Goodbye fluff, hello know-how: meet the woman who can teach you to be successful

The event includes talks and panels from leading women across a variety of industries. Social media campaigner Mother Pukka will talk about her campaign for flexible working, Olivia Wollenberg of Livia’s Kitchen is dispensing wisdom about being an entrepreneur. Dr Dani Gordon is the expert speaker on health and wellness and Danielle Newman, co-founder of F =, a website highlighting female entrepreneurs in the UK, will give pointers to setting up and sustaining an online business.

This female-focused event champions businesswomen, right down to the brands supplying the food for the breakfast. For exampl, peanut butter will be supplied by Pip and Nut, founded by Pippa Murray.

Malin tells me that this event differs from many put on for women because they are a bit “fluffy” and hers is more practical. Hence there are no yoga sessions but lots of talks by businesswomen and accountants. “I think the whole conversation about money and women is really taking off,” she enthuses. “Women just don’t invest their money as much as men do.”

She hopes her experiences can help other women. Setting up her own business at the tender age of 22, using £600 of her savings, she admits she knew nothing about the finances and responsibilities of running a business or employing other people.

“You make a lot of mistakes. But there are so many benefits — one of which is financial responsibility if you’re able to live at home, you don’t have kids, you don’t have rent, you don’t have a mortgage. You might have student debts —which I did — but there is a lot less pressure.”

As a result, many of the sessions at She Started It Live will focus on the realities of taking a business from Instagram (and dreams) to real life and also on life as a freelance. “Working for yourself is pretty unsexy most of the time; it’s hard enough dealing with your own mortgage, let alone having other peoples’ on your shoulders”.

After studying English and Drama at Bristol University, Malin got a job at a travel magazine, run coincidentally by a girl who had attended the same school. However Malin was fired after six months, when the editor told her “there isn’t a place for two people to shine at this magazine”.

So Malin walked out of the meeting and decided that she was going to shine anyway. She set up an online listings magazine, About Time, which was “less of a business, more of a way to stand out; blogging was taking off but Instagram wasn’t really a thing yet”. The magazine now has 85,000 users a month and more than 45,000 social media followers — and has spawned an agency which does everything from PR to consultancy.

It hasn’t always been easy though, and over the last five years Malin has seen changes. “When I started, the digital space was booming; it was a good place to make money. Then Instagram took off and it changed the space.”

However she credits the fact that her team is small — just her, a digital editor, a head of events and two editorial assistants — with an agility that has helped her adapt to the changing times. She launched the About Time Academy in February this year as an official portal for the reader events she had already started running. She also hosts a podcast , She Started It, talking to female business leaders and entrepreneurs. “The podcast space has recently gone crazy,” she says.

While Malin tries to keep her political opinions to herself, she doesn’t shy away from making her stance known — especially when it comes to antisemitism.

“I feel like it’s a ‘lest we forget’ situation— we have to remind people that there are problems in the Labour Party that aren’t being dealt with.”

But she ensures that About Time and her own social media are totally apolitical. First, because her brand is essentially about lifestyle and business and she doesn’t present herself as a political pundit. But also because “putting my head above the parapet on Twitter does make me a bit nervous, although I think if the wind really turns I would probably change on that.”

Nonetheless, a recent podcast guest was controversial choice for Malin and she says she still has doubts as to whether she should have given the left-wing, anti-Israel journalist and activist Ash Sarkar a platform.

“I wanted to reach a varied audience and she was the face of Corbynism at 26 years old… I felt it was important to engage in a dialogue with her.

“I said in advance I wouldn’t talk about Israel and it was more about her career trajectory, but the point of the show is to look at people’s experiences and how they got to where they are.

“She came off as so balanced and accessible — which in itself is problematic — but I think it’s important to show that you can have your viewpoints and you can also just talk as colleagues.”

Being Jewish is an important part of Malin’s life, although she admits that while she had a “Jewish upbringing” her education was slightly less so. Going to boarding school, Heathfield in Ascot —“it was an all-girls boarding school, I was the only Jew in the school”—was a formative experience.

“It pushed me into wanting to connect with Judaism a lot more in later life,” she says. She sought out Jews and the Jewish society at university and now describes the friends she made there as more like “childhood friends”.

Her boyfriend— who has also launched his own business although not in the same industry — is Sephardi and “way more of a frummer than I am”, but she describes herself as practicing and is a member of New London Synagogue on Abbey Road.

So far, the She Started It Live event has been four months in the making — and it won’t be complete until all the inspiring women scheduled for the festival have handed out their advice 
in September.

But Malin has no plans to take a break afterwards. About Time Academy has a series of 12 events running from October to the end of the year.

“We’re in a new world of work where so many people are looking to work for themselves but I know so many people who have burnt out because they weren’t prepared for the practical side of things. I’m basically trying to backtrack on everything that was difficult for me, and make it right for the next generation.”

She Started It Live takes place on September 14 in central London