Today’s Be My Guest post, as part of my Interview Series, is with the lovely Claire Mitchell. If you haven’t heard of her yet then you’re missing out! She is an amazing inspiration to thousands of businesswomen and seriously knows her stuff when it comes to marketing!
From Mumpreneur To Facebook Sensation!
She set up a Facebook group called The Girls Mean Business as a forum for other business women to vent their frustrations or share their worries about work. The amazing feedback she received from around the world encouraged her to EXPAND FAST. Claire used her marketing experience and new skills and set up coaching programmes she could offer the women in the group. As word got out, the group grew at an amazing rate – within 3 months there were 3000 fans, and today, 18 months on, there are more than 13,000 from around the world.
Claire realised there were LOTS of women like her out there. They’d lost their jobs through redundancy, or they’d stopped working to have children, and now they wanted some direction. She wanted to share her experiences with them and help them learn from what she’d been through. And to teach them how to make their businesses grow – no matter what their situation or budget.
She now has several hundred coaching clients from all over the UK, Europe, Australia, Canada and the US who credit her with dramatically increasing their incomes. Claire also offers free advice and business resources, such as webinars, on the Girls Mean Business Facebook page. She has 4000 subscribers from 15 countries who love receiving her weekly newsletter and Bite Sized Tips on marketing. This lady is on fire!
Describe yourself in 3 short, fab and fun sentences
I’m a business owner, mum to a 5 year old and wife to Mitch. I spend my days helping women business owners to get unstuck and start making money in their business. I have the best job in the world and I love every minute of it – I see some amazing transformations, hear some inspirational stories and kick bums quite often….what’s not to love?
Why did you choose to become an entrepreneur?
My last employed job was awful – I’d taken it just for the salary and I regretted it within days. There were no others jobs around so I stuck it out for 9 months and one day said ‘enough is enough’. With £20k of debt and no savings, I upped and left and set up as a marketing consultant the following week. It was a disaster – I made every mistake in the book, I had a rollercoaster few years include building and liquidating a marketing agency, getting married, having a baby, moving house 4 times and being broke pretty much the whole time. I had to learn to dig myself out of the mire of debt so I used my last chunk of cash on my last credit card to buy some one-to-one business coaching and that one decision changed my life.
Who has been your biggest inspiration in business?
The women I work with every day. I was always sort of inspired by people on TV but they seemed quite distant to me. I love to see what we girls can do when we’re up against it – there are business all over the world being run against the odds by truly amazing women. Women going through illness, bereavement, financial dire straits, bad relationships – they are taking them and using them as fuel to do something they love. And then we have the rest of the amazing Girls that Mean Business who are just doing their thing – juggling running a business with bringing up a family, holding down other jobs or looking after others. Every women business owner has a story and that’s what makes me love what I do.
What’s the best business advice you’ve ever been given?
Be yourself and do what you love – otherwise you’re just creating a ‘job’ for yourself instead of a business.
What three tips would you give when starting out with their marketing?
- Know where you’re going – understand what success looks like and put some milestones and targets in place. Otherwise you’ll drift along aimlessly and never get any further forward.
- Eat Your Elephant One Bite At A Time – Break everything down into bite sized chunks, rather than getting overwhelmed and paralysed into inactivity by huge jobs on your list
- 10 Minutes a Day – spend 10 minutes a day on your marketing, every day and you’ll be amazed at how much you achieve if you’re consistent and persistent
What are the three biggest mistakes that people make when promoting their business?
- Not knowing who they are targeting – you can’t market to everyone so you need to find your ideal customer and market to them. Spray and pray marketing is costly and ineffective. You need to pick a type of customer or client and speak to them in your marketing, so that you attract more of the right people for your business – people who love what you do and value you
- Not knowing their numbers – so many people just pootle along day to day, with no idea if they’re making a profit. Understand what things cost, including your time, and price properly.
- Undercharging – following on from my last comment, many business owners price themselves too low. They listen to friends and family and existing (bad) customers and completely undervalue themselves. This has a knock on effect – they attract people looking for ‘cheap’ products or services, they have to sell more to make a living, they compete on price rather than quality and they wonder why it’s so hard to make money! Seriously, it’s only Mind Monkeys stopping you from appreciating your value so ignore them and put your prices up!
What if I know nothing about Marketing, where do I start?
- Work out your ideal customer - the perfect fit for your business. The person who you love to work with, who makes your heart sing, who loves what you do and appreciates your value.
- Write your marketing materials for your ideal customer and put them in places on and offline where your ideal customer will see them
- Pick 2 or 3 marketing tools/activities that will work for your ideal customer and do them consistently for a month
- Spend 10 minutes every day on marketing
Watch your business grow!
Is there anything else you’d like to share?
Don’t listen to Mind Monkeys or helpful friends and relatives who tell you to get a proper job. It’s tough running your own business but you can make it so much easier on yourself if you surround yourself with likeminded people. That’s why I set up The Girls Mean Business and it’s now a great place for women business owners to learn, connect and share. You are not alone.
If I wanted to connect and/or work with you where would I find you?
Www.thegirlsmeanbusiness.com
Www.facebook.com/thegirlsmeanbusiness
We’d love to see you!
A note from Ruby … I am part of Claire’s Girls Mean Business Group and the support I get from other women in business as part of that is just fab. You know when you just need a quick answer or to share an idea? There is a wealth of support and encouragement in the group and from Claire herself. In fact I can’t even really list the benefits of how great it is because there are too many! Claire’s been known to give me a kick up the butt too and it’s SO been worth it in terms of my development and progress with my business
Over to you… We’d love to know what your works for you with your marketing. What one key strategy do you find really helps? Let’s get a conversation going in the comments section below. Missed my post about being the amazing you the other day? You can read it here.
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Would you like to be my guest? Just drop me an email to apply and tell me what gems you’d like to share with my readers.
[...] know you might actually start pleasing yourself for a change What fun! Missed my Be My Guest post yesterday? Then you really should check it out. I had the fabulous Claire Mitchell [...]