Rose Gibson: Welcome to today's episode of I'm Fine But. I am joined by Caroline from probably one of my favourite brand names I've ever heard, Pink Spaghetti. Caroline, welcome to the show.

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: Thank you, it's good to be here.

Rose Gibson: So Caroline, tell our listeners who you are and what you do.

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: So I am a co-founder and franchisor of Think Spaghetti PA Services. Our virtual assistants support small business owners behind the scenes with a wide range of tasks, tasks that they don't have time to do, don't know how to do, or simply don't want to do.

Rose: You've just listened to I'm Fine But. If you're unsure about business or what really matters to you right now, why not take our free Core Values course? It's linked in the show notes and it's a brilliant place to begin. Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode and you can follow us online at all your favourite social media platforms at BabyBeat UK. Until next time, I'm Rose and I'm fine but honestly...

Rose Gibson: Yeah, because so many of us get into business and we love the thing that gets us into business, but then all the other stuff that comes with it, we don't necessarily want to do or want to learn how to do or have the time to do as well.

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: No, you suddenly find you've got to put your hat on to do your administration and your hat on to do your social media and wearing all these different hats that typically in a corporate world we could just pick up the phone to somebody.

Rose: We're all just figuring it out.

Rose Gibson: Yeah, so tell me Caroline, where did this concept start? Where did it come from?

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: So my business partner, Vicky and I, we're always the organizers in our sort of family network and friends network. So we knew we were very organized people. We had the corporate, the typical corporate careers, and then had children and needed more flexibility. And we both had had previously the same sort of business idea to offer people that time, because when you've got kids and you've got the corporate career, time is totally squeezed. So we always had this business idea. and started talking more and more about it and both got to a point where we had an opportunity in both of our lives to take the step. So we went for it and Pink Spaghetti was born.

Rose Gibson: So what was the opportunity that got you to think, yes, this is the right time to do it?

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: It was alcohol on a New Year's Eve. ⁓ For me, it was the end of a contract. I worked in IT and I had come to the end of a six-month contract and Vicky had the opportunity to take volunteer redundancy. And those three things all came together. We got talking and decided that it was kind of now or never. If we didn't do it now, we'd both get back into different jobs and it would be a lot harder to do.

Rose Gibson: How old were your children at this point when this New Year's Eve happened?

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: ⁓ gosh, yeah, so I think my eldest at that point was probably four, ⁓ youngest would have been one, and we'd known each other for about three years, and Vicky's children were just a little bit younger, both of hers a little bit younger, so very young.

Rose Gibson: So literally in the thick of motherhood then with the toddler, the baby.

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: in the total thick of it. Total thick of it. And I had been traveling, you know, I'd gone and done, I've got a flexible contract, but it was still three days a week. It was sort of 200 miles away. So it really, we were doing all of the dropping off at nursery early, trying to, to, you know, get other people to look after kids. It was just, yeah, what everybody has to deal with. We needed flexibility.

Rose Gibson: Yeah, so was that one of the main drivers then for starting the business that you both needed this flexibility?

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: It was, we just realised that we had children and we weren't seeing them as much as we wanted to see them. But we both needed to work and wanted to work, you know, we're both incredibly motivated people. But yeah, we just wanted something different and knew there had to be some way of getting it.

Rose Gibson: So what were your first steps? You've decided that this is what you're gonna go for. And I've never worked co alongside someone else. I've always kind of gone, this is what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go for it. How was it building something with somebody?

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: In hindsight, was about the best journey I could have had. We were both very lucky, but the first thing we did is we put our sensible heads on and the day after we decided to start a business, ⁓ after that New Year's Eve, we said, right, we will both go away through January. We'll research what sort of business it would look like, what else is out there, who our client would be, how we would market it, how we would price it. And we put a date in for the end of that January where husbands would take the kids, we would get together and decide, is this a goer? And we got together at the end of January and it was like we'd both written the same plan. We came up with exactly the same ideas, the same way forward, and it became a no-brainer. This has got to be something that we do. At that point, we didn't know whether it was going to work and we kind of said, if it doesn't, it's all right. And that very quickly changed once you start with your own... your own thing, suddenly the passion comes out and there was no way we were going to let it fail.

