Start-up to Scale-up with Channel 4 Ventures: Gender Equality + The Power of Resilience with Sam White

Your Dream Business

In this episode, I interviewed the brilliant Sam White, founder and CEO of Stella Insurance. We discussed Sam's journey into creating a female-centric motor insurance business, her challenges as a woman in a male-dominated industry, the difficulties in raising investment, and her unique approach to resilient entrepreneurship. Sam shares her experiences of starting her first company at 24, her struggles with financial institutions, and the innovative solutions she employed, including a media for equity deal. We also talk about gender disparity in business funding and highlight the importance of supporting diverse entrepreneurs.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

1. Resilience in the Face of Adversity: Sam White’s journey highlights the importance of resilience when facing challenges in a male-dominated industry. Her ability to overcome setbacks, including struggles with financial institutions and investment, showcases how perseverance is key to entrepreneurial success.
2. Creative Funding Solutions: Sam’s use of a media-for-equity deal exemplifies innovative ways to secure funding when traditional avenues seem out of reach. This approach demonstrates the value of thinking outside the box and leveraging unconventional strategies to grow a business.
3. Championing Diversity in Entrepreneurship: The episode sheds light on the gender disparity in business funding and emphasises the importance of supporting diverse entrepreneurs, and how empowering women in business can lead to impactful change in industries that need a fresh perspective.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Sam White on Instagram, Linkedin Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript

Teresa:Hello and welcome back to the Dream Business Podcast. This is episode 378, but it is number two in this special series that I'm doing with Channel 4 Ventures. [00:01:00] The first episode, which I aired yesterday was with Nikki Wicks, who is the brother CEO and creative director of Joe Wicks The Body Coach. And I loved that conversation, so I would love to hear what you thought of it. Today, I am interviewing Sam White, who is the founder and CEO of Stella Insurance, a female centric motor insurance business that's unapologetically led by women and designed for women. Now, this conversation was really, really good. I was super inspired by Sam. We had conversations around the fact of Why would you even get into insurance in the first place? I'm laughing saying it, but like of all the businesses that people set up, surely insurance does not seem like the easiest thing. And it doesn't seem like the most simple, it's a really heavily regulated industry. What makes someone starting a [00:02:00] business want to go into it? We talk about the fact that She was 24 when she started and that she loved solving problems and she was frustrated with some of the things in the industry. So it was her own kind of need for an answer that made her create the answer herself. We talked about how difficult it was for her as a woman, not only in this industry, but also to try and raise money and the difficulty that she had with financial institutions. And then we looked at what makes her resilient. How is she motivated? How did she pick a really difficult industry and go on to make a really successful business? I think you're going to be super inspired by this. I really loved her frankness. I really loved her direct conversation. It was a wonderful conversation. And I think that you are really going to enjoy this episode. So without further Here is the amazing Sam White. Welcome Sam to the podcast. How are you doing? Sam: Not so bad. Thank you for having [00:03:00] me on. Teresa: Well, thank you for giving me your time. I was just saying to you before we hit record that I don't think I've ever interviewed anybody who's in insurance or certainly not set up an insurance company. So I am fascinated about this conversation. Sam: So nobody ever, when referred to insurance, Teresa: think about like the entrepreneurial world, there's not many that, you know, go, this is the route I want to go down. So let's start there. So how, how is the big question and why did you decide that that was the business you wanted? Sam: Yeah, look, it's something that gets said a lot in insurance circles. People would say, nobody actually chooses to go into insurance. They fall into it. I think my path was probably quite different in the, I set up my first company when I was 24, um, and really just because I couldn't stand the thought of working for somebody else. I realized I was unemployable at a very [00:04:00] young age. Young age. And so I didn't really care what I got in. So as long as it meant that I could work for myself and be independent and not have to kind of live by somebody else's rules. So the first business that I set up wasn't actually in insurance. It was around insurance. I set up a business supporting insurance brokers with their motor claims. And the only reason I did that is because the only job I had. previously was in that sector. So it was what I knew and it seemed like a safer landing point. And it kind of evolved from there. Teresa: So 24 is very young to start a business. Was that something that had always been on the cards? Was your parents, were they entrepreneurs? How. Did you get into that? Sam: Yeah, look, we, uh, my mom had had her own business when she was younger, so there was probably some kind of seeding of that, that mentality as, as a [00:05:00] child. But I think, you know, as a teenager, I used to go out washing cars in the neighborhood to make money. I always had that energy about me of wanting to create something in the