Can you introduce yourself to us?
Hello I am Jo, Founder of The Better Menopause. I am Mum to two boys, Josh and Theo and live in Wandsworth London with my husband and children. I am a nutritional therapist, investor and marketer. I love great food, travel, yoga, fashion, beaches, cities and a good book. Being married to a pilot certainly helps fulfil the travel and beach passions! I do love living in London but also I crave time in open spaces, especially the beach. Standing on the shore line always gives me a sense of freedom and a huge energy boost. Can you take us through your journey to where you are now? I left school at 18 and made a fairly big decision at the time not to go to university and instead went to work to pursue a passion in media. I joined Mindshare (a media agency) at 19 and worked my way up to becoming Managing Director and ended up staying for 20 years! During my time there I wanted to feed my desire to keep on learning and stretching my brain to do new things so over 3 years I studied Nutrition at the college of naturopathic medicine at the weekends. I qualified as a Nutritional Therapist in 2006 and have been nurturing a private practice and passion for women's health and wellness ever since. After 20 years at Mindshare I made my next life altering decision to leave my fairly safe and successful career to go and join a startup as the first UK employee and country manager at Freeda media. My final media role was CEO of Brainlabs, a digital media agency. In early 2023 I decided to make a change and bring nutrition front and centre to my everyday work. Being in perimenopause myself was a big trigger for this change and also for the creation of the business. Since starting, have you made any changes to your business model? We have only been trading for 8 weeks so it is early days for any major changes but due to demand we have also added a corporate product for businesses to access our training and expert speakers on menopause at work. We are providing the biology lesson everyone should have had at school and live clinics for employees to access expert advice from Menopause Doctors and Nutritionists. Have you ever had a mentor? If so, how has this benefitted you either personally or professionally? I haven’t had a mentor as such but I always choose to spend my working days with people who inspire me. I have built many teams over the years and I always learn from them and try to listen to their feedback to be a better leader. Periodically, I have worked with coaches which has always been transformational for me. I love having someone to ask the tough personal questions and encourage me to be really honest with myself and to stay close to my values. What outlets do you use for marketing? We use social media, podcasts and sector relevant webinars and events. We are exhibiting and speaking at ‘Pause Live’ in November. We are also part of the GenM collective. What or Who has inspired you most recently? I am so inspired by all the women that start their own business. When you bring personal passion and experience together it can be so powerful. I am also inspired by how generous women are to each other with sharing experience and ideas. What is the best piece of business advice you have received to date? I try to collect up new snippets of advice all the time but here are three that feel very relevant at the moment.- Keep focused and do what matters most
- Have relentless belief and passion for what you do
- Work on your resilience to keep bouncing back from the challenges!
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