Building a beauty brand is one thing. Turning it into a global retail business is another. 

Thea Green MBE has done both. Founder and Chairwoman of Nails.INC, she launched the brand in 1999 after spotting the nail bar trend in the US and bringing the concept to the UK. Nails.INC went on to become a major name in beauty, winning the Queen’s Award for Enterprise for International Trade, while Thea was appointed MBE for Services to the Beauty Industry. 

Now a female business speaker, investor and founder behind brands including Holler & Glow, INC.redible Cosmetics and My Mood, Thea brings rare insight into entrepreneurship, retail, brand building and global growth. Her experience spans product innovation, international sales, customer loyalty, company culture and the pressure of scaling a business without losing its original identity. 

In this exclusive interview with the Female Motivational Speakers Agency, Thea Green discusses the entrepreneurial mindset, why starting is often the hardest step, what founders must learn when scaling, and why failure becomes part of the armour needed to build a business. 

For someone with a business idea but no team, funding or perfect plan, what is the most important first step? 

My message is simple: just get started. 

The biggest challenge is starting. People can procrastinate forever, even when they have brilliant business ideas. Most people have had multiple business ideas in their life because we are all consumers. We see problems and think, “It would be amazing if there was a product that solved this”.

The difference between an entrepreneur and someone who does not start a business is action. You will not have all the answers. You probably will not have the team or the finance, and that is part of it. It is not supposed to be perfect. You learn as you go through the process. 

You also need to know when to change. I do not mean give up. If you want to be an entrepreneur, you should be an entrepreneur. But if your invention is not quite working, you need to adapt it, listen to the consumer, get feedback, remodel it and ask as many people as possible. 

What you start with and what you end up selling to your consumer could be two different things. Sometimes an idea lands exactly as it was on day one, but for most people, you develop a product with the consumer and go on that journey. 

If you are selling into retail, or Amazon is your partner, you also need to understand what they want and where they have blank space. Your idea might be too similar to something else. Sometimes people are ahead of their ideas too. The idea might be right, but the world may not be ready for it yet, so you have to educate and train people into it. That takes longer. 

My message is still: just get started. I genuinely think starting is the hardest thing. Everything after that is another lesson. You will have lessons and failures every day, but starting is the hardest bit. 

What separates an entrepreneurial mindset from the way most people look at risk, failure and opportunity? 

Entrepreneurs see possibilities where other people see risks. That is the biggest thing. 

Where some people see challenges or roadblocks, entrepreneurs see a gap and something they can solve. 

They are also as comfortable in success as they are in failure. Most entrepreneurs I know do not jump up and down when they succeed, and they do not jump up and down when they fail either. They stay quite level because, as an entrepreneur, you can succeed and fail multiple times in the same day. 

You get used to the bumps as you gain experience. 

Entrepreneurs are generally optimistic because even when things are going wrong, they feel they can solve it. It is a solving mindset that makes an entrepreneur. 

They are comfortable with difficult situations and uncertainty.

Scaling a business requires structure, but how do founders avoid losing the agility and customer focus that helped them grow in the first place? 

Scaling a business is different to starting a business. 

It requires much more delegation and structure, but you can get too tied up in structure. You can end up with systems for the sake of systems. 

You have to put systems in place, but you also need to review them. Whether that is yearly or every two or three years, you need to make sure you are not applying more admin on top of more admin. Everything should have a purpose. 

For me, the most important thing is finding key people who can lead each area of the business. You need people who will protect the original DNA of the business, protect the entrepreneur’s vision, stay true to the customer and keep listening to the customer. 

Scaling is a different skill. You can talk a lot about systems and infrastructure, but you need to keep questioning them and asking whether you know why you are using them. 

One mistake I have made over the years is bringing in very smart corporate people to systemise the business. Because they have worked in big corporates, it feels as though they will have the best possible systems. But what you realise is that corporates also have layers you do not need. 

There is a strong hybrid between an entrepreneurial, can-do culture and something more professionalised that can scale and help the business grow. 

It is not either/or. As you scale, there is a sweet spot where you stay agile and cost-focused, but professionalise the systems. If you are telling your customer you are a bigger business, you have to act that way too. 

That hybrid is hard to balance, but that is where you want to be.

When you speak to audiences about entrepreneurship, what do you want them to understand about the reality of building a business? 

I want to give a very real public speech, so people can see the highs and the lows. 

I want it to feel honest and approachable. I want people to know that setting up a business is accessible if they want to do it. 

There are pitfalls and challenges, but I want to inspire people with the positivity of the journey. I would not change anything about mine. I have had awful times in business and terrifying times in business, but I would not change any of it because it makes me calm today when challenges come up. 

There is not much now that surprises me. I have usually seen that problem, or a different version of it, before. 

I am still learning every day, but in terms of challenges and problems, I have seen most of them or some version of them. That becomes your armour in business, and it helps you support other people. 

There is no secret sauce. I love listening to entrepreneurs’ journeys, so I want to share mine, inspire someone and make someone feel positive. 

The aim is for people to understand that they could do it too. It is not just for certain people. Anyone can do it.

This exclusive interview with Thea Green was conducted by Tabish Ali of the Motivational Speakers Agency.