An easy cost effective business that can be done anywhere
Article by Diane Shawe M.Ed
Threading in the UK has become a very popular treatment over the least few years and with a few tips and ideas you could benefit from starting your very own threading business.
There is a huge potential for earning good money as a self employed beauty therapist offering eyebrow threading as a service.
Look at most salons and even shopping Malls these days and they have signs for threading in their windows. Look inside a salon and you will nearly always see them busy.
Customers don’t usually need to make an appointment, they just walk in and wait or get it done after they have had there other beauty treatments.
There has never been a better time to Start your own Threading business from home. Working on your own gives you the opportunity to work your own hours with much more flexibility and freedom then being tied down in a salon.
What’s more you can actually out sell salons with your threading service and make even more money than they do!
1. You can offer very flexible hours. Working on your own you can offer treatments at unsociable hours such as evenings or weekends. Just think how limited salon opening times are…
2. You can offer discounted rates. A salon has huge overheads – staff, rent, heating etc, you can operate at very little cost and undercut salon prices hence making your threading prices very attractive.
Eyebrow Threading is an ancient art with hugh earning potential
3. You can offer a mobile service. Clients love it when you can offer your threading treatments in their own home. Just think of the business mobile hairdressers get. Many people don’t want to visit a salon – they may have work commitments, young children, don’t drive. There are many reasons why people can’t get to a salon and offering a mobile threading service is a superb way to make good money.
Setting up a Threading business is not expensive. Although you should always buy the very best equipment, threading kits, tools and thread is very cheap.
You will have very little over heads, think what would you use for a client? A little talk, some wipes and a few metres of thread. These products will hardly break the bank expenses wise so your profits margins are very high.
The best place to start is to get some threading training. Threading courses cost as little as £95 can and be booked on this site with a credit card or even Paypal. The price to train is very little compared to other similar industries. A hairdressing course would cost you £1000’s. You can learn eyebrow threading in just one day with our One Day Professional Threading Course Workshop. Combined with a practice and guidance, you ready to go… A Hairdresser trains for months if not years before they can offer their art for profit.
Once you’re trained getting business can be quite easy. Start of by printing or writing some adverts with your details and phone number. Stick these up in your local shops, post office or Supermarket. Chip shops surprisingly do well as people stand in the queue and read everything! Most places charge a just couple of pounds a week.
You local newspaper classified can be a good place to put a small add. Currently our local paper the Bolton News charges £25 for 6 lines of text. You can also try your local supermarkets notice board, local salon, church, women’s group the list goes on.
Also place averts in online directories so people can find you when they search online.
The best way to advertise these days is to get a small website built. Most people search on the internet for what they need and a nicely designed webpage can be a great source of clients. Get in touch with us if you want a cheap website, we know a man who can!
Once you get a few clients, word of mouth of is by far the best advert for your services and if you do a good job word gets round quickly and you’ll soon be booked up with peoples mums, sister, aunts, uncles?? calling you.
So, put in basic terms, threading training is fast and cheap, materials are cheap and you can start your business in a short space of time with very little outlay. Threading is a perfect business model.
So why is 2013 going to be a different type of bumper year for training organisations or consultant who can help the unemployed individuals upgrade into a new skill that will help them generate their own income?
article by Diane Shawe M.Ed
Well usher in the new breed of Virtual Teachers! If your not up to speck with the new direction and growth in the market then you could really find yourself on the old fashion self by 2016! Make no mistake, becoming a trainer is all about running a business. Being up to date with the latest techniques, developments, trends and needs is just as essential if you decided to set up a coffee shop.Institutions of higher learning increasingly embrace on-line education, with 65.5 percent of chief academic officers now calling on-line education ‘critical’ to their institutions! long-term strategy, an opinion that’s risen more than 15% over eight years.
Like any business you still have to source new customers, gain glowing appraisals and testimonials, get your pricing right, court the right type of publicity and sustain credibility. Oh! and let’s not forget making a profit.
AVPTGLOBAL almost 400 courses all globally accredited
We all know it takes a certain kind of self belief and courage to set up any type of business in today’s climate. You could even make a claim based on sheer desperation, the need to do something to generate an income.
But it even takes more courage to leave your destiny in the hands of many of the businesses today, no matter what their global or brand status might be. Most people are now being spurred into self employment due to the levels of redundancies, job insecurities and the need to meet ongoing expenses.
Participants are more interested in the qualifications and or skills they will gain in the subject at hand, and the experience you have in doing jobs similar to theirs and your track record in ‘doing’ rather than ‘talking about’ the topic.
