Applied Series: Recycling Fashion's Waste with Refact's Pauline Guesné

Turning Textile Waste into Recycled Fibres:
Pauline Guesné, co-founder of Refact, once a corporate consultant now turned entrepreneur shares her story of a little French girl dreaming big. Those dreams developed into the desire to do something for the world and in this case fashion, having been shocked by the industry's wasteful nature. Pauline and her team have invented a novel process that utilises a combination of mechanical and chemical recycling processes to break down used garments into reusable fibres. Pauline shares in this episode how that magic happens and the drastic shift it could enact for fashion to become circular.

The Industry's Appetite for Recycled Fashion:
This episode peels back the layers of the glamorous facade to expose the urgent need for a circular economy in fashion. Alarmingly in this conversation Pauline tells host, Peter Jeun Ho Tsang, how the larger fashion players are just not biting and the truth about VC investors still prioritising short term returns over long term humanity's need for advancement. What will these commercial and market challenges mean for circular solutions like Refact?

Find out about Refact here
Connect with Pauline on LinkedIn

*EXCLUSIVE OFFER* -20% discount for podcast listeners on the printed or ebook of Fashion Tech Applied. Purchase your copy at Springer here using the discount code*: 08cWPRlx1J7prE

*Offer ends end June 2024

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Fashion tech applied is published, my co-authored book taking you through six chapters and covering the technologies and innovations powering the fashion industry. I'm Peter Joen Ho Sang, founder and CEO of Beyondform, and welcome to the special podcast series applied. Each episode, I'll be sitting down with incredible fashion tech professionals that are featured inside the book. On today's episode, I'm sitting down with Pauline Gizny, co-founder of Refact, a textile recyclable solution based in France that can turn used garments back into usable textile fibers. So far on the applied series, we've predominantly discussed software and digital solutions, but Refact is our 100% hardware technology that uses practically magic to break down existing textiles. In my conversation with Pauline, she rings alarm bells into how little the industry is doing to embrace circular tech like hers, and how the people with money don't seem to want to buy into it, even though necessary for the planet.

Speaker 2: 1:02

We were like, okay, we need to do better. Because once we started with that first product and we realized how much the industry was damaging, we're like, okay, this first product is cool, we're making money out of it, but we need to do better. And it was a little bit of a case of if not us, then who? If not now, then when? So what does it tell about us if we try to do nothing about it?

Speaker 1: 1:24

Let's get into the conversation with Pauline on this episode of Venturing into Fashion Tech. How are you today, pauline?

Speaker 2: 1:30

Hello, I'm good, thank you.

Speaker 1: 1:32

Good to hear you're looking forward to hearing your journey and how you created Refact, and obviously you're featured in the book. I want to set the scene for our listeners before we get stuck into the conversation, though. The textiles recycling market size expected to reach 7.6 billion US dollars by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of 3.6% during the forecast period of 2022 to 2030, according to straight research. So it's quite slow in terms of growth, considering the size and the pace of the fashion industry, and I'm sure you're going to share a little bit of insights and opinions as well as to why it's moving so slowly in terms of growth. There is a plethora of textile recycling solutions on the market. Many are not yet large, though, in terms of commercial scale, due to long development lead times, but they're all trying to combat the current linear fashion system, and I know you're very passionate about this, pauline, in the various conversations that we've had previously.

Speaker 1: 2:35

Refact is featured in chapter three of the book, where we discuss material innovations and the supply chain. The space is exploding, which is exciting but also very confusing for brands, especially for those brands that are a little bit more traditional in terms of fabric choices. So, on that note, pauline, let's start with your entrepreneurial journey. You don't come from fashion, you don't come from textiles. You're actually in corporate consulting. To start off with. How did you start on your entrepreneurial adventure and how did you make it happen for Refact?

Speaker 2: 3:14

Well, so I started about almost 10 years ago it's been nine years now, so almost 10 years ago and I was in consulting in France and what I did was I always been passionate about fashion. So already when I was at school, we had to do an entrepreneurial project for a year and it was a fashion project. So I was already thinking about fashion and entrepreneurship and everything, and I met my business partner, sebastian, at the consulting firm and we decided to start in duo because that's our first company together and we've changed business model quite a bit because we started doing shirts resistant to stain and sweat. Quite quickly. The shirt worked and the only problem we had was with distribution and sizing. So we decided, instead of selling the shirts, to sell the material that we developed for the shirts to other brands. So that was our first business model change.

