours. But was it quite hard work doing it all on your own?
EMILIE: Yeah, I think in some ways, it’s hard work, but in others you probably move faster on other things because you’re the only decision maker.
PHILIPPA: But there’s no one to say ‘actually, Emilie, that’s a terrible idea, don’t do that’.
EMILIE: ‘Don’t do that!’. I launched another business before Vestpod where I had some co-founders. And it can be complicated also to manage co-founder relationships. So that’s why I decided after this business not working that I’d start Vestpod on my own. I mean, it’s not like I’m doing everything on my own, I have a team, I have a lot of support. We have advisors, we have a network so I’m not doing everything on my own. So I think it’s a personal decision of ‘do you want to do it on your own or do you want a co-founder?’. But you may want to talk about co-founder relationships because it’s like being in a marriage. So it’s something you have to manage properly.
PHILIPPA: Thinking about partners or co-founders, did you formalise the relationships with your co-founders straight away from day one? As in a legal agreement between you?
LISA: That’s a good question. So for us, I think there was a lot of - I mean, my best friend was my partner. So I was frankly delighted to be married to her for that journey. It was a very happy marriage. But yes, I think we had different roles and responsibilities. When we set up the business, we set up a limited company and we were 50/50. So we were truly co-founders. We had some agreements in place in terms of - for the major decisions, we’ll do these things together. And then in other areas, we’d sort of said, well, actually that’s your domain and this is my domain.
JINESH: For me, I don’t think I could’ve built Sprive alone. I think I’d have crumbled. I think it’s great to have - we have three co-founders - so there’s three of us in total that started Sprive. There was myself, my colleague that I’d worked with, and then we decided that we were going to build a tech company and none of us could code. So we felt like it’d probably be a good idea to bring in a CTO. And so fortunately enough...
PHILIPPA: A Chief Technical Officer?
JINESH: ...Yeah, a Chief Technical Officer. I think it’s really good to act as a sounding board. You almost sometimes get into arguments around certain things, but it’s really a good way of stress testing whether the next step that you’re taking is the right one.
The money & admin
PHILIPPA: Let’s move on to the nuts and bolts - let’s talk about the money. People think about bank loans, don’t they? I mean, I think it’s fair to say that you three had some degree of connection when it came to financing your businesses. If you don’t, I think most people think about a bank loan. Good idea? Bad idea? How easy are they to get?
JINESH: I mean, for me, a bank loan sounds quite scary. Because it’s quite easy for the business to - I mean, most startups, if you look at the numbers, ultimately most startups do fail. So having a personal bank loan if you set up a partnership or as a sole trader, you’re personally liable. So I’d almost prefer to bootstrap if you’re going to come up with a small business idea and have a little bit of savings that you set aside and invest that into the business, get more money back, bring that into the business. And start to really be confident that you’ve got a good, profitable business that generates revenue on a recurring basis. And then you can, with a high level of confidence, you can then say, ‘well, if I want to take out a loan, I know that if I deploy more capital, I’m going to get more money back and it’s less of a gamble’.
PHILIPPA: So save to get the business off the ground rather than borrowing?
JINESH: That’s what I’d do if I didn’t have an idea that relied on, kind of, investment and capital.
PHILIPPA: Everyone’s nodding around the table.
EMILIE: Yeah, I mean, I’ve bootstrapped my business until now. So that’s basically trying to launch the business, with a very minimal cost. So, for me, that was building a website. And I was the one doing the courses and stuff that helped me get some money into the business that I then reinvested in the business. So that’s a way to grow organically. It may take longer, but you keep full independence of the business and then you can decide that you want to get external funding where you’ll have to give shares and you’ll have to give equity to your investors. And there’s different ways, usually when you go through the funding journey, if you manage to bootstrap at the beginning, it’s great because you try to get your idea off the ground, then people usually look at angel investors. So individuals who may have a little bit of money to spare, usually high-net-worth individuals. So of course, when you’ve worked in banking and finance, you tend to have these networks. Not everyone will have a network of angel investors or...
