Saturn Returns with Caggie - 9.3 Autonomy: Becoming your own Authority with Ella Mills

Episode Date: March 4, 2024

Join Caggie Dunlop in this transformative episode of Saturn Returns as she sits down with Ella Mills, the powerhouse behind Deliciously Ella.Ella Mills stands at the forefront of the vegan movement, turning her quest for health into a thriving empire. This episode takes us on a journey from Ella's early health struggles at 20, through her meteoric rise to fame, to finding balance and success in both her personal and professional life. Origin Story: Explore the beginnings of Deliciously Ella during a pivotal health crisis in Ella's life. Discover how she embraced autonomy and authority over her health, internalising the solution and setting the stage for her future. Rapid Success: Hear how Ella's personal blog exploded into a global phenomenon by the age of 23, leading to a best-selling book and overcoming imposter syndrome. Ella shares invaluable insights for young women on backing themselves and empowering others. Vision and Purpose: Ella reveals why sticking to her intentions and connecting with something greater has been crucial to her brand's global success. A discussion on purpose and the power of intention. The Reality of Entrepreneurship: An honest look at the highs and lows of business ownership, challenging the glamorised image of entrepreneurship and the societal pressure to monetize passions. Partners in Life and Business: Ella shares the unique story of how her partner became her husband and business co-founder, offering a glimpse into their intertwined personal and professional lives amidst challenges. Post-Saturn Return Wisdom: Reflecting on post-Saturn return, Ella talks about embracing her introversion, gaining clarity, and her evolving relationship with social media. Lessons in authenticity and passion. Ella's story is a testament to finding one's path and shining light on others along the way. Don't miss this inspiring episode that delves into health, empowerment, success, and the authentic journey of an introverted leader reshaping the wellness industry. Thank you Wild Nutrition for making this Episode possible. Use the Code: SATURNRETURNS for 15% off your order at www.wildnutrition.com —- Subscribe to "Saturn Returns" for future episodes, where we explore the transformative impact of Saturn's return with inspiring guests and thought-provoking discussions. Follow Caggie Dunlop on Instagram to stay updated on her personal journey and receive more empowering insights and you can find Saturn Returns on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.  Order the Saturn Returns Book. Join our community newsletter here. Find all things Saturn Returns, offerings and more here.

Hello and welcome to Saturn Returns with me, Kagi Dunlop. This is a podcast that aims to bring clarity during transitional times where there can be confusion and doubt. So we went on three dates, Thursday, Sunday, the next Thursday, and we never left each other since that Thursday. And after kind of two weeks or so, he started helping me with Deliciously Ella and things that I was doing. And after like two months, he quit his job and we started building Deliciously Ella together. Today, I'm thrilled to be sitting down with the wonderful Ella Mills, the founder of Deliciously Ella. Ella was at the forefront of the vegan movement at the age of 23 which started out as an exploration of ways to regain her own health but it soon grew

into a hugely successful empire. She runs it alongside her husband who is also her business partner and her ethos has always been to make healthy living easy and exciting and accessible for people. Since beginning her blog in 2011 Ella has gone on to sell one and a half million books in the UK and her recipes have been translated into 30 different languages. As well as being a hugely successful businesswoman, she is a mother of two young girls. I've been in touch with Ella for a while and Ella is a fan of the Saturn Returns podcast, which I'm very honoured by. And I went on her podcast when I was doing the rounds for my book and I loved connecting with her and so I was thrilled to get her on the show for this season

and she speaks so beautifully so eloquently but what really came through in this conversation for me was this theme of autonomy and it is so important and it is so Saturnian to be able to have autonomy over our lives over our decisions and it really ties in with authority and I think that that's something particularly as women we can find really hard to do because we have been conditioned to subcontract our authority over to other people and so I was really impressed by Ella's ability to constantly come back to herself in challenging times even when other people were telling her to do things differently or thought that you know her and her husband were crazy for doing what they were doing and it shows that it pays off and so I hope that some of the takeaways for this

conversation for you guys is to step into your power to step into your truth and to have autonomy over your own lives. I hope you enjoy this episode. And welcome to Saturn Returns. Thank you so much. I've been an avid listener for a long time so it's almost quite bizarre to be now in the episode. That is incredibly flattering and obviously the last time I saw you was when I was on your show but for the audience I feel like everyone is going to know who you are but for the audience that doesn't know would you be able to introduce yourself in your own words like what you do? Yeah absolutely so I'm Ella. I started a company called Deliciouslya as a exploration to regain my health after a very low period so

this was back in 2011 into 2012 and I've been running that growing that with my husband ever since and the real focus is just trying to make healthy living easy and exciting for people and I've also got two little girls so that's the other half of my life so it's full chaos and totally brilliant which we were just discussing and I can't wait to get into but to bring it right back to the beginning in 2011 obviously you were at the forefront of this movement not many people were doing it it was kind of obviously it's become very much a common thing now and people have a lot more vocabulary around it and awareness but at the time they didn't so

what you just touched on like but what really like could you take us back to that moment in time and what was going on for you yeah absolutely so as you said no one was talking about the link between how we lived our lives and and obviously a big part of that is diet but obviously our health goes beyond just just what we eat into the way that we live our lives and our health and so I always feel like I have to fully preface you know sitting here at the end of 2023 saying this was a revolutionary concept because it was I know but it seems so strange today because it's as you said it's much more part of kind of common vocabulary and conversation and lexicon today but it just absolutely wasn't at that point and I spent 2011 in that hospital I was very very ill with a condition that affected my autonomic nervous system so I couldn't control all these

systems and processes that should happen totally automatically whether that was controlling my heart rate or my digestion circulation all sorts of issues my immune system I had chronic fatigue so I was sleeping kind of up to 18 hours a day brain fog chronic pain I spent almost three and a half years I think it was on antibiotics used to have to go into hospital for antibiotic drips for all these infections like you name it I had it basically and I was for you at the time so I was 20 turning 21 it's really tough so very young and quite a strange age I think because it's that age where the world's really in front of you and I guess actually it's funny I hadn't thought about it until just then it's very relevant I guess I

