#1 - My first month working full-time as an entrepreneur

Hello and welcome to my first blog post as an Innovation Award holder. For those of you who might not know me, here’s a little introduction!

My name is Natasha and I’m a beauty entrepreneur on a mission to create a more ethical beauty industry. Whilst studying International Management at the University of Bath I worked as a beauty influencer for some of the top brands in the industry including Beauty Bay, L’Oreal and Look Fantastic. I thought I was living the dream when lockdown hit and PR packages were flying through the door for me to review. That was until I realised the sheer amount of packaging and plastic that went into each new product I received. This was the first time I was exposed to the sustainable and ethical problems behind the beauty industry. Since then, I have been working on several projects to overcome the issues.

Laguna Lashes

Laguna Lashes was my first business, launched during lockdown 2020 after I first discovered the plastic problem in the beauty industry. With over 120bn packaging units being generated by the cosmetics market every year, most of which end up in our oceans and landfill (ZeroWasteWeek, 2018), I was determined to find a better solution. From my kitchen table, I designed the world’s first plastic-free biodegradable eyelash box made from 97% recycled materials. Since then, Laguna Lashes has launched 6 different eyelash styles, had two sell-out launches and received a Global Green Beauty Award. Recently we were shortlisted for an Allure Best of Beauty Award and featured on Sky News!

Beauty Switch / Ethical Beauty App

Launching Laguna Lashes was an amazing success, especially considering it was my first business. But I couldn’t help but wonder ‘what about the rest of my beauty routine, how do I make it all sustainable?’. This is when I came across a new problem - people don’t actually know which beauty brands are sustainable or not. Due to a lack of awareness, misinformation and greenwashing, it is really difficult to shop for ethical and sustainable beauty products. It was from this, that the idea of Beauty Switch was born - a new platform to discover and switch to ethical beauty products.

The First Month

Up until this point, I have always been working on my businesses part-time alongside my studies. Now that I have the Innovation Award, I am so excited to be working on Laguna Lashes and Beauty Switch full-time to explore their potential.

But if I’m completely honest, this month has been challenging!

Since working full-time on the businesses, I have been putting a lot of pressure on myself for the businesses to ‘succeed’ rather than enjoying the process. I’ve had to take a step back and evaluate what success looks like for me this year and to see this as a learning journey and an opportunity for growth. I don’t have it all figured out, but that’s exactly what this year of the Innovation Award is all about.

It can also be quite lonely as a young entrepreneur especially when all of your friends are getting graduate jobs. However having Izzie and E-J also on this journey has been amazing. It means that we can all come together, have businessy chats and have people who relate to our experiences - also shout out to Maks Rahman (E-J’s cofounder) and Vicky Regan from Bath Entrepreneurs who I regularly have entrepreneurial chats with! Speaking to other Innovation Award holders and the connections I’ve made on my entrepreneurial journey honestly helps so much. For any young entrepreneurs reading this, I’d say speaking to other founders and making founder friends is one of the best things you can do.

Finally, I’ve definitely found it hard to switch off. As I’m so passionate about the projects I’m working on, I’ll often find myself trying to solve problems in the middle of the night, or struggling to put my laptop away even when I need a break. Work-life balance as a founder is a struggle! (Side note: a good book for this is Working Hard, Hardly Working by Grace Beverley). I’m sure that over time I’ll find ways to overcome this but I wanted to be real and highlight some of the challenges I have found this month. So if you’re going through any of these things as a founder, you are not alone!

Having said this, I am so grateful to be experiencing these things and it’s showing me that this year is going to develop my mental resilience more than I ever could have imagined. Having the support of the University and the Innovation Award is a dream come true and I’m looking forward to embarking on the rest of my entrepreneurial journey.

As Miley Cyrus would say ‘It’s the climb’!