moment out of nothing. And I, I didn't like, you know, I had Saturday jobs. I had a job in Gregg's actually as a, my sort of first paid employment and I didn't get paid a lot and it was very, very hard work and I hated the rigidity That kind of structure. So I think I was always of a mind that I wanted to push out against that, that kind of framework. Teresa: Yeah. And I think I always, I used to joke, and I don't say it so much now that I'm like an accidental entrepreneur, because that was never, I wasn't one of those people. I follow rules really well. I love being patted on the head and being told I've done a good job. So the fact that I now have my own business is mind blowing. And again, I could never go back to [00:06:00] it. But I think like, if you've grown up and had that kind of passion, what Because again, even though you'd had some experience in that industry, that doesn't seem like a particularly easy industry to get into. It feels like there's loads of legal stuff and you've really got to know what you're talking about. Sam: Yeah, it is. It's heavily regulated. It's also extremely Male dominated, which I talk about a lot. It's, you know, it's financial services. So the majority of senior decision makers in the industry and male, it's not necessarily an industry that really attracts entrepreneurs either, because it's seen as a very capital intense area and therefore it, it puts people off. For me, I just like solving problems. And I, I kind of, I'd, I'd started because I'd started working in claims, I kind of understood the industry almost under the, the [00:07:00] hut in terms of some of the challenges that the market has generally. And as I'd started to build out a claims business and work with insurance companies, I was getting frustrated that there was things that I wanted to change. That I couldn't change because I wasn't in control of that part of the process. You know, it's funny you talk about the accidental entrepreneur. My personal belief is that 90 percent of us are accidental entrepreneurs, but some are better at lying about it post being successful because, you know, I, I, I don't believe in this really thing. Cookie cutter, clean plan that plays out exactly as you expected it to. And it's one of my big objections to sort of traditional VC is, uh, they, they, they tend from my experience of them to come from the big consulting firms. Come from a financial background. [00:08:00] So you sort of CFO mentality that says that everything works on a spreadsheet. Then real life happens. And, and, and that isn't how most businesses that I know and entrepreneurs that I know, and I've met a Tom that have been wildly successful. And when you're sat at that after dinner party and you're chatting and you really get to the honest nub of it with them, they've all had that rollercoaster of experience where they thought they were going in one direction and then they had to go in another and the pain points and the trauma and all that stuff. And it kind of flies in the face of the. The way that we expect them to present when trying to raise funds, the two of them really kind of fit together very well. Teresa: No, and I think, you know, this is where we look at like people's zone of genius. And I think to be an entrepreneur, to come up with those ideas, to have the guts to go out there and do it, to be [00:09:00] brave, to be scrappy in those early days, like they're not necessarily the, the spreadsheet type skills that you would have necessarily. So, so one thing that I really want to understand is when you decided to start, when did you start Stella Insurance? Sam: So Stella Insurance I launched in 2020 actually in Australia. Um, but I, I had the backing of my own successful businesses in the UK that I'd organically grown to be able to do that, to even be able to go out and check out the market and say, is this something that, um, I could do, uh, was possible because of the business that I'd built previously. Teresa: Okay, so you hadn't necessarily had investment in those other businesses, not because you had grown such a good business and had such a foundation that enabled you to kind of flip onto the potential new business. So had you got [00:10:00] investment from day one in that business? Did you literally start with, I'm, I have investors for this? Sam: So with the Australian business, it was the first and only time I had any kind of investment. So part of it was my own investment. So I, as what I said for myself with, with Stella was, I really want to do this. I really love the Australian market. I love the potential of what we're going to do with this business, but for this, because I've done the organically grown like freedom services group had got up to 20 odd million pound of turnover and it was profitable. But it is, you know, blood, sweat and tears, lots of falling over and face planting the mat and getting back up again. And I said, I, I want to experience building a business with funding and backing and what does that look like? So I got a small amount of local VC funding. And I put money in and I also actually interestingly [00:11:00] did a media for equity deal, which was my first experience of the whole media for equity dynamic. I did a deal with Bauer Media at the time across all of their female magazines in Australia. I got sort of 15 million in inventory across their now magazine, Marie Claire, et cetera, to launch the brand. But it was a, I'm not doing this by myself again. I want to have somebody in on board day one. Teresa: So there's a couple of things I just want you to clarify for me. So when you talk about the media deal, can you just explain to listeners what you mean? What does that look like? What is it? Sam: Yeah. So look, there's, there's many different ways to skin a cat, as I like to say. And over