How did your business get started? From the good, bad and ugly, what was your startup process like?
The Good?
The launching of the company was a lot easier than I thought. I used Squarespace as a template builder for the website, so I didn’t need any developers. I put a lot of emphasis around the name of the company. I knew this would help organic ranking, CTR’s, authority, and memorability in the future. Luckily, the URL I wanted was available for quite a generic keyword for the product/service. From then, you’ve got to create a feedback loop and iterate fast.
The Bad?
I remember one time I had a life drawing class in the Edinburgh for Nude Life and one in Brighton for the previous supplier I was working on weekends. I didn’t have enough cash in the bank for a flight at the time, so I drove between the locations! I think it took 8 hours in total.
The Ugly?
The biggest obstacle by far was my own doubts. I was paid quite well by the company I was already modelling for, so, I didn’t want to disrupt that. I had to fly under the radar for the first year (2016) as I wanted to use the money, I was earning from my two sources of income. I was my current employers competition, so that was pretty difficult at times! I think at times, working weeks 9-5, weekends and trying to build a company was prettyintense at times – looking back this probably impacted my mental health in some way.
What niche or hole in the market are you filling with Nude Life?
Ultimately, we’re filling the creative space where people can get out and do something different, explore different body types, meet like-minded people and learn a creative skill. Our bread and butter are hen do’s. Hens are going further afield, spending a longer number of nights away, and searching for more fun and sophisticated activities and places to stay. We have had weekends running 50+ events this year across multiple countries in Europe. Our main aim a couple of years back was to fill the hole for hen parties for life drawing, we’ve achieved that now with the volume of events we are doing and the number of models we have on our books – we’d like to maintain that but explore some other options too. We’ve recently launched corporate classes and public life drawing classes. The formats are different (less about having fun and drinking) and more about learning. We have a fantastic tutor we call upon from the Gagosian Gallery and some great models with all different body types and personalities.
How much has your business changed from day one until now?
In the early days we were just running hen party life drawing in Brighton. We moved on to The South East, now we have extended that to involve all the major cities across the UK and Europe. We’re now running corporate, birthday and public classes in areas of the UK too.
What are your biggest challenges in marketing Nude Life?
Nudity! Most advertising platforms have very strict nudity guidelines. So we just have to get creative 😉 check out our Instagram page @thisisnudelife What types of marketing are most effective for your business? SEO! That’s my professional background and what the company has been built on – we only run advertising in months we know that the cost of acquiring customers will be low.
What is the #1 lesson you learned since starting Nude Life?
I’ve learned that anything in life worth having comes from patience and hard work. With hard work and dedication, anything is possible.
What can we expect from Nude Life in the next year?
I would love it to become an established brand with a voice on nudity. We’ve always maintained we would like to be more than just a company generating profits, but one that has a voice. We’ve started a clothing line (tees embroidered with ‘send nudes’ on!) and I would love this to take off – although we haven’t been able to focus on this as much as we would like to. If we could run life drawing classes across the World, be it hens, corporate classes and public classes then that would be amazing!
