Getting Started in Franchising.
Jackie Perkins, She’s a coach. She’s a franchisee, she’s held a franchise for nearly 20 years, a mother. And she’s a creator, a speaker. And she’s going to tell us all about how she got started in franchising, which, as you know, the show is open for business, we talk to business owners, and I think one of the things that we often overlook, if you’re looking at now is a very good time to look. If you’re looking to have your own business and franchising, I would suggest is a very good way to go. So Jackie, please do tell us how you got started with franchising because I think the franchisee model is great when done well.
Yes, well, I wasn’t looking for a franchise. And in fact, you know, when you have those famous last words moments, I remember very distinctly standing in the middle of the Office of my former employee saying I’m not the kind of person that has my own business. And here I am 20 years later having been through the franchisee route, I’m now co owners franchise or and setting myself out as a coach independently trying so clearly the there’s a lot of truth in those rumours that we say. But I came to franchising because House of colour, the company that I’m co owner of has a franchise and I’d got to a brick wall in my previous career I was in what I thought an IT world. In hindsight, when I look back, it was actually customer service and training I was teaching people how to make the most of their boxes. And as I say I hear you consistently talk about Jackie is colour and style. And the reason I do is because I have very little interest in fashion very interested little interest in shopping. And I wanted to be able to just find a simple formula turn up fit in look the part not look overdressed or underdressed just find that middle point pitch. And it was such a transformational experience for me, that I I would rave about it, tell everybody about it. And when I came across House of Color and the reliability of the results that come from running a franchisable business format system, I realized there really was only one place to go. And this friend said why don’t you become a consultant. I’ve never thought about it. So I accidentally got into franchising, because the model House of Colour ran was franchising. But equally, I recognized that I probably wouldn’t have had the courage, the stamina, or the confidence to set myself up in business without that. So it gave me team it gave me training, it gave me systems, it gave me connection to people. And although I had to make my name known in my local area, I also had to learn about I can come in under the banner if you like have another brand. And so I’ve now moved into recognizing the power of brand, the secret power of personal brand. And so bringing all that together, that’s how I started so accidentally into franchising. But I also recognize that without that route, I possibly wouldn’t have gone into being self employed. Because where I was 20 years ago, I just didn’t have enough self confidence and belief to push through the barriers, the walls that we hit along the way.
20 years ago, we didn’t have the same online connections that we have now. Facebook wasn’t a thing, YouTube wasn’t a thing. Phones had buttons, you press the dial, and it was just limited texting. That is changed enormously. What was it like at that at that beginning? Were you given certain things to use?
it was, it was a very different time. And actually, what I find is my role now inside the House Of Colour is coaching and supporting new franchisees existing franchisees to grow themselves and their business to the next level. And what I’m finding is, the lessons is still same, we still have to overcome our fears, we still have to get out there, be willing to stand up and say, Hello, this is me, I’ve got something that I can offer you. And this is where I come from. And so back then, I remember training, I remember having a few clients come to me, because they were local, they knew about House Of Colour. So they were effectively referrals on the basis of the brand. But after six months, I had taken a total of £3000 and I realised that while that was great, you know, for somebody, you never expected to be able to get anyone to part with any money, there was a part of me that was like, wow. And then when I looked to the harsh reality of that, even 20 years ago, that wasn’t going to support me, either in the lifestyle I had, never mind the lifestyle I wanted to get used to. So I realised I had to do something, and I had to do something very, very different. And it was a mind shift, mindset shift, because then sweetened with a drink, it was that switch that went in my mind that I went, actually this is a business, I can be a businesswoman. And actually if I don’t make it a business, I’m going to have to go and get another job. And I recognised in that moment that every single one of us has passions and interests and hobbies and, and work and different things that we do, every single thing that we do could either be a hobby or a business. If it’s a hobby, we’re prepared to subsidise it. You know, we have a pet a horse, we have Motorsports, we’re prepared to earn money to subsidise our hobby. If it’s a business, it not only has to pay for itself, but it also has to pay for me. And then the other people that I employ, and it was that switch that got me to wake up. And I started doing courses that are offered by local networking groups, I did a marketing course which got me to start thinking in terms of telling stories, in terms of connecting to people, I got into House Of Colour as a result of careers coaching, looking at what direction I was going to go where we identify purpose. And so I’ve been working purposes is apparently one of the main trending phrases on Google at the moment. I’ve been working with purpose for 25 years. And which is great, because I’m also the kind of person who used to feel I was always a little behind so you know, well ahead of the curve.
