Cecily Mills, Cecily’s Dairy Free Ice Cream
Getting your products out there is the first obstacle any new business has to overcome. Developing a good product, building brand awareness and finding the right channels are all key to its success.
But it’s not easy and can be full of ups and downs, as many small business owners will tell you.
Cecily Mills is the founder and CEO of Cecily’s Dairy Free Ice Cream, a natural dairy-free alternative selling in Ocado and M&S among others.
Since starting the business in 2015, Cecily has been on an incredible journey; from creating recipes at her kitchen table, to pitching on BBC’s Dragon’s Den and turning down a £75K investment offer. Today, Cecily’s is a nationwide brand, winning numerous awards including seven Great Taste Awards across the flavour range.
Relying on her retail management background, Cecily bravely took risks, and most importantly action, towards building her dream.
Cecily chats to our host about the challenges of selling into supermarket chains, and how important building a strong team is when growing your business.
From calling on her family for flavour inspiration to testing products at her kitchen table, Cecily shares her story of getting her products out there and building her remarkable brand.
An extremely inspirational listen, Cecily’s story will have you itching to start chasing your business dreams.
We hope you enjoy this episode. Get in touch for more information on how we can support your business start-up journey.
Find out more about Cecily’s Dairy Free Ice Cream and buy online at https://cecilys.co
- Read the full transcript here
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Announcer (00:01):
Welcome to the Outset Podcast, the business startup podcast from Outset Cornwall for support and inspiration to start, run and grow your business. Here’s your host Rich Gunton
Rich Gunton (00:15):
Welcome to the Outset Podcast. Talking today to someone who has certainly achieved a few great things on her journey from 2015; a fellow Outset Cornwall client, a Dragon’s Den contestant, where Peter Jones said it was the best ice cream he’s ever tasted. And you got an offer of investment. It says here that you turned it down, but I’ve read elsewhere that you didn’t. So we’ll talk about that in a moment. A natural dairy free alternative selling in Ocado, and M&S, to give us the inside scoop on her journey and success, the founder and CEO of Cecily’s Ice Cream, Cecily Mills. Hello and welcome.
Cecily Mills (00:54):
Hi, thank you for having me.
Rich Gunton (00:54):
We’ve got to talk about Dragon’s Den, which we will do in a moment, but first, tell us how your journey started. What’s your background before you became the vegan ice cream queen?
Cecily Mills (01:06):
My kind of professional background is retail, graduated from university where I read anthropology at Sussex, which was brilliant. And I went on to the graduate scheme with Marks and Spencers straight afterwards. So that took me to store management and commercial management roles with M&S across the Southeast. It was great. I spent five years with M&S, it was hard work. And the other thing is corporate life wasn’t for me. But nonetheless, I learned masses M&S. I have some great memories of being there for five years. Then I left. I went over to Oliver Bonas a great retailer, actually 2013/14. That’s when I kind of came up with the idea of Coconuts actually, Cecily’s Ice-cream, as we’re now called as of like a week ago. So I might call us Coconuts Organics still. So Oliver Bonas, which was a great company, it was such a good company to work for very entrepreneurial.
Cecily Mills (01:57):
Yeah, I think that was a really pivotal moment for me because, at Oliver Bonas to get things done, you just kind of have to work it out for yourself. And it was such a good lesson for me, having come from corporate M&S, where there are processes and systems for absolutely everything to have the complete opposite at Oliver Bonas. It just, it was a bit of a shock at first, but it was so good for me. And I think it’s what gave me the confidence to kind of start this journey as well. And that’s how people do it. You just do it and you just make it happen. You don’t necessarily have to know exactly what you were doing.
Rich Gunton (02:33):
So Oliver Bonas, what was their reach then? What did they actually sell?
