The Game Changers
In this award-winning podcast Sue Anstiss talks to trailblazers in women sport. These are the individuals who are knocking down barriers and challenging the status quo for women and girls everywhere. Along with openly sharing their historic careers, what drives them and how they’ve dealt with tough challenges, each episode explores key issues for equality in sport and beyond.
We’re incredibly grateful to Sport England who support The Game Changers through a National Lottery award.
You can find out about all the guests at https://www.fearlesswomen.co.uk/thegamechangers
Fearless Women in Sport
The Game Changers
Mel Bound: Helping inactive women get moving
Our guest today is Mel Bound the founder of This Woman Runs (formerly This Mum Runs), the world's largest digital and in-person running community for women.
Mel is driven by her vision to inspire women everywhere to enjoy the life-changing benefits of being active and in this inspiring episode shares her journey from a chronically asthmatic child to a successful entrepreneur.
We explore how what started as a local women's running group in Bristol in 2014 has evolved into a powerful, global movement for over a quarter of a million women.
Mel talks about her experiences of running health clubs in the fitness industry and how she recognised it’s actually a space that fails many women. We discuss Mel’s transition to working sports events at Alan Pascoe’s Fast Track in the 90’s, a place that provided the foundation for many leaders in sport today.
Mel shares the accidental creation of This Mum Runs, the challenges of building a community, and the impact of COVID on its growth.
We discuss the challenges female founders face in securing funding, the innovative strategies TWR has employed to grow the community-focused business, and the importance of creating supportive environments for female entrepreneurs in sport.
Thank you to Sport England who support The Game Changers Podcast with a National Lottery award.
Find out more about The Game Changers podcast here: https://www.fearlesswomen.co.uk/thegamechangers
Hosted by Sue Anstiss
Produced by Sam Walker, What Goes On Media
A Fearless Women production
Hello and welcome to The Game Changers. I'm Sue Anstiss, and this is the podcast where you'll hear from trailblazing women in sport who are knocking down barriers and challenging the status quo for women and girls everywhere. What can we learn from their journeys as we explore key issues around equality in sport and beyond? I'd like to start with a very big thank you to our partners, Sport England, who support The Game Changers podcast through a National Lottery award. I'm excited to say that in this, the 18th series of The Game Changers, I'm talking to founders and entrepreneurs the women who have set up organisations that help change the landscape for all women and girls in sport.
Sue Anstiss:My guest today is Mel Bound, the founder of This Woman Runs formerly This Mum Runs, the world's largest digital and in-person running community for women, with a vision to inspire women everywhere to enjoy the life-changing benefits of being active. What started as a local women's running group in Bristol in 2014 has evolved into a powerful global movement for women everywhere. So, Mel, I know your business and your home are now based in Bristol, but is that where you grew up?
Mel Bound:I grew up in Reading actually Sue a Berkshire girl as well. Yes, I was there for virtually all of my childhood actually and then left and went to University in Birmingham, moved to London for work for a few years and then landed in Bristol for love actually, initially, but then fell in love with the city and have been here ever since.
Sue Anstiss:And how was you mentioned the Birmingham University? But how was sport a part of your younger life growing up? Was you mentioned that?
Mel Bound:Birmingham University. But how was sport a part of your younger life growing up? Um, so I I my earliest memory of sport actually is and I talk about this, this story, a lot, because I think everyone assumes when you work in sport you grew up always being the sporty kid and actually as a youngster I was. I was chronically asthmatic, and, um, it was in the 70s when, when being asthmatic was not something that was easily managed with you with the inhalers and things that we have these days. So I was the weird wheezy kid at school with allergies and, you know, off school a lot, with various things going on with my lungs.
Mel Bound:Thinking GP who said to my mum the best thing you can do for her is to get her outdoors and being active and running would be brilliant for her.
Mel Bound:And so my mum really took that to heart and before I knew it I was kind of whisked off to the athletics club and every club that she could kind of find to sign me up for. And I also had a PE teacher at my primary school who also kind of took up the challenge and through that I discovered I was actually quite good at running and I went from being the slightly weird wheezy kid to being, oh Mel's, the girl that we want to pick first on the on the school relay team or put on the last leg, you know, for sports day, and suddenly it was. Running was something that gave me an identity from like kind of feeling slightly othered and slightly bullied, running and being the kind of kid that was good at running and the kid, eventually the kid that was sporty, became a really important part of my identity and carried on through my kind of teen years and into university when I chose to study sports, sports science as my degree as well.
Sue Anstiss:How interesting is it that a doctor, as you say, in the 70s, was so forward thinking to recommend activity?
Mel Bound:Yeah, I mean yeah, I mean, it's the original social prescribing, isn't it? It's, it's and it completely changed my life, because I kind of uncovered this thing that you know it's still all these years later gives me so much joy, it's still such a big part of my identity. All through my school years I was the sporty kid you know. I just absolutely loved it, lived and breathed it and it really I'm not even sure it would have happened had it not been for him suggesting that in the first place yeah, yeah, yeah, that's brilliant.
Sue Anstiss:And you mentioned you took a similar path to me, studying sports science at university and then you worked in the fitness industry and in sports marketing, and I know you were a graduate at Holmes Place at a time when the fitness industry was really growing. So what was your experience of that like?
Mel Bound:God it was. Do you know, sue, it was mad because you know, we were the first. First I was with a cohort of graduates, mostly from Birmingham actually, and the reason for that was that our boss at the time had also been at Birmingham before us and he'd joined Holmes Place in Chelsea and had risen through the ranks really quickly as a great guy, nick, and so he had come up with this idea of recruiting graduates from the sports science degree and training them to be managers of clubs. But you know, we're 21 year old graduates, suddenly find ourselves on the King's Road, you know, in a glamorous health club, and you know so. It was a real kind of work hard, play hard environment. But what was amazing was that we were given so much responsibility, so, so quick, like it was real responsibility, it was on the job, learning, and it was kind of a deep learning experience in pretty much every area of the health club business. So we, you know, we'd start on the gym floor as a gym instructor, and then we'd learn about gym management, and then we went on to exercise, to music, and learned to become a fitness exercise music instructor which I hated, I did it and then we were managing the studio timetable and then we kind of progressed through to club management and so there was and it was a very accelerated process as well. You know it was over 18 months, a couple of years, and we were you know, all of us that were part of that cohort were either assistant club managers or club managers of multi-million pound businesses. Looking back at it, it was such an amazing opportunity, completely thrown in at the deep end, but what an amazing way to learn the business.
