Island Feather: From festival feathers to sustainable sportswear brand

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Lydia Bolton 

About this episode

We were honoured to welcome Lydia Bolton into the Club to share her incredible founder story during this very special live episode of the podcast.

From realities of working in the industry as a fresh fashion grad, to the moment she realised she had a responsibility as a founder to create the designs and changes in the industry that she want's to see.

Since this moment Lydia has taken the industry by storm and become a leading force for upcycling movement. Not only creating her own sell out line, but making huge changes by collaborating with major fashion brands (such as as Nike) create real impact at the core of the industry.

This journey really showcases the real and raw realities of growing a business, with the need to balance various roles to make ends meet and the need to learn the business skills to turn your passion into a successful venture.

Included in this episode:

• Lydia's realisation after leaving University that it wasn't going to be easy to secure a job in the industry.
• The reality of taking the first steps in the fashion industry by having to work full time in a pub every evening and all day in an internship in the day.
• The moment she realised she needed to follow her values and make a change in the industry "as a designer it's your responsibility to create what you believe in".
• Leaving her internship to focus on growing her own brand whilst still working full time in the pub. Seeing starting a business a her own internship in business.
• After completing a sustainability in fashion course she discovered exactly what she wanted to you. She focused on giving life to the clothes in charity shops that people didn't want to buy. Contacted Trade and gathered the textiles they knew wouldn't sell, and offered a donation.
• After seeing Lydia's University final year showcase, Lydia was contacted by an Artist who was playing at Glastonbury and asked for Lydia to create a piece for her to wear.
• Learning how to make it into a business. Lydia soon realised she needed to up-skill and learn how to sell if she was going to make it successful.
• Core lesson during lockdown that she needed to create pieces that people wanted, rather than just created lines for her own pleasure.
• She needed to become a brand, rather than be seen as a hobbiest.
• As she worked more on her brand identity she was approach by Nike for a collaboration in store. This snowballed into being approached by many more brands. Lydia puts this down to being clear on her purpose and communicating it clearly.
• Lydia's passion for working with bigger fashion brands as she knows she can reach new audiences of those who are less sustainably minded and make a bigger impact.
• Lydia's thoughts on the future of sustainable fashion: Creative thinking around serious issues and the need to lean towards transparency.

Discover more about Jenna O'Keefe

Follow Jenna on Instagram.

Discover Uncommon folk.

In this episode:

• More about Jenna and get journey to become a leading confidence coach, including understanding her own mindset blocks
• Creative motivation and what’s at the core of losing your spark
• Tools and tips to stop being demotivated:
• Tip: Take the emotion and shame out of it. We often make ourselves feel worse as we are in a society where we always need to be productive.
• Tip: Set the bar low. Stop trying to start at the end and do it all (e.g. if you haven't been going to the gym, go once, don't set out to go every day)
• Tip: Understand your body and your productivity (Cyclical productivity). Stop trying to push through.
• Tip: Zoom out - look at the bigger picture. Stop letting the small things stop you. Practice patience.
• Build resilience /confidence. - Learn from failures and don't hide away if you fail.

Explore Daye: https://yourdaye.com/

Follow Daye: https://www.instagram.com/meetdaye/

Want to join live podcast episodes? Explore Uncommon Club.

Included in this episode:

• The purpose behind Daye and why Valentina wanted to make a change in women's health.
• The first steps Valentina took to build the innovative CBD tampons.
• How Valentina built the prototypes on her kitchen table
• How she funded the first prototypes and business at the beginning
• A real look into securing seed funding, including how she built her pitch, who she approached and a behind the scenes.
• The reality of investment of females. Only 1.8% of all funding goes to female founders.
• Securing 4.2 million in seed funding and the next steps in building the brand.
• Putting a team together (including operations, brand, design engineering)
• How Valentina started marketing the brand. Finding what worked (SEO/organic through a value-added blog, influencers) and what didn't (PR). 
• Going against investor opinion and taking on an artists to build the brand and making a change in women's health product branding. 
• Launching with a subscription model.
• The reality of launching a purpose-led brand that hasn't been done so far. Battling the many barriers of women and working so hard (high levels of stress) that Valentina developed quite serious physical health conditions.
• Learning how to manage stress of being a founder.
• Highs, lows, and lessons learnt from the journey.
  
