I'm Giselle Boxer, I'm the founder of East Healing, and we sell traditional Chinese medicine products. Our hero products are ear seeds, which we're best known for. They're an acupressure product that applies pressure onto different acupressure points on the ear to help with things like anxiety, sleep, pain, etc.
The ear seeds basically apply pressure onto nerve endings, which then influence the nervous system. So they communicate with the brain and body to provide support. Most of our customers use them for anxiety, headaches, and menopause symptoms as well.
There are five on my ear currently for focus and memory, which I'll use before a big work meeting or on a busy day if I've got a bit of brain fog. Then there are other points for things like digestion.
So it just depends on what you want to use them for as to where you place the product.It's like needle-free acupuncture, so it's also really good for people that don't like needles. They look nice too; it just looks like jewellery.
I'm the only full-time employee, which I guess is quite a different way to run a business these days. I have a lot of freelancers and agencies I outsource to, but I'm the sole full-time employee in the business.
I went through my own health journey with a condition called ME, and Western medicine tells you that you can't recover from the condition. But Chinese medicine really, really helped me recover fully, and from there I developed a huge passion for Chinese medicine and all the different tools and tricks and things it can provide to support your health.
While I was on maternity leave, nine months after my first daughter was born, I realised I didn't want to go back to my previous job in advertising.
I was racking my brain for different business ideas, knew I wanted to do something in the wellness space because I'd become obsessed with wellness through my own health journey, and started from there really.
I remembered using these things called ear seeds, which I thought were so weird at the time. I started researching into them and realised there were really beautiful versions of ear seeds available from Japan, rather than the traditional style we used in China.
I just started Googling suppliers for packaging, suppliers for ear seeds, and went from there.
The biggest challenge that comes to mind, to be honest, is balancing motherhood and owning a business. It's just insane amounts of juggle.
I got a lot of family support, had a good network around me, and I also started using AI and automation, which has really helped. I've managed to get my business to a point where it just runs in the background.
I've got a really good meta ads team, email team, great accountants. Everyone's working in the background so I can focus on what I'm good at: new product development and social media content.
We're five years in now, and I feel like we're at a point where sales are really good day to day, and there's less pressure to sit at my computer until midnight scrambling after sales.
My background is in social media advertising, so I'm lucky I already had those skills. Initially I built everything through organic socials, and then when I went on Dragon's Den, we started looking into paid, and the revenue's just gone through the roof since then.
Dragon’s Den was great. I loved it and I don't regret any of it.
The process to actually go in and pitch was quite long-winded. It took a couple of months of so much due diligence, which was interesting at the time because I didn't have a proper accountant. They were asking for financials and a business plan and all of that, and I was just winging it.
When I actually went in to pitch, it was a little bit nerve-wracking, but because I'm so passionate about wellness and the product, and I was the most knowledgeable person in the room about the product, it didn't feel that scary.
I got six offers on Dragon's Den, which is a record-breaking amount of offers - no other entrepreneur has ever had six offers, I don't think. That's because there's usually five dragons, but there was a guest dragon, Gary Neville, on the show when I was there.
They all offered, and I accepted investment from Steven Bartlett, so he's my investor.
He loves health and wellness, he's got investments in loads of other wellness businesses, plus he's built his career in social media. So for me it was a no-brainer.
We actually achieved the highest number of sales post-Dragon's Den of any other business that's been on the show. I think mostly because I did well and people related to my health journey and the products and everything.
But then there was quite a bit of negative press after the episode went out, because I think anyone who goes out there and promotes alternative medicine unfortunately gets questioned quite a lot on how it works, and whether it works, and whether it's a real thing.
We've got thousands of testimonials of how the products have helped people. This past weekend I was working at a festival, and it was amazing because people were coming up to me face to face and telling me the impact the products have had on their lives and health. And then there are hundreds of clinical studies as well.
The thing is, with Chinese medicine and alternative medicine, it doesn't have the millions and millions of pounds of backed research behind it that pharmaceutical and Western medicine has. So it's a bit of a tricky industry to be working in, but I think people are moving more and more towards alternative medicine now, and they're more open to Chinese medicine as well.
It's not the quackery or the snake oil that it was once portrayed as. People are actually understanding it more and appreciating it more, which is good.
I've ear seeded quite a lot of celebrities, which I've found amazing and really enjoyed. I've ear seeded the Beckhams, which was really cool. They went on to buy my products, which has been pretty crazy, knowing that they're in the Beckham household. I'm still hoping that Victoria has actually used them.
I was recently flown out to LA to ear seed a guy called Jay Shetty, a spiritual guru, probably one of the biggest names in spirituality and wellness at the moment. So that was really cool.
But I think mostly I'm just proud that I've managed to build this fairly alone. I've had help from freelancers and agencies and stuff like that, but I haven't really ever had any mentors or anything, and I've built it largely on my own.
This year we're forecasting about £2million in revenue, which in my head I'm like, wow… I'm literally sat at home in my office doing this, without being in a big fancy office in London with all these people around me. £2million is quite a lot of money!
My favourite part of the job would be the social media stuff - I love that side of it. I'm moving more into panel talks and speaking gigs as well. There's my health journey, which people are really interested in, but that's not what I'm all about. I'm not just about recovering from an illness and setting up a business.
I have actually achieved quite a successful business, so I'm wanting to talk a bit more about how I set that up. I only started the brand with five grand of my own savings, and didn't have any further investment apart from the fifty grand from Steven.
Completely bootstrapped until then, and for the first two years it was totally organic.
As a business owner, especially when you get to this stage and you're trying to scale, it's really important to delegate all the stuff that you're bad at, and I'm fully aware finance is not my thing.
I used to do the bookkeeping in the early days, and the profit and loss and everything like that, and I look back and think it was definitely not right.
It's just been really great to outsource it to the experts, and for Gravitate to just do it in the background while I'm focusing on other stuff. I've also found that's why I haven't employed loads of people in-house. I don't love the hand-holding and the micromanaging. I just don't have time for it, with running the business, having two kids, and travelling all the time. I don't want to be breathing down people's necks, being like, "why is this not done, why is this not done?"
That's why I think Gravitate have been really good, because they've just done it in the background, and it's been running really smoothly over the last few years.
We love working with Giselle and helping her grow her business. Charlotte Turner and the wider Gravitate team work in close partnership with clients to help them know their numbers and boost financial resilience.
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Gravitate Client Stories are shared with our clients' permission. Our clients describe their businesses and what they offer in their own words, and those views remain their own. We don't independently verify statements about their products and services. We act as their accountants and advisers, so we speak only for our own work rather than for what our clients provide.
Unit 13E
92 Burton Road
Neepsend
Sheffield
S3 8BX
United Kingdom
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