How UpCircle Beauty Turned Coffee Waste Into a Global Skincare Brand | Anna Brightman | S3 EP6
Struggle Bus is back
It would be too easy to mention Dragons Den performances, staritng a business with your brother for this epsiode. Instead, I will say that I came away from every discussion with Anna smiling. Purpose without pretense, an innate desire to leave our planet better than when they found it. The journey being the destination and not settling for the easy road. Smiles, empathy and challenging through doing. This is a founder who’s won ~200 awards and she told me exactly how she decides when to outsource:
“We wait for crisis point and send up the flare.”
Ten years in, the pattern behind every one of those decisions is the same “we should have done that sooner.”
The Struggle Bus is back. Season 3 (part deux) opens with Anna Brightman, co-founder of UpCircle Beauty the brand that turned rescued coffee grounds from London cafés into a circular skincare business selling across three continents.
She picked and packed every order herself. Then came a railway arch with a cracked floor and curved ceilings “we stayed in it far too long.” Because every outsourcing is a handover of trust, and usually a handover of more money.
What it buys back: time, energy, and scale.
That’s the maturity curve as founders actually live it. Not a framework. A flare.
Episode 6 is live now link in the comments.
With thanks to our special partner for this episode, ParcelPlanet, and Mark Greene who fittingly just published a piece called “When is the right time to outsource.” Anna’s answer, from the trenches: sooner than you think.
UpCircle are a business where every decision is a challenge because of the model they have chosen. It removes the stress as I really do not think Anna or her team could be any other way. Values are not the add on here.
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