   

Episode links:

Kira's website: https://www.kiramatthews.com/

Kira's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kirathebold/

Future self 90 day journal: https://www.kiramatthews.com/shop/p/the-future-self-guide-book

Episode overview:

Introduction to Kira Matthews and her mission

Confidence as a founder, including:

- How it doesn't have to be something you hold all the time

- Confidence of being yourself - find your unique strengths and don't try and embody someone else's confidence.

- Sometimes confidence doesn't even matter, it's about taking steps in fear and growing.

Why journalling is so important

Three journal prompts that may help you scale, including:

- write 7 wins and acknowledge your part in it

- how can the challenges you are facing now help you in achieving your goal

- how is your product/service the best option for your customer - write down 10 reasons

Episode links

Women + Waves: https://womenandwavessociety.com/

Women + Waves Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/womenandwaves/

Uncommon Folk: https://uncommon-folk.com/

What to expect in this episode:

• How it all began - defying tradition and following your true passion
• The start of the community - how to build a really engaging community online and off line
• The H&M collaboration - how it happened and what it's like to work with a major brand
• When Covid hit - how they continued the community through a global pandemic
• Dealing with imposter syndrome int eh lifestyle industry
• The challenges as a founder
  Her top tips for other founders

Be gone are the glory days of scaling an Instagram at pace with relatively minimal effort. Now it feels like you can spend hours in crafting exceptional content, just for it to land straight in the abyss.

In this episode we are joined by Instagram and overall marketing specialist to understand how we can get the spice back in the platform and get some home her top three tips to nail Instagram for business.

We discuss:

The mindset shift needed. The platform has changed in purpose, we need to start meeting how it can field our business.

Top three tips.

1. Choose your lane - go for A grade content and post a few times a week or C grade and keep it regular.
2. Treat Instagram like a Facebook community. 
3. Treat followers like potential leads.

I would love to hear your thoughts. Drop us a DM @un.common.folk.

From cacao brownie to peanut raspberry, if you have managed to grab a Squirrel Sisters snack, you will know exactly why they have become an award winning food brand. But it goes beyond this, although they have seen great success, they are on a mission to educate and offer truly healthy options to consumers.

From co-founding the company at home with her sister Sophie, you will now see the Squirrel Sisters range in over 2000 leading stores (from Waitrose to Selfridges), but there really has been one hell of a journey to get there. 

In this *live* recording we have an open and honest conversation with Gracie to get a  behind the scenes on what it really takes to go from your kitchen table to the supermarket shelves. 

The episode is jam packed with insights, tips and advice on scaling a purpose-led brand and what it's really like to see your brand on the shelves of major stockists. 

Included in the episode:

• How the company started and why their mission is so important to the sisters
• How they approached their first retailers, and the clever tactic they used to stand out against the crowd
• Tips and advice on branding and what works in the food industry
• Their biggest marketing success that you can use in your own business
• The realities of being stocked in major retailers and the underlying costs.

Has the noise and demand of social media meant you have skipped PR and traditional methods (think TV, radio, digital & print publications) in your strategy and solely focused on other channels to gain brand awareness?

Does even the thought of gaining PR and putting yourself out there give you an absolute fear fest which makes you avoid it even more?!

We hear you. We’ve all been taught that the media is scary. A place for celebrities to get shamed and outed.

It also seems a little dated, right?

Well, it’s time to change these thoughts.

Traditional marketing methods are still at the forefront of brand awareness and one of the best ways to get in front of your ideal audience.

Just like any other marketing channel, you just have to approach it strategically and confidently. You are interesting and you do have a story to tell, people want to hear about your journey and business purpose.

We first met Charlie (Founder of Seafoam PR) during our COVID lockdown (1.0) support sessions over in The Hangout. Charlie kindly offers 1-2 coaching sessions for group members to open the conversation on communication and traditional media. We quickly found that most, if not all, of the business owners we connected with were not considering traditional media/marketing within their strategy. So we thought it was about time we started the conversation.

This podcast does just that. We hope it sparks those initial thoughts of introducing traditional media methods into your overall marketing strategy.