So you had this realisation and and so it was this mind shift that you went through. But where you supported by family friends.
I had to change I live in Peterborough. I laughingly say that I knew the roads better than I knew any people. I had a half a dozen friends, but I knew people but not that many. Because I used to go to work and I went home again, in a belief system where I’d grown up, you didn’t work. You didn’t mix business and pleasure. I grew up on a farm in Cornwall 300 miles away, I had come to Peterborough through work after I graduated and had no family in the area. So I really had to do it. I had a house, I had a mortgage, and I had enough money to keep supporting myself for another six months, or maybe even 12 months. But paying the mortgage is very different to be able to afford a new mortgage. So I couldn’t move. I was stuck here. I could keep up with my payments. But I had to make it work here before I could move on to anything else. And I recognise that a lot of my colleagues were going out talking, getting talks at clubs, businesses, social events, and promoting themselves but back then my self confidence wasn’t even that far. I knew I could do it if I had to. So my principle was if anybody asked me I’ll say yes. Almost like I backed myself into a corner I go Okay, and then I figure out how to do it. So if anybody asked me I would say yes, and they wouldn’t know thing about it because I could have this very calm exterior. But I wasn’t I just didn’t have the confidence to go out and find them. So I realised I had to get myself in front of people. I had to I would be what well, how would anybody know how to find with the Yellow Pages wasn’t exactly the same as Google. Because it was it was yellow pages time. And I read about a networking group in the local paper. I had no idea about networking groups didn’t know what they were. So I gave them the call. They came to meet me I turned up to the first meeting. I can honestly say my outward appearance 100% belied what was going on under the surface 100%. But I was quite lucky because I knew how to look the part. My whole training with House Of Colour was to turn up looking good. So I knew that what I was wearing suited me, I might have been a bit more formal, but it didn’t matter because it suited me. So there’s always a variety of dress codes, and my personality would tend to want to go more, slightly more formal, I’d rather be slightly overdressed and slightly underdressed, in an alien environment if you like. And because I brought up on a farm, we always had big community events in the sense of the village and the employees on the farm and salesmen turning up all the time, you know that that kind of family business, so I was used to talking to people, even if I didn’t know, feel the confidence on the inside. And in my previous job, and in training and customer service, I would be out talking to anybody in the business. So as long as I knew my role, I could hold conversations, just don’t ask me to go down the pub for a drink afterward. And, and so I turned up at this networking meeting and it was only when I arrived, they said, right, let’s have your one minute introduction, everybody. Nobody warned me about that part. And of course, I could look the part. So I just stood up and said, Hello, I’m Jackie Perkins. I’ve lived in Peterborough for five years, 10 years. I’m an image consultant with House Of Colour and I can help you look good. And I sat down. And somebody else stood up and said, well, you can tell Jackie knows what she’s talking about. Because Doesn’t she look, the part to me was the little tick of a few got away with that one, they didn’t notice what was going on under the surface. But what I realised is I love meeting people like you now I love talking to people, I love meeting people, I love finding out what they’re about. And I jokingly say, I’m actually I don’t care about what you’re passionate about. But I care that you care. If you’re passionate about it, I want to know about it. And I can’t help myself trying to give you ideas and thoughts and all that’s interesting in finding out about it. And, and so whether you want to be a, you know, a farmer, a fisherman, an artist, a political leader, it doesn’t matter to me, but it does matter that you care about it. And so networking was perfect, I would get out I would meet people, I would get known on the circuit, people would start to refer me. And then the other thing I did was also go out and do sort of mind body spirit first. Because so I recognise that my business was seen as something where you invest in yourself to feel better. When you feel better and look better, you’ve got more confidence. And that’s that market profile, if you like the psychographic rather than the demographic is somebody who’s prepared to invest in themselves for games. So I turned up at the mind body spirit fairs next to all the crystals when the vaporises, and the jewellery and actually just started to meet people in different walks of life. And gradually the word spread. And I think also, given that I connected to you through Denise and Denise works with energy. It was raising my energy. I love what I do. My energy is high, that is attractive to people, you know, we always get drawn to people who look interesting. And actually, the people who look interesting, are the ones whose energy is high. We just don’t realise it’s the energy that’s attracting us.
