Rachel is an artist, creating stunning tree-forms as jewellery and sculptures from wire and gemstones. Her dream is to create a life-size memory-tree installation for a public space in her home city of Birmingham, UK, whose leaves will be tokens dedicated to victims of Covid-19.
The idea came from a conversation with a business mentor at Digital Boost, who provide unlimited one-hour mentoring sessions, as well as workshops and extensive digital training. She is getting to grips with the multiple roles small business owners undertake, learning the value of free expert advice and making time to put it into practice.
Akers of Art ran as a side-line until a couple of years ago, when Rachel decided to dedicate herself to it full-time. An art teacher for fifteen years, she specialised in teaching young people on the edge of exclusion, helping uncover potential in those with few academic prospects.
So, it was a natural extension to start out by offering art workshops, the first one being a clay workshop in partnership with a local charity. When the pandemic hit, they went online, sending out kits in advance, focusing on very specific projects and setting up a camera to show her hands at work.
But that took some time and the pandemic nearly destroyed Rachel’s dreams. She struggled to keep her head above water. As a single mum of a nine-year-old boy, she was worried she would have to give up and find a job. Her amazing mum jumped in and gave her the six-month breathing space she needed.
Setting up a website and a social presence was new to Rachel. That’s where her Digital Boost mentors, two from Google and one from RSG Consulting, have been invaluable.
Her hard work paid off and demand for her online workshops grew. But workshops alone weren’t enough for Rachel. Her passion is to create sculptures as installations for public spaces.
She loves those that allow her to explore the therapeutic nature of art. Like the care home in Warrington where she created three ‘snapshots’ of the Warrington Golden Gates to remind residents with dementia where they are and give them a sense of home.
Setting up a website and a social presence has been new to Rachel. That’s where her Digital Boost mentors, two from Google and one from RSG Consulting, have been invaluable.
As well as the idea for a community-based memory tree, she has discussed creating an online gallery on her website, investigated the price points for her art and who she should be targeting, whether B2B or B2C customers.
Rachel said: “I can’t believe all my hard work is finally paying off. I’m my harshest critic but am finally beginning to believe in myself. Digital Boost is fantastic. I’m so grateful the experts there are willing to give up their time free of charge. I’m now focused on making my memory-tree installation a reality.”
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Mary and her husband, owners of Hippersons Boatyard, bought the sixty-year-old business on the southern reach of the Norfolk Broads National Park nearly ten years ago. Moving their barge home from London to Suffolk, they decided to occupy one of their own houseboats while the barge was in dry dock for repairs.
She immediately realised that they had bought a tourism business, with boat maintenance taking second place. They would need to attract a different type of customer and manage stays, from booking to check-in, directly rather than going through an agent.
So, they created holiday experiences including overnights in stylish new luxury glamping pods, water-based experiences including canoe tours, paddle boarding and dayboat hire, and packages with bookings at the best local restaurants.
Mary decided to move much of the business online and taught herself to run the customer experience and promotion of their holidays, learning about marketing, the power of Facebook, and setting up a YouTube channel to give customers the information they need before arrival.
It was a fortunate decision. Mary had an advantage when the pandemic brought the first lockdown in March 2020, and her plans accelerated. She realised that if she didn’t go online faster they could lose the business forever.
Taking up free digital courses on offer, Mary upped her digital game, creating and commissioning vlogs, and building her website with more engaging content.
Consequently, when they were allowed to open on 4th July 2020, the business was super-busy. Units and day boats were perfect sizes for the social bubble and visitors enjoyed the experience so much they quickly booked again for 2021.
Mary discovered Digital Boost, who provide free unlimited business mentors as well as workshops and extensive digital training to small organisations, as she sought to improve her skills during lockdown. She connected with Chris from BT for a mentoring session. She was most impressed that he had researched Hippersons beforehand and came to the conversation armed with great ideas.
The focus of the conversation was YouTube, and Chris shared his screen to show Mary how it works, how to get subscribers and how to write a profile that connects to Facebook and other social media for message continuity.
He also showed her how to create ads and promote locally, which inspired her to create a film showcasing their guided canoe tours for local people using her new underwater GoPro camera, aimed to reach the age-group most connected to YouTube.
