[00:00:00] We are now on day eight of 12 days of Christmas. You've probably lost track of time and probably spent quite a lot of time on social media kicking yourself, thinking you could have spent time elsewhere. With this in mind that we wanted to speak to Aida Davies, founder of By Rotation, who explores the tension between building a personal brand and running a serious business from the pressure of constantly feeding social media to questioning whether visibility is actually driving commercial value.

Ashita speaks honestly about presence, boundaries, and ownership. Tune in tomorrow to hear Daisy Bird speak about emotionally intelligent teams and how to build one.

Eshita Kabra-Davies: Thanks for inviting me onto the series. I'm very honored.

Juliet Fallowfield: , it's an absolute pleasure. 

So we've got into more of a habit of doing season themes and we've done sustainability, health and wellness, investment, this one's branding, the next one's productivity, and we'd love to chat to you about personal brand because you seem to do it so well with so much grace.

Wondering how you can do it [00:01:00] all,  

 How important do you think personal brand is in a startup?

Eshita Kabra-Davies: I have really mixed feelings about this. I mean, I know the conversation is going to be a little bit about how you think it's great that I've built personal brand around me,

Juliet Fallowfield: Or not 

like whatever you want to share from your experience would be great.

Eshita Kabra-Davies: Yeah, for me, I think the reason that I have like a present personal brand is because I'm very much the customer that's using the solution, the business and I use it every day, like without fail, I'm using it at least once a week, either I'm lending something out or I'm renting from someone else. So I think for me, having that personal brand has actually made me like an ambassador for the business for free. It's like the most cost efficient way of doing marketing without having to pay, you know, models or not, not that I'm saying a model or like influencers or like voices or ambassadors to essentially, embody the brand in like a scripted way.

Because for me, it's coming very naturally. I'm breathing it every single day. It's [00:02:00] my, reason for being.

Juliet Fallowfield: And did you start it because you found there was a gap in the market that you wanted to solve?

Eshita Kabra-Davies: Yeah By Rotation is very much like a first world problem that I was having. And I was like, I wish there was a way to be able to share nice designer, high quality fashion with each other. And no, I don't want to buy it and own it forever. So I don't want to buy it firsthand. I don't want to buy it secondhand.

I just want to borrow it for, like a holiday. So like my honeymoon, you know, that's the story. I came up with the idea of it for my honeymoon.

Juliet Fallowfield: You'd have this amazing borrowed wardrobe.

Eshita Kabra-Davies: Yes,

exactly. I didn't have it then and that's why I looked back at it and I was like, wow, if I were to go back on honeymoon part two, I would have so many incredible options now. It's funny, actually, we are sending out a newsletter on Sunday about honeymoon rentals,

so it kind of feels like full circle.

Juliet Fallowfield: It's so true because when you have these special occasions in your life, you want to [00:03:00] pack a good suitcase for it and you want to know that you've got outfits that you feel great in and you don't necessarily want to invest in those pieces every time. You want to be able to have that treat and that lift of wearing something that makes you feel wonderful and then give it back.

It's fantastic. I mean, years and years ago when Facebook launched and I was, going to lots of weddings, but can we have a Facebook album of photos of all the wedding hats? Because in England at the time, everyone was wearing hats and fascinators, none of us want to wear these more than once or twice.

Can we all just swap around and share this Facebook album? And you've created that software to help people do that.

Eshita Kabra-Davies: Yeah, and, and also, you know, like a lot of times within your friend circle, I mean with hats, sure, like one size fits all, right, and they're adjustable, but you know, even within your friend circle, there are these situations where people are different sizes, so what if you wanted to borrow from a complete stranger, whose style you admire, and I think that's where I was like, yeah, I want to create a community where people actually bond over their love for style and fashion. And actually are very happy to share [00:04:00] with each other as opposed to, you know, just being consumerist about it all.

 what we've created is very much the sisterhood of the travelling pants coming to life. But now it's dress because people love renting dresses.

Juliet Fallowfield: And for you with the personal brand element, has it been quite a challenge to overcome to put your face out there and your personality out there, you know, people have an insight into your life. Is that quite hard?

