Female Founders Series; UGCers
Photo by No Revisions on Unsplash
NAVIGATING STARTING A BUSINESS THROUGH MOTHERHOOD.
Co-founders of UGCers, a User-Generated Content Agency, Riina Stocker and Leanne O’Rourke reflect on their founder's journey. An inspiring and aspirational insight into the transition from motherhood to entrepreneurship.
RIINA: We met years ago. We’ve got a lovely little group of friends, with all our partners having met at uni or in graduate jobs, and once all the boys coupled up, the girls just clicked together too. So now we have breaks and weekends away together. It’s wonderful! What makes it even more wonderful is that you grow to know each other well over the years.
What clicked between us two very quickly was that we are both mad workaholics. We can’t stop. It could be 11 pm and we could have been working since 7 am, yet we are still texting each other action points, ideas and anything in between.
For years I had been working for various businesses, busting my backside to the point of breaking and always still feeling like when it came to the rewards I had to prove more and go home with very little. When I got pregnant with my daughter, I wanted to take control of my own life. I wanted to ensure that I could continue building my career, but still be there for my little one during the week. The working-for-someone-else math wasn’t mathing for me anymore, and I was looking for a way out. So Leanne messaged me when my daughter was about two weeks old and shared her idea for the agency.
LEANNE: It’s strange going back to the beginning because we’ve not yet reflected on our journey, it's’ been a bit of a whirlwind, to be honest! Since my first graduate SEO job in 2012 in Leeds, I have always wanted to run my own business. Similarly to Riina, it just made no sense that I was being paid to help increase revenue for large brands, and going home with a small salary. I remember thinking my yearly salary was the same as one month of marketing budget spent for one of my clients, and it just didn’t sit right with me.
I have always had an entrepreneurial mindset and dipped into various side hustles selling on Amazon and Etsy. I was also running a small hen party brand which was doing well however I struggled to create new content for social media and newsletters - the kind of products I sold was the type that needed to be shown in real-life settings, but influencers cost a fortune and they seemed to be the only option for getting that kind of content. At that point, I knew there was a problem which could be a viable business idea.
Again, I encountered the problem when I moved into a new full-time role in 2022, managing the social media team for a luxury retail brand. We had polished studio-style content, but no authentic lifestyle content, which was the highest-performing kind of content for us! The only way to get this content style was to pay influencers who were charging thousands, which wasn’t an option. It made me think…what if there was a service where we could get this content for brands, but from everyday people? Cutting the need for creators to share content on their social channels could ultimately cut the cost.
RIINA: So there we were. Because UGC was still fairly new, we deep-dived into trying to understand everything about it. It was hard to find our feet at first but we worked every available moment, voicenoting endlessly every day. We owe some of our success to WhatsApp and Meta.
For the first time, we had taken control of our lives. I never did the gap year or travelling thing. I don’t have the bank of mum or dad, so I’ve always known I had to make it myself. Having the business and my daughter being born around the same time and growing them both has been one of the hardest things I have ever done. Managing the sleepless nights, and time between a baby and a business is the real juggle.
image via UGCers
LEANNE: For me the hardest part was working a 9-5 full-time job, having my side hustles (Amazon business) to run on evenings, plus this new startup, and a few months in I found out I was pregnant too. I didn’t have a minute to myself with everything going on and I was exhausted. Eventually, I decided something had to give, and I paused my other side hustle. I could see the potential for the agency, as once the site was built and optimised for Google, we started getting leads immediately!
Regardless of it being hard at times, it has been super rewarding. Both of us agree that we are so proud to have managed to secure some of the biggest global brands and we’ve had amazing feedback from them too. And of course, the other most rewarding thing is working with each other. We voice note every day about the business, with an occasional rant about how little sleep we have had, and we encourage each other to eat chocolate and drink wine when needed!
image via UGCers
RIINA: I think we’ve started the agency as a supportive place, where hard work is at the core, but without restricting one’s life. This is something we both want to hold on to when we grow. I firmly believe that if work isn’t being done, it’s pretty obvious, and if you hire good staff then letting them live a life and having a job where they are trusted to get on with it has a positive impact on the business. There is so much research that has been done about this, it’s shocking we are still ploughing on in the old-fashioned way.
LEANNE: I agree. Riina and I have discussed how we want to change the work culture. But for me, it’s also super important to give back the same opportunities that were given to me when I left college and University. It’s difficult being young and getting on the career ladder, so many people helped me and as a result that has allowed me to have stability.
image via UGCers
RIINA: Talking about the business itself, we both come from marketing, social media and e-commerce backgrounds, but it’s been eye-opening to be working at the very forefront of content creation specifically.
LEANNE: Oh God, yes, the one thing I’ve learnt is that content creation is a lot more difficult than it looks. The amount of work that goes into it, from lighting, scripting, presentation, editing etc is overlooked. There is also a balance between paying creators their worth whilst getting a good deal for brands.
What we do at UGCers is valuable, because we help the two sides (brand and creators) come together to create the perfect content. Creators aren’t always commercially minded, not all of them are aware of the commercial aspects such as brand guidelines, strong ad hooks, trending topics, CTA’s etc - they do what they do best, which is film and create great content. So having Riina and I help with scripting and all of the technical bits that help content perform is really where the value is. Brands sometimes don’t know what they want, they often need direction too. We have been delighted to help bring both parties together by creating content relatable to audiences whilst helping convert businesses.