What is really important is your ability to engage with participants around this experience and help them to translate that into action. That is where the true value often lies for them. Of course we know that there are academic trainers and teacher courses which award accredited or private certificates.
Choosing the entrepreneurial route can bring great benefits, but there are also challenges.
Lord Ahmed congratulates students and AVPT on achievements
The Academy of Vocational and Professional Training (AVPT) have had an exceptional year, with a huge list of positive achievements. A year in which AVPT launched globally was marked the first cohort of students being presented with their certificates by Baroness Uddin followed by congratulations from Lord Ahmed, in the impressive setting of the House of Lords.
“This was a huge achievement for us,” explains Diane Shawe, the CEO, “Our 395 courses are all globally accredited by the International Accreditation Organisation, meaning that they are accepted anywhere around the world. We’ve achieved so much this year and we felt very excited for the future when watching the first generation of our students receive their beautiful and meaningful certificates.”
The globally accredited status given to AVPT by the International Accreditation Organisation in June 2012 means that the courses available hold a big draw to students that want to travel. Diane sees this as recognition of the significant rise in e-learning. This has also meant that AVPT’s launch of its Scholarship Den initiative hasStudent pitching to judges for scholarship happened at just the right time; young people, with a desire to better themselves or start a business are awarded with £2,000 of AVPT training. This has led to the continued and dynamic success of the academy’s offering.
In October 2012, AVPT was the main sponsor of the education section of the Youth Enterprise Live Show 2012 at Earl’s Court in London and had the Mayor of Hammersmith and Fulham as the guest of honour to officially open the AVPT stand where they attracted over 350 enquiries for the short courses.
To finish off an already exceptional year, AVPT won a contract with a Middle-Eastern Government to provide crisis management and leadership training to the government heads of departments. After a highly successful training programme, AVPT was also added to the official procurement list for the UK’s Ministry of Justice and Department for Work and Pensions and so is able to provide training for these two large departments.
Rachel Fanshawe receives her certificate from Baroness Uddin at the House of Lords
This remarkable success story has continued into 2013 and the AVPT team are already setting their sights on the next target. The company has begun work towards striking up a partnership with The Department of Business, Innovation and Skills to carry on its successes with departments of the UK government.
Diane explains, “We have built solid relationships with all that we work with, and over the course of 2013 we want to be able to offer students from across the world a larger platform of study. We believe by building foundations with The Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, we can do this efficiently.”
AVPT is dedicated to helping students in reaching their full potential and have launched the first UK voucher code website offering customers the chance to find special offers and deals on short courses. The website, expresscoursevouchers.com, allows the general public to take advantage of new education and training deals everyday.
Tim Dingle, the Chief Development Officer at AVPT says, “We’ve been extremely busy this year and have created a paradigm shift for online adult education. Our Social Enterprise division, known as ACEE, will also begin to deliver training courses to the wider community, by awarding bursaries to people who are disadvantaged or cannot afford to up-skill. We are totally committed to life-long learning and to helping students better themselves. We are passionate is this goal and believe we have a unique and powerful product that people are connecting with very quickly.” The National Lottery has view our proposition in a positive light has it helps the wider community.
Next generation of mobile learning
The Social Enterprise division of AVPT ‘ACEE’ will launch a project in July 2013 called ‘Switch Momentum’. ‘Switch Momentum’ is targeting the areas where knife crime and gang problems pose a real threat for teenagers who do not want to get involved but are locked into their homes in order to be safe.
Diane says, “Switch Momentum will provide teenagers with a way out of challenging and pressurised situations. We believe everybody can fulfill their potential given the right opportunities and we believe we can offer this positive environment.”
Diane Shawe finishes by saying, “This is targeting young people in the summer vacation who may not be going on holiday, a projects like ‘Switch Momentum’ can offer that inclusive learning experience in a calm environment to them”.
As a natural progression of their growth, AVPT is also looking to inspire and train a new workforce of Virtual Tutor Facilitators (VTFs). AVPT has already trained several individuals and have found that they help create a seamless bond between the student and their studies. By May 2013, AVPT will have created 300 jobs.
Tim Dingle explains, “The VTF is a revolutionary new idea. Teaching is changing, and we are creating dynamic change. We have created a jobs and helped people to work creatively and passionately in adult life-long learning. We’re extremely pleased with this.”
AVPTGLOBAL almost 400 courses all globally accredited
AVPT will be present at three major exhibitions throughout 2013.
Annual and semi-annual appraisals waste everyone’s time.
Years ago, my review was late so I mentioned it to my boss. He said, “I’ll get to it… but you realize you won’t learn a thing. You’ve already heard everything I have to say say, good and bad. If anything on your review comes as a surprise to you I haven’t done my job.”
