The Authentic Marketing Story

My aim is to support:

~ holistic and conscious practitioners who are struggling with their marketing and can’t seem to reach out to more of their ideal clients without doing things that feel out of integrity or require a lot of investment.

and

~ awakening team leaders within the corporate world who feel dissatisfied with their jobs and that their work is incongruent with their values.

I am a life and business coach and I also run a couple of businesses in the wellbeing sector. I have taken the best of what I have learnt from my extensive marketing qualifications, my time in the corporate sector and my own journey into creating sustainable, holistic, conscious and client-focused businesses, and I want to offer this to as many heart-centred practitioners and team leaders as possible.

I believe that true heart-centred marketing can be one of the most powerful tools for change and right now we are in a time that requires us to be placing the most powerful tools in the hands of those who will use them to carve out new ways of being in the world.

I also know that, done correctly, marketing can actually feel good.

It can be an enriching process that develops understanding and authenticity, allows you to recognise and release long standing blocks and patterns, connects you to your own heart and to others and allows you to offer your gifts fully within a healthy and sustainable exchange framework.

So … now a little bit about my story, so that you can understand how I came to be here. I have always loved to write and to make things look pretty, I also enjoyed receiving lots of attention! Marketing then, seemed the ideal career choice. I was very career focused and determined to ‘climb the ladder’. I went to university and studied a marketing degree and a postgraduate diploma and then went out into the corporate world, working for some big consultancy firms in London.

I climbed that ‘ladder’ very quickly … This led to physical and emotional burnout and worst of all, once I was ‘up there’ I realised there was nothing. The experience was empty. I realised with horror that this ladder that everyone seemed to be climbing, pushing and shoving to get to the next rung, led to nowhere. I jumped from that ladder in a state of despair and I fell and I hit the ground hard. I left the corporate world for a while to travel in Thailand, India and Central America. I learnt to meditate, I learnt to live in presence and a whole new world started to open up, one without ladders, where being ‘right here’ led to everything.

When I returned to London, I started to work for a small architectural consultancy, volunteered to offer marketing to ‘Engineers without Borders’ and studied for an Masters in Marketing – my MSc mentor was a bit of rebel and guided me towards books such as ‘No Logo’ by Naomi Kleine and this, along with my involvement with Engineers without borders, led to the focus of my assignments and dissertation being Corporate Social Responsibility.

Sadly, I realised that ‘Corporate’ and ‘Social Responsibility’ could never really sit together in integrity in the same phrase. I left the corporate world completely and, supported by sponsors such as John Pilger and New Internationalist Magazine, started up a glossy Global Issues Magazine for teenagers, which hit the mainstream and changed a lot of young hearts and minds.

Eventually, even the ‘green’ and socially responsible world took its toll. There were a lot of people using the same corporate tactics, climbing a slightly different ladder and simply green washing it all. It got to the point where I couldn’t even switch on my computer without feeling physically sick.

I took some time out again and I retrained as a yoga teacher, therapist and coach. This led to me creating wellbeing programs for children and recently, my own yoga school.

I started to take all the skills I had learnt in the corporate world and utilise them to market myself. However, I tried to hide my sordid past away, ashamed of the fact that I not only had a past in the corporate world, but I also had a MARKETING background.

These skills gradually started to surface again. When I was life coaching heart-centred solo-entrepreneurs we would end up working on business aspects too, with great success. The combination of working on personal blocks and integrating the business practices fully with the client’s life-style, spiritual practice and authentic expression were a winning combo.

When I first realised that I could offer my gifts so fully, my heart cracked open, tears flowed and I realised how much I was longing to use all of the skills that I have to help people like you. My love affair with marketing was rekindled. This time round it had evolved and I knew how to make this work an expression of my heart. I could see how to develop an authentic, conscious heart-centred process of marketing.

I gathered together all of my knowledge, my experience in alternative business, advice and inspiration from marketing colleagues and coaches working in this sector (particularly Tad Hargrave, Corrina Gordon-Barnes and Mark Silver) and the best from the coaching sessions I have offered. All of these resources were pooled together to develop the authentic marketing mentoring program.

I also started to coach those in the corporate sector who wanted to integrate the best of personal development practices into small teams within the corporate world, at the heart of where change is need the most. This awakened leadership coaching enabled them to re-focus their skills so that they could stay in their current job, whilst remaining true to their values and making a difference. My aim is to build a community of strong business leaders who can use cutting-edge personal development tools to build effective teams and increase profits, whilst increasing well-being.

If you are a Practitioner or a Solo Entrepreneur please click here to arrange a free initial consultation to find out if we are a good match to work together.

If you are a Team Leader please click here to arrange a free initial consultation to find out if we are a good match to work together.

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