Another panelist at this year’s Entrepreneur’s Christmas party is Rebecca Veksler. Here’s her story of starting SoL Cups, being hit by COVID-19 and key lessons learned.
Rebecca Veksler’s health journey with chronic fatigue syndrome and growing up in a health conscious family inspired her to create SoL Cups.
SoL Cups produce eco-friendly, 100% hand-blown glassware from reusable cups, water bottles to accessories. Their aim is to replace plastic with a sustainable, healthier alternative.
A much needed shift as we use 1 billion takeaway cups in Australia each year many of which end up in landfill.
Her COVID and reinvention journey starts with Sol Cups losing a majority of their business.
“It has been a pretty incredible journey, we essentially lost a huge majority of our business. So many of our incredible clients around the world needed to shut their doors. As much of a hit that it was, we will continue to support our stockists and continue to re-focus on innovating internally and developing as a global company. In retrospect, it has changed us for the best. We really know what to focus on now.”
They refocused on innovating internally and community building, content delivery. Acting as a platform for educational content.
“We have definitely been focusing on social community building, really shifting the way we communicate and deliver content. A huge focus is on emphasizing our mission to be a platform of education by collaborating with as many like-minded people as possible to bring our “Solmate” community as much quality and educational content as possible! It has been so much fun, so rewarding and we will continue to grow on this path, even when COVID is over.”
Key lessons from her journey:
- As an entrepreneur you need to find the balance between planning and improvising
- Focus on your mental health, business development and personal development
- Quiet time is a great time to fix the problems you usually don’t have time for
- Fix everything. The system processes, logistics, marketing plans, business plans
“Most business owners know that running your own business is basically a game of Russian Roulette, you never know what can happen at any moment, which is why it’s so important to have a solution based mindset and to learn to turn stress into the positive challenge, or growth. It is very important to be able to adapt and innovate in each moment. You need to find the balance between, planning and being able to improvise as required. So my advice is to really focus on your own mental health, your own personal development, and if you are being forced to have some quiet time in your business, use it to fix all the problems you never have time for.
Fix the system processes, logistics, marketing plans, business plans. Fix it all! Take a big focus on business development and personal development. This ensures you and your business are COVID-19 proof, as they say. Sometimes these little pauses are blessings to major developments and even bigger success. That’s what we have been doing at SoL.”
Check out a great interview with Rebecca here.
You can meet Rebecca and our fantastic panelists at the Christmas party. Get a ticket now before they sell out.
