Apparently, I didn’t learn my lesson.

Because here I am again. Looking at samples, obsessing over tiny details, having endless conversations about colours and materials and getting far too excited when something I’ve had in my head finally exists in real life.

And honestly, I love it.

When I knew I wanted to start another business, I thought I had one fairly big advantage this time around.

I’d done it before.

I spent years building SLA The Label. I knew how to design products, work with factories, create CADs, develop samples, launch collections, build a brand and deal with all of the chaos that comes with running a product based business.

So surely the second time around I’d know what I was doing?

Lol.

One of the biggest things launching NTILA has taught me already is that experience doesn’t stop you from making mistakes. Sometimes it just means you’re even more annoyed with yourself when you make them.

When we were developing our first sunglasses collection, the samples arrived and I tried them on.

I looked at the shape, the colour, the lens, how they sat on my face and whether I liked them.

We made changes, got another sample, made more changes and eventually signed them off.

There was just one fairly important thing I didn’t do.

I only tried them on me.

Which, writing that now, seems so unbelievably obvious that I almost don’t want to admit it.

When the collection launched, we started getting some feedback that certain frames felt too oversized on some people or didn’t quite work for different face shapes.

And I remember thinking, how the hell did I not think about this?

What made it even more ridiculous is that this was something I absolutely knew from SLA.

When you design clothing, you have fit sessions. You put samples on different bodies. You look at where things sit, what needs changing, whether something is too tight here or too loose there. You don’t just put every sample on yourself and decide that because it fits you, it must fit everyone else.

Obviously.

Yet somehow, when I moved into a completely new product category, my brain apparently decided to forget all of that.

I really beat myself up about it at the time.

NTILA had only just launched and suddenly something that was supposed to feel really exciting started to feel like I had already failed at something.

I kept thinking, you should have known better.

And I think that’s one of the strange things about starting a business for the second time.

You expect yourself to know better.

There’s less forgiveness because you don’t feel like a beginner anymore.

Except I am a beginner.

I might understand business, branding and product development, but I had never designed sunglasses before.

And designing sunglasses is completely different to designing clothes.

Suddenly I’m learning about lenses, acetate, hinges, measurements, materials and a completely different manufacturing process. There are so many tiny details I had never needed to think about before.

I think I assumed that because I knew how to create one type of product, moving into another category would be relatively straightforward.

It hasn’t been.

And maybe I needed reminding that being experienced in one thing doesn’t automatically make you an expert in another.

Also, for the record, it hasn’t all gone wrong 😂

Some of the frames from our first collection have been incredibly popular. ROKO and LENI have been loved from the beginning, and then something really interesting happened when we launched RAZE and MONROE.

Those two styles were actually delayed.

They were the more complicated designs in the collection and took longer to get right because they were much more unique. They came very specifically from ideas I had in my head, and I didn’t want to launch them until they felt perfect.

MONROE in particular launched in this slightly crazy amber colourway with an orange toned frame and blue lens.

It wasn’t exactly the safe option.

RAZE has this amazing mirrored lens and a really vintage feel to it. It’s the kind of pair of sunglasses that someone sees you wearing and asks:

Where are those from?

And when they finally launched, people loved them.

Especially the colours.

And it made me realise something that, once again, I already knew.

The things that feel slightly risky are often the things people remember.

When I think about why SLA became so successful, it wasn’t because we were making versions of things that already existed.

It was the pieces that felt different.

Our three piece glitter suit. The diamanté cuff blazer. The pieces that went viral because people hadn’t really seen anything like them before.

Those were the products people associated with the brand.

And looking at NTILA now, I can already see the same pattern.

The frames that have something unexpected about them are the ones people get excited about.

Which has completely changed the way I’m thinking about our next collection.

For Summer 2027, I don’t just want to make nice sunglasses.

There are already thousands of nice sunglasses.

I want every frame to have something about it that makes you think, I haven’t seen that before.

Maybe it’s the shape. Maybe it’s the lens. Maybe it’s an unexpected colour combination or a tiny design detail.

But there needs to be a reason for it to exist.

And that is something I think I had slightly forgotten.

Maybe one of the strangest parts of doing this all again is realising that sometimes you have to learn the same lesson twice.

