"I quit Facebook to do this instead!" S2 #25 Shara Tochia | The Purposeful Project Podcast

Key Takeaways

so i've had a marketing career across many different industries and that being fashion hospitality and technology but i've also had a side hustle for the good old i'd say 15 years now four years ago there was only platforms talking about how to get abs in six days diet pills and a lot of celebrity trash endorsements so that is the how the inspiration for dose started so one of the first steps we did when i say we i mean myself and my business partner i work with a wonderful girl called hetty holmes is really just look at the market research exactly what was out there in terms of wellness content was it was it simple to quit i had a failed company and then that was a very stressful but wonderful two years of my life and i kind of always loved working for myself so then became a freelancer but deep down knew that i wanted to build a brand again so i was always saving always saving thinking i'm not ready for it i don't know what i want to do i haven't read the right person to start this company with safe safe safe welcome shower to the podcast thank you so much for being here thank you so much for having me it's nice to meet you simon i've heard so much about you and i just love what you're doing would you mind just kicking off things by telling my audience a little bit about who you are and what you're doing yes absolutely and so as you know my name's shara i'll say my last name just so everyone knows how to pronounce it because it's always fun my last name is tochia so i am a female that lives in north london and i run a lovely wellness brand called dos and we are dedicated to transforming your mood so dose is actually an acronym for your feel-good hormones which are dopamine oxytocin serotonin and endorphins so let's get straight into it how did you um how did you start this business how from my listeners that love to start love to start a business how did you go about making this a reality it's a great question and i'm going to keep this as summarized as possible so i've had a marketing career across many different industries and that being fashion hospitality and technology but i've also had a side hustle for the good old i'd say 15 years now i've also taught spin classes before and after work it's something i've always done as a passion and i had no idea when i started doing that when i was at university that wellness or anything to do with exercise and health would become my full-time job so after many many different roles i was kind of frustrated that let's say four years ago now that there wasn't a platform dedicated to talking to someone like me who loves to exercise but loves to reward themselves at the same time i.e have the pizza have the glass of red wine because you've done the spin class at 6 00 am four years ago there was only platforms talking about how to get abs in six days diet pills and a lot of celebrity trash endorsements so that is the how the inspiration for dose started and what were the first few steps that you took to make it happen i mean a lot of people have an idea right there's loads of my audience listening now that have an idea and but how what were the first few things you did to kind of turn it into reality so there's a little bit of a backstory which is i've actually had a failed company prior to starting dose so i had learnt a lot in that situation and after that i had some time going back into employment and freelance work but i knew and had learned a few tricks along the way so one of the first steps we did um when i say we i mean myself and my business partner i work with a wonderful girl called hetty holmes is really just look at the market research exactly what was out there in terms of wellness content and if anyone listening understands the wellness industry they'll see that it's become a very popular category in the last four to five years so we did a lot of research and at the time of starting the business i was in full-time employment working for facebook and instagram and we started a newsletter we wondered you know do people actually want to hear about what's going on in london like the latest vegan restaurant the latest fitness studio and the latest zero percent alcohol brand and we just created content every week and emailed a database at the same time that grew and grew and grew so there were the first few steps and so um is that simple sometimes isn't it i think i love this idea that you know it starts with a newsletter i think it yeah sometimes people can overthink creating a business and and once you see that people are interested in that content i'm sure people shared it right and that there's a growth in the database and and sometimes marketing is way too over complicated and it can just be that simple so after after the newsletter kind of took off which it clearly did because what happened next what was the kind of next few steps that you took well at the time we were writing the newsletter and we went out every monday morning i like i said was working full-time and my business partner was also working full-time we had one of those you know ironic situations now where those jobs came to an ultimatum and facebook was offering me a full-time job and my business partner's business was also offering her a full-time job we were both consultants and we basically sort of said you know this business dose has got legs is it is it time to jump ship and one of those very fortunate scenarios we actually had our first client come to us around that same time and we didn't honestly know what the business was we were like we've got this amazing community what do we do with it what what does it grow to is it an app is it is it an aggregation marketplace business and basically they ultimately resulted in us leaving our jobs and our first paid client and so was it was it simple to quit again thinking of my listeners that maybe you're in a job they don't love um but you know it's security right is that guaranteed income pays the mortgage and so on yeah how