You’re not you’re just selling, looking good. You’re selling what the looking good will do for you. it’s it’s that end result. That is not not just not just the colour, because that’s, that’s all part of, of actually selling it’s that vibrational energy. Is it true?
You’re absolutely right because it’s not about the clothes. You know, people who who look at our business, in image consulting, think it’s all about the hair, the makeup, it’s And when I say that it’s exactly the same applies to men as to women. So just because there’s more options with women, the same principles still apply. We’re human body, we need to look the part. But what I tend to say to people now is it’s almost got nothing to do with the clothes. It’s got everything to do with who you are. Because what the clothes are doing is communicating something about you in a visual way. So it’s not only the colours, it’s the styles, it’s the kind of patterns it’s the you know, you’re wearing a polo shirt today, some people wear a formal shirt, some people wear a T shirt. Actually, it doesn’t matter too much. Unless you’re sabotaging a message that you’re actually trying to get across with your business, it doesn’t actually matter. What matters is that what you’ve chosen is aligned with who you are. Yes. And so when you know who you are, you can then learn how to do it. And it’s a whole combination of your colouring, your body architecture, your personality, your proportion, and your balance. Some people are really tall and skinny, some people are really tall and big, some people are short and fat, and some people are short and petite. We’re all kinds of shapes and sizes and colourings. And so it’s about making the most of that, because when we resonate with the things that are right for us, other people can tune in, it’s like the it’s like tuning the radio, you just get rid of that interference, and you suddenly is tuning the camera lens, you’ve got that moment of focus in focus. And so when you are in focus, people see you. It’s like the clothes, accessories, the glasses, the jewellery, the haircut, style, colour, etc, becomes the picture frame that projects you forwards rather than either being distracted by something around, you know, brackets, the cartoon tie after Christmas, or even seeing it because we’ve all either felt invisible, or seen someone who’s invisible. You know, that moment where somebody says, Oh, I remember you and you think, well, you’re there. So yeah, I consider myself to be fairly dull and boring. When I was younger, crushingly lacking in confidence, hid behind the introversion because of that lack of confidence. And actually, my luck was consistent with that. It was in my opinion, it was unremarkable, it was easier to try and camouflage and keep my head under the radar if you like. So dull and boring was consistent with dull and boring. What happens is, as we build our skill set, we also need to build our internal or external together. And it’s the balancing of that, which allows us to come across as confident, competent and capable with that credibility. So it’s not about the clothes, it’s about who you are. And the reference point that was first ever given to me at House Of Colour was a quote by Epictetus. ‘Know first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.’ And actually, where I am now, having moved beyond image consulting, image consulting as a key part of what I do, but it’s a part of what I do, you adorn yourself with the relationships you choose with the jobs you choose the hobbies you choose with, where you go on holiday, the car, your home, your interior decor, all of these things. And when you align to who you are on your core, you are empowered, you are supported in every part of your environment. And that’s what it’s about. For me, it’s that power. And the other metaphor I use is the red arrows have always loved watching the red arrows. And something really amazing when they come in, and they do Loop The Loops against each other. But the real power, the energy that I feel is when they come in together and align and they go on like this. And for me, that’s when your visual energy and your verbal energy are aligned and congruent. People get you people see you people remember you for the right reason.
Continuing on from The House Of Colour, you’re also now coaching and coaching speaking.