We’ve had other moments like that too.

Our original sunglasses case looked great, but after launching and listening to customer feedback, we realised it probably wasn’t protective enough.

Again, something that seems incredibly obvious when you’re looking backwards.

So we’re changing it.

We’re developing a new case for future launches that will be much more protective because, ultimately, there’s no point pretending you got something right just because you’ve already launched it.

Your customers are the ones actually living with the product.

You have to listen to them.

I think the old version of me might have seen those things as failures.

And if I’m being completely honest, there are still moments when I do.

I’m trying to get better at seeing them for what they actually are.

Information.

Something didn’t work. Why?

Something sold incredibly well. Why?

People loved this colour. Why?

People struggled with this fit. Why?

Then you take all of that information and make the next thing better.

That’s business.

The biggest difference this time around is that I’m also not doing it alone.

I always said that if I started another business, I didn’t want to be a solo founder again.

I have an unbelievable amount of respect for anyone who does it because I know exactly how lonely and overwhelming it can become.

This time, I have business partners.

I have people sitting beside me when something goes wrong. People to bounce ideas off. People who are equally invested in figuring out what we do next.

People in the trenches with me.

And I really love that.

But there is one thing about starting again that I don’t think I could have prepared myself for.

It’s scarier when you know what failure actually feels like.

When I started SLA, I didn’t really know what could happen.

I just started.

There is a certain freedom in that.

Now I know.

I know that you can work unbelievably hard at something and it can still go wrong.

I know that businesses can grow and be successful and still fail.

I know how much of yourself you can pour into something.

And I know what it feels like when you lose it.

So when something goes wrong with NTILA, even something relatively small, I sometimes have to stop my brain from immediately turning it into something bigger.

A mistake doesn’t mean the business is failing.

Bad feedback doesn’t mean everyone hates the product.

Getting something wrong doesn’t mean I’m bad at this.

It means we got something wrong.

Fix it.

Learn from it.

Try again.

We’re now working on Summer 2027 and I feel more excited about the direction of the brand than I ever have.

We’re pushing the designs further. We’re thinking much more about fit. We’re listening to what people loved and what they didn’t. We’re working on new product categories that I’m going to keep quiet about for a little bit longer.

And I’m sure we’ll get things wrong again.

Actually, I can almost guarantee it.

I think I went into starting my second business believing that this time I would get to do everything I did wrong, right.

Maybe that was never realistic.

Maybe the advantage of doing it for a second time isn’t that you suddenly know all the answers.

Maybe it’s that you know what to do when you don’t.

I didn’t think I would be starting again six years later.

And there are definitely days when that still feels hard.

But I’m trying to change the way I think about it.

I don’t have to start again.

I get to try again.

And apparently, I still don’t know what I’m doing.

But maybe that’s half the fun.

Sarah x

Before I go…

Currently building: Summer 2027. And trying very hard not to show you everything yet.

Currently learning: Experience doesn’t mean getting everything right. It means knowing what to do when you don’t.

Currently over: Telling myself I “should know better.”

Current life crisis: Apparently I’m a beginner again.

Some weeks there’ll be five things. Some weeks there’ll be fifteen. There are no rules here.

1. The jeans I can’t stop wearing

I fear I’ve found the jeans. They’re from Ru & Rocka and I’ve worn them an embarrassing number of times since I got them. The fit, the wash, everything about them is just right. Consider this your warning that you’re going to be seeing these A LOT.

SHOP THE JEANS

2. PRP microneedling

I had one of my favourite facials this week, PRP microneedling. I actually first tried this treatment last year after seeing Hailey Bieber having it done because, naturally, if it’s good enough for Hailey Bieber, it’s good enough for me.

It’s basically microneedling combined with platelet-rich plasma taken from your own blood, which helps support collagen production and your skin’s natural repair process. I’ve had it a few times now and I genuinely think it’s one of the best treatments for that super fresh, glowy, healthy-looking skin.

You do have to accept looking slightly questionable for a few days afterwards, but beauty is pain etc etc. I get mine done at Natali Kelly in London.

3. The skincare product that has seriously impressed me

I bought this azelaic acid on Amazon without particularly high expectations and... I fear it may have transformed my skin.

