i made the decision to start a skincare business in my bedroom during the summer of 2019 after realising i didn’t want to go back to university to continue a pharmacy degree. i truly felt at rock bottom in life and felt like giving everything up. somehow this was the moment i decided to start pursuing what i actually wanted to do for the first time in my life. for the next few months, i spent every day researching products, suppliers and building an online store. once i finally launched my website, it would take me one month to get my first order, but i started posting my small business journey on tiktok and eventually i was running out of space in the garage and living room of my parent’s house within the first year. during this time it was just me working on likeskin full time with my sister helping me out after her 9 to 5 finance job. we moved into our first office space in 2021 and i remember feeling so nervous to even send an email requesting a viewing for the office. it felt like a such huge step and i guess i was experiencing imposter syndrome. we would work 16 hour days seven days a week in our first office and although there were many stressful moments, we honestly had the best time. after packing the first 5,000 orders on our own, we hired 2 people to help out during our second year and my sister quit her job to work full time at likeskin during our third year. recently we moved into our first warehouse and have a team of 10 people working at likeskin. it feels surreal to say we will reach our fourth year next month. i still go through the same struggles that i did four years ago but the main difference in the person i was then to who i am now is that i go after what i want regardless of how much self-doubt i have. i would constantly be too scared to do anything i wanted because i felt i wouldn’t be good enough and i was scared i would fail. i still feel this way often and have to remind myself daily that everything doesn’t have to be perfect to start something - the only thing that matters is to start in the first place.