“I have always loved Bollywood dancing”
Tell us about your business… BollyFitUK is a company promoting fitness, health and well being through the use of Bollywood Dancing. BollyFitUK aims to become the biggest Bollywood fitness method...
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Running a business doesn’t have to be lonely… connect with like-minded women.Ready to read some inspiring stories about female entrepreneurs?
We have some truly inspirational stories from female entrepreneurs – stories that will blow you away. You can read the latest below or you can have a browse through the categories listed on the right and find a story that suits you. We have stories from women who have quit their jobs and started a business, women who were made redundant and decided to set up on their own and women who overcame serious personal challenges to start their business and much more. Enjoy!
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Transforming Pain into a Productive Power
What motivated you to start your business? The death of a mother-figure motivated me to start Woman tO Woman (W.O.W). I had an epiphany that many women share: as many... -
“I dreamed of having my own business”
What motivated you to start your business? I’ve always been an entrepreneur. Even as a child and later when I was a teacher, I dreamed of having my own business.... -
“I maintain my full-time job and run my consulting business on the side and I love it”
What motivated you to start your business? Both of my parents are entrepreneurs so I grew up always assuming I would eventually do my own thing. The first time I... -
After Lea’s Mum Died She Decided To Quit Her Job And Start A Business
What motivated you to start your business? I held my Mum’s hand as she died from a cancer-related complication. How can you just go back to “normal” life after something... -
“This is the dream I’ve had since a young teen”
Tell us about your business… Transitional Home for Homeless Female Vets (Phase 1) and those with children (Phase 2) The plan is to purchase & renovate a large abandoned or... -
“We can live in the past as a victim, or we can live the life we want now and in the future”
What motivated you to start your business? Here is our story, and motivation… Little Girls Don’t Belong In The Emergency Room As the back doors of the ambulance closed... -
“Being blind was a wake-up call and made me put a lot of things in perspective”
What motivated you to start your business? In 2005 I lost my sight in my right eye due to a corneal hydrops resulting from the eye condition called keratoconus. Eventually...
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What would you create if you could start your own nation?
I love my family, but I am sure I was switched at birth. Most of my relatives are hard-working, practical and realistic. These are all very good traits. But practical and realistic sometimes translates into reluctance to take risks or do something different. On the other hand, almost from conception, I’ve been fascinated by those who step outside the box, who dream big and work to create something that’s never been done before. Even when the odds are close to impossible. Imagine those who first ventured out from the old world to the shores of North America – usually leaving everyone and everything they knew behind. In most cases, once they were gone, it was forever. They did it for something unexplainable. A dream. A vision. A wildly unrealistic idea. Maybe they were crazy. They wanted to build something better than what they had. And, though these ideals are not... -
Top Tips For Raising Awareness Of Your Business
As a business owner you’re probably always looking for more ways to get your business out there, without having to spend a fortune. When I started my first business I only used paid advertising to raise awareness. I started off with Google Adwords and then moved on to developing my SEO (which cost me a fortune) and advertising on other websites. I used to spend around £15,000 per month on advertising, which is a colossal amount of money! Don’t get me wrong – it did convert well (otherwise I wouldn’t have done it), but it was eating away at my profit. Then I got smarter and started using free advertising… social media. The great thing about running a business today is the power of the internet and the amount of free advertising you have access to and you can use it to get started and in conjunction with offline advertising... -
Fear: The Only Thing That Is Stopping You
When you think about being the person you want to be, what would happen if you had no fear about that? No fear about what others may think of you? No fear about going for your dreams, no matter how big? No fear about becoming truly successful in every way? FEAR is the main emotion that holds us back in life. Our fears can be mild or out of control; either way they are inhibiting. They shut us off- they close us down, and make us afraid to strive for more. You know when you’ve been plagued by fear. The ‘what if’s’ begin to creep into your head… ‘what if I dont get the job?’ ‘what if she doesn’t like me?’ ‘what if I can’t do it?’ … and the list goes on. What do those ‘what if’s?’ get you? That’s right, absolutely nothing, except probably more of the same-... -
Back Yourself To Win
