Inspiring Women in Business Podcast - Episode 17 - The Online Business Collective
Starting a freelance business can make you feel like you are navigating through it alone, and it can be overwhelming, especially coming from the corporate world where you work with a team. Having a community that supports you is critical.
In this episode, I talk about my membership, the Online Business Collective. I share the why behind it, how it came about, and the support system built inside it.
Key takeaways from this episode:
- You start with getting clarity and making a plan.
- Set goals. Without goals, you don’t have a plan or something to focus on.
- Learn and implement as you go along. The best way to learn is to learn by doing.
5 key areas of the membership:
1️⃣ Looking after your mental well-being.
2️⃣ Designing your dream lifestyle.
3️⃣ Do less, better.
4️⃣ Building your authority.
5️⃣ Creating stable, scalable income.
The new roadmap for the membership that helps you plan out your YOU shaped business
Episode Timeline:
00:04 Intro
01:08 Episode Intro
01:57 Why I wanted to create a space for business owners
03:23 The dilemma of female business owners
04:42 How it started
06:33 A hybrid program
07:18 The growth and what can you get inside the membership
08:10 We start with clarity and the plan
08: 53 Designing your dream lifestyle
09:38 To do less, better
09:58 Building your online authority
10:36 Creating stable, scaleable income
11:05 Especially for you
12:19 Outro
More about Ruth:
Hi, I’m Ruth, a business coach specializing in helping freelancers and business owners adjust their mindset and marketing so they can get fully booked with clients they LOVE to work with. I’ve helped hundreds of self-employed women achieve the time and money freedom they craved.
I’ve started this podcast because when I first went all in and left the corporate world to be a freelancer, I was grateful for any work that came my way. After over 20 years of freelancing and working for other people, I started to realize I’d created a glass ceiling for myself.
In 2017, I finally started listening to that voice that had been telling me for a long time that I wasn’t doing what I loved and fulfilling my true potential. It took a critical illness to give me that wake-up call. I don’t want the same to happen to you.
You can expect practical advice, inspiring stories, and a lot of aha moments as we uncover and kick to the curb all the obstacles you have been putting in your way.
I’m on a mission to inspire women to start and play bigger in business.
Connect and know more about Ruth here:
Coaching: https://www.ruthgilbey.com/coaching
Free stuff: https://www.ruthgilbey.com/next-client
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ruthgilbeymarketingandcoaching/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ruth_gilbey/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruthgilbey/
Transcription
Ruth Gilbey 00:04
Hello and welcome to the inspiring women in business podcast. My name is Ruth Gilbey, and I'm a business and marketing coach. I'm on a mission to inspire women to start and play bigger in business. Now I started this podcast because when I first went all in and left the corporate world to be a freelancer, I was just grateful for any work that came my way. After over 20 years of freelancing and working for other people, I started to realize I'd created a glass ceiling myself. It was in 2017 when I finally started listening to that voice that had been telling me for a long time that I wasn't doing what I loved, and I wasn't fulfilling my true potential. It took a critical illness to give me that wake-up call. And I don't want the same thing to happen to you. You can expect practical advice, interviews, inspiring stories, and a lot of aha moments as we uncover and kick to the curb, all the obstacles you've been putting in your way.
Ruth Gilbey 01:08
Hi, everyone. Welcome to today's episode. Today, I'm going to be talking to you about my membership, the Online Business Collective. There's so much I could say about the Online Business Collective, so I'm going to start by telling you about its origin and how it came about. It grew from really a place of I wanted a space where I wanted a community I wanted a membership that I wanted when I went freelance, but also as I started to grow my business somewhere that I could go and ask questions, somewhere where I was held accountable, somewhere where I could get access to a business coach, somewhere where I could get support from others who've been through the same thing as me somewhere where I could get outside of my own head and ask other people questions. And I know I needed that.
