From small town girl to organic retail pioneer, with Renée Elliott, founder of Planet Organic, and co-founder of Beluga Bean

Conversations of Inspiration

Holly Tucker MBE

Education, Society & Culture, Entrepreneurship, Self-improvement, Business, Personal Journals

5.0 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 7 November 2022

⏱️ 71 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Renée Elliott had no real inkling of what her purpose was, until walking down the aisle of a health food store in Boston. Little did she know that this moment would ignite her dream, and lead to her opening the first organic supermarket in the UK in 1995 — Planet Organic.

With no prior experience but a determination to build a business that would make a difference to people's lives, Renée learnt ‘on the job’ when she had an idea to bring organically grown food to the mainstream shopper.

However, Renée’s world was turned upside down when her business partner tried to take ownership of the business in a period where Planet Organic was thriving. Renée opens up about this achingly stressful experience, how she battled through it, and how it has shaped the person she is today.

Renée is a true trailblazer we can all learn from, with an inspirational mindset and shares with Holly the guiding principles she’s learnt on her journey so far. She’s an unapologetically emotional, female founder, continuing her mission to spread positivity and encourage people to live the healthiest, happiest life possible — as demonstrated through her second business, Beluga Bean.

This conversation is a tonic for anyone that needs to hear why, “Everything will always be okay”.

If you would like to work with Renée at Beluga Bean, you can email her at renee@belugabean.com, and if enjoyed this episode, head on over to hear Holly’s talk with Greg Hoffman, Nike’s former CMO, which we think you’ll love too.

Plus for more unfiltered insight, subscribe to Holly’s weekly newsletters on our website, where she shares small business inspiration of all kinds, exclusive nuggets of wisdom from her and her guests, plus offers, creative ideas and topical, 'ungoogleable' business advice.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Wow, my conversation with René Elliott, co-founder of Planet Organic and Baluga Bean has blown me away.
0:08.3	I think you need to definitely take a deep breath, get a lovely cup of herbal tea, put a candle on before you listen to this,
0:16.5	because not only is she a woman who just blazed a trail in the organic food sector,
0:22.4	went up against the huge supermarkets, but she is also someone with deep wisdom, learnt wisdom,
0:30.8	and she has shared things I've never heard before, but utterly resonated to my very core.
0:38.9	She is incredibly special in business, and actually I'd say for us women,
0:44.9	she brings and yields this calmness that actually I think might change my life forever.
0:53.4	It's one to definitely listen to, scribble down notes, read them over and over, and as she would say,
1:02.1	whatever's happening in your life, it's going to be okay. Thank you René.
1:18.8	I'm Holly Tucker, and welcome to Conversations of Inspiration. Back in 2006, I founded not on the
1:26.1	high street from my kitchen table, and since then I've gone on to launch Holly & Co. I'm the UK
1:32.4	ambassador of creative small businesses, and I believe that having a business doing what you love
1:38.0	is the key to a happy fulfilled life. My dream is to help everybody start theirs.
1:44.3	I'm here to offer advice, inspiration, wisdom and encouragement, and in my view, the best way
1:51.4	to do this is by sharing stories. So I've reached out to my favourite small businesses,
1:57.5	entrepreneurs, and those who simply inspire me and ask them to share theirs.
2:03.5	With thanks to Adobe, who've helped bring this podcast to life. Here are my Conversations of Inspiration.
2:14.1	Hi René, it is such a pleasure to introduce you on my podcast Conversations of Inspiration.
2:21.3	Welcome. Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here. It's just you have been, well the listeners will
2:28.0	remember I have this thing called a podcast pot, which is basically little pictures of people that
2:33.9	I cut out, and I stick them on the wall, and you have been such your corners of your piece of
2:40.2	paper all turned because you've been on that wall for so long. I've always wanted to interview you,
	...

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