Before I started Olive & Joyce, I was incredibly naïve about business and, if I'm being truthful, six years later I most definitely still am. If I saw a little skincare company featured in a magazine, I assumed the Editor at the magazine had discovered them, loved their products and thought, we absolutely must tell our readers about this. If something appeared in a Christmas Beauty Must-Haves feature, I imagined a beauty editor had carefully selected their favourites, and if an influencer told me she'd discovered the most incredible face cream, I assumed she'd bought it, used it and genuinely loved it.
As for a business with 100,000 followers, obviously that meant 100,000 people had chosen to follow them.
Hahahaha. Welcome to another instalment of Things Emily Didn't Know Until She Started a Business.
Featured Doesn't Always Mean Chosen
One of my biggest surprises was discovering how much of what looks like editorial coverage can actually be paid-for promotion. I've received emails offering Olive & Joyce places in magazines, newsletters, gift guides and special features, sometimes written in a way that initially made me think someone had genuinely discovered my little business, until I reached the bit containing the price.
That's not to say every magazine feature or newspaper article is paid for. Genuine editorial recommendations absolutely exist, and there's nothing wrong with advertising either. What surprised me was how similar the two can sometimes look to the person reading them.
I've made those decisions myself. I was offered an expensive opportunity to appear in Marie Claire and decided against it, yet I happily paid to appear in The Big Issue's Christmas edition because I knew what my money was supporting and believed in it. Same woman, same skincare company, different decision.
Running a business has simply taught me to occasionally wonder what's happening behind a recommendation. And once I'd realised a magazine feature wasn't always quite what I'd assumed it was, I started noticing the same blurry line elsewhere too.
Which, inevitably, brought me to influencers.
Your Favourite Influencer May Absolutely Love It
Influencer marketing was another education. As Olive & Joyce grew, I started receiving opportunities where I would provide products for free and then pay hundreds of pounds on top for somebody to create a Reel, Story or post.
I don't think influencers are inherently dishonest, and creating content is work. Some have spent years building an audience from nothing, while others already have enormous audiences as actors, musicians, models, celebrities or TikTok stars. We've seen famous faces advertising hair dye, make-up and perfume for decades, but I don't think any of us believed the A-list film star on television had popped into Boots, discovered a box of hair dye and thought, goodness me, I simply must tell the nation about this.
We knew it was advertising.
Social media made advertising feel more personal. Someone sitting in their bathroom saying “I've been using this and it's AMAZING” can feel like a recommendation from a friend, when they may have received the product for free and been paid to tell us about it. Thankfully, paid influencer content now has to be clearly identifiable as advertising, which is why we see labels such as #AD. They may genuinely love the product, but that distinction matters.
I've sometimes wondered whether I'm cutting my nose off to spite my face by not doing more of it. Would Olive & Joyce have grown faster if I'd handed over the money and played the game? Quite possibly. But I've never felt entirely comfortable paying somebody to make something look like spontaneous enthusiasm when I've actually paid for that enthusiasm to appear. I wrote a little more about this recently in What Six Years of Making Skincare Has Taught Me, because after six years I've realised there's quite a difference between growing a business and simply looking like you've grown one.
Big Doesn't Always Mean Popular
Then there are followers.
I've been approached by companies offering to sell Olive & Joyce thousands of them, meaning that if I fancied becoming considerably more popular by Friday, apparently there's a package for that too.
This doesn't mean a business with 100,000 followers has bought them. Far from it. They may have spent years building a brilliant community. I simply hadn't realised how easily the appearance of popularity could be purchased.
I'd rather have 5,000 people following Olive & Joyce because they chose to be there than 50,000 when I know I bought 45,000 of them.
Although I'm fairly certain there's at least one bot amongst mine, so hello little Bot. I hope your skin is glowing.
Not Everything Is Made by the Brand on the Label
White labelling was another world I knew nothing about. In simple terms, a manufacturer can make a product that another company puts its own branding on and sells. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, and plenty of legitimate businesses work this way.