know it's a little bit earlier but it's as Saturn returns in this kind of moment of transition in your life and you do because you go through Saturn squares and oppositions so like Saturn has seven year cycles in a way as it does its full orbit so every seven years we have these like mini initiations and 21 is one yeah it's really interesting because I feel that very strongly that it's this real tipping point in your life you know when you're becoming gently your own person is starting to understand who you are and like how is the adult world going to open up for you and what do you want to explore and so just as I felt that I was kind of getting a sense of independence and a little bit more self-belief and autonomy that all fell away and as everyone around me was looking to their future and applying for jobs and thinking about

what they wanted to do I was sort of faced with this idea well if I stay as I am you know I won't be able to work or live at home with my mum forever and what does that look like so it was a very interesting for want of a better word time I think to be so unwell and I also just didn't have the tools to deal with it very well and so I just shut myself away I felt it was easier not to talk about it and not to I found finding any sense of vulnerability around incredibly difficult I didn't like that it made me feel alien or other um and I just desperately wanted to fit in and I it was so clear that that stopped that from being the case um was it if you don't mind me asking was it quite a quick thing that came on or was it over time? No, it was so quick.

It was really within a week or so that I had gone from being totally normal to thinking, wait, something's not quite right. And two months later, the symptoms had kind of fully set in and I was incredibly unwell. It was quite debilitating. Fully debilitating. And so, yeah, it was was really it was incredibly fast so things kind of turned upside down within the space of a summer um holiday from uni and I stayed like that for about almost nine months of really just kind of consistently waiting for someone else to have an answer and consistently thinking well when I try the next

medication or when I meet the next doctor they will know what to do and they will solve the problem for me and in retrospect I think in the illness but outside of the illness as well that has always been one of probably my biggest challenges is I guess wanting people to find the solution for you and not always being quick enough to find it for yourself or have the self-belief to find it for yourself and it was realising when I tried the last drug from the doctor that I was working with and it didn't do anything it actually gave me some quite complicated side effects that arguably just made me a little bit worse and I remember so vividly it's really

like strong memory for me sitting on the floor of my room on the phone to him and he said like I I don't have anything else I don't have anything else I can offer you I don't really have any more suggestions and just for the first time really in that whole year I just completely lost it like I was absolutely inconsolable and I had this sense of complete hopelessness yeah and I sat in that for a little bit until I had that kind of real wake-up moment of my god that will be my life and I can't let that be the case and it was in realizing that that I was prompted to start to research what else I could do and to start to take a little bit more control of the situation and of my life again you say because you speak about you know how we sort of

subcontract our authority onto other people and especially doctors or in that sort of health world a bit less so now but definitely at that time we're like well if they don't know what to do then I'm doomed but do you not feel that generally speaking as a society we tend to do that with most aspects of our life yeah no completely I think it goes it's quite a 360 situation I think we we so often I certainly have done that goodness knows how many times want someone else to solve our problem for us yeah and um and people so rarely do uh so that was a very interesting realization I remember when I first met my now husband he talked about it so much this idea you've got

to internalize the solution and he's yeah it's nice isn't he's obsessed with it it's like how this is like number I guess it's his sort of north star in the way that he makes his decisions and lives his life which is like I am the only person accountable for my life and my actions and only I am responsible for it and i've got to solve everything for myself and he doesn't do it in a way that's isolationist and it's incredibly saturnian these themes of like autonomy authority taking that responsibility but you know it's quite scary oh they're terrifying and they're things that you know especially in our well teenage years or even 20s like we want to be adults but we don't

want the responsibility of adulthood and then it's only really kind of in our late 20s usually through experience that we kind of find those within ourselves but it sounds like you had to kind of try and discover them quite young because of the circumstances that you were in yeah I think I grew up very quickly from that point on and maybe in my 20s I had a potentially slightly different outlook but I guess also it was a combined a combination of suddenly having to take this real responsibility for my mental health my physical health my general well-being but also with my career taking off really really quickly again when I was like 22 23 you suddenly had what felt like a lot of responsibility it's interesting that you know you taking that responsibility for yourself

in your because obviously you realized that it was going to determine your future like if you didn't like you said earlier it might just mean that you were stuck at home and weren't able to progress in the way that perhaps your friends might have been but then whilst you started exploring this world and then it became this huge thing that you probably didn't anticipate happening I mean I don't want to put words in your mouth but what was that experience like going from feeling quite hopeless to then suddenly having this career that was exploding and everyone kind of wanting a piece of you I mean utterly bizarre like you definitely were not putting words in my mouth there like it was a very unexpected unfolding of events and I what were those events well it was it was a kind of strange combination of things really so it was in um spring 2012

when I had this real wake-up moment and felt okay I need to try and take some control of my life because I felt I had lost all semblance of control of it over and I became very interested in diet and lifestyle and how the way that we look after our bodies um can make such a big difference to our health and it was fascinating and I thought look if it's worked for other people it might work for me so I taught myself to cook and I shared those recipes online and delicious yellow was born but I genuinely sit here today and I'm really not just saying this like I didn't intend for other people to read it it wasn't um it wasn't a means to an ends by any it was like a cathartic it was just a it was a

personal project I needed something in my life my life was so empty um and so exactly it was a personal project and I was actually so embarrassed about it what when it started to take off oh yeah i mean i was embarrassed about it for so long but i was so well i don't know i mean i was so embarrassed of it to start with because i felt who on earth am i to write about food and to share this online like I have like an imposter syndrome full like fully I have no authority I have no experience like no one should read this and so I said I won't show it to anybody until um it hits 10,000 strangers like 10,000 hits from strangers and if it gets to that point I'll show you know a few friends and it hit that point actually the week of my 21st

birthday um and I so I showed some friends and they showed some friends and then within two years the site had 130 million hits and I had all these people there was a map on the it was a wordpress site and there was a map on the back end of the wordpress site and you could see all the countries in the world where people were reading it and it was just extraordinary and people started to write in and tell me about what a difference they had made their life and their own health and them discovering the recipes but even at that point yeah i still had a real imposter syndrome and i think when the first book came out which was in january 2015 and again i really don't say this to be self-deprecating because i have gently learned

