ISSUE 7 • FEBRUARY 2020
IN CONVERSATION WITH
Niki Hutchison
ENTREPRENEUR
10 things to help improve your website
Don't fall out of love with your business Small business spotlight Box of Hugs London Market Yourself The Art of Self-Promotion 1
CONTRIBUTORS
RUTH BUCKINGHAM, FREELANCE MARKETING CONSULTANT Ruth is a Freelance Marketing Consultant operating as Kandu Marketing. She provides jargon-free marketing strategy and content marketing for small business owners. This usually starts with content strategy or copy-writing. www.kandumarketing.co.uk
SARA BUSSANDRI, WRITER, AUTHOR & MENTOR Sara is a Digital Content Writer who specialises in helping small business owners and podcasters with blogging and re-purposing audio and video content into standalone blog posts. She’s a mum of three boys who works around school runs, laundry loads, and football matches. www.sarabussandri.com CORI JOSIAS, RELATIONSHIP AND DIVORCE COACH American-born Cori Josias has lived in the UK for 40 years with a background in the music business, training teachers, building a health and beauty business, life coaching, and relationship coaching. She successfully navigated a 20-year marriage as well as an amicable divorce and is the proud mother to two grown sons. She continues to build several businesses and coaches high-flying couples and divorcees. Cori can be contacted at cjosias@mac.com. www.facebook.com/gettingoverdivorcewithcori FIONA MINETT, CONSUMER PR EXPERT Fiona Minett is a Consumer PR Expert and long-time supporter of small business. She spent six years running Peachy PR, an agency specialising in working with small businesses and start-ups and helped her clients make their mark through canny PR. Now, she wants to help you do the same. www.bossyourpr.com HYACINTH MYERS, FOUNDER/ MANAGING DIRECTOR OF SOUL CONSCIOUS CREATIONS Hyacinth is a dual heritage mother of two sons. She is a Creative woman who still cannot define her title and also Founder/ Managing Director of Soul Conscious Creations Limited offering her signature course and workshops on her EMPOWER 7 women's personal development programme. She also uses her intuitive coaching skills and Holistic Therapies to help heal past adversities by empowering women to create their life by design. www.soulconsciouscreations.com SARAH SCOTLAND, COMMUNITY NUTRITIONIST Sarah Scotland (Wiseaboutfood CIC) provides benefits to communities in Hertfordshire and further afield, with respect to healthy eating, diet, exercise and the benefits of socialising, specifically this is intended to be the elderly, isolated, disabled, disadvantaged and children; also people who care for these groups: care home workers, early years workers, their support staff, health visitors, school caterers, parents too. wiseaboutfood.co.uk KATE STOW, FREELANCE EARLY YEARS CONSULTANT/TRAINER Kate Stow has been in the area of Early Years for a long time, nurturing and inspiring children to successful onward learning. She has a breadth of experience in many different settings over the years, including roles as a Private Nanny, Nursery Nurse in both hospitals and schools. Kate works as a freelance Early Years Consultant/Trainer. Through her business Nurture Every Step she offers to EYP’s, workshops and high-quality resources. To parents, she offers workshops or 1:1 coaching sessions to advise and support ways to: engage with their child and how to enable their environment to help the children’s learning and development. www.nurture-every-step.co.uk SARAH TJOENG, WEBSITE DESIGNER AND STRATEGIST Using her 12 years of digital experience, working as a User Experience Designer for big brands such as Tesco and Canon, Sarah is now helping smaller parent entrepreneurs grow their businesses online and get them to the next level. She helps smaller businesses upscale their digital presence and attract more customers by implementing key design and layout strategies on their websites and recommending best practice layouts and structures. She thrives on the psychology behind a website’s designs and wants to ensure that people with small businesses understand the need to continuously improve and analyse what they’re doing with it! www.daretodreamdigital.co.uk KAREN WALKER AND JULIAN ABEL, THE NOWT PONCY FOOD COMPANY Karen and Jools and we’re on a mission! A mission to