Yeah, I’ve always done speaking. It’s not been a major part of what I do, but people want to know more about it. So I’ve always done speaking. And, and so one of my one of my favourite ones was when I when I helped my dad in his Rotary Club and I turned up to do a talk and then suddenly realised he had no idea what I was going to talk about. So I opened In my talk with an impromptu frame that said, Yes, ladies and gentlemen, dad thought I was here to talk about my business and the training that the rotary had supplied for me. But actually, I’m here to tell you what it’s like to live and grow up in our family. So, I’m a very interactive speaker, I can be quiet impromptu, I have my main points that I get across. But it’s always around that theme of making the most of yourself riding the emotional roller coaster and making the most of it. In terms of what you’ve and one of the talks, I give us what we got in your box, because when you get a present for Christmas, you get something, let’s say it’s a jewellery box, you’re given to your wife, and you give her a little square box, she’s going to expect something like earrings or ring, you give her a flat, bigger box, she’s going to expect something like a bracelet or a necklace. The thing is, if I open that box, and I find I don’t have a gadget from my computer, it’s not what I was expecting. And so the point about it is we have a box that we present ourselves in when we go outside the door. When I open my mouth, as people get to know me, is all of those is our are all of those messages, consistent with what the first impression that people were given? What’s in my box? Because sometimes you open the box, and it’s not a nice pair of craft earrings. It’s a beautiful diamond ring. So it’s you know, for example, it’s something well in excess of what you expected, but it is in line is just in excess. Other times you’re in that box, and it’s a disappointment, or it’s a shock, even because it really wasn’t what you expected. And it’s the same when we meet people, sometimes we start to think, oh, that’s not what I thought. And in fact, my son has just started a new school this year, this term. And I said, How are you getting on? So good, he said, but there’s one little boy, he said, when I went for the taster days, he was really kind, but he’s not really kind anymore. And so what I’m picking up is this little boy has has challenges integrating with people and beer and he wants he wants to somehow have control. So as an adult, I can understand it. But what my 11 year old son is experiencing is somebody who originally initially first impressions was welcoming and friendly. But when he went back now as a permanent part of the team, it’s not the same reaction. And so out in life, we need to try and give people those consistent messages. Because actually, again, this comes to another my phrases, we talk about ‘people buy people,’
I disagree. emphatically, we do not buy people. Because if you do, I could bring any person in front of you and go, you would buy from them. What I say is we buy passionate people with an engaging proposition. So if you’re passionate about what you want, it might not engage to what you need are looking for. Equally, it might be all, my friend was looking for one of those the other day, and you’d pass on the referral. But it’s that passionate. It’s that engagement. It’s that something extra that we actually buy from people. But in the sense of people buy from people absolutely right. How many thousands of pounds does a corporate business invest in their corporate branding? And I actually at a wedding, once I was stood next to somebody I discovered was was pretty senior in a multi billion pound company. He was asking me what I did. And I sort of saw his eyes glaze over and give him a bit of context. I said, right, branding your business million billions turnover. He went, yeah, I said, Okay, so your budget for branding. And he obviously didn’t want to share the number, but it was clearly very large. I said, right off that budget, how much do you actually spend on the people who deliver your brand? speechless. He had zero in his budget for supporting the people that deliver the brand that they will probably spending six or seven figures on doesn’t make sense as it were in terms of internal skill set, but I’m talking about outward appearance, making sure their purpose and who they are, is aligned with the corporate brand. So it’s bringing together because every single person I believe has a triangle, you’ve got one point of the triangle is you and who you are. One point at the triangle is the business that you represent. And then the other third corner is the product or department or service that you’re offering. And that same triangle applies whether you’re in a corporate environment or self employed, there’s you There’s your business, and then there’s the product or the service or the department. And when you can bring those three together, you have what I call the power up triangle. That’s when you get the rocket boosters because when they’re aligned and working together, you get the team to together, the people working together, and the people being able to represent your corporate product.
What is working with you? What would that look like? So how would someone get to work with you?
It’s the age of networking that you have to find me first.
It depends on what level you want to come and work with me. And the main project I’m working in a b2c environment at the moment is a collaborative project. Because I’ve found two people who are absolutely amazing in their niche. And what they’re amazing at is the Miranda Burch works on your verbal story. She’s an ex BBC reporter, researcher, and she would research people’s stories to find out the bits that you could then share in women’s are or Desert Island Discs, that that kind of thing. What she’s been able to do is translate that into a business environment. So if she was coming to work with you, she find out the bits of your past the kinds of things that you’re drawing out from people in an interview. But she’s got this amazing ability to hear your purpose, your values, what your clients are getting. So you get the verbal story that you can then present back to reach new audiences. Basically, I then connected to Nick Horton, who has a business called Vibe To Tribe. And what he does, is he does the visual story. So he wants your imagery, your photographs or video, he wants to get the essence of who you are. It connected through the visual story so that you can fulfil on your business plan. And when I’ve met both of them separately, I just said, Hello, you two need to meet. So they met. And I went Yep. Great connection, Jackie. Thank you. So that’s one of the things I do if you meet with me, you work with me, there’s a never ending, as Miranda said, a limitless supply of ideas, creativity, connections, if I don’t know someone I know someone who knows someone. And I can’t help myself, which is why I call myself or somebody called me the connector beta. Because there’s something in the energy and the connections that is always taking people forward. So when those two got together, and they went, yep, great connection, Jackie, visual verbal, love it. I said, so can you see the third point of the triangle, and looked at me and I said, ‘Well, visual and verbal, but you’ve then got to make it visible. You’ve got to be out there so people can see you.’ And that’s where I bring together the combination of the internal and the external. So making it visible is about having your look right, that connects to the visual story, because one element of what Nick does is eventually coming to your brand colours based on the energy and what you’re achieving. So you’ve got the visual visible piece, but you’ve also got the internal confidence to deliver it. And for some people, that can be giving them extra coaching and support around self esteem, self confidence, practice of getting out there on camera believing in themselves. Or in one person’s case, it was actually recognising that, her business activities actually weren’t truly in line with who she was. They didn’t make her heart sing. She was really, really good at them. But they didn’t really make her heart sing based on what we discovered through the coaching conversations, and the visual and the verbal part of the stories. I was able to open up new avenues for her to explore because fundamentally a bit like, I want you to care about what you care about. Does it make your heart sing? Is it true to who you are on the call? And and just like a choir, you know, acquire where all the voices come together and harmonise is phenomenal. But you can’t actually have a choir if you’ve just got a dozen voices doing their own thing. The choir isn’t the choir without all the individual voices. But equally, you can’t all sing the same thing. But you have to align to the choir and that’s coming full circle back to the franchise and a corporate organisation. You I describe it a bit like a plant pot. House a Colour has a brand that can be recognised and inside of that it provides businesses So the soil and nutrients, you’ve got to keep watering it, but it provides a structure that you can grow. But you particularly might be a grass, the tree sapling, a flower, a bunch of flowers. You might be bold. You might be, you know, I’m not I’m not, despite coming from a farm on a massive gardener, but it’s about finding your own place within that using the power of the corporate brand to find your own voice within that.
Have you ever gotten the success stories you can tell us about I saw you gave a shout out to a lovely lady on your Facebook page and overcome her tech challenges.
Well, Jan, Jan is one of our longest serving consultants. She lives down in Devon, she moved to Devon and set up the franchise. So actually, there’s a lot of parallels with me setting up in Peterborough, she really didn’t know anybody. And she had retired from a previous career, I think through redundancy, but she was probably 50ish. So starting out again in a new town and everything because she’s now definitely have senior years, but she’s absolutely gorgeous. But if I liken that to my parents or other people of a similar age group, most of them probably aren’t even on Facebook, never mind going out and doing Facebook Lives, having colleagues on and doing interviews, one of her interviewees was her hairdresser. But her hairdresser is one of the senior hairdressers on The Voice. Hello. So I said we’ll get him on and do a live doing interview. So this is a lady who is convinced that technology is against her. But the amazing thing in terms of I suppose my result for me that I’m proud of is that I first met Jan when I was thinking about becoming an image consultant. And it’s very easy for people like that, to see me coming after them and to, in some ways overtake them move on. But what I love doing is being able to give back and grow. And I see all these people including her and I can see potential in them. And I can see that the only thing really stopping them is their fears. So I give them the opportunity to understand themselves in a different way. And then just stretch, just stretch beyond where the comfort boundary is. So in terms of SMART objectives, you know, the A stood for achievable. I scratched that out, I think the only system for adventurous adventures is stupidly risk taking, but it’s just outside your comfort zone. So you still got one eye back on it, you can still get back there if you need to. But just try this little bit, stretch ourselves over there a little bit. And that’s what Jan did. You know, she was stuck. She couldn’t travel, she’d had a period of not being able to travel ironically, for six months before that, and so suddenly stuck at home, well, what else was there to do, but to go onto Facebook. And she had such a crisis of confidence at one point that her she just put the message out to clients and said, No, I’m not going to do this. It’s too difficult. And they all came back and said we want you back. You know and so to see her win an award for innovation, when she’s when she’s been around for 20 years and you know, she’s she’s got a reasonable business, but everybody, most people would like it to be a bit more and to see that result was phenomenal. And change that as well. So she now totally embracing it or actually still a little nervous. Well, I think I think by the older we get the more ingrained our thought habits are those thought habits, those beliefs about what we are not good at. So one of my mischievous ways, you know, you ask what it’s like to work with me Well, it’s a bit cheeky sometimes, but one of the things I do is quite mischievous is I will kind of poke and prod or I’ll expose them in a lovely way which is what I did with that post. Because I gave her a shout out you know Without her, she was one of the people that got me to where I am now, because she was generous enough to open her doors. Okay, my sister was going for a consultation, but she didn’t have to have me in as an observer. You know, it can, it can throw the dynamic of a training room when you’ve only got three or four people to have an observer of the room. And, and so it was my way of giving back. And I just said, you know, I’m gonna keep doing this until she gets the message.
