High Flying Design

EDITOR’S LETTER

I grew up in Clacton-on-Sea. Not many women around me worked for themselves. Then there was Dina.

She lived across the road. Every morning I'd watch her drive her Mini to the hair salon she owned on Coppins Road, and it lodged somewhere. Here was a woman who'd built a thing of her own, in a town that wasn't supposed to produce them. She was the first female founder I ever saw, though neither of us would have used the word.

Years later, when I said I wanted the same, I was told a business wasn't realistic. When I started writing, I was told that it wasn't a real job either. I had one example on my side, a hairdresser across the road, against a chorus of people telling me to be sensible.

That one example won. It took years, but it won.

Here's what I understand now that I didn't then: you never stop needing to see it. We talk about role models as something children need, and they do. Eight in ten young people in this country can't name a single female entrepreneur. But it doesn't end at eighteen. At every stage, you grow faster in the company of people doing what you're trying to do than you ever will alone, second-guessing yourself in a vacuum.

That company is what I've tried to build. Not a highlight reel, and not only the women who've already made it. The ones still in the thick of it, telling the honest version of how it's actually going. Dina, twenty-seven years in, will tell you there was never a grand plan, that she still sees the accountant each year and breathes a sigh of relief. That's the truth other magazines edit out. It's the truth that makes building feel possible.

Because it is hard. The self-doubt, the invisible work, the certainty that everyone else has it figured out. They don't. There's no single right way to do this, and you were never meant to do it alone.

So here you'll find honest interviews with women working it out as they go, and real advice from founders a few steps ahead.

You're doing this on your own. But you don't have to do it alone.

— Shannon Kate Murray, Founder & Editor

EDITOR’S LETTER

High Flying Design is the online magazine for women building businesses. Real stories from women living it, and honest advice from those a few steps ahead. Written by founders, for founders.