Eshita Kabra-Davies: I think it does come to me naturally, but I think what I struggle with is the fact that this space, so like the social media space and when you look at, whether it's content creators or influencers, or even, I guess bosses, like CEOs who have kind of a public profile,  it's sort of expected that you have like a content plan 

Like, you know, you need to figure out your pillars and what exactly you're speaking about and you should make sure you're like creating content that's useful, shareable, 

 debatable and all of that strategic stuff. And I'm like, I [00:05:00] don't really have time for that because I spent all of my brain power in building the business, which is By Rotation, right?

It's not my personal brand. So all of my incredible insights and strategy and planning all of that mental power needs to go into the business. That is my priority. So I kind of struggle with the fact that, when you have a personal brand, there's this expectation online that you have to build it in a very strategic way, and

that's not my vibe at all.

My vibe is very authentic, and you'll see, like, it'll range from things like going to work out in the morning and

then not putting anything else up until maybe even the night and be like, 'Oh, just went for like a dinner with a brand', you know, that, I'm friends with the founder or, the PR and they've invited me and it'll have nothing to do with what I did as the CEO that day.

And, I personally prefer that because where I come from, which is, well, firstly, [00:06:00] it's a cultural thing, you know, Asian culture is a bit more, I'd say we're a bit more reticent, you know, we don't like to, overshare too much. And then my background, which is I used to work in finance. You would not be allowed to share photos, of the trading floor of your desk, because there's private stuff on there, right?

And then, so

you can get into trouble. In fact, if there was some screenshots of something about a client that you're not meant to be sharing or a trade. So if anything, I thought that when you're building your own private small business, you know, one of the benefits is privacy.

So me, I'm like, why would I build in public? The whole point of having my own company that's private and small at this point is that I get to build things quietly and quickly and test them out and experiment without the whole world watching, because I don't need to share my results with them. I'm not a public company.

Juliet Fallowfield: I think with the rise of social media. So my career at luxury brands, I remember there [00:07:00] was a really interesting time when Instagram was launching and the brand wanted the handle of the other person that had the handle and Instagram said to them, it's like, right. Well, it's Chanel.

It's like, right, Chanel, if you're going to do it, if we're going to give this to you, you're going to have to start posting. And we had this entire HR policy come out about no one is bigger than the brand. You don't speak on behalf of the brand. And we knew this anyway, that there were very few people within the business that would speak on behalf of the brand and it kept the brand on brand and I was totally happy with that. We were behind the camera. We were not influencers. We were potentially working with influencers, but it wasn't about us. And I was fine with that. And then now you look at how PR agencies and companies want their teams to be their biggest ambassadors and, it's quite a tall order.

And when I was recruiting a team, I was like, there is absolutely no pressure to you, but if you would like to share company content on your platform, I would encourage you to, but please don't worry if you don't want to. It's not up to me to tell you what to do on your own channels. But my team looking at our company channel and then looking at mine, they [00:08:00] sat me down at the beginning of the year.

It's like yeah, you're going to need to do more company content because at the moment all you get is penguins because you've just come back from the Antarctic and your next travel plans. I was like, I don't care because that's me. I love travelling. Yes. I'll post work content, but I don't want to have to become a product of the business.

It's not what I'm doing it for. There's got to be other ways. And we see a lot of CEOs, particularly on LinkedIn, putting a voice to their roles now, and I used to be an in house PR person. It's really risky because if they say something that goes viral and is not great, the firefighting you have to do is awful.

Eshita Kabra-Davies: No, no, it's it's so true. It seems like everyone is very vocal now, even when there's nothing that they are actually saying and to me, I have to say it's a bit cringy

and I am quite, I suppose, discerning, like I'm not just gonna post on LinkedIn for the sake of posting because I need to build my audience because if I don't [00:09:00] build it, then someone else will or they'll forget about me, you know, and I'll have that

FOMO. It's just not really how I operate and I think I think there's now this sort of, this push, right? I remember LinkedIn reached out to me in the early days and they're like, we would like for you to be a voice on LinkedIn, one of their

creator programs. And I was like, okay, you know, interesting.