Mel Bound:One of the things I did take from it, though that I think in a weird way has sort of led me to the work that I do now, is that I really I really disagreed with some of the fundamentals of the fitness industry at the time, which was really about selling as many memberships as possible, getting people in and out the door, actually not even really caring whether people came and used the gym.
Mel Bound:You know you'd sell the membership and if they didn't come, brilliant, because there was more space to sell more memberships and often writing programs for people that you knew weren't really going to help them with their goals, because it was really about not over-utilizing certain machines or getting people in and out of the gym space as quickly as you could. And I also think for women, those gym environments were not always that positive. It was very much about you know, it was very much about kind of body, beautiful, and what you look like and image, and skimpy clothes and all of that which I know now can have such an influence on how women feel about being active. So lots and lots of learnings from that early experience at Homespace that I still use in the work I do today.
Sue Anstiss:I say you almost had a bit of an unsettling feeling around that fitness industry. Took me much longer to get there myself. I worked in it for another 15 or so years. But, um, but is that the reason that you didn't stay in the sector? Because clearly you'd had an amazing kind of starting out and in that role, yeah, and I and I was doing really well and I was offered um.
Mel Bound:I actually studied German with my degree, so I did German and sport and, um, I got offered the opportunity to go over to Switzerland to to start a new club in Switzerland, which is amazing. You know, I was 23 years old, but part of my kind of. I guess this was a personal goal, but. But I always planned to work for two or three years out of university and then go traveling. So you know, I had loads of commission because I was often in a sales role and I saved all my money and I booked a round the world ticket just before I got offered this job in Switzerland.
Mel Bound:And I remember my boss at the time saying to me you're crazy, you're crazy not to take this job, and whatever you paid for your ticket will give you the money back for your ticket because we really want you to take this, this role. But, um, that was my plan and it was a real kind of heart and head decision. That's, that's really what I wanted to do and so so off I went, um and when I came back, I still wanted to work in sport in some way, but I, but I didn't want to be in the fitness industry, as it was then anymore.
Sue Anstiss:And you went on to work in sports events in the early days of Fast Track. So, alan Pascoe's agency, can you paint a picture of the the sports industry at that point? It was 20 years ago, yeah, I mean it got.
Mel Bound:It was so competitive getting jobs in sport back then, wasn't it? There were just, you know, there just weren't that many jobs outside of you know, like being a PE teacher or working in the fitness industry. So I remember seeing the advert for that job and it was an event manager job and I had no event management experience at all, but I really, really wanted the job because there were hundreds of people who applied for that role. Um, I found out subsequently and I kind of winged it a little bit and I remembered, um, I think it was a second interview and I I knew I was probably a bit of a dark horse because I didn't really have direct experience for the role and I made this powerpoint presentation that kind of showed, um, how the skills I had from working in the health and fitness industry were transferable and obviously managed to convince Michelle and Trish, who were interviewing me, that I'd do an okay job.
Mel Bound:But I just remember it being, you know, from the outside you imagine it being really glamorous, don't you?
Mel Bound:But my god, it's hard, it was hard work and, you know, for six months of the year I was away from home, we were staying in hotels, we were traveling, all the time working incredibly long hours. But then you know event day would come around and you know the events we were doing with televised athletics events and the. The buzz for me, the buzz of being in a in a stadium where you had had a role in every single little detail that went into that. You know those, those um spectators experience was just incredible. It was the kind of it was proper pinch me moment stuff, but also incredibly hard work at the same time. But I think also, I think the, the, the kind of relationships and the friendships I don't know if you found this about that, but the relationships and the friendships that you make in that kind of environment just last a lifetime, because you go through those experiences together. You're away from home and traveling a lot together in your formative years. You know all in our mid-20s and you know those friendships last a lifetime, I think.
Sue Anstiss:I was going to mention that actually, because I think Fast Track was an organization where many great people that are in the sports industry today, sort of you know, paid their dues and worked there, and it was lovely to see you recently at Leaders Week catching up with Michelle Dyte, who's now at Wimbledon, and reminiscing about your time working there together. So what do you think? Obviously, you said it's that travelling abroad and being together, but what else was it? Do you think about the culture of that organisation? Because from all I hear, it does feel like it was such a powerful organisation.
Mel Bound:Yeah, it was, and I think at the time when I joined, I think Michelle was employee number four or something like that and I was employee number 15 or something and we were a tiny team doing massive things, even just in terms of capacity. But also, I mean, alan Pascoe is someone. I mean he was such a visionary really in terms of athletics and his vision for what it could be as a as a spectator sport, as an in-stadium spectator event, and I think what we tried to do as a team was really groundbreaking at the time. You know, it was really challenging the way that people experience track and field. You know which historically. You know you'd go to an event and you might miss a world record because there's so much going on that you just might not be looking in the right direction.
Mel Bound:So everything that we did was about thinking about every single touch point and experience of that experience that you have as a participant in the stadium as well as you know how that conveys through the television screen and making that as amazing as it could be and really breaking the rules and challenging the norms of a sport that was quite, quite traditional, norms of a sport that was quite, quite traditional. And I think what Alan gave us was a lot of freedom to do that and a lot of encouragement to push the boundaries and do things differently, and it translated into PAP stadiums and, you know, I think, an era of athletics, where people knew who who athletes were and they'd turn up to events because they were excited about the experience they were going to have. So I think all of us were incredibly proud of the work and it's fed into when I look at what everyone's out there doing now. It's definitely fed into the stuff that we're all out in the world doing now, even 20 years later.
