Kate Butcher
Hello and welcome to today’s episode of Business Foundations for Mums. Today I am welcoming Julie Brown to the podcast, and Julie is going to tell us all about her experience of running her business, how that’s inspired by motherhood and how that fits in with everything that she does. And so let’s straightaway hand over to Julie and say welcome Julie, please can you introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about yourself, about your business and about how that fits in with family life for you.

Julie Brown
Oh, hi everybody. Nice to be here. So, my role as a self employed person is visibility and review course if I was going to be formal, that’s what I would say to you. And what I do is I work with, it is usually female entrepreneurs out there but a few brave men do knock on my door as well, and helping them become more visible in their business and in the closing the title really. And that can be general visibility, or quite often it’s media coverage, people come to me because they want to get some media coverage in whatever press thereafter. And the reason to do that is because I’m a journalist, I’ve been a journalist for 19 years. And I know everything there is to know about the media. So I’m really lucky that I can use my general visibility. Advice and experience alongside my media experience. And that’s quite a unique combination actually, there’s, there’s not many people who will do do those two together, but it puts me in a really good position to help my clients become Uber visible. I’m also an accredited and qualified life coach. So I am able, and I’m really glad I can do this to switch over into mindset coaching, if I need to. Because what I find is that one of the things that holds people back with their visibility, particularly when I start talking about media coverage, is their mindset. Not good enough they’ve got no confidence don’t want to be on camera. Don’t pitch tech, yada yada yada. On it goes. So I’m looking at I can see each other, do some mindset work and then pull them back to the visibility piece. So I do do a lot of talking around using Instagram and Facebook and the groups and everything else that people want to know about that side of visibility and I also have a podcast and I also have a YouTube channel so I can talk to people about those sorts of things as well. But certainly from the media coverage, that’s where I get a lot of people interested in what I do. 

As far as personal is concerned. I live in Brighton in the UK, if anybody’s listening from abroad. I’m quite adventurous. I guess. People think I’m an adrenaline junkie, but I’m not. I’m sitting in my traditional Scansoft desk most of the time, because I like things like snowboarding and I ride motorbikes. I like doing adventures, I’ve ridden across America three times, been around France and Spain. And my next adventure on the list is to walk to Everest base camp and I’ve got that booked for next year. So I do enjoy a bit of an adventure but as I say, I’m not an adrenaline junkie people are so many, would love to be scared. No, I don’t love it. I just can’t help myself. I just have to do these things so that I feel like I’ve lived I guess. I’ve got one who’s grown up now so possibly different some people that listen to this, but obviously I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from my son and I know what it’s like to be a working mum because although he’s grown now, I worked all the way through his life, then I went back to work when he was 12 weeks old and haven’t stopped since. So although I’m self employed now, I did go through the whole corporate world with a young son. So I know exactly what it’s like to be juggling all those things.

Kate Butcher
Absolutely. Gosh, that must have been quite a challenge juggling a life in journalism because I imagine I don’t know a huge amount about journalism by any means, but I imagine there must be quite a lot of needing to be responsive. If you’re working in journalism and needing to potentially drop things and and deal with whatever needs dealing with which can be tricky when you’ve got a young family.

Julie Brown
Yeah, absolutely. Although I have to say when he was really young, I wasn’t a journalist. I’ve done a couple of bits in my life. I used to work for the National Health Service. So when he was young, proper young, I was an NHS manager, then I worked for the government inspecting hospitals, very, very high profile stuff. And that, to some extent, was even worse because I was often reacting to national crises. And I used to have to down tools very quickly to head off and deal with whatever the NHS was throwing at me. So yeah, that was, that was a struggle. I used to be away for weeks at a time as well when I was inspecting hospitals. So I used to have to try and manage that. And I moved into journalism, probably when he was about 12, a little bit older. But obviously that then brings with it completely different challenges. Yeah, that was fun. Teenagers are fun, folks if you’re not there yet. She says, tongue in cheek. But yeah, I’ve always worked. I’ve always worked full time and part time work. And yeah, it was a challenge but you get through it. You find ways of managing that you look for support around you. And everything’s doable. It’s just about being organised and having the right mindset to do it.

