Online courses – 30 Days to Boost Your Biz

Online courses – learning and development without even leaving the house

We all need to keep up with the latest developments in our own fields or areas like social media, blogging and so on. A cost and time effective way to do this is to sign up for online courses, which you can often complete at your own convenience.

Our home working reviewers have been busy learning all kinds of skills on online courses to report back on what’s good value for your time and money.

The Girls Mean Business – 30 days to Boost Your Biz coaching programme

What is it?
An online course run by Claire Mitchell of The Girls Mean Business for women small business owners and freelancers. A friend told me about Claire and TGMB only a couple of days before her 30 Days to Boost Your Biz (Before Christmas) programme started. So I had no previous relationship with her at all, but I instantly took to Claire’s down-to-earth style and signed up.

Content ****
The programme is delivered by webinar, a private Facebook group and an online coaching portal that members log into. It began and ended with a Q&A session delivered by webinar. Every week there was a webinar, four in all, each with an online workbook for making notes and answering the week’s homework, which could then be typed into the portal and sent to Claire.

Access was also provided to webinars on related topics previously recorded by Claire. In fact there was so much information provided I sometimes lost track of where it all was! You need to know your way around FB in order not to get swamped by all the updates and to find all the information such as members’ bios and homework they wanted to share.

I learnt a lot simply from observing the strong presence of TGMB on FB, being part of the private group and being introduced to Likes Ladders, which I’d never heard of.

Delivery *****
Claire is a warm, friendly, down-to-earth northern lass with lots of marketing experience, very encouraging but also capable of delivering a swift kick up the backside when needed. She effortlessly instilled confidence into the 30 Days to Boost Your Biz group members, making them all feel their ambitions were achievable, when before some had felt very discouraged.

Claire takes a very active part in the FB group, making suggestions when people ask questions, and nagging in the nicest possible way where necessary.

What you learn *****
How to spot and kill ‘mind monkeys’ (of which more later), identify your ideal customer, develop focus and decide on your vision, set goals of all types – financial, number of new clients, number of testimonials etc – and plan your marketing in a way that suits the way you work.

Many business ‘gurus’ make a reputation and a lot of money by touting their formulas for success, with the assumption that in duplicating the process in your own business you will inevitably become successful. They often neglect to address conditioning and emotional issues. Claire starts from the position that there are many factors that can hold us back as women business owners.

She talks a lot about ‘mind monkeys’, those nasty little voices that chatter away about why you’re not going to succeed, why you’re no good, why it’s all a bad idea etc etc. I found this acknowledgement and tackling of stumbling blocks to be empowering, and so did the other women on the 30 Days to Boost Your Biz course.

Does it do what it claims? *****
Did it boost my biz? It provided valuable perspective to focus on my business and I got into habit of going to the library once a week to do ‘homework’ because being away from my desk helped with that perspective. Because I’ve had to deal with other priorities I’m still working on Claire’s suggestions and I’m confident they will bring results.

Any training only works if you’re prepared to put in the effort to think it through, complete the assignments and make the changes you come up with. If you do that 30 Days to Boost Your Biz will definitely move you forward in some way, whether it’s approaching your business from a new and better informed perspective, attracting more clients, being able to put up your prices or even deciding it’s not the right thing for you to be doing right now. There were examples of all these on the course I was on.

The FB group is brilliant for home workers who feel a bit isolated and there’s a core of members who are still using the group regularly to ask questions and get feedback, two months since the programme ended. There is also talk of a meetup being organised for those who can get together. So this is not just a flash in the pan – membership of the group can be long term if you want.

30 Days to Boost Your Biz is confidence building, provides a supportive group of women business owners ready to share their experience and opinions, AND gives a solid and straightforward foundation for your marketing.

Worth the investment? *****
Most definitely, 30 Days to Boost Your Biz is unbeatable value for £197. Some group members had to borrow to pay for the programme and many of them say it’s the best investment they’ve ever made in their business. You could easily pay many times this amount for information delivered in a much less engaging and supportive way.
Once you complete the programme (you can sign up by clicking on the logo on the left) there are special deals for the 6 month coaching programme, Running a Business in Heels, and for a one hour one-to-one strategy call with Claire, generally only available to 6 month coaching clients.

Overall score ***** 4.8

Best for
Women freelancers and small business owners who work from home and have got stuck, lost confidence, are confused about how to market themselves or who simply feel isolated and could benefit from the support of likeminded women.