Sue Anstiss:Yeah, how fabulous for him to know the impact he's had on those people in their careers too. So what was your career path then, after those early years and the kind of traveling and the events with fast track through to the creation of what was then, this mum runs so I had a bit of a weird 10 years after fast track and that's, that's because I moved out of London and at the time I did it really naively.
Mel Bound:I just assumed, oh, I'm gonna find I'll still be able to find work in sport outside of London. But at the time that was absolutely not the case and I moved to Bristol and I remember looking for a job in sport and the only job was with World Snooker. No, I don't really, you know, no, no kind of disrespect to sneak about that. I just didn't want to do that, having been, you know, working in athletics and the work we were doing a fast track and um, so I found myself taking a bit, a bit of a kind of move into more general events. I spent the next 10 years working my way up through events, brand experience, um, brand marketing agency world, um, you know, with with some really fantastic clients. You know, we did work on the Manchester Commonwealth Games. We worked with Reebok, we did car launches for major brands, we worked at tech companies you know incredibly interesting stuff.
Mel Bound:And then the kind of latterly the more kind of my guess, my most recent role to what I do now. I was a strategy director for a brand experience agency, which meant I worked at board level with clients that were trying to work out how to spend their event budget. And I think it kind of has led into what I do now, because at my core, I'm deeply interested in people and what makes them tick tick and in creating experiences that have an impact on them in some way. And that's that comes from those fast track days definitely fed into the work I was doing in events, where it's really about kind of understanding where people were at and what a brand or organization wanted to achieve in terms of how they felt, how they behaved, what they did or what they achieved as employees or as customers of their brand. And so I would kind of work really deeply with chief marketing officers and CEOs and boards around really challenging that and thinking about okay, you're a tech company and everyone sees you as a tech company, but you want to be seen as an innovation brand.
Mel Bound:What do we need to do from an event and experiential perspective that's going to enable you to make that shift? And it comes down to people and experiences and the kind of experiences that you deliver, that you deliver, and I guess that feeds into everything that I do. Now. I'm still as curious about that and you know, obviously now we create experiences for women and that's in digital spaces and um, in real life, through the, through the runs that we deliver. For me, the curiosity is still about how do we create something with those experiences, a shift with those experiences, and how people feel and what they do and how they behave and how they interact with each other. So it all sort of makes sense, even though I've kind of went off on a bit of a tangent for 10 years, yeah and what, then, was the inspiration for this?
Mel Bound:mum runs uh, do you know what it was? Um, it was such an accident because I think I've always had it in me to to start my own business. I think I've. I was a, I was a kid. I remember as a kid I um, I'd have all these little kind of hustles going on, like I'd set up little stores in my back garden, charge people to come along and play things. I'd created and had a little cleaning business when I was 13 or something. So I think I've always wanted and hankered after doing my own thing, but I I could never have imagined it would be this and actually when I kind of at the very beginning it was, I didn't start out to set up a business. It was 10 years ago. I was, I had a, my daughter was four, my son was 10 months old.
Mel Bound:As anyone with young kids will will, you know, will say you know, your own time just goes out the window. Anything you might have done before you had kids in terms of being being active becomes massively challenging. Definitely was for me, and added to that, I also I had an accident out running actually with my daughter and I slipped a disc in my back and it led to having surgery and a year of rehab, relearning how to walk and you know, all of that stuff that I just shared with you about my identity being around, moving and running and being active just disappeared. I basically was really depressed and I found being a new mum really challenging and I found it quite lonely, quite isolating. I was a bit of an older mum. I'd kind of go to a lot of the groups and I didn't feel like I had anything in common with the people I was meeting. So I was struggling, I guess, and that was the context for all of this.
Mel Bound:I had a trainer at the time who was doing my rehab and she was actively encouraging me to start running again and I was actively resisting it. And I resisted it for some time because I was terrified that I would injure myself again. But this one day I just remember she'd kind of nudged me again and I'd kind of gone okay, I'll try and find. Maybe I'll try and find someone else locally, another woman who doesn't have any time, that's got young kids, that's juggling a lot of stuff, that's feeling unfit and a bit nervous Maybe I can just find a buddy to go out running with. So I put a post onto. It was just like a mum's buying and selling group sharing a bit of that. And I just said you know, if, if anyone would like to come and meet me for a run, then I'm going to go and stand outside the park on Wednesday night. So that's what I did. I always didn't go.
Mel Bound:It was raining, it was November, it was cold. My husband was literally shoving me out the door and thank god he did, because 75 women turned up to meet me total strangers, women I had never met, women that did not know each other, came out of their houses on a rainy November night to meet a total stranger to go for a run and, aside from being terrifying, it was just that massive light bulb moment of wow, oh my God. And as someone that's really interested in people, you can imagine the light bulb moment. For me that was just like wow, there are all these women that feel exactly the same way and they've turned up. And it's not even really about the run.
Mel Bound:We went for kind of 10 minute run down a busy main road and came back again. We stood outside the park and we talked for a long time, just kind of chatted. It was that real sense of connection that I think that's the thing I remember the most and I think that's the thing that we all wanted to replicate. We wanted to do it again, we wanted to meet the next week, and that's where it all started.
Sue Anstiss:And where were these women from? Were they similar to you? They were mothers, they were.
Mel Bound:You know what was their running experience across that group. So they were. They were all mums, but the interesting thing was the chat that we had was not about kids, it was about everything, but it was almost like we were all crying out just to step outside our lives for a minute, and all the stuff that comes with having young children, and just be us and talk about stuff that has nothing to do with our children. That was kind of the kind of really interesting thing for me. Most of them had done a bit of running before, but all of them had stopped for, you know, for one reason or another, so they weren't women that were regularly running already. They were women that were kind of related to what I'd shared. What was interesting, though, see, was and that was the origin story but I often talk about there's another moment about. It was probably about two months later that I talk about as the real origin story.
