Finding your third place: An exclusive interview with co-founder and CEO of Girls on The Go - Steph Barney
"I want to not just help women make friends, but make the world a safer place for women."
Award winner, CEO and co-founder, Steph Barney is the powerhouse behind Girls On The Go. At just 23, she has set up an events, social enterprise for young women across the UK, giving them a safe outlet to make friends and find their third place in their 20's.
What was the inspiration behind Girls on The Go?
“Girls on The Go came about in September 2023, we wanted to create a women’s only run club to raise money for a charity myself and my co-founder were working for at the time. Lots of people would come to the Liverpool run clubs and say that they had a great time, but they were coming not necessarily to run, but to make friends as it was really hard to make friends as an adult. It’s something I experienced in university as I’m French and moved here {…} that’s when we transitioned from not only a run club, but to a whole events, social enterprise.
Within a week or two of us starting, it sold out in 4 minutes, and we we’re like oh… clearly people want this sort of thing, {…} now we do 10-15 events a week. Within 9 months we scaled to Birmingham and Manchester, and now Bristol and Leeds.”
Girls on The Go Team. Credit: Steph Barney
Girls on The Go Team. Credit: Steph Barney
GOTG event attendees. Credit: Steph Barney
GOTG event attendees. Credit: Steph Barney
Steph Barney, co-founder and CEO. Credit: Steph Barney
Steph Barney, co-founder and CEO. Credit: Steph Barney
GOTG charity run. Credit: Steph Barney
GOTG charity run. Credit: Steph Barney
Did you ever see yourself having such an impact on young women? Now you’re in 5 major UK cities, did you ever see yourself doing something on this scale?
“No, not at all, I mean, I did a biomed degree so {…} to be honest didn’t know what I was going to do. I’ve always been passionate about women’s rights and I’ve always wanted to make a difference in that way because it is something that I’ve cared about since I was a young, little 8 year old who discovered the word feminism and I realised I needed to make a difference. So, I didn’t imagine this for myself but I’m very happy with how it has gone, so this is the dream.”
Steph winning Merseyside Woman of the Year award. Credit: Steph Barney
Steph winning Merseyside Woman of the Year award. Credit: Steph Barney
Last year, you won the Merseyside woman of the Year award, what was that moment like?
“That was unreal, I still can’t really grasp that I won it, I kind of showed up in like, the worst clothes ever, everyone else was in these gorgeous dresses and to be honest, I didn’t really appreciate how big of a deal it was, I didn’t want to get my hopes up. And then I won and I was like, oh… wow.”
“He said I was the youngest one to ever win it, which is pretty cool.”
What is something you'd never want to sacrifice for Girls On The Go?
“Our political stance is something that I never, ever want to sacrifice. We’ve been told quite a lot that we shouldn’t be so political, and we shouldn’t post our opinions on social media because brands won’t want to work with us, I've always made it quite clear that if a brand doesn't want to work with us because we support women's rights, then we don't want to work with them.”
GOTG ambassadors. Credit: Steph Barney
GOTG ambassadors. Credit: Steph Barney
“Being a woman, is political, we experience so many different things because we are women.”
Caitlyn, Steph and Martin - GOTG co-founders. Credit: Steph Barney
Caitlyn, Steph and Martin - GOTG co-founders. Credit: Steph Barney
What is your favourite part of being a co-founder/CEO?
“Two things, I think the freedom of being able to be my own boss is really amazing {…} I can choose my own working hours, and how I want to run my team, and with that, being able to create a safe working environment I wish I had growing up.
I think I really try and lead with empathy and try and make that work environment where people, like my team, say they love working for me, and Girls On The Go. That’s the best part.”
Dragon's Den Star, Millie Flemington-Clare: “I was painted as this young, female, disabled entrepreneur that didn't really know what she was doing, which just wasn't the case”
Millie Flemington-Clare is determined to redefine the makeup industry, starting her brand Human Beauty to ensure everyone is represented within the beauty world. Each product is curated with different disability limits in mind, Human Beauty sets a new standard in what all beauty brands should uphold in their products.
Millie is a multi-award-winning entrepreneur from Bristol, working full-time as a Marketing Manager alongside running Human Beauty. She appeared on season 22 of Dragons Den, and got what audiences believe to be the best deal ever, although that didn’t necessarily reflect off the screen. My talk began with Millie telling me about how the ideas for her accessible and inclusive beauty brand, Human Beauty, came about.