Speaker 2: 4:21

And then Covid happened and so we started doing face masks like a lot of brands at that time and with that we all all. The time we had the first product launched, we tried to launch other projects to try to minimize the impact of fashion on the world. So we had different r&d project that we had launched already prior to Covid, and one of them was a recycling project and it showed a lot of promises and that's 2019, beginning of 2020, when Covid hits. So we did the face masks and from that we had a bit of money that we decided to invest all in the recycling project. So it's been over three years now. We've started to develop that recycling technology.

Speaker 1: 5:13

You did a little fashion project in your younger days, but corporate consulting is so different to the start of world. I know that you said previously that you've had many learnings and you made many mistakes previously, like what put you in that mindset to go from corporate to entrepreneurial life.

Speaker 2: 5:32

I mean to be fair, and so I told my parents I wanted to be an entrepreneur when I was 12 and I said to them okay, this is like the best way to do that is to attend business school in France. And I had my eyes set on that business called, called EM Lyon that was specializing in entrepreneurship. So I told them at 12, I was like I'm going to be an entrepreneur and this is the school I'm going to attend. And I did exactly that. But obviously, when I was at the point of graduating, a lot like American citizens, I had student debts, right. So I had no money, student debts, no corporate experience at all, and my father is disabled, my mother is a teacher, so I didn't even have that experience through my parents' job, of the corporate world, like I knew nothing about it.

Speaker 2: 6:26

So I thought, you know what, going to consulting would be a good way to make money and also to approach different problematics of the corporate world and try to kind of get to know how a company works right Before I create my own. So for me it was never about staying in the corporate world. It was always a stepping stone, but then when you're in it it's so comfortable, right that you start to question that I'm like I'm a really bad entrepreneur because you're doing consulting, you have a great pay, you have very smart colleagues that teach you a lot, you change what you're working on every three to nine months maximum, so you see a different, a wide variety of company and problems that you need to solve and it's absolutely fascinating. So for a second there I questioned whether I was going to stay in the corporate world or actually achieve my dream and become an entrepreneur, and it required a lot of sacrifices, and it has required a lot of sacrifices for the past 10 years still.

Speaker 1: 7:33

I can just imagine 12 year old Pauline saying I want to start my own business. I think at 12 years old I wasn't even thinking about what I'm going to do in the future. So that's very forward thinking of you, I guess. And I think for context of our listeners that aren't from France I've never been to France, you know starting your business is not necessarily the number one agenda. Shall we say special back in those days.

Speaker 2: 7:59

No, yeah, the French mindset is not as entrepreneurial as other cultures, for sure, and it is a bit of. The administrative system can be a little bit heavy and it can be hard to navigate to create a company. And for me, the 12 year old thing started, actually. So when I mentioned my father was disabled, so he started to be ill when I was about six years old and so at eight I had like a huge existential crisis. Like it's way too early to have an existential crisis at eight years old, I know, but I was like, okay, so my parents are going to die. Then I realized I've got to die too eventually. And then I was like, okay, so when people die, what happens? And I was like, okay, so maybe they go to heavens or whatever, but what happens to those who stay on earth? Like what's the impact on them? And I was like, okay, maybe your children are going to remember you or your grandchildren are going to remember you, but then after that, like you're just falling to oblivion, right? So what's the meaning of life if you just suffer and then you die? Why are we here? And then, at eight years old, I remember thinking around that time I don't want to end my life just now, right? So I was like, okay, so what do I do with my life?

Speaker 2: 9:23

And there was this TV program back then on TV right before the news, the evening news. That was about inventors, people who had invented something and they were presenting it. And it went from silly like pedal cars are curved how do you call that? Curve the cutlery to get some Nutella up to very advanced things like water modders or whatever. And I was fascinated by that. I was like, okay, if I create something, that it's, then it survives me Then. Then I put something out in the world for others to use and enjoy, and I love that idea. So at that point I was like, okay, I'm going to be an inventor, right, I had never heard about entrepreneurship.

Speaker 2: 10:13

I had never, as I said, I was not familiar with the corporate world due to my family history. Like my grandparents, all four of them were farmers. So I had like farmers, teachers, policemen in my entourage, but nothing about like corporate world. And then I realized I'm not there, like you have to kind of be an engineer to become an inventor, and it was not something I was contemplating. And then I was like, oh, what if you create a company and then you have employees and with the wage that you pay them, they can make their family leave. And then it's not just about you and your family, but you're impacting other families and like improving the life for other people as well.

