“The only way to do great work is to love what you do” — Steve Jobs
It may seem strange to start with a quote by Steve Jobs, especially when you consider his personality ‘quirks’, but you cannot deny his business has been successful and this quote seems to sum up exactly how I feel about my work.
The other option was Yoda’s seminal, “Do or do not. There is no try”
That certainly seems to have been attitude adopted by many of our clients. In the last few months I have attracted some very interesting clients; not exclusively, but predominantly, female. Each has found a niche that they have been able to exploit.
The first was Julia Chi Taylor, a mentor, guide, teacher and healer. I first met Julia around 10 years ago when I was promoting the Starting Over Show, dubbed the UK’s first Divorce Fair by the media, for the innovative Suzy Miller and we kept in touch. More recently Julia made contact when she decided to celebrate her 59th birthday by running barefoot across Spain.
The 1006km route started on the Northern Coast at Suances and ended 52 days later at the Southern coastal town of Almuñécar. She used the event to raise money for two charities - Friends of Sussex Hospices and Fundación Cudeca in Spain.
As you might expect from someone so driven, she successfully completed her challenge, raising over £10,000 for her charities. During the run, she was interviewed several times by BBC local radio and followers were able to follow her progress on her dedicated website - http://barefootacrossspain.com/
Julia is a former international marathon runner and describes herself as a running nomad. She says she feels like she has been running all her life and has written several books on the subject. She now describes running, for her, as 'meditation on the move'. As a mentor and healer, she helps clients to develop new skills, access their latent talents, and find inner strengths they didn't know they had. To find out more about Julia and her business, Soles Journey, click here.
From Julia, I became involved with Sue Harbottle-Sear – another truly inspirational woman. Sue founded Konzepts – a social media and website company that focuses on helping rural businesses – in 2016 after she was made redundant. Her struggles to develop and grow her business were made doubly difficult by her diagnosis with breast cancer in January 2016. Despite these difficulties, her strength and resolve have seen her business grow and she was recently shortlisted for two Rural Business Awards – Best Rural Start Up and Best Rural Creative or Media-based Business. The winners will be announced in October.
While we were still promoting her press release about the business award, and it soon became clear to us that she is an excellent interviewee, her story had to be updated. In August, Sue was chosen to be one the representatives of the Rural Business Group at a round table discussion held by the Prime Minister’s Business Engagement Team on 27th September. Part of Konzepts remit is to give back to rural communities and this is an excellent way to help rural communities around the country.
Our most recent client is Athena Jane Churchill – artist, theatre designer, heritage artist,
creative consultant and community artist. Jane has over twenty years of experience creating and realising theatre sets and artwork, and over fifteen years of experience creating and leading art projects. She helps communities, businesses, schools, groups and individuals engage with each other and express themselves through the arts.
We began working with Athena Jane as she prepared for her latest art installation - Re:remembering An Offering To Mnemosyne. This show brings together all the strands of her work to create an exhibition that invites viewers to step into the world between the real and the imagined. It reflects her ideas of memory – Mnemosyne is a Greek goddess of memory and art – using heritage objects, myths and ancient devotional sites to create an artistic shrine.
The exhibition ran from 15th – 21st September at the Arts@TheCrypt Gallery in Seaford, East Sussex, and won universal praise with the words ‘Beautiful’ ‘Magical’ ‘Enthralling’ ‘Mystical’ and ‘Inspirational’ all appearing in reviews. To see some images from the exhibition, look on her Facebook page.
Her work has left quite an impression.
In a beautiful piece of serendipity, we were also able to introduce Jane to Sue, and Sue has now developed Athena Jane’s new website, which you can view here.
It has been an interesting few months working with these inspirational ladies. Each has a vision that they have developed into a success. While each of them is very different personality, working with them you see common themes - each is strong; full of enthusiasm for life; and each has truly inspired us at Blueberry.