I’ve noticed such a difference since adding it into my routine, particularly in how clear and even my skin looks. And considering some of the frankly offensive amounts of money I’ve spent on skincare over the years, the fact this is so affordable makes me love it even more. Shop it HERE.

4. My new Barbie print

I am FINALLY starting to make my flat a home (don’t tell anyone I’ve lived in it since March and I still have boxes I haven't unpacked).

I bought this Barbie print for my breakfast nook and she is completely unnecessary and absolutely perfect. Exactly the kind of slightly ridiculous thing that makes a room feel more fun, now I just need to hang my new mirror next to it. Shop the print HERE.

5. What’s in my ASOS saved right now

My ASOS saved section is essentially a holding pen for things I’m trying to convince myself I don’t need.

These are the pieces currently winning the argument. Shop them all HERE.

6. The Noisy Oyster

Adding this one immediately to the London recommendations list.

I went to The Noisy Oyster in East London this week and loved it. Really cool interiors, amazing food and just one of those places that actually feels worth going to. Come for the oysters, stay because you feel like you’re instantly in your cool girl era being there.

7. The Zara wish list

Zara is currently doing that annoying thing where suddenly everything looks good.

I’ve done the scrolling so you don’t have to — these are the pieces currently sitting firmly on my wish list. Shop them all HERE.

8. A Substack date at Dorothy’s

My friend and I took ourselves to Dorothy’s on Savile Row for a little Substack writing date this week and it might be my new favourite way to pretend I have my life together. Coffee, laptops, a very cute setting and several hours of us saying “omg, you should write about that”

And that’s everything I think you needed to know this week. Consider yourself caught up. See you next week.

Sarah x

Turns out it’s not.

In fact, one of the biggest surprises about being in my 30s is how young I still feel. And also how everyone somehow gets hotter in their 30s???

But I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how different I am from the girl I was ten years ago.

At 22, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what my life was supposed to look like by now.

I’d be successful.

I’d have money.

I’d probably be married.

I’d have my shit together.

And presumably at some point after achieving all of those things, I’d arrive at this mysterious place called happiness.

Cute.

I don’t think I could have been more wrong.

If I could sit down with 22-year-old me now, I think the first thing I’d tell her is that things do get better.

But probably not in the way she’s hoping I’m going to say they do.

Life doesn’t suddenly become easy.

Things still feel hard. Just in different ways.

There isn’t a magical age where you wake up and everything is sorted. I’m still figuring things out. I still get anxious. I still get overwhelmed. I still compare myself to people. I still make decisions I KNOW are going to end badly.

We’ll get to the 2am rule later.

But the difference is that I know myself now.

I’ve accepted parts of myself that I spent years wishing were different. I have a confidence I definitely didn’t have at 22. And while I don’t have everything figured out, I’m becoming increasingly okay with the fact that I probably never will.

I’m not trying to reach happiness anymore.

I’m trying to find happiness amongst everything else.

And I think that’s one of the biggest things I’ve learnt in the last ten years.

You do not need to have found your person by 30

This one would have TERRIFIED 22-year-old me.

I’m 32 and single.

And I love it.

I genuinely used to believe that to be happy, I needed to be settled down and preferably married by 30.

Now I actually think being single for at least some of your 20s is one of the best things you can do.

You change SO much.

I’m a completely different woman to who I was at 22. My priorities have changed. My boundaries have changed. What I want from life has changed.

And I love the idea that when I eventually meet the person I’m supposed to be with, he’s going to meet this version of me.

Not the version who was still trying to work out who she was.

Not the version who thought she needed someone else to add value to her life.

Me.

Also, given some of my decision-making in my 20s, I’m fairly confident I’ve avoided my first divorce.

So that’s nice.

I used to think a boyfriend was something I needed to make my life feel complete.

Now I get so much love and fulfilment from my friends and family that a relationship would have to add something to an already full life.

Which is a very different starting point.

You should never have to convince someone to choose you

This one took me far too long to learn.

If someone wants to be with you, you shouldn’t have to present a PowerPoint presentation on why you’re a good candidate.