Tell me more. And there were all these sort of things that you had to do every week. You had to make a set amount of posts, they had to be educational, they had to encourage people to comment, debate, discuss, and I thought. Okay. I mean, it's great, but it's just, I'm really, really very, very busy.

And I cannot put my energy on this.

Because then I'm taking away energy from actually running the business. And I think that's where, we as founders and CEOs really need to decide, how's this actually going to help the business? Is it helping the business or is it helping me and my personal profile?

And if it's a latter, that's also fine, but I'm currently at a place where, for me, everything that I'm doing needs to help the business.

I'm

still at [00:10:00] that place and I'm still very much in love with the business. 

Juliet Fallowfield: Yeah, and we meet a lot of clients, so in the day job that we teach people how to do their own communications, it's finding the time that they may have spare to do it. And if they don't have capacity, don't do it. And adding another hat to that wheelhouse of 30 different hats that you're wearing running a business, it's the last thing you want.

So when my team, again, we're putting pressures, like turn the camera on, do more video content, people want to see your face. It's like, that's only ever going to be me. I can't delegate that to someone else. That's not a sustainable for me. There's got to be other means of doing this.

And I met someone recently, who's a beautiful florist, cut flowers, sells to florists, doesn't do bouquets, doesn't do arrangements. She's like, oh, I need to do Instagram. I need to get reels sorted. And people tell me I need to do more to camera. I'm like, but why? And I kept saying, why? And she said, Oh, but I got 3000 views.

It's like, were any of them florists or any of them buying from you? No. Walk around Exeter, meet 30 florists and you're done, like, don't worry. And people can [00:11:00] get so distracted. I think when they're starting out, they've got to build a website, got to get a logo, got to get, it's like, what is actually going to make you money to keep you alive for the next month to then do the next project?

But for you, how integral is your professional profile to the growth of your business? Because obviously you're pitching potentially for investors, new employees, board members, clients. Do you think there is a percentage of you that you have to give out as a founder, or can you completely protect it?

Eshita Kabra-Davies: I think this is where like setting the 

Eshita Kabra-Davies: boundaries for me has been really important, which is if you're say, for example, you're an investor, right? If you've decided to follow me on a non professional channel, such as Instagram, that's sounds good, right? I'm posting important work related updates about my company on LinkedIn as my primary platform for where it's all things business. If you're going to start following me on Instagram, I'm sorry, but you're going to see me doing my yoga headstands or whatever, and that's that, you know, that's me being honest [00:12:00] and truthful about what are the things that I need to do to be me, right? So as long as I'm kind of, showing up on the different platforms where people can communicate with me, they just need to kind of understand what my tone is going to be on each one of them. So on LinkedIn, for example, you know, last week I posted twice. This week I posted once, each time that I posted, that was something very specific that I was saying about my company. Be that an update in performance, be that something that happened in the industry, or when it comes to sustainable fashion. This week it was about us, you know, acquiring another rental platform. So it's very, very specific and targeted. It's not, 

here's a photo of me at my desk. Oh, you know, I started taking melatonin gummies. They helped me sleep like that's not relevant. And 

 Maybe this is just my training working in a very corporate background and my culture, which is very Asian, but, I do care a lot about boundaries for every single platform.

So with LinkedIn, it [00:13:00] needs to be professional, it needs to be specifically work oriented. And yeah,

the great thing about LinkedIn is that the reach is incredible, right? If someone likes your posts, it goes to the entire network. But the bad thing about it as well is that if you're doing like a weird, cringy post, people will remember you as that person who is wasting their time during work hours, writing those posts. So for me, I'm quite conscious of the fact that a lot of my ex bosses do read my posts there's so many impressions that you get on LinkedIn versus Instagram, I personally find.

Juliet Fallowfield: I 

agree yeah.

Eshita Kabra-Davies: Yeah, and not all of them convert to likes or comments. So it must be people just reading and absorbing and thinking about it. So I'm so careful and I think this is maybe where the personal brand side of thing comes right for me it all shouldn't need to be a hard sell, you know. Me being a founder or CEO, me being good at personal branding or whatever. It doesn't need to be something that I need to say. If I am good at it, you should be able to [00:14:00] decide it yourself and see it from the work that I do. And I think a lot of what's happening these days is people telling you exactly what their brand is. And I, and I don't think it should be this way. I think, the people who are viewing your content should be able to tell you themselves that I think this is your brand. I mean, I'd love to know, Juliet, what do you think is my brand?

