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About FireFortuna.com
Welcome to FireFortuna.com, the go-to resource for achieving Financial Independence and Early Retirement (FIRE) through entrepreneurship!🚀
My name is Fortuna and I sold my first startup in June 2022 – what a blooming ride! I started my hair supplement brand, It Really Works Vitamins with £7000 of my life savings and I turned it into $1.2 million dollars.
I’m now having fun, working on a new business idea and telling you all about it here on this blog!
From my own personal experience, the greatest way to achieve financial independence is to:
- Start a side hustle,
- Nurture its growth into a full-fledged business, and
- Scale it into a million-dollar enterprise.
Whether you plan to sell your flourishing business or keep it. Either way, FireFortuna.com is dedicated to providing practical strategies that will allow you to do what you love while securing your financial independence.
At FireFortuna.com, I go beyond theoretical advice. Instead, I share my real-life experiences to help you navigate the challenges and celebrate the triumphs that come with entrepreneurship.
This blog is about transforming dreams into reality, side hustles into booming businesses, and financial goals into achievable milestones.
I’d love to stay connected with you. By signing up for my email newsletter, you’ll receive a little gem of financial wisdom every Sunday evening. Delivered right to your inbox, these insights will serve as your weekly dose of inspiration and practical knowledge.
Remember, your journey to financial independence starts here. Let’s grow your side hustle and turn it into a profitable business together. Welcome aboard!
About Fortuna
Well hello, I’m Fortuna, the little lady behind FireFortuna.com Initially, this blog began as a personal hobby following the successful sale of my startup – It Really Works Vitamins (www.itreallyworksvitamins.com).
I founded It Really Works Vitamins in 2015 and after seven solid years of toiling away on my startup, I found myself retired at the age of 36.
Beneath this blog lies a message of empowerment and possibility. It’s a testament to my belief that financial independence and early retirement aren’t just for a privileged few but achievable realities for anyone with passion and determination.
I invite you to join me in this journey and discover the potential of turning a side hustle into a profitable business, and beyond.
Let’s turn dreams into realities together! xx
My Backstory
I wanted to share a little of my backstory. I was a total goody-two-shoes at school and I went on to study Law at University. I graduated with a 2:1 and completed my master’s in Commercial Law. For those four years, I found myself wondering what else was out there for me and I felt compelled to find a career that I love, found meaningful and allowed me to be financially independent. At the same time, I’ve always been interested in health and beauty products but had no concrete idea of how I could turn this into an actual business.
I also became increasingly interested in working as a writer, (YES I Know – I did just say I wanted to be financially independent and writers aren’t known for exactly being millionaires) Once I graduated I worked at a lovely oil and gas company and in the evenings after work I went to the Anna Scher drama school.I absolutely loved it.
I enjoyed writing and performing so much that I was accepted onto a relatively new Masters’s course at Oxford University I loved my time at Oxford and I wrote and directed my first comedy, It’s My Party https://cherwell.org/2014/01/23/interview-fortuna-burke/
(I found this old clipping which unfortunately ripped a little in a house move!)
Once I completed my studies at Oxford University I placed my CV with a headhunter and the following day I was contacted by Guinness World Records – unbelievably I was hired by this incredible brand as a freelance adjudicator – my job was literally to travel the world (in luxury!) judging world record attempts. Can you actually believe that? When I write it down and read it back, I even astound myself.
Working for Guinness World Records was an unbelievable time of my life and one I look back on with stunning memories. After three years, and a proposal from my boyfriend, I realised that I wanted to create a life at home.
As I mentioned, I’ve always loved health and beauty products and over the years I’d amassed so much knowledge on natural skin and haircare. I started investigating how I could start my own brand. If you love the idea of setting up your own supplement brand, check out my full guide here. I also share a little more of the nitty-gritty of my entrepreneurial story here.
I began reading up on how people actually create and scale up a brand. I launched It Really Works Vitamins on the 5th of June (my Grandmother’s birthday) and on the 6th of June we had our first customer! It wasn’t all plain sailing though. I look back on the first few months of building my store and can’t believe how I got through it – it was hard work with very little rewards. And then one night, 16th November 2015 – suddenly everything took off in a very big way – I got the marketing imagery, channels, and timing precisely right and my brand took off like a rocket!
The next seven years were late nights and early mornings, trial and error, stress and euphoria. By June 2022 I’d had enough and was burnt out and ready to finally rest.
I sold my startup using the platform Acquire.com (my video on that whole adventure is below! and now we find each other here today. What a ride eh? I officially retired at 36 – but I’ve kept myself busy, throwing myself into this blog and I can’t wait to share all the things I’ve learnt and am still learning along the way.
Let’s get started, shall we? Xxx
P.S. Every Sunday I share practical advice and a nugget of inspiration straight to your inbox. I keep them sweet and life-changing and you’ll want to sign up!