Jasmine Douglas
Published 6th June 2021
INTRODUCTION
Jasmine is the Founder of Babes on Waves, a platform that gives all women, especially Black Women & WOC, the tools, support & guidance to make their dreams a reality.
Babes on Waves also hosts the 1st Business Club for Diverse female founders to launch & scale badass businesses, and make genuine friendships along the way. She won Innovate UK’s 2020 Young Innovator Award and came Highly Commended in TechRound’s 50 Under 50 BAME Entrepreneurs.
What do you love most about what you do?
I get to meet so many amazing women and other founders. The whole reason why I launched the business in the first place was to make friends basically and chat business ideas with people who were just interested in the same kind of topics. I love that I get to do that on a daily basis and make genuine business friends. The friendships come first and the business building comes afterwards.
© Babes on Waves - Jasmine Douglas
How did Babes on Waves come about?
Initially, it was an online magazine, celebrating different women's wins and then I realised I really didn't like writing content. But I didn't know what I wanted to do and had no idea what direction I wanted to take it in. I thought it'd be really nice to chat to people about it, but none of my friends in my life at the time were interested in business. So I created a little business group, just by posting a flyer on Instagram which essentially said: “If you have a business, and you're a woman, and you're under 30, do you want to meet up once a month and chat about our businesses?”
And from that, about 30 people responded, but 10 women came consistently and every month we’d meet up in a shared workspace like WeWork and I prepared little presentations. Then when the pandemic hit, I had some time to sit and think about the direction of where I went to the business to go and I thought maybe instead of me running all the workshops, why don't we all pitch in some money and use that fee to hire other experts, and everyone agreed.
And from there, it just grew really organically and people started finding the page and asking to sign up. So from those original 10 members, we’ve now grown to about 120!
What does a day in your life look like at the moment?
My days really vary, but Mondays are typically an admin day. So usually, I'll just be checking emails, replying to members, engaging with people in the group, posting on Instagram, all those kinds of admin bits.
It might be a client day on a Tuesday, which is when I run strategy sessions, 1:1s, workshops, and I take my meetings on those days, because I like to group my calls. I only do calls on two days a week rather than every day.
I've got my creative days on Thursdays, which would usually be designing things, coming up with new initiatives, working on merch and higher strategy bits.
And I've been a bit lazy recently, I've been taking one day a week off…which is fine really!
So a day in my life really varies! It's never really consistent.
Would you consider yourself a specialist, generalist or somewhere in the middle?
I would say I'm definitely more of a generalist. I don’t identify with being, ‘a creative’ or ‘an artist’, but I am a creative person. I’m also really good at admin, but I don't thrive off admin. So definitely somewhere in the middle, which is really handy, when it comes to running a business, because you have to be the designer, the accountant, the CEO and everything else all at once.
“When it comes to running a business, you have to be the designer, the accountant, the CEO and everything else all at once.”
I used to be really obsessed when I was younger with the fact that I wasn't really good at one thing, it used to really bother me. But now I'm quite glad because I can just outsource those bits that I don't know how to do, but because I can see across everything, I know what I want it to look like I know how it will interact with the other aspects of business.
© Babes on Waves - Jasmine Douglas
How do you juggle a full-time job, running Babes on Waves, freelance work and maintain a social life?!
I actually left my full-time job about three weeks ago now, but it was definitely very hard to juggle everything. I definitely don't think you can maintain a social life, full-time job, run a business and freelance all at once.
I have not had a social life for the past 18 months-ish to be honest! I’ve just been working pretty consistently - and I think it's fine. You can never be 100% in every area of your life, I think you can only ever pick three things really.
The key is just being super, super organised. When it came to my day job, if it was a slow day I would just work on my business, instead of going searching for stuff to do that isn't necessary.
“There are always going to be sacrifices.”
But just to sum up, definitely organisation, definitely not trying to be perfect in every area of your life, and also recognising that there's always going to be sacrifices.
It's okay to go through phases of your life where you’re working more on your business, but not having as much of a social life. And similarly, you can have more of a social life, but then recognising that your business growth will be a bit slower, and that's fine.
What was your experience of breaking into industry post-graduation like?
I had a bit of a weird one post-graduation because I ended up taking a year out of uni. It wasn't a proper year out, it was basically a year-long extension on my dissertation, which was the only thing that I had to do to hand in. And so my fourth year of uni was kind of finishing my dissertation, but also working. I was temping loads during that year and doing loads of interviews, trying to break into the creative industries. But I found it really difficult. I maybe applied to around 100 jobs and out of those 100 jobs, maybe got five or six interviews. And then out of those six interviews, got offered two jobs.
The job that I ended up accepting was a really random one in a tech company where I’d been temping. It wasn’t an industry that I saw myself in, but my manager was really nice and I thought it’d be a good opportunity to get paid and also learn some new skills.
“I definitely didn’t break into my dream industry and my dream role straight away, but I kind of stumbled into it.”
So I definitely didn’t break into my dream industry and my dream role straight away, but I kind of stumbled into it. And through that role I learnt about all these different fields like user research, and UX, which I'd never even heard about. I always thought you needed a tech degree to break into tech. So yeah, it was kind of accidental, and I just went with the flow!
Your platform has grown massively over the last 12 months! Do you still feel as connected to each of your members as you did back in the early days?
I definitely don't feel as connected to everyone as I did back in the early days, but that's just natural. You will always have to make sacrifices to some degree. It’s intimacy versus growth and you can't be best friends with 120 people - it's just not possible!
But I think there are ways to have elements of that connection, which I'm kind of working on, and if you hire a really good community manager, then you can kind of have someone who's that extension of yourself. And that helps a bit. So yeah, I definitely don't feel as connected. But I like to think that I'm quite available to members when they need me.
What’s one digital tool you couldn’t run your business without?
Ahh! I don't think I could pick just one...I'm torn between Notion and Trello.
I guess if I had to pick one, maybe Notion because it has some functionalities that Trello doesn’t. It's hard though!
© Babes on Waves - Jasmine Douglas
What advice would you give to your 16-year-old self?
I think my advice would be not to worry about trying to get to the right place straight away. And even if you don't feel like you're in the right place, whether it's the right job, the right school, whatever it is, that's completely fine. You can learn something from wherever you are, whoever you're working with.
“You can learn something from wherever you are, whoever you’re working with.”
When you do end up where you want to be, you'll have all these skills and experience across various industries and various connections that you never would have found otherwise. Just chill out a bit and just go with the flow.
Where do you want to be, this time next year?
I’d say this time next year, I'd want to be working a four day work week, earning a high salary, having a really strong team that I can rely on to execute the vision. I’d love to have a mentorship scheme up and running and probably in the Maldives somewhere.
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