For me, again, it comes down to transparency. If a company gives the impression that its founder spent years developing a formulation when essentially the same product may be available to several businesses with different labels on the front, that's when it starts to feel murkier.
Perhaps that's why I'm still so attached to physically making Olive & Joyce myself. After thousands of jars, I know how my cream should feel against the spoon, when it needs more stirring and when it's ready.
I like knowing what's inside the jar because I put it there.
Awards, Greenwashing and Other Impressive-Looking Things
Awards were another surprise because I once imagined somebody in a mysterious room simply discovered brilliant little businesses and unexpectedly presented them with trophies.
At this point, honestly, bless me.
Some awards are incredibly respected and independently judged, while others charge businesses to enter or offer paid promotional packages afterwards. An entry fee doesn't automatically make an award meaningless, but once again, what happens behind the scenes can be rather different from what I'd imagined.
Then there's greenwashing. Words such as natural, clean, conscious, sustainable and eco-friendly can sound wonderfully reassuring without necessarily telling you very much. A beige label, a leaf and a photograph of somebody standing barefoot in a meadow don't automatically make something environmentally friendly. It's a little like supermarkets and their wonderfully rustic, completely made-up farms.
Which is annoying really, because I've spent six years worrying about ingredients, packaging, palm oil, sourcing and waste when apparently I could have just bought a fern.
The Bit I Think Is Actually Dark
For me, though, the darkest part isn't magazines, influencers, awards or followers.
It's what all of this can do to the person running a small business.
Social media has given tiny businesses extraordinary opportunities. I can make a jar of face cream in Brighton, photograph it, put it on Instagram and somebody I've never met in Scotland can discover Olive & Joyce that afternoon. That's amazing.
But the same little screen also shows me everybody else's apparent success. Their 100,000 followers, magazine feature, celebrity endorsement, award, sold-out launch and enormous pile of parcels, while I'm sitting amongst cardboard boxes wondering why everybody else appears to be smashing it and Instagram has shown my latest post to approximately seven people and my mum.
What I can't see is what's behind any of it.
I don't know whether the followers were bought, the celebrity was paid, the magazine placement came with an invoice or the Reel had thousands of pounds of advertising behind it. I don't even know whether that enormous pile of parcels represents a profitable business.
Social media can make a small business, but I think it can also make the person running one believe everybody else is doing better than they are.
The same goes for those enormous financial claims online. “I built a six-figure business!” sounds incredibly impressive, but six figures of what? A business can take £100,000 and spend £95,000 running itself.
Turnover isn't profit. Followers aren't customers. Visibility isn't necessarily success.
Those three things took me an embarrassingly long time to learn.
Perhaps We Just Need to Look Behind the Numbers
I don't want anyone reading this to become suspicious of every influencer, magazine, award or successful business they see, because that's really not my point. Nor is this one enormous moan-up from a woman surrounded by shea butter and cardboard boxes.
I've advertised Olive & Joyce. I've paid for opportunities I believed in. Businesses need marketing, publications need advertising revenue and content creators deserve to be paid for their work.
I just wish I'd understood the machinery a little better before I became a business owner.
Big doesn't always mean popular. Featured doesn't always mean chosen. Recommended doesn't always mean unpaid, and small certainly doesn't mean unsuccessful.
Perhaps instead of being dazzled by the numbers, we can occasionally look behind them. Who makes the products? Do customers come back? Do the reviews feel genuine? What does the company actually stand for?
Don't automatically overlook the tiny business because its Instagram following isn't enormous. Behind that little account might be somebody making the products, answering your messages, wrapping your order, doing the accounts, taking the photographs, writing the emails and wondering why on earth becoming a small-business owner ever sounded like a sensible career choice.
After six years of Olive & Joyce, I've decided I'd rather build something real slowly than buy the appearance of having built something enormous overnight.
Even if I occasionally wonder whether I've cut my nose off to spite my face.
Although ask me again after Instagram shows this blog to seven people and my mum.