He was right. The best feedback isn’t scheduled; the best feedback happens on the spot when it makes the most impact, either as praise and encouragement or as suggestions for improvement and training.
Waiting for a scheduled review is the lazy way out. Your job is to coach and mentor and develop — every day.
2. Say, “Look, I’ve been meaning to apologize…”
Apologies should be made on the spot, every time. You should never need to apologize for not having apologized sooner. When you mess up, ‘fess up. Right away.
Don’t you want your employees to immediately let you know when they make a mistake? Model the same behavior.
3. Hold meetings to solicit ideas.
Leadership: Becoming management material
Many people hold brainstorming sessions to solicit ideas for improvement, especially when times get tough. Sounds great — after all, you’re “engaging employees” and “valuing their contributions,” right?
But you don’t need a meeting to get input. When employees know you listen, they’ll bring ideas to you.
Plus, the best way to ask for ideas is to talk to people individually and to be more specific. Say, “I wish we could find a way to get orders through our system faster. What would you change if you were me?”
Employees already have ideas. Trust me: They imagine themselves doing your job — and doing your job better than you do — all the time.
Be open, act on good ideas, explain why less than good ideas aren’t feasible and you’ll get all the input you can implement.
4. Create formal development plans.
Development plans are, like annual performance reviews, largely a corporate construct. (HR staffers love to monitor compliance and alert managers when supervisors are late turning in their employees’ development plans. Or maybe that’s just my experience.)
You should know what each of your employees hopes to achieve: skills and experience they want to gain, career paths they hope to take, etc. So talk about it — informally. Assign projects that fit. Provide training that fits. Create opportunities that fit. Then give feedback on the spot.
“Develop” is a verb that requires action; “development” is a noun that sits in a file cabinet.
5. Call in favors.
I know lots of bosses who play the guilt game, like saying, “John, I’ve been very flexible with your schedule the last few months while your wife was sick… now I really need you to come through for me and work this weekend.”
When you’re a boss, generosity should always be a one-way street. Be flexible when being flexible is the right thing to do. Be accommodating when accommodation is the right thing to do.
Never lend money to friends unless you don’t care if you are repaid, and never do “favors” for employees in anticipation of return. As a leader, only give — never take.
At the House of Lords, Helene Martin Gee and Jill Pay presided over the announcement of the 2013 Roll of Honour to celebrate International Women’s Day.
Diane Shawe CEO of AVPT was amongst several other women who was nominated for the 2013 IWD Roll of Honour.
After the presentation, guests enjoyed a sparkling afternoon tea hosted by The Earl of Erroll and Baroness Morris.
This year’s theme is ‘Wonderful Women’ inspirational women who have touched our lives. These amazing women were nominated by Pink Shoe members and friends. All those nominated are included, there was no selection process, as all these wonderful women have inspired those who nominated them.
As Helene said in her introduction, the list comprises women from all backgrounds and areas of life, and all have achieved a great deal, working locally, nationally, internationally. Some are household names and others are well known within their communities.
What they each have in common is they are all making a tangible difference to the lives of others. These women are truly inspiring!
We were delighted to be joined by many of the women included in the Roll of Honour, and those who had nominated them, along with Pink Shoe members and friends, as well as students from Lambeth Academy and Cardinal Pole schools.
With huge thanks to Ling Tyler-Bennett; to all who nominated the Wonderful Women for the Roll of Honour, to Lucy Temple for researching and compiling the list, and to Sanna Shahzada who did a great job of managing the presentation on the day.
International Women’s Day Roll of Honour 2013
Wonderful Women
The 2013 IWD Roll of Honour, nominated by Pink Shoe Club members & friends is announced. Those nominating said about these inspiring women:
She demonstrates that women can be great, respected and liked leaders
She inspires me with her vision, her application and her work ethic
She speaks sense and gives practical advice
She cares and goes out of her way to make a real difference
She demonstrates how consistency creates results
She embodies the ethos of helping others reach their full potential
She has made an outstanding contribution to the lives of others
……What she has achieved so far is only the beginning of a long and fruitful journey
Tim T Dingle BSc (Hons) PGCE MBA
Chief Development Officer AVPT Global
Pitching comes with a health warning. It can make you seriously rich, but you need to make a transformation to the digital platform for pitching.
You may be surprised that we need to step back a bit and re-visit the ‘old school’ values of the successful elevator pitch. Ironically these skills are so poorly perfected by the majority of companies and business owners that you could make your fortune by getting them right. You will need to understand something of the neuroscience behind pitching, simple psychology and some basic, good old fashioned common sense. The premise for the perfect pitch should then become your essential mantra; the natural, automatic response when someone asks you what you or your company does. In our digital world, you will need to know the real secrets of pitching before entering your Twitpitch and Youtube contributions.
