What’s next for the self-made founder behind a $50 million silk business

Olivia Carr founded Shhh Silk in 2015 after losing her silk pillowcase on a trip to New York and almost a decade later the self made founder and chief giving officer talks leadership, philanthropy and what is next for the e-commerce business.

Inside Retail: What has your career journey been like, and how has it shaped your approach to leadership?

Olivia Carr: I’ve had an interesting career. From the age of 9, I studied professional acting. All I wanted to do in life was move to Hollywood and become the next Nicole Kidman.

I left school at 16 to study acting professionally. Ironically, at 19, the same week that I received my acceptance letter into NIDA [the National Institute of Dramatic Arts], in October 2000, I found out I was pregnant. That was my first sliding door moment in my career and I chose to be a single mum, which was challenging.

Next was real estate, which was gruelling and tough. I had no qualifications and had to find a job that I thought would pay the bills. At 24, I started my first business and knew nothing about how to navigate that until I burnt out with mental exhaustion and fatigue from travelling and having two kids.

Prior to Shhh, I was general manager at Pacific Brands, which has now been called Hanes for many years, then I knew it was time to jump. I’m a terrible employee, I’m not easy to manage and I have too many ideas. I like to execute things really fast and that just doesn’t go down well in corporate. I backed myself and started Shhh Silk. It took three months from idea to execution and launching the website. See, I move quickly.

Fast-forward with a lot of hard work, a last minute trip to LA where I personally delivered Shhh Silk pillowcases to Kim Kardashian, without invitation, and the brand is in a position where we can do incredible things for the community and continue to make beautiful products. 

IR: What are some of your career highlights and defining moments? 

OC: I did some time at the National Breast Cancer Foundation, where I fell in love with philanthropy and purpose. It allowed me to see a totally different world that I hadn’t come from and connected me to so many good humans.

It was a really beautiful, career-defining moment for me. Years later, when I started Shhh, I knew from day one, irrespective of how many pillowcases or PJs I could sell, fundamentally, there had to be a bigger purpose and we had to do good and give back in any way we could.

Inside Retail: What does a day in the life of Olivia Carr look like?

OC: It’s changed a lot. I’m currently in a few different roles. I’m touring my first book, Self-Made, and I’ve started a retail consulting business, Self-Made Academy, and am writing a second book, Self-Love.

I’m here in Sydney tonight for the National Online Retail Association’s (NORA) 10th birthday, to be part of the wider ecosystem, which is all about connecting with people.

It’s pretty simple, I try to go for a beach walk, I live in Melbourne, so I don’t mind if it’s raining. I have a chai, I don’t drink coffee. Then I usually like to connect with my son, he’s in VCE. Then he’ll go to school and I might workout before I head to the office or start working remotely. I have the saying, ‘win the morning, win the day’.

IR: What are some of the challenges you’ve faced in your career and how have you dealt with them?

OC: It’s not a surprise to most people that follow me on LinkedIn that I struggle with mental health. I’ve been on that journey since 2017, after experiencing burnout from starting the business. My morning routine, really, to be honest, is more about enriching my mental wellbeing. 

IR: What do you do in your role at Shhh Silk?

OC: My days in the office are really varied. I spend a lot of time still doing things with our wholesale business and working on hotel collections and building that side out.

Connecting with the team is important, we have become family in addition to the family in a traditional sense, that work with me, and we do everything in house.

I work smarter, not harder now. You can get a lot done in a small amount of time if you’re doing the right things.

IR: What do you do to switch off when you finish work? Do you have any hobbies?

OC: If I haven’t done my morning routine, I’ll try TO do it in the evening. I’m a big reader, I don’t watch TV and I obsess over books. I’m currently re-reading my own book Self-Made and I listen to a lot of podcasts. I do a lot of mind training. 

Now I’m saying this aloud, I live a very simple and fulfilling life to be honest. I don’t need much, just connection with the humans whom I love. I need a bit of sun, water is good. I’m like a plant, stick me in the sun, give me some water and I’m good. Simple and so joyful.

IR: What excites you about Shhh? What are you doing differently than other brands in the beauty and e-commerce space?

OC: A lot! We have a ‘random acts of kindness’ fund that has an allocated spend each month that the team and I can give away as we see fit. It can be as small as paying forward a morning coffee for a stranger, someone’s electric bill or, for example, one of our employees had just started and had no furniture and limited means so we kitted out her entire place.

The office culture we have created is beautiful, supportive and flexible. Most of our employees get into the office, to some degree whenever they want. I don’t manage people to their hours, they are self-managed.

IR: What is happening at Shhh Silk? Can you share the future plans for the business?

OC: Shhh is further expanding the hotel wholesale supply aspect of the business and we’re about to launch some pretty big international hotel partnerships.

Our new sustainability, made-to-order model has been back in operation for a while now and is going really well. It’s a first of its kind for Australian retail.

I’m at a stage where I’ve run Shhh Silk for eight-and-a-half years now and I am having a lot of discussions with potential buyers about selling the business.

IR: What was your motivation for starting Shhh Silk? And what wisdom can you impart from lessons you have learned as an e-commerce business founder and Chief Giving Officer?

OC: I was just talking on the plane to someone about this. When I started the business, one of the biggest motivators was to be a parent who could pick my son up from school. I had my daughter when I was 19 and that came with a lot of challenges and adversity. One thing that I missed out on entirely was the school drop-off and pick-up. It was never about building a $50 million business, it was to build something so that I could be the mum at school pick-up, to me that was my first measure of success. 

If I think about my ego when I first started, versus where it is now, I would have been working ridiculous hours and, truthfully, trying to grow the brand so that others labelled it as successful. I placed a huge amount of pressure on myself as a new e-commerce brand to kill it, go fast, get to a million followers and I really got caught up in that with my ego. Our Shhh mantra is doing good is in our DNA and I was not doing good to myself. Instead, I was overworking and building based on ego. Thankfully that is not where I’m at now.

None of that brought me joy and comparison is crippling. I’m not thankful I burnt out, but I don’t regret that it happened. It taught me to re-evaluate my life and ask, ‘Well, actually, what is it that lights me up? Why am I running this business?’

Know your why and check your ego.

This story first appeared in the February 2024 issue of Inside Retail Australia magazine.

The post What’s next for the self-made founder behind a $50 million silk business appeared first on Inside Retail Australia.