Speaker 2: 10:56

So that really, at 12 year old, that was what entrepreneurship was for me. It was the idea to create something, an organization, a system that allows other people to take wages, so money from that, and have a decent living for their families. And it's obviously now we talk about the start of nation in France and everything. So obviously entrepreneurship has a whole different meaning. But I'm talking 23 years ago, so I'm 35, going on 36. So clearly back then it was not popular at all.

Speaker 1: 11:34

But luckily, you stuck with it. You stuck with this curiosity to create, break things, invent things, which brings me on to my next question, then, what is Refact that you've invented?

Speaker 2: 11:46

Yeah, so Refact is a recycling process for textiles, and the very cool thing is we're able to recycle multi-color, multi-composition textiles that are used textiles, because a lot of people don't know that, but you have three customer textiles that are production scraps, and then you have post customer textiles that are your clothing, bedsheets, towels, whatever and it's much more complicated to recycle the latter. So this is what we're focusing on right now, and we managed to take those used textiles and create absolutely new fibers with them that can be used to create again other clothing or other articles of textiles.

Speaker 1: 12:30

You talk about their taking about clothing, but it's pretty difficult to take clothing apart, especially within fashion, where designers aren't necessarily designing with that mindset that eventually the garments need to be pulled apart for recycling. So how does that whole process work? Like what magic are you using to make this happen?

Speaker 2: 12:54

So actually the taking things apart is the easy part for it. So basically you have different recycling techniques and usually they allow you to recycle one type of textile. For example, they're going to be able to recycle cotton or polyester or, in the best case, poly cotton, like a mix of cotton and polyester, but it's always like one time's textile and usually for mechanical recycling you can also be one color right. And our approach was like OK, you have some textile that maybe you can sort, but a lot of them you cannot sort. So we're gonna take a compliment, like something that is a complementary approach, of what about what we can't sort and then what we can't sort? We just take and grind down to powder and then we chemically sort them.

Speaker 2: 13:47

So what we're doing basically is we're taking if I go into a bit more detail, we're taking new clothes, then we're kind of shredding it into small, smaller pieces. Then we try to isolate the accessories, so buttons, deep buries, whatever was not textiles. So we have different ways of doing that, like with earslows or with magnets to capture the, the metallic parts. And then once we get that the textile with a lot of accessories taken out, then we can just grind it into powder. So we get a multi-composition, multicolored powder. Then we take out the dyes, we remove the colors, so we get like a white powder and not like okay enough. A lot more fluffy than that.

Speaker 1: 14:36

Knock knock.

Speaker 2: 14:39

But when we talk white powder, sometimes it's what people think about, so very flussy white powder, and then with that white powder we have different chemical steps to isolate the cellulose. So the cellulose is the main component for cotton, linen, viscose as well and all those types of materials. And then we also isolate the polyester and then the remaining, which is thankfully very, very minor, because the polyester and cellulose fibers are 80% of the fibers on the market. The rest is 20% and when we take the waste, we try to take waste that is going to have less of the others. So, for example, we're going to take trousers, shirts, towel, bed sheets, but we're going to try to stay away from coats and underwear, bra especially, and the pillowverse that are mainly made of wool. Right, so the rest we discuss. We can't do anything with that, but at least there are those two materials, primary materials, that we can recycle.

Speaker 1: 15:48

So for listeners that are trying to make sense of this magic source that Pauline is describing, she is featured in chapter three of the book Fashion Tech Applied. If you're looking at a short here, that is refact, basically, and some imagery there. It looks really good in print, pauline, so you'll be getting your copy very, very soon. In the book, just quoting you, you said that less than one percent of any used textile, whether it's a garment or not, is recycled into usable textile. That's an alarming number, such a small number considering how many clothes there are in the world, and obviously beyond clothes as well, from a textile perspective. Why is that and what should the fashion industry be doing to tackle such a mammoth issue?

Speaker 2: 16:30

So you have two types of recycling. We have what we call closed loops recycling, so it's textile that becomes textile again, and that's less than one percent. And then you have open loop recycling. So, for example, if you take textile and you make constriction material when they'd like isolation material for walls and stuff, so it is a bit better with the open loop textile, but it's still very minor because at the end of the day. So we were struggling to calculate the number and then the European Union came up with an official number 87 percent of used textile ends up incinerated or lens sealed, so that's almost nine out of ten. Nine out of ten garments are gonna end up well and it's in the wait, so it could be even worse Are gonna end up lens sealed or incinerated, and so yeah, so, and less than the one percent are going to be textile again. So it's absolutely mind-blowing and crushing.