Mel Bound:I'd gone home, set up a Facebook group, called it this mum runs never said I'd never run a community, for I didn't know what I was doing, but I set it up and it's, and women started joining it, and more and more women were turning up to runs, and women from other parts of Bristol were saying, oh, will you start some runs for us? I was kind of feeling really proud, um, like we were doing something. You know something really good was. But I remember this kind of night really clearly because I was putting my son to bed and my phone was on the stairs. I just suddenly heard all of these notifications on my phone and I thought God, what's happened? And when I looked at my phone, a woman had posted to say that she joined the community and she'd been following and she really was really enjoying seeing everyone's photos and story you know stuff of us, stories of us going out running. But this was her words about herself. She said I'm a porky, unfit mum of two and I haven't moved off the sofa for the last 20 years. I just sit here drinking wine. And hundreds of women had replied saying me too, that's exactly how I feel.
Mel Bound:And so all of these women had kind of been drawn to the community but didn't feel like they could join in because they weren't currently active and had never really been active.
Mel Bound:And that was the game changer moment for me, because I felt a deep empathy for those women, because I'd been in the same position as them for the last kind of you know two or three years with my injury and as a you know kind of coping with new motherhood, but I'd also had the experience of the absolute joy.
Mel Bound:I'd also had the experience of the absolute joy of being active. And so I guess that was the start of my mission of how do we support women that feel like that and how do we give them the gift of the joyfulness that comes of being active and the joyfulness of the kind of friendships and the connections you make through being active. And that was the start of everything. It's the root of everything that even now, 10 years down the line, that we still do. It's really about understanding those women and how they feel and how hard it is when you've never done it, you've never had it it, and taking that first step and thinking about the experiences that the experience they need to have, whether it's online or whether it's turning up to an in-person run for them to feel welcome and for them to keep coming back.
Sue Anstiss:And that's that's driven absolutely everything that we do and at what point did you then take the opportunity, that decision, to stop either going back to corporate life or taking another job and then fully immerse yourself in that world of running?
Mel Bound:this mum runs so I think I had a bit of a sliding doors moment because I so I had gone. I was still on maternity leave at that point when it when we first started. But I went back to work and I had been while I was on maternity leave, I'd been offered a promotion, but when I got back to work it was taken away. Oh wow, I think a lot of women might relate to that sort of story. And so I kind of got back to work and I just thought why am I doing this? Because I had a job that meant a lot of traveling, meant me being away from my kids a lot of the time, and in that moment I just felt intensely undervalued and obviously, at the same time, I'm doing this work, this kind of it's not even work at this point, but I'm building this thing that's giving me massive. It's massively rewarding and purposeful and making a difference. So I kind of started thinking about I don't know, I really want to be doing this all the time, but I don't know how to make that transition. But I was heading up a team that was working on one client and the client pulled the account from our agency. So our entire team was put at risk of redundancy and inside I was thinking, brilliant, this is perfect timing. So I went through a redundancy process, and this is the sliding doors bit.
Mel Bound:As I was going through the redundancy process, I was up one night feeding my son and I was scrolling on my phone through Facebook, as people do, and an ad came onto my feed for a program called Entrepreneurial Spark, which was a program supported by Nat West, where they you had to apply. It was very dragon's den. You didn't necessarily have to have to have a kind of like a functioning business, but you just had to have an idea for a business and I just, kind of on a whim, applied, you know, one-handed my son in one hand and I applied on my phone. Anyway, I got my redundant and I started. I got a place on Entrepreneurial Spark in pretty much the same week and so the decision was sort of taken for me and I was suddenly immersed in this world of learning how to be an entrepreneur. Anyone that's kind of thinking about joining one of those programs? It's, honestly one of the best things I ever did. It was amazing because it was all about investing in you as an entrepreneurial leader to you know, develop an idea into a successful and sustainable business and I went.
Mel Bound:If I had not done that, I don't think I'd been here where I am now because I had no idea what I was doing. I'd not done that, I don't think I'd been here where I am now because I had no idea what I was doing. I'd worked in businesses. I'd made businesses a lot of money, you know, I'd had big roles, but I had never started a business from a black sheet of paper and done all the things that you have to do to get a business up and running and all the stuff that you you know that I might hate doing but you know, just have to get on with. I'm not sure, without the that kind of support of that program and the network that I built through that program, whether I would have got through the first two or three years. It was completely game-changing.
Mel Bound:How long did it run for it's? The initial program was six months and we were the first cohort. So it was quite interesting because the entrepreneurial spark was sort of building the plane and flying the plane, yeah, at the same time. Um, and it was brilliant because we were kind of the guinea pigs, but we benefited. There was so much we gained from it. So, for example, one of the things um that was in that first cohort that I think didn't continue, doesn't continue now, is that there was a big focus on pitching and learning how to pitch your business effectively, and there was lots of cash prizes for pitching competitions.
Mel Bound:I was rubbish at pitching and it was massively out of my comfort zone. I made myself do it because I wanted to win the cash, and so I won loads of cash, and there was a few of us that at the end of the six months, we then applied and we were able to extend for another six months. So we ended up staying, some of us for two years, and that meant we had office space and we were able to extend for another six months. So we ended up staying, some of us for two years, and that meant we had office space. We had weekly coaching with what they were called enablers, kind of like business coaches, but also, more importantly, we were part of this network of other entrepreneurs that were going on the same journey at the same time, which is amazing. It was such an amazing experience, god.
Mel Bound:I was properly winging it, though I you know. I admit it now, but at the time we had to go to these enablement sessions every week, I just didn't know what I was doing. Like I I just and I didn't have the confidence to say I don't know what I'm doing. And so I'd go into these meetings with sort of all cobbled together information and if I had my time again, that time again I would go in and be much. I would be much more honest and say I don't know how to do this, yeah, and I'd ask the questions and I'd ask for more help, instead of feeling like I had to pretend like I knew everything about everything yeah, how am I?
Sue Anstiss:what an amazing. That's a fantastic backing, isn't it for a, for an initiative like that, to see the impact it had? So, in terms of the community, how has the community grown and evolving over that?
