Page 70

Pia Stanchina

Interview Phadria Prendergast

Phadria: How did it all start?

Pia: I’ve always known that I’ve wanted to have my own business and I’ve always wanted it to be something that’s really meaningful and I never knew what it was going to be. I would watch friends of mine start their own companies, become founders and become successful, often in the space of a year or two years and a close friend that I had been on holiday with and would hang out with built a luggage company and I just didn’t understand how they were doing that, how they had that vision, how they knew what there unique strengths were and how they were partnering with other people. So, I never knew how I was going to end up doing it or what field it was going to be in so I just kept following my curiosity and working for a startup and then Google. At Google, I really found out what my strengths were and what really made me feel alive, but it was even after that, two years later I really figured out what I wanted to do, and even when doing the coaching course I didn’t realise how right it was going to be and on the other side of it I was like this is it! 

Even now for me I know I can reach more people if I’m not only doing one to one’s,  trying to figure out how I can create products and scale the company. So, it’s a really exciting time to be in business because you know the internet is so full of expertise, knowledge and ways that we can build our skills. It’s fascinating, now I can really do what I like which is helping other women to become really emotionally empowered and economically empowered. 

Glossy box is a clone of a company which you may know called Birch box and the company was incubated in Germany by Rocket internet, using the kind or framework and formula that they use by hiring some local founders who were really the driving force behind the business who would then go into local markets. So, for example in the U.K. we recruit local founders and that’s how I became one of the founders of the U.K. Glossy Box. That was an amazing learning curve for me because really we were a super young team. I was still finishing my masters when I found out about it and joined this team of people who had never worked in beauty, no one had ever worked in a subscription business - it was a new business model, content creators at the time were just emerging as bloggers and youtubers. When I look back at it I see the power of youth because you don’t feel like you have a lot to lose yet. Obviously, you are a bit worried and scared and not sure how to do things but you really just do it and for me it was amazing because I was mentored by Tracy Woodward who is an amazing Industry figure. She’s like my fairy godmother and she really took me under her wing, really explained the business to me and made wonderful introductions we really got people to believe in us in the industry level and try it out to really just see it as an experiment and as a way to connect with younger customers, with this new way of marketing to customers and we also had an amazing opportunity to reach out to young people who had started their own YouTube channel and weren’t yet being taken seriously by most people and to show them that we really saw the potential in what they were doing. We started collaborating with them on a regular basis and then also leveraged towards Facebook and Twitter to reach out to consumers and to help them discover beauty in a different way. Everything way new, everything was exciting, everything was a challenge and it was really really fun.

Phadria: When was Glossy box founded? 

Pia: Glossy box was founded in 2010 or 2011, Rocket Internet went really aggressive with this business model and opened up something like 24 markets at the same time. They really put a lot of research behind it and put a lot of pressure on the individual founders to follow. Like any market it turned out that it wasn’t feasible yet, the infrastructure was possible, actually disturbing the boxes, taking payments  wasn’t necessarily possible, many market brands hadn’t yet properly started distributing their products so there wasn’t enough quality product to send to people in terms of samples. So a lot of those markets shut down again but in the U.K. we were really lucky that it worked really well. I also started collaborating with brands such as Harrods, Net-a-Porte and doing specialty boxes so we quickly became really really well known as the beauty box where you can get really exclusive products to have a really luxury experience.

After a while I felt like we weren’t able to deliver on the promises we made, so we never really developed technology that was really scalable in terms of making sure that different women with different skin tones and different skin types, with different hair types, were able to get products that were super personalised to them so really discovering things that were really really personal to them and I felt a bit disappointed that we weren’t able to develop that kind of technology and I really have a lot of respect for who my customer is and I started to not want to make these promises and not delivering. The other thing that started happening is that in this company, even though we were really young we did really well and scaled the company to like 30,000 subscribers in about 2 years and I have gained a lot of experience. I had also realised that actually managing people is a huge responsibility that I wanted to take more seriously and not wing it because these were actually people’s careers and personal development. I was also fascinated with digital marketing and wanted to be in a company where their values were really aligned with valuing their people and supporting the talent they had hired instead of expecting them to figure it out on their own but really investing in them. I’d also be much closer to the power of digital marketing and really start realising what are the tools out there. I was starting to hear about attribution and more of the analytics, performance marketing all that kind of stuff. The other thing is I really miss being in the fashion arena as that’s my original kind of background having studied fashion at St Martins, so I started thinking where I wanted to go and I started to realise that I wanted to work in Google, that was the only big company I could see myself at and they offer this valued driven culture, it was obviously loads to do with digital marketing and I looked for a role in fashion there and something opened up within a few week of me looking and I applied and I was really fortunate to get that Job so I moved over there is 2013. 

