This week I am delighted to be sharing my interview with Samantha Wills and her Legacy Project, the Samantha Wills Foundation. As a successful entrepreneur who has carved her name into the cut-throat fashion industry, I have watched Samantha over the years with both awe and interest. She has tenaciously built her business empire from the ground up. And as any creative entrepreneur will tell you there are days that you just want to give up and go back to the regularity of a 9-to-5 job and be satisfied. But the truth is you can’t. There’s always a burning desire within you to do it on your own terms, in your own way, in your own time and this Legacy Project is designed to help you do just that.

Read on to discover the inspiration behind the foundation, its purpose and the great lessons Samantha has learned in life.

Q&A

What inspired you to set up the Samantha Wills Foundation?

I am beyond grateful for the incredible online community that I am lucky enough to engage with. Being able to reach hundreds of thousands of women through social media on a daily basis is incredible. But I truly believe that with that type of following, comes great responsibility. The majority of our followers are young females and it would be remiss of me to portray my story as one of all fashion industry glamour and no sweat. A series of airbrushed images that imply I just woke up one day with a global company, or that this fashionable life and path is only for the ‘chosen few’. Because that would be  fraudulent.

Because the truth is, for the first 3 years of starting my brand, I hand-made every single piece of jewellery on my dining room table. My hands bled, and I was getting about 3 hours of sleep per night. I have had more doors closed in my face than I care to think about, but that just made me incredibly savvy about finding open windows.

I have sacrificed relationships due to the amount of travel and time required to build a company from the ground up. There have been nights I haven’t been able to sleep given the pressure of what I am responsible for. I have pissed industry people off by speaking my mind and my belief that there is no actual ‘need’ for what we do in the fashion industry, but it is purely an industry based on ‘want’. And as such, it is my belief that we, as established people of industry, need to give back. Giving back with time, knowledge, mentoring, funds, encouragement, inspiration. – Something. Anything.

And that’s what The Samantha Wills Foundation is about – it’s a platform and community for our followers to learn, ask questions, be inspired and connect and know, that if a girl, with no tertiary education, from small town Port Macquarie, Australia, can be based in New York City, meet incredible people doing amazing things on a global stage, all while being paid every single day to do what she loves – then hell, so can you!

Was there an event or circumstance that served as a catalyst for the foundation?

No singular event. People would graciously line up after talks I would give, and they would usually ask me similar questions. I wanted to give each more time, but wasn’t able to – so I thought having a platform that allowed me to answer these questions and give each answer the integrity it deserved would provide some guidance for people who are just starting out on the journey.  

It can feel very isolating in start up. I remember how I felt when I was starting out, you wake up at 3am with anxiety and feel so alone. I wished there was something back then that I could log into at any time of day to read and connect to and know that I was not the only one going through the process.

I guess it’s a matter of ‘Be who you needed when you were younger’.