You know, when you’re working from a lot of gratitude, and helping people and it was up Zig Ziglar, who say, you help enough people achieve what they want, then you’ll achieve what you want, I’m sure. it is true. It’s really true. If you serve others and you’ll get you’ll want
So at our annual conference last year, I presented on the fear zone, and how actually the fears and doesn’t change, our comfort zone either gets bigger or smaller. And of course, what we’ve seen during lockdown is everybody’s comfort zone gets smaller as they retreat into their homes. And for some people coming out of that safety place can be quite challenging.
And that’s part of the problem, people who previously would happily have gone into town or the supermarket and now go, Is it safe? Is it safe. And so imagine, House Of consultants, their studios are in their home. So not only are they is it safe, but they’ve got people, clients coming into their homes, and the potential impact on their own family and the clients and you know, it goes on and on. Anyway, I presented a conference on the fear zone, little knowing that COVID was coming around the corner. But it was about actually we grow, we stretch our comfort zone to overcome the fear. And beyond that we get into learning and growth. So we start COVID, we start locked down. And I’m thinking like, I’m the coach around mindset in this business. What we’re going to need is probably a lot of that I’ve got loads of tools in my toolbox from the last 25 years. Where do I start? I thought I could start with just repeating that presentation. But I realised that talking about fear from an observational perspective is very different from talking about fear when you’re in the middle of it. Yes. And that was the difference. I thought I could do that. Let’s hold that one in the background. Let’s reach out, connect to people and find out where they are. So we’ve got between 100 and 150 consultants around the world, mostly UK, in US, but in other countries as well. And I went out I said, right, Saturday, nine o’clock and three o’clock, I’m going to schedule two phone calls. Here’s my zoom link, jump on anybody’s welcome, no registration required. I want to find out how I can help you. In the first 10 minutes, I got really clear how I could help them. The way that I could help them was just by turning up every Saturday on a call so they could offload so they could connect to their colleagues so they could deal with the emotional rollercoaster that was locked down in a way that they can’t when they’re in the middle of their families and when their businesses are in crisis. And when everything’s kind of fallen off the cliff. So for 15 weeks, twice a Saturday, I was on I thought it was going to be about an hour, it turned eventually into nearly two hours each call. So that’s four hours a day for 15 weeks. And in terms of that, that quote you gave from Zig Ziglar, I recognise that doing that on a voluntary basis was who I am. But locked down was definitely going to be longer than the three weeks that we were originally, you know, so I would need to have something that I could tune and tap into in my resources that would keep me going beyond so one of my teachers said, commitment is the thing that has you do something long after the feeling of inspiration has left?
Yeah. So I knew I needed to have something that I could draw on. And I realised that in the coaching and training I’ve done I’ve gradually become more in the background in The House Of Colour. So this was my opportunity to raise my profile, we’d had so many new consultants in that I no longer saw because the training had shifted into this coaching role. And I turned out every Saturday, people turned up we had laughter we had tears we had anger we had, we had every emotion running. But one of the things I got was what we need as people is connecting, feeling a sense of belonging, feeling we need to be part of something that’s bigger than ourselves. If we think we are the biggest thing in our world, that’s when our world starts to collapse in on us. So people reaching out we had colleagues from the west coast of America all the way through to Earth all over the world contacting, connecting and supporting each other, and then creating random projects. So they’ve got some fantastic video projects going on because they each record 30 second clip from their own studio at home, zapped over email, somebody would string them all together. And suddenly we have these really fun little video clips. And so all these projects and connections and ideas and opportunities came from nowhere.
Just because we reached out and you know, there was a couple of people in the company, but I recognise that those support calls that I ran regularly, were one of the things and then in terms of what did I provide for people. At our conference this year, three of the people that won awards at our conference had all been on those calls. So I know, I absolutely know that that allowed them to move through that shock that was required in lockdown and come out the other side ready to go. A lot of other people I was looking at talking to in and outside of House Of Colour and they’re still in that fear place, their comfort zone has shrunk so much. So we need to help them, support them, help them feel safe, help them stretch. And then again, because we’ve got a massive message to support people, you know, we want everybody wants to feel more confidence. There’s real national crisis coming with redundancies and jobs, everybody knows it, we’re not there yet. But for some people, they are for the people who’ve already lost their jobs, they’re already there. And so we can help them, we can help them get ready visually, we can I can support them with coaching to get ready. In terms of their internal place. I’ve got people that can support them around CV writing, applying for jobs, all those kind of things. And actually, I think the way forward for a lot of people is going to be what I call portfolio incomes, you know, a little bit of income here, a little bit of income there, that entrepreneurial, self employed sort of lifestyle, and to do that you’ve got to know who you are. Because otherwise your boundaries fudge, you lose track of time you get overwhelmed, you burn out, or you feel so much like the imposter that you end up sabotaging yourself.