Ruth Gilbey 01:57
So I wanted to create that space for business owners as well, service-based online business owners. I wanted to give them a space where they could get support at an accessible price because not everybody's got the time or the funds to do, you know, a course that takes up or a program that takes up a lot of time. Many people, most business owners need to be running their business and doing all the things in their business, they haven't got 10 hours a week to be doing a course. So I wanted something where it helped you as you went along. It was like support as you went along. You focused on the things that were really going to help you reach your goals. So let me just go back to more reasons why I started the membership. As you know, by now, I've always been very passionate about helping women launch profitable businesses without burning out.
Ruth Gilbey 02:49
And this is why I do what I do. And why I launched this podcast and why I started my membership, the online business collective for a really long time, I saw women, and I was this woman as well. I saw women dumbing down their skills, taking work, anything that came their way to try and fit it in with commitments, life commitments, family commitments, putting themselves at the bottom of the list, not charging enough, working long hours, and then thinking having a successful career or business was something they couldn't do, or what others did.
Ruth Gilbey 03:23
The other thing, the really big thing that I saw was this fear around that if they put something out there if they actually created a business, or they put themselves out there as a consultant and charged a certain price that what would come with that perhaps it would mean more stress. But what I was actually seeing is it was more stressful for these business owners and these female business owners trying to do so much for such a low price and stuff that wasn't really lighting them up. And I was like, there's got to be another way. And I found the way from myself, and I want you to help others do the same. I just saw too many women not fulfilling their true potential and knowing how credible and exceptional they already are.
Ruth Gilbey 04:07
These are just some of the reasons why I launched my membership, the online business collective, it gives business owners one place for support to launch and grow their business without working all the hours and without having to do every single course out there. They pick what they focus on within the membership. They get the clarity and set the plan, and I help support them with help from the other members of the membership and experts who come in to do live training. And from the courses and resources that are already in the membership.
Ruth Gilbey 04:42
Now I started the membership in January of 2020. So it's just coming up to two years, the two-year anniversary, and it was just before the pandemic, so it was initially a community for anyone who'd been through my program. My new program back then in 2019 was The Online Business Blueprint. The Blueprint is slightly different from the collective. The Blueprint is really for people at the real beginning stages of launching their business. They've got an idea. They're feeling nervous about it. They don't know how to put it out into the world. And really, what the Blueprint does is really give you that kickstart. So you're not floundering around. You can actually put something out there that you're really proud of and show the world you mean business. So it's kind of a five-step module program all about getting that idea out into the world and getting those first clients and charging what you should be charging. The results that people were getting from my program are incredible, even from the first round.
Ruth Gilbey 05:41
So many were getting clarity and confidence to launch the business that they really wanted, rather than just taking contracts or anything that didn't light them up. And they asked me, they said to me, they asked me for the membership after the program. They said, what's next, we want to continue this, you know, we want to continue getting your support, and we want to stay together as a community. So I launched the membership, then obviously, the pandemic happened. And I was thinking, you know, how can I support more people and I decided that the Blueprint was for something now very separate, that could be done, and the membership was something or they could that could be separate as well, or they could be done together and work together really well. There's like an I've got a year-long program that includes both, so I felt that there was a real need to support people at a price that was accessible for people.
Ruth Gilbey 06:33
So the membership is like a hybrid program a membership. So you can go at your own speed, you have, you know, access to support for a longer period of time because you've got to run your business as well as learn all these things and you know, reach your goals or think about things, and it can get really overwhelming. You know, people talk about shiny red ball syndrome. And that's what I want to really reduce. It's like there's enough content in the membership. But I want you to focus on your goals on what you have, the clarity you need, and the plan you want, not someone else's version of success. I wanted to give people access to me, a business coach, experts, and courses to help them grow and market their business in a safe place.