did you mitigate that risk what was your mindset so again a great question and this comes back to my back story i had a failed company and then that was a very stressful but wonderful two years of my life and i kind of always loved working for myself so then became a freelancer but deep down knew that i wanted to build a brand again so i was always saving always saving thinking i'm not ready for it i don't know what i want to do i haven't met the right person to start this company with save save save so yes i quit facebook quite quickly um but it was a question of living like a pauper like you just do when you start a company and all your disposable income goes into the business or as you say paying your bills i really like this insight and i want the audience to really pick up on it this is really interesting you didn't know what you wanted to do but you did know that you wanted to build a brand of your own and be your own boss so you saved and kept your head down that's really interesting to me because i think for a lot of people that are listening they don't have an idea and they wonder you know well i'll wait until i've got an idea then i'll put all my energy into it but you did the prep work you did the prep work yeah i think you set yourself up to have that ability to you know i'm gonna guess you didn't get yourself into a lot of debt you didn't buy things you didn't need you didn't you didn't get a lot of you know monthly costs that would stop you from following up on your dream when it came to you and that is very important i think that's really quite special and so how did you find your co-founder this is another thing i know a lot of people struggle with um you know finding a co-founder or making the co-founder relationship work so what do you think your secret sauce is on that so i had a what's the right words to say this i was very very scared of working with someone after my first experience so in the failure of my first business to give a quick summary it was a fitness aggregation business um where you could find a book a fitness class anywhere which is now known as classpass because someone came in and did it and took over and i did that alone i did that with the most naivety you could possibly have as a founder i did not know what the word startup meant when i you know started a business but i did find someone to work with about a year down the line and that person was not right for me and it ended very sadly and very badly so i was scared i didn't want to work with anyone again and as i said i needed the break i needed the income i just needed time out so when hetty my now business partner approached me she had been someone i'd worked with in these freelance contracts and i really respected her background she had also built a company but with someone else and been a little bit scarred and someone really amazing in my life who is very successful and founded and a few businesses said to me don't ever go into business with someone who hasn't been scarred and it never left my brain and being someone who had been scarred meeting someone else who i respected who'd been scarred i thought there's something in this let me just see what this girl's like so we became friends we drank a lot of red wine we did a lot of fitness classes we did a lot of brainstorming and that's essentially how dose became dose what we did do prior to actually incorporating the company was work together on contracts um it's more of a trust relationship tester i mean we joke and say that we dated for a while because that's that's literally what we did for about a year and then we realized we liked each other we respected each other we had very similar long-term goals we understood the hard work that startup would be and we wanted to do it such a great insight as well that only experience can can really uh fully understand but one of the reasons we do this podcast is to try and give people this knowledge before they go through the pain of what you're talking about here and i love this point you know you work with people that have been scarred which sounds counterintuitive doesn't it but then there's so many um learnings in that experience and and can can i make an assumption just on my own experience but feel free to correct me that that the one of the things was making sure you had very different job roles making sure you didn't overlap each other i should have said that you're absolutely right we are chalk and cheese i mean we have the same work ethic with absolute grafters but she is a creative editorial genius i am someone who loves people and commercial sales and i cannot do her job she cannot do mine i mean i think she could probably do mine if she tried but she doesn't want to yeah i think that i think that's that's that's crucial to the dynamic and and i think the the work ethic alignment alongside having very different roles is when the magic happens and so um your story is just so important for my listeners to pick up on so so you you meet your you know you work the other thing i feel is really good by the way the dating point i mean sometimes people jump straight into a partnership with someone why not date i personally had great experience my last company i sold it to pwc in part because we dated that company before we sold it and i think that's actually what made them want to work with my team and vice versa and so i think it's really an underrated piece of knowledge there and people want to jump straight into a co-founder structure and why not just work together for a while um i think exactly such a good be patient right like you say date you wouldn't just marry someone but people do unfortunately and then sometimes it works you know let's call it luck and sometimes it doesn't right so it's really important what you're talking about there i i think you you you see or speak to sometimes at some points of the relationship and the business your business partner more than you do your boyfriend husband girlfriend wife and that is testament to why we say we dated you you literally spend your life married to this