I recognise in life is life is a spiral. If you stop still, you actually start slipping down the spiral. So we always need to grow. And sometimes like COVID you grow and growing, working hard just to stand still. It’s like that, that peddling to standstill scenario, and the more we can be out there to help grow that spiral and ready for when the growth comes, I think another least 12 months of, of tough times. And there are people out there already earning money because they’re out there helping people get over the shock. You can’t help people get over the shock unless you’ve got over yours and seeing the opportunities.
One of my, one of my clients said to me, we can we can go out these days. And we could do a weekend course an online course and get a certification that we’re we’re a coach, and we can be a coach. But as I say to people, there’s hairdressers, and there’s hairdressers, but you wouldn’t let every hairdresser need your hair. And this coach said to me, there’s two types of coaches is the kind that read the theory and learn and then teach you back. It’s very valid, you know, teaching school type teaching, but there’s also the coach that brings their experiences. And that’s where I am. I’ve done 25 years of being on my own journey. And I bring that Encyclopaedia of everything from those 25 years, the pain, the joy, the experiment, the lethargy, that all of those experiences I pull in. And so when I’m working with somebody, half the time, I don’t even know what’s going to come up because it depends. What if, for example, if it was you or me, what has triggered in my mind from the conversation that you’ve LED, and then I find out sharing stories I’d forgotten about. I mean, even today, some of the things I’ve said, Where did that come from. I haven’t said that one for a while. And, and it’s that working with people to allow them. So some of my coaching calls are going for a book, I’ll plug in the headphones, and we’ll walk because if I’m on the phone, or if I, if I can side by side, but it’s, it’s that being an action and doing something different, that allows a different energy to flow to try and get people to relax. And that’s why my coaching is what I call very holistic, you know, you can’t be great in your business if your family life isn’t working, or if your home doesn’t support your if your car’s broken down. No, and there’s absolutely no point in even trying to work when you’ve got somebody close to you is ill, you know, you’ve got to somehow get your business managed. But first and foremost is family and relationships. And you. And in fact, one of the main principles that people got reinforced through lockdown for me was oxygen mask, put your own oxygen mask on first, and then you’re able to help everybody else, you want to become part of the solution or part of the problem. If you want to become part of the solution. Take care of your own mental and physical well being, and then you will be able to help other people.
Are you are you open to receiving new coaching clients
I am absolutely open to receiving new coaching clients. And my, the main people that I work with are people who are already successful, so they, I can help people get started. But the main people are people who they know their job, they know their business, they know their trade. But they also know there’s another level that they want to get to. And they know that their personality, or in my language, their personal brand, who they are and everything they bring to it is a key part of their business people buy them to batter the people by people. And so the approach is to explore and uncover that personal brand, so that they can then make the most of it. And so a combination of that with the power of the project. And also the coaching that I bring helps people fly higher. Wherever you are, you can fly higher. What’s your next level?
Oh, fantastic. I love that. So there we go. We know exactly who who we’re after. Again, from a marketing point of view, that is always what is drummed into us know who your target market is don’t be all things to everyone. So that’s brilliant. So, so So again, so so for the people to get in touch with you. You have your Facebook page or LinkedIn,
I’ve got my business page on Facebook is Jackie Perkins Connect debater, I’ve got my LinkedIn page, LinkedIn is probably the platform that I use the most. And you can contact me on email, Jackie.Perkins@houseofcolourhq.com
Jackie Perkins What an amazing lady. She is. Absolutely knows her stuff inside out. I think that came through in spades. So here we go.
If you want to get in contact with Jackie either for coaching or maybe you’re looking to become or are interested onlooking at the House Of Colour opportunity then contact Jackie in the following ways.
https://www.houseofcolour.co.uk/
Email Jackie.Perkins@houseofcolourhq.com
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