Kate Butcher
I love that attitude. Everything’s doable. It’s about finding the right way to do it, isn’t it? It’s a conversation that I’ve had quite a lot recently about if you have a “I can’t do it” mindset, then you won’t do it. It’s quite a simple formula. If you don’t think you can, you won’t find a way but if you want to, you’ll find a way to do it. You’ll find a solution, you’ll find a way to manage the problems and the challenges that get thrown in the way which is so important, so amazing. And what a fantastic combination you’ve got as well now all that experience from the past that you’ve got, but equally now you’re a qualified life coach and a visibility coach. And then you also do the PR I mean that that must be as you say, a really, really interesting combination, a really good combination of different things that you can use together and different skills that really complement each other.

Julie Brown
Yes, and interestingly enough when I first became self employed I’ve tried to almost ditch my experience from before, which I’ve since learned is really a big mistake. I decided I was going to leave work around about six months before I did because I wanted to build a plan for it. I just didn’t want to dive down tools and walk out. I wanted to save some money so that I knew when I went self employed I’d be okay for a while and all that stuff that is really good thing to do thinking about leaving work, but I decided I wanted to be a life coach. So I tried to be a life coach and I became accredited so when I left work, that was my goal. Be a life coach. And I don’t know why I thought it was GREAT idea not to think about the journalism and my writing experience and all the stuff that I did with NHS particularly around assessing and auditing. I did decide to be a carry on doing journalism as a freelancer, but I didn’t use it in my my business as such. I didn’t tell the people who was coming to, or coming to me for my services that I was a journalist or any of those things I just said I’m a life coach and I can help you with whatever it is that you’ve come to me to the eyes of life coach.

 I was probably about 18 months into my self employed life coaching business when I thought “why am I not using my experience as a journalist and all the other stuff in this business now” and that’s when things started to take off for me, when I expressed my experience as a whole. And, it happened slowly but it started because some of the people I was attracting, and I wasn’t even trying to attract these people, they were just coming to me, were business owners who wanted coaching, but they want to coaching around their writing skills and their storytelling skills and their messaging skills, which, as a life coach, I wasn’t actually offering. I was doing more work on things like confidence and impostor syndrome, but I was obviously attracting them because they were learning what I did in the past and decided that’s what they wanted to talk to me about. And that’s when I thought “you know what I really should relook at this and decide whether I should be doing something other than just like coaching” and it was definitely a good decision to make.

Kate Butcher
Fantastic and is that then when the visibility coaching came in, and the PR side of it?

Julie Brown
Not straightaway no, and again, this is very, a good thing to talk about because people think that they have to have everything sorted from day one in business. And that’s not the case. You can change. You can pivot. You can add things on. When I first started getting those inquiries around storytelling and writing I decided that will be a writing coach alongside my book and so I did that for a little while. And then I thought “you know what, I really can’t ignore the fact that I’m a journalist” and I started looking at including media coverage as well. And that’s just been amazing for me. I did a little bit of done-for-you work with the media coverage centre people are doing for you, like an agency I guess, but quite recently I ditched that because actually just want to teach people how to do their own media coverage, because that’s much more powerful, so much more powerful to go out there and try and get your own media coverage and have an agency working for you.

Kate Butcher
Absolutely. A lot of that I think it’s about personal messaging, isn’t it? I know that’s something that I’ve always resisted as a virtual assistant writing other people’s content for them on social media, because although I think I’m quite good as a writer, I struggle to put myself into someone else’s voice. So that’s something that I’ve resisted, I have a brilliant associate who does manage to do that really, really well for some of my clients. But personally, I can’t do that. So I think it can be quite hard to to get your own voice and your own message out there if you’re getting somebody else to do it on your behalf.

