Emily Hughes - Founder - Reco HQ

Last Breakfast with Founders of 2024! 🥐 On Thursday I had breakfast with Emily Hughes

Emily is the founder of Jeco Bowl, but most recently Reco HQ - A (coming soon!) sports recovery and wellness spa, offering infrared saunas, contrast therapy, compression therapy & more.

Younger entrepreneurs take more risks, overcome obstacles and have more fun.

We spoke about:

- Starting business really early. Ages 13, Emily started a nail and massage therapy business using vegan and cruelty free products. Early exposure to entrepreneurship is invaluable to anyone's experience. Ironically, younger entrepreneurs take more risks, overcome obstacles and have more fun. Important that we don't lose these despite having more on the line as we grow up.

- Bootstrapping and building a food truck business with Jeco Bowl, to then run full summer festival seasons for months on end. Hard work pays off and is certainly no easy feat. Emily learnt a lot about her customer and how to market an experience that people kept coming back for. 

- Understanding your demographic, their existing habits and the behaviour that will lead them to you. With Reco HQ being an infrastructure business, your real estate build isn't mobile. Using research, data and insights; Emily is building a proposition where there already is demand and potential growth. This helps to de-risk her acquisition efforts.

- Creating a cookie cutter operating model for capital-intensive businesses. Unfortunately, a wellness and sports recovery spa can't be delivered as a no-code MVP. You want to create an operation that delivers, is easy to maintain and swift to replicate. It's an intricate balance of costs, decisions, revenue potential and paths of least resistance with no compromises (ie. when taking into consideration building regulations, planning permissions and health and safety!)

Startups are diverging into founders who seek to innovate with new technologies (such as AI and quantum) and those building traditional businesses from the ground up. I am a fan of both. Having dealt with infrastructure businesses in the past myself, the opportunity still remains for those to look at physical experiences like Reco HQ, enhanced retail like Gymshark on Regent's street as well as the world of trade services.

Can't wait to jump into post-sports recovery sessions next year!