the years I've learned that bartering in business is really helpful. So you can't always, getting debt into a business, getting traditional investment is unbelievably hard, particularly if you don't fit the classical, Mold. And what I've learned over the years is that you can [00:12:00] exchange things. So if you know that you're providing a service that another bigger business has a requirement for, you can sometimes do a deal where they may help forward fund you in order to be able to get more of what they want from your business, from a supply chain viewpoint. Um, media for equity is, is for me, is a bit of a bartering system where You've got a company like Bauer who have various media businesses, whether it be magazines, radio, etc. And they will have inventory that they are selling to other companies. And a media for equity deal is simply saying, is it me paying you for it? I'm going to give you some shares in my business. And in doing that, you're, you're playing for the long term. So you get, you're going to give me some of this space. You're going to help support the marketing of my business. But you accept the fact that I'm not giving you cash day one, I'm giving you a share of [00:13:00] the business and hopefully we'll all win together in the future. Teresa: So I'm assuming then for someone listening to this and maybe thinking about, you know, straightforward, we'll give you some money for a percentage of our business. And then this type of investment. What would you do? Is there one that's better than the other? Is there a reason you chose that one? Would you have rather had the straight money if you could? Sam: Look, there's lots of different ways of looking at it. I can only speak to sort of my motivation. At the time, the deal metrics were more favorable than I would have gotten a straight cash for the equity deal. But also my mentality was, If, if you just purchase the media, it's an exchange, it's a financial exchange, but it's done. You've spent the money, they're gone. If it's a media for equity dynamic, then they only get that return if you're successful. So one of the [00:14:00] motivating factors for me was the idea that there was skin in the game on both sides, that there was, there was a sort of active interest in being, um, in the business being successful and being able to do that. But the, the other factor was. I think the media world is probably more open minded to different types of entrepreneurs than the financial world. And I had had a terrible time of it trying to raise money over the years. In, in my previous businesses, my, my original bank manager, when I set up on my own, when I was 24, the first thing he did was remove my personal overdraft. And that kind of was a pattern across the, the entire time, whenever I've engaged with financial institutions, it's just not, it's not been good for me. So, I kind of, you know, their engagement with us because we were a fresh brand, we were doing [00:15:00] something different and interesting. They were excited by the possibilities of what we wanted to do as, as a business. And it was a very different response to the response that I'd had before. Teresa: And that is so interesting and kind of really nicely brings us onto the work that is being done with Chavarron Tapped is that one of the, when you think about investments and people who give investments, they tend to fit a very small, box and the people that you had like this TV box and then the people that they're giving investments to. And that was one of the most shocking things about when we went, um, at the time recording this, it was last week. I knew the stats would be bad. Like as a woman in business, I knew that. The people getting funding would be low when it came to anybody that wasn't necessarily a white male, but I was gobsmacked. I mean, from your point of view, obviously you weren't [00:16:00] surprised because you've been in it, but what were your thoughts about it? Sam: I wasn't surprised. I mean, it, it was even worse than I thought and I had a fairly low opinion. So it was, it, it was kind of like I was, I'm just, I'm a bit embarrassed for them. So like I'm a part of a lot of female entrepreneur groups and some incredible women doing phenomenal things and, and the thing that I've found in my experience of dealing with. Female entrepreneurs is they often have like a societal lens as well. So they're not just building businesses that are good for them. They are trying to build businesses that are good for everybody. And this is a consistent theme that I kind of come across. So. I, I look at them and I go, why on earth wouldn't we be backing the, these incredible women? And for, I think, you know, the Rose review pointed out that if we backed female entrepreneurs in the same way that we do men, there'd be another 250 billion [00:17:00] in the UK economy. So I look at that and I go, this is like, it just doesn't make any logical sense. So yeah, the stats were hugely disappointing, but not surprising. And having got a small amount of investment in Australia, but then trying to do a series A after really successfully scaling the business, you know, to a substantial number of customers and turnover and being very close to profitability. And systematically failing in that endeavor, having been told that we were, like, perfect profile, perfect, you know, incredible this, incredible that, I kind of, I kind of wasn't going in there with an expectation that the stats were gonna surprise me, put it that way. Teresa: Yeah, and I, like, it just, for me, I work, I would say, probably 90 percent of my audience are women. And, I think we're starting on the right foot anyway [00:18:00] in getting in a business and the day to day things of running a business of, you know, I had a, in one of my groups, there...