From analytics, Chris and Mary realised that people liked videos about the engines and what goes on around the yard even more than the marketing-type films. This insight is bringing about a fundamental shift in her marketing approach as she upped her digital game, creating and commissioning vlogs, and building her website with more engaging content.
Mary said: “I’m so excited to move forward with the ideas Chris shared and am impressed that he found out about us before the call, especially as he is a volunteer. Our digital strategy is working, and I’m so pleased we moved online. We are creating employment opportunities locally and I am excited that customers love our new approach.”
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Rachel from Creative Active Lives worked with Digital Boost to help her understand how to reach new customers online who could benefit from her activity kits for adults and children with physical and learning difficulties, to grow her business in new directions.
Rachel is a single mum whose first business started ‘by accident’ when she discovered a talent for hula-hooping and circus tricks and started teaching adults with physical and learning difficulties.
She built her social-enterprise by working with occupational therapists and other experts in dance, art, and crafts, to adapt the skills. She has since taught thousands of people, specialising in care homes and those with dementia.
But the arrival of Covid-19 was devastating for her business.
With home-schooling her priority, Rachel was forced to put things on hold. But she needed to pay the bills and wanted to help. She created activity kits for STEM activities, beading, pottery-making and a sensory fidget box for children with autism and ADHD. She applied for grant-funding to set up a website and was successful.
She wanted to build a new site that others could share, like a marketplace. But how to create something that was a brilliant user experience? That’s when she spotted Digital Boost on her LEP website and got in touch to set up a mentoring session.
Rachel connected with a mentor at Google, a specialist in website development. He helped her navigate her way through the digital tools available, like Audience Finder and Reach Planner. She discovered she could explore potential customers and how to reach them by understanding, for example, their search behaviour for kids’ activities.
Rachel said: “I feel I’m winging it, but I’ve had amazing help. The mentor at Digital Boost helped me short-cut to finding my audience and making my brand visible online. I’m so grateful to Digital Boost and am lining up some more experts to help me explore more ways to grow the business.”
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Amanda, founder of Mann’s Cookies created her first-ever business with the help of her family, baking and delivering fun and delicious cookies nationwide. Digital Boost helped her optimise her social media content and build partnerships with other businesses to help her grow.
Amanda wanted to help her friend who runs a local A&E department with some tasty team treats during their long shifts and ended up starting a cookie business with her fourteen-year-old niece in 2020.
Her children helped build her website and keep her customers engaged with blogs and fun social-media posts. Amanda can’t contain her excitement as she processes orders and heads to the kitchen at 7am each morning.
Her fun-cookie boxes are lovingly created for every occasion and include vegan, gluten-free and even a rude option! Additive-free, they are delivered through letter-boxes nationwide.
However, as a first-time business owner, Amanda needed more serious advice on how to build her online presence, manage customer experience and grow collaborations with businesses selling products as diverse as coffee, umbrellas, and sponges. So, she reached out to Digital Boost when she saw a post on Instagram.
They jumped in to help her with advice on SEO and managing partnerships, so she could handle the success of her growing business and take things to the next level.
Amanda said: “Mine is a COVID-19 business. I couldn’t imagine I would have so much fun and meet such amazing people. But I don’t have business experience so am grateful I found Digital Boost. They were brilliant on their mentoring calls. They are helping me get to grips with the mechanics of things, how to deliver great customer service and keeping up my social media presence.”
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Georgia is an administrative assistant at the Sue Lambert Trust where she has created an online presence for the charity for the first time through self-taught digital marketing and social media activity. She was helped by Digital Boost to understand analytics and is planning to return and build her design skills.
Georgia is an Administrative Assistant at the Sue Lambert Trust, which has supported survivors of domestic abuse in Norfolk for over thirty years.
They offer long-term counselling services, but with high demand due to Covid-19 waiting times are long. With no safe place to go for community support and to seek information, survivors are having to dig deep to find resilience, strength, and healing.
The charity had no online presence at the start of the Pandemic. With resources tight, Georgia took it upon herself to acquire the knowledge to build a social media and digital marketing presence, in addition to her current role. She also took a course in counselling, aware of how triggering certain words can be.
Georgia discovered Digital Boost via a Google Digital Garage learning session, and it was a Google employee who mentored her when she set up her session.