Speaker 2: 17:30

I think there are different reasons for why it's not better. First of all, up until that point it's been. I mean, we see it with some apps like Sheen and other companies like that, textile can be quite cheap, and so it's about other consumers and the brands willing to pay more because recycling is not going to be that cheap. So sometimes when you when producing new is less costly than producing recycled, it doesn't encourage recycling, right? But I think we're now at this point that people see the value of changing their habits and trying to make better choices for themselves and for the planet. So I think we see an opening. The market's been changing for the past five, ten years.

Speaker 2: 18:20

There is another factor, that is the regulations. So now in France you have a new law called Ajek, not pelling brands to include recycled materials in their collections, and they're both encouraging it through subsidies and also being cohesive about it, with progressive numbers of recycled material that they have to integrate year after year. So, yeah, you have a will from the end customer, from brands, from governments to make it happen. So it's starting to emerge and obviously, as we said before, it's a very complex thing to do because you have. So the three problems with textile recycling are real simple and I mentioned it before it's multi-composition, multicolor and accessories. Those are the three problems, and so, because it was not a simple thing to solve and it was not profitable before then, nobody did it. But now everybody's starting to take a look at it and hopefully we see more and more technologies emerge in the coming years.

Speaker 1: 19:39

How did you feel, pauline, when you found out, almost like this dirty secret about the fashion industry as a newcomer to the vertical? What would eight-year-old philosophical Pauline be saying right now?

Speaker 2: 19:52

Honestly, I was a palt. I was really sad, really really sad, because I thought I never imagined that mine out of 10 pieces of clothing were incinerated a landfill, and especially where it's landfill and how it impacts certain low-income countries. I find this even more disgusting that we take some countries to be our trash bin, and I really feel that it emphasizes inequality among men on this planet. So, yeah, I was a palt and this is one of the reasons why, when we launched our first product Resistance, sustain and Sweat that already had an environmental component to it, we were like, okay, we need to do better. Because once we started with that first product and we realized, being in the industry, how much the industry was damaging for the environment, we're like, okay, this first product is cool, we're making money out of it, but we need to do better.

Speaker 2: 20:58

And it was a little bit of a case of if not us, then who? If not now, then when? Because we had, for our first product, we had built textile laboratories. So we were like, okay, now we have the lab, we have the resources, we have the money, so we have no excuse and we know what's happening now. We didn't know before, but we know what's happening now. So what does it tell about us if we try to do nothing about it?

Speaker 1: 21:24

I completely agree, pauline, and I think the fact that you know early in the introduction I said that the growth rate of these types of solution is actually quite so, it's only 3.6%. You mentioned there that obviously things are changing but it doesn't seem to be that quickly actually and we find that many fashion brands they say it's important but it's not important enough necessarily to move quicker.

Speaker 2: 21:52

Yeah, and we've seen it because. So right now we have the technology we have. So, for a refact, our advancement level, let's say so we have developed the technology in the lab. We have built a full production chain in the lab. We're able to make a few kilos of fibers. We have fided the different patents on our technology and we're now trying we're not the point that we're trying to set up a factory, a demo factory right to be able to make about 300 tons a year.

Speaker 2: 22:25

So we're at this very stage of industrializing our solution and for that we need money and we've been trying to raise money for the past six months and so far it has proven really challenging and we have not raised that money. And when we go and to talk to brands and I understand, we're making fibers, so we're a bit further away on the production chain than what they're used to. They're used to buying garments or fabrics and we're a bit more up the value chain. But they are the one with the power and the money to make it happen and they don't necessarily invest. You have few exceptions and namely H&M, who's investing in some textile startups, recycling textile startups, but apart from that, most of the other brands are not yet there. And then it's been challenging because the traditional VC fans are not necessarily keen on textile, because historically it's not been performing the best, especially in Europe. It's really challenging to find fans to industrialize this process.

Speaker 1: 23:33

I can just imagine how frustrating that is for you, because the innovation is there, the tech is ready, you know how much potential impact it's going to have, not just on the industry but the world at large as well.