Millie grew up with a rare genetic condition called cystinosis, which only affects around 3000 people in the world. It’s caused by acids forming inside the cells, affecting her eyes and kidneys. “I struggled to find my place,” she tells me, “I spent a lot of my time in and out of hospital and I kind of fell in love with makeup, it helped me become who I am.” She has had two kidney transplants in the past four years, and was tube fed up until the age of 18, teaching herself how to digest food normally. After realising how little representation and accessibility there was in the beauty industry, ideas for starting a business started to form.
Following on in her Dad’s footsteps as an entrepreneur, owning a business is something Millie always knew she wanted to do. “Without getting ahead of myself, that was the inspiration behind it.”
“My condition can be really dynamic, most days I'm fine but other days could, in the future, not be very well.”
Millie holding The Makeup Therapy palette. Credit: Millie Clare
Millie holding The Makeup Therapy palette. Credit: Millie Clare
Millie on Dragon's Den. Credit: Millie Clare
Millie on Dragon's Den. Credit: Millie Clare
Millie talks about her Dragon’s Den experience, calling it “a dream of mine that I couldn’t believe had come true”, but there was more to her involvement in the show than meets the eye.
“They actually scouted me, they have casting researchers, who reach out to people. It was a very big risk process; you go through so much stuff before you even get to the studio.”
She continues to tell me that the experience was quite disappointing, although her whole brand surrounds accessibility, disability and being a female entrepreneur, there were a lot of things they didn’t take into consideration to better her experiences. The production cancelled on Millie a week before, due to a due diligence producer saying word for word: “as you say your disability is invisible, so we’re worried about the public perception of that.”
Millie’s experience felt very fake and all for TV and publicity: “I can say I was in Dragon's Den, which is great but the promises and offers made from the dragons were kind of bull***t TV promises.” Steven Bartlett, the youngest ever investor in the show’s history, invited Millie to his offices like he promised, however that gesture wasn’t all as it seemed. “It was a camera shoved in my face, I didn’t consent to the video footage being used without my approval, which they got very defensive about, claiming it was a gesture of goodwill rather than anything contractual. It makes me believe that it was going to be used for another feel-good, charity type video.”
The Human Beauty community. Credit: Millie Clare
The Human Beauty community. Credit: Millie Clare
Although The Dragon’s Den experience had its flaws, overnight Human Beauty received 300-400 orders, which was more than the first year of the business. Each Human Beauty product is so carefully thought out, tried and tested by Millie herself.
I asked her, what makes your brand stand out compared to other brands in the industry? “Rare Beauty is one of very few companies, who talk about it [accessibility] at the moment. Although Rare Beauty doesn’t kind of focus solely on that. The key differentiators are we have anti-roll packaging – which I have trademarked. Our mascara is square and our blushes are heart shaped, if you knock it over it won’t roll away. We have navi-lens codes, on the back of our eyeshadow palettes, which when they are scanned, it leads to an audio description where I read each shade out, what it looks like in detail. All of our eyeshadow shades are in an order that makes sense, so all our neutrals are in one line, all our mattes are together, all our brights and all our shimmers.”
“Neurodiversity can be equally a barrier to products”
Model using Liquid Confident Mascara™. Credit: Millie Clare
Model using Liquid Confident Mascara™. Credit: Millie Clare
Liquid Confident Mascara™. Credit: Millie Clare
Liquid Confident Mascara™. Credit: Millie Clare
Model using Liquid Confident Mascara™. Credit: Millie Clare
Model using Liquid Confident Mascara™. Credit: Millie Clare
The Makeup Therapy™ swatches. Credit: Millie Clare
The Makeup Therapy™ swatches. Credit: Millie Clare
Millie as a child. Credit: Millie Clare
Millie as a child. Credit: Millie Clare
Millie getting her degree. Credit: Millie Clare
Millie getting her degree. Credit: Millie Clare
The main piece of advice she’d give to young, disabled, female entrepreneurs would be to take their time.
“I was eager to do it right now, right now or the industry would move on without me. Six years later and the beauty industry hasn’t moved very far.”
Human Beauty is built on community, which is so important to Millie as she says it’s something she felt she didn’t have growing up. “In terms of business, if you have something that is purpose led, and you have a community at the heart of it, people will, when they become customers, they’re not just one time customers, we’ve built a community of trust.”
Millie’s plans for the future are to grow Human Beauty with the help of an investor, keep pushing for a change in the beauty industry and ensuring her community are able to thrive with the help of one another.
