On paper, I had it together and was building a successful career in tech and operations management. I was building the systems and budgets other people relied on for 10s of millions of dollars and was the person people came to when numbers didn’t make sense. But with my own money, I knew I wasn’t capitalising on my full potential. I was earning well but was guessing about my future. I did all the “responsible” things, saving, not being stupid, but I knew there was a trick I was missing. Investing was something for other people, who were rich and understood markets.
Then I learned through various books and podcasts how compound interest and a Stocks and Shares ISA work, and realised this stuff isn’t as gatekept as I’d thought. But my second realisation was fury because if it’s that simple, why did no one tell me fifteen years earlier?
F-It Finance came from not wanting others to feel shafted. I lived in the arc of penniless graduate to earning well and still feeling behind. My corporate 9-5 showed me I wasn’t the only one, and I refuse to watch other women lose years to a silence that costs nothing to break.
I signed up to Rebel Business School in Glasgow on a whim. I had signed up to a virtual delivery but wasn’t able to attend sessions live and never got round to watching the recordings. When I saw the in-person delivery was happening 5 mins from my house I signed up and attended as much as I could around my work. It was the moment that changed everything because I knew I wanted to do something with this idea of offering financial literacy resources, but it had been sitting on the back burner for easily 18 months.
Being in the room with Rebel Business School and being told “you will have a website but the end of this” was the kick up the arse I needed to build ‘something’ and then refine it later. I knew it wouldn’t be perfect within that week, but it got the idea out of my head and into something I could share with others.
Since Rebel, I attended a corporate leadership course. They asked in early sessions what we were currently working on, and I mentioned that, alongside my day job, I was passionate about financial literacy, had co-founded the workplace discussion group, hosted internal webinars and finally, from attending Rebel, I’d set up my website.
The leadership course director took me aside during a break and said, “We really need this sort of content in our deliveries. Do you offer train-the-trainer sessions?”
I had intended F-It.Finance to be a digital download or online resource centre running on a user subscription model. I hadn’t gotten to the point of considering more formal training. With no resources or modules built, I just answered the director, ”Yes, of course,” and decided I’d figure it out. The yes led to a scoping call, pitch, sample delivery and signed contract to deliver a full-day train-the-trainer session covering 6 modules they could teach as a full curriculum or fold into their existing course.
I had a goal of £20k/year, which was originally looking like 1000 sales of a £20 resource. Now I can offer full-day deliveries and only need to give 10 deliveries to hit my annual gross revenue target.
Rebel Business School’s marketing appearing in my Instagram feed was the perfect algorithmic pairing. I’m a corporate rebel, disruptor and circus performer. Everything about the in-person delivery in Glasgow was geared for someone like me. I’m a corporate wanker who describes myself on LinkedIn as a professional troublemaker, flag-flying feminist and lifelong learner. It was almost inevitable Rebel Business School, and I would come together.
As a recovering perfectionist, my lightbulb moment has been action over perfection. I could have agonised over building the perfect tool on the perfect website with the perfect marketing plan, and I would be sitting here today without a single sale or module to offer. Instead I treated the site build as a mini-experiment, said yes to offering a product I hadn’t considered yet, figured it out as I went and got my first sale. Rebel Business School to delivery was 3.5 months for an idea I’d been sitting on for nearly 2 years.
Rebel is superb if you’re ready for the nudge to act. They offered the focus I need to start. They helped boil down a fizzy brain spilling over with ideas into one thing I could do each day, so by the end of the week I had something tangible to show to others.
The idea I went in with is not the business I now run. It’s significantly better.