person so you may as well get on with them you said something else i think that's also vital as you respected them and their craft and what they could do and i think that's also important you've got to give them space to make their own mistakes but also you know acknowledge that um that they they know more than you in that area and give up the power of of being the boss which i think is really really interesting so so explain to us um you know what what kind of what happened next you know so the business um you've got the partnership you're doing these commercial deals so how did you build it out because again a lot of people dream of building a business like yours what do you think you know looking looking back where the next few steps that were vital so the beginning of dose we didn't know what it was as i said um i came from trying to build a marketplace aggregation tech business which i didn't know was until the end and you know a business that never really made money so i spent a long time of that business raising money and i hated it and i'm not brilliant at it so i kind of sat there and unfortunately at the beginning of dos i was like this is what we have to do we have to raise money but when we were at that kind of cracks of our full-time jobs and our first paid client was nike that came to us we really like what you're doing your brand is really cool and we think you're really ahead of the game we were like oh my god someone's going to pay us we um called the first person we knew that ran an online magazine and went how on earth does this work like how does how do you monetize it what's the process talk to me about your operation and learn as much as we could from as many resources we could pull in in our network and wow what a first client it sounds super glamorous um yeah no i know i mean i have lots of money i've also worked with these brands and it's it's all it's hard work as well but but but still you know that's a big validation i often thought that nike could do a a brilliant program to support entrepreneurs you know just do it just start your own business just do it that's so good isn't it i love that well they've kind of accidentally done it by um by by backing you as a as a as a client relationship so that they've kind of done it without realizing it so but um but yeah so just just backtracking a little bit i'm always fascinated to share with my audience the entrepreneurs kind of um history how how they've got this kind of let's call it the entrepreneurial drive which i i think um no one's born with i think everyone develops it but do you think entrepreneurs are born on bread and and were your parents entrepreneurs how did this kind of entrepreneurial spirit in you manifest itself how did it happen so again amazing question but i think the answer to that is both so my dad was an entrepreneur um but he was a tv and video repair man with a shop in forrest gate so i should say i'm first generation half irish half indian and i grew up in essex in east london well north east london depending on where you are so my dad did run a business but he wasn't particularly driven by money he he was just a really really chilled guy that wanted to earn a living for his family and my mother is an nhs nurse and has been since she was 19 she's 65 so completely unentrepreneurial and institutionalized by her job but i do think the only reason maybe subconsciously of course i saw my dad work for himself but i think for me personally i just found a problem i couldn't solve in the first instant so my first business i was a freelance fitness instructor so i knew the fitness market had worked for every gym in london and i was a marketeer so i saw the modeling open table which for anyone listening that doesn't know open table it's fine and book a restaurant and i thought why on earth hasn't someone built that for fitness and this was 10 years ago before class pass existed at the peak of the health and fitness boom in london specifically so i think that was my drive initially and then the subconscious was yes i i'd known a few people in my career that built companies that were good friends and probably always admired them so a bit of both just looking back at your history i mean that's that's you've worked for pretty much all i think some of the top brands out there you know dkny ralph lauren of course facebook so um and instagram i mean these these are kind of dream companies to work for for a lot of people um but none of them tempted you to stay it wasn't like oh actually this this uh employment life um it's a lot easier uh so i did a lot of those brands before i started working for myself and when my first business died i was freelance and and to the point when i was freelance at facebook as well i think once you worked for yourself at it and you love the hustle when you love the drive and you love the risk it there's no going back so even though i'd gone to facebook i was still freelance and i knew i told you deep down like i knew i wanted to do it again i just wasn't sure what during that time did your um did did you well your parents did they they say oh you're crazy doing it again or were they like did the first time how did they how did they respond when you said you're going to do a new company well it wasn't so much doing the new company it was like are you sure you want to leave facebook you know facebook and it was a very good year for me i mean i was a freelancer in a tech company it was a financially stable year let's call it compared to the rest of the things i've done but i mean my mom still has conversations at work and obviously someone goes oh facebook's a brilliant company to work for and then she rings me four and a half years into my now business going are you sure you did the right thing yeah it's always facebook yeah it's uh i know what you mean it's a very interesting phenomenon isn't it i mean parents love us so ultimately they're just they're just doing it because they care about you so much but but i know a lot of my listeners we get a lot of we got a lot of messages around this