to start to back yourself and and how important that is and I think especially as women for us to encourage yeah each other to do that and to champion each other and um but equally like I'm really not being self-deprecating to say like no one expected it to succeed like you know we could have sold you hadn't told anyone about oh you know i had at this point the book yeah exactly no i mean there was a there was a dedicated online following it wasn't that the expectation that we'd sell 10 books but no one thought it was going to be something it was smash it like absolutely not and i think they'd printed 20,000 copies or so and if they'd sold them all they would have been pleased and that would have been

all good but we sold out of copies before the book published and how many did it sell so we've sold one and a half million books since then which is which is in in the UK and so and I think it's had 30 plus translations so so yeah quite quite a lot and how does that feel for you now looking back does it feel real and can you feel proud of it yeah no I do I now feel really really proud of it but I think at the time because I was it was so unexpected like I really wasn't ready for it and it's also such a contrast of where it sounds like you were at quite soon before then so it's so lost such low self-esteem felt so alien from people had no sense of purpose no sense of future so lost and then suddenly starting to explore what felt like this totally left field thing where people thought it was quite bizarre um and then you go from there

to within like a week you are on every tv show and having an interview in every newspaper and I mean I was only 23 at the time so really young and you're literally everywhere and then obviously that quick switch from people talking to you to talking about you and having lots of opinions on you and look you know I don't think it's unfair to say I I don't think my imposter syndrome was unjustified you know it's really interesting because I think I try and be very honest when your stress or your concerns or anxiety or imposter syndrome feels valid to the extent that you are so far out of your comfort zone um or something really does make sense that it would be triggering that thought process in you and I think when I look back on it it would have been quite

extraordinary if that hadn't been the case like I was 23 I had started cooking at home as a small hobby I didn't know how to write a book and you know I didn't intend to write it to kind of teach the nation and suddenly that was the way that responsibility yeah and it was you know I didn't intend to write it to kind of teach the nation and suddenly that was the way that responsibility yeah and it was you know you're the queen of this and you know the leader of this and being touted as something that I just hadn't positioned myself as didn't see myself as and I thought oh I'm not I'm not sure this is quite right which I guess is a very common thing with I guess fame when people have that kind of explosion that feels almost overnight, that they haven't quite caught up with it.

And so I always find this concept of the internal world and the external one kind of feeling at odds with each other. Did you feel for a while that it took you a minute to catch up with what was happening in your external world? Like years, so much more you a minute to catch up with what was happening on in your external world like yes so much more than a minute but yeah I mean the first so the rest of 2015 I mean I remember I had like really crippling anxiety like I was just I just felt consistently like I'm gonna get found out you know people are gonna realize that I don't know what I'm doing and I said really clearly you know in that book I'm a home cook this is my personal project this is why I'm doing it this is why I started it so it's not like I was you weren't lying no not at all I wasn't trying to present myself as

something that I wasn't but I think sometimes the way things get picked up and get talked about you know the headline sometimes speaks something a bit different you know of course and then and naturally the bigger something gets you're always going to invite more criticism and then that can be quite derailing if you don't feel 100 confident about it yourself exactly so I had a real sort of period of I guess reflection in 2015 and and it was it was very busy work-wise but it was really deciding like do I want this am I comfortable with this why well because I felt if it's making you feel that anxious like is this really because what was happening externally was this huge success this like amazing book deal and it's selling all around the world and you're everything's expanding

but then you and didn't feel good about it no not at all and I didn't feel I think I hadn't probably had the time to like I thought of a better word reconnect with myself and kind of build myself back up I think I've always said this I feel I've always felt it took a lot longer to regain my mental health than my physical health because I think that sense and I didn't have great self-esteem going into being really unwell like I really definitely didn't I've always really struggled with that and so I think it's it took a long long time to build that back up so I think people think that if you become successful and famous then you'll have good self-esteem it just doesn't work that way no I think if anything it like gives a lot of permission to continue to chip away at it um and so I feel like I've almost spent

the last 10 years proving to myself that that success um was justified to some extent. When you said that you felt like you weren't sure whether you wanted to carry on, because I know that sometimes when something feels, I don't know if you have imposter syndrome or whatever is going on in your own head, did you ever feel like you wanted to sabotage it? Yeah, for sure, definitely.

And just in like small ways of just not wanting to do things or turning things down and I definitely yeah just continuously said no to things or step back from things and and I feel like I've almost had to build a body of evidence to myself you know that like you do work hard and you have um and you deserve it yeah like it's justified to an extent which is which is really interesting um but I wish I had enjoyed it a bit more and I think sometimes when we have these and it happens in everyone's lives in different ways and it's not it's not always to do with work but you have these kind of extraordinary moments where great things happen and things take off and there's something exciting going on that i think some

things were so surprised it's almost like we're waiting for the other shoe to drop so we can't really exactly embrace the moment exactly i read this amazing book it's it's my favorite book i've probably ever read and it's called i may be wrong i don't know if you've read it oh my gosh it's so brilliant it's by a buddhist monk who unfortunately died it must he must have passed away about two two years ago um but it was just um he was a British Swedish and he um had a very corporate job and he sort of renounced everything and spent about 20 years living as a Buddhist monk and he just had the most extraordinary outlook on life and he has this saying in it that really resonated with me which is maybe maybe not you know it might it might be

good it might not be good no one knows no one knows the answer to any of that and you know it's that idea that the only certainty is uncertainty and i wish it's exactly that i think a lot of us spend a lot of our time waiting for something to go wrong like not agonizing believing that this something good can last and it can stay and it's okay and you can enjoy it and i think i really try and apply that to myself now when i feel nervous or i feel overwhelmed even if it's something small like flying and turbulence you know that idea of like maybe it's a problem and maybe it's not a problem and there's just as much to believe exactly that like every time you you see that like there's every reason to believe it will be good as it will be bad yeah I find that quite hard I can kind of