Regardless of what you call it, the perfect pitch, an elevator pitch, the elevator speech, your lift story or your perfect 60 seconds, it is one tool every entrepreneur, salesperson, business owner and job seeker must possess is an overview of their solution. With one, they will be able to catch the often fleeting attention of the people who can help them bring their solution to life. The simple truth is without one, they just won’t.
Back in the room, sixty seconds isn’t much time to pitch a client, a group or investor. The elevator pitch is a great exercise to develop a very short message which says what you do to potential clients, investors, media or partners. Your pitch should leave your target audience hungry for more. You should understand that you must create clarity and buckets of curiosity. This is a vital online as it is in person.
One of the most enjoyable events of last year was being part of the Scholarship Den, run by the Academy of Vocational and Professional Training. It involved an ‘elevator pitch’ competition, where hopeful young (and not so young)entrepreneurs extol the virtues of their business idea with the best getting free training and mentor packages. These sort of events are both joyous and yet frustrating. There is nothing more joyous than listening to entrepreneurs explaining how they are going to change the world. What is more than frustrating is that few people have worked out how to pitch their ideas in a simple, concise and powerful form.
To the best of my knowledge, the standard lift (or elevator) really does not get stuck for several hours. I haven’t tried the lift in the Shard yet. Therefore you have to keep your pitch short and punchy. The worst sinners seem to be start-up businesses, consultants and technologists who feel that they have to cram as many features as possible into their three minutes presentation. The human brain cannot cope with this assault of facts, features and benefits. Most customers have in fact very short attention spans and can only remember three things at a time (see my articles about George Miller and Chunking, 5 plus or minus one). As soon as you mention the fifth star item the first and probably most important one drops out of their short term memory; boom, gone for good. By the time they get to number fifty, all the most compelling ones have long since gone, and the prospective customer has truly lost the will to live. The objective in delivering an elevator pitch or 60 seconds is not to secure an order there and then. That is simply not going to happen. Try to stimulate enough interest for them to give you another fifteen minutes and to hand over their business card.
The great elevator pitch is very simple to understand having the key 6 Ps of passion, pain, premise, people, proof and purpose. It uses the inner workings of the brain (at the reptilian level) and your ability to deliver these 6 answers:
Passion: You will remember being in a classroom and knowing instantly that the teacher (or supply teacher) really was not passionate about the subject they are trying (unsuccessfully) to teach? That feeling is detected in a flash: their lack of passion. If when you pitch you don’t have a certain sparkle in your eye, a passionate purpose or that palpable X factor, you will have the same effect on your audience as that hapless teacher. If you are not passionate about your company, close it now.
Pain: Can you answer this simple, crucial question ‘where’s the pain?’. Decide right now what pain or real problem you plan to solve with your business or service. The key is that the bigger the pain, the more likely people are to pay you to take it away. It seems very negative but is at the heart of everyone’s primitive brain thinking. The movement away from pain is unbelievably powerful. The pain presents itself in many forms and multiple guises. A simple rule to remember is that if your product or service saves time and money then you are on your way.
Premise: “So Tim, what do you actually ‘do’?” You need to be able to explain in pretty simple terms the ‘premise of your business’. Does that seem too obvious? Well for this to work you have to use language that is basic, literal and not some clever beefed up, steroidal slogan that is meaningless. When asked what I actually do then I make it a simple statement: We delivery outstanding online and workshop training for soft skills, using blended mobile learning and virtual tutors.
AVPTGLOBAL almost 400 courses all globally accredited
People: Here is the thing: every customer says they buy from people not companies. Every investor I have ever met has confirmed that they look for a credible team rather than a good idea. Get the best people you can around you and get yourself a Mentor as soon as you can. It really changes everything.
Proof: So Why should I buy from you, not your competitor?; great question. Maybe you have a killer product or service and the greatest team money can buy, customers can still be skeptical and have doubts, reservations and remain unconvinced. Evidence suggests that testimonials and the tales of your happy customers and clients can make a huge difference. Have a look at those on my Linkedin and see the difference between ‘endorsed for’ (laughable in some cases, as I have never met them) and someone taking the time and trouble to write a glowing, current and accurate testimonial. Thank you to those that have!
Purpose: One of the oldest jokes I have heard is ‘What did the dolphin say to the whale when he bumped into him? I didn’t do it on porpoise’. Sorry. So the most important purpose of any business is to make money. I know crazy, eh? The thing is that the potential investors will be looking for a great ROI in any deal (return on their investment) and your prospective customers and clients will want to know that you run a sensible and profitable business. Why so? Well they need to know you have built a reliable and consistent delivery model for your products and services.