where you know there's almost like parents wondering about their children and starting a business somehow seems risky my view is that starting a business of your own is less risky than working for someone else just because you're in control of it you know you can decide whether or not you're going to get fired and you can make your business uh survive by by pushing some buttons whereas you can't necessarily make sure facebook survives um if mark zuckerberg goes and says something wrong in congress they could get shut down and you lose your job right so there's but it but it is an interesting phenomenon that people feel like starting your own business is risky um yeah it's interesting i really like your view on that it's um it's just it's just a perception isn't it and i think for me personally there's nothing like the fear to drive you to earn money when you know you have to pay your rent you know you have to pay a mortgage or bills or for your kids and feed people there is nothing like the fear that drives you and that's a personal thing and something i should have added um talking about being freelance and starting doses i have still to this day teach spin classes so when i've had a bad month i have ways of earning money and it's not a lot of money because it's a freelance trainer you know income but it's still there if i need more that's again that's really smart and it's also good it's almost like a hobby that pays you money that keeps you sane and gives you that feeling that i i think that's really interesting as well i don't do that i might create a side hustle that is you know just for fun a bit of income in case in case the main job doesn't work out the other thing you said earlier which i think is really gold is is um loving fear that's the phrase you used when you spoke earlier and i think that's really interesting too because people in fear most people i see fear something to avoid right something they want to reduce the feeling of i don't want to feel fearful i don't want to be worried about cash flow right who wants to be worried about cash flow but you know i think that like you're saying that fear actually is is designed to help you it drives you it pushes you it's a really really interesting point you're making there so how do you think you've learned to love fear because clearly you know you you've highlighted and been very open you had had failure um do you how do you think you've come to enjoy fear how's that happened i think i've done every type of job i can that i can possibly be good at and i know what makes me happy and i believe in the statement do something that scares you every day like i really do believe in that and then i have been a freelancer i've been a consultant i've worked for a global tech company i've worked in four different types of industry and i've just weighed it up and gone you know what yeah i earn a ton more money than i'm currently earning right now in my new business at facebook but i know what makes me happy mm-hmm well i think that's experience such a great statement that should be on a t-shirt like as people walk by what makes you happy do you know you know if you know what makes you happy and you go for it that's that's pretty pretty powerful do you think um i mean just structurally for a second i was wondering your your brand name's so cool i love dos in fact um tic toc just sent me a new newsletter this morning and said here's your daily dose and i thought to myself you know i believe in fate i'm interviewing the founder of those today um i wonder if there's a trademark but uh do you do what about trademark did you manage to trademark the name how did you uh manage to get that name protected um do you know what unfortunately you can't we we've protected the logo um and the brand name but unfortunately because it's descriptive word in the uk you can't trademark the name so we're a little bit stuck with that one yeah that's just one of the things i've seen in business myself i owned a business called foodie and it did really well and then someone came out the woodwork and said they owned the trademark to the word foodie and naturally they could shut us down and take the last three years of income would have been theirs because in theory you're passing off and got into quite a funny old legal situation so i'm always warning people now try to protect but you've got the brand image protected that's at least something exactly no one can trademark the word so you're you're okay i think um but but it is one of the things i like to bring up especially with great names like yours uh that that's something people need to think about when they've come up with a good name you know can they protect themselves and has someone else already got foodie as those in my case i wish i checked that beforehand you know um but it but yes it is it's structurally quite important so do you think uh you know when you well when you're thinking about your business now um how do you define success for the business and for you personally how do you how do you decide what success is so we haven't funded the business to date and we very much have never put a pen into the business other than our own savings at the beginning um which was very very small and for us success is consistent growth especially in this last year during the pandemic and being able to pay our team at the moment that is what success looks like for us don't be wrong we put different sorry don't i i can change those metrics and those goals every month um but at the moment that's what success looks like for us what do you think the critical factors were in your success do you think there's anything you can pinpoint in particular um for the business now yes i think i had built an incredible network of people um in my career and my previous business that was instrumental into getting the first paid income into this current business so yes it sounds amazing our first client was nike i'd known nike for 10 years because i'd worked with them and i had very much worked at keeping those relationships um even when they've