Speaker 1: 23:48

And people are saying to you but we're still going to prioritize making an ROI for our LPs on a 10 times return rate or whatever it is they're trying to promise, and I think, as you say, it is sad, and I think for fashion as well, many professionals don't understand what that means as well, and quite often they are turning a blind eye away to it. I would say I think, out of all the technologies that we do feature inside the book, we fact have probably got the longest lead time out of all the tech, because it's hard tech as well. In terms of lead times. We know we've had conversations about this previously it can take up to 10 years for it to be commercially ready and scalable. In the book, we do actually say it took you two years worth of R&D and 150,000 euros of your own money, which is not actually a wrong stat, apparently and it's taking you a lot longer and a lot more money. Why does it take so long? Yeah, actually.

Speaker 2: 24:49

So the number and the timing is correct. But that was for our first product. So for REFACT we're at 1.5 million, so 10 times more than this, and the overall process up to having the patents and everything has taken us almost three years. But yeah, it's completely. It's extremely frustrating, and especially even for brands if they cannot invest.

Speaker 2: 25:14

We're trying to rally brands to sign support letters, because some of the private funds we're talking sorry, I keep referring to them as private funds, but PEC funds that we're talking to they're like oh, but we prove to us that there's a market Like this is obvious to us being in the industry, but not to them. And even like signing letters of support or pre-sell contracts that are non-binding for them. It's binding for us to deliver to them in priority, but not to them. They can say, oh, in three, four years time, once you have the factory, then if it doesn't fit the market at that time, we can totally get out of this contract. And even that has been proving extremely challenging.

Speaker 2: 26:12

I have brands I had meetings with in April or May last year and they still hadn't signed anything and some of them promised we would get a signature by January 15th and it still hasn't happened. So even like Even that, as simple as that, we're not asking money, we're just asking them to make a signature. But there's always something that is more of a priority to them the next collection, the sales for the sales period and everything. I can understand that. I can understand that for brands, the last years have been really challenging with COVID and then inflation, and that they're struggling. I can understand that they're reducing their workforce and that the people remaining in those companies are absolutely overwhelmed with the amount of workload that they're dealing with. I can totally understand that. But at the same time, what does it say about us as an industry right that we're never prioritizing these projects that are supposed to be our future?

Speaker 1: 27:21

For any listeners other, I guess or brands that are listening, then I think it's a case of get off your bum, shall we say, and do some action. As you say, there ultimately is industry and for the world, ultimately there's going to be an end to it, because we only have so many resources that are possible. Shall we say. We interviewed you at the end of 2022 for the book. Around 14 months have now passed. Can you share any insights and numbers that have come to fruition within that timeframe?

Speaker 2: 27:53

We have. So I mentioned that we are able in the lab to do a few kilos of material for some of the steps for our recycling process. We've started to do some tests on 200 kilos. So we're really even though we haven't raised the money to build a full-size factory yet, we're still advancing on that front trying to up the quantities progressively so we can start. It would be really cool to be able to start a test launch with a brand. So that's what we're trying to achieve now.

Speaker 2: 28:30

We also have got a lot of subsidies from the French and the European governments, and especially we have two millions that have been allocated to us that we have not yet spent. So this is really exciting. We feel that once we get some money from private investors, we're all set, ready to go, because we have already that money from the subsidies that was granted to us. So that's the positives. By the way, we were surprised by the reaction of brands and VC funds not being more excited, not making it a priority, but we were really surprised, on the other hand, by the amount of subsidies and help that we were getting from the French government especially.

Speaker 1: 29:20

So it's not yet a priority for the private sector, but it's definitely a priority for the public sector, which we were really really pleased about, and I think, on that note, for many Western brands it's not needed to go to China or India to see this type of machinery in action is literally on their doorsteps. So, going back to our earlier point of getting off your bum and doing something, I think the very first thing is to go and see what are the possibilities. So I want to actually change my last question to something a little bit differently than I normally do on my interviews. I want to hear your rally cry, I guess with your warrior hand at 12-year-old in a polling now coming out wanting to change the world. I just want to give you this time to say to our listeners that go from those equals, whereas people in sustainability right three, to brands and retailers, what do you say to them to make this a reality and the fact that we do need change?