Rose Gibson: So then how did you get your first clients? What did those first few months look like? Were they quite streamlined? Were they a little bit messy? What did it look like for you both?

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: It was nothing like we planned it. decided, we researched for months, lots and lots of different things. We actually waited until the September that year, ⁓ working in the background with procedures and all sorts of things that most of which we never used in the end. We waited for Vicky's youngest at that point to go to school and we set off. We got our first clients through networking and actually our first clients were They were not ideal and we very quickly changed. Originally we were called home PA services. It was the busy parent that we were looking at and then suddenly a few busy parents that we looked after and did things for, we realized owned small businesses and as soon as we started looking at the business side rather than just the things at home, the business started to take off. So was a bit of a false start in the early days but we learned so much along the way, which I think is as important as things going right.

Rose Gibson: Yeah, trying and testing things is how you learn whether stuff works. And I think the majority of businesses, end product or the products they've got now is completely different to the original idea that they had.

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: 100%. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think we've always been quite good at that.

Rose Gibson: So your your original concept wasn't for business. was for busy moms to take on their like house admin, like home life.

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: Yeah, was, well, it was house admin, absolutely, because it was what we both, we ran our homes like a business. you know, working out weekends away, finding a cleaner, finding somebody else that you needed for your house, all these things that when you're working becomes so difficult. And even things like errand running, we did a lot in the early stages. I'm very pleased to say we don't do that now. But all the things that you need to run, ⁓ run a home that you just... either don't have time for or just don't want to be doing when it's your weekend and you've finally got time with your kids.

Rose Gibson: Yep. Yeah, and it's things like car insurance and home insurance. Like you don't want to spend your free time going through compare websites, do you? And not really 100 % understanding what you're doing. And it is a lot of admin as a parent on top of working and looking after your children and keeping your home nice and trying to keep everything together.

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: No. It is. It is. Absolutely. And there's a massive amount of guilt with that as well. think females particularly feel like we should be doing it all. We look at other people and think they're managing to do it all. They're not. And for several decades now, it's been OK to have somebody to clean your house because you understand you want to be doing different things. But ⁓ it's taken quite a while to catch up with the fact that it's OK to outsource other things too.

Rose Gibson: Yeah, so you've had this natural evolution of the business and you've got into a different ideal client. What happened from that point?

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: So from that point, it was all about expanding. We did that and really we renamed our business, I think, within a year. So instead of Pink Spaghetti Home PA services, we became Pink Spaghetti PA services. And from that point on, it has just been about consistent growth. In the early stages, social media was just becoming a thing. We're talking 17 years ago now. So we went on presentations to learn about Twitter. and all of those sorts of things. So that became a huge part of business development. All the social media platforms carried on networking and really started growing until a couple of years afterwards, we decided to then expand more than Vicky and myself. How are we going to do that? And we started then looking at franchising as an option.

Rose Gibson: So you and Vicky had built up a very successful business. Was that locally or was it nationally?

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: Yeah, it was locally, although one of our customers was in London, we're in Cheshire, but very much it was local business in the surrounding area. So it's something that although we're virtual, we meet our clients typically, we have a relationship with those clients, even though 99 % of the work is then done virtually.

Rose Gibson: Yeah, and I think even, for us, when we decided to franchise, you can see this model that works so well and that you're like, this, I can share this, I can give this to somebody else and they can effectively follow the blueprint to replicate what we've done. So how did you find the transition into franchising?

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: It's hard work. I think we very definitely, what you've said is absolutely right, we recognised that we had something that we could show somebody else how to do. We'd make a lot of mistakes and I think franchising is as much about stopping other people making the same mistakes as it is telling them what they can be doing. The transition was hard. think you have to make sure that everything is a process. It's got to be replicated. Fortunately, with our backgrounds, I had been an IT consultant, I'd trained, I'd written processes. So we were quite confident with that. There was just an awful lot of work. And we'd just got to a stage where we were confident with the business we'd got. And suddenly, we're then learning about this whole new world, which as far as I was concerned, franchising with McDonald's. So it was really understanding all parts of it. to make sure we then get it right for what we hoped with our first franchisee.

