A career as an entrepreneur is not often a path that a school careers adviser would suggest to students. But Debbie Wosskow OBE, who featured on Blake Morgan’s most recent Investing in Success event, would like to see change. She spoke about why and gave tips for upscaling and business exits.

Starting her own company at 25, Debbie has formative memories of growing up surrounded by business owners. With her grandmother and mother both running their own businesses, it was normal for her family to have non-conventional jobs. Being an entrepreneur, was and is part of her DNA.

Debbie is now campaigning for girls and women to know how to ‘show up’ in the world and make their mark. Backed by a tonne of research which shows that “female led businesses produce better results than male led businesses”, Debbie is determined to get more capital in to female hands, and in turn encourage women to invest in other women to create an ecosystem of wealth.

Debbie has always set up and backed businesses which are tied to her own passions. From setting up Love Home Swap after an awful hotel stay (which she subsequently sold), to her current business The Better Gut, focused on a probiotic to support the menopause, Debbie puts purpose before profit in all her endeavours.

In our webinar, which you can listen to here, Debbie shared a number of tips for people scaling up or selling their business.

  • Surround yourself with knowledgeable people, including a really good chair who is on your side. Because during a sale everyone’s interests are competing
  • Don’t assume an exit will always make you money
  • Align everybody at all levels within the business on what really good looks like
  • A good lawyer is everything on a business sale and is at your elbow as a founder. The right adviser will remind you to “take a beat”
  • Workshop issues with your network
  • Back women – go above the minimum requirement of having a female on your board. It is our job to ensure there isn’t simply ‘gender washing’ at non-executive level, but rather that we are focused on all different parts of women’s careers
  • You are much better when you have amazing people in your life and cultivate them

This event was only made possible by the brilliant team at the Women’s Prize for Fiction, who Blake Morgan are proud to support (one of many initiatives we carry out to support diversity). Debbie is a Board member of the Women’s Prize, and like Blake Morgan, this is an organisation which she champions and supports.

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