This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Amelia Christie-Miller, the 32-year-old founder and CEO of Bold Bean Co. She is from the UK and based in Barcelona. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
When I founded Bold Bean Co. in 2021, I was working at a sustainability company in London and had become obsessed with the idea that beans could solve many of the world’s problems.
I juggled my job and Bold Bean Co. for about a year before I went full-time with my business that fall.
Beans are so fundamental to soil health and our journey toward net zero, and from a diet perspective, they’ve just been completely overlooked in the West. Everyone’s talking about gut health, fiber, and protein, and beans score highly in all three categories.
My mission was to make people obsessed with beans by giving them a really good quality bean.
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I have 20 employees, and we’re a remote-first business. I’m based in Barcelona, but I often go back to London, where I started the business (our products are only available in the UK). I have colleagues in Valencia and Edinburgh because I think people should be able to live wherever makes them happiest and most productive.
I work from home, unless I’m meeting one of my four team members who are also based in Barcelona. Here’s what a day in my life is like.
I wake up starving at 7:45 a.m.
There’s this expectation that founders are super high-performing individuals who drink lemon water and exercise all before 6 a.m., but I’m so far from that. I’m not a morning person. I really need my sleep.
At the moment, because I’m pregnant, I wake up starving. I eat as soon as I can and I’m currently trying to get in a lot of protein, so I usually have eggs. I definitely need my coffee, and I love having it freshly ground. It’s a really lovely ritual.
Sometimes my partner and I will have a moment together in bed with our coffee and do NYT Connections or a crossword, to have a moment of pause before the day starts.
I may go for a little walk to get some sun on my face, but often I go straight to my desk if I’m not meeting anyone from the team.
My workday starts at around 9 a.m.
My mornings just whizz by, because that’s when I’m really productive and have a lot of meetings. More often, I get derailed in the afternoons through fatigue or brain fog. I think it’s really important not to just push on through in those instances and to take a break, go for a walk, or do a meditation, and then come back to it.
When I want a change of scene, I love going to a café. I write a lot, mainly articles for the media and for my LinkedIn profile, and because I’m away from the two big monitors on my desk, I find it useful for shifting into a more creative mindset.
As the business has grown, I spend more time managing people and firefighting, making it harder and harder to focus on strategic, forward-looking stuff, which I did a lot of at the beginning.
I recently started maternity leave, and I see this as a turning point for the business. For example, I’ve just hired a marketing director. I’m hoping that this time out will mean that I actually let go of some responsibilities and let the team run itself, so I can focus on where I can add the most value. I think that’ll be as a campaigner, advocating for beans in general, to help unlock opportunities in retail.
I break for lunch at around 12:30 p.m.
I always try to cook something for lunch. I find taking that pause really positive for my well-being.
I wish I took longer, but my break is probably 20 to 40 minutes because I prefer to finish my working day earlier.
I love the creativity of seeing what we have in the fridge and going from there. The other day, I whipped up some hummus with our chickpeas, chopped up some tomatoes, onions, cucumber, and loads of herbs, cooked some chicken, and had a kind of hummus bowl.
I’ve always loved cooking and learned mostly by experimenting at home, reading lots of cookbooks, and working alongside chefs in my previous role. I took a monthlong cooking course when I was 18, and after that, I worked as a private chef for a bit.
If I’m having one of those days where I really don’t have time, I heat up a jar of our baked beans, which are white beans in tomato sauce, and eat them on toast.
I’m on flex-time before the baby comes
Before the baby comes, I’m on flex-time. I’m off Slack, email, and team calls, and I’m not taking on any new projects, but wrapping up conversations with financial partners and things like that.
Once I’ve given birth, I will be fully out for probably at least two months, after which I will work on special projects that don’t involve the team for a few months, so my schedule is more flexible.
One of the biggest strengths a founder can have is finding a way for the business to exist without them, so I’m feeling positive.
My team is predominantly made up of women who don’t have kids, and they want me to be a role model, showing that taking time away won’t affect your career.
I stop working at 6 p.m.
My brain is usually frazzled by 6 p.m. I need that step change — like that walk to the shops or cooking —so my brain isn’t whirring before I go to bed.
If I’m in the flow, I might keep going, but then it’s at the expense of doing yoga or having a nice dinner, and often it’s not worth it.
I never have a TV dinner because I think it’s so important to connect with the person you’re with, my husband in my case. I do often have beans for dinner, but not always.
I really try to switch off in the evenings, and yoga and meditation are big forms of relaxation for me. I often go to yoga classes and sound baths after work. My favorite class, which I can’t do at the moment because I’m too pregnant, is on the beach on Sunday morning. I go for a swim after, and it’s just this incredible weekly reset.
I have a bath every night and fall asleep by 10 p.m.
About a year and a half ago, I got an app called Opal that locks me out of Instagram, email, LinkedIn, and anything like that after 9:30 p.m. It has been game-changing.
At the moment, I’m obsessed with having a bath every night. It’s quite woo-woo, but I add magnesium salts and a cocktail of essential oils with different properties, whether calming or energizing. Putting that in the bath feels like you’re caring for yourself.
Afterward, my husband and I get into bed and read. My favorite books are about how people exist in the modern day. It’s very cliché, but probably a Sally Rooney book. I read until I fall asleep at probably 9:30 or 10 p.m., and that’s my ideal evening. It probably was a bit later before I got pregnant.
On the weekends, I usually have a slow breakfast with my husband, go on a long walk, and do some kind of cooking project. Plus yoga or a swim if I can squeeze it in.
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