Julie Brown
Yeah, I think, I mean, because I write for lots of different magazines I’m quite good at picking upon styles and tones and things. I have no issues with that for me as an editor, because I’ve been an editor in chief and a publisher so quite high up in the journalism world, I got every day, lots of lots of emails from people saying, I’ve got story ideas. And to be honest with you, I only really took notice of the ones that were coming in from the people themselves, not from a PR agency. Because the PR agencies have got a slightly different reason for getting people in the media. It’s not always because they’ve got the person at the heart of it all, it’s is because, you know, the more media coverage that can get somebody the more money they can make. And you’ll see if you talk to any of the journalists, they’ll say they should know journalists, relationships, PR people is not great. So for me if I saw an email that had come from a PR company, I’d possibly just delete it. Whereas if it comes from the person themselves, saying I’d like to feature your magazine or on your website or wherever, I’m much more likely to open it, because I knew it’d be more heartfelt the stories would be come from a different place. So my big advice if you want to do PR stuff is strictly while you’re still learning and you’re still sort of a newish business, to try and learn how to do it yourself, because you’ll get many more rewards for that. Of course when you get to be a multimillionaire and you really haven’t got any time but then that’s when you go to a PR agency although you probably wouldn’t need much media coverage by that point because they’ll be coming to you. But yeah, definitely learn how to do it yourself to start with.

Kate Butcher
What a brilliant tip. Thank you very much. That’s a really, really good tip for anyone who’s thinking about getting out there and getting some PR done. And can you tell us a little bit more, you mentioned about how a lot of people struggle with, I suppose it was imposter syndrome you were talking about weren’t you, about saying you know people struggle with thinking about their image or whether they wanted their voices out there and all of those kinds of things. So how do you help and support people to get past those barriers?

Julie Brown
Well, like you, I guess, I do quite a lot of mindset work. So obviously, as an accredited life coach, I’ve got lots of tools at my fingertips to help them with that. I do teach live coaching on the London Academy as well so thankfully, you know I get a lot of input from lots of different people and my life coaching journey never ends because I’ve got to be up to speed with everything. So yeah, I use a lot of tools, but I also really want people to remember all that they have done in life, because they may have impostor syndrome about this particular thing that they’re trying to do now. But what people forget is how fabulous they are. In everything else. And we need to transfer that on through our journeys, to be honest, and have lots of tools that help people with that, just trying to get them to see what they’ve achieved, how going all the different ways, the different things that they have to do particularly as a mum have to succeed in, have to achieve, and we need to take that on really to the future and what they wanted to do in the future. 

Now, if I was going to say one tool that I think helps a lot of people then I would suggest keeping a big-me-up book. So that’s a little book and I’ve got one, there’s no point showing it because it’s on the podcast so it’s gonna get out for you then that’s what was reaching for if you’re watching this on the video, but it’s basically a little books I carry with you wherever you go. And I asked people to write in it and it’s an ongoing thing. So you make start and then you keep going, everything that you’ve achieved, everything that you’re good at, everything that people have told you about yourself and how good you are. And it becomes like a little book of you. And all it has in there is all the things that you’re really good at. So all things you’ve done in the past that you you’re good at, things that you’re doing now that you’re good at. If anybody gives you a compliment put it in there to get an email from somebody. So now, once you’ve helped them put it in there, it’s just a book, a reminder of how fabulous you actually are. So although there’s hundreds of tools that we could talk about, that is the one that I find makes the most most impact on people because they can carry it with them. So if they’re going somewhere to do an inteview for instance and get it out remind themselves how good they are. Instead of about to do a zoom call and then wobbly and get it out and remind ourselves how fabulous they are. It’s just one of those tools that is never ending. And when I say write things in there that you’re good at I mean anything so if you’re good at cooking a curry put it in there, if you’re good at, you know changing a baby’s nappy, put it in there, if you put it styling your hair, it doesn’t have to be related to the stuff you do for work, it can be anything because we all are fantastic human beings and we need to remind ourselves of that every single day.

Kate Butcher
That’s a really fabulous idea. I’ve not come across a big-me-up book before so I think I might have to start one of those. That’s a really great plan. And I think I’m gonna start one, get my daughter start something like that as well because we gave her a little diary for Christmas last year, I think actually, for her to, to use to put down her thoughts and she hasn’t I don’t think he used it consistently but I think that would be a really great way for her to use it to write down all the positives what a good idea. I strongly believe in having a gratitude diary and writing down daily gratitude. That’s something that I tried to do, although I’m not massively consistent as I would like to be with that one. But yeah, what a really good idea because actually, that’s one thing that when I wanted I wanted to get some testimonials recently for something I did a while ago and I thought a few people sent me emails and a few people make comments on Messenger and I didn’t actually take snapshots of those or put them anywhere in a collative place where I could come back to them when I needed them which would have been a really sensible thing to do, but to have it all in what a really good idea.