Juliet Fallowfield: Well, I think it's a sustainable fashion solution and the brand is accessible for a product that typically isn't that accessible to a lot of people. And it makes that wonderful luxury purchase a completely different product offering because I can tap into it for a day.

I don't need to tap into it for my entire life savings forever and be stuck with it and then regret it. So your brand to me speaks, it's fun. It's joyful. It's accessible.I remember when I was at Chanel, they were launching stores in Westfield and had to take the big heavy door off the store because normally you'd have a guard that would, you'd come up to the door and they'd look [00:15:00] at you and then they'd open it and go, yeah, you're allowed in here.

They realized that was a huge barrier for people to come in and buy a nail polish. They didn't want to feel that intimidated. And what's so fun now with fashion is that with the rise of digital, with the rise of e commerce, with the rise of these amazing platforms, you can go in and tap into it for a day or a weekend or a week.

 I love what you're saying about the different platforms because so many people get quite confused about what platform is for what, and I saw, someone posting something on Hinge that belonged on LinkedIn and someone posting something on LinkedIn that belonged on Instagram

and I was like, how do you not get the audience? 

And for me, audience segmentation is so important because you don't want to throw a lot against a lot of walls. You want to throw a little bit against a targeted wall and it will more likely stick. Your LinkedIn is your professional persona, I guess.

Whereas Instagram for me on my channel, I'm very, I mean, no one cares. No one's looking. It's just me and my travels, but my work Instagram, I am like straight laced, this is purely professional. I mean, we've done a little bit of this month, the team are [00:16:00] reading or this month, the team have learned because we are learning and growing and doing all sorts of fun stuff.

But that is just on the line of how much I'm prepared to sort of sell out my team. I don't want them to feel like there's that pressure on social media because as we know, it can bring on a lot of anxiety as well. 

Eshita Kabra-Davies: Yeah, 

Juliet Fallowfield: It's the last thing you need.

Eshita Kabra-Davies: Yeah. And I was, feeling that a little bit. I never want to feel like I don't want to feel like if I'm not feeding the monster, which is social media, that I will be forgotten because social media is not real life. So, you know, and I think that's where I kind of struggle with the whole, how present do I need to be on social media for my personal brand as the founder and CEO? So that's why my identity is not just about being the founder and CEO of By Rotation when it comes to my personal brand, like there's many different aspects to me and I will always put my business first in my content, but there will be other things that are completely unrelated to the business when it comes to Instagram in [00:17:00] particular.

It's just so interesting where everything seems to be so strategic now 

 You know, you want to be known for, I don't know, vegan cooking because then you'll be the expert and then people will find you when they search for that hashtag, you know vegan meals or whatever I get it but I think it's almost so strategic that you can't really trust these people anymore and I think that's where probably I stand out.

I like to think anyway. I don't have a large following but my following is it's pretty high caliber. It's quite established people within the industry. It's quite a lot of working professional women with high disposable incomes who, you know, are basically my customers. And, I'm actually very happy with with the level of influence I have in a small group, I don't feel the pressure that I need to continue growing my audience. I feel like I'm at the right place and I've got the right eyeballs. And I think that level of security is something [00:18:00] that a lot of people online lack.

And I wish that more for them because we're all just, you know, feeding the algorithm and this monster.

Juliet Fallowfield: Completely, and I think where that pressure, it will never go away. No one's going to come up to you and pat you on the back and go, you've made it. You've got X many followers, you've succeeded. 

It's a constant drain and no one publishes the bad stuff either. I think if we're probably a little bit more

honest about the trials and tribulations of running businesses. And that's what wonderful about podcasting is people are quite humble about it and they share a lot more of the heartache and the angst that goes in it. And podcasting seems to be that sort of therapy platform if we're differentiating between them.

