Alisha Williams doesn’t own a home because she took a $50,000 risk in 2020.

The 33-year-old, who has a background in marketing and communications, launched her sexual wellness business, Rosewellwith what could have been his house deposit.

Ms. Williams wanted to sell sex toys to women without it feeling shady. It was a tough sell when it launched in 2020; sexual well-being was not in fashion.

“I grew up in a time where anything to do with sexual wellness was uncomfortable,” she told news.com.au.

Williams wanted to eliminate the stigma of women’s pleasure, but when she started planning her business in 2019, she was met with more blank stares than anything else.

She was trying to explain that she wanted to create a sex toy store that felt like walking into Mecca, and people just couldn’t imagine it.

“They were imagining a hot pink jelly dildo,” she said.

“Five years ago! It was incredibly uncomfortable to tell someone what I was working on.

Williams has worked three jobs to fund her own business and has yet to seek external capital from investors.

The company is entirely founded by women, which is important to her. She wants to be in control because she feels like she understands what women want, but that means she’s had to take on all the financial burden that comes with it.

“I was taking out loans and paying them off as quickly as possible,” she said.

Ms Williams said investing so much in her business was a scary decision.

She did not pay herself a retirement pension, and the risk was enormous that everything “depended” on the correctness of her idea.

“It’s not just the money you invest. It’s about the opportunity cost of not earning a significant income elsewhere,” she explained.

“My initial investment was between $50,000 and $70,000.”

Williams said her business was particularly expensive because it involved a physical product that took time and money to create, test and perfect.

“I still don’t own a house. It all goes into the business,” she said.

The 33-year-old still finds himself in a delicate situation where all financial gains are plowed back into the business.

“The business may be doing well, but personally, I could earn more working for someone else,” she said.

Ms Williams said running a business is also much harder than being an employee, saying “it’s 10 times harder than doing a job because there are no limits and no stable pay”.

All kinds of expenses are also related to a business. When she opened her physical store in Melbourne, she had to put up the deposit and pay three months’ rent in advance.

“It was a $40,000 bill,” she said.

She is also transparent about the difficult times that come with success.

She recently spoke online about being gutted after her plan to have a co-director completely “failed” and left her in the lurch.

Williams shared on social media that she was experiencing what she considered a “failure,” but she wanted to be honest about it.

“I’ve been doing this for four years now. If you had told me today, on our fourth anniversary, what I would do,” she said.

“I would have cried.”

Ms Williams said it can be difficult to be honest online because if you are a CEO you want to appear “successful” and “ambitious” because that can help the brand.

However, she wants to show people the reality because “no one really talks about it” and she thinks it’s important.

Even if things are difficult, it is worth it.

She said she feels “proud” of the impact she has had on other women who use and love the products.

It’s not uncommon for her to receive emails from women thanking her for creating products that make them more comfortable with their sexuality and their bodies.