become quite obsessed with knowing or wanting to know the outcome of situations that you never really do never and that's the thing and I think I spent so long like that that I I missed a lot of my life in a way I mean I hopefully still have a lot of it to go but I think it's been such a kind of rich experience the last decade building the company and all the experiences that have come with that and motherhood but I think I've been so busy waiting for something bad to happen that actually I haven't enjoyed way too much of it do you feel like now a decade on you have enough evidence to be like actually maybe it's good yeah I think I think so I think I've probably had enough times where I've looked at this idea of like maybe maybe not I realized like actually very very few things are as bad as they initially seem and so even if they're jumping

to conclusions is largely quite unhelpful well you end up causing yourself unnecessary pain yeah and I honestly laugh at it so much I look at it and I'm like you were so worried about this and look it all turned out okay in the end well you know a decade on and essentially building an empire I feel like you are building a bit of an empire with your partner as well which I want to get into what have been some of the challenges that you face and how much has the vision for Deliciously Ella changed and evolved along the way I don't think the vision's changed at all which is really interesting um what was the vision in the simplest way to be really useful I really wanted I felt so desperate in where I was when I was ill and so empowered by unlocking

these simple changes that I wanted to share that with people and I wanted to do it in a way that was useful that was meaningful and where I could be a kind of um unlocker of it and carrier of it but it wasn't all about me I realized that very very quickly after that when we were saying that time of anxiety after the first book came out and that yeah slight sense of notoriety and realizing like I don't want this to be all about me i want this to be about this mission of helping people eat better in a simple everyday way and and i can be a yeah a flag carrier for that but it's not going to be all about me in my life all day every day which i think i mean before you carry on on that is such an important takeaway for anyone just having that mindset shift of most things tend to be quite

me orientated and we live in that world more than ever today but actually making it about how can I be of service how can what I do help people just alleviate some of that anxiety in itself yeah I mean that is I mean I guess it's a bit strange to be like that's the best thing that's ever happened to me but it you know but it's one of the best things that's ever happened to me because I think I definitely am like a warrior and a catastrophizer and someone who can go like internal very very quickly and I think having something that you're really connected to that's so much bigger than you that's not really about you um and that sense of purpose has been extraordinarily powerful and so in that sense division hasn't really ever changed it's always been about helping people eat better in a simple

everyday way and of course the execution of it has evolved massively as the company has grown but actually the mission is the mission is still identical which that's so nice it's really nice and I think that's what that's why I still love it and in 2015 so when you had that moment of thinking I don't know whether this is for me or whether I can sustain this what was the moment that brought you back on track it was that it was literally it was the simplicity of this community and of this purpose and I I think because of the personal experience of being at that extraordinary low like when I just you know I still get messages from people every day saying what we've done and has made such a big difference to their life and you know sometimes it's in a small way and sometimes it's in a really massive way of like

the extent to which it's changed their health and their well-being and when you read that you just think who cares if I feel a bit anxious you know who cares if someone doesn't like me who cares if someone writes something about me I don't like like it just really is going to affect hundreds thousands hundreds of thousands millions of people and genuinely improve their life like god that's worth it and also what an amazing feeling to get yeah it's the message or meet someone that says this has changed my life and I've got my health back on track to have played that role in someone's life it's phenomenal like it is honestly like the most it's like it's a massive gift and so it does it keeps you you know look don't get me wrong

sometimes it you know it wanes and I you know knackered and I'm like disengaged for a week but it it keeps it's like the most amazing anchor and it's like it keeps drawing you back in totally and I think having that and whenever people send a message they're like I want to start a business always say like make sure you know why you're going to do it because to your point like what have the challenges been I mean well we could sit here for at least a year top three detail them top three I mean I think honestly the biggest challenges are when you think you're going to go bust like that's definitely when you think oh god this is really stressful um for sure and especially how many times has that happened I mean in the early days like probably probably three or four where you feel like you're really

you know on an eye fetch um which is I imagine as you're expanding yeah when and different reasons and but that was that's extraordinary and you know when covid happened and everything stalled you know we had a personal guarantee over our house and all the and again and you see no sales and you've that's you know it's it's really challenging and then you all sorts of other challenges along the way i think from a personal perspective that the biggest difference biggest challenge was probably also in you know balancing like all the other things that are going on in your life with work and when those become really overwhelming that's difficult so in 2017 my mother-in-law was diagnosed with um terminal

brain cancer and she passed away a year later in may 2018 so you know navigating that for example um because for those that don't know you work with your husband yeah pretty unusual it's amazing honestly so we but we don't know any different like we met three weeks after my first book came out and within a week we moved in together so we went on three dates thursday sunday the next thursday and we never left each other since that thursday and after kind of two weeks or so he started helping me with delicious yellow and things that i was doing and after like two months he quit his job and we started building delicious yellow together so it's been a with our lives are so entwined in every capacity that is i think when people are surprised

that we work together we can't really you don't know anything we don't know any different we don't know each other we don't know our relationship without that but it does because it is our whole life in so many ways it feels very much like our life's work it's it's quite extraordinary to share that together and share that sense of pride when things go well and that excitement but also to have that total unwavering understanding and compassion the challenges yeah in that sense you're completely in it together because I guess when you are your business there's never really an off switch at the end of the day so I was going to say you know how do you manage keeping that stuff slightly separate from home life but it probably sounds like it probably isn't no it's not it's like there's there's not really any starting and stopping between and i think initially we kind of fell because people

talk so much about work-life balance and boundaries like do we need that do we need to have this like rule we won't talk about x or we won't talk about y or we won't do this when we're away and we realize that we we love it like we love what we do it's so fulfilling and it's so exciting and actually that's very much who we both are and I think that's taken again like a really long time to accept in a way like who I am and what I really enjoy and like I'm a real introvert I really don't enjoy going out I enjoy you know being with my very very close friends I don't particularly enjoy like big social occasions like you know I like a small cozy quiet life and I like just to be with my kids my husband like that that's really my idea of absolute heaven and I I love the challenge of work like I really I find it more exciting and more stimulating

