Are you always in the spotlight and feeling the pressure to look good?

You're the calm one in the room. The one who never looks frazzled, who has the answer ready before anyone asks the question, who somehow makes it look effortless: the meeting, the deadline, the dinner where you're meeting someone new. Everyone assumes you've got it handled, and most days, you do. But nobody asks what it costs to stay that composed, that "on," that reliably put together, because the moment you're seen as anything less, it doesn't just feel like a bad day. It feels like slipping.

You're not chasing more, you gave that up a while ago. What you're actually tired of is having to vet everything before you can trust it. Every product claiming to be clean, every brand promising what it can't prove, every label you have to squint at and research before you believe it. You've outgrown products that just do the job. But finding ones that actually meet your standard, effective, values aligned, honest about what's inside, takes more time and energy than you have left over at the end of a day like yours.

And it shows up in the small, unglamorous moments nobody sees. Reapplying lipstick in a bathroom mirror between back to back meetings, just to look like you haven't been running since 8am. Standing in front of that same mirror before something big, waiting for the version of you that usually shows up, and some mornings, she's just a little slower to arrive. Confidence isn't unreliable for you often, but when it is, it's rarely convenient.

Here's the part you don't say out loud. From the outside, you've got it together: accomplished, composed, exactly where you're supposed to be. But some days, quietly, you're still waiting to be found out, like the polish is doing more work than you are. And so much of this isn't even for you. It's for the client who needs to trust you, the room that needs to believe you, the people who are counting on the version of you that never cracks.

I'm an award-winning founder, a mentor to the next generation of women, a chemist, a makeup artist, and listed among the Top Females in the UK. And quite frankly? I feel on top of the world. Confident. Purposeful. Fortunate to be in a position to help others.

But it wasn't always like this.

I built VARU from the ground up, every formula developed with the credentials of a trained chemist and the eye of a working makeup artist. That combination isn't common in this industry, and it's exactly why VARU exists the way it does today: clean, high-performing, and taken seriously enough to be recognised nationally.

I had such low confidence, having gone through my own adversities. Anything I used on my lips would dry them out. Working in the corporate world, I was fed up of reapplying lipstick over and over, only to find the products that actually worked were loaded with the very ingredients damaging my lips in the first place.

So I thought, enough is enough. Why can't we have it all? That question sent me down the path of formulating something with no nasties, kind to skin, kind to the planet, and still beautiful to wear.

Here's what's interesting, though. When I started this journey, it wasn't strangers who tried to hold me back. It was women closer to home. More pushback from my own than support from them, and more encouragement from strangers on the internet than from people who were supposed to be in my corner.

And that's when it hit me. I wasn't the only woman going through this. So I decided to build something bigger than a lip product. Today, through VARU and the campaigns we run, we empower women from every walk of life, and we've built a community of fierce women who channel their inner wolf, without forgetting the men who show up to support them too.

This is the lip gloss she built because of it.