9 Aug 2012
Jill Bennett is a mumprepreneur! She is a fabulous Women Ambassador for the Guildford area; an Independent Consultant with Arbonne International and the area coordinator for Peel2Save which helps good causes raise much needed funds. Jill is passionate about helping others and finds her businesses all allow her to do just that. Jill is married and has two gorgeous children Harry and Felicity.
My life is so different today compared to four years ago! I get to drop my son Harry off at his bus stop at 7.35am during term time. And take my daughter Felicity to her school which is a few miles away. Mum’s taxi duties are usually over by about 8.10 so I am free until 4pm most days.
Three years ago I gave up my career with the Foreign Office. I had become rather disenchanted with the office politics and vowed to retire! I was 50 after all! The rushing to the station after school drop offs and arranging after school care was all a strain – and when one of the children was ill…. well let’s not go there! It may seem strange to other women of my age out there, to hear me talking about school drop offs etc. but I started my family rather late in life as I guess many women do today; I had my son Harry at 38 and my daughter Felicity at 42.
For the first year after leaving work life was good, I got involved with charity work and had lots of fun but soon we realised that it was not realistic to think we could maintain our lifestyle with one income! My search for something flexible that worked around the children began. Once I changed my mindset from one of looking for a job to looking for an opportunity things started to find me! I now have my three businesses, they have all found me and all dovetail rather nicely!
What does an average day look like for me? There is no average day as such – if it’s the second Tuesday of the month I will be running the Guildford Fabulous Women Netwinning (yes Netwinning – we don’t network we netwin!) group from 9.30 – 11.30am see https://www.facebook.com/WeAreFabulousWomen/events for all the Fabulous Women Netwinning Groups. I love the supportive atmosphere we have at the monthly meetings and I’m about to set up another group in Birmingham!
Some days I may be accepting a cheque on behalf of a charity I’m an ambassador for or helping with a fund raising event. Or meeting someone for coffee to tell them about my network marketing business and the amazing health and wellness products. Most people do network marketing every day but don’t get paid for it!
I’m building a global business simply by recommending our incredible, Swiss formulated, health and wellness products and teaching and training others to do the same. I show people how to re-direct their personal care expenditure into Arbonne products and earn an income from doing so. I don’t have parties or hold a garage full of stock, I simply ask people to try my products and when they want to purchase they go on-line and order for delivery direct to their door – it’s that simple! And mixed in with all of this I will be visiting a charity, school or other not for profit good cause to help them start a fund raising campaign with Peel2Save’s clever fund raising cards. Oh and most days I’m there to collect my children from school!
I was institutionalised, or so I thought; but I have made the transition from corporate to entrepreneur and you can do it too!