Julie Brown
It is really good and it’s funny because when you first started doing it, certainly if I said to somebody, you know get 50 things in there quite quickly, I find that, particularly the women, struggle to get going and the might get to 10 and say I haven’t got any more. You’ve got to really egg them along. It’s a bit different for the men, they tend to fill it up quite quickly. But yeah, certainly the women that I work with can struggle, so if it’s slow to get going, don’t worry. Just keep at it and you’ll find that there are so many things that you’re good at.

Kate Butcher
Yeah, it’s very, it’s very true. I think often, women get to the end of the day, particularly if you’re juggling family life and business, or get to the end of the day and think I had a really unproductive day I didn’t really get anything done. But then when you actually look back and you think about the fact that actually you’ve got your children up and dressed and fed and you know having a fun day and you can actually think through all of the things that you did achieve. It might not have been necessarily business tasks or whatever it might be, but actually, you know, we do achieve a lot more in our days than I think we give ourselves credit for a lot of the time. So yeah, that’s that’s a really good idea to have a way of recording all of that and all of the things that you are good at. So yeah. Fantastic. Thank you very much. Brilliant, some really good tips to get us started so far. So can you give us a little bit of insight into, you’ve talked about starting your business, but was there a particular trigger? You said you sort of planned it for six months and so on, was there a reason that you decided to give up on employment and to start working in your own business?

Julie Brown
I loved my work as a journalist. It’s a fantastic thing to do. And I still am a journalist now, and I still write for lots of different places. I didn’t want to let that go. There were a few reasons why I wanted to be self employed. The first one is because I wanted to I wanted to feel some of that freedom I’d never heard. So, you know, after working through all my son’s early years, you can only imagine the sorts of things I might have missed as I went along. And although my my son was grown when I decided to start my self employed business, I still wanted a sense of that freedom, you know where I manage my own time a little bit and make my own path in life. Turn out a career that I styled really, I guess. So that was one of the things that I wanted to do, have some of that freedom. I also wanted to move. I’ve moved quite a lot but when I was the last place I was working before I left, I really needed to get out of it but it wasn’t a place that suited me, so that was another reason, I’ve been there for about four and a half years at that point and I thought I really need to move away from this town. But getting a job seemed too much like hard work. I thought you know what, I think it’s time to go self employed. So that was another reason. And I was earning a lot of money, but I wanted to see how much more abundant I could be. Because obviously when you’re when you’re working, you can’t buy whatever your employer wants to give you. I felt that there might be a different way to look at life than to have somebody telling you what you were worth. I wanted to see how much I was worth on my own terms. 

I guess alongside of that was when we had the whole Brexit thing which I’m not going to get into too much. But it made me realise actually the best that you could do is future proof your own life. So when you’re working for someone, your future is in their hands, really. They could have just decided overnight that they didn’t need any more. The business might have shut down because of what was happening in the politics situation. And I didn’t I didn’t want that stress anymore. I wanted to know that I was in charge of what I did. So you know, I could work harder if I needed to because I needed to bring some money in or something out in the news that was affecting my business. I could pivot. I just wanted to be in charge. And it’s really worked because I’m much less stressed around the future, I get stressed day to day when I’ve got so much to do, but certainly as a future goes, I’m not as stressed. I stopped feeling charged. I started travelling more, I go away on my own now not places that don’t rely on other people. So yeah, I just wanted to be in charge of me. And even though my son’s grown, having this flexibility means that I can still spend more time with him now, because I can take time off in the week if he’s got a spare time. And it’s just just much better much easier for me to be in charge. And because I can do the freelance journalism, I don’t feel like I’ve lost that I’ve just transferred into a different situation, I guess.

Kate Butcher
Fantastic. I love that sense of taking control of your own destiny. Yeah, I think it’s so important isn’t it to know that you you are in charge of your future and you make the decisions that determine where your life’s gonna go, which is fantastic.