Rose Gibson: It's learning a new business model. So you build something that you are really confident with that you know inside and out, every question, everything you know, but then you have to then learn a new business model in order to then be able to get these new people to do your original business. right. ⁓

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: totally. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. I said we started this business because we were the organizers. We were, you know, we loved doing what we did and suddenly we're moving away from that and doing something that we hadn't done before and supporting and training other people to do this business. yeah, I mean, it really, it's just as the business is developed, it is kind of nonstop change and learning, I think.

Rose Gibson: Yes. Yeah, definitely. it does, when you look down the franchising route, you do get taken away from that original passion that you had. You step into a completely different role. So you expanded your network, you took on franchisees. How was that journey?

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: Very much so. Mm-hmm. Yep. It was a slow and steady journey, very purposefully. Vicky and I are both risk averse. So we very much wanted to get pilot franchise right. The pilot franchise, in fact, we had two pilot franchisees. They came on knowing that they were pilots. So everything was about us learning from them as well as vice versa. And then we waited about a year and brought on another couple of franchisees. One of those didn't work out, very early didn't work out. it enabled us to look at the sort of person, why did this work and that didn't. So we learned from that. So we started franchising in 2012 and it was in 2014 that we said, right, we're happy, we're now going to replicate and we started then building into the business that we've got today.

Rose Gibson: Perfect, so this journey sort of evolved, you'd learnt about it, was it all running quite smoothly at this point?

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: I mean our training and development has changed consistently. If I think about the amount that we gave our original franchisees and what training and development for them looks like now, it's completely different. So that evolving process has just carried on because things change. So yeah, it's always been steady. That doesn't mean there haven't been issues along the way. things to sort, things to solve, but generally it was steady few years.

Rose Gibson: Yeah, and it is an evolution of any business that as you progress, you have to change with the algorithm, I suppose, you have to change with all the different aspects of it to keep the business moving forward. Now, you had quite then a huge life event that happened. Can you tell me a little bit more about what happened?

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: Yeah, so Vicky and I have been very fortunate as business partners. We, as I said, we had the same sort of risk appetite, if you like, and the same aims and objectives. We worked really well together and were incredibly good friends. All our business planning would tend to be done on long walks. And we went away for a weekend in Spain together. It first time we'd ever gone away. And in short, she became very ill very quickly. started to lose her words and we ended up in A &E in a Spanish hospital and then transferred and again to keep a very long story short she was diagnosed that day with a brain tumor within a couple of days it was known that it was cancerous and we had an 11 month period before sadly she died so it was yeah quite a I mean, obviously a massive impact because she was my friend as well as my business partner, but she's also very well known and very big part of the business. So we were not just dealing with ⁓ us and her family, but also the network, how we supported what was then quite a large network. So this workload to balance with emotions. yeah, it was quite a year and then probably the year after that as well.

Rose Gibson: Yeah, because that's a huge toll to take on anybody as either a friend or a relative, but then also your right-hand man, the person that you've been through the whole journey with. And how...

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: Yeah, it impacted every part of social and business, every part. She was just ⁓ a massive force, really.

Rose Gibson: And within your roles that you both had, what was the predominant role that Vicki took on?

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: So we split our roles very early on in our business to really play to our strengths. So I was the process person, the financial person, the person kind of behind the scenes, and Vicky loved the networking, the marketing side. And unbeknown to us when we started the business, that worked really well together. I never liked to do things like interviews and all of that sort of thing. I was the introvert. She was much more of the extrovert, and that suited us down to the ground. So that was a massive change because suddenly I've had, you know, I've had to really change. I talk about with my franchisees coming out of your comfort zone and I've had to do that with bells on because those are really important skills in the business and they're just not things that I ever did.

Rose Gibson: Yeah, and it's a very hard skill to learn when it's not your natural, not ability, but your natural personality, I suppose.

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: Absolutely, and it is something you've got to learn. It can be learned, but it doesn't feel like you can learn it. But now I'm three years on, I can say it can be learned. It doesn't mean it's still my first choice to go networking and to do those sorts of things, but it is part of a job and I still love what I do. So it's something that I have had to get comfortable in doing.

Rose Gibson: Yeah, and what a shift in the business as well that you've had to then, you had to have somebody else come on to help you with that workload or did you take the whole thing on yourself?

