Having dropped out of university, feeling like her life wasn’t heading in the right direction, Meggan Roxanne took solace in music from rapper Wiz Khalifa. Photoshopping her favourite lyrics onto an image of the man himself and posted in on social media platform, Tumblr and promptly went to sleep. Waking up, she discovered she had accrued thousands of new followers thanks to her post and lo, the Good Quote was formed.

Six years and 20 million followers later, Meggan has grown the company with four new staff members, working on a new app as well as their merchandising store and agency to reach as many people with their quotes as possible.

What does your business do?

We started out as a picture quote platform with the aim of inspiring our audience and growing our brand. Getting testimonials early on in the business, I launched a blog I then opened up our store, selling merchandise, making £36,000 by the end of the month which has helped to finance this venture early on. I met my business partner in 2013 and we decided to rebrand and launch The Good Quote on Instagram in 2014. We have 20 million followers on Instagram and 27 million combined on all social platforms. The point of the whole journey was because I wanted to create a space online for people who were going through what I was going through.

In 2015 we met a potential partner who was willing to loan us £300,000 so that we can create website and an app and their agenda was to pretty much take over the company which we were apprehensive to sign onto. We were in quite a lot of debt so in 2015 we opened up an agency for authors who want awareness or to sell books, we also work with other brands.

We are also in the process of creating an app and we are trying to migrate our followers on to facebook. 2018 will be a very busy year.

When did you know there was a market for this?

Honestly, I think it was pretty much the second day. I thought, wow, these people are willing to spend money on my idea and if I can create a space where people can find peace and inspiration and then also create products that match that idea, then that is a business right? I thought that for about two years and then I met my business partner who just changed the whole game.

Have you been in contact with Wiz Khalifa to thank him for inspiring you?

I haven’t! But his current girlfriend follows us, maybe I should message her!

How and why did you get funding?

We actually fund ourselves. We tried to go for funding back in 2015 with the partner but we were turned off from the experience.

We opened our agency full time and started to collaborate with other people and authors, using that money to grow. Our merch store also has helped us to expand.

We are hiring more staff and we are searching for an office. I hope next year we can start talking about investors.

Describe your business model in brief.

We have a positive platform that curates fresh new content designed to inspire our 20 million followers, we have an agency and we have a merchandising store.

What was your lowest point?

In 2015, we didn’t really do research and we were quite naive. That year I lost maybe four or five stone in weight, I didn’t sleep for months, I didn’t have much money and I lost two family members. There was a lot of stress and that was a hard time for me and for the company.

What was your highest point?

Definitely reaching each milestone of followers, one million, two million, five million, they were great for us. Also getting in touch with some really cool people and some awesome celebrities was great. We also love to see testimonials of how we have affected our audience. That was why I started, I wanted to make an impact and help people so that is really great to see.

What advice would you offer other entrepreneurs?

Definitely research! Spend your time looking at what the market is doing and do your research. We decided to listen to audio books and educate ourselves and just surround ourselves and be immersed in the business world.

Where do you see yourself in five years time?

I will still be doing the Good Quote! I think we are still at stage one out of 50, there is a lot of potential and we want to take it as far as we can. In the next two years, I will be focussing on the app and the website, creating more content and trying to build our brand. If we can get to ten million followers on our app that would be amazing.

We have partnered with GoFundMe recently too, so it’s all exciting. Me, personally, I have a book deal with Penguin until 2019 so it is all really exciting for us right now.

Is it difficult to find space in the social media market?

I have been working in social media for ten years and the social media platforms are great places to create businesses in and it’s just designed to be a great space to work in. You can reach anywhere in the world and I don’t find it hard to use these other platforms at all.

The only downside is that you always run the risk of having your account deleted due to copyright and things like that. You always have to keep up with the rules, but if you can manage that, it is a great opportunity.

What would you be doing if you weren’t an entrepreneur?

I was destined to work in social media. I would have always been working in this space, I love making people feel better about themselves. If not that then I would love to be involved in the music industry or creating events.