And if someone continually makes you feel like you’re too much, too anxious, too stressed, too emotional, too career-focused, eventually you have to ask yourself why you’re trying so hard to be accepted by somebody who keeps making you feel like the way you naturally are is a problem.

I did that for years.

I allowed parts of my personality and the realities of having a high-pressure career to be presented back to me as reasons why I was difficult to be with.

And looking back, that makes me sad.

Because I started believing it.

I’ve realised now that the right relationship shouldn’t require you to become an easier-to-handle version of yourself.

It should be somewhere you can actually talk.

A good man will listen. He’ll want to understand. He’ll have uncomfortable conversations instead of shutting your feelings down.

And sometimes the kindest thing somebody can do is tell you the harsh truth.

Unfortunately, the wrong men have an incredible ability to tell you just enough of what you want to hear to keep you around.

A skill set nobody asked for.

Friendships change. Let them.

I used to think a good friendship meant speaking constantly.

I don’t anymore.

Everyone is busy. Everyone has things happening that you know nothing about. And sometimes people need to disappear into their own little world for a while.

I definitely do.

When I’m anxious or overwhelmed, I can go quiet. It’s not because I don’t love my friends or can’t be bothered to reply. It’s how I recharge.

I’ve realised how important it is to have friends who give you grace during those periods rather than keeping score.

But I’ve also learnt the difference between giving someone grace and ignoring a friendship that doesn’t feel good anymore.

Your friends should clap when you win.

That sounds so simple, but I’ve experienced enough jealousy in friendships over the years to know that it isn’t always a given.

Having the career I’ve had from a young age has created some strange dynamics. I’ve felt used by people I genuinely considered friends. I’ve had people make me feel guilty about good things happening to me. And for years I found that incredibly upsetting because I knew how genuinely happy I was when good things happened to them.

It’s made me more guarded.

But it’s also made me very good at recognising the real ones.

And the friendships I have now are some of the things I value most in my entire life.

Also, every woman needs a gay best friend.

Preferably five.

I don’t make the rules.

I don’t care if my life looks impressive anymore

This might be the biggest change of all.

For a long time, I cared enormously about looking successful.

Having the business.

Having the money.

Having the things.

Having the life that looked like I’d made it.

And then I lost my business.

It was probably the biggest ego death of my life.

And because I’ve spent my entire adult life online, I didn’t get to quietly go through it behind closed doors. People knew. I spoke about it publicly. Something I’d spent years building was suddenly something I had to explain losing.

At the time, that felt awful.

Looking back now?

I think it might have been one of the best things that could have happened to me.

Because once the thing you’re desperately trying to prevent people from seeing happens publicly anyway, there is something incredibly freeing about realising…

You’re still here.

My life didn’t end.

The people who loved me still loved me.

I was still me.

And slowly, I stopped caring so much about how my life looked from the outside.

I care much more now about how it feels to live inside it.

I want peace.

I want genuine happiness.

I want people around me who make me feel good.

I want work I’m excited about.

I want to go home at night and feel calm.

That means infinitely more to me now than whether somebody on Instagram thinks I’m successful.

Comparison is still a bitch

I’d love to tell you that at 32 I have reached a level of enlightenment where I no longer compare myself to anyone.

I have not.

I work in an industry where you can open your phone at any given moment and see someone younger, richer, more successful, more beautiful, on a better holiday, with a bigger house, launching a bigger business or apparently having the best day of their entire life.

And even after 14 years of doing this, I still get caught up in it.

What I have learnt is how much my phone affects the way I feel.

There is almost a direct correlation between my screen time going up and my mental health going down.

When I take a break, stop doomscrolling and actually exist in my own life rather than consuming everybody else’s, I feel SO much better.

I’ve also realised how much the people around you influence you.

I’m lucky that my friends are ambitious. They want to do big things. They have ideas. They work hard.

And being around that energy makes me want more for myself too.

Choose your circle carefully.

It rubs off on you.

Looking successful and running a successful business are not the same thing

Another lesson I unfortunately learnt the expensive way.

When I started my first business, there were things I was very good at.

And there were things I thought I could wing.

Some things in business you absolutely can wing.

Finances and logistics are not those things.

You need a plan.

You need to understand what you’re building and, more importantly, why you’re building it.

You need a clear vision.