Cecily Mills (02:40):
They are a women’s wear and like homeware and gifting retailer based mostly around London, but their opening more and more shops up in the rest of the country. When I was with them, they had 42 stores and were opening more at a rate of knots. I mean, they’re doing so well. They’ve got such great products and they designed most of the stuff in-house as well from the clothing to the homewear. They’re opening up in the rest of the country now. So Bristol, Exeter, Scotland, generally outside of London.
Rich Gunton (03:07):
Interesting. All right. Well maybe we’ll come back to them in a moment. So let’s talk Dragon’s Den then. What was that process like? How did you even get on there?
Cecily Mills (03:17):
It was an amazing experience. I knew that we needed investment, like some significant investment into the company. We’d done around our friends and family investment prior to that. But I knew that if we wanted to grow and deliver like volume, we needed like big money, but at the time I was at home, I’d just had my second daughter. She was two months old and I felt so far removed from, from investment circles. And so far removed from investment networks, being in Cornwall with a two month old baby at home. The crazy thing is applying for Dragon’s Den felt like the easiest option. And I know that sounds kind of stupid, but, but it really was so, and it was just quite a good process, quite smooth process. I applied, I got through, I went for tests, went for filming tests and interviews quite rigorous. And then eventually in that April, I think I got offered a filming date up in Manchester, and that was that. And then it was like, right. I just need to prepare for this and pitch the life out of myself and, and try and have a successful show. I think the stakes were so high that I didn’t really allow myself the indulgence of thinking about what could go wrong because it was just too scary. So I was just very focused on getting a great pitch, and the Dragons loving my ice cream. And as long as I delivered those two, I would have been happy.
Rich Gunton (04:34):
Okay, fantastic. So what actually happens then, because in my tiny little bit of research and notes, one says you did get investment. The other said that you didn’t so what actually happened?
Cecily Mills (04:45):
I got two offers of investment from Taiz Lavonne and Jenny Campbell and accepted in the Den on camera I accepted, Jenny, which was fab. And then we started the due diligence process after filming and it was going really well. However, a few weeks later, just the company circumstances just changed. It suddenly became clear that we would need more money than the £75,000 I’d asked for soon. So then it became a question of, it just didn’t really feel like it was the right thing to do because the price was quite high. The company valuation quite low with, you know, mutual respect. We walked away from it because Jenny didn’t want to change her offer, which was completely fine because it’s not what I’d pitched for. But as I say, I mean, it would have been great to work with Jenny. She’s incredible. The decision kind of made itself in the end, we opted for an equity crowdfunding round on seedrs.com and we raised like £412,000. So as I say, we needed significantly more money to help the business grow then the £75,000 and we raised it on a much better valuation and we’ve got some fantastic investor base now. So it was the right decision for us.
Rich Gunton (05:57):
What was that website?
Cecily Mills (05:58):
seedrs.com Equity crowdfunding.
Rich Gunton (06:04):
Those listening to this podcast may well have gone through the same Outset Cornwall journey, or maybe just about to embark on it or just listening. And they picked us up somewhere in far-flung Dubai or The States, and they’re listening with interest and I suppose, you know, fairness and, and personally being involved in this program for over a decade, not an awful lot of people go to funding to that extreme. So it’s really quite exciting and quite fascinating, I guess you obviously have to on a fairly regular basis, keep those investors updated. That’s part of the process, I suppose.
Cecily Mills (06:37):
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I could probably be better at doing all of this stuff, which on three rounds on seedrs.com now. So we’ve raised a total of about £1.1 million at the last round, which we closed just this December just gone. We’ve now got approximately 1,800 investors. I keep them updated. A lot of those investors have put in a tenner 20 quid, a hundred quid, a few who’ve put really significant amounts of money. All of them have made a difference to the company, but yes, and broadly speaking we update them once a month, either on the telephone or normally in an email format, like an email update, we have a seat of shareholder portal on Cedars as well, where we can post just fun news and font updates, you know, stock listings, things like that to the main investor base. I do take help and advice on this one on the whole corporate governance thing, because it’s, it’s not something that I’ve ever had to do before until I started this company, but it is very important.