Mel Bound:well, it's almost a decade, isn't it next month, or this month is a decade, yeah, yeah, well, we obviously started with that one run, but we're now a quarter of a million women in 83 towns and cities, mostly in the UK. We've got a couple of communities um outside of the UK and we've got plans to to um to expand outside the UK as well. You know, it's been interesting because I remember hearing um a talk, uh, in my kind of my early days of being an entrepreneur, by the guy that set up pret a manger and he shared a kind of personal anecdote of when they he had one shop, one cafe, and he opened the second pret a Manger and it almost his entire business almost collapsed with the expansion from two. And that was that was my experience as well. So when we went from one community in Bristol, I knew I wanted to create this kind of community model that we could put in any town or city in the world and have confidence that it would be positive experience and that it could grow and be sustainable. But it took a long time to get to the point where we had two communities and then you know, three, four, five, and I'd say that kind of one to two was particularly hard um, because you're kind of taking what's. You know something that I'm personally very close to and people know who I am and it's very wedded to me and my presence and then putting it somewhere where I'm not, and we have to work out how we you know how we can recruit and train those local teams and, you know, have the right systems and processes to know that those digital communities, but also the kind of physical weekly runs, are actually going to operate well.
Mel Bound:And in a weird way, covid helped us with that.
Mel Bound:We actually we went into covid with five communities and we came out with 50, wow, wow.
Mel Bound:Yeah, I know which is nuts, and I think the reason for that is because we had closed down all of our.
Mel Bound:We had to close down all of our, our in-person communities for obvious reasons, so it meant that I could just focus on expanding our digital footprint and so over that period we really nailed our playbook for digital communities and then we expanded really quickly, you know, when we came out of the worst of Covid and we could get back to being together in person, we then kind of had to work out how to do the in-person bit and make sure that was really positive. And now I can say with some confidence that you know we're at Community 83. We know how to recruit the right people, we know how to train those digital community leaders, support them to launch a digital community, support them to build a local team of volunteers and launch local runs, and know that it will have the best possible chance of succeeding. Sometimes it doesn't, but we know that we've got the right conditions now for it to have the best chance of succeeding and the experience for women in those areas to be really, really positive.
Sue Anstiss:And what's your split now, then, in terms of digital and in person? Does each of those um different? 83 entities have digital and in person? Yeah, that's the model.
Mel Bound:That's the model basically. So the digital exists to support and enable the in person, because we're really about bringing women together in person and using digital to do that. So we've been operating on Facebook and we're in the process of moving our entire community to a new home, which is our own app, and that will mean that we can start to connect women around more than just where they live. And that's the kind of next phase of what we want to do is to be because meaningful connection is our.
Mel Bound:That's kind of what we're offering, and we know that women want to connect around more than just where they live. So that might be their life stage. It might be, you know, they've entered an event and they want to connect with other women that are training for that event, or they're interested in nutrition, or they've got an injury and they want to be in a space with other women that are recovering from injuries or illnesses or whatever. And so the purpose of the new app is to bring all of our women, the women that are kind of part of our 83 communities, into one space. They'll still be able to connect with their local communities and find their local runs, but they'll also now be able to connect in a digital way around all those other things as well. So we're just learning about you know how to do that.
Sue Anstiss:And I guess all those things and you've obviously rebranded from this Mum Runs to this Woman Runs this year as well to All Tape Money and Investment. So where have you found that funding? What's that process been like for you over the last decade?
Mel Bound:Oh, wow, it's a loaded question. Yeah, it's a loaded question. Yeah, it's. It's a loaded question because, as we know it's, you know it's, it's that's it's incredibly hard as a female founder to to unlock money. Less than two percent of equity funding goes into female founded businesses, about the same from philanthropic funding as well. So you know, there's not a lot of cash going into female founded businesses and there's some brilliant businesses, and so you're, you know you're kind of in this competitive space, which is which is challenging, you name it. So I've done it so, and the first phase for us was that we, so we crowdfunded, and and I did that it was quite a deliberate move because we're obviously a business that's all about community and we're all about free programs and we're all about volunteers. However, we need money to grow and our mission is massive and we want to grow a community that's global and can reach women all around the world, and that takes cash, and so I took the decision deliberately to create a company around our community, because I knew that we would need, probably diversified, lots of different ways to bring money in, and so, when I set up that company, I crowdfunded to sell 10% of the company to the community and that felt really in terms of my own personal values. That felt really important. I'm giving women in our community skin in the game. I'm giving them the opportunity to financially invest in something that means something to them and hopefully, at some point we'll be able to. You know, they'll get a return on their investment. That was the first thing we did so. When was that? When was that? How long ago was that? Oh my god, ish, 2016, something like that. At the time, we were the, we were, we funded, we crowdfunded on the crowd key platform and at the time, we were the fastest funded female business with the highest percentage of female investors. Wow, wow, which is amazing. Yeah, we, we were like we'd hit our target within about uh, within less than 48 hours, which is amazing. Yeah, I mean, we, we were like we'd hit our target within about uh, within less than 48 hours, which is amazing. Since then, we've done two investment rounds with angel investors, with a uh, local angel investment network called bristol private equity, who were brilliant and, um, kind of real. I'd say they were real kind of early early adopters and believers in our mission, because it certainly with the first round, it was still fairly early days and we were still kind of navigating our commercial model and you know and and we were still only in bristol at the time as well, so the community was relatively small. So they, what they saw was the ambition and my drive to achieve that ambition, I think was probably, was probably what they invested in and we did a second round with them as well, which is brilliant. We've had grant funding. So actually the growth that we achieved over COVID was largely due to funding we received from Sport England and that was all invested in building out our volunteer workforce, growing our volunteer workforce and expanding our free programs.
Mel Bound:And then the two other things to date have been retail. So we have a merchandise business that started because women that were running with us wanted to be able to recognize each other when they were out on runs, and so we started making some t-shirts. I was listening to Kelly's podcast yesterday actually when she said she she ordered 4,000 pairs of pants. It was a similar story. I had like a garage full of t-shirts thinking god, I hate someone buys these t-shirts. I don't know what's going to happen, but I couldn't produce them fast enough like it. It was a surprise how quickly it grew and actually it was one of the ways that we grew as a brand and we started to reach women like we shipped our t-shirts. At one point we shipped, we were shipping to 30 40 countries around the world, so women were coming into the brand and into the community through our merch, which was amazing.
