It's a pop of colour this week with flamboyant, fabulous founder Pauline Paterson from Dr. PAWPAW. Pauline founded her company in 2013 with her husband Johnny, when their daughter developed eczema as a baby. The doctors recommended steroid cream but, being a hairdresser, Pauline knew how harsh chemicals could be — and just how delicate a baby's skin was. Back in Australia, the paw-paw fruit (a.k.a. papaya) is widely used for its soothing qualities. Once she put it on her baby's skin, the eczema cleared up straight away. Seeing the huge gap in the market, she created a clinically proven, multi-purpose, paw-paw-infused vegan balm — and Dr. PAWPAW was born. She's since used the same base formula to create a whole range of products, from hair care to lip tints.

Pauline talks about working with her husband, how she's grown a huge business from scratch with no formal training, and her passion for developing her products. Intrepid and daring, Pauline is all about saying yes to life — climbing mountains, travelling far and wide, and most recently joining 50 entrepreneurs on a hair-raising tuk-tuk drive coast to coast across India to raise money for girls' education.

Describing herself as a maximalist and a compulsive jewellery buyer, Pauline whittled her "bits" down to some fascinating pieces — including a pair of vintage sapphire and silver rings she bought in Egypt on her honeymoon. She also shares the story behind a moonstone ring: how it cracked, and how a woman in a crystal shop told her something evil had come her way — and the crystal had defended her. Down to earth and funny, Pauline also faced most parents' nightmare: losing a beloved cuddly toy and brings a pair of matching toys for each of her kids to show us.

She keeps herself grounded amid an all-consuming business by carving out time for exercise and lives by the mantra "Work hard, play hard, be kind". She firmly believes there's rarely a difficult situation that kindness can't solve.

Dr. PAWPAW is available in most high street stores — see the full range at www.drpawpaw.com. Find Pauline at @mrspawpaw on Instagram and @drpawpaw. @showusyourbitspodcast

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Oh, we do like to be beside the seaside! Oh we do like to be beside the sea... Alice and Josie take to Brighton beach for this week's episode, because who doesn't love the British riviera when the sun is blazing down and everyone is in a good mood? Basking on the stones (and looking for hag stones - the special lucky pebbles with holes in), Josie regales Alice with her recent adventures in the Cannes Film festival where she's been talking about her film, The Bright Side Running Club - a story inspired by Brighton beach. Whilst Alice shares her fascinating with seashells and her gorgeous seashell jewellery collection. Do check out their new Substack page - Show Us Your Bits Podcast for the stories behind the bits. And @showusyourbitspodcast on Instagram

Read the full transcript here.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W4GK5aaiHv68jp1numaY_T91rA-ymZn7BaFxuL-TxF4/edit?usp=sharing

To view our guests' special bits, please follow us on Instagram @showusyourbitspodcast

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In this episode of Show Us Your Bits, Alice and Josie are joined by the brilliant Ciara Crossan, founder of Wedding Dates, for a conversation full of adventure, instinct, motherhood, bold decisions and the magic of saying yes. From backpacking around the world with kilos of sand in her suitcase, to just saying 'yes' and flying across the world to LA for the Grammy Awards with a DJ friend after being offered a free ticket, to building a business as a single mum of identical twin boys, Ciara’s story is packed with colour, courage and those extraordinary little moments that change everything. Her bits are just as full of life. She brings sand collected from beaches across the world, a painting she bought after that unforgettable Grammy adventure as a reminder of the moment she stepped out of her comfort zone and said yes, and a beautiful diamond necklace with three stones: one for Ciara and two for her sons. Bought to mark a huge personal milestone, it has become a daily reminder of what she has built, what she has overcome, and the boys at the heart of it all. There are seagulls in Brighton, a psychic twin dream, a wedding dress marathon, Kilimanjaro, imposter syndrome, instinct, and the kind of stories that make you want to look again at the objects you carry through life.

A gorgeous, funny and inspiring episode about trusting your gut, backing yourself, and the bits that tell the biggest stories.

In this episode-

In this episode of Show Us Your Bits, Ciara Crossan shares the story behind the meaningful objects she has collected through travel, motherhood, business and personal growth.

Ciara is the founder of Wedding Dates, a wedding technology platform based in Cork, Ireland. She started the business in 2008 after growing up in a hotel family and spotting a gap in how couples searched for wedding venues and suppliers by date. Over the years, Wedding Dates has grown into a platform supporting hotels and wedding venues across Ireland and the UK, including its venue CRM system, WedPro.

The conversation explores Ciara’s journey as a female founder, tech entrepreneur and single mother to identical twin boys. She talks about the loneliness of building a business, the importance of women’s networks, finding confidence in rooms where she once felt she did not belong, and the power of trusting your gut.

Ciara’s personal objects, or “bits”, include sand collected from beaches around the world during two years of backpacking, a painting she bought after flying across the world to Los Angeles for the Grammy Awards with a DJ friend after being offered a free ticket, and a beautiful three-diamond Chupi necklace. The painting reminds her of a moment when she stepped out of her comfort zone and said yes to an unexpected adventure.

Her Chupi necklace has three diamonds: one larger diamond representing Ciara, and two smaller diamonds representing her twin sons. She bought it to mark completing her postgraduate masters in international selling in 2019 to 2020, after once swearing she would never return to education. She now wears it almost every day as a reminder of what she is building for herself and her boys.

This episode touches on entrepreneurship, motherhood, women in business, imposter syndrome, travel, friendship, intuition, meaningful jewellery, personal storytelling and the objects that hold our most important memories.

Listen for stories about Brighton seagulls, a psychic dream about twins, running a marathon in a wedding dress, appearing on Dragon’s Den, launching the Irish Wedding Venue Awards, climbing Kilimanjaro with women from the EY Winning Women network, and learning to say yes to life’s unexpected opportunities.

@showusyourbitspodcast

To view our guests' special bits, please follow us on Instagram @showusyourbitspodcast

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.