I am Holly Stephens, Chief Cheerleader of Subly, bringing energy to our users, customers and investors. I’m the one who had the problem with subtitling videos and now we are all here at Subly helping hundreds of thousands with the same problem. I’ve dabbled in starting businesses, leading senior marketing positions and launching products into new markets. Subly is the biggest accomplishment I’ve had and I get to wake up every day to a remote team who is beyond unbelievable, in what they do.
I grew up in Birmingham (yes, it’s where Peaky Blinders is filmed). I was the typical ‘giggle box’ in my classes, loved music, singing, being on stage and playing piano. Art was always my favourite subject as I love to paint. Business always sparked my interest and so I decided on Business and Marketing for my degree at Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent so I could continue the creativity and build upon my business knowledge.
I never thought I would be an Entrepreneur or have my own business. I’m from a family where I was encouraged to get a full-time job and build my career at a corporate level, being an entrepreneur was not really a ‘thing’ in my family. My first role was at Xerox in Internal Communications and then I went onto the Grad Scheme in Product Management. I preferred the mix of Marketing and Product and so I then took the leap to Mimecast, helping with Partner and Product Marketing. But one day, I started reading ‘Tim Ferris’’ 4-hour work week and my mind exploded that I could have a full-time job and build a side-business whilst working the 9-5. That’s when that entrepreneurial spark began.
From starting multiple landing pages, blogs, to helping launch a coconut oil business, to starting an events business…all of these ideas led me into Google. Building and launching Google’s Digital Garage programme for businesses to ‘get online’. I loved helping other businesses and also tinkering with other projects I was building on the side. Actually, none of these really ‘took off’ but I gained a hell of a lot of experience.
After gaining experience in the UK, I moved to Australia for three years. Working on launching Google Pay, taking senior positions in start-ups, and working on Cryptocurrency projects. My days were varied, working on marketing campaigns to learning the lingo of Crypto. I became fascinated with launching start-ups and helping them with marketing. At this point, I also realised that people didn’t know how to launch a ‘Side-Business’ but they wanted to. So I began training courses and a community for women to start that idea and this led me to creating videos on YouTube and presenting on Sky News.
Working on marketing campaigns, translating product videos, adding subtitles to my own YouTube content and promoting out. They all had the same problem. The process was complex, time consuming and ‘there must be another way’. So I launched a landing page with the idea to ‘add subtitles to videos in 3-steps and translate’. And here we are now, three years on with a business now called Subly.
What have I realised? Launch as many business ideas, dabble in projects until you find your ‘Subly’. Building a business takes time, you will have multiple successes and failures. All that matters is that you try, you find what you want to work on in the long-term and what you truly believe in. Building a business and company is hard, you devote all your time to it and your headspace. You need to really believe in it, and yourself. The only regret you will have is that you didn’t try.
Subly is one of the biggest achievements. Staying true to our mission and employing people around the world. We are making a difference and I’m proud I get to say I am the ‘Founder’ but I’m even more proud to say I work with 16 incredible people at Subly. It is honestly my biggest achievement.
Having a non-existent crystal ball and trying to predict the future of Subly. We started with a single idea and I could already anticipate what was to come and look at the opportunity of how many people Subly could impact.
Other than that, I’m pretty darn good at being Subly’s Cheerleader - from speaking externally about Subly, telling investors what we are getting up to, generating interest from prospective investors and using our product day-in, day-out for my own videos.
We are a remote company, which allows me to live and work anywhere in the world. Not only does it give me the freedom to live where and how I want, but I get to see the world and visit the team in their locations too. I like to spend a couple of months somewhere different. It allows me to build a home for a few months, do things locals do and explore new places during the weekends.
I grew up in a family of ‘foodies’ and cooking is always something I enjoy to chill out. You can find me researching recipes to use up everything in the fridge or cooking the lockdown classic banana bread.
I geek out on reading about....health and life hacking - any ways I can extend my health and do things better, from fasting to habit stacking my day. The books I recommend for anyone interested in this are The Body by Bill Bryson and Atomic Habits by James Clear.
The biggest highlight is actually taking that leap of faith to launch a business, the courage to start and the perseverance to keep going. There’s lots of things you need to learn how to do, lots of ‘first-times’ when you have no idea where to start and things you need to navigate and work out how to do. It’s never ending, and that makes it exciting. Embrace what you don’t know, connect with people that can help, and keep learning along the way.
