Rachel McDonald says she won’t let her life-long quest for perfection prevent her from getting things done.

She’s the MD of Manchester-based Fearless Adventures, which was founded by Dominic McGregor, David Newns and Charlie Yates and invests in founders looking to rapidly scaling businesses in the ecommerce space.

As the former CEO of Dentsu North she oversaw a staff of more than 800 and told TechBlast’s latest Going 4 Growth that she ‘reframed’ her outlook after having children.

“I think I was born a perfectionist,” she says. “I like things to be absolutely perfect. I don’t want anyone to see something until it’s ready.

“When I had to reframe my working hours (after becoming a mum) I had to reframe my ability to be constantly available, which naturally was what I loved being.

“I had to get better at sharing, letting go and trusting people, at delegating and then the big one was, and it’s probably quite controversial, was launching things or doing things when they’re not absolutely perfect.

“If you wait for the stars to align, if you wait for everything to be just right, I think you would probably never get there and you would move too slowly.”

‘I won’t apologise for reducing my hours after becoming a mum’

McDonald says working four days a week so she can spend more time with her two sons has made her more focussed in her career.

“I think the reframing that I did around maximising my time making every moment count is really relevant in growth,” she explains.

“Sometimes not everything is perfect but you just have to go for it. If you’ve got an idea, you’ve got something that you think could work, my advice would be to go for it rather than it being 100% perfect otherwise you’ll spend forever pontificating and honing it. I think you learn loads by just getting things out there sometimes.”

Fearless Adventures was only founded in October 2021 and has already made a series of investments.

McDonald says the key criteria for investment is people.

“We’ve found already that people’s businesses change,” she says. “We spend a lot of the due diligence process meeting the people and getting quite a lot of our team to meet the founders and the wider business to make sure we are aligned on both sides.

“I know that’s a really obvious thing to say but I guess it goes a bit deeper than just making sure they know their market and understand their product really well.

“We also look at where they can add more, the model is based on adding tangible value and we are creating a community of founders helping founders across the businesses that we’ve invested in.

“We’ve spoken to over 700 businesses since we started and it’s the ones that we can’t stop talking about in the office that get you really excited. That’s definitely an indicator for us.”

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