How to trust your intuition & get your business started

At the start of 2018 I started working full-time in my business as a Personal Branding Design Expert and Website Designer. It’s been a fun and exciting road getting here…

Here's my story…

My first ah-ha moment

At the grand old age of 13 I decided that I was going to become a fashion designer. So that was it, I just needed to decide on what I needed to do next to get there. This apparently consisted of taking Textiles at High School, where I would annoy the lovely, Mrs Watt for extra time on the sewing machines.

Anyone who knows me from the fashion world will know that it was all in vain – I’m not the worlds best seamstress but what I am, is a brilliant creative designer, even if I do sew say myself. Please pardon the Dad jokes, they will crop up consistently throughout my blog posts, wherever I can fit them in.

After High School, it was Art College, then University in the North West of England and finally to LONDON TOWN. London was always my destination and I’m happy to call this vibrant city home for the past 10+ years. 

Those past 10 years were spent working in the fashion industry for the super talented, high-end designer, Anna Scholz. When I started working at Anna’s I was a junior clothes and print designer plus the webshop ‘packing orders’ Queen!

At the time online shopping was just starting to get big. People were slowly getting websites, albeit very basic/boringly uninspirational websites. Then boom Anna appeared on a huge TV show on primetime TV and the website took off.

My second ah-ha moment

I went from my dream of being a fashion designer to becoming an online graphic designer. At first I resisted the change, this wasn’t what I’d always dreamt up for myself. I didn’t want to be designing websites and newsletters, I wanted to be designing beautiful dresses with plisse skirts. And then a funny thing started to happen, I secretly started to LOVE what I was doing and not like the designing pretty dresses part. How could this be?!?! THAT was my second, ah-ha moment of many that has led me to where I am today. 

One of my main roles was creating content and design for our twice-weekly customer newsletters. This was the fun bit! I loved coming up with new ideas, curating stories that went along with the season’s collections.

If we had a beautiful print that reminded me of a spectacular piece of art, I would see if there were any current exhibitions featuring that particular art movement. Or for example when we launched our new Fitness line, it coincided with the London 2012, so that was a perfect theme.

I loved being able to use my mind creatively not just with the design/creation of online marketing but in telling a story. Getting really clear on what the companies brand’s vision was. 

Three years ago my third ah-ha moment happened… 

I quickly want to talk about what an ah-ha moment means to me and I think Oprah (I love Oprah) explains it pretty well so I’ll borrow some words from her… “I say the universe speaks to us, always, first in whispers. And a whisper in your life usually feels like ‘hmm, that’s odd.’ Or, ‘hmm, that doesn’t make any sense’ Or ‘hmm, is that right? It’s that subtle. And if you don’t pay attention to the whisper, it gets louder and louder and louder. I say it’s like getting thumped upside the head. If you don’t pay attention to that, it’s like getting a brick upside your head. You don’t pay attention to that – the brick wall falls down.”

…Now back to the ah-ha… I met a very successful, super positive woman who said to me that I seemed very happy but that I appeared a bit low, if that makes any sense? It did! She suggested I read a book she’d read that was all about self-development.

Now I was a complete cynic at this time, I’d never read a book like this before. But here was this successful woman telling me all types of CEO’s and her peers read books on self-development, to make them the best that they can be in their fields and in life generally. So off I went and read ‘You Are A Badass’ by Jen Sincero. 

You Are A Badass, changed my life at that point. That was my entry point into the self-development world. Shortly after reading the book I started a business designing/selling inspirational quote phone cases.

You'll find my site and blog peppered with Inspirational Quotes, I know it's not to everyone's tastes, but I love them and it's my online home so just avert your eyes.

After a year of many successes where I appeared in Cosmopolitan magazine, Closer, Woman’s Own and a few other national titles I decided to close it down.

I realised that what I loved most about creating ‘Blossom London’ was creating the Brand, designing the website, building my social media following, telling a story – not having an ecommerce store.

Throughout all of this I was working hard in my day job as an online marketing & website designer, I was attending events from the inaugural Girlboss rally in LA to inspirational talks given by prestigious entrepreneurs all over London. 

By this point I was waiting for the next ah-ha moment to happen, which it did in early 2017. I was starting to think about getting my own life/business coach or going on a coaching program.

I knew I had some pretty great gifts, I just wasn’t sure which direction I wanted to go down. So I started looking for a coach and that’s when it happened! Lots of the coaches I was searching for had really basic, uninspiring websites.

All I kept on thinking was, I’m sure they’re good at their jobs but their online ‘shop window’ which is my first impression of them wasn’t tempting me into working with them.

My final ah-ha moment that led me to the business I have today…

I KNEW I could make their websites AMAZING, and get clients like myself, clicking ‘where do I pay’ immediately. So that was that, I’d found exactly what I wanted to do!

At the end of 2017 I put lots of work into immersing myself in the coaching world. What were coach’s biggest challenges online to help them stand out? What problems were they trying to solve? How could I help them get clarity, so their customers knew what they were all about within 10 seconds of glancing at their homepage? (I think this is a whole blog post in itself, so I’ll save this chat for a later date…)

All of this, along with creating my own website was in preparation for working on this full-time. 

In October 2017 , I handed in notice and I officially started my business full-time in January 2018.

I left my long-standing job, with my lovely bosses (great friends) to embark on this new and very exciting chapter in my life. I can now say with absolute pride and happiness that I create kickass personal brands/websites online for coaches and female entrepreneurs.

I’d love for you to join me on my future journey, to see where the next few years take me, who I’m working with, which country I’m working from (because you know I’m now going to travel as much as I can whilst working from my laptop) and what my next ah-ha moment will be. And maybe I’ll even be working with one of you, my lovely readers soon.

Please do leave me a comment if any of this spoke to you. If you’ve had a fun journey you’d like to share. Or I'd love it, if you wrote your favourite dad joke below, I really could add to my repertoire. I think my friends are sick of hearing the same ones.