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: Yeah, so that's an interesting one. actually when we, know, Vicky was diagnosed very quickly, but then put on some drugs that for the couple of months meant that she was herself completely normal before then treatment and the progression of the cancer. And actually that gave us a couple of months to kind of make sure that the business was taken in the direction that we wanted it to be. And those were difficult conversations, but the first thing immediately was we brought in two senior franchisees to support the network because immediately myself and Vicky weren't going to be able to do all of the support that we offer. And we're very proud of the amount of support we offer our franchisees. So that was put in place really quickly so that the immediate workload was dealt with. And then we interviewed together our franchise development manager. because we knew that longer term we had to have somebody in the business to take on that role. And we kind of danced around the fact that that, you know, we talked about it being the future and actually it was a lot sooner than we had hoped. But we made that decision together. And I have to say the person we brought in who's now been in the business just over three years was the right decision. It was one of the last decisions Vicki and I made together. She's perfect. Absolutely brilliant for the network. and has been absolutely right. So in the long term, that has been a real positive for the business. It's a real shame as to why it came about like that.

Rose Gibson: Yeah, and what effect has that had on you personally?

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: Well, I mean, I can't overstate the effect on me personally. I think, you know, the emotion is huge. The responsibility for the network is huge. I have taken that on. Making sure that we carry on with the values that Vicky and I both would have had has been huge. And now developing somebody within the business to, you know, to take on that role, which she has done superbly. I think the first year after Vicky's death that the workload was immense. It was absolutely immense. I actually brought in a business coach so that I could start to look at how I could do things a little bit differently and I needed that. Even to practice what I preach, delegate a little bit more. And our franchise development manager that we brought in has given me the ability to do that. So after about a year, it started, yeah, life started getting easier again. But of course it's tough while it all happens.

Rose Gibson: Practicing what you preach is probably one of the hardest things because it's so difficult to, when your business is your baby and you feel the weight of that responsibility on there, to then put into place boundaries, to put into place delegating to other people, to trust other people as well with something that you've built.

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: It's so difficult and yet all the small business owners that we help, we're asking them to do exactly the same things. You don't need to be doing all the different jobs yourself. Usually people are control freaks because they've built really good businesses, they've got great ideas and it is one of the most difficult things, but also boundaries. You know, I was working every hour and that's the sort of small business owner that we meet. but actually they need to say enough is enough, I want my balance, I want the work-life balance, I want to spend time with the family. So things can be delegated, it does not need to be you, ⁓ and I definitely have practised what I preach.

Rose Gibson: Yeah, it does. It's a hard thing to do. And did you get to a point where you almost, were you conscious of that or were you, did you have one sort of epiphany moment where you were like, I can't do this anymore. Like I am at the end.

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: I think it was the business coach. think as soon as somebody comes in and just sort of questions, why can't, who could do this? You just suddenly think, why have I not thought, why have I not thought about this? This is how we, you know, tell other people to run their business and how to delegate. just, think I was so far in it and had dealt with such a, an unbelievable a couple of years at that point that you just sometimes need somebody else to spot the really obvious.

Rose Gibson: You do, you need somebody looking from the outside sometimes inwards to point out the things that really are right in front of your face that you don't always see because you're so busy looking at everything else. So if we've got...

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: Yeah. Absolutely. And as soon as the business coach helped me start working on my business, you know, instead of just in it, it was, it was transformational overnight.

Rose Gibson: and having somebody else as well, because a lot of our listeners run businesses solo or they are running it self-employed or as a sole trader and actually seeing that you can bring other people in to support you without taking anything away from you, because I know as women, we like to shoulder a lot and so many women do. So to have someone else come in and just go, I can take this off for you. If you don't like this part.

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: Absolutely. Yeah.

Rose Gibson: I'll do it. And that's a big thing to admit as well.

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: It's a huge thing to admit, but actually as virtual assistants, when we tend to start working with a business who then recognizes that that's what can happen, those businesses grow because people are doing things that they don't love, they're not particularly efficient or quick at. It's stopping them doing often the revenue growing things in their business. So by delegating, instead of being admitting defeat, and ⁓ know, I should be able to deal with this, actually, we work with growing entrepreneurial businesses because they recognize that by getting this done by somebody else, they can grow their business and actually enjoy their business a lot as well.