Julie Brown
I guess when I talk about it, it sounds like it’s probably quite easy, but it wasn’t. I mean, for the last six months, I was at work, I mean, I saved for quite a lot of money so that I knew I would have a certain amount of months where if I didn’t earn anything I could still be okay. But I was quite terrified. I was thinking well this work when I get any work, and I didn’t bother because the minute I switched off my day job. The work just started coming in. Firstly, because, and I guess this is a really good tip, depending on where your listeners and viewers are in their life, but what I did is I just told everybody what I was going to be doing. I told all my friends, I told all the immediate people that I got contact with. So the minute I switch off my business I got requests in from the media saying could you do some work for us? You come in and write for us for a little while. So although straightaway I didn’t get into the life coaching quickly. I had enough stuff going on to make sure that I didn’t fall flat on my face.

Kate Butcher
Absolutely. So the freelance work was keeping you going while you built up the life coaching side of things.

Julie Brown
So if there’s anything that your listeners or your audience clients are good at, do’t switch that off straightaway. To switch on your new life. As I’m saying you’ll see whether you can have a bit of both going off for a little while just to ease you into the self employed, true self employment status. If it’s something that you’re a little bit worried about.

Kate Butcher
Absolutely. And I think that’s a that is a really good tip because a lot of people do worry about taking that step from leaving employment and starting their own business. And I think having that several months of planning time that you’ve put in place in advance there. So you’ve made sure that financially you’re in a position in case things are slow to take off. I think that’s a really good plan to get things in place. Get everything ready, so that you have that that buffer I suppose so. Brilliant. So yeah, and you’re quite right freelancing in what you’ve always done is a great way to fill that gap as well and to keep things ticking over. That sounds absolutely brilliant. Thank you very much.

Julie Brown
There are absolutely tons of opportunities out there once you need to look for them. You know when you’re employed or that’s not working if you’ve got because you’ve got your children you think “well what opportunities are there?” but there are tons, now there’s so many different things we can do now. There’s always some way you can make money without having to go work somebody else. Yes, absolutely.

Kate Butcher
And shouting about what you’re doing to everybody as well. Brilliant tip. Thank you for that. Because I think you never know who might be interested. You never know who might be in need of what you’re offering or might be able to tell somebody else about it. That was one of the biggest tips I got regarding networking when I started networking is that there might not be anybody in that room. Who is a potential client for you. But you know hand out your business cards anyway because I still remember to this day years ago, being given a business card for an insurance broker. And it was some of my dad had met at networking. And my dad didn’t use him didn’t need to but he said I’ve met this chap at networking. He seems really on the ball he seems really good. There’s, those are his business cards. So I learned the other way around that. You know, I was recommended somebody secondhand through networking, and networking can sometimes I think frustrate people if there doesn’t seem to be anybody they’ve met who is an immediate fit. But you know, I’ve given away business cards, two, three years down the line for somebody I’ve met and I’ve remembered and passed on the details to somebody. So getting out there and talking to everybody and anybody who will listen about what you do, I think is a really good, really good thing. Definitely.

Julie Brown
I also would suggest people write one letters. This is another tool that I speak to my clients about when they’re worried about getting clients and that’s because often people are changing directions. So for instance, for some of your audience, maybe mums at home at the moment, but they’re about to go and do something else, or might be changing jobs, whatever the situation is. I would suggest writing a warm letter to anybody that you know that you want to alert to the fact that you’ve changing jobs so it could be people you’ve worked with in the past. It could be friends it could be family, and just like to say you may know me as a stay at home mum or you may know me as a whatever it is you’ve been doing, but you know I’m now doing something else. And this is what I do. And this is who I offer it to. And you’d be amazed how many clients you can get from that because obviously these people are close to you, the friends or family, the people you’ve worked with before, and they want you to succeed. And I find that when you do that the what you get back can be anything. Suddenly you’ve got this influx of people asking you about your business and what you do and can they employ you just for one letter or a number of letters that go out to all these people that want you to succeed?

