IN CONVERSATION WITH
Dominika
Founder of BYBI Beauty (Exited), rayro, and @twotiredmums_
Dominika pictured here with her business partner of 10 years, Elsie Rutterford, on her right.
Minarovic
LOCATION
NOW
PREVIOUSLY
A FUN FACT
London
Entrepreneur and Content Creator
Sales in publishing & media
I have lived in Australia, Hong Kong, Leeds and London. My family are also from Slovakia.
Founder of
BYBI Beauty (Exited)
rayro & @twotiredmums_
(Sales Executive, Manager, & Agency Lead)
01
Where did it all start? Take us back to the beginning.
Born from a love of skincare and the wellness movement of the time, Clean Beauty grew into something much bigger: BYBI Beauty.
02
How do you separate a good idea from a good income-generating business idea?
The difference between an audience and paying customers. Testing the market, and honest financial conversations.
I've been an entrepreneur for over a decade now and one thing I'd say straight away is this: the barrier to bringing something to market has never been lower and building an audience has never been easier. But building an audience and getting people to actually pay you are two very different things, and that's the real test of your idea. Is it a good business idea that can make you money, or is it just a good idea?
Test it before you commit to it. Speak to a journalist and see if there's a story there. Send a prototype out to a handful of people and see if they'd genuinely buy it. Talk to 10 people who have the problem you're solving, and ask them straight: would you pay for this? A leap of faith doesn't have to mean blind faith.
That's exactly what Elsie and I did with Clean Beauty. We ran it for about two years alongside full-time jobs, and in that time, we built up a significant community, got a book deal, and tested every way we could think of to actually monetise it: workshops in London, early brand partnerships, all sorts. We weren't just building an audience, we were finding out, piece by piece, whether people would pay. Because until we had a clear way to monetise, I didn't feel like I could give up full-time employment. Running a blog is one thing and creating content is great, but you obviously need income to pay your rent.
By the time we launched BYBI, we already knew we had something real. People kept asking if they could buy the products from us directly, rather than making them at home, and we'd already tested enough through Clean Beauty (the workshops, the book deal, the brand partnerships) to know there was a genuine appetite to pay for what we were building. This wasn't a hunch any more, it was starting to look like a proper goer. That's the moment testing gets you to: not a leap of faith, but a decision built on proof.
Even then, before each handing in our notice, Elsie and I had the honest, practical conversations properly - out loud, not just assumed. What were our savings? How long could we go without being paid? What was our actual path to payment and at what point would we start taking a salary? Did we need funding to make any of that possible? If you've got a business partner, that level of communication and financial transparency isn't a nice-to-have, it's everything. You're moving from a reliable salary into a situation where your business might not be able to pay you at all to begin with and you need to be honest with each other, and yourselves, about exactly how long you can sustain that.
"We'd already tested enough through Clean Beauty to know there was a genuine appetite to pay for what we were building."
Dominika Minarovic
03
What would you say is the most important part to get right at the beginning?
Dominika explains why the problem you're solving should be your North Star.
"The problem has to be your North Star of whatever business or offering you're trying to create."
Dominika Minarovic
04
What do you think of the phrase 'fake it till you make it'?
How even the most successful people are figuring it out as they go, and why knowing your numbers is so important.
I don't love the phrase ‘fake it till you make it.’ It sounds a little disingenuous, as if you're misrepresenting yourself, and I don't think that's really what it means in practice. I'd call it imposter syndrome instead: am I good enough? Should I be in this room? Should I be having this conversation?
The thing I've learnt after speaking to so many people over the last 10 years is that no one really has a clue. Even the people on LinkedIn saying ‘my business has just done this and I'm so successful,’ or ‘I've just had this exit,’ or ‘my business is turning over $100m.’ No one really knows what they're doing; everyone is feeling more or less the same way.
Unless you're on your sixth or seventh business, you're encountering completely new things and new challenges every day. And, the world is moving so fast that what worked a few years ago could be completely irrelevant today anyway.
As an entrepreneur, you keep going until you make a mistake - and even then, it's not really a mistake, it's a learning, as long as you can pick yourself back up and keep moving forward. That's the journey of business: it’s not linear, it’s a complete rollercoaster.
The imposter feeling never fully goes away, but there's one thing that has genuinely helped: knowing my numbers. It's one of the most important skills you can learn and one of the most important things you can do for yourself and your business. It's worth putting in the work, because it gives you the confidence to walk into tricky conversations with your head held high. I can talk about the story, give you the vision, give you the inspiration, I can wing all of that. But numbers is the one area where I make sure I actually know what I'm talking about, because no one can challenge you on that. Once you've got your numbers down, you can pretty much wing everything else.
"Numbers is the one area where I make sure I actually know what I'm talking about, because no one can challenge you on that. Once you've got your numbers down, you can pretty much wing everything else."
Dominika Minarovic
05
Was selling BYBI Beauty everything you'd imagine it would be?
The reality of exit, loss of identity and figuring out what to do next.
"I'd been a founder for eight years. That had been my whole existence, from the minute I woke up to the minute I went to bed. Suddenly I didn't have it any more and that was a grieving process."
Dominika Minarovic
06
Has your definition of success changed?
Dominika on ambition and success on her own terms.
Elsie and I built BYBI Beauty in our early twenties, when my biggest decision most evenings was whether to go to the gym or not. We were working long hours, the business was on a high-growth trajectory and we were making really good money. Now, with two children each, our priorities look completely different. Choosing to build rayro in a way that suits us as mothers was a conscious decision we made after selling BYBI: our next business had to fit this new chapter of our lives. We're not putting ourselves under pressure to double the business every year, or to attract lots of investment, and we choose when to take a salary. Those small shifts have added up to a completely different way of structuring the business.
It would be easy to assume that means we've scaled back our ambition too. We haven't. Just because a woman wants to work flexibly, or wants to be around to put dinner on the table for her children, doesn't make her any less ambitious. It just means knowing what's actually worth the fight. Building something on your own terms gives you the control, the ownership and the confidence to say: I'm in the driving seat and nobody else is making these decisions for me. You get to prioritise as and when you need to and nobody's judging you on your input rather than your output.
You can't do everything. Try, and you end up doing it all badly, burning yourself out, until life stops being fun. It comes down to understanding your own measure of success, because someone else's version doesn't have to be yours. You need to define what success looks like for you and work backwards from there. Maybe it's a six-figure salary, but also being at sports day and finishing at three for the school pickup. Maybe you want a big exit, or you just want to run this business happily for the next twenty years, or simply earn enough to cover the bills. None of those are wrong and none are more ambitious than the others.
If making millions is genuinely what drives you and the money landing in your account is what lights you up, brilliant, go for it. But if what you actually want is quality of life and the ability to have both the ambition and the life, that's success too. If you've got sports day, you go to sports day. That, to me, is the real definition of success: not a number, but the freedom to choose what matters and to build a life around it.
"It comes down to understanding your own measure of success, because someone else's version doesn't have to be yours. You need to define what success looks like for you and work backwards from there."
Dominika Minarovic
LASTING THOUGHT
"I love this quote: be the reason why other women think they can do it too.
Think of the woman five steps behind you, who's in a tough situation and doesn't think she can do it. Be her inspiration, if you're not yet an inspiration for yourself.
I think it's brilliant because it doesn't put anyone on a pedestal. We're all normal women. Some are just a few steps ahead. Let that be your inspiration, not something that makes you feel unconfident. The more we lift each other up, the better we all are."
Dominika Minarovic
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