And where people have that pressure, they think they have to do all the things, where actually just take that one thing off the to do list and, and do what you're comfortable with, especially if you're trying to scale a company to sell eventually, because it's not always going to be about you if you then exit.

And if it is, it's harder to convince someone that you can exit.A lot of people don't think long term. That's really interesting. And are there any [00:19:00] things that you would go back and do differently now you've had this experience under your belt when it comes to putting content out there?

Eshita Kabra-Davies: I feel like again, you know what this whole sort of not being very strategic about content, I thinkit would have been better if if we had been a little, you know, on the By Rotation channel in particular, we had been a little more strategic and planned when it came to content creation, because we do have a huge community, right.

And a lot of like well known personalities and a lot of community

 members who other women look at and be like, that could be me. And sometimes I think, we could have maybe like made a series, which was much more consistent as you've done with the podcast series you know, you've got over 106 episodes, as you said.

And I think one of the things, you know, we are very consistent. We do a lot of user generated content. We were doing a lot of lives during COVID we had like two a week, but that seems to have fallen off the [00:20:00] radar, and you've gotten so busy with like doing

transactions and getting people to rent. But I wish we did a better job at doing something very consistent.

Juliet Fallowfield: It's never too late, you can stop, start, trial, A, B, test, or go, you know what? When we're ready and got capacity, we can do it in the future. I think a lot of new founders particularly come in, rabbit in the headlights, like we have to be perfect from the beginning, we have to know everything from the beginning, that is impossible and every single person I've spoken to, they're 5 years in, 50 years in, fifth business, first business, they're like, ' every day know that you don't know everything'.

I was like, 'Oh, thank God'. Because when you're Chanel trained, you damn sure that you're 150% perfect on everything. 

 I came into it with that expectation and my team are like, we like working to a really high standard, but I've had to bring it down to the a hundred percent is more than good enough.

It's, that's what we want to deliver. We won't let anything out the door unless we've had three eyes on it, but we have our service level, but I mean, I'm going off topic here, but I think that feeds into the business's brand of our quality [00:21:00] of output, but that founder piece where you're looking at your persona.

I think maybe I've mistitled this episode cause we talked about personal brand, but it's your professional persona as a founder that we're talking about really. And that boundary level of how far do you sell your soul for the business? 

And people need to know that confidence of your social media output or your pitching to investors.

You've got these different dialogues that you've got to manage and own and know what to say and how to say it, both published online, in a room with other people. It all feeds into your personal brand. 

so something that we love to do with our guests is have a question from the previous guests for you in terms of their startup journey, and it was the founding team of COLLAGERIE, so Serena and Lucinda, 

and they're like, 'Oh God, this is a really important question.

We really want to think about it'. It's like, would it help if I told you who it's going to? And they're like, 'Oh yeah'. And I haven't done that before, but , Serena straight off the bat, she's like, 'how the hell does she do it all?' I mean, that woman, [00:22:00] she does so much and it was really interesting because we're talking about how much people are putting content out there.

 Everyone has an impression of you externally. And her impression of you is that you do so much.

How do you do it? Or does she not sleep was her question.

Eshita Kabra-Davies: No, okay. So, as I said in the outset of our conversation, I am sleeping and I'm actually sleeping way better and way more because touch wood business is going well and we're finally at a place where I feel like. I don't need to be involved day to day in the business. You know, like I can actually be in a different city and run the business, which is, which is really cool.

And we finally got into that place.

Juliet Fallowfield: Because that is huge. 

Eshita Kabra-Davies: thank you. Yeah. Yeah. And I love it. You know, I'm still very much in love with it. Sometimes you can see founders and CEOs being like a bit more distanced over time, you know, they're bored of it or whatever, or they're burnt out But I've always been a very highly energetic person and it kind of feels like I finally found my [00:23:00] match. 

I just feel I used to work in very high pressure environments, you know, either with very long hours or very strange hours, like my previous job on the trading floor, I had to be at my desk by 6:45 AM all the way until 6 PM and you couldn't, you could head out to pick up lunch, but you can't eat lunch somewhere else.

You have to eat it at your desk because the market is open and you're trading. So, for me, I feel like I've done all these intense jobs and I, it, I still felt like something was missing.