Rich Gunton (07:35):
So you’ve got 1800 odd investors, 1800 people have heard the story, have seen your pitch of have, I guess, looked at your website and have bought into you, into the product, into the business. So tell us about the product then. How how has it developed?
Cecily Mills (07:52):
Okay. Our product is organic, plant-based ice cream. The thing with the product is I literally started it in my kitchen. It is ice cream, but just without the milk, because in my kitchen back, this was back in Brighton and, you know, 2013 or whenever it was, you know, I didn’t have any of these fancy, weird ingredients that you see in so many products on the shelves and in the freezes these days, like I literally had the health food shop and I went to buy coconut milk and a few other ingredients and mix them all together. And you know, this weekend I was making new products in the kitchen here. And so I think the really key thing about our product is it’s a really natural ice cream. Now it’s really hard to make natural ice cream, commercially viable, as in shelf stable, something that doesn’t grow, ice crystals, something that’s still, scoopable something that’s still creamy. It’s really hard, which is why most ice creams on the shelves and in the supermarkets, aren’t natural. Most of them use artificial stabilizes, it’s all 44 71. That’s just full of all sorts of stuff like trans fats that you just don’t really want to eat, but it makes good ice cream. I mean, it makes ice cream like characteristically smooth and scoopable and creamy, but our ice cream doesn’t have any of that stuff in. And it’s just got natural ingredients that you can literally, I buy my, I buy the ingredients on Amazon when I do new product development still. Um, it’s just really normal stuff. It’s really set up for up to par basically these last five years, because people will say like, oh, it just tastes like ice cream. It’s really delicious. And it’s so creamy because it’s virtually ice cream, but just with the dairy replaced.
Rich Gunton (09:27):
For dietary needs and for health conscious needs and people who don’t want to eat dairy, I guess this is an obvious and an easy replacement without having to miss out, I suppose. In your time, then over the six years or so, did that trend grow more?
Cecily Mills (09:46):
Massively, massively, even in the industry it’s growing. So in our first year, I, I, my first goal was to do, was to exhibit at like the health food industry’s main trade show, which is like the natural it’s called the natural organic products. And so I was there in 2015 with the product. And even then even in the industry, people were still a bit like ice cream without milk. How does that work? Like it was still a bit of an explaining piece. It was a bit odd for people. I mean, nowadays it’s like literally the most normal thing people are like, yes, I want some plant-based ice cream. Now the difference that we’ve seen in the last few years, particularly, which is fantastic is that plant based has become more significant as a small step that, well, actually, no, not as a small step, as a very significant step that we can all take. If we want to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. So choosing a plant-based product, there’s something that doesn’t have dairy or doesn’t have meat is literally, and this has been reported by not only the world health organization, but, um, I mean, David Attenborough, you know, he he’s talking about it as well, but, but the reports show that it’s the most significant way that we can all contribute to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by making more plant-based swaps, you know, I’m not here telling people to just go vegan. It just doesn’t work. People don’t live like that. But I think the really amazing thing is that if you go dairy free for health reasons, it makes you feel better, becuase you’re lactose intolerant or your literally allergic. There’s a bigger piece now around something to do with the environment and sustainability where plant-based swaps are just a really good way that we can all contribute. And how fab does it that you can make plant-based swaps that taste delicious and don’t make you feel like you’re really giving anything up. It’s just like an easy swap. And I think that’s something that we’re really, that we’re really proud of. People can buy this ice cream and it does some good for the planet, they’re making a choice, and at the same time it tastes delicious. So it’s like win-win
Rich Gunton (11:43):
And with your ice cream, it doesn’t mean that the flavors are kind of fairly dull and boring. You got Choc Orange swirl, double caramel, creamy coconut, pure chocolate, pure caramel, rum and raisin, having a look at your website obviously. You mentioned before there about doing some trials and tests at home in the kitchen, how do you come up with them?