than a party and I know that and I'm like even now I say that and I'm like oh my gosh what will I love that I think that's fantastic but it's also knowing like what authentically lights you up exactly exactly and don't get me wrong like I don't always enjoy it like every day you know some days are an absolute slog of course they are and there's lots of practical boring things involved like in anyone's life exactly but actually when I think about what I'm really excited about I feel more excited about building our life around our work than I do about lots of other things and so but again I think we have these like really predetermined images and ideas of like what someone should be and what someone should appear as and what they should be excited about and what

yeah what kind of cool person looks like essentially and I think it's really interesting as you get older and a bit more experienced I guess to start to like dismantle that and say no that that's not who I am that's not what it looks like for me and that's okay yeah which I think often comes post Saturn return when you're like whatever it is for you actually I don't like going to those parties or I'm tired of trying to be this type of person and actually just embracing the things that bring you joy exactly and it doesn't matter what those are and they're going to be so different for all of us. But I think it's just that full acceptance of like nothing's right. Nothing's wrong.

It's just a very personal decision. We touched on it a second ago about, you know, when people ask you about starting up a business. I feel at the moment there is more of a desire than ever before for people to do something that aligns with their purpose you know to have something that's a real mission like for why they are here and on one hand I think that that's like a really romantic beautiful concept and then sometimes I'm like but is that a realistic thing to preach to everyone of course some people are very fortunate that they're able to do something that totally aligns with who they are but I don't I don't know and so I'm curious from your experience

and probably given that you have a lot of people asking you about this what are your thoughts on that yeah it's a very good question it's I think it is romanticized like yeah definitely I think there is this glamorization of starting your business being your own boss um quitting your nine-to-five exactly that is so far removed from the reality of it um and I think it's about knowing it's just as we were saying it's like knowing who who you are and what you really enjoy because equally on the flip side I think it's about knowing it's just as we were saying, it's like knowing who you are and what you really enjoy. Because equally on the flip side, I think if building something and really kind of focusing your mind and your attention on that is something that does light you up. you are more excited about creating a tool a class a business a product a service about something that's instrument that's been instrumental to your life that you're so excited about and you're really passionate that it has a role in other people's lives and you you want to share that

you need to share yeah you feel really like formed to better accord to share that like you're so excited about it means so much to you to do that and you are so willing to put that above and beyond essentially everything else in your life i do think it gives you so much um but if you're not i think it is the worst idea you'll ever have and the worst advice but i mean i feel like every podcaster at the moment is like i quit i just have to not like we're two women of privilege that do do our own podcast and other things and there's so many factors that play into that so I think to dish out advice for people that's like you just quit it and you start an online course I'm like I don't know whether that's very good advice yeah I think

exactly like the vast majority of businesses fail that's that's just a fact and and creating something that can sustain your life for decades from a financial perspective it's just it's very difficult and even you said you know the biggest challenges were thinking that you were going to go bankrupt and of course like i look at it from the outside it's everyone else like oh it must have just been you know success all the way but you don't realize actually because I was speaking to someone that was talking about staying in their job and they didn't know whether they wanted to stay in it for a few years and they get like a sign-on fee to do it and then I was thinking in my head I was like god if I'd love to have a sign-on fee to keep doing Saturn returns for

like four years you know it's like such a different mentality but i've kind of cut you off from what you were saying no no not at all no it was exactly that like in it you know i don't know any other founders who have had a different experience where you had to put your work above friends above going to weddings above going on holidays i think we cancelled 17 different attempts that we took at taking time off and going on a holiday were cancelled in the first four years of working together like it's it's just what you do like and you don't complain about it and sometimes it's on christmas and sometimes it's like you never know when the problem's coming and

you know so we no one you know i won't i don't have anything in my diary for next year like i don't plan anything more than like because you can't no because you can't see like you aren't fully married to and committed to your business and you don't know you're married to your business which is brilliant because then you have complete appreciation of it because that can be challenging oh my gosh so partnership if one person doesn't understand that space to kind of negotiate it and be like why are you working all weekend or exactly and that's just what you've got to do and i think that's the bit that people don't talk about enough and so this idea of like just go and do what you want to do it doesn't actually look like that um and the amount of

uncertainty and stress that comes with it's extraordinary and i also think there is this danger of turning any hobby or something that you enjoy into something that has to be more than that like it's okay kill it exactly it's more than okay to have a job that like it's fine you quite like it's okay it doesn't light you up but it very much pays the bill and it doesn't take over your life and outside of that you have the things that light you up and that you don't you commit to in a way that you really enjoy and you they're just there for enjoyment and that is massive success too like i i think that this success is so different for everybody it's defined so differently and it's's, I think there is, yeah,

this danger of like, you love astrology, so quit your job and go into work in astrology. Or yeah, you're very interested in health and wellness, so like start your own health and wellness business. And like, unfortunately, the vast majority of the time, those businesses don't succeed. And it's obviously a particularly challenging environment at the moment. But also, like you said and it's obviously a particularly challenging environment at the moment um but also like you said it's so important i think people are neglecting that piece around

because as we go into the working world and we're trying to make a living i feel like most people cut off the things that light them up because they're not their earner so they might do something like painting when they were little or younger and then they just stop and it's not necessarily to say like maybe they are supposed to be a painter but how about inviting that back into your life and then reassessing how you feel about what you do more holistically because it tends to just work does tend to kind of take over and then people spend their spare time kind of escaping you know their reality and then it can become a bit of a vicious cycle totally i'm feeling like everything they do has to like reach a certain point you know

like you love yoga so now you have to be a yoga teacher it's like no no you don't you could just go to the class and enjoy it and it doesn't matter if you're you know people say you can't be good or bad at yoga but it doesn't matter if you're like the most advanced in the class or not it doesn't mean anything you're there because you enjoy it and I think that we're not great at that in our society of just and it's actually one of the things I really love with my kids is like they love arts and crafts and coloring and you just color for the sake of coloring like and I find that really really enjoyable has it made you tap into those things yourself definitely and the way and I really enjoy yeah their perspective and and they do things because they think they're fun and that is it and I I really like that and it's sad that we stumped that out totally exactly