PHILIPPA: Friends and family?
EMILIE: ...Friends and family money.
LISA: That can bring complexity as well!
JINESH: I think the great thing about this day and age is that there are a lot of resources out there that are very cheap or free. So if you want to create a website, you can use a platform like Webflow, Wix or Squarespace. And quite quickly you can find stock images that are free that look very good. And then like there’s AI and there’s ChatGPT and there’s amazing things that they can do.
PHILIPPA: Yeah, spend as little as possible. Because Lisa, I mean, the other side of this, of course is there’s a temptation to plough all your savings into this idea. But thinking with my cautious head on, I mean, you need to keep a cash cushion back, don’t you? To look after yourself if things go badly.
LISA: Because I think when you’re starting a business, it feels like everything, right? It’s your baby, it’s your passion, you’re so into it. But actually there’s a whole life outside of that as well and that has to continue. You need a roof over your head, you need to pay for your children and you need to keep the car going. You need to do whatever it was that you were doing before.
PHILIPPA: How big a cash cushion should you keep aside? Six months’ expenses or, I mean, what’s your suggestion on that? Because it matters, doesn’t it?
LISA: I’m not sure there’s one answer to that. I mean, I think it really depends - I think there’s two sides really, which is one, what are the factors around your business? And then the second is what are the factors around your lifestyle? Are you on your own? Do you live with someone? Do you have a partner that can help shoulder that financial responsibility of life whilst you’re starting your business? So I think it’s a very individual decision based on your circumstances.
PHILIPPA: Can we talk a bit about structure? I mean, how do you set up a business? There’s a sole trader, limited companies, partnerships? Pros and cons? Any strong thoughts on them?
JINESH: Yeah, so we’ve set up a limited company and that was because it was very clear from the outset that we needed shareholders and we needed to raise capital. So that’s the traditional way you’d structure a company. And you don’t take personal liability which is obviously good.
PHILIPPA: So you’re not gonna lose your house?
JINESH: You’re not gonna lose your house, exactly. Whereas if you’re, for example, a sole trader or a partnership, you have personal liability. And so, if the company has personal debts, they’re your debts.
PHILIPPA: Emilie, any thoughts on how you should make that decision?
EMILIE: I think you should definitely have an accountant. It’s probably a cost, but I’d say it’s an investment for you. When you set up and have that first conversation with an accountant, especially in small businesses, to understand the tax relief. Especially if you’re a limited company and you have a lot more responsibility and you have to publish your yearly accounts and potentially register for VAT at some stage. So they’ll be really really helpful.
PHILIPPA: So I want to get into the pros and cons of them. I mean, from what you’re saying, it sounds like you all think that you should set up a limited company, however tiny your venture is. And that’s not an expensive thing to do, is it? I mean, it’s worth saying that. But you think you should?
LISA: Yeah, I think it’s pretty sort of simple and straightforward to actually set up your company. I asked my husband, who’s a friendly lawyer, to do it for me. And I spoke to my dad, who’s a friendly accountant, to help me along the way.
PHILIPPA: Handy family you’ve got there!
JINESH: I think it’s £13 to register a company. And then obviously you need to do your annual accounts.
PHILIPPA: So proper advisors?
EMILIE: And one thing I’d say is that, for me, setting up a limited company was because I had a big vision for the business. So even if the business was small, I thought maybe one day it’s going to be a much bigger business. So I’ll already have the structure, I’ll have a history of annual accounts. So that was helpful. But it was also about separating my personal finances versus the businesses finances. And I know when you’re a sole trader, you should definitely have separate business accounts because it can be very confusing sometimes when you start paying from your own account for the business and for yourself, your mortgages, it all comes from the same pocket. So even if you’re a sole trader, make sure you have separate, at least, bank accounts for you and your business.
PHILIPPA: OK. So if you’re setting up a little retail business online or something, just for yourself, at the kitchen table, you should have a business account and keep everything separate?
