The Business Pharmacy: Lucy Gordon

Welcome to the Business Pharmacy, where successful founders share their 'prescription' for prosperity.

Like Lucy Gordon, who established From Our Cellar. An online marketplace, delivery service and membership programme for fine food and wine enthusiasts. Another string to the Gordon family bow.

Hi Lucy! Let's start with your daily routine.

I start with a few of the easy things on my to-do list before moving on to the more difficult tasks.

I’m sure lots of people recommend starting with the hard ones, but there is something lovely and motivating knowing things are being crossed off!

It also means that by lunchtime, I have done quite a lot of my jobs and I can then spend time in the afternoon making sure I get those harder tasks right.

It’s also key to have a good break during the day either a longer lunch or going to the gym or for a dog walk. It helps to take a break from the screen, and you’ll find that ideas come to you when you give yourself time to think!

How do you fuel your day?

Always a fresh lemon and ginger tea in the morning followed up with chocolate (or ice cream in the summer) in the afternoon.

What inspires you?

Knowing that I’m doing something I love. No matter how many hours of the day it takes up.

How do you rest and relax?

To relax, walks, baths and cuddling dogs. It all works for me.

I really struggle to fall asleep, particularly when I am stressed or anxious. A few years ago I got into listening to the Harry Potter audiobooks and now I can’t get out of it.

So, yes, I am a 32-year-old business owner who falls asleep listening to children’s books!

What tools do you use to get the job done?

We use quite a few – we don’t have a physical office so we use lots of online tools to help us work efficiently together whilst being apart. Asana, Google Meet, Canva, Later.com, to name but a few!

What's your strategy?

A rather loose interpretation of strategy, but it’s knowing your own limitations. If you aren’t very good at a particular task, ask/hire someone else to do it (there are plenty of amazing freelancers out there).

If you give someone else the jobs that you aren’t very good at or take you a long time, then you will have so much more free time to focus on the things that you are good at and that are important to you and your role.

Remote or non-remote? What works best?

I think it depends.

Working remotely allows you to be able to avoid busy and stressful commutes and get odd jobs done at home, and, in my opinion, also makes you more efficient as you aren’t taking 15 tea breaks a day!

But, I do think meeting up with your team is important. It’s much easier to brainstorm an idea or discuss an issue face to face.

Share scheme or no share scheme?

I am definitely a fan of a share scheme, but you need to make sure you give it to the right people. It is a great motivator for staff but you need to make sure that you trust and believe in each other, otherwise it can quickly cause issues.

What do you avoid where possible?

STRESS! Stressing doesn’t get you anywhere, other than being more stressed. So, when you feel stress or anxiety coming on, take a break.

Go for a walk, have a cup of tea, anything that gives you space and time to reflect on what is causing the stress and how you can mitigate it.

And you’ll find that the problem becomes much easier to solve when you aren’t stressed or worried about it.

Thanks for sharing, Lucy!