and we think that we have to become good at everything that we do and as I said like they color and they do stickers because they enjoy doing stickers they're not doing it because they want to be really really good at coloring and I think that we yeah yeah this like obsessive nature of proving ourselves and and perfectionism that's so deeply embedded in so many of our cultures and the way that we live our lives and our upbringing and of course like you know not to be kind of overly simplistic about simplistic about it but of course you know the internet and social media plays a role in that because we get these totally false insights into people's lives like nothing you see on social media is real not not because people are lying to you like

absolutely not I think that's a bit you know that's too far the other way but because you're seeing I mean some people well no many people are but yeah they're giving you like a highlight trailer of they're giving you a millisecond you know they're giving you like an literally like a millisecond of their life and well how have you found navigating that space throughout your entire career and how do you think it's changed I definitely have like much more of an arm's length relationship to social media than you did for sure um definitely I think I I just feel that it's I really like social. I think it has a really amazing role. And I think there are lots of things that it's done

that we don't talk about the positives enough. You know, take cooking, for example, like it has really democratized cooking. Before I think people had much bigger sense of like, I'm not good cook because cooking was very much dominated by what you saw on TV. It was much more kind of a master chef kind of era inaccessible exactly and it's you know it's very complicated cooking and i understand why that doesn't feel that appealing and now you have people showing you what they make for dinner

after work in 15 minutes and it's like a packed lunch and it's so simple and it breaks it down that's a really good point actually because that's probably paid a huge played a huge role in how people have become more healthy exactly they have more awareness tosian it's the same with like quick tips on fitness or like really great ideas about like i don't know i've always get served these sorts of things but like you know an ikea wardrobe hack like how you take those wardrobes and turn it into something that looks like the most amazing built-in wardrobe like this is great that is great those are great content and pieces of content like i follow lots of different child psychologists and nutritionists and like i have learned a lot of very valuable information there but the problem is is that because we all spend too much time on

it i think we just think that it's much more real than it is and as i said it's not that what these people of course you're absolutely right there's a lot of it which is which is actually just yes slightly exaggeration of the truth or bending of it but a lot of it is that you follow this person you followed them for years and years and years you check in with them almost every single day so you think you know them but actually like they're only telling you you know a fraction of it and again i'm very quick to say like i think so often that's also the case because lots of things aren't their stories to tell you know like with me for example like with parenting i don't talk really about my children on social media you're kind of damned

if you do and damned if you like yeah but whatever you say someone's gonna have that's not my story to tell like it's not it's not my i don't feel that it for me it's right to come on and say like this one of my children did this today and i found that really difficult and etc like that's their life and that's their story as in your children yeah i don't think it's right for me to to you know look some days are like an absolute nightmare you know and they're screaming how are they gonna feel when they're adults exactly it's not right why did you share that time they threw like a nap in your head or whatever it might be yeah I'm like I don't think that's I don't I just don't feel like that's my information to give or like you know I remember yeah so it was a difficult few years my my parents went through

a very very very um difficult divorce and all sorts of things came out in the wash and what more recently a couple of years ago and then very shortly after that was when yeah my mother-in-law got cancer and it was you know she didn't want to talk about it for the first six months and then she actually really wanted she was a politician she actually then really wanted to use her profile to to champion um the development of um different uh potential um cures or or ways to prolong um life with brain cancer because it's it's an area that hasn't come on for decades but so she did they want to talk about it but there was a period of time where you know we were in the worst months of our life and and you wouldn't see any of that on social media because it's not my story to tell and I think you people forget that a lot yeah and everyone's very quick

to want to share perhaps for the wrong exactly or like you know you're saying what are the challenges with work like they are literally you know never ending but most of them aren't they're not appropriate to share online like you get to a point where that's not right you don't your customers can't know that you know that's not or the whole team can't know that the team is now basically 100 people like it's not appropriate for all information to be shared and I think we have this like expectation that we should know everything about everyone all of the time because of the way that the world is today and it's just like it's just not how it works in reality so i think yeah you think you're quite a private person um i'm a real mix actually like i'm very open about

lots of things um and there's like there's not really anything that i'm not happy to talk about but i'm probably not the first to volunteer all of the information. And I think having lived a not public life, and again, that was a really conscious decision really early on, like I didn't want to be, I'm very happy to be known for what I do. But I didn't want to be a public figure, you know, so I didn't want to go to parties and events and be photographed to talk about what I was wearing etc like I'm did you feel a pressure to do that no no no none and I I just didn't want to do it and I'm sure there's parts of doing that that would have furthered my career but I just didn't want to I just didn't want to do that um I think I've always wanted

like as much autonomy over myself and my life as I could and it just that just wasn't that's not to say that's not a bad life choice it's just not the life choice for me that's not what I enjoy and it wasn't particularly appealing for me and so yeah I guess I made a decision really early on to not want to do those sorts of things to be known for starting Delicious Yellow for growing delicious yellow for helping people eat better to look after their health and their well-being but not for just being me and with the stuff because you said like a few years ago it was quite challenging you had a lot of personal stuff going on then running the business with your husband like what was that like managing all of those things together just really intense yeah um so intense

it was honestly like this the it was just like we were living on you know when you if you're watching sky or something and you do like times 30 it felt like we lived on times 30 like everything the speed at which things have happened has just been extraordinary and actually it was when at which things have happened has just been extraordinary and actually it was when sky who's my older daughter so she's four and almost four and a half now and she was about seven months old i think when covid started and it was that lockdown and that stopping at the beginning of lockdown where i sat down i was like oh my goodness in yeah five years since my first book came out we've yeah published another five cookbooks I hired you know gosh however many people we've got a team with this many people we've got products

in 10 000 shops we've opened three cafes we've closed two of them we've turned one of them into a restaurant we've done this we've launched an app we've like yeah it's like oh my gosh we've we've done a lot of things and at the same time we've navigated yeah we've met each other we've we've done a lot of things and at the same time have navigated yeah we've met each other we've got married exactly like my my whole family have kind of broken up in in lots of different ways both my parents have got new partners my dad's getting remarried or he's now remarried my you know then my my husband's family my mother-in-law passed away and their family dynamics all shifted and then we had our own baby and just'd moved house three times we'd moved office three times yeah we'd nearly gone but bus definitely three times we'd had investors we then bought the investors out and it was like i wanted i wanted