Speaker 2: 30:24

Well, we don't really have a choice, do we? Because I mean, look at it that way, the industrial, the agricultural sorry lens for cotton, hasn't been growing, it's been more extensively cultivating cotton, but the available agricultural land hasn't changed much. So, if you think about it, that's a limit, right. At some point we're not going to be able to make more fibers of cotton. Similarly for viscose right now, about two-thirds of our viscose comes from a co-managed forest, but one-third still comes from virgin forests, which no one need to explain you how bad this is. So, similarly for viscose, if we want to keep viscose a little bit ecological, then there are also some limits in what we can produce right now. And for polyester, well, polyester comes from petrol, so it's also limited resource. So for all of those main fibers, we have a huge environmental problem, but also a huge limit resource problem. So at some point we're going to have to make fibers from other things than those, and the only way I can see is recycling what we already have. I mean, it's so sad that we have these huge cool resources 87% of use-take style that is not being used in any way, shape or form, and just literally going up in flames, and so we absolutely need to react now.

Speaker 2: 32:02

As you mentioned, peter, those are technologies that take quite a long time to see the light of day. So, for our hand, we're planning that if we manage to raise fund this year, then we should be able to open the first demo factory by the end of 2026, early 2027 at most, and then the full-size factory 2029, 2030 at most. So we're talking six years right. So we have to act now, otherwise, once you walk the fibers, it's going to be too late.

Speaker 2: 32:37

And once you hit that point that the legislation is not just encouraging with subsidies but actually being constraining is that how you can say it on brands? It's going to be a problem for brands because there's going to be a demand and offer situation and you're going to end up paying your recycled fibers a fortune, and that would be really sad, especially when the solutions exist and are being developed right now. So please, please, please. If you're a brand, contact me. My email is real simple. It's calling P-A-U-L-I-N E at induosr. Like friends, and please get in touch with me. I would love for you to sign a support letter or pre-sale contract. And if you're an investor, I think this is the future of our industry and you need to get on board now.

Speaker 1: 33:36

Very good radical there, pauline. I think for me the problem is that many people in the industry just don't realize to the extent of the problem that every time I have a conversation with you, pauline, like hand and heart, I learned something new, and I think that's really surprising, considering that every fashion product starts with raw materials of some kind and most of us don't know where it comes from or what happens with it at the end of the life cycle. So there's this huge knowledge gap as well, especially for the people that are building the products, shall we say. I just want to finish off this interview with a quick fire round of questions. The first answer that comes to your head are you ready?

Speaker 2: 34:20

Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 1: 34:22

Have you read fashion tech applied yet?

Speaker 2: 34:24

I have, so you send me the digital version and I have written some of it, not all of it.

Speaker 1: 34:30

Printed version coming to you very soon. Best advice for our listeners to be more sustainable.

Speaker 2: 34:35

Well, if you're an individual, just buy less clothes, and if you're a brand, then try to integrate as much as possible recycled material.

Speaker 1: 34:47

Last item that you recycled.

Speaker 2: 34:49

Oh, a towel from my bathroom that I just put or recycling.

Speaker 1: 34:54

Yeah, towels. For some reason I get so many towels from my mother-in-law. For some reason she's obsessed with this. I think that which is better mechanical or chemical recycling.

Speaker 2: 35:08

Both, because it's not a choice between the two, they're complementary. So, for example, for us we can take the waste from mechanical recycling the fiber that are too short to be made again to textile. We can take that, because it's already textile power powder, and recycle it with our chemical recycling process. So both need to coexist and work together to solve the problem.

Speaker 1: 35:31

A piece of advice for the listeners in the corporate world. Wants to begin their own startup adventure.

Speaker 2: 35:37

Just go for it. Don't think about the sacrifices, don't think about how difficult it's going to be, because then you're never going to start. And if you do start, then you'll find solutions along the way to make it happen. And what's the worst that can happen to you? The worst that can happen to you is you fail and in the process you learn a tremendous amount of things about life yourself, your entourage and how company works.

Speaker 1: 36:01

So there's no reason not to go for it if you feel the want to start something Absolutely, and the worst-case scenario is that you just go back to your day job and it's fine.

Speaker 2: 36:13

I mean, I really believe that an entrepreneurial experience on your resume can only benefit you in every shape way form possible. So just go for it. I had known everything that would go into being an entrepreneur, I probably wouldn't have done it, and I'm glad I didn't think too much about it, because I'm still absolutely thrilled I did it. So I think it's just a matter of don't overthink this. Just go for it, and if you can't find solutions, then you'll go back to your day job if you can, and it's going to be an amazing adventure and you're going to be so proud of it.

Speaker 1: 36:52

Thank you so much for your time, Pauline. Thank you.