moved on to new companies i think building a network is instrumental when you're starting out in the category you want to go into i know i've been on clubhouse too much because as soon as i hear that i'm like oh your network is your net worth i just wanna i've heard too much people in millionaire rooms on clubhouse shouting out your network is your network but it is very true i think building that's why i would tell people treat your suppliers with a lot of respect because they're you know that that later could be your your partner in business and part of your network and as you as you grow so just treating people on both sides of the equation suppliers or clients of course well and building that network up will will serve you forever actually even even after dose that will serve you right um yeah so it's a very good very good point 100 agree and now if you were to kind of do it again um start this business again um would you do anything differently uh would i do that's a brilliant question would i do anything differently no not at the beginning maybe halfway through i maybe wouldn't have spent a really long time trying to think about building an app because we didn't do it and that's waste of my time there's a million things i wouldn't have done in the last four years um but i think for me again talking about the failure of my first company it taught me so much about what i wanted to do the second time did you build a web platform first is that is that what you mean there did or did you build an app first no so we when we first started dos we thought we were gonna we thought we were gonna create an app i think our url was actually dosapp.com.uk and then we realized that we needed a ton of money we both weren't technological people like i'm not a techie no there's hetty well what the hell are we doing we're trying to build it build a brand like on with our strengths at least in the initial stages and again for us to be a techie brand we would have to try and find a cto we'd have to raise some cash two things we're not particularly good at we were like great let's do what we know best that's another great uh nugget there i just i think so many people sit there and say right okay let's build a tech product and the people involved aren't tech and and then they wonder you know why they they have to raise money which they're also perhaps not good at and then they find that hard and spend all the time doing that and then they try to hire people when they don't understand what they're hiring tech wise yeah it's so true why not just you know play to your strengths okay and clearly you you knew your space and you knew marketing and so you know just leverage the things you're good at i think that's so so insightful and so smart from hopefully my listeners to pick up on so going forward i mean do you think there's any um important personal characteristics that you you and your partner have had that have kind of helped you push through and get what you've got um i mentioned it before but we're both just very very very hard-working people and we both have hustle and a long-term goal with this business it's not it's not about trying to make you know a million quid overnight like we would love this business to be successful financially and live the life that we both want to but we both understand each other's values the business values and what we're trying to do i think this working hard thing is another interesting area so you know you hear a lot from the likes of gary vee work hard work hard work hard the only way to make it is work hard of course then you'll hear the other side just work smart and so on i mean what what what does work hard mean do you think how do you frame it i think we're working hard especially in a new business there's a lot of sacrifices that come with that i'm not saying that you should sacrifice your health by working you know with two hours sleep a night it's it's not about that it's just understanding your priorities so right now i am working more hours for my business partner because she is nurturing two children under two but she's still working hard like probably more than she has the energy for but it's just about understanding what periods of your life you need to sacrifice what you know right now we are launching a new area of the business so we're working a lot harder so we're trying to balance a lot of different things um it's just it's also having that that work ethic like you want to keep going you're still driven by what you do i i think this is really interesting this area and uh my interpretation is always like if you have purpose it kind of it's cheesy but it doesn't feel like work it's um you know you i i've got a three and a half year old um and i and i absolutely love spending time with him and uh you know today he's like daddy play with me and don't do the podcast but i explained to him that i really enjoy it and i'm i've got a purpose to help other people with this you know interviewing wonderful people like yourself and i and i feel like he understood and and you know but i guess what i'm trying to explain here is that you know it makes the painful things of like for example the sacrifice point you're making there a little easier because um it's it's purposeful and it's important and and actually in a way you make your business one of your children it is my business partner does call dos her first child and she now has she says four because she has a dog and two actual children yeah well i think that's a great way of looking at it i actually think it's a great way of looking at it and and you've got to love it you know and that's why sometimes when people say i'm building this business up to sell it i'm like would you say oh you're three and a half year old how much would you you know and it's um that's brilliant yeah i think there's a slight misunderstanding there and don't get me wrong i mean i've exited my business so there's a time and a place um i think when they're teenagers but you know each to their own but um but i think you know it's one of those things so