NotOnTheHighStreet.com Founder: Rapid Success Lead To My Darkest Days - Holly Tucker | E92

Early twenties, I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. That was the first knock down.

Holly Tucker, ex-CEO and founder of Not On The High Street. Holly's story is mind-blowing.

We go and pitch the idea of Not On The High Street to the land of VCs, who would tell us that it was lovely that us women wanted to create a crafts website, but really, there was nothing in it. And I just said, "Well, we're actually going to change the face of retailing, funny enough. It's not a craft website." We tried to build a marketplace with no tech experience, but we knew what we wanted, and so we found someone who built the technology that eBay were building in America. And we just relaunched, and, and we nailed it. How could I smile or laugh? I found myself becoming a different version of me. One of the lines at Holly & Co is "Bringing color to gray," and I think I was turning gray.

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Holly Tucker, ex-CEO and founder of Not On The High Street, one of the UK's most loved brands, but a real pioneer in its space at its time. Holly's story is mind-blowing. How she rose from someone that had no experience, didn't have huge amounts of capital, at a time when women in business, especially women in tech, had it harder than anybody else, she built an online tech company that went on to be worth hundreds and hundreds of millions. But her story isn't straightforward. It's riddled with pain, divorce, heartbreak, turmoil, and having to reinvent and refind herself time and time again. The fundamental life lessons that she shares today, and that she unpacks for us, are life lessons based on problems that we're all going to experience in our lives. It's a real joy to bring you this conversation. And I want to thank Holly for her openness, her intellect, and her incredibly inspiring personality. Without further ado, I'm Stephen Barlett, and this is The Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

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Holly, I always start in the same place in this podcast, because I think it provides the greatest amount of context on a person, so I, I'm, I'm, I'm somewhat sort of bored of asking these questions, but they're so incredibly foundational to who you went on to become-

Mm-hmm.

... because everything from, you know, the start of your journey till now proves that you are clearly an outlier in every way. So tell me, below the age of 18, what were the factors that went into making that person that went on to become this person?

Well, um, I was nicknamed Holly Hurricane.

(laughs)

And that was because I couldn't wait to get to the next stage. So when I, um, you know, turned, I think it was 12, I persuaded my dad that I needed to get a job in a pub cleaning it, so he would wait outside in the car park at five o'clock in the morning. I don't think I'd do this for my son, by the way, anymore. But he would wait outside the, um, the pub, and would, um, pick me up after my shift. I went on, and then I just continually worked when my friends weren't working. I, um, decided that, you know, I needed the first mobile phone, you know, one of those bricks, I think it was 1:1, I think, that it, it only worked in the M25.