Q: What is the main thing that stops us from going for our dreams, from striding out from the crowd? A: Our mindset, our perceptions about ourselves and our belief as to whether it could be possible. I recently read a very interesting perspective from Timothy Ferris’s book, ‘The 4 hour work week’ that states ‘It is more difficult to go for the mediocre goals and the ‘average’ salary than it is to shoot for the top. It’s less crowded there- most people are too insecure to go for the big guns’. As children, we are not insecure. We dream boldly and greatly. We never think that we cannot be the things we want to be, never think that our dreams are ‘too big’ or that we’re not good enough to achieve them. Slowly, most of us settle for a ‘realistic’ standard of living, a ‘normal’ job and a ‘steady’... -
Adventures in Working From Home
What happens when you’ve worked for other people for years, but you’ve started a business where you now work from home? I have a full-time job outside of my business which means that nights and weekends are my extended working hours, and keeping myself accountable inside a house full of distractions without any supervision has proven to be pretty challenging at times. Because this is the final month before I am to launch my handmade shop (on May 30th), I decided it was time to get extra disciplined and come up with smarter ways to keep myself focused and on task, and it’s made a world of a difference for me so far. Tips for Making the Switch from Off-Site Office to Working From Home: Continue to keep set hours. I set up a weekly schedule that works for me just by observing the natural wavelengths that I operate on... -
Try Something New For 30 Days
Have you ever felt like life is passing you by and you’re not really doing the things you want to do? Days, weeks and months go by and you’ve not really achieved much. I think we’ve probably all felt like this at some stage. The question is, how can we turn this around and start doing amazing things all the time? Well I recently watched a great video on TED called ‘Try something new for 30 days” and I thought it was a simple, but genius idea for actually doing amazing things! In this short, lighthearted video, Matt Cutts talks about a great way to think about setting and achieving goals. I’m definitely going to try something new for 30 days – are you? In fact, last night I got my journal out and started to make a list of all the new things I’d like to try for 30... -
Inspirational & Spine Tingling Video (get the tissues at the ready)
I was just taking my daily inspiration break and I came across a talk on TED given by a girl called Amy Purdy, about living beyond limits. I don’t often cry, but this video made me cry! Her story is incredible – when she was 19, she lost both her legs below the knee and since then has gone on to do some amazing things (including becoming a pro snowboarder!). It’s such a powerful talk and she shows how we can draw inspiration from life’s obstacles. Amy said the question that changed her life was… “If your life were a book and you were the author how would you want your story to go?” -
Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming…
So I haven’t written in a while. Excuses follow in no particular order. 1). I was lazy 2). I was broken into and my laptop was stolen 3). My full time job has gone a little bit mentally busy 4). I WAS BUSY DOING MY BEAUTY THERAPY TRAINING! Can you tell which excuse was actually pretty darn exciting?! I really, really loved doing the course which was super fun, bar the teacher was a tad scary (isn’t it crazy how once person can really affect things for you?!) but managed to pass all my tests with 100% and have fun doing it! I also met one little lady who was super organised and had already bought the extra training bits she needed and had already started her portfolio work. It made me feel super lazy but at the same time motivated me to crack on. That was last week. This... -
Personalizing Your Business
When you think about some of your favorite businesses and independent shops, what comes to mind first? Is it their branding, their products, or the type of customer service you can expect to receive from them? All of those things are definitely important to pay attention to as a business owner – they should, of course, all be based on how you’d like your customers or clients to perceive you and your business as an entire entity. But once you figure that out, you then need to decide how you’re going to communicate with your potential customers in a way that will get them to see you as you want to be seen. Social media is one of the best ways to give your brand a voice and get the word out about all that you do in a more personal way. On top of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and now... -
THE WORLD’S BEST IDEAS FOR SCREWING BUSINESS AS USUAL
SIR RICHARD BRANSON CALLS ON AN INSPIRING LINE-UP OF ENTREPRENEURS TO HELP HIM SELECT THE WORLD’S BEST IDEAS FOR SCREWING BUSINESS AS USUAL An inspiring line-up of judges was announced on Monday 16th April for Virgin Unite and Sir Richard Branson’s Screw Business As Usual competition. The panel of judges, including Sir Richard, consists of Jane Tewson (Igniting Change), Creel Price (Founder Accelerate Global), Peter Boyd (COO, Carbon War Room), Tony Banks (CEO, Balhousie Care Group), Mark Thompson (serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist) and Joe Polish (Founder and President of Piranha Marketing Inc). The Screw Business As Usual competition, launched in November 2011, was designed to find ideas from around the world that are truly screwing business as usual and making the world a better place. Some of the ideas that made the competition included: · The world’s most ethical Football Soccket – an amazing football that harnesses and stores...
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