Ruth Gilbey 07:18
So nearly two years old, the membership has grown into something I'm really proud of. You get access to me to create your U-shaped business. No cookie-cutter approaches here. A growing vault of 20 plus video masterclasses and seven courses to help you build your business and skills and fast track your personal development, the best community ever, in my humble opinion of business owners to support and brainstorm with you, access to expert advice on your challenges from myself, the experts and members who've learned the hard lessons, so you don't have to. Live group coaching, accountability, business planning, marketing strategy, well-being mindset support, and inside the online business collective, we look at smarter ways of you making money without working all the hours.
Ruth Gilbey 08:10
So the way it works is that you start with getting clarity and making a plan. And yes, I do ask you to set goals because, without goals, you don't have a plan or something to focus on. After that, when you've got that clarity, you can then either dive deeper into a particular area of the membership that is going to help you reach your goals. I don't want you to be the eternal student. I want you to learn and implement as you go along. Learn by doing. This is ultimately the best way to learn and means you're working on your business simultaneously. Membership focuses on five key areas. I'm going to give you access to the roadmap, the very new roadmap for the membership in the show notes.
Ruth Gilbey 08:53
First of all, as I said, you reset the clock, and you get clarity and plan out your goals. Then you pick from one of the five areas, and one of the first area is looking after your mental well being it shouldn't be an afterthought or a step you do want. So many business owners suffer from feeling isolated or burnt out and overwhelmed by all the things they need to do in their business. If there's anything the pandemic has taught me, community and support and looking after your mental health and well-being are so important. So that's one area of the membership, which is called designing your dream lifestyle, which is about creating positive habits, and there's an area within the membership with masterclasses and support, and there are the coaching calls as well.
Ruth Gilbey 09:38
The next area of the business is called to do less, better, having more time to focus on the activities that will help you grow your business by eliminating bottlenecks and weaknesses. You'll learn how to improve processes, outsource and automate so you can have more time to spend doing the things you love.
Ruth Gilbey 09:58
The next area of the membership is called building your online authority, which is what was one of the main parts of the membership, and all these other areas have kind of grown as well. This is where you create your marketing ecosystem. Marketing is huge. So we look at it, we simplify it, we start with something that you can implement that you feel you can get a system in place that doesn't feel hard, and you don't feel like you need to be on every single channel. And you will learn how to develop your authority to use standout, position yourself as the go-to and attract your dream clients so that you can make a more significant impact.
Ruth Gilbey 10:36
And the fifth section of the membership, which really started growing and developing this area in the membership, was about creating stable, scalable income. Here's where you'll learn how to scale your income without increasing your hours. You might even find ways to work less you choose your path to scaling your business without feeling like you only have to do it one way or by following someone else's approach. This is all about making more impact without working more hours.
Ruth Gilbey 11:05
So what does this actually look like? It comprises of an amazing community, weekly sessions, group coaching, accountability, live training, new content added every month, live training from experts and me, growing volts of 20 plus video masterclasses, and seven courses to build your business. The membership at the moment because of the way my life is. It's just open all the time at the moment. But I'm currently running a promotion. It's kind of a Black Friday offer that helps you make money. I'm giving you access to everything for one pound for 14 days. So that if you've been considering joining, now is the time to check it out. As well as that, you get access to the new roadmap and a new bespoke success plan where I guide you through your first 14 days inside the membership. I am all about you getting success your way. If you're listening to this episode after the offer, don't worry, doors are still open, and it's still a complete bargain. And you can join monthly and cancel at any time. If you have any questions drop me an email at [email protected], or why don't you come and say hello to me on Instagram. I'm @ruth_gilbey.
Ruth Gilbey 12:19
Thanks for listening to the inspiring women in business podcast. I hope you found this episode helpful. If you did, I would love it if you would leave me a review. Also, I would love to connect with you on Instagram. That's where I hang out most of the time. I'm @Ruth_Gilbey. I'll put a link in the show notes for you as well come and connect with me. Tell me about your business. And also tell me what you'd like to hear next on the podcast. And lastly, go and check out the business building hub on my website. There you can find more amazing free resources to help you take the next step in your business. And you can also find out other ways that you can work with me. I'll see you soon.