And even if you have people around you whose job it is to understand certain areas better than you do, as a founder you still need to understand enough to know what’s happening inside your own company.

That’s something I’m taking into everything I build now.

Experience is expensive.

Might as well use it.

You might actually like yourself more as you get older

Another thing nobody told me.

I’m much happier with the way I look at 32 than I was in my 20s.

Part of that is confidence.

Part of it is finally finding a relationship with exercise and food that actually makes me feel good.

When I was younger, I hated working out and I didn’t particularly want to eat healthily, but then I’d beat myself up because I didn’t like my body.

Which would make me feel worse.

Which would sometimes make me binge eat.

Which would make me feel worse again.

Very productive cycle.

Now I genuinely love working out. I like eating well because of how it makes me feel. And that shift has done more for my confidence than punishing myself ever did.

I also wear significantly less makeup than I used to.

22-year-old me would be horrified by the number of makeup-free days I have now.

I love them.

That said, please don’t mistake any of this for me saying I’ve decided to age gracefully.

Absolutely not.

Give me the Botox.

And when the time comes, I will be arriving at my consultation with a photo of Kris Jenner.

We all have limits to our personal growth.

Nothing good happens after 2am

I know this.

You know this.

Everyone knows this.

And yet, at 32 years old, if there is a group of people debating whether to go home or go somewhere else, you can absolutely guarantee I’ll be the one saying:

“One more?”

Some lessons apparently require another decade.

The thing that broke my heart gave me a new life

If you’d spoken to me immediately after my breakup and told me that one day I’d be grateful for it, I probably would have wanted to punch you.

It felt like my world had ended.

When you’ve imagined an entire future with somebody, you’re not only grieving the relationship when it ends.

You’re grieving the life you thought you were going to have.

And that’s terrifying.

But with enough distance, I can see now that the ending of that relationship was also the beginning of a completely different version of my life.

One I couldn’t see at the time.

I’ve travelled.

I’ve changed.

I’ve become more independent.

I’ve learnt how capable I am.

I’ve had experiences I wouldn’t have had.

I’ve built relationships with friends and family differently.

I’ve learnt who I am when I’m not part of a couple.

And most importantly, I’ve learnt that no one is coming to save me.

That sounds depressing.

I actually find it incredibly empowering.

Because it turns out I don’t need anyone to.

I can do it myself.

I had happiness completely wrong

At 22, I thought happiness was material things.

Success.

Money.

The right relationship.

The right body.

The right house.

The right life.

At 32, I think happiness might be almost everything other than that.

It’s laughing until your stomach hurts with your friends.

It’s your family being okay.

It’s waking up without that horrible feeling of dread in your chest.

It’s liking the person you are when nobody else is around.

It’s having people you can call when everything goes wrong.

It’s being excited about something you’re building.

It’s having a peaceful mind and a calm nervous system.

Still working on those last two, FYI.

Maybe that’s the biggest thing I’d tell 22-year-old me.

Stop waiting for the point where everything is perfect before you allow yourself to be happy.

It isn’t coming.

Life will hit you hard sometimes.

There will always be another problem. Another heartbreak. Another thing that doesn’t go to plan.

But there will also be dinners with your best friends.

Holidays.

New people.

New beginnings.

Really good hair days.

Laughing at something you absolutely shouldn’t be laughing at.

Random Tuesdays where you suddenly realise you’re really fucking happy.

The hard times don’t cancel those moments out.

If anything, they make you notice them more.

So no, at 32 I absolutely do not have everything figured out.

But maybe that’s okay.

I’m not where 22-year-old Sarah thought I’d be.

And thank God for that.

Sarah x

Before I go…

Currently learning: Peace is significantly more impressive than looking successful.

Currently working on: Less screen time. Again.

Currently grateful for: My friends and family. The real ones.

Current life crisis: Knowing nothing good happens after 2am and behaving as though this information does not apply to me.

If you’ve been here for a very long time, you’ll know that before Instagram was my job, before TikTok existed and before anyone was calling themselves a “content creator”, I had a Blogspot called That Pommie Girl.

Very 2012.

I’d post my outfits, write about what I’d bought and basically document my life on the internet with absolutely no idea that it would eventually become my career.

