I was working as a holistic health therapist. I would’ve done massage reflexology, aromatherapy, Chinese medicine. I taught yoga, fitness, meditation. It was a whole broad range of health.

It has to be a whole myriad of things and I really always believed that even what you put on your skin contributes to that health and happiness as well.

So, in my clinic as you were saying I knew my stuff and I always passed on my knowledge to people. I was never kind of, you know, I was never like ‘There’s the treatment. There you go. I’m not going to explain anything to you.’

So, I do always try and educate people.

I just saw how they enriched the skin, but also people’s lives.

So, at that stage I was more concerned about how people felt.

So, the person comes in. They’re feeling tired or they’re feeling down or they have aches and pains or whatever, and I would choose certain oils based on the information they gave me and just on aroma alone it would give them a little bit of a lift.

So, when you use something like lavender over time or rose or whatever, that is absorbing and that is having an effect on your body and on your wellbeing.

Now, often the case was I would get people who just had had no luck with doctors and that’s when they came and sometimes it was too far gone.

I’ll see, you know, if I can bring in a little bit more money. These oils are beautiful. I’ll see if they’ll sell,’ and Paul said, “Right. I’ll design some boxes for you.”

And then, we started doing that and that was in, like, early November 2012.

People going, ‘How can we order? Want to get them for Christmas,’ all this.

I had no website. I had nothing.

It was literally just taking messages and getting people to put…

I set up a PayPal account, put it into PayPal.

And then, I did Christmas markets and we worked…

I suppose, for some people that’s they’re like, ‘Oh my God, that’s a product that, like, you could buy off a shelf!’

and suddenly it was this…it was like, Wow, that’s amazing!

It wasn’t just…it wasn’t just done by someone who decided they were going to start up a skincare company.  It was a very organic, a very organic progression, which came from a lot of knowledge.

It was I was…I mean, I worked so hard.

We were making, we were literally making boxes by hand.

We were cutting them by hand. Everything was crazy.

Did really well. I was left shell-shocked.

and he marched me to the Local Enterprise Office and I brought in some products.

You had this experience of being extremely busy and all the rest of it and, I mean, it was when you talk about…

I think drastic change often doesn’t happen drastically; it happens in increments.

‘Look, this is export potential. There’s potential for employment.

It ticks all the boxes for us.

So, you know, why don’t you go do a business plan?’

I was like, ‘Yeah, grand! Right!’

It’s very hard to get support when you’re a service, financial support and, look, that’s what I needed.

I was in there going, ‘Like, all the mentoring in the world is not going to get these products on the shelf, because I need money and, like, that’s the bottom-line. I need money.’

So, they said, ‘Get a business plan in and we’ll see what we can do.’

And the reason I ask you this question is, one of the things I do a lot with clients is this idea of…and I believe it very strongly… about having a vision.

And I’m kind of interested in this incremental progression and

• your vision …before the Christmas market,
• your vision… after the Christmas market,
• your vision when you’re told there’s export potential.

Well, at that stage it wasn’t believing that these would be exported.

You know? At that stage it was ‘Get a business plan done.’

And for me it was like ‘I need to believe in getting a business plan done.’

So, I spent, like, 6 months doing a business plan to get funding.

That was the end game at that stage.

It wasn’t ‘Get them on the shelves.’ It was nothing. It was like,

‘Get funding to get this out there.’

There’s a grand scheme of things.

And you have this kind of faraway vision or picture where you’d like to be.

But you can’t work to that until you’ve worked at the other little bits.

So, my first step was to get the business plan done.

That’s what’s of interest to me.

Is it…did you actually have that grand, maybe foggy, but some form of potential vision at that point?

…You know, and really kind of thought about it.

I was like I did get it all into the business plan that, you know.

I did have it in the plan, exporting and employment and all of that stuff.

I knew that, that was the grand scheme, but I still couldn’t see how…

I still wasn’t at the stage where I could see HOW I was getting there.

And then you believe it.

It’s like you have to have this vision. It might be muddy, but if you get past this one, this stage, you will be able to get to the next stage.

So, there’s no point in, like, bypassing all the stages and going straight for the top.

It just doesn’t…you have to take the steps.

So, at that stage, yes, I was writing all this stuff down because I knew that that’s what they needed to hear.