Cecily Mills (12:04):
Yeah, it’s funny it’s a mixture of everything really. So from I have to say a lot of it is literally my family who were like, can you do this flavour? And then the team as well, I talk with the team about it. We’re like, what should we do? What should we do? Sometimes it’s just comes from my head, you know, everywhere. There’s always like the latest, one of the latest flavour’s I’m doing is actually been inspired by my two children. So that I’m really excited about that. One is a bit more like structured than that. We do have a long list, kind of discuss it as a team about which ones we should take forward to development. Some of them are terrible. They don’t work and they don’t go any further, but the ones that I’m doing now, I’m in about the third round of kitchen samples. And so we’ll take them to the factory soon and go to the next stage of that hopefully to release them well the plan is to get them released in the next few months.
Rich Gunton (12:54):
Oh, fantastic. And so in terms of that team that you mentioned there and, and the factory, how did you put all that sort of infrastructure in place then? What, what does that look like?
Cecily Mills (13:03):
Yeah, so the team is really small. You know, there are only three of us, full-time in the office down here in Cornwall, in Pool, and then we work with some consultants virtually full-time as well. So there’s kind of five of us in the team. We are looking to grow, actually we need to grow. So we operate a very like outsource model, which has served us really well, particularly this last year during lockdown, because our overheads are quite low. With regards to the factories, I’ve been really lucky with factories. We have two factories, both here in Cornwall who make fantastic ice cream themselves and make ours for us as well. And we have great relationships with them. That’s definitely something that I feel really, really fortunate with. I had a hideous experience with one manufacturer, they weren’t in Cornwall, and it was just disastrous. And I realized that not all manufacturers are as great as our two manufacturers. So I’m very grateful to have them. They make literally all the difference.
Rich Gunton (13:57):
Going back to what we were talking about earlier in terms of flavors and product development. I mean ice cream, I don’t know what the original starting routes of when ice cream was invented and how it’s grown and developed over the years. I guess that’s been part of your sort of market research and what’s the best selling flavors and those sorts of things, has it?
Cecily Mills (14:14):
Yes and no. I think it’s been more of as opposed to kind of market research, I think it’s been more of a personal interest piece. Actually. I have a brilliant book about it, about the history of ice cream, but you know, I think in terms of market research for us, we look more towards the kind of plant based market as a whole and the opportunity there. But, you know, look, ice cream have been around forever who doesn’t love ice cream. That’s, what’s so brilliant. I work in an industry that ‘everyone loves ice cream’. It’s not like I’m selling crickets or mealworms and trying to get the world to like them.
Rich Gunton (14:52):
And so as you said it started on your kitchen table you’re now in national retailers, what’s that journey like then, you know, who did you first get into in terms of retailers?
Cecily Mills (15:04):
I think it was Morrisons down in Cornwall, and then Ocado. Look, it’s been, I think the nice way to say it is a learning curve. Brutal is probably another honest word to describe it. And it’s been challenging. It’s been like really, it’s been part of the really hard times, but also part of the brilliant times, because there’s nothing better than seeing your product on the shelves of a national supermarket. It’s super cool. But you know, you get into bed with the big retailers and you play by their rules. That’s the way it goes. And so you have to be prepared for that. And there’s no way you can really get prepared for that until you live it. I think, I mean, I’m not saying I would change anything. And, and the fact is that small brands like us need the volume from big retailers. They help us too in that sense. They’re pretty brutal, but not all are the same. I have to say our current retailers are fantastic. The ones that we work with at minute are absolutely brilliant. Ocado has been super from day one, as have M&S actually. They run a slightly different model of course, but, um, but yeah.
Rich Gunton (16:07):
Okay. Right. I want to get my ice cream into M&S, right. I’m just going to pick up the phone to Mr and Mrs. M and S and, and, and have a chat. I mean, how does it work?
