Sally Marshall worked for many years in the House of Commons as a Business Manager. She now uses those transferable skills to work with businesses on their strategy and planning as well as publishing a business magazine with a complementary app called Steer Your Business
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
When business started difficulties overcame:
“a lot of it was building my confidence and to value what I’ve got. Because we all do it, we assume because you know it everybody else knows and they don’t. So, writing the business plan on doing all that sort of stuff was just common sense to me and I don’t understand why everybody doesn’t do it but they don’t and it’s not common sense to them… So, at the beginning it was just about getting known. When nobody knows who you are and what your background is it’s quite difficult because. Certainly, as a business coach there are hundreds, thousands of business coaches out there so why would somebody come to me? So, it’s been about gradually building my confidence, building my credibility and my visibility. So, I’ve worked hard on having the book, the magazine, my social media, the speaking. Because people by people in the by people they know like and trust so when they hear you speak and they think well actually perhaps she knows what she talking about. All when you write a book again that’s an amazing feeling to think you are an author but you become an expert and then people start to follow you and listen to you. But it is a challenge at the beginning in that it is all new, I had never run a business before, I had been involved in a business but not run my own and that’s a very different thing. You suddenly realise you got to do everything for yourself, you don’t have all those people in the office doing everything for you which is what I had been used to. So all of it is quite a challenge and I think the key to it is just keeping going, believing in yourself and keeping going and you can do it”…[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
- The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It Book by Michael E. Gerber
Also mentioned
- Key Person of Influence: The Five-Step Method to become one of the most highly valued and highly paid people in your industry Book by Daniel Priestley
Favourite Quote:
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts” Winston Churchill
Recommended Online Resources:
- YouTube, LLC is an American video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California. Three former PayPal employees—Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim—created the service in February 2005. Google bought the site in November 2006 for US$1.65 billion; YouTube now operates as one of Google’s subsidiaries.
- Google LLC is an American multinational technology company that specializes in Internet-related services and products, which include online advertising technologies, search engine, cloud computing, software, and hardware.
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“talk to each other because you don’t need to be competitive but you can learn from each other. And When you look at businesses of all different shapes and sizes, they all have the same issues at different times in different ways but they basically all have the same challenges. So just by talking to someone you probably find that they’ve been there done that or know somebody who has who can help you. So don’t sit in the silo and worry about it just going find somebody that you can trust and talk to them, talk to each other”…[Listen for More]
More About Sally Marshall:
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
“The worst part of success is to try to find someone who is happy for you.” Bette Midler
Other Quotes From the Chat with Sally Marshall:
- “succeeding is addictive”
- “see someone doing something really well why wouldn’t you want to follow in their footsteps and see if you can achieve even close to that”
- “everybody has competition, we all do whether you like it and not. Very few people have a unique business”
- “I have always had a good network of people to call on”
- “when I finished work, I didn’t know many people locally so I went out networking, breakfast meetings and things like that… There’s lots of free meetings you don’t have to you don’t have to go to paid ones, there’s lots of free networking… And building my network on LinkedIn and social media. Because once you got that network and you start your business you have got somebody to sell. If you don’t have a network you might have the most amazing product but if you haven’t got anyone to tell it really doesn’t help and you very quickly run out of family and friends”
- “build your network now before you need it because in a few years’ time you don’t know what those people are doing who are in the same class as you or working the same office as you or at university together. They could be the key person that you need and you don’t know who they know. So, everybody has a circle of about 250 people even if you don’t realise it. So just talking to somebody they might know that key person that you have been trying to get hold of and they will suddenly say oh yes that’s my husband or wife or brother or lives next door to me or something”
- “sometimes I get a bit too emotionally involved in something, I’m not stopping and thinking it through properly, you get distracted when you do that. So, listening to my gut instinct is a much better way working now and I get things done quicker. I don’t get distracted so much”
- “just keep working at it and don’t give up. I think there’s a lot of people who are just on the brink or maybe need just a little bit of help. There is nothing wrong in asking for help. Sometimes people see that as a weakness but we can’t all be good at everything and sometimes you just need a bit of help or a bit of reassurance”
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