I knew that, yeah, look, products do this, but I still didn’t believe it in my heart that this was going to happen for me.

But if I could get the funding… Maybe it could happen for me.

I could pay for getting all the toxicology reports.

That was the only thing that was stopping me from launching, was getting toxicology reports and all the legal stuff done on the products.

And then, to get obviously…to pay for packaging and all that for seventeen products, plus three candles.

For the first time, they were seen in public and I don’t shy away from public…from being in the public, but I…that morning I cried.

I didn’t want…I didn’t want to go. I was sick. It was like…

It was like ‘Oh my God, I did it.

I did the business plan.

I got the funding.

I’ve got the products.

Now I have to go and put it out there.’

You know selling it, literally calling door-to-door, because that’s what you have to do unfortunately.

It’s horrible. No one likes it, but you have to do it.

And I would introduce myself and ask them if they had a minute and take out the products and go through them all and tell them my story.

A lot of it was telling my story at the time, um, and, I suppose, I only learned my pitch… By going and doing that.

But at the beginning that…that story really did help with bringing in the first…the first customer, the first stockists.

And I think they saw the passion and, you know, I did a lot of work and support with them.

There was a lot of being on the floor with the, you know, visiting stores and just giving them onsite support.

And then, I suppose, the next… So, you kind of do that and you get lost in that and it’s just busy, busy, busy and you’re getting on with things and I think probably the next thing that makes you realise is when the media start talking about you.

And so that kind of our first…our first kind of experience with seeing the power the media.

I would’ve been working on, you know, on social media.

Like, I came into this business knowing nothing, you know? I knew nothing. I had people saying to me, ‘Oh, have you sent your products to so-and-so editor of whatever magazine?’

And I’d be like ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah…’ and I’d be furiously googling who this person was, because I hadn’t a clue who the influencers were, who the people who could help me were.

It was pure stay…you know, study the industry, look who’s influencing the industry, who are…you know, Twitter, stalking them on Twitter, getting involved in the conversations.

Lots of, like, strategic hard work in, like, making sure that these people knew who I was, and then getting the products out there, sending them out.

You know, I got lots of support, like Marissa Carter was brilliant support from the very beginning, like, she, you know, got me on Xposé at the beginning, like, our very first TV, which, I suppose, the next kind of thing after the newspaper thing.

We were getting loads of blog reviews and loads of bits in magazines.

It was…it was great, you know, as one comes, they start to kind of flow a bit.

So, it’s really important to build those relationships.

Had you been doing any of that before?

We would pick a subject and we’d talk about it and then that blog, that blogger brought their friends or their blogger community on.

We’d have the conversation and then they would go and review the product, so…

The bloggers would write reviews and most of them were not huge bloggers, but they’d have loyal followings.

So, this didn’t just happen to you. It didn’t. It wasn’t…well, this is a question, not a statement, I suppose – when that first article appeared.

Was that the culmination of all the hard work you’d done to get it out there?

Was it…did it or did it prompt the idea to do that?

I didn’t go for, you know…it had nothing to do with me except that it was my product.

I do connect with editors and I make myself visible.

We’d send products to them. You have to do that. Or they forget about you.

There’s new things all the time and I follow them all on social media.

I, you know, get involved in their conversations.

But, like, a lot of it, a lot of the big stuff is ‘Luck…!’ like, you know…

It just came at the right time that Laura Bermingham needed a product on Friday and she had nothing and she looked at a number of products.

I was working with a PR company at the time and she looked at a number of products and she chose Holos.

And normally you’d end up paying for those slots.  But she needed something and there was no payment required.  She went on and that was my first experience of being on TV.

Not me personally, but my products, my brand being on TV.

And that was a whole other ball game, because, like, wow, literally watching it on TV and watching the computer as the orders came in.

And then, you know, when you win your first, like, I won the first, my first business award 9 months after we launched and the Bank of Ireland award and then again, it’s like,

‘Okay, I must be on to something. Like, you know, these guys know what they’re talking about,’ so if I’m standing in front of them with a plan and telling them about my plan, my strategy and they’re going, ‘You win the award,’ like, maybe I do know what I’m talking about.

And then, you know, I think it’s just confidence all the time.

Different things happen to you as you go along that build your confidence.