Cecily Mills (16:15):
You’re not that far off actually, Rich, although no one really phones, people email because no one really uses phones anymore. No one has time to talk to anyone. Getting through to buyers is like, you need perseverance and you need patience. You need a little bit of cheek. Probably you need to be a little bit bold and you need to be creative. These guys get like bombarded with new supplier requests. They are so busy. I do not know why the supermarkets don’t put more buyers in. They’re all just so rushed off their feet. I would not want to be a buyer that’s for sure. You need patients and any perseverance, but you can’t be annoying. Cause then they’ll just delete you. So it’s a bit of an art form, but not really that much of an art form, nothing you can’t learn, you just have to kind of email them and go from there.
Rich Gunton (17:02):
Patience and perseverance. And, and in terms of when they come back with, okay, right, we’re going to test it here or we need this quantity there, the logistics of that. And when you first started, I guess, as you slowly scale up, that pressure becomes less and less, but in those first days, in the early years, rather, how does that work? Is there a balance that in your lead in time of production to getting it on their shelves or in their freezers?
Cecily Mills (17:26):
So if you’re talking about when you actually got a listing and put it, you know, getting the listing on the shelves, are we talking about samples to buyers?
Rich Gunton (17:33):
Probably both really. I mean, I guess you get you the samples out to the buyer, that’s the first goal. And then they go “That’s great. How many can you supply?”
Cecily Mills (17:41):
Yeah. Yes, yes, exactly. So, yeah, samples is relatively easy because we just send them off in dry ice. Now we’ve got our online web shop selling and we send it all over the UK in 24 hours next day delivery. So samples, easy getting listings on the shelves is a different matter. You will work normally for like a six month lead time. So from when the buyer agrees to list the product, you’ll probably have about six months to get ready for that listing. With us it’s always involved some slightly dramatic finale before we actually get on the shelves. I don’t know if that’s true for everyone, but it has been for us so far. You probably need to redo packaging. You probably need to redo pack, copy, or design, and you, you have loads of stuff to sort out. And then if you’re talking like a lorry full of ice cream, you know, 20 pallets or something, you’ve got a plan in production, you’ve got a plan in and the testing, the microbiological testing. So yeah, it takes a long time, but you know, the great thing is now I think allbeit with just three of us, we just work together and do it. Like I couldn’t do it without them. And so that kind of helps. It makes it all a bit more manageable. Really. It’s just different when you get a little bit bigger, because in the early days it was like such hard work. So it was literally me doing it all. And that’s so hard. So it’s a bit easier now, cause I’ve got, you know, the team and we kind of do it together and it makes like the world of difference. It really does. And a lot of to be honest is you learn as you go in that situation.
Rich Gunton (19:08):
When you spoke about all of Oliver Bonas and their entrepreneurial spirit and run by the founders, it was great because I could tell in your voice that you obviously had a great time there. Am I assuming that you’ve taken some of that, that you want to mirror, that, that you want to grow and develop a team to achieve that kind of entrepreneurial type of thing?
Cecily Mills (19:24):
Yes, you’re absolutely right Rich on that one, I mean, God, if we can get anything close to Oliver Bonas, I’ll be very happy with that. Yeah. Those guys are incredible. What Olly and Tim are doing running the company, they’re doing it very well. They’re doing something very right. Like I’m really grateful for people who want to come work for us because I’m not like a company with all of these employee benefits. Anyone who comes to work for us basically has to do everything. They probably have to answer their emails like every day of the week. And they probably have me on the phone with them every day of the week. So it’s not like I go to work at nine. I switch off at five and that’s me done. So the people that I have working with me now, or the sort of people who are just, we just work really well together and, you know, cause they get this and they get it. And I’m so grateful to people like that who want to work with me. We’re doing some brilliant stuff at the minute and we’re really at a good like output phase of the team. So yeah. And that, it’s tough to find good people like that.
