Never Been A Nine To Fiver
Lisa’s advice to any fellow young women thinking of starting their own business is: “Do it! Don’t wait for years to find out whether there is a glass ceiling or not, if you know what you want to do then just go for it.”
The idea (via Oprah)
The idea to start up her own business came to Lisa when she saw self-help author and businessman Robert Kiyosaki on the Oprah Winfrey show back in 1999. Lisa found his words of wisdom motivational particularly the advice that if you want to be rich, you have to learn how to be a business owner and / or investor. Inspired, Lisa started her own bookkeeping service, Boogles Ltd in May 2004 - the same month she graduated from City University, London. “I think I’m different because I didn’t wait to start my business. I didn’t think there was any point. I always knew I wanted to work for myself, so I just got on with it. I had £100, my mum gave me £50 - and with the £150 I started. The challenge has been working on a shoe string budget. But, I was coming from a student background - so, I was used to being inventive and creating something out of nothing.”
Aged 23 and armed with a first class honours degree in Accountancy with Marketing and a Masters in Investment Management, Lisa started the business from home, all profits were ploughed back in and Boogles expanded gradually, with turnover doubling year on year.
Awards and expansion
In Feb 08 Boogles won an Enterprising Business Award, and used the prize money to develop a product line - a maths game, which can be played on PC, and is aimed at helping 5-11 year olds with their maths. In addition, Lisa also started the website YUR Broke - in 2006, which was to help people find solutions to their money problems - at least a whole year before we started hearing and reading about the “credit crunch”. Lisa thinks a lot of people struggle to get to grips with their finances because of poor financial education in schools - and one of the first steps to tackle this, is to make children believe that they are good at maths, numbers, and ultimately money. It’s not something to be scared of. “I’m in a unique position because I see peoples finances - their personal tax returns, their business money all the time - and I could see that debt was on the increase. Everyone was just transfering balances and not paying anything off.”
Today, Boogles has staff of 20, and encouraging young people with numbers and to think ‘outside the box’ about their finances is how Lisa believes she can help, “Many people work nine to five because they think that is what they should do but there are other options and starting your own business is one of them. Starting your own business can be one of the most challenging, but (when you get it right) rewarding things you ever do. Every day you are in charge of your own destiny. And in this credit crunch environment, you won’t be fearing for your job, but getting excited by the opportunities out there.” Lisa’s only word of caution is “understand the numbers”…
On Enterprise 
