Jo Stroud, Founder of Mantra Jewellery: Don’t make assumptions – look for evidence.

Wednesday, 10 April 2019

Jo Stroud established Fabulous, her retail jewellery business, in 2005, curating collections of inspirational jewellery from designers all over the world. Jo was twice voted into the Hot 100 of the jewellery industry.

Ten years later, Jo decided it was time to create her own brand of jewellery.

Jo had always been a firm believer in the power of words, seeing the impact words have on your mind-set, so she brought together her love of words with the beauty of jewellery, to create Mantra Jewellery.

Mantra won ‘Brand to Watch’ at the UK Jewellery Awards, and Jo herself was awarded NatWest everywoman ‘Businesswoman of the Year’ in 2017.

Jo's Top Tips 

• Ask for help. As entrepreneurs, we all seem to think we need to know everything ourselves, and must find things out for ourselves by our own experience. But there are many people who have trodden the same road before us, and experienced many of the same problems. I have always found people to be very willing to share their advice, experiences and contacts - which can give you a short-cut to your own solution.

• Embrace the true meaning of FEAR as ‘false evidence, appearing real’. It is so easy to be worried about something happening in business simply because you have falsely imagined a scenario that simply isn’t true. Don’t make assumptions – look for evidence.

• You learn by doing – trial and error – not by sitting in your office thinking. Try something, learn from it, move forwards.