Kate Butcher
Fantastic. That’s another brilliant bit of advice. Thank you. Gosh, we’re getting loads of gems of wisdom today which is fantastic. Thank you. So Julie, what would you say is the best bit of advice that you have been given since you started in business? Maybe it’s one of those pieces of advice that you’ve just given us? I don’t know.

Julie Brown
Yeah, Well, there’s loads obviously. But I guess the ones that I thought I would share here is one around, just get it out there. What I find more than anything is alongside impostor syndrome, we get this perfectionism and procrastination. And people think that –

Kate Butcher
Guilty.

Julie Brown
– a lot of people are, but I think it’s the perfectionism that really gets people because that goes hand in hand with procrastination. I know but, I think to think that it has to be perfect for them to put it out there and it really doesn’t. The message that you’re sharing is important, but if you don’t share it in the most perfect of ways, it doesn’t really matter. I look back now to some videos that I made when I first started, they’re terrible, but I’m still at it, because if you don’t get started, you can’t complete either. You’ve got to start somewhere. And even now, you know, five years on, I still put things out there that I think “Oh God That’s not really quite what I expected it to be”, but it just has to go because otherwise I’d be sitting on it and sitting on it and sitting on it. And what’s more important is that you get your message out there and your services out there, and you out there, and it doesn’t really matter if it’s perfect or not. So that’s my first tip. Just get it out there. Wherever it is get it out there.

Kate Butcher
It’s so true. In fact, I’ve got up on my wall, above the mantle piece there, “Done is better than perfect”, which is the Sheryl Sandberg quote about exactly that. Yeah, it’s brilliant tip that one thank you.

Julie Brown
Alongside with that goes you know if you compare you despair, so don’t compare yourself to anyone else. You know, you’re on your own path. Because what we often do is compare ourselves with people who are much further ahead of us. And it’s no wonder we start to think well, I’m useless. I really can’t do this because look at them, you know, I’ve got all these clients, but they’ve probably be an at it five or 10 years and you’re not on the first ladder so definitely don’t compare. Secondly is start growing your email list right from the off, from day one, start planning and organising an email list because that’s what will sell your services. When you get further down the line. Those are the people who are already in love with you. The people have signed up to be in your world, the people that you can nurture and we don’t know when Facebook’s gonna shut down when Instagrams gonna go pop. And all those things we don’t own, whereas that email list is our own real estate, we own that and unless we decide to shut it down, it’s not going anywhere. So that’s definitely absolute number one thing in business is to grow your email list. And then another thing I would say is if you’re not enjoying what you’re doing, then reassess it because if you’re self employed, although it’s a struggle sometimes and we have tough times, along with the good times, you should be enjoying it. And if you’re not enjoying it, I would take a good look at it, because it might be that you need to be doing something else.

Kate Butcher
Brilliant. Thank you. Absolutely fantastic advice there on both of those. The email list. You know, I actually just had a conversation this morning with one of my accountability buddies about exactly that. And she said, What are you doing with your email list? And I have to say, I’m guilty of I’ve gathered some emails, but I don’t nurture my email audience as much as I should. I know I don’t, and yeah, so I did get a slap on the back of the wrist this morning for, a virtual one, for not actually doing anything with my email list. So yes, thank you. Hearing it twice in one day is giving me the kick up the backside that I need to go out and actually start doing something with it.

Julie Brown
What I find most is, people nurture their cold lists, or their warm lists, so we’re all busy on social media posting and things like that. And what we’re doing there is just talking to a cold audience mostly. Wherea your email list is your red-hot list and that’s where we should focus. Or get started on. Yeah.

Kate Butcher
Absolutely. Thank you. I will. I’m gonna get on with that one. Definitely. Brilliant. Thank you very much. So do you have a favourite business tool that you use in your business at all?

Julie Brown
Yeah, again, I’ve got a few but the the two I will talk about, the two that I will talk about, can never do just one is mailer light, which is my email list platform.

Kate Butcher
Yep.