that is yeah i mean i'm exhausted hearing that but what i want to talk about the investor bit because i remember i think you telling me that last time I saw you which is a really interesting piece that I wanted to cover but back to you and your husband obviously you have your role as husband and wife but what we what are your roles in business and like by that I don't mean like who's CEO that kind of thing like who is the the vision and like do you have a kind of clear dynamic of how that works and how they complement each other yeah and I do think that it's really important like I know I was saying earlier like how how much I love working together and I think that's because we are we're so aligned in our values and what matters to the two of us and again I think that's that's been really

important we're like very very similar people in that way but equally like the way that we think and our brains from a more professional perspective is so different like for me I'm all vision like 100% vision and he is 100% making things happen and you need that you need that you absolutely one doesn't work without the other like not even a teeny tiny bit and like again when I always say and I'm so quick to say like to seven delicious yellow would never ever be anywhere near where it is today if I had done it by myself and I think people again think that's like almost like misogynistic and like give it you know what I mean like taking too much away from you but it's really not like I really acknowledging like the partnership and also

you know equally he wouldn't have been able to do it without you exactly we've really enabled each other but I think a mistake that a lot of people make is thinking that they can be all the things and you can have a vision for something that can be enough of a reason to do it but without having the team or the people around you to help realize that dream it can often you know not manifest the way that it's supposed to yeah I think learning to know what you don't know is really a brilliant skill did that come into play when you met him or did you start to know that before? I knew that before because I, and I also knew that, yeah, I knew this, like the kind of practical application of the business was never going to be my strong suit. So I always felt that Delicious Yellow would never reach kind of full potential with just

me. But did you always have the vision for it too? I think I always was curious as to what it could be but he has definitely built brought like a different level of confidence and and to the vision for sure I love that and in terms of the investor thing because that's quite was quite a huge thing to do what was how did you get them involved and then what was the decision making process around deciding to kind of bring it back in between you guys yeah I mean we were laughing about this last night we seem to have this like constant desire to roll the dice like just like keep risking things again

and again and again but we know we brought some investors into the business in 2017. Yeah. No, 2017, 2018. Did you always think you'd want an investor? No, not really. But we needed a bit of money for our cash flow, basically. So it was a very small amount and a huge amount. And then what became really clear to us was again like we wanted full control full autonomy over the company and what it was going to be and what

it was going to do and we didn't feel that we could have that completely in that situation and so we made the decision to buy them out so that was in early 2021 um that we decided to do that which is really unusual obviously like especially at that point like most people are trying to bring investors into their company and we were trying to remove them and have this family-owned company which again feels yeah a little bit unusual but we've just like we yeah we wanted full control over it we wanted to be wanted to be able to grow it and develop it in the way that we wanted was that tough well it yeah that was one of those situations but when we made the decision to do it and we really went back and forth on it because it was it was a it was a big decision and we took a multi-million pound loan to be able to

do it and that was guaranteed against like us and our house and the business and all the rest of it and so it was um high risk yeah and we had two tiny children like a six month old and 18 month old and so you are definitely rolling the dice the easy option would not be to do that the easy option would be to you know sell their steak and some more definitely to to someone else um but it wasn't what we felt had like the biggest integrity and to the company um but we did it in a different environment and it felt like we were coming to the end of covid and everything was looking really sunny. And then obviously the Omicron variant came out.

And then by that Christmas, things were looking like really bleak again. And then obviously we then had, you know, the war in Ukraine and all the inflationary pressures. So the next year felt really overwhelming because suddenly we were yeah paying infinitely more on the interest and um yeah we had a lot of time where then we couldn't get stock out because um of shortage of ingredients or because the factories were closed because of um omicron because of covid and so yeah that was that was one of the kind of darkest moments I think also we were just so burnt out from like a few years of consistent problems between this the beginning of COVID and that point and so um now I don't regret it for a second but there was

definitely a moment of like oh my gosh like why don't we just choose the easy option but I guess you wouldn't learn you know the amazing lessons and and no and the easy options not often they're like most rewarding or the funnest option but we we then sat down like three months ago and we sat down and we were having dinner together and we were like this is the first time in eight years that our life has felt calm the last two months have felt calmer like kids sleep through the night they're really settled one's at school one's at nursery like this is this is great like we maybe we've done it like maybe we have all of this hard work was like super super worth it and like we can breathe and for the first time in like eight

years it was it's always been fun and the mission's always been there and the excitement and the drive and the like desire to make a change and and to yeah play a meaningful role in society for want of a better word has been there but and so it's been great but it's been just not without challenges and like um and then and there's a reason that most fail and not many can achieve what you guys have and then anyway and then one of our um main suppliers went into administration and so we were like great let's buy a factory oh shit so yeah so so we yeah anyway and then we did that today maybe that's what you guys like thrive off you know it must be because we apparently love to do it so yeah so now so that's our next that's our next big challenge but it is yeah there's a reason we keep

doing it and keep looking for challenge I think which is those we I said earlier like I think it is what we really enjoy and there is a moment where the risk feels a bit too great and the pressure feels a bit suffocating and you wake up in the middle of the night can't really breathe but actually like most of the time it it's what makes our life really fun and also you have each other to you know be supportive what would your advice be for entrepreneurs that have you know something they really need to do let's say because I feel that a lot of people think that investment is always the root and obviously it's very nuanced depending on who you are and what you want to achieve

but what would your advice be for those setting out and trying to really build something that has a lot of autonomy yeah it's a great question look I think it speaks to a lot of what we've spoken about so far which is that other people don't often have the answer and that's not by the way to say that you know you know best always like absolutely not like everyone has their own answers it's probably a better way of saying it but I think there is this like image in people's mind that like I'll get money from someone and that will unlock the success it's almost like that same instead of believing that you and you internalize the answer it's this