bring fabulously tasty scoff to the world that’s full of all the good stuff and leaving out all the nasties. Nowt Poncy® products are low sugar and coeliac and vegan friendly (apart from the Big Easy Creole). www.nowtponcy.co.uk JODIE WEBBER, THE BUSINESSES COMMUNITY Jodie Webber has had a long career gaining valuable experience in Marketing, Print Management and Customer Service. Following a short career break for some family time, she decided to take the plunge and utilise her skills and experiences to help other local businesses. So in 2017, with a newborn daughter in one hand and a laptop in the other, Jodie started Enfield Businesses (now The Businesses Community Enfield – TBC Enfield). They currently have a thriving Facebook group, regular co-working monthly Jellies and are growing a good social audience as a platform to help their members. www.thebusinessescommunity.com BHAVINI LAKHANI , GRAPHIC DESIGNER Bhavini is an independent graphic designer specialising in branding and design for print, and is a mum of 2. She’s based in Milton Keynes, with a client base that spans global brands such as Conti Espresso, Barclaycard and British Gas, as well as local businesses across the UK. www.b81designs.com Disclaimer views expressed in the articles are those strictly of the authors. Every effort is made to ensure that all information given is correct but Parents in Biz limited accepts no liability for inaccuracies, errors or omissions that may occur or their consequences. This publication is copyright and may not be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without written permission from the publisher. Copyright includes (and not limited to) the content syndication of the RSS feed of this publication. The content and images used in any of the articles of this publication. The Parents in Business Magazine logo and any of its derivatives.
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EDITOR’S WELCOME Welcome to the 7th issue of the Parents in Business magazine. We are committed to 2020, and beyond being the best, Sara Bussandri writes about some of the marketing communication strategies that you might want to employ in 2020 (and beyond) to promote your business and to help you achieve your goals. On page 6, Hyacinth Myers covers how to overcome any challenge and thrive in 2020. We have practical, actionable tips from Sarah Tjoeng, a Website Designer and Strategist she tells us 10 things to help improve your website. And continuing with actionable business advice Ruth Buckingham covers how to attract customers to your business with content marketing on page 16.
Bridget
Bridget Daley Editor
Page 31 Market Yourself - the art of self-promotion Fiona Minett As unnatural as it may feel, we must be our own cheerleaders and our own best advocates. Our business spotlight goes to Box of Hugs London three sisters Anna, Sophie and Lucy who started a business together after their mum was diagnosed with a brain tumour they were inspired to fill a gap in the gifting market. We have two inspiring interviews with Niki Hutchison of Nikihutchison.com. Niki is an entrepreneur based in Edinburgh, Scotland. And Melanie Hunter Yell Founder of Huff Equestrian. And with it being the month of LOVE, we have you covered with articles covering business love and relationship love. Happy reading!
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We are a Work for Good Partner and give a proportion of proceeds to charity.
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In Conversation with
Niki Hutchison of Nikihutchison.com Niki Hutchison is and an entrepreneur based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Niki is married and a mother of 2. Niki never imagined that she would become an entrepreneur. To her, entrepreneurship was running a huge, multi-national corporation, something she had neither experienced, nor had any desire to. She studied business and marketing and then worked in advertising agencies for most of my career. Her entrepreneurial journey began in May 2009 when she suffered an ectopic pregnancy and underwent emergency surgery, losing half of the blood from my body and one fallopian tube during the process. Signed off from work for three months, she slowly regained her strength but simultaneously lost a good deal of confidence.