Julie Brown
There are many, many, many out there, started with MailChimp moved on to MailerLite. And the reason I like it is because it’s free until you get to I think it’s 1000 subscribers. But even when you start paying, it’s not a lot to start with. So for anybody who’s starting out, it’s it’s a good one to go with because it’s really easy to use. I find it easier than MailChimp and when I was really struggling with MailChimp, that’s when I sort of wasn’t doing the email marketing that I should have because it was just too much of a struggle every day. Whereas now I’ve moved on to moonlight and it’s much easier and I can get emails out there quite quickly. It’s not to say I won’t move on, you know, as an email list get bigger and bigger. I’ll probably move on to something else but it’s working for now. And then the one thing that I really couldn’t live without, although it’s quite a basic tool really, is Canva because for all the graphics that I have to do, all the branding that I have to do, all the resizing stuff that I do, I couldn’t do it without Canva, and it’s so easy to use and again, in the pro is £10.99 a month which is nothing. So definitely not going to strike that off my list. probably heard that 1000 times I’m sure but yes, definitely.

Kate Butcher
Honestly those two tools are two of my absolute favourites as well, and I exactly as I was saying I have a mailing list and I haven’t used it, it is in MailerLite, but MailerLite is something I use very frequently because I may not nurture my own mailing list, but I do a lot of work as a VA with my clients and their mailing lists and MailerLite is the one that I always recommend that my clients use, because as you say, it’s it’s, it’s free to use with a smaller number of subscribers if you’re under 1000 or so. But actually, it is, as you say, very easy to use, very user friendly, but it’s also the only piece of software that I could find that allows you to have quite a comprehensive sequence of automated emails in there, within their free package. If you want to have automations. In any of the other packages, you’ve got to upgrade to their paid programmes, which when you’re in the early stages of business, you don’t necessarily have the funds to invest in even low cost products and services necessarily, and you can set up some really amazing automations with MailerLite, which I think is absolutely brilliant. They have just changed their pricing structure in the last month and I need to have a really good investigate and see what is and isn’t included. But yeah, they’re automations are absolutely brilliant and so, so easy to use. So yeah, I absolutely agree with that, that recommendation, and Canva, likewise, use it all the time. And in fact, my daughter is completely obsessed. Now I’ve set her up with a student account and she loves to make invitations and posters and create all sorts of fun things in there as well. So it’s great as a tool for children to use with the free package as well to come up with their creations for their things they want to use. But yeah, brilliant tool. Absolutely fabulous.

Julie Brown
There’s so much, so many things on there that I’m still not using, you know, things like all my presentations now are done on Canva, it’s so much easier than anything else I’ve used. So, yeah, quite a basic thing. But once you start with it, you’re not gonna be able live without it and that’s for sure as a businesswoman.

Kate Butcher
Absolutely. And totally, I absolutely agree with that one without a doubt. Fabulous. And do you have any books that you particularly like to read or to listen to that you would recommend to other mums in business?

Julie Brown
Yeah, I have got a whole library of books. I’ve got a couple of with me, I know the your podcast audience can’t see them. But I tried to choose based on who I know your clients are. So this first one is called “Builder: Tackle your inner naysayer. Get out of your own way and unleash your badassery” and it’s by somebody called Coach Jenny. Now there are lots of books on impostor syndrome, spotting imposter syndrome basically. But I just think it’s really lovely. It’s written in a really lovely, easy to understand way. And it’s got lots and lots of tips and it’s probably, is it the best book I’ve ever read on impostor syndrome, probably because of the way it’s written. And some of the tools and tricks that she talks about in there. So that was my first one. She’s suffering from impostor syndrome, which I know a lot of people are, and that’s definitely worth having a look at.

Kate Butcher
That’s brilliant. That’s a completely new one to me, I’ve not heard of that one. So thank you for that recommendation, that’s going on my list as well.

Julie Brown
It’s very good. It is very good. And then my second one you will probably know about and it’s called “Building a story brand” by Donald Miller. This has been around for a while now, and a lot of people talk about it. But I think one of my big, big things is that getting your message straight is what’s going to help you build your business. And I said earlier that you, it doesn’t need to be 100% perfect, how you how you get it out there you know what your writing styles like and things but actually making your message clear is a different matter. It has to be clear. The people who are doing marketing that’s confusing and not going to get any clients. So getting your message spot on as far as having it clear in your head so that it can be clear in your, when you’re doing your marketing, is really important and I would highly recommend this book to help with that.