And now, all these years later, I’m doing it again.

Except this time I’m 32, I have significantly more life experience, significantly more opinions and significantly more stories.

Welcome to Between Us.

I wanted to start this because I’ve realised recently that despite sharing my life online for over a decade, there is actually so much of my life that I don’t share anymore.

Instagram became polished. TikTok became quick. Everything became a 60-second video, a carousel or a perfectly edited photo dump.

And somewhere along the way I think I stopped actually telling you what was going on.

Which is funny, because quite a lot has been going on.

The last few years of my life haven’t exactly followed the plan I had for them.

And I love a plan.

If you’d asked me a few years ago what my life would look like at 32, I’m fairly certain I would have given you a completely different answer.

I thought I’d have certain things figured out by now. I thought some things would last forever. I thought other things would work simply because I’d worked hard enough for them.

Turns out life does not particularly care about your five-year plan.

There have been moments over the last few years where things I was completely certain about suddenly weren’t there anymore. Relationships changed. Business changed. I changed.

Some of it happened very publicly.

Some of it didn’t.

And I think one of the strangest things about having shared my life online for 14 years is that people can watch your life completely change without ever really knowing what happened.

They see the new apartment.

The holiday.

The outfit.

The new business.

The night out.

And sometimes behind that photo is a person having the best year of their life.

And sometimes they’re thinking, what the actual fuck am I going to do now?

I’ve been both.

Starting again

There is something quite humbling about starting again in your 30s.

Because you’re old enough to think you should know what you’re doing, while simultaneously realising that nobody actually knows what they’re doing.

Annoying.

But I also think I’ve started looking at the idea of “starting again” differently.

For a while, I saw it as going backwards.

Now I’m not sure it is.

Sometimes starting again just means you’ve finally got enough information to make a better decision this time.

And that’s probably the biggest difference between me now and the girl writing That Pommie Girl.

She had absolutely no idea what was coming.

I actually envy her slightly.

But she also hadn’t learnt everything I’ve learnt since.

I’ve built things I’m incredibly proud of. I’ve made decisions I would never make again. I’ve trusted the wrong people. I’ve probably been the wrong person at times. I’ve had things work beyond anything I could have imagined and I’ve had things go spectacularly tits up.

I’ve fallen in love.

I’ve had my heart broken.

I’ve had friendships change.

I’ve watched the internet turn from something I did because I loved it into an entire industry.

I’ve grown up on here.

And now, weirdly, I feel like I’m at the beginning of something again.

So what happens now?

I’m building again.

I’m figuring out what I want my 30s to actually look like rather than what I thought they were supposed to look like.

I’m trying to make better decisions.

Still occasionally making terrible ones.

Obviously.

And for the first time in a while, I actually feel really excited about not knowing exactly what’s going to happen next.

There are new businesses I’m building that I want to take you behind the scenes of.

There are things I’ve learnt from the businesses I’ve already built, including the bits that went wrong, that I finally feel ready to talk about.

There’s fashion, beauty, friendships, dating, getting older, confidence, money, the internet, probably men who should know better and definitely me knowing better and doing it anyway.

Basically, all the things we talk about in the group chat.

Except now the group chat has a mailing list.

I don’t want Between Us to be another polished version of my life.

I want it to be the opposite.

Sometimes there’ll be proper essays. Sometimes business diaries. Sometimes life updates. Sometimes recommendations. Sometimes I may simply need to discuss something that’s pissed me off that week.

I want to tell you about things while I’m actually going through them, not six months later when I’ve figured out what the lesson was and can package it neatly into an Instagram caption.

Because sometimes there isn’t a lesson yet.

Sometimes you’re just in the middle of it.

And I think that’s the bit of the internet I’ve been missing.

That Pommie Girl was essentially a diary of a girl in her early 20s trying to figure out who she was.

Maybe Between Us is the 32-year-old version.

Still figuring it out.

Just with better clothes.

And considerably more life experience.

Anyway, it feels good to be blogging again.

See you next week.

Sarah x

Before I go…

Currently building: Something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time.

Currently learning: Starting again and failing are absolutely not the same thing.

Currently over: Pretending anyone has their life completely together.

Current life crisis: Give me until next week.