You know, I would never have thought that I could stand on a stage and speak to four hundred people. You know, you do that and a little bit more confidence grows.

You know, you go on Xposé a couple of times and, you know, it’s…it’s just you have to…you can’t…you’re never confident before go in and do it. Like, you have to…I think you kind of have to.

You’re always sacred.

You’re like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m doing this, but then you do it and straight away you know you’re never going to be afraid of doing that again, because you’ve already done it.

So, every time you do something that you think this is happening to somebody else, you just get new confidence and it spurs you on to the next bit.

Do you think having it in your mind that this should go, it has to be some part or something that you’re doing that makes you that little bit scared to push you to the next stage?

And one them in business is if it scares me I have to do it.

‘Look, if it scares you, you have to do it, because it’s only fear in your mind, and then when you actually look at it, really, it’s just excitement. It’s actually that you…you know, it’s…it’s not…’

Fear and excitement are…there’s a fine line. So I just started looking at fear in a different way and started looking at it as more of something really exciting that is going to make me feel amazing afterwards.

That’s what I think about when I have to do something that scares me.

Or do you even think you’ve grown fast?

And often the challenge is to break the cycle, but I find it interesting that you have this rule for yourself, which means the odds are if you keep that rule you’ll never fall into that cycle.

If I didn’t have something on the horizon that was scaring me, I’d give up.

Finola, I would completely give up and I would just like marry a rich man or something, because, like, there’s no point doing it unless there’s a challenge that gives me, like, a feeling in my gut that, you know, there’s just no point and I actually will get depressed if I don’t have something like that.

Like, I just need it and I think that’s probably the entrepreneurial spirit, um, and it’s a bit of madness as well, but…

Like, obviously I want us to do well and I want to have money and, you know, but there’s so much more. There is that, like, just that feeling of when you’ve done something.

You know, I mean, my first, you know… Like, it used to be I was scared of going in and pitching, just doing a cold call pitch, and then It got to, like, you know, being absolutely terrified before I’d go in and pitch to, like, a pharmacy group.

And then, you know, it was…or I’m pitching to an awards committee and then, you know, it’s getting up on stage to four hundred people and…it was, you know, Dragon’s Den and…

I…I don’t even know why they have picked me.’ You know, it was…it was that I had all the right words on paper for them, but I was kind of, you know, ‘Do I believe them?

Do I really believe them?’ and then, honestly, they believed them.

So, I went in and I was so nervous… I was shaking and I went in and I told them I was nervous. I did the pitch and it was fine and we got on great and there were loads of questions. I was brilliant and I walked out of there and I think I wanted it so much at the stage when I got in there.

It only hit me when I was in there. It was like, ‘I’m here and I’ve done this because I’ve worked bloody hard to get here and I deserve to be here and now I want it so much.

I want this investment so much.’

And then, like, 2 weeks later I did Dragon’s Den and it was the same thing that I kind of…when the whole Dragon’s Den thing started, I was like, well, again,

‘What do they need to hear?’ and then when you get there and you’re in front of them you go, ‘Man, like, I’ve done really well here. I’ve got in here,’ and you…and you want it so much then, but it’s that you have to go through all the other bits and be pushed into it out of your comfort zone to face the fear, realise that it’s actually really exciting and go, ‘Okay, I can do it. I can do the next thing now.’

So, you know, now I’m in the phase of, you know, I’m starting to export. I’m getting partners. I’m speaking to people I would never have dreamed of speaking to.

I’m going to bloody, like, investment conferences – I mean, how boring is that? This is what I do, you know?

It’s not boring to me. This is what the thing is and this is the stuff that excites me now…

…Because I’m in that, you know, I’m now in that. I’ve now got to that stage where I know I’ve done all those other things that were so difficult and so scary at the time, but now I kind of think, ‘Yeah, you know, that just has to be done.’

I think it’s good in this interview, to draw attention to that.. to growth only happens when things are a little bit scary or some movement.

You need that movement to keep going.

And not to stop.

That’s…that’s one thing that’s happening that we’re going to have to hopefully at the end of the year we’ll be looking for a round of investment.

Export is big, so we just started exporting to the UK and we’ll be looking closely at Germany and the United Arab Emirates as well.

And then, we have a new range coming out.

So, there’s big things. There’s investment, export and a new range, which is like a new concept in skincare and it’s going to be huge.

