I’m Bringing Back My Startup Brain - 5 Frameworks to Grow My Sales.

Happy Sunday, everybody.

I’m writing this newsletter this morning from bed while waiting for my blue lotus mask to develop. I plan on staying in bed for the next 24 hours, perhaps breaking only to have my morning bath, to put some laundry on and to make a vat of chicken soup. I need a break from work. 

I guess this newsletter is “work” of sorts, but I know that I’m way behind in my writing. For the last month, I would say I’ve been working seven days a week, 12 hours a day, across holiday plans for 39BC and multiple shoots, along with being a mom and helping my son with his GCSEs. It’s been a lot.

While I apologise for being somewhat tardy with this newsletter, I’d like to think that each business essay or personal essay gives you enough information to change the way you think and provides the mentorship I get asked to do on a daily basis.

Over the next few weeks, I will finish some shopping newsletter drafts about my winter essential recommendations, and also my gift guide. I hope 39BC is the gift of choice this year, but theres also a bunch of beautiful things I've discovered that I want to share.

Today, I want to write about something a little more concrete, something a little different. This one is for the business baes among you.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how the Gemini in me gives me a thought process of extremes. I’m often like a pendulum swinging from one point of view to another. I’ve discarded a particular point of view for the last few years, and now I’m bringing it back...

This point of view is growth hacking.

...the startup-based approach, the tech-based approach, even the VC-based approach to building a business. Because my seven years in tech traumatised me so much, I stopped listening to all of the podcasts and stopped reading all of the business books. I actually find it quite cringe when people recommend certain books to me that I read ten years ago that effectively drove me over the edge into workaholism.

But one year into trading at 39BC and two years into building the business, what I realised (and I’ve always been grateful for and acknowledged it) is that startup culture gives you incredible frameworks and processes within which to grow your business. So now I’m bringing them back.

The way that I’ve run 39BC for the last two years has been very intuitive, very relaxed. Although I’ve had an incredibly clear strategy for the next ten years of the business, I was very much going with the flow because everything has been flowing towards me.

We’ve been incredibly lucky in terms of winning awards, being in the hands of the right tastemakers and being featured in the right places. But now, after one year of trading and heading into our first proper holiday season, I’m determined to hit a significant revenue milestone of a million in sales.

Some people have said that this is ridiculous, that we don’t need to hit a million so early on. Sort of reminds me of when my investors said, “Oh, you don’t need to get a thousand beauty pros on the app, 25 will do.”

They always say that, but then, when it comes to fundraising and to pitching or presenting, revenue is always what matters. Cash is queen.

This is for the readers who made something, launched it and wondered why it didn’t sell.

Maybe you wrote a book and it didn’t get on the bestseller list. Maybe you made the most genius, innovative product and nobody came to your website. Maybe you opened a restaurant and had no customers. The “build it and they will come” approach assumes you’ve made something so mind-blowing that it will spread without you lifting a finger. But those moments are few and far between, and even going viral doesn’t guarantee a lasting business.

These frameworks I’m about to discuss are really about understanding what generates a sale, learning how to repeat it and automating the parts you can, so that your product and your marketing machine are constantly working.

So, how does one galvanise a team towards the north star of a million in DTC revenue?

When you and your co-founder are the only real full-time employees, how do we connect a remote team to stay focused on the singular goal of smashing through the holiday season? I think I’ve mentioned previously that a beauty brand can do up to 60% of its entire year’s revenue in the last month of the year.

This month and this crazy work pattern I’ve been on have been about getting all our ducks in a row to be able to achieve a good holiday target. FWIW I started thinking about Holiday Season in January 2026. Now I’m returning to my tech days to implement an operational strategy to ensure we get there.

So heres what I'm doing to reach my goals...

1 - OKRs

I never, ever thought the day would come when I’d say this, but I’m bringing back OKRs.