But whereas with By Rotation, I feel like despite the crazy hours and breathing it every single day, even on the weekends and basically using every opportunity to pitch and talk about the business and get people to use the app or download it or invest in it.  I still love it. So I just feel like I finally found my calling. And I think that doesn't feel, Like work to me.

It doesn't feel too much. Some days are too much and Serena and I are actually good friends and she's actually on my close friend's story on [00:24:00] Instagram which is also amazing because I feel like I finally have a safe space where I can confide in a few people who are my friends from before By Rotation or my family or people in the industry that I trust, and it's kind of nice to just have that sounding board or people to empathise with me. So, I'm actually really grumpy outside work, but for work, I just love it so much that you can't see it.

Juliet Fallowfield: Yeah, and it, you're right when you say, sometimes it doesn't feel like work and you get the ups and the downs and my God, it's a roller coaster. A lot of the conversations actually I've had on branding have landed on purpose. People are like, I need to do this.

I'm solving a problem that I had, but I'm now solving it for a community of people that I really care about. Irrespective of revenue, this has to happen and that passion and that purpose, it keeps you going. It is your lifeblood and it fuels you. But yeah, when you come across, you look like this graceful swan doing so much with dignity and you're like, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, and the company's going from strength to strength, it's [00:25:00] lovely to see that success, but yeah, she was like, Oh God, if it's her, just ask her how she gets it all done.

Yeah.

Eshita Kabra-Davies: She's very kind but I don't have kids either . I think that's another part of it. And maybe I, haven't been through that yet because I think that's very, very difficult. So, that's another thing I always tell myself, for the phase of life that I am in, I need to do as much as possible so I don't have any regrets.

Juliet Fallowfield: Yeah, 

Eshita Kabra-Davies: Serena does a lot though.

Juliet Fallowfield: yeah, I mean, she can talk, right? And would you have a question for our next guest, anything about starting a business or scaling a business, anything that you've come up and gone, 'Oh, I'd quite like to ask someone that'

Eshita Kabra-Davies: When you first founded the business, was your why the same as what it is today? And if it's different, how has it changed and why do you think that is?

Juliet Fallowfield: Perfect. I love this because in 106 of these, no one's ever come up with the same thing. It's 

brilliant. Yeah. Cause everyone's like, there's a lot going [00:26:00] on in your head the whole time about your business and it's, you're in the weeds, you're on top of the weeds and you're looking at the weeds and you're evaluating the weeds and then you're like, I've got lots of questions, hence do a podcast about them all.

Eshita Kabra-Davies: Yeah. Yeah. No, but I think that's like, I'd love to know that. And I think it's probably applicable to any founder, to be honest, because along the journey, you realize so many things about this business idea you had and about yourself. And your priorities change, and your phase in life changes as well. Like, for me, I founded it because, sorry, I'm answering the question

myself. 

Juliet Fallowfield: no, no, no. I'd love to know.

Eshita Kabra-Davies: But I, you know, I founded the company, you know, I came up with the idea of my own I just wanted to wear nice clothes and not pay crazy prices, right? That was the reason and then along the way I realized that actually this is solving a huge problem in the world which is waste

and then now for me, it's like it's all about connection because people forgot that fashion is about self expression And the fact that you can actually make new [00:27:00] friends because of your love for style.

So it sort of changes over time. You know, I've got women paying for their IVF journeys from how much money they're making on the app, 

it's so much more than dresses and clothes and designer brands.

Juliet Fallowfield: It's grown and grown.

Eshita Kabra-Davies:  I feel like it's brought a lot of emotional maturity to me as well as the, founder of this, I've seen it become so much more than just these materialistic things. And so much more than just a solution for me and my friends.

Juliet Fallowfield: Yeah. Well, huge congratulations and thank you because you've democratised this whole industry where it's much more fun now that we get to do this and it's so exciting because you leading the way and now you see all the massive retailers trying to catch you up and do it too

so thank you very much and thank you for all the advice you shared. It's been wonderful chatting to you. 

Eshita Kabra-Davies: Thanks for having me.

Juliet Fallowfield: [00:28:00]