That eventually we would train Holos therapists. So, because I was a therapist for 13 years and because my therapies were all kind of self-designed, really – like, I never was one to just learn how to do something.

I always put my own spin on it – I had five different massage modalities. They’re like diplomas that I put together to form a treatment that you wouldn’t get from anyone else.

So, what I’ve done is designed Holos therapies.

They’re really holistic therapies, so it’s like a facial, but it’s not just a facial, so it’s brilliant for people with neck problems as well. It’s really, it’s just a holistic treatment.

So, we’re training up therapists and salon owners and they use the product in the salon.  They can retail it if they want and they also become Holos therapists.

And then the idea is to build a huge community of Holos therapists and they will become trainers.

So there’s great…there’s employment and there’s partnership and there’s loads and loads of potential, um, for the whole Holos community.

One is that you talk a lot about the plan.

And that’s quite interesting because entrepreneurs don’t…often don’t like to do them.

So, you talk a lot about them.

I think it’s really important to have a plan.

You know, it doesn’t have…every single little thing doesn’t have to be worked out and it doesn’t always go according to plan.

A lot of the time it doesn’t go according to plan, but you still need to have a plan.

You still need to have an idea of what you have, where you are, where you’re going and some measure of how you’re going to get there.

You know, my first business plan was for a year, because I could only really see in a year down the line.

My, you know, second, third and fourth were for a 3 years and now I’m writing a 5-year…

And, like, I now know…

I know from…in my work as a marketing practitioner for years that when I tried to get people to think in terms of 5-year frameworks, because I also want them to dream a little, to extend a little, because often we think too small…

…Because the entrepreneur as you described at the start, 1-year plans. 1-year plans are because you…you are a doer. Entrepreneurs are doers…

…But they’re very operationally focused and it’s always to stretch, and it’s interesting because in Japan they do 25-year plans.

And then it starts to grow and you realise, ‘Well, this is not all going to happen with me.’ Start building a team, so you’re building on the bits in the plan that the other team members are going to do.

And, you know, that gets bigger and bigger and bigger. So, well, that bit in the plan, you’re not going to be able to do that, but someone in your team will be doing that, but you need to have that idea in place.

And if you’re…you can be an entrepreneur and have something that never needs funding or never, you know…and make plenty of money and be… but, my industry, first of all, the market in Ireland is too small. I’ll never survive in Ireland. I need to be getting export. I need massive funds…

…To keep going or for it to grow to the extent I want it to grow, so I have to have a plan. I can’t walk into an investment, panel with a bit of an idea.

It has to be, you know…

People need to change their mind about plans. Like, planning, like, you’re just creating a picture of what you want, like, you know, it’s…

You know, like, if you never put it down, how can you possibly believe it? If you can’t get it out of your head, it just stays in you, like, it’s never going to happen.

You know, get it out and…yeah, bit by bit it becomes more. It’s becomes clearer and clearer.

So, if you were to give one piece or two pieces or three pieces of advice to an entrepreneur, what would you give them?

I think a good recipe for being an entrepreneur is passion and a bit of groundedness.

I think there is the idea of that passion alone gets you what you want is pandered a lot to entrepreneurs.

You can have all the passion in the world, but if your idea is rubbish and nobody wants it.

it’s just not going to happen like.

You have to have this groundedness and reality, or reality and passion.

And you need that together.

You have to be able to look at it and stop if something is not working.

You have to be able to take advice from somebody who knows better.

I think I learned that from my first business when I refused to take any advice from anybody.  I knew everything.

So, yeah, passion with reality.

And then the thing around fear, like, everyone is afraid.

And that if you’re not afraid, well, then, God, you must be miserable.

Don’t be afraid of the fear basically that that is completely normal I like to think.

It’s actually excitement.

And maybe to understand that there’s a difference between the fear that’s the warning system and the fear that’s the excitement.

You know? Like, if you put me in a cage with two lions, that’s like Fear, because, oh my God, I’m going to be ripped apart.

But the other thing is like, you know, I mean…

’What’s going to happen at the end of this?’ If you go in and you do a pitch and the chances are you walk away with quarter of a million euro, like, would you not take the chance?

You know, go for it, like, and it’s that excitement. And sometimes it doesn’t work, but…