697: I Sold My House to Fund My Idea - and Built a £26M brand

Sam Faiers had already shut down two businesses. She'd laid off her entire team in one day when the fashion brand stopped turning a profit. So when she found a collagen formula every manufacturer told her couldn't be made, she put the money from the sale of her house into it anyway. Revive Collagen launched in August 2020, mid-lockdown, with no marketing budget, and hit £1 million in sales in 13 weeks. Six years later it's on track for £26 million, sits in 6,000 US retail doors including Ulta, Walgreens and CVS, and is the most awarded supplement brand in the UK - all bootstrapped.

In this interview, Sam breaks down the mistakes from her failed businesses that she deliberately reversed the second time, why she spent five and a half years without an office, and what a Kim Kardashian post actually does for a business (it's not what you'd think).

What you'll learn in this interview:

• Why she sold her house to fund the launch - and how two failed businesses gave her the conviction to do it

• The two-year R&D battle where every manufacturer said no - and why that formula is now nearly impossible to copy

• How one raw, unpolished video about her own acne drove the entire first 13 weeks

• Why they had no office for five and a half years - and the exact overhead mistake that killed her last brand

• The cash flow discipline that changed everything: reviewing accounts weekly, not monthly

• How they got a six-figure London bus campaign for around 20% of rate card

• The ambassador playbook: why they gift product for months before ever signing a deal

• What the Kim Kardashian post really did - and why the retailer meetings mattered more than the sales spike

• Why she deliberately kept her face off the packaging to avoid being labelled a celebrity brand