From full-time influencer to founder of a multimillion dollar tech company

Just Grow With It with Natalie Barbu

Natalie Barbu

Education, Business, Entrepreneurship, How To

4.8 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 24 September 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Welcome to the first episode of Let's Grow with It! I went from being a full-time influencer to building a profitable, multi-million dollar SaaS company in under a year — but it didn’t start that way. In this first episode of Just Grow With It, I’m walking you through the full story of how I turned an idea into a real business. From creating content in high school, to launching a failed product, to raising VC funding and relaunching with clarity — this is the real, unfiltered version of the journey.If you’re a founder, creator, or someone sitting on an idea, this one’s for you. We’ll cover the lessons I learned about finding cofounders, making your first hire, building the wrong thing, pivoting quickly, and why being naive might actually be your biggest advantage.This episode is here to break down the growing pains of entrepreneurship — and how sometimes, you just need to grow with it. 00:00 - Introduction and Overview 02:39 - Journey from Influencer to Entrepreneur 03:53 - Squarespace 05:21 - My Early Business Ventures 07:38 - Transition to Full-Time Influencer 09:40 - Starting My Social Media Agency 11:22 - Birth of Rella 17:29 - Building the Team and Raising Capital 20:42 - Pivoting to Rella 2.0 24:38 - Closing Thoughts Sign up for my newsletter: https://thegrowthlist.substack.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Here's the truth about AI. AI is only as powerful as the platform it's built into.
0:05.7	ServiceNow puts AI to work for people across your business, removing friction and frustration
0:11.2	for your employees, supercharging productivity for your developers, providing intelligent
0:16.5	tools for your service agents to make customers happier, all built into a single platform you can
0:21.9	use right now. That's why the world works with ServiceNow. Visit ServiceNow.com
0:27.8	slash UK slash AI for people. Here's the story of how I went from a full-time influencer to building
0:33.9	a multi-million dollar company. I'll even share a story about how we told our investors
0:38.2	we were shutting down the company and how we managed to save it. So how hard can it be? We're going to be transparent about numbers here. And it was a really, really, really hard pill to swallow. But we were at the point where we had to do something or we were just going to die, at least slow down. Welcome to Let's Grow with it. I've always been a little
0:54.8	impulsive. I get an idea and just go with it. But that's the thing about life and business. You're
1:00.2	always growing, learning, and figuring it out as you go. Welcome to Just Grow with it. The podcast where
1:05.8	I share lessons I've learned as a founder and creator, the mistakes, the pivots, and the wins,
1:13.0	and how staying consistent can change everything.
1:15.8	So if you're ready to grow with me, let's get into it.
1:17.2	I am so excited.
1:22.4	This is the very first episode of many, and this is my new show called Let's Grow With It.
1:27.2	As you guys may know, I used to have a podcast named The Real Real Real, and I shut it down at the beginning of this year.
1:28.9	It just wasn't something that fulfilled me anymore. I didn't feel like I was really driving value
1:34.1	that I wanted to be giving to people. I was doing it more out of a chore and coming up with
1:39.6	episodes just because I needed to come up with something versus actually having like a theme or a message.
1:45.8	And I just got lost in uploading without any purpose.
1:49.4	I took a step back this year.
1:50.7	I definitely want to focus more on entrepreneurial content and business content.
	...

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