My journey into entrepreneurship has been an intriguing one and exciting one and a challenging one all rolled in together. I came from a service background as a mental health nurse in psychiatry where I looked after patients with acute mental health conditions. I led a team in specialist perinatal psychiatry and we were also a training ward too for student nurses.

One of the things that I learnt from that time was about the value of care and empathy in bringing about profound healing results in patients.I also learnt a lot about the power of setting standards in relation to my values and the personal growth that allowed me to deliver to such an extent that my reputation went before me

You see it's one thing to have skills but personal attitude is equally important if one is to achieve excellence

So I went through a remarkable journey where I was headhunted for every post from day one. In fact even in my student days I was asked to represent the nursing college at a number of nursing events that were local and regional wide. It was of course a true honour but it reminded me of the Importance of being a good steward. A good steward does not think in terms of possession alone but thinks in terms of how they can contribute in a way that serves humanity with responsibility and human touch.

I also had a background in playing and coaching in women's football and one of the things that I learnt about life from playing football was winning mentality and teamwork. One of the most important things I learnt about teamwork is that when everybody is working and playing in harmony more can be achieved without losing your individual identity.

As a result I won many player of the match trophies more than any other player in the team and I won the players manager of the season award three seasons consecutively. No player had achieved that accolade up until that point. What was key to my success in addition to being a great team player was the personal growth and the mindset training I put myself through as part of preparation for what appeared to many to be a physical game only.

I understood the power of psychology sufficiently to give time and attention to this part of my preparation.  It not only served me in football but it served me in life and these are the experiences and qualities I bought into entrepreneurship

When I first dipped my toes into entrepreneurship it was in the 1980s. I recall working for a company on a commission only basis and they sold these Kirby vacuums which I was really drawn to for the value they provided when it came to domestic cleaning.  They were more powerful than any other hoover on the market and it was built on science and was able to demonstrate why it was of better quality and more powerful in getting rid of dirt that was below surface tension whether that be on a carpet or a bed mattress for example.  However I failed miserably from a sales perspective, but a seed was sown.

I didn't really recognise this in terms of being an entrepreneur. I just saw the possibility of creating and enterprise that would bring great value and serve humanity if I could combine it with philanthropic endeavour. At the same time it would give me a lifestyle of freedom.

One of the problems with employment is that sometimes it feels like you are in a straight jacket where your role is concerned it's not really built around your superpower as some people call it Often the creativity gets stifled and relegated to the need to follow rules and regulations in order to get a job done.

So while I was using my abilities to the best standards that I set at the same time I grew increasingly unfulfilled and also I felt a call from the level of my heart and soul to take who I had become and the skills I had acquired and expressed and to plant it into a new environment

I bought many qualities from the service industry into the entrepreneurs world and it was very exciting to see if I could replicate something I did very well in the service industry which was to look at my values and set my standards accordingly and then put my head down grow as a person and deliver on those standard.  

The question was would my reputation spread in business in the same way that it spread in the service industry without my having to campaign for myself? In some ways it did and yet I needed to make some adjustments too.

One of the challenges I found in being an entrepreneur when I first started out was the emphasis on self promotion and marketing. I do not consider myself a great marketer although I can talk about the value of how I can help people with great passion and purpose. So I struggled with those aspects - money and marketing go hand in hand. so these were skills I needed to give great attention to in order to be successful in bringing my value to the table in a way that would remunerate me sufficiently.

At first like so many people in business who are self-employed I was charging purely for my time and it took a major transition in my personal growth to understand the restriction of that model and to exchange it for one that was based on value.

It is always a fine balance to monetise valuable solutions whilst enabling people to afford them and that varies from country to country in my discovery so far. However I realised that to charge for my time put a ceiling on how many people I could serve and to what extent I could deliver deep impact hence the switch which would allow me to scale up and serve more people with greater impact

This transition was not simply about changing the business model of I do I consider to be my life's work which is a coaching and mentoring business but is an organic extension of my own life journey and from which I was called to write a book called Breaking Free which got recommended for screen adaptation.

It was fundamentally about learning to value myself and what I brought to the table of this earth through my abilities my skills and my talents, and to combine that with an effective marketing approach that would educate and communicate  directly to the people I could best serve in a way that would bring about solutions to their situations while financing my lifestyle

So where I am at on this journey is learning to build round four basic pillars and that is to build around

1) the relationship with myself,

2) the value of the help I can give other people

3) effective marketing system

4) money which allows me to go beyond the immediate day to day needs to build humanitarian projects.

In this scenario, passion, purpose and philanthropy integrate in a way in which everybody wins and that is how I wish to continue to build my life's work moving forward. And thanks to technologies such as the platform here at Markethive I get to share and connect globally.