Rich Gunton (20:23):
What’s their roles then chief of all jobs? You’ve got you and you and two others and a couple of consultants?
Cecily Mills (20:30):
Yeah. So we have, operations and supply chain manager, David, and then we have our marketing manager, Hannah, two consultants that work with us. They also do marketing. It’s also more sort of marketing focus as well from them. Cause that’s basically what we are in our sales and marketing company in sales kind of come down to me. But yeah, Hannah and David are just brilliant. And I mean, I say that they’re like supply chain and logistics and marketing. I mean, they do everything as well in between. So they’ll also do sales. Like we all kind of do everything.
Rich Gunton (20:59):
Everyone wants to find a Hannah and a David!
Cecily Mills (21:02):
Yeah basically but you can’t have them!
Rich Gunton (21:04):
No they’re all yours. You mentioned there. It’s mainly now you’re down to sort of sales and marketing and the marketing and the branding aspect of things and the promotion and you’ve won some awards. Is that right?
Cecily Mills (21:15):
We’ve had a really good run of great taste awards for the product, which is so fantastic. It’s such a good accolade for the product. So we’ve got seven great tastes awards in the range. And then we won a variety of other ‘free from’ food awards as well. The Great Taste awards are really significant because they’re such a good, like instantly recognizable sign of well great taste and for a product like ours that perhaps needs a bit of explaining to some people just to see that makes a lot of difference when you’re on a shelf, like at the point of purchase. If you see that on the packet that it’s got a gold star or two gold stars and it can make all the difference
Rich Gunton (21:52):
And looking at your website and looking at your packaging and obviously the different colors along with the different flavors, where does that start then? How do you even start to decide on that kind of look and that brand?
Cecily Mills (22:04):
It’s so hard. This is the area that I find the hardest actually. We start with brilliant agencies and these agencies have amazing or individuals actually. And they have brilliant designers who have so much creativity. I’m so jealous of it. So we’ve had one brilliant agency who did our current, like the Coconuts Organic packaging. And I think I love this packaging. I think it’s awesome. And then we evolved this last year to Cecily’s and we’ve got a different agency doing that packaging. So, you know, it starts with a brief and you just work through it over, you know, I guess a number of weeks, maybe months until you get to a look that everyone kind of thinks, ‘Yes, this is it. We’ve kind of hit the brief, let’s move forward with this.’ We rely on other people, basically people who kind of know what they’re doing, but as I said, I find that side of it really hard. Um, the hardest part of it all, I think,
Rich Gunton (22:52):
I think it’s certainly very, very interesting to have that idea, have that kind of baby that you grow and you develop and, and frankly you have to let go a little bit and have other people in. Otherwise it’s just you on your own, unless you’ve been in that position, it’s almost completely difficult to describe to anybody how that feels and that trust that you pass over that other people have to be part of your baby. I mean, your brand has got your name right in the middle of it. You know, David and Hannah and et cetera, have to buy into it as much as if not, perhaps almost slightly more than, than you.
Cecily Mills (23:26):
I mean, I couldn’t have said it better myself. You’re absolutely right. It was why it’s so hard and which is why no one can have Hannah and David, you know, you can’t grow the company unless you’re willing to relinquish some of that control a lot easier with the team and my God. Uh, even though it can be a bit tricky at first, not in my case, but you know, it can be hard if you hire people and it doesn’t work out or whatever, but, but life is a lot easier with a team because you can just do more.
Rich Gunton (23:50):
And so if we fast forward another five, six years into the future, what does it start to look like for you?