Rose Gibson: Yeah, and when I first started in business, I remember speaking to ⁓ a friend of my sister and he was like a business advisor. And I'd always tried to do everything myself. I'd like built the website, I'd done the logo, I'd done all the bits and pieces myself. And I sat and had a coffee with him and he told me the story about the rowers for an Olympic team. I don't know if you've heard this one. And they are trying to... win a race and they can't work out why and somebody says it's simple we just need to make the boat go faster and

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: I run my business with that phrase and I have to say I've never heard anybody else say it. We say, will it make the boat go faster? Will it make the boat go faster? If it won't, don't do it. It's as simple as that and it's incredible.

Rose Gibson: Yeah, and I think that's, and to have that as a, you know, as a philosophy, as the person that's running the business to go, actually is what I'm doing going to make the business move forward? Yes, it might be something that is, it's needed to be done. It's a priority within the business, but actually you as the business owner, if you can offset that onto somebody else and you can do the things to make the boat go faster. It actually just switches your mindset around to go, okay, I don't need to automate this. I don't need to be doing that. I've got someone else that can take that off my hands for me. I really do love that story.

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: Absolutely, it is, it's amazing. you know, we speak to so many business owners who don't have time to invoice people. They don't have time to answer customer queries that come in via email or to keep up with their social media messages. And you just think, turn it on its head. This is why you're in business. So just get somebody else to get those bits done for you so you can just do what you're great at.

Rose Gibson: Yeah, so Caroline, if we've got any listeners who are in the throes of the middle of business and they are thinking, everything that we've just discussed is me, I am run ragged, I am trying to work flexibly around my children, but it feels overwhelming, it feels too much. Is there one piece of advice that you could pass on to them?

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: If you're running a small business, outsource. And I would say we are experts at outsourcing, but we're also not over salesy. Get in touch with somebody and just start talking about the things that you love, that you hate, and get somebody who's expert in this area to talk through how you could outsource these different tasks. You're never going to get any pressure. If it's not right for you now, you might know somebody that it is right for, or you might have it as a strategy for you, sort of six months or a year further down the line in your business. But don't see it as a failure, see it as an absolute superpower for your business.

Rose Gibson: Because I do think when we were building and we were growing, we almost needed to outsource before we were financially ready to do that. And yeah, it's a really tricky phase to be in because you almost know I need to do this, but I'm not quite financially there yet. And I see that a lot with businesses that they need to outsource it, but they feel...

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: very difficult.

Rose Gibson: scared to do that. And I know that we took a bit of a jump a few times. It worked on a couple of occasions. On a couple of occasions we were like, we could have really saved revenue on that. What advice would you give to somebody if they are thinking I could probably do with outsourcing my email automations or my funnel to somebody else, but they don't feel like they've got the revenue yet to do that.

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: again explore it because it could be that there's just small parts that you could outsource. It doesn't have to be huge, it can be really starting small. I heard a piece of advice that somebody had got from a business coach the other day that actually said people in business within five or six weeks almost can't afford not to outsource because they're not good enough at everything and they are spending time they don't need to be and by turning it around they will grow faster. So it's almost take a step back to leap forward. Sometimes you've got to invest in your business and that might just be the way.

Rose Gibson: And if anybody's tried to do, for example, meta business ads, and you've wasted a week of your life on that system, it's one of those things that you could go, actually, I could pay somebody else to set this up for me correctly in the right way, and my time will be spent making the book go faster.

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: 100 % Absolutely right, yeah. And people do fear it, but it is transformational. It makes it far more enjoyable to run a business as well.

Rose Gibson: Amazing. Well, please tell our listeners, Caroline, if they want to find you, learn a little bit more about Pink Spaghetti, fantastic name, where can they find you?

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: So pink-spaghetti.co.uk, I have to say because of the name, if you Google us, just put Pink Spaghetti in or search Pink Spaghetti on any socials, you will find us. And if you're a small business owner that wants to talk, there's all the contact information on the website. And if you're somebody that's in a corporate career and feel like you would be interested in finding out what life would be like as a virtual assistant, as we are. then again the website has got opportunities there to look at the franchise and ask for a perspective.

Rose Gibson: Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Caroline. It's been lovely to speak to you.

Caroline - Pink Spaghetti: It's been really nice to speak to you too, thank you.