Mel Bound:And then partnerships for us have been really important as well. We've um just entered into a second three-year partnership with vitality, who've been massive champions yeah, they've been amazing, you know. Obviously they invest incredible amounts of money into women's sport and um have been incredibly supportive to us. As you know, the community arm of of that and we kind of we fit really neatly in with what they're doing with parkrun and what they're doing with the Vitality 10K and with what they're doing with women more widely. So that overall, you know, we've got this kind of six year partnership with them, which is amazing and that's a big focus for us to grow actually. So we're currently actively talking to some really cool partners that we're going to bring on board for the next phase of our journey, which we hope will unlock the kind of big commercial engine for us which we think is going to be around coaching and coach education. But that's where I kind of watch this space and news coming soon on that.
Sue Anstiss:Excellent and is that whole? It's quite a disparate. You know, some partnerships, some merch, some different areas and parts. Is that a choice, like looking back, is that the right decision to have that variety of investment? Or actually would you be much happier if you've had somebody come along and said here you go, mel, million quid off you go. I would be much happier.
Mel Bound:See, I would be much happier. It's, um, it's been really challenging because I think with each you know revenue stream whether it's been through retail or grant funding or partnership funding usually what it's given us is a cash runway of a year maybe two years if we're lucky and so you get the money and then you're sprinting as hard as you can to grow before you have to then start the whole process again of reapplying or kind of securing that ongoing funding or thinking about marketing, if it's you know your own revenue streams, and that's incredibly challenging, I think it's. You know, like, like, like Baz was saying, I think, when in in her interview a few days ago, you know when you're doing something that's really pioneering. You know, like, like the Well HQ are doing and like we're doing where you're, you know, effectively creating a new category in a different way of doing things, that kind of magic wand of someone giving you a million quid or three million quid or whatever it is you need to do to really kind of light the touch paper is very challenging.
Mel Bound:It certainly was 10 years ago. Maybe things are starting to change a little bit. Fingers crossed, you know the landscape is very different now, but you have to hustle. Um, so it does mean that this kind of slightly diversified, slightly inefficient model of revenue coming from lots of different places and different, you know, lots of different relationships that you have to manage and that constant eye to cash flow and you know, you know what it's like of right. Okay, where's our runway? What can we invest in? Can I add to the team? Can I invest in marketing? Okay, bring that partnership on board. Now I can do that. It's a little bit like that and that's incredibly challenging and I think also it is that whole.
Sue Anstiss:you've got to invest the time.
Mel Bound:It's the time you've got to spend finding that money that you could be focusing on the business and growing and doing good, but actually it's, you know, those meetings and partnerships and then reporting etc, too, isn't it?
Mel Bound:Yeah, exactly, I think so. Where we're trying to get to, the absolute holy grail for me is to not need money from anyone, that we're completely self-sustainable and that we're generating enough of our own revenue that we can, you know, grow and be self-sustaining. But also we've got investors that we can start to, you know, think about returning, you know, giving them their return on investment as well. We're not far off being at that point the kind of the things that we've done over the last couple of years with the new brand, with the move to the platform, the way that we're now operating our retail business, with some bigger partnerships that we're bringing on board that give us longer, you know, longer. We're nearly at the point where we can really invest the time and energy and resource into the commercial model that we think is going to give us that long-term growth and sustainability. But God, look how long it's taken us. You know there's no overnight success, unfortunately.
Sue Anstiss:I said, many of the women I've spoken to for the series find great support in working with co-founders, but you've been a kind of solo entrepreneur and CEO from the start, so was that a conscious decision for you?
Mel Bound:I don't think it was conscious and then it was just too late to change it. Um, I do so. I think about that a lot because it is lonely, I'm not having anyone to bounce ideas off or null through problems, but what I do have is an amazing board, yeah, and so, um, in Jenny, ruth and Nikki, who are kind of my core board members, they act almost like co-founders. Obviously they're responsible for governance and they do all the board stuff, but the relationship I have with them is very co-foundery in that we kind of we talk through problems and you know, if there's a big decision I'm trying to make, I'll discuss it with them outside of board meetings. And so I have got that support around me. Me even though it's not in a kind of day to day co-founder sitting, sitting alongside me, I guess.
Sue Anstiss:And as you look back now, are there decisions that you would have made differently either in that structure and setup, or any gems of advice that you'd share for other female entrepreneurs that are kind of starting out in this space today?
Mel Bound:I don't. I don't think I could, can regret anything, because any decision I've made along the way, I've made the best decision I can with the information I've got available, with the right level of balance of thinking about it and gut instinct, and I don't think you can regret that. One bit of advice I would give actually is that on the very rare occasions when I've acted against my gut instinct, I have always regretted it, right, yeah. So when I'm asked about advice, I will often say I trust your instincts, listen to them and trust them, because they are usually right. It's actually quite hard to do that when you're starting out, because you kind of think well, I don't really know what I'm doing and therefore I'm going to take all of this advice and listen to all these people's opinions, and then we're going to ignore what I actually think because I have less experience than everyone else around me. But actually you know really what it is that you need to do, I think.
Sue Anstiss:How important has it been for you to see other women having success in this space. I mean, you said there's so few women that are getting that investment, but have you had role models and women that have inspired you to feel you can do it too in this space?
Mel Bound:My role models are God? That's such a good question. I think it has felt quite a lonely space. If I'm honest, and it's interesting, I hadn't really thought about that until very recently and I was at the Google event Raise, and I think it's one of the first events I've been to where there were women from all around the sports sector, whether that was broadcasting or brands or governing bodies, and actually a few founders as well, and it was the first time I'd really thought, wow, there's just not many of us. And that would be one of the things actually just thinking about, if anyone's listening, thinking how can we help female founders? And that visibility thing is so important.
