Someone once coined the expression ‘Behind every great man is a great woman’ … but what is behind every great woman? In the case of Sell Beyond’s founder Heloise Finch, it’s often a wall of books, as knowledgeable and diverse as the woman herself. Anyone chatting to Heloise on a video call can see the myriad publications and while Teams may not allow a clear view of the titles, you can be sure they cover the multiple areas of her experience and expertise.
The force behind Sell Beyond
After graduating top in her year of 150 students, she won a scholarship to study an anthropology MA at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in France, turning her back on her skipper dreams. Her Masters included writing her dissertation in French, a language in which she is now bilingual. She can also speak Réunion Creole, Italian and Spanish, skills that set her apart when helping clients sell in European marketplaces.
After completing her MA in 2003, she was presented with several scholarship opportunities to study in the US, including a £300k offer to do a PhD in anthropology at Harvard. She turned them down. A PhD in anthropology and history at the University of Michigan was her preferred choice.
The next few years brought a number of changes to Heloise’s life as she spent time in La Réunion, an island in the Indian Ocean that measures just 40 miles by 30 miles, to continue her PhD research. Despite the small number of island inhabitants, she was fortunate in meeting Stephane Boyer, who not only became her husband, but also the joint founder of Sell Beyond.
Greenwich Time – And the Future
Her journey to Sell Beyond includes living on the seven seas, a rejected Harvard scholarship and an MA dissertation written in her non-native French – this is a woman who doesn’t follow convention. She is not one to back away from a challenge – in fact, she has spent much of her life seeking them out. She prides herself on her tenacity to find effective solutions and refuses to be beaten.
Captain of Her Destiny
Heloise has had, she says, a portfolio career. She’s tried academia (‘lonely’), being a museum curator (‘too slow’) and doing business development for a graphene company (‘hated trying to market electrons’). But along the way, she has honed the knowledge, insight and skills that are shaping the future of Sell Beyond.
Her life now is far removed from what she had in mind as an 18-year-old school leaver in 1996 when she shunned the idea of university in favour of moving to France and sailing for a living, inspired in no small way by Dame Ellen MacArthur. “I loved the freedom and the autonomy it brought, being completely absorbed in the task. I wanted to be a female leader, to make my mark in a very male-dominated world.”
Heloise being the force behind Sell Beyond has come from a lifetime of passion, endurance and innovation. Heloise may have turned her back on her skipper dreams, but is the embodiment of a captain at the helm.
Unfortunately, her mum didn’t share her aspirations and made it clear she wasn’t happy with Heloise’s choices. Facing something of an ultimatum from mum, Heloise took up a place at the University of Birmingham to study English and French, although she spent every holiday sailing as a second mate with the Ocean Youth Trust, training to become a yacht skipper.
Je Suis Une Érudite
After a year as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2011 Helo ise decided to leave academia and was appointed as the Curator of Science and Technology at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, UK. If academia had been lonely, working at the museum was even more so as figureheads can’t hold a very good conversation.
In 2015, Heloise decided it was time to jump ship – and change career. She found a job in innovation consulting, writing innovation grant requests for SMEs.
After her son was born in 2017, she and Stephane decided to make some changes. With their combined language skills they provided Amazon translations and a seed of an idea was born. Although Heloise went on to spend a year working as a business development manager for one of her previous grant clients, a graphene start-up in Cambridge, her growing knowledge of Amazon identified there was a gap in the market for a high-level consultancy, supporting third-party sellers.
From being inspired by Dame Ellen, she now has a new drive … to build the world-leading Amazon consultancy and to confront the statistic that says men are five times more likely than women to build a business of £1m+ turnover.
“I’m excited by the challenge. I’m aways excited by the challenge. Coming from a family with brothers, I am used to competing.”
Speak to Heloise
Heloise is a woman on a mission. She is credible, interesting, well informed and has a track record to envy, and she couples this with her humour, warmth and engaging personality. Not only is she just the sort of person you need to support your business growth, but she is also the one you want.
If you’d like to chat to Heloise to discuss how she could support your business, call +44 (0)1206 899020 or click here