Community Post | Give Yourself Kindness: As Seen At Thrive Street In The Bullring

In November, through our partnership with Mastercard and their Thrive Street initiative, members of our community had pop-up shops in the Bullring Birmingham, with inspiration from Mary Portas OBE and Masterclasses, including one from us on mentoring!

One of the small business owners from our community who took part in the event was Rachel, founder of Give Yourself Kindness. Read her experiences, in her own words 👇

Digital Boost is an amazing place for connection – and in business, connection is so important.

I got a very exciting late-night email from Karen Licurse the Managing Director of Digital Boost about an exciting event bringing together 5 small businesses in the Midlands to host a pop-up in the center of the Bull Ring on a weekend in November. What an amazing opportunity – what an exciting late-night email.

A couple of weeks later, I packed up, my normally online business, Give Yourself Kindness – passionate to share tools (beautiful tools in the words of Mary Portas) to nurture a kinder inner dialogue for us all – and headed to the Bull Ring.

The event oozed warmth and connection and the power and energy of small business. Together we brought small business to the city center and it was clear that the person behind the business mattered. In a world where online is powerful and digital is important – it showed me that there is still a massive place for in-person. Especially, when in-person events can be shared online – so everyone can be a part of it through social media. I learned that it is not always in-person or online – there is opportunity and space for both.

The event was opened by small business champion, Mary Portas, and her energy and warmth felt very special. She made time to talk to, support and advise all our businesses – an opportunity that I will forever value.

The joy of the event was the whole weekend – I really love having an online business and I love being able to reach people and send my products across the world – but getting to speak in person to customers also feels so important. This weekend created an amazing opportunity for that.

There also felt a power in small businesses coming together. Running a small business can feel like a lonely place sometimes – part of the reason I connected with Digital Boost – and this event allowed an amazing space for us small business owners to learn and inspire each other. It’s amazing how different, businesses can look on the outside – but delving deeper we all had connecting passions, challenges, and inspirations.

I cannot thank you Karen and everyone at Digital Boost enough – and I also want to take this opportunity to recommend Digital Boost to everybody. The value of external advice is enormous – we are all so passionate about our businesses, and this is a wonderful thing – but it can mean it’s hard to see an outsider’s view. And with Digital Boost it’s not just an outsider, but an expert that wants to help.

Also if you’re reading this and want to say hey, please reach out and also check out my business and passion Give Yourself Kindness – and find my expert-recommended wellness tools to make self-compassion easier. I’ve worked with experts around the world to create the best tools to support the mind. The mind can be a tricky place sometimes – I wanted to create tools that worked – and could really help.

Rachel is one of the amazing businesses in our community that we’ve been able to support through our free business mentoring. Would you like to take part in future events like this? Join our Digital Boost community and we’ll keep you updated on all opportunities we have to showcase your small business!