sense of like right when i have someone else come on board like that's when everything will fly like that's where my idea will work and i think sometimes that's how people look at investment yeah it's another way of like subcontracting your authority yeah and your success in so many ways and I think you know gosh the number of businesses that we've seen start and stop in the time that we've been doing this has been huge and so many of them have taken on absolutely vast amounts of money and it hasn't always been the answer and I think you know and I don't mean to be overly cheesy but I do think if you can build a brand or a product a good or services a company that has meaning to somebody that is worth like infinitely more to some extent and like on a really practical and kind of boring

example like we see that all the time, you know, we'll launch something new into a supermarket, and as will one of our competitors, who's owned by like a very large conglomerate, and they will spend literally like several million pounds on a marketing campaign, and we will spend five pounds, you know, literally it's just like organic social media and ours sell a lot a lot a lot better we are now outselling almost all of them and we still you know we have a very small team all things considered like we have a almost non-existent marketing budget and it's always about like these products stand for something this business stands for something and I think people connect to that and relate to that and I think so do you think it comes down to authenticity I mean I think it's about connection isn't it and

something meaning something to you and you see that like amazing brands whether that's you know Patagonia like it really stands for something and it really means something to people and it's amazing the longevity of that and I think there is this desire like I'll come in I'll pay a lot of money to a branding agency and I'll spend a lot of money on bus adverts and tube adverts and then I'll succeed and I I'm just not convinced having watched the space for quite a long time that that is the case it's not a quick fix no I just don't think I really passionately believe I guess if there was like almost one message from from this that like quick fixes don't exist and it doesn't matter what aspect of your life you're looking at it doesn't matter if that's your relationships because ultimately like great relationships

come when you have a great relationship with yourself and there is no quick fix to that with your health there is no quick fix to that like it doesn't you're not going to change the way that you feel whether that's mentally or physically within a day a week a month and it's also a lifelong commitment to various different practices to keep looking after yourself and and it's the same in your work like there is never going to be an easy answer there's never going to be a silver bullet like life doesn't work like that and it's frustrating to some extent because gosh wouldn't it be nice but would it though well no probably not because that you wouldn't have the you know that whole idea of like you can't have friday night without monday morning you know you've got to have the lows to have the highs and

and i do believe that um but i think that we just live in this world and you know not to be kind of like too flippant about it but you know you you go on amazon and like with amazon prime like anything you want is arriving even as early as like a few hours later but tomorrow you know you don't want to make dinner you and you still live in a city like you click a button and someone will bring you food within like 20 minutes you know you don't want to go and get groceries like again you can go on an app and they can be cycled to your door like we we have this we are learning and i i think it's really interesting. You know, I think about my kids and like what that generation think of

because they really do believe you can click any button and the answer can be there very, very, very quickly. And life doesn't work. But life just doesn't work like that. Like the meaningful facets of your life, whether that is your health, your relationships, your career, like it never works like that. Like if something is too good to be true,

then it's largely like it's not really true like it's you know and it and certainly often doesn't last i mean that's just so much beautiful wisdom like i or it's really depressing i don't know which no it's not because it really encapsulates everything about saturn returns because i used to be someone that was like wanted every shortcut and quick fix yeah me too and now I've shifted my mentality like before you know I started doing this work if someone said oh you have to do this for a year before you get I'd be like oh no that's way too long do you know what I mean but now I'm like that's fine you know it I my concept of time has really changed and I

just think the landscape of social media and all of this instant gratification has meant that everyone wants the shortcut but I'm like but you don't really get anything from the shortcut even if you get the thing you think you want you won't pick up the wisdom along the way and that's the stuff that gives you longevity yeah no it's so so true but we are all drawn to it and so I think there's nothing like it's not to be self-critical or like judgmental of anybody else who like are desperate for that. But it is, I think it's just, yeah, it lacks the longevity.

And is there anything else that you would like to add for our listeners? I feel that there's like a big theme here around autonomy, which I think is a beautiful takeaway, but any kind of final send-off oh that feels the pressure i know i really feel the pressure on you with that have something really wise to say um definitely read i may be wrong it's the best book i'm gonna read that yeah it's phenomenal

and i think this idea of like building your own life for you and really trusting in who you are and it doesn't matter if it's different from anybody else and it doesn't matter if it fits the mold that you think that you should live into or not and really trusting that I think has extraordinary benefits but also knowing that everything takes a long time to unfold and nothing is a like smooth trajectory there is nothing in life where you just you know even if it's a long-term answer not a quick fix like you're going to take many steps backwards on the way forwards and I think that's again just something that we don't talk about enough and so we think doesn't happen for other people but it does but

it does like everyone goes down just as much as they go up and if you end up a little higher than when you started that's that's when you're winning I love that that's beautiful thank you so much Ella for joining me I love this conversation so thanks for uh being on Saturn Returns. Thank you. Thank you for tuning into this episode with me and Ella for this incredible conversation. I learned so much from it. Ella might not realize it, but she is so Saturnian by nature and everything that she talked about really, really, like I said, encapsulates the essence of what I'm trying to teach of all the things that I learned from Saturn. And I think if you guys are listening, you probably feel it too. This wave at the moment of instant gratification, quick fix, overnight success is just such a misconception of how

life actually works. And I truly believe you know everything Ella mentioned about there is no quick fix there is no shortcut and actually there's going to be a lot of setbacks and and obstacles along the way but you know as long as you continue to rise a little bit more than you were when you started then you're winning and so I hope that this is a reminder that what we see online isn't an accurate depiction of reality and actually if you can do something that aligns with your authentic truth your values and you are going through your Saturn return hopefully it will be able to all those things you'll be able to shift into a position where you actually want to build something substantial that has meaning that has longevity and that has the foundations so thank you very much Ella for joining me and I hope you share this

to the audience not Ella but I hope you share this with someone who you think might find it useful who's perhaps going through some of these themes or or struggles or just share it online because that helps us get discovered by more like-minded free thinkers like yourself and as always thank you so much for listening and remember you are not alone goodbye