what do you see kind of in the future for dose what's what's the what's the what's the dream what's what's the long-term vision so we've spent four years at the moment well to date to building this amazing community of readers and now we're actually going to launch an e-commerce brand which is something we've been working on for two years so hopefully building something that our community wants which we did a lot of research around uh to sell to them and hopefully make more people feel better that's all that's awesome and we'll put the links to your newsletter and e-commerce site and all that when it's launched we'll update the links as well make sure it's all below for anyone who's listening to this now you can click through and see um what's been talked about here and you can click through to the social media channels for dose just just wondering i have this thing personally about education i i think the educational system's broken uh to be honest but um doesn't mean you have to agree with me i'm just interested in your view i mean what was your education like do you think it's helped you do what you're doing today or do you feel like there's there is a problem like i'm suggesting sure i have this argument with my husband all the time um i think education's broken as well i had a really normal education in my eyes i went to a state school and then i went to a convent high school which was fine i have no feelings of good or bad towards it it's just where i went to school and i did have i had absolutely no idea at the age of 18 what i wanted to do i had parents that didn't pressure me at all they were like as long as you are happy and you know maybe go to university if you think that you have no idea and give you a few more options and i was very fortunate enough to be able to go to university so i did but the only reason why i chose my degree was because i got to go live in new york for a year so i did a degree in the most niche thing you could imagine and it was a degree titled fashion merchandising management three years into that degree i absolutely hated it and became a fitness instructor i mean i was probably probably letting people know a lot about my personality right now i'm not very good at sticking uh sitting still so i had a i don't know i'd call it a normal education but also a little bit weird i am don't believe that directly my education affected what i'm doing now um certainly the area of fashion retail management did not but at the same time my husband believes and i i think he's probably right i'm just someone who loves people and i'm very good leveraging relationships and it is very much what i do now and he said you won you won it you wouldn't you would have done that regardless and he's probably right so that's interesting isn't it i think the the natural core skills people um you're very strong because i think sometimes people net people's natural skills get squashed by education in my view so fit into the system memorize take a test and get those dot boxes ticked and that can squash people's true um nature but you fought back i feel like you've you've ended up leveraging what you're naturally good at and and not let your education hinder you i can't see you as a fashion merchandiser i can't see you as a fashion merchandising manager in a big corporation i just i just it's just not not not you is it but still like you said you got no no you got the travel in which i think is also really important especially for young people to experience the world and and see how it works and did you spend a lot of time in new york i spent a year in new york and i spent three years in sydney so um i feel like i had some amazing travelling experiences so when's those going international then oh my i mean we do have an international audience in our online readership so um i think we're working a few ways around brexit at the moment to try and get our products launched and then we'll think about international fair enough well look um i want to thank you for giving up time today to come and share your story with us your insights knowledge um i appreciate you know there's there's 15 years worth of experience you're kind of giving us in this podcast and i'm really grateful um i i just want to end i guess by just asking if you went back to kind of the younger you and gave some advice what would that advice be uh two things i'd say and it sounds so cliche and i really don't i don't want it to is enjoy the journey you just don't know where you're going to end up and and you know life is a ride so enjoy the journey there's there literally is not a destination and don't be in a rush because i am always in a rush to do everything i'm in a rush to get to places i'm in a rush to hit a goal i'm in a rush to travel somewhere so i'd say probably stop being a rush which i have to be honest the last year's taught me very interesting very interesting well um your younger self i'm sure is listening and saying you know what i've really enjoyed the ride so i'm fine with it i'm fine with it but i appreciate what you what you've shared here today i've i've made notes myself personally reminding me of things that i kind of knew in the back of my mind but you mentioning them today remind me also myself i built 18 companies reminded myself to enjoy the journey a bit more so so i really appreciate you and thank you so much for taking the time out to share your story with us today and we'll look forward to having you back on when the e-commerce site's flying come and tell us what's going on and your plans for the future and yeah thank you thanks again for coming on the podcast thank you so much simon for taking the time to chat thank you for listening to the purposeful project podcast today if you got any value from this podcast then do feel free to give us a review and give us your feedback and if you think anybody out there might enjoy this story of this real life successful entrepreneur then feel free to share and of course go and visit purposefulproject.com and join our main list at any point thanks again for listening