As the cost of living crisis worsens, more and more of us will be looking for ways to increase our income.
It's hard to see a way to do that outside of the traditional nine to five grind, but Brenda Gabriel, 41, managed to leave her full-time job and achieve incredible success. She left her civil service job after 11 years in the sector and started training in marketing and PR.
She managed to convince a PR firm to give her a chance, despite having no experience working in the industry. Now, she makes as much as £184,000 in a month, and wants to help others and inspire them.
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Brenda told money-saving community LatestDeals.co.uk: "I learned all about the power of PR and promotional marketing. I learned about the different ways small unknown businesses could raise their profile and gain clients with ease if they had access to someone who could help them.
"I totally blagged my way into working at an agency. I had no marketing or PR experience when I started but I convinced the founder to give me a chance to prove myself after drafting a proposal that outlined the results I expected to achieve.
"It took me a whole day to create but it was worth it because I got the job. After eight months we decided to part ways as I realised some of the business growth goals we wanted to achieve were unrealistic in the timescales."
After a while, Brenda decided to take the leap and go self-employed. She says the journey wasn’t easy, but by embracing the fear she has managed to achieve monumental success.
She said: "In my first year of being self-employed I made £11,000. I now run a six-figure business and have done since 2018 which seems insane.
"When I worked as a civil servant, I was excited at the prospect of progressing to a salary of £60,000 as a senior manager. My highest sales month was £184,000 of sales in just one month.
"After my first year in business, income grew slowly as I worked around a teen and two young children. In 2016/17 I made £24,000 in my business before hitting over £100,000 in 2017/18. In summer 2017 I hired a high-ticket sales coach and that was when things really took off for me."
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The switch from being employed by a company to running your own can be daunting. She said: "It’s a real culture shock to go from being paid every month no matter how much work I did or didn’t do, to be responsible for making sure I get paid every month.
"My biggest challenges were a lack of confidence and lack of business knowledge. I didn’t know anything about starting, growing or scaling a business.
"When I first started out money was very tight and I had to do everything myself. I had a newfound appreciation for my first PR boss and how much she had achieved by running a successful business with staff and a consistent flow of clients for years. It’s not as easy as it looks!"
Brenda’s advice for others wanting to launch their own business is simple. She said: "Do it. Start before you’re ready and be prepared to suck at everything in the beginning. Every master was once a disaster. What’s most important in the beginning is to keep showing up for yourself and be prepared to fail.
"There are so many ways to make extra cash these days and social media accounts and books which all provide great advice on how to set up and run a successful business or side hustle. That means there’s no excuse not to do it.
"The only thing to beware of is taking advice from multiple sources and trying to mix everything up at the start. Decide on a course of action and follow it through to success.
"So much time can be wasted trying to implement all the advice given that you never get anywhere fast."
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