She focused on analytics and how to build a plan for reporting, different types of reporting and what information is important to people. She plans future sessions so she can branch into design and connect the charity’s website with email and social media.
Georgia said: “I don’t have any digital experience but am loving creating the digital content. There are so many skills to absorb – design, storytelling, copywriting, analytics - so I will be back to Digital Boost for more. I want to create posts about the impacts of trauma on people, share the voices of survivors and give them a safe place online until we can open up and do that in person.”
Amarachi is at the forefront of a revolution – to educate consumers on the benefits of ‘Bean to Bar’ chocolate and make it seen as much a connoisseur delight as wine and coffee.
She sources cocoa from the same places in central and South America as the best coffee, where she pays the equivalent of a living wage to farmers who cultivate beans with amazing flavours. She makes her own chocolate, which takes three days of loving labour, avoids the use of refined sugar*, and sells her premium chocolate to high end restaurants, hotels, and stores.
Ama taught herself to make chocolate after a running injury, when she learned about how certain foods work with the body to heal and launched her business from a spare room in 2015. At the same time as working on major projects for UNICEF, she would make her product in the evenings and deliver to a growing customer base before work.
In February 2020 Ama moved to a new factory in Bermondsey and was selling to ACE Hotel, Bluebird restaurants and coffee shops in high footfall places like the British Library, when Covid-19 struck. Overnight, she lost 90% of her business. She panicked, then posted on Instagram that Lucocoa is ‘too small to fail’ and pleaded with people to buy.
They did, and sales are up 300% year on year.
Ama found out about Digital Boost, who provide unlimited business mentorships via partners including Apple, Google, DCMS and BT, from a supplier.
Because her business has necessarily changed from B2B to a B2C focus, she wanted to sense-check her strategy, and chose a mentor from Apple. The conversation left her buzzing with ideas. Her mentor understood her business right away, confirmed she was doing the right things and added some extra layers of ideas. She’s since met with additional mentors in SEO, social media and more.
Ama said: “What the pandemic did for us was make us evaluate who we are and what we do. We decided to take our chocolate revolution direct to the customer and celebrate the quality of ‘Bean to Bar’ through social media. Digital Boost helped me sense-check my strategy and the guy from Apple was brilliant. He said, ‘people are coming to you for the story and staying for the chocolate’, so I need to get my story out there!”
* It’s in her company name: LU (lucuma, a fruit from Peru) CO (coconut sugar) COA (cocoa beans and cocoa butter).
Jess is a Spanish national who moved to London to study. She learned in a language foreign to her, went to job interviews and took on professional roles in sectors as diverse as FMCG, pharma, fashion, and renewable energies over ten years.
So, she knows a thing or two about being a non-native English speaker living in the U.K. When the pandemic hit and she lost her job in 2020, she decided to fulfil a dream to set up a company and help others gain confidence in their own lives.
The idea for the business came from her sister, who was struggling with presenting during webinars at work. So, Jess helped her prepare and build confidence in both her verbal and non-verbal presentation skills.
Public Persona was founded in January 2021. Jess is working through the big challenges of understanding her customers, setting up a website, and getting to grips with legal considerations and financing.
Her mission is to help other non-native English speakers gain confidence and improve their career value and self-worth. As a former actress, Jess has a bank of experience to draw on to help her clients prepare for presentations, job interviews, pitches – whatever they need.
One of the biggest issues Jess faced starting a business alone was the isolation. She found it lonely, and it was a struggle at times to find the motivation to keep going.
So she was pleased to discover Digital Boost, who provide unlimited one-hour mentor sessions as well as workshops and extensive digital training, in her search for business knowledge.
Her first priority was her website, so she selected experts in website development, one a female-founder like her. She was most impressed that they took time to research and came to the conversation with ideas and suggestions.
She found it incredibly valuable that people would give her honest feedback and recommendations which, for the best reasons, wasn’t always forthcoming from family and friends.
More sessions were been set up to explore user research, visual design, and branding. Jess is taking all the advice she can to get her business off to a strong start.
She said: “I’d definitely recommend Digital Boost. I think as women we tend to wait until we know something perfectly and are fully prepared, instead of just jumping in and figuring it out along the way. I would say to people if you had an idea you should just go for it. There are great resources out there like Digital Boost to help.”
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