Can you tell us how you got started in business? Following a career spent working as a Strategic Planner in UK advertising agencies, I had my second child in 2010 and knew I wanted more flexibility, more freedom and the opportunity to create something from nothing. Prior to going on maternity leave, my biggest client was the Scottish Government, and I had been involved in large scale campaigns around how to reduce anti-social behaviour in children and young people as well as the introduction of new national curricula to pre-school and school-age children in Scotland. I was interested in the role that activities and role models played in ensuring that a child would stay on a positive path, making great choices as they grew. In 2011, as I wondered what business I should launch, I was approached by a friend of my
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husband, who was a Breakdance Teacher. He asked me to help him promote his dance classes to local children, and I did that for a while and really enjoyed it, but after a while, I realised that it was taking up quite a bit of my time for no return. I discussed this with him, and we decided to start it properly, as a business. After the first year, he injured himself then decided to go back to being an employee (thankfully it was all amicable, and we’re still friends today!), and I took the business forward myself after that first year. Now, I’ve never been a dancer, but what I loved was being creative in business and using my marketing skills to grow something from nothing. I realised in 2016 that I didn’t want to grow my dance business beyond a local business, I didn’t want to franchise or expand regionally, and I kept being asked about how I had built such a strong local brand and how I executed
the marketing of it. So in 2017, I decided to launch my second business, teaching other female founders how to use marketing to grow their businesses.
What are some challenges you faced in your business journey, and how did you overcome them? With my dance company I was part of a business accelerator programme which was fantastic, I really got a lot from it. The reason I entered the programme was to learn all about the financial side of running a business, how to generate profit (not just turnover), how to manage cashflow and develop pricing strategies. However, they also really encouraged businesses to scale and I went down several roads that just weren’t right for me. We expanded regionally, which put a huge strain on the team and we began to get ready to turn the business into a franchise. In
fact it is franchise-ready, but by that point I was ready for a new challenge so I won’t ever be the one to develop that franchise. It is a perfect business for franchising, so maybe someone else would like to take that on in the future. During this time of development, I lost my way a little, took people on to help grow the business who weren’t the right fit and who didn’t have my best interests at heart. It’s hard to find people who love your business as much as you do, but I’m very fortunate to have a number of
employees today who have been with me through all of the ups and downs and who I’m proud to have running that business for me today, while I develop my marketing business.
How do your values show up in the work you do? I try to stay true to my values in everything I do. I always say honesty is the best policy, so that people know where they stand. Nobody enjoys difficult conversations, but they do crop up if you’re growing a business
and need to be tackled head on. I try to remove emotion as much as possible and encourage my clients to do so too. Clients also tell me that I’m straight-talking with no BS which I love to hear! I’m not into ‘woo-woo’ I’m far more practical and action-focused than that, I just love to come up with ideas and make them happen, both in my own business and for my clients.
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HERE ARE SOME OF THE BUSINESSES YOU’LL FIND IN THE PARENTS IN BUSINESS DIRECTORY
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www.parentsinbiz.co.uk
Don’t fall out of love with your business! I decided to set up my own business after the birth of my daughter. I’d had a long and successful career already, built up my skills, and thought ‘wouldn’t it really be great to do this for myself, and be the ‘parentpreneur’ that can have it all’… I’d always worked in Marketing (save for a random first job buying aircraft parts, but we won’t go into that!). It was an industry I loved and knew well. I had many contacts that I had built good relationships with over the years, and had a good working knowledge of how ‘business’ works – so surely taking the leap and doing it for myself couldn’t be that hard!
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The reality is that although utterly exciting and completely liberating compared to the standard 9-5, running your own business can be tough, it can be lonely, it can be challenging… Add to this the fact that you are also trying to make time to be the best possible parent there is, and there’s one hell of a lot of pressure, which can lead to resentment towards or disillusionment with what you are trying to achieve.
I found quite quickly that when I was working, I’d feel guilty about not spending time with my daughter. And equally, when I was spending time with her, I felt guilty about the proposal I was supposed to be writing, or the social media posts I was supposed to be creating on behalf of my clients.
