Empowering Female Entrepreneurs To Achieve Business Success

Men are five times more likely to scale their business up above £1 million and I want to change that.

For outgoing and friendly Brenda Hector, collaboration is a must. Backed by the community environment encouraged by ActionCOACH, Brenda is on a mission to empower female entrepreneurs to scale-up their businesses using the tools she has gained.

Keeping it simple

Brenda’s background was in animal nutrition. After completing her MSc and PhD, she worked in a research role she loved before leaving to have her children. Following a role with a subsea company, Brenda was completing her MBA when she realised she wanted to go it alone. “My husband and I ran our own small wedding business for just over a decade, so I had some experience of knowing what it’s like to run your own company. 

“Just as I was finishing my MBA, ActionCOACH appeared in my inbox, and I really liked what I saw.” After more research, Brenda travelled down from Scotland to meet the ActionCOACH team and was blown away. “When I met the team, any doubts I had disappeared - I knew this was my next step.

“An MBA can be very theory based and overloaded with technicality, but in those initial conversations with ActionCOACH, business all began to seem so much clearer. Their simple and effective approach to grow your business as a franchise partner and those of your clients really stood out to me - I wanted a piece of the action.”

Waiting until she graduated her MBA, Brenda was well-prepared for the notoriously intense ActionCOACH University in the summer of 2018. “I completed all the pre-training, and it definitely stood me in good stead. I was lucky there was a big group of franchise partners I trained with and, since launching my ActionCOACH business, we’ve stayed close. It’s a great, collaborative community – exactly what I wanted.

Never on your own 

Brenda won her first clients through networking in her local business community. She never felt alone if she faced a challenge, feeling completely comfortable to ask for the advice from ActionCOACH’s community of over 200 franchise partners in the UK, not to mention those also willing to help globally! 

“One of the main reasons I wanted to run my own business was to take back control. I put a lot of time and effort into launching the business as you would expect with any new venture. Now the trajectory of the business is heading upwards and I feel confident I’ve got the tools to keep progressing. 

“The work-life balance I have now is great. I can switch off when I need to and enjoy my down time. I’m a really outdoorsy person and have three dogs, so getting out into the countryside in our campervan is something I love to do. If I want to take a long weekend off, it’s great knowing my business allows me to do that.”

Scaling up the future

For Brenda, her immediate goal is to be in the top 100 Action Coaches globally. However, her biggest passion is to continue her work with female entrepreneurs. 

“Roughly one-third of entrepreneurs in the UK are female, and men are five times more likely to scale their business up above £1 million. Through ActionCOACH, I have the tools to address this imbalance and really enjoy focusing my efforts towards working with female entrepreneurs. I’ve got my own podcast called Scale Her Up: The Female Entrepreneur Show, which is full of great ways to build up a business. 

“Being able to impart my knowledge and see it having positive results on those I work with is just one of the many reasons why becoming a franchise partner with ActionCOACH is one of the best things I’ve ever done.”

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