Lara Morgan - Founder of Pacific Direct

I was born in Germany I grew up in Hong Kong I went to school in Scotland so I had a global outlook and I also have parents who are unbelievably enthusiastic about everybody having a value and I know for a fact that my passionate belief in everybody has something to offer everybody can grow it can be infectious my dad went bankrupt so I had to get a job when I was 18 two weeks after finishing if you like my formal education I had to start paying my parents rent and my job was selling premiums and giveaways I'm shamelessly proud of selling everything from umbrellas and keychains to stuff you put in a cereal packet McDonald's promotions items all sell anything it was a small business and we grew it pretty quickly I guess from that was my foundation of building my first company which was Pacific direct I started that when I was 23 in UK the guys that had owned the premium company had just bought into a manufacturer of sewing kits and shower cap so it's not a terribly glamorous or glorious start but I needed a job I needed to make money so I started and my grandmother was my strategic advisor and genuinely and she said darling if you're going to sell this stuff go to the Dorchester one of London's loveliest properties the business graduated from shower caps and sewing kits into toiletries and branded licensed goods for leading luxury brands and we sold them in 110 countries which was pretty cool so I traveled to 92 different countries in the development of my business they are brand luxury goods at the 5-star under the market and on a global platform if you're working with some of the major hotel groups like intercontinental or Sofitel you'll be delivering to 57 countries just to meet their needs simplistically I would buy a product 214 pence set it at 21 to the Dorchester it's a pre thready tone kit as we grew the business you're starting to deal in much bigger volume much bigger contracted goods and again you might be buying a 6p and delivering at 9p but you're selling two million units I started Pacifica route with a 99% shareholding my mother was the other shareholder and I sold Pacific in 2008 and I'm still retaining 99% when I sold it so the business went from startup nil to 23 and a half million turn over that was also about me progressively growing up and learning to communicate and this is really valuable about finance and about understanding mechanisms of money and interest and where I could continue to grow the business by really milking every penny out of the way finance works I like to learn about stuff I don't know about I'm currently invested in a platform called so - comm which is a social media platform I know nothing about social media but I see it as a sales channel so I just have to see whether I can make some money out of that if you have that ambition to learn and grow it's about asking the dumb questions are not being afraid to ask and I certainly ask still masses of dumb questions and I know a bit more but not much and so the answer is I learned by asking I think if you go in with a very open mind about learning and a humility about wanting to learn actually the world is a very generous place people are unbelievably generous with their time I can't really think of someone I know who grew a business to just make money I think it's about wanting to be the best the most admired or the most outstanding in your field but you know it's a combination of lots of things being in the right place at the top working really hard