Very few businesses ever reach £1 million in revenue. Far fewer make it to £10 million. Rachel Watkyn, founder of The Tiny Box Company, got there — after being told she had no USP, being grilled on Dragons' Den, and running her business from her bed through years of serious illness.
On a recent episode of the ActionCOACH podcast, Rachel talked openly about that journey. If you've ever felt there's no light at the end of the tunnel in your business, her story is proof that there is. Here are the lessons every business owner can take from it.
Spot the problem nobody has solved
Tiny Box was born in 2007 for a simple reason: Rachel couldn't find jewellery packaging. Etsy was taking off and home crafters were everywhere, yet suppliers wanted 12 weeks' notice, minimum orders of a thousand units per size and colour, and sent their quotes by post. Coming from a career in IT, where response times were measured in hours, she asked the obvious question — why can't you just order one box online?
So she built a website to do exactly that, with sustainability and ethics at its heart from day one. Being naturally risk-averse, she didn't jump in blind either: she spent six months researching the gift, packaging and jewellery markets at the British Library to make sure the problem was real and wasn't just hers.
Build a bonfire, not a fireplace
Asked why so few businesses scale, Rachel's answer is intention. She compares it to the difference between lighting a fire in your sitting room and building a Bonfire Night bonfire. If you plan to scale, you need the systems and the right people in place from the very beginning.
Her biggest early mistake was hiring low-paid staff who didn't have the skills to grow with the business. As Tiny Box grew, the roles outgrew the people, leading to some uncomfortable conversations. It took around five years to reach the first £1 million in 2013, and another seven to pass £10 million in 2020 — and she believes the right people and systems from day one would have got her there faster.
Don't let the doubters decide for you
A few months after launch, Rachel pitched to a government business support panel. They told her the business had nothing unique about it. When she asked what she should change, the lead adviser said that if he knew, he'd be running a business himself rather than advising her.
Her next pitch was Dragons' Den. With six months of trading, nothing patentable and no packaging background, she went in with no expectations — her only goal was to make the best two minutes of advertising she could. She was in the Den for two and a half hours, and it was tough: Duncan Bannatyne picked at a sample box and declared his young daughter could make a better one, and the Dragons told her a sustainable business would always be fighting in a niche.
Yet after a gruelling due diligence meeting with a dozen specialists, the investment went through, and they left her to run the business her way. As Rachel puts it, they had the confidence in her that she didn't have in herself. And that "niche" focus on sustainability? It's now mainstream.
Find your steel rod
Rachel describes having a "steel rod" inside her: once she's passionate about something, nothing stops her — not imposter syndrome, not a lack of confidence, not the wobbles every founder has.
She needed it. Between 2000 and 2004, a botched appendix operation left her with chronic fatigue syndrome. She lost her home, her job, her partner and her car, and moved back in with her parents. She calls it the lowest point of her life — lower than her later cancer diagnoses — because she had no hope of getting better.
The illness returned in 2009 and 2010, and for three to four months in each of those years she ran Tiny Box entirely from her bed, preparing quotes while her office team handled the rest. She shared this publicly for the first time on the podcast, having long seen it as a guilty secret. Her advice to anyone in a similar position: get as much help as you can, and don't accept being fobbed off.
Make it about something bigger than you
For anyone struggling with confidence — and Rachel speaks especially to women in business — her advice is to focus on something bigger than yourself. When your attention moves away from you and onto the people you're serving, negative emotions carry less weight. And if you aren't helping people in some way, you don't have a business model anyway.
It's why she describes herself as a servant leader. She and her husband Steve used to joke that they were the waiters, there to help everyone else do their best work.
Build a team that can run without you
Rachel freely admits she's an ideas person, not a details person. She focuses on the big strategic questions — where the business is going and what matters most — and surrounds herself with people who are strong where she isn't.
Today, Tiny Box is run by Vicki, who joined the warehouse ten years ago as a single mum who had been told at school she would never amount to anything. She is more structured and methodical than Rachel, a natural people person, and is doing a phenomenal job. When a previous head of marketing offered to help out in the interim, Rachel simply asked her to come back for good. With the dream team in place, Rachel has stepped back to work on her next big idea.
Know where you want to go
Rachel runs free clinics for women in business, and the most common problem she hears is "I don't know where to go with my business." Her response: where do you want to go? You can't plan a route without a destination.
She meditates most days and keeps a vision board, and suggests building your vision in three columns:
- The experiences you want — not just "a business", but what it gives you, whether that's leading a team of 100, a home you love, or meeting a real need.
- The skill gaps you need to close to get there.
- What you can give back to society along the way.
Strip it back to basics
The biggest myth about reaching £1 million — and £10 million — is that experts always know more than you. Rachel has hired plenty of them, and is happy to be the person in the room who says she has no idea what the jargon means. Strip it back and running a business is much like running a house: pay your bills on time, keep food on the table, listen to your customers — and have a good marketing lead.
Above all, define success on your own terms. For Rachel, it isn't about wealth; it's about achieving whatever matters to you.
What this means for your business
Rachel's story is a reminder that the headline numbers rarely show what happens behind the scenes. Scaling takes the right intention from day one, the right people, a clear vision, and the resilience to keep going when others doubt you — including when you doubt yourself.
If you're ready to build the systems, team and vision to take your business to the next level, an ActionCOACH business coach can help you get there.
Watch the full episode with Rachel Watkyn on the ActionCOACH podcast.