So, in the spirit of February being the ‘month of love’, I thought I’d share a few tips that have helped me along the way, and made sure I didn’t fall out of love with my business! Create boundaries – look at your time realistically, and separate home life from business tasks. Sounds simple right? But all too often, I fell into the trap of trying to reply to emails, or update my website whilst in ‘daughter time’, which left both of us frustrated. You’ll be more productive setting aside
time when you can concentrate properly – obviously, this all depends on factors like the ages of your children, childcare cover, what your business needs are, where you run your business from etc. Mine was from the kitchen table, so I had to set clear parameters for when the laptop was on/off. Have clear objectives – review the overall goal of where you want to take your business, and try to chunk it down into small manageable pieces. What’s the saying…? ‘How do you eat an elephant… one bite at a time!’. I know where I’d love to be this time next year, so broke that down into monthly goals, set weekly challenges to help me get there, and put daily practices in place to achieve those challenges. When you look at things one day at a time, it looks far less daunting! And will be much more manageable around your ultimate priority – the family! Take regular reviews – make some time to regularly assess how things are going. I set aside half a day every month just to look at what went well (or didn’t!) the previous month. Did I achieve everything I needed/wanted to? If not, why? Did I set unrealistic targets or did life through me a curveball (like an unexpectedly ill child?) How do I get back on
track, or how do I need to tweak my plan for this month to feel fulfilled in my business life? Assess any frustrations – you’ve obviously set up your business because it’s something you enjoy and are good at, but are there any areas that you find particularly challenging / time consuming (accounting/admin / social media etc.)? Look to outsource these areas… It can be hard when first starting out to find the budget to do this, but the time and energy that you can then put back into your parenting/business and doing the things you love is far more valuable! Don’t forget, you are not alone – in this day and age, so many parents are embracing the business journey and enjoying a flexible working lifestyle. And there are lots of online and offline business support networks where you can seek support and advice – similarly, there are lots of parent groups too. Don’t be afraid to ask questions of others, and my experience is that all ‘parentpreneurs’ are more than happy to share their experiences and tips. Jodie Webber The Businesses Community www.thebusinessescommunity.com
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3 top tips for a Healthy Relationship It’s the season for romance. Just because you are parents in business, doesn’t mean you need to sacrifice your relationship. Here are my three top tips for a healthy relationship.
#1
#2
Self-actualisation
Focus on the good
Self-actualisation is the key to happiness both in life and in relationships, though it may seem counterintuitive. So often we feel pressure to do something we don’t really want to do, just to please the other person. Are your core values healthy eating and early mornings, but your partner prefers late nights and fry ups?
So often we focus on what we don't like about another person. The result is that the person’s “faults” become magnified. If you are in a long-term relationship, it may be useful to reflect on why you got together in the first place. What was the moment you realised you wanted to make a go of it? What did you love about your partner?
There is always room for compromise, but it’s important to know what your personal standards and boundaries are in a relationship. For example, I don’t like cooking, so it’s futile for me to pretend I’m going to be the kind of partner who will have a home-cooked meal on the table every night. As Socrates said, “To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.” If you are trying to be someone you are not, it will not serve you or your partner. Be clear about your own standards and discuss them honestly. Lack of clarity and the erosion of boundaries is very damaging in the long run.
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Once you’ve identified these qualities, remind yourself of them often. You may even want to say, “I love your jokes, your cooking, the way you smile at the kids…” It can work wonders. Busy parents still need to feel loved.
#3
Know the other person’s love languages New York Times bestseller Gary Chapman talks about the 5 love languages. These are words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, physical touch. Which one makes you feel the most loved? Does your partner know this? Which one makes your partner feel good? Become a keen observer. If the
cracks are beginning to appear in your relationship, likely, you are not even aware of each other’s love language. If your love language is acts of service, you might be happier when your partner helps in the kitchen. Perhaps you would prefer praise or flowers or a hug! What makes your partner feel the most loved? All three of the above tips require awareness. As a busy working parent, the detail can sometimes get lost. It’s important to stop and take stock of your feelings, otherwise it’s easy to get into a cycle of blame. Choose February as your month of reconnection! Cori Josias Relationship and Divorce Coach Cori can be contacted at cjosias@mac.com
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