Cecily Mills (23:57):
That’s a good question. Our growth strategy is pretty simple. You know, we want to grow shelf space in UK retailers and we want to, and we want to do that by expanding our flavor range. Uh, so we’ve got a lot of new flavors scheduled in for this year. Um, really excited about that. Uh, and then at the same time, we want to open up and expand into different markets. So China being the one that we’re working on at the moment and then other markets across the world, because, you know, the UK is still quite, quite far ahead in the whole plant-based movement if you like. Uh, so there’s a lot of opportunity in other countries across the world where plant based hasn’t, you know, it’s still quite young. And so I’m really excited about that, about taking the brand, you know, growing it internationally as well. More growth, more of the same. We need to just keep striving to innovate and bring out brilliant flavors and deliver brilliant ice cream. That’s the goal anyway.
Rich Gunton (24:55):
And I think that’s right, you know, once you find a model that works and you’ve got obviously flavors that work and you can grow and develop and replicate that. I lived in New Zealand for a number of years. And you know, when you start talking about plant-based and about, you know, that kind of, I would have thought that, that this product would do fantastically in New Zealand and Australia and the Pacific islands.
Cecily Mills (25:18):
It absolutely would, I’d love to get over there.
Rich Gunton (25:19):
So on that, is there much competition then in the marketplace?
Cecily Mills (25:23):
Yes, there’s fierce competition. It’s very competitive ice cream, very competitive. I mean, not least because you’ve got freezers that are like physically limited in size, you know, shelf space is somewhat more flexible in a supermarket because you can kind of, you know, go around the ends or it’s a slightly more flexible, a freezer is actually a freezer. You can’t just put in another freezer in a supermarket because it’s all a fixed space. So, but it’s a super fun category to be in. There are some brilliant brands that are out there. And I think we just want to be a part of it. Cause there’s definitely enough opportunity in terms of plant-based and plant-based ice cream and the growth that we’re seeing.
Rich Gunton (26:06):
We’ve been talking on this Outset podcast now for about half an hour, we’ve got the listener there and they’re all poised and they may be completely inspired and thinking, you know what? This is for me, this is my time. What would you pass on? Any bits of advice and tips?
Cecily Mills (26:20):
The first thing is you have to have, I think you would probably call it like a belief. You have to go into it, believing that your product or your service is just brilliant. And it really is something that the world needs. You might kind of call it a commitment thing because you know, if you go in thinking, I think this is all right, and I might just try it out and see if you’re looking for like recognition from others before you were entirely convinced on what your product or service is. I don’t think you’re going to get it because customers are pretty brutal. You’ll probably get your friends and family saying it’s brilliant, which is good, rightly so. You need to believe in what you’re doing and be pretty unshakable in that belief. I think the other point after that is you have to just take action. It’s so easy to sit at your computer and model things and forecast things and plan things and focus on pack design. It’s so easy to not do the hard things. The hard things are the things where you just put yourself out there, especially at the beginning, it’s really difficult, but you have to make the call to the shop that you want to stock your product, or you have to make the call to the person that you want to become your client. You just have to take action and only by taking action and then it’s, and it’s beautiful because then you take action and your results make you more motivated and you think, oh, cool, that works. And I can do this. And then the more action you take, you will get some bad results or some results you don’t necessarily want, but by taking more action, it kind of negates that still and even further. And I’m a firm believer that action like trumps pretty much everything like talent and perfection. It just, you just have to get out there and do it basically. And I think perfect along the way.
Rich Gunton (28:14):
I think that’s fantastic belief in what you’ve got your product and your service and, and just get on with it and take some action. And if you can, and you can afford it and you can find them, get yourself a Hannah and David,
Cecily Mills (28:27):
But you can’t have mine
Rich Gunton (28:29):
Cecily Mills, thank you very, very much indeed for your time. And for joining us on the Outset Cornwall podcast, I’ve loved talking to you.
Cecily Mills (28:36):
Thank you so much for having me. It was really good to talk to you.
Announcer (28:41):
Thanks for listening to the outset podcast brought to you by the Outset Cornwall program, which is funded by the European Regional Development Fund, H M government and the Outset Foundation, supporting people to become self-employed and start their own business for more information, visit dev.outset.org/cornwall