What is your name?
Sally-Anne Blanshard
What is your business name?
What industry is your business in?
Career coaching and job search advice
Where are you based?
Sydney
How long have been in business?
Two years
Is it a full-time or part-time business?
Full time online presence, part time contribution of time
Did you start your business before or after becoming a mum/step-mum?
While pregnant.
Why did you start your business?
I wanted to give job seekers of all age groups access to career coaching and job search tips. It is a competitive job market and people do not prepare enough to get the right role. By providing some advice for free via my blog visitors to my site start to trust my advice and then may go on to purchase my online resume and interview tutorials or prefer to have a 1-1 coaching session with me.
What has been your biggest triumph in business?
PR/Branding – I worked hard to get coverage for free. I would offer free articles to professional associations and also offer to speak to membership based professional communities. This enabled a room full of people to see me as the expert and then log on to the website after.
What was your biggest mistake in business?
Make sure you do enough research – I made a number of assumptions early on in the research piece and, if I had my time again, I would have spent more time talking to people, surveying, running focus groups. It meant that I wasted a lot of time on what I thought people wanted to know and building my business platform on that. I have since changed the model three times.
What is the one piece of advice you wish you’d been given about running a business with children when you started out?
When they are young you can do so much more! My son is a good sleeper so in the first six months I could have done a lot more. As he became more active, my activities had to slow down because he needed my attention more – quite rightly too! So you will be surprised just how much you can get through when they are really young.
Name your top three business successes?
Brand – we have a good reputation in the marketplace for career advice, as evidenced by flow of testimonials
Growth – we have been in business for two years and with little advertising have a subscriber base of 10,500
Web World – I have become very web aware and constantly looking to improve our offering by keeping up with other online businesses.
What are you passionate about?
Helping people leap up and over their career hurdles. Finding a new job need not be hard, you just need to piece the process together and myambition.com helps people do that. As a coach I am always looking to support people and help navigate their thinking.
What’s the one thing you can never resist?
A chance to plug my business – it’s the marketeer in me! That and a big bubble bath with magazine!
Who inspires you?
I am inspired by people in the workplace, my clients, and also a few entrepreneurs. I take time to be part of thought leadership groups and mentoring schemes that always take you to another level of thinking. It is a commitment of time but the returns can be endless.
What is the song that gets you fired up?
Kings of Leon’s Sex on Fire – it’s not the lyrics more the tune. I love to sing it out loud while driving!
What is your favourite quote?
“Growing old is mandatory – growing up is optional.”
Contact Sally-Anne
Website: www.myambition.com
Twitter: @myambition
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000871988975
LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/in/sallyanneblanshard