Mel Bound:If you're someone that's putting on an event and they're looking for speakers, have a think about female founders and entrepreneurs and creating, creating some content around women that are out there doing the sort of thing that faz and I and kelly and others are are trying to do, because you can't be what you can't see, and so and there might be, you know, opportunities to connect and network, for you know us working in these kind of fairly lonely spaces just don't realize. Are there so, god, role models? Sorry, I kind of danced around that question, didn't I? The reality is, I think in sport it like true founders there just aren't many. Yeah, there just aren't many. And those of us that are in the space are trailblazing, like we're pioneering, we're trying and we're and we're kind of head down building, like thinking, dealing with problems, pivoting, you know, hustling, doing all the, all the things, and so it's. It's sometimes hard to look up and look around and think, okay, how can I connect with the other women who are also doing this?
Mel Bound:it's one of the goals I've set myself this year, actually with you know, just to get out and about a bit more yeah you know I want to connect with other women doing this stuff and you know I think we can take a lot of strength in in in doing that and sharing the challenges and celebrating each other and lifting each other up.
Sue Anstiss:You know the way that women always do so brilliantly so, in terms of the work you're doing today, what do you think are the key barriers for women coming out and running, whether either coming back to running or even getting started in running in the first place? Well, do you know?
Mel Bound:what I think the first thing to say is there are millions of women that are in that boat. So England Athletics did this piece of research last year and they found that there this is just in england that there are around six and a half million women that are either lapsed runners or they're not. They're kind of running very infrequently. Six and a half million and 70 of those women would like to run but they just they don't feel like the kind of experience of running is quite right for them where they're at. I think when I try to unpick that as someone that's interested in how people behave and how to change it, the conclusion I came to is that the DNA if you think about the DNA of running, it's all about performance and how fast and leaderboards and even you know, even parkrun is about a time over a distance and all of those things are such a massive barrier to women who are not currently running because they feel like they're going to be too slow, they feel like they're not going to fit in, they don't know what to wear, they feel like they're going to be laughed it's all of those kind of fear of judgment things that tap into it or they don't know what to wear. They feel like they're going to be laughed. It's all of those kind of fear of judgment things that tap into it. Or they don't know where to start, or they don't know what trainers to buy, or they don't know what sports bras to buy, where. It's all those kind of I don't knows. And so I guess, in really simple terms, what, what we try to do with all of the experiences we create whether it's in digital spaces or at our runs or in coaching programs is design experiences from the perspective with a female lens. So thinking about everything from, if you turn up to a run, people saying hello to you and actually welcoming you and recognizing that you're new and connecting you with someone that you've maybe never met before, and explaining what's going to happen.
Mel Bound:None of our runs are, or our coaching programs are, based on pace or distance. They're all based on the number of minutes moving, whether it's 30 minutes or 45 minutes or 60 minutes, which sounds ridiculously simple. But just that small change completely democratizes running, because we can say with some confidence if you turn up and you run with us, we're going to run for 30 minutes. It doesn't matter how fast you're going, because our volunteers will manage. You know very different kind of abilities and paces. We'll keep you all together, you'll all get what you want from it and you'll all achieve 30 minutes. We can say that with absolute confidence Once you kind of understand what the blocker is.
Mel Bound:For me, anyway, it's really easy to then design experiences that start peeling those away. And sometimes it's really simple things like how women are welcomed. And that comes down to how we train our volunteers so that our volunteers understand how women might feel when they turn up and they do the right things to make sure they feel welcome. It's how we, you know, structure those run programs and those are those coach programs so that they don't feel so performancey, like they're going to fail, and everyone's set up to succeed at whatever level they're at.
Mel Bound:And then the community bit is really important because, as you know in the work that you do see, if you create this community environment where the members are supporting each other and there's those incredible connections where someone says, oh, I've, I haven't been out, I haven't done any running before, I don't know where to start, and for me, as a you know the owner of the community, I don't even need to say anything because I know that other members of the community will leap in and they'll say I felt like that, this is what I did.
Mel Bound:Have you tried this program, or you could come along to this run, or I'll come and meet you and we'll go for coffee afterwards, and all of that magic that happens within a community space. When you combine those things you suddenly help, women start to you know the kind of barriers that they feel start to fall away. They feel brave enough to give it a go and then, once they step in and give it a try, they're nurtured by the community to keep going and before they know it it's become something that's just a regular part of their life.
Sue Anstiss:I love the, that kind of lack of competitive nature. I do feel I feel this generally across a lot of sport that we've almost moved away from where sport was originally of community and fun and the things you said at the very beginning giving women the joy, the gift, the community, that, that element of it that we're so much on, either with girls a pathway to you know, the england pathway and where you're going to get to performance wise or for women entering competitions and times and distances, and actually where did the just the fun of movement and moving your body and being with friends go?
Mel Bound:well and it's interesting actually, because this is one of the drivers for our rebrand was um. So we moved from mums to women. But one of the reasons we wanted to do that is because we wanted to be able to go downstream and start working with girls as well. Yeah, because we'd find I felt kind of personally quite frustrated that we'd you know, we'd work, be working with women who were in theirs. Maybe that would turn up to a session and say, oh, I've literally done nothing since PE, and so I kind of look at it and think, well, okay, so how do we stop that happening, so that we can work with teenage girls, which we know is a massive drop-off point, and instill this sense of joy and friendship and connection and community, so that it just becomes part of their life, all the way through their life? We don't have these kind of decades of inactivity.
Mel Bound:And we did a piece of work with Bedford University, went into some school in Bedford and ran some workshops with year seven and year eight girls so they would have been 12, 13, 12 and 13.
Mel Bound:And we talked to them about their lives and we talked to them about their lives and we talked to them about, you know, being physically active, about school, pe, about the things that they do, um, to be active, things that get in the way, and also we talked to them a little bit about walk run programs and what they you know what to get from them, and the deeply depressing thing that came out of it for me was that girls are overwhelmed and stressed with all the things in their life, with school, with caring responsibilities, with cultural responsibilities, social media and all of the stuff they have going on.