Kate Butcher
Fantastic I haven’t read that one. It is in my wish list though. So it’s that it’s one that I know, I know of, but I haven’t actually listened to or read yet.

Julie Brown
Definitely, definitely worth having a look at, it follows the hero’s journey, b,ut it shows you how to implement it and stuff so it’s well worth reading. And the last one which I don’t have a copy of to show your YouTube viewers because I’ve only got it on Kindle, is called I’m gonna have to look at the proper title, “The Go Giver”, and it’s by two men, Bob Berg and John David Mann. And the reason I’ve chosen this, it was a new book to me till quite recently, is that, in business, we talked a lot about giving value, give value, give value, give value, and I get quite a bit, people pushing a few people pushing back on that oh, you know, if I give my best stuff away, nobody’s gonna want to buy anything. And that book tackles this, and it really gets to the heart of the matter around the more you give, the more you get back and it does it in a really interesting way. So if you feel like you’re giving too much away, or you don’t want to put things out on social media because you’re worried that people then won’t buy your services, definitely read that book because it will get rid of that for you straightaway.

Kate Butcher
That’s another one that I’ve been recommended and haven’t yet listened to. But it is again another one that’s on my wish list. And I’ve heard a lot of really good things about that book. So yeah, definitely one I look forward to listening to or reading really soon. Thank you, three really good book recommendations there. That’s absolutely fabulous. Thank you for those Julie. So before we wind up the interview, could you finally tell us a little bit about where people can find you? If people want to check out what you do a little bit more where you are on social media, your website and any offers that you’ve got going on at the moment that people might be interested in?

Julie Brown
Yeah, so my website is iamjuliebrown.com. But with a name like Julie Brown you have be quite creative with how you title yourself because it’s quite a common name. I am on Instagram which is iamjulie.brown. I’m on Facebook. If you search me under Julie Brown but I think you’re gonna put the links to that aren’t you as well and –

Kate Butcher
All of the links will be in the shownotes yes.

Julie Brown
– again with a name like Julie Brown, if you just google Julie Brown or look on Facebook under Julie Brown you get quite a few. So the link to my page will be great. I do have a Facebook page called I am Julie Brown. And I have a Facebook group as well which I know you’ve got the links in the show notes to that too. I am on Twitter as well which is iamjuliebrown1. So those are all my different places you can find me.

Kate Butcher
Thank you and is there anything that you’re offering at the moment in terms of promotions or things that people can sign up to that will be of interest?

Julie Brown
Yeah, I have got a freebie that I would like to offer because it’s about media coverage and think for the people who are listening here now, watching, and your audience in general. The earlier you can think about starting to get media coverage for your business, the better it’s going to be because media coverage is so powerful. We haven’t touched on that really but it is the most powerful form of marketing you could ever do. And so many people are not using it. The tip of the iceberg really when it comes to the amount business owners that are using it, but the ones that are, are reaping massive benefits. So I wanted people to start thinking about this sooner rather than later. So my freebie, is in two parts really. It’s a list of 10 media outlets that are looking for business owners right now because they want to feature them in their place, wherever that may be. And there’s a little bit of information on each outlet as far as how to look at that and see whether it’s something that you want to go further with. But then it comes with a video, which is about whether you are ready for media coverage or not, because although you don’t need to be mega experienced, you can still get media coverage as a newish business owner. There are things that it would be best to have in place before you start contacting the media. And this video just goes through that and tells you what you can do about it if you don’t think you’re ready, and –

Kate Butcher
Fantastic.

Julie Brown
– the link to that is that on your show notes.

Kate Butcher
It is indeed, it will be. Yeah. Brilliant. Thank you so much, Julie for giving us so many valuable insights today and some of your time to talk to us. You’ve given us loads of gems to work with today. So thank you very much. I’m sure the listeners and those watching on YouTube will find loads of really useful things to take away from everything you’ve talked about. So thank you. It’s been absolutely lovely talking to you.

Julie Brown
You’re welcome. Thank you very much for having me.

Find shownotes, and Listen to the episode here

Or watch on YouTube