I believe even in the fast moving digital age, the premise is the most important part of an elevator pitch and the best pitches with the most traction also give some idea of the market. Consider these three:
– John Rockefeller at Standard Oil: ‘Let the poor man have his cheap light’
– Merill Lynch: ‘Bring Wall St to Main St’
-AOL’s Steve Case: ‘Make the internet easy and fun’
Even as I write this, the standard elevator pitch however is under-going a face lift with new media. The truth is that getting clients or investors’ attention may never be the same again with You Tube pitches and the short punchy Twitter pitches. As new social media has exploded in recent years and slowly businesses are becoming more social media aware, the number of channels and methods to pitch has dramatically increased. The new digital elevator pitch allows you to reach a broader audience and receive critical feedback to really improve your pitch and business. So, if you find getting access to potential clients to pitch challenging, try the new dimension in digital opportunity.
The Tube Pitch: YouTube is quite simply MASSIVE. Consider these stats and prepare to change your pitch (still using the 6Ps) forever:
Over 800 million unique users visit YouTube each month
Over 4 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube
72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
70% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the US
YouTube is localised in 53 countries and across 61 languages
In 2011, YouTube had more than 1 trillion views or around 140 views for every person on Earth. Yes, 1 Trillion!
Using your newly acquired 6 P Pitch & Grow rich strategy you need access this market, right now. A search on YouTube for the term elevator pitch returned millions of results. Forget your boring 80-page business plan, ditch the figures and research and get that new pitch ready and evoke the passion behind your idea or business for the new digital market.
The Twitter Pitch (Twitpitch): If you have just returned from a 5 year space mission, Twitter is micro-blogging allowing text messages of 140 characters or less (see also @timlondonset and #expresscourses). So here comes the new idea: the Twitpitch, and yes, it’s just what you think – the same pitch narrowed down to 140 characters or less. The Twitpitch is the invention of Stowe Boyd, a business strategy and information technology consultant. Boyd had plans to attend the upcoming Web 2.0 Expo, but was having trouble scheduling meetings with startups. To address this problem, on Tuesday he posted on his blog that in order to make things simple for himself, he was posting a schedule of times when he was available for meetings. He added that he would not accept email-based proposals for these meetings, only Twitpitches.
To further explain the concept, Boyd put forth a set of rules for the pitches as follows:
All companies who would like to have a meeting with me, need to send me a Twittered description of the product. Yes, please Twitter it to me at http://www.twitter.com/stoweboyd. Yes, one tweet, 140 characters less the eleven used for “@stoweboyd “.
Optionally, send a supporting twitpitch with one link, and no other text. Could be to anything: website, video, press release, Rick Astley, etc.
Then, twitter me one or more suggested times/place to meet at the event, using the times on the calendar, and a location in the conference building I won’t have time to visit your nearby hotel or offices.
This new way of getting the perfect pitching, now being dubbed the ‘twitpitch’ is quick, painless, andcuts through all those wordy distracting elements I talked about earlier. It cuts through the endless pretentious PR stuff and dramatically forces companies to summarise what they do in 140 characters or less. Mighty good work that!
The Blog Pitch: One of the areas of rapid advance that can use the power of the 6P Perfect Pitch is in the channel of blogging. TechCrunch is one the popular blogs around and has created TechCrunch Elevator Pitcheswith the great strapline: One Startup. 60 seconds. Go. The blog describes its core service as a place where business founders and CEOs get a chance to pitch their startups directly to you, the TechCrunch audience. The instant (or certainly rapid) feedback is enhanced via a vote the best pitches up and the stinkers down, and tell them exactly what you think of their businesses in the comments.”
The Slide Pitch: There are yet more interesting styles of digital pitching developing that allow you to use your 6P skills to dramatic effect. The relatively SlideShare group (Google it please) is an online slide presentation community. Have a look at the Linkedin version of this which is rapidly gaining traction. Creating your perfect pitch, remembering the crucial 6P elements, in a brief slide presentation can reach a new audience or push them to your website for more details and edge them closer to a sale.
These new media ideas offer a massive opportunity to use your Perfect Pitch: Pitch & Grow Rich skills. It is a new opportunities for the average person or business to really stake their premise and their endorsement right out there for everyone to see. Yet at the heart of a any successful pitch, online or in person, is understanding the 6Ps and getting your story across in the most powerful manner. Pitching just got more interesting and the chance for you to pitch and grow rich has never been greater.
A selection of Sales and Marketing courses: Available at www.avptglobal.
You must be logged in to post a comment.