Mel Bound:They feel absolutely overwhelmed, in the same way we do, as women juggling a million things. They're 12 and 13. And so what they desperately want is headspace. So when they're being offered, come and play competitive netball after school and you may or may not be picked and you have to come to training every week and it's going to be about who performs best. That is an absolute no. What they want is permission to take some time for themselves and, yes, me, but in a very low, non-competitive, non-performance way, in exactly the way that women in their 40s want.
Sue Anstiss:Yeah and it's almost like I've started doing more of walking netball. But the walking netball is just rock up once a week have a laugh. Some of them go to tournaments. I don't do the tournament bit, I just want to enjoy it and play and be with other people. And it's almost like bringing that to a younger age group to have those same sensations of overcoming loneliness, feeling a part of something, having fun and moving, isn't it? Yeah?
Mel Bound:watch this space on that, see, because we um I guess it's not core to what we do, but it's a very personal mission for me is yeah, how can we take the programs and the things that we've created for women? How can we take those and make them relevant to, and available to, teenage girls?
Sue Anstiss:that's something I kind of very much want us to do in the future, and I know that safety for women out running on the streets, especially the. The times have changed now it's getting darker, isn't it so that safety against sexual harassment when women are out running is a huge issue? You co -founded the we Will campaign that aims to end the sexual harassment of women runners, so tell us a little bit more about that and, I guess, the impact that it is having.
Mel Bound:Yeah, I guess the campaign came off the back of some insight that Women's Running Magazine did, which found that 68 percent of women had been harassed while out running. I mean, that is just absolutely horrendous, isn't it? And I've certainly experienced it myself, and I know many of the women in our, our community have, you know, not just name calling or cat calling, but have been physically, physically assaulted as well out running, and it's another barrier in the way of women actually getting out the door. You know, I know, you know that when the, when the clocks go back and it's dark in the evenings, all of a sudden, you know, well, we see a lot more women turning up to our group runs at this time of year because women are not able, or don't feel able, to go out and do those sessions on their own and they want the safety of being in a group and it's something that we, I feel quite strongly about and it's kind of one of those perennial topics, isn't it, that comes up and we talk about women's safety or something. You know, there'll be something major in the news and there'll be some media interest.
Mel Bound:But what we did, what we wanted to do with them with the we will campaign was try to basically get some ownership at a very individual level for men and women to change or pledge a change in, even if it's at quite a micro level. So the the campaign was around this idea of asking individuals to make a personal commitment to do one thing that might kind of ladder up to creating some change. That pledge might be I'll call out, you know, if I see someone catcalling, I'll, I'll um, I'll call it out. If I, one of my mates, says something and it's and it's sexist, I will call it out. I'll have a conversation with my son about the correct way to interact around, you know, around women. And there were a million things that people pledged. You know it was. It was really quite a powerful campaign that you know.
Mel Bound:Unfortunately we didn't have the budget to turn into. It's one of those. It had the power to be a very, very powerful campaign for change. We just didn't have the budget to do it. But the intention behind it was to kind of move beyond the blaming men, the not all men brigade and the not all men brigade, responding to a collective responsibility and saying these are the things that we will do individually to try and change things, but understanding that this is such a deep rooted issue. You know, starting with young boys in primary school, the thing, the ways that they talk to girls in the playground, all the way through to white bad man driving down the street thinking it's okay to shout things out the window when they're running down the street. There are layers and layers and layers here that kind of make change quite difficult.
Sue Anstiss:And I guess just in closing, we obviously talked about all that you do. I haven't even mentioned you. You're raising a family as well, too. The work that you do. You sit on a number of boards as non-executive. You work with sport, england and others. Anyway, you do so much so where do you find time for yourself? And, you know, are you still running? Where is your happy place to, uh, refresh away from it?
Mel Bound:all um, so I am still running. God wouldn't it be weird if I said no, I'm not running is my, is my kind of happy place still, interestingly. So two things I've got. I, yes, I've got two young children. So when I started the business, my kids were four and ten months old, which actually, with hindsight, was absolutely bonkers. But also over these 10 years I've gone through the menopause and so it's the kind of those, the double whammy of juggling life as a mum and trying to run a business with you know that major life change of everything that comes with you know losing, you know, vital hormones in your body. So all of that has been going on and that has definitely been challenging at times, um and um, and that's why, for me, kind of maintaining that space to go out for a run is it's more important than ever and it's one, it's my one non-negotiable, like it's three or four times a week I will be out and I'll feel a million times lighter when I return.
Mel Bound:I've also found, as I've got older, I've basically got slower, which was quite hard to come to terms with, and so I found myself entering longer and longer and longer events which I always swore I would never do so. I've just entered an event, a 50 mile ultra wow, which, I will confess, I thought was 50k when I ended. It's 50 miles. But I think the thing is I don't care about how long it takes me, I genuinely do not care. I'm non-competitive. For me, it's about just going out, getting to the start line, not being injured. Getting to the start line feeling strong, enjoying it, hopefully doing it with a friend. I'm a social runner like I like running with other people and it's the thing that keeps me sane.
Sue Anstiss:If you'd like to hear from more trailblazing women in sport, like Mel. There are over 200 episodes of the Game Changers that are all free to listen to on all podcast platforms or from our website at fearlesswomencouk. Along with incredible entrepreneurs like Mel, my other guests have included elite athletes, coaches, broadcasters, scientists, journalists and CEOs all women who are changing the game in sport. As well as listening to all the podcasts on the website, you can also find out more about the women's sport collective, a free, inclusive community for all women working in sport. We now have over eight and a half thousand members across the world, so please do come and join us.
Sue Anstiss:The whole of my book game on the unstoppable rise of Women's Sport is also free to listen to on the podcast. Every episode of Series 13 is me reading a chapter of the book. Thank you once again to Sport England for backing the Game Changers and the Women's Sport Collective through the National Lottery Award, and also thanks to Sam Walker, who does such a fantastic job as our executive producer. Thank you to my lovely colleague at Fearless Women, kate Hannan. You can find the Game Changers on all podcast platforms, so please do follow us now and ensure you won't miss out on future episodes. Come and say hello on social media, where you'll find me on LinkedIn and Instagram at Sue Anstis the Game Changers fearless women in sport.