EMILIE: It’ll make your life easier because you’ll also have to pay taxes and there’s expenses that you could deduct. So you’re going to have to work with your accountant and having things separate will help a lot. And if you make investments in your business that come from your personal bank account to your business bank account then you should document everything that you’re doing.
PHILIPPA: OK, we all know this isn’t going to be easy. I think the stats that you alluded to earlier, Jinesh, said on average _basic_rate of new businesses fail in their first year and more than 6_personal_allowance_rate only make it to five years. Now, this is all quite dispiriting. But having said that, that means _higher_rate of them do fine and keep on going, right? So, common mistakes; what common mistakes do you see startups making?
EMILIE: For me, it’s focus. So, trying to do too many things at the same time and building something quite complicated and then losing track. So I’d say keep it simple. Cash is king. We talked about cash flow. Especially for small businesses, I think that’s the main reason why startups actually close.
JINESH: Yeah, I also think - I mean, all those things are common reasons. I think also if you start on your journey, you’ll find certain things happen that you didn’t anticipate and so your ability to be able to be quite agile. So I think part of it’s also just reacting to curveballs that go your way.
PHILIPPA: Is there a piece of advice that would’ve made a difference to you in the early days, if you’d known it? Something you know now?
JINESH: Everything takes a lot longer than you think. So, I remember talking to my wife when I had the idea and we decided that I was going to leave my corporate job behind. And I was like, ‘don’t worry in about a year I’ll be earning a salary’. It took me two years. So, like, you know, 18 months later, when’s your salary coming?
PHILIPPA: Yeah. Emilie?
EMILIE: I’d say it’s about the journey and not the destination. It’s a very long journey. So it’s like a series of sprints. You think you’ve got somewhere but then you’re working on the next thing. So I’d say try to enjoy the journey. If you’re really not enjoying it, if you feel it’s not working, you should really reconsider your plans. Take care of yourself and your mental health. We talked a little bit about, you know, the business within your life and it takes a lot of space, a lot more space than you’d think. It’s like having another child for me. And you stress a lot about it, you think about it all the time. So try to have strong boundaries.
JINESH: And that’s a really important point - the mental side of things. I don’t think I appreciated that at all - having a good support infrastructure because it’s really tough.
PHILIPPA: It sounds like it’s gone really well. But was it really tough?
JINESH: It’s tough because, like you say, you don’t switch off. So that’s one thing. So when you’re trying to be present, sometimes you’re having a family event and you’re still on your phone managing your business and people notice. There’s other stresses, like, you’ve got your team and you don’t want to lay the stress onto the team because ultimately, they’re looking to you for inspiration and guidance. And then you’ve got your family life and you don’t want to necessarily lay it onto them. And I found leaning on other founders is a really nice way of doing it, because you’re going through similar challenges.
LISA: Totally.
PHILIPPA: I think, you know, we know there’s a lot to think about here, but I hope it’s not going to put people off giving it a go.
Just a last reminder that anything discussed on the podcast should not be regarded as financial or legal advice. And when investing your capital is at risk.
Next month on The Pension Confident Podcast, we’ll be looking at the financial barriers facing women and how to smash them down, but don’t think this is only for women. Trust me, there will be lots for everyone to know in that episode.
Remember if you’ve got the PensionBee app, you can now listen to the podcast on our brand new in-app player. Give it a try next time you check up on your pension. Thanks for listening.
Risk warning
As always with investments, your capital is at risk. The value of your investment can go down as well as up, and you may get back less than you invest. This information should not be regarded as financial advice.
Period | Market Event | FTSE World TR GBP (%) | 4Plus Plan (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
4Plus Plan’s inception – 6 Sept 2013 | QE Tapering, China Interbank Crisis and its aftermath | -5.44 | -2.41 |
3 Oct 2014 – 15 May 2015 | Oil price drop, Eurozone deflation fears & Greek election outcome | -5.87 | -1.77 |
7 Jan 2016 – 14 Mar 2016 | China’s currency policy turmoil, collapse in oil prices and weak US activity | -7.26 | -1.54 |
15 June 2016 – 30 June 2016 | BREXIT referendum | -2.05 | -1.07 |
