Ask the Northern Irish doctor for her best advice for a budding entrepreneur and she simply poses two questions: “Are you addressing an unmet need? Do you truly know the inner workings of the mind of the person you are trying to target?” Ticking these two boxes has been a constant in her business. From day one, Bunting set out to solve a problem she knew only too well was causing misery for countless women – problem skin. While chronically stressed working as a junior doctor in hospital she found herself plagued by spots and the associated anxiety becoming her own target audience. “I’ve been there. I’ve cancelled dates because of bad skin – I have a real personal insight,” she recalls.

Bunting also saw that lack of dermatology expertise in GPs, combined with a feeling in women that they “shouldn’t complain”, meant many were suffering in silence simply because they didn’t know where to go. “In the UK it’s not common to go to a dermatologist for what people think is a beauty problem”, she explains, “but acne is the most common skin problem in our society. It’s a really pervasive issue that is generally not handled very well and causes huge amounts of distress and scarring. Fixing it makes such a big difference to people’s lives.”

The life-changing possibility of achieving great skin informed the thinking behind her private dermatology practice, which she opened a decade ago, and still drives her brand.

This instinctive positioning worked leading to a natural interest from press without any concerted PR push. Success followed in the form of work with skincare brands – including Dolce & Gabbana’s skincare launch – as well as world travel and even a TV show, TLC’s ‘Extreme Beauty Disasters’, in which Bunting helped fix beauty treatments gone wrong.

As her personal brand grew, Bunting’s social media presence emerged organically in response to an issue she witnessed time and again in her patients – women following bad advice from amateur beauty bloggers. “I thought that was a good time to take to YouTube and develop the channel as a place where you could come for good advice from a place of proper skin knowledge.”

Again, her instinct was correct. Bunting’s wise, medically-informed advice, confident, friendly manner and recommendations for great, reasonably-priced products gathered a loyal following. She credits this to her empathy and integrity. “I think that’s what people like about me. The straightforwardness of how I demystify a lot of things around skincare and my integrity in what I recommend. I don’t encourage heavy-spending unless the way that the product is formulated genuinely leads to increased costs.”

While many brands try to retrofit community onto products, it was Bunting’s community that “naturally” led her to the idea of creating a skincare brand – something she had been mulling for years. As well as continually hearing the same concerns from her online audience, she noticed many brands used in her practice were being discontinued despite consumers complaining. “It was a real call to action to do something about that myself – to make products that were even better, using the knowledge I’d accumulated by working with people over the last 10 years.”

The line itself is pure Dr Sam: sleek, simple and accessible. “The idea is that simplicity is luxury”, Bunting explains. “I wanted it to be a super-educated edit with no extraneous products. Simple, easy to use, easy to navigate – with supporting video content that leaves you with zero question marks about how to use everything correctly together. I knew I didn’t want to get bogged down in medical language. I wanted the tone of voice to be warm and empathetic so the consumer knows they’re in good, safe but also human hands.”

Looking back it would be easy to dismiss Bunting’s success as luck. But truly understanding her audiences and taking the time to learn from every step has laid the foundations of her brand. “It’s a bit of rambling route,” she admits, “but looking back there’s nothing I’ve done where I think ‘gosh, I wish I hadn’t done that’. It was all just a really good immersion in all parts of the market place.”

She has also faced challenges frequently pushing her comfort zone and grappling with topics she knew nothing about. “I’m a doctor,” she laughs, “I have zero training in entrepreneurship. I can barely write an Excel spreadsheet! I could easily have become discouraged with the idea of building the business – but I’ve learned how to break tasks down step by step and avoid the anxiety that comes from being truly out of your comfort zone. I’m naturally quite anxious and quite ‘type A’ so I’ve really had to embrace the ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’ approach to business life.”

She also credits respecting this anxiety as part of her success. “We worked really hard to minimise our costs in the early days to minimise the anxiety of a massive monthly spend. We were very lucky we were profitable within the first month. We’ve never had any debt. I think it would have been very difficult if we’d gone in all guns blazing with a new team and a big PR budget before we knew what we were meant to become.”

Is she proud of what she’s achieved? Here, pragmatic Dr Sam kicks in. “I’m Irish – so I’m not prone to being overly sentimental. But I couldn’t be happier with where we are. We’ve made the decision not to go into bricks and mortar at this point as we want to control the customer experience from end to end for a longer period of time. Once the brand is more established, we’ll revisit this”.

She adds that the kindness of others has been a big help in building the brand. “One of the things along the way that has been a real joy is the readiness of almost complete strangers to help me with different facets of my business. Sometimes it’s been overwhelming how generous people can be because they like to see others doing well. There’s a chain of people that I’m very grateful to for giving me the right introductions”. Ultimately, however, Bunting’s success rests on one thing – her desire to solve a real problem well.

Simply put, Bunting knows the problem – and understands how to solve it.