The British Fashion Council at the time realised that the British designers had been trained as great designers and makers but didn’t necessarily have the background business acumen much less understanding how the digital landscape was evolving at this crazy pace and they realised that in order to support British designers and to really play on the international playing field they really needed to experts in the various businesses and tech and innovation sector to really support them.

They invited me as a representative of Google on their digital and innovation board and that was an amazing thing that I did during my time at Google and when I left Google I was still supporting them in another part of their charitable work and that was really amazing because I got to help them with their first fashion forum which was a collaboration between Founders Forum and BFC I got to create the tech room that they had there with new innovations like Google glass and lots of startups that were providing resources for fashion designers to start their businesses and reach consumers in a new way and just support them in a lot of different activities that they had going on to support British fashion designers become more digitally advanced.

Phadria: What made you feel like you could go for all of these roles?

Pia: What made me feel like I could go for it? I think ultimately it was firstly having the experience like you said; it was having set up things in place partnerships and having to deliver on these partnerships and network and having realised that I have a lot of capability and confidence that even if I didn’t have that skill I could acquire that skill, either through working at it or taking a course, through mentors and all of the combination of that, but I really realised that I was fortunate to live in a time, unlike my mother for instance who was a young professional maybe 30 to 40 years before, so basically every knowledge is at my fingertips. I spent loads of nights really late, watching interviews and doing courses and learning about digital marketing and think that I’ve realised that if you have clarity over where you want to go or what you are trying to do then it becomes kind of simple because you, you know how to do this and don’t know how to do this so then how do I learn how to do this other bit and I have also i think for a long time been following female leaders and have constantly read and heard and repeated the same lesson that women often go for roles that they are capable of and I don’t think that’s right, you are meant to go for roles where you don’t have all the skills, you are meant to be able to grow in that role... you think on something that is bigger than you are now and that’s how I’ve always thought about my career. 

Phadria: When you landed Google and Fashion Council, I’m guessing from there you probably thought I could pretty much do anything?

Pia: I was really grateful and I said in my interview I was really desperate to work here, i said this is where I see myself ... I don’t really see myself here in the long term, like I see myself here for like 3 to maximum 5 years to really learn to contribute then I know that I want to go and do my own thing. At the time I felt really cocky for doing that because I was interviewing for the most valuable company in the world… I did have confidence that I was going to figure it out because I kept seeing people around me and I was really fortunate to know people and meet people. I realised that these people are not necessarily smarter than me or better than me they just figured out that they are going to do something and then they do it. I just need to keep working and acquiring skills, keep having ideas, keep being inspired and when the time is right, the time will be right. The other thing is that I am a single mum and I had my daughter at 24 and I think I  have always known that my timeline is going to be slightly different from other people because some of my founder friends don’t have children yet or they made so much for money or had ressources to have more support or there businesses relied on them less, because when you first start a business when you are not working the business is not working, whereas once you are a bit more skilled you have resources in place, there are blueprints, there are products... so I know that it will take me a bit longer to figure it out.

Whilst I was there I learnt a lot… what I also realised pretty quickly at least at the time and do think it’s important to say that this has changed now, at the time there weren’t a lot of female leaders that were visible and there weren’t you know a lot of mothers and there were certainty no other single mothers at the company and what I could say, I see how this could work out for me and another thing is that at the time company wasn’t super open... they weren’t helpful in establishing what your career trajectory would be if in 5 years you wanted to be here...There are other companies that are a lot more helpful whereas Google were a little bit more close so it was a little bit of a guessing game to figure out how could you get somewhere and it was highly competitive to get promoted and even though I didn't get promoted it was made clear to me that even if I was outperforming the way that I was and I really use to work my butt off and I used to stay late, loads of nights and working on weekends. It was made really clear that only a few people can get promoted there isn’t a lot of head count and it was kind of the sense like ‘look we expect you to work super hard but we are not going to be able to necessarily give you that much back.’ Other than what you’ve given at Google which is amazing which is like the free food the wonderful gym...but you know when you are a single mum whilst that stuff is really nice, what you really need is money right, you need money to pay for childcare you need money to pay for education you need money to pay for rent and I've always just known that you know for me, the perks are less important than the actual cash. 

So, I think one of the wonderful things about work is that even though you are not in the right place it gives you an opportunity to develop an understanding on what you like doing and what you are good at and even at Glossy Box towards the end when I wasn’t really loving the company's culture anymore and I kind of didn’t see it growing in a way I wanted to. What I did start realising is one of my superpowers is to be great at sales and to be great at developing partnerships. You know one of the key ingredients is that you are really good at listening. You are able to understand what the other person's situation is, what their challenge is, what their goals are and how might you play a part in reaching those goals. So, that’s why I always approach when I go to meet... a lot of companies who are really really hesitant to go in the box with other brands - you know to expose themselves to customers and not to have control on how their brand has been presente.  I started realising that because I had studied fashion and because I was really into fashion really into beauty I was able to speak to them a language that made them feel really heard, made them feel like this girl gets what’s really important to us. In the meetings they’ll make sure I ask questions that demonstrate again that I would really be respectful of what matters to them and their partnership and the other thing is that I had so much passion for what we were doing at Glossy Box for making beauty more accessible to more diverse group of women. Helping women of different skin types different skin tones different hair and you know different preferences when it came to fragrance discover what they really wanted rather than just having to rely on magazines telling them staff based views on advertising on magazines. I think that was infectious for them to see a young person who was passionate you know who really cared kind of represented who they were open to reach and really was kind of an embodiment of what she was selling because I was there saying that look I’m on Instagram i’m on Twitter. Like I watch YouTube and you guys aren’t there you need to be there you know like I have a skin one where I have to mix two different foundations that’s not okay you need to show me more samples than what you are giving me right now, which is all just for girls who are white. I think being there and speaking to them in a way it was both respectful and challenging I think that’s what’s important in partnership, that you are able to show someone you are safe with me.. it’s actually the same kind of thing that I ended up doing at Google and it’s now similar to what I ended up doing as a coach. I think for me it is about realising that I’m really strong at this and keep leaning into that skill, set into those strengths and to develop those more and more into my main core in my work and that’s really what I think leads to success. If we figure out we all have amazing gifts that we were given and sometimes it doesn’t even feel like it, like people used to say to me “you know it’s so great to talk to you I love being around you you have an amazing energy.” I’ll just be like that’s to intangible and unhelpful like what the hell am I meant to do with that but it was only when I started to listen to that and realising that like, oh, this how I can apply that this is what this means in business you know and I started really developing those skills and I started reading what makes you a good negotiator, what makes you good in sales, what makes you good as a coach, what makes you good as a listener? I was able to make that into something that was really valuable.

I think I was 29 when I joined Google. Google I was there from September 2015 to July 2016. I finished at Google when I was 32. That’s also when I finished work for the British Fashion Council as a board advisor of the Digital and innovation pillar. Which means I would come on board, so they ask me if I would come on board to support a charity which is supporting emerging designers in slightly different ways. They basically have a grant that they give them at the end of the year. They asked me if I can sit on the board of that to make sure we were raising enough money, that we’re offering a really innovative programme supporting designers both offering business mentorship and making sure that wealthy patrons were coming and shopping with them to be able to establish the kind of clients that would make their business successful. After the British Fashion Council digital and innovation pillar, it was the funds and trust executive committee. From July 2016 I had worked in Google for almost 3 years, I had realised pretty quickly that promotions were not as easy to get as I hoped... pay rises as I needed as a single mother. I didn’t really have a clear career path because I didn’t want to stay in the role I was in anymore which was in the marketing team, which was an amazing opportunity but made it very clear to me that I didn't want to work at marketing at Google. So, I basically decided to leave and it was kind of an intense step to take, but I had in the last year I was working in Google already started working part time, so I had only been working Monday to Thursday and working on Friday with founders to advise them on their businesses. Basically building up these client bases doing more and more panel talks and hosting events and it was already supplementing my income to the point where I thought; okay not I’m gonna need to take a pay cut but I know long term I don’t want to stay in Google because I’m not having the career trajectory that I want and the cost is so high for me as a mother. Because I was just working so hard I don’t have the possibility to spend time with my daughter and I did really think that once your children are grown up you can always accelerate your career even more. I think if you have a partner, that’s not necessarily a trade off you have to make because you have two people who are contributing income, two people supporting the child’s parenting. But in my case her father wasn’t present and I was alone. It was a situation where my daughter is young now. I would regret for the rest of my life that I wasn’t there with her for the moment. I’ve had enough therapy to know that as a child if you don’t feel really secure in relationships and if you don’t feel really secure and seen that is going to have a long term impact on your confidence, self worth, and the opportunities you go after in life. Whether that be in romance, career or health 

Phadria: Would you say you are a thinker or doer? 

Pia: I would say I’m a thinker. An Overthinker!

Phadria: What does Beauty and Fashion the industries look like to you what does the future look like to you?

Pia: I’m also connected to leaders and people in those industries. I am an ambassador for Huggle tree. So through them I still have amazing exposure to young founders. They just had an acceleration of young business founders and they were all women, a really diverse group of women. A great honour to be able to mentor these women and see their energy and ideas but I have to say I don’t even have an opinion on the beauty and fashion industry anymore, just as a consumer I expect it to be non toxic for me and my family. You know we know so much about transdermal absorption. So, I’m so careful what I put on my daughters and my skin. These days I have so many opinions on personal development, leadership and on how to run a business so I’m actually so not in the fashion and beauty industry anymore in terms of thought leadership.

Phadria: What are you doing now?

Pia: After I left Google, I started working as an advisor to female founders and I kind of started doing keynote and offsite speaking, where I basically would speak with different leadership teams and over time what started happening is in the businesses that I was in, I started realising that the founders would be hiring me initially for my expertises, what I done at Glossy Box, what I done at Google, at the British Fashion Council, more and more as when started working together, we would both realise that while there is value in someone telling you what’s around the corner, every founder that I was working with had different strengths and weaknesses to me, so they wanted to do things differently. The times had changed, consumers had changed, opportunities were changing more, what we would quickly realise is they would benefit so much more from me actually helping them connect to what they needed to do. What were their strengths? What was draining their energy? How did they have to change what they were doing in order to create scale in the business? How were they thinking about partnerships? That is how I actually realised that I wanted to be a coach. It is because I’ll be in these companies and less and less I was advising and more and more I was coaching and then I was working in a company where basically, I was helping to manage a project but during my lunch break I was almost at every lunch break. Going out with someone junior and the team would ask me if I could coach them on something, personal relationship; issue with the landlord; issue with the management member and then the CFO of that company asked me if I could coach him because he found that his team was growing so much and that’s when I decided oh my god, I want to be a coach. It clicked in my mind that, I’ve always been really fascinated by people like Bill Campbell, who you know is often referred to as the Trillion Dollar Coach who had coached people like Steve Jobs, and Sergey Brin and people at Google and it’s then that I did my coaching diploma and the things really snowballed because as soon as I started talking about me being a coach loads of people started dm’ing over Instagram, they started emailing me and started saying you know I’ve always wanted to work with you or I saw you on this panel and I always wanted to like kinda get your help with my career, can you coach me? Until, since about August last year I’ve been working as a coach for female leaders, most entrepreneurs but also some women in corporate and that’s been an amazing journey to basically work with women who have managed to get themselves, in terms of their lives and their businesses to a certain level but then I find out that they’re kind of plateauing, because they’re doing the thing that was working up until now, but finding out that they need to change something and often times they know that something has to change but they don’t really know what to do. Their juggling so much at work, sometimes they’re also mothers and wives so then they have so many hats on and it’s really hard to take a step back when there’s so much going on and actually you know basically say I’m going to drop a bunch balls momentarily so I can really change the way I’m doing things, so I can reach the next level of revenue or I can finally actually create space for me to have a personal relationship or I can finally get my health and my fitness on track and lose weight that I’m feeling stuck with. So that’s been an amazing thing, to basically help people who have so much potential but are feeling slightly stuck to get a new level of clarity and develop basically like actions and frameworks and systems in their businesses which will mean that they can really scale and become people who are really contributing to the economy and really employing people who are able to raise money, who are able to really take things to the next level.