Meet clair.......
You don't have to become a different person to build a successful business.
And you don't have to become an influencer, post every day or learn to sound like someone else.
I'm Clair, and I teach small business owners how to communicate and market their businesses in their own words.
In 2018, I left a successful corporate career with a national charity to start my own business.
If I'm honest, corporate life never really worked for me. I was often told I was too much. My personality didn't quite fit the setting I was in, and I spent years feeling like there was something about me that needed to be toned down.
I'd spent my whole working life being told I didn't quite fit in.
And for what?
Forty hours a week in an office where I wasn't happy, plus two hours a day sitting in traffic getting there and back.
I wanted more.
I wanted to work somewhere I could be myself and feel good about it. I wanted to build something that worked for me, rather than constantly trying to make myself fit into something that didn't.
So I started my own business.
And somewhere along the way, I realised something that changed everything:
I don't have to choose between being myself and being successful. I can be both.
And I believe you can be too.
It turns out, being yourself is good for business.
When I started my business, I thought I needed to learn how to be a business owner.
So I did what most people do. I learned about marketing. I learned about content. I learned what I was supposed to say and how I was supposed to show up online.
And for a while, I tried to do it all properly and "professionally".
But the more I learned, the more I realised that the best marketing I'd ever done was the stuff that actually sounded like me.
Not the perfectly crafted post. Not the clever hook. Not the version of me I thought people wanted to see.
Me.
The things I was genuinely interested in. The opinions I actually held. The way I naturally talked about my work.
That's when I stopped trying to become good at marketing and started getting good at communicating what I do.
And that's what I want to teach you too.
Because you don't need to become an influencer. You don't need to have a huge following. And you don't need to spend your life trying to work out what the algorithm wants from you.
You need to know what you want to say, who you want to say it to, and how to say it in a way that sounds like you.
Those are skills. And skills can be learned.
You don't have to be naturally good at marketing.
Maybe you're brilliant at what you do, but when it comes to talking about it, things get a bit harder.
You know your clients. You know your subject. You know the difference you make.
But then you sit down to write a LinkedIn post and suddenly you're questioning every word.
Or you find yourself copying the structure of someone else's post because you have no idea what you're supposed to say.
Or you're spending far too much time trying to create content that sounds professional, interesting and vaguely like you.
And maybe you've started to wonder if you're just not very good at marketing.
I don't think that's true.
I think you've just never been taught how to do it in a way that makes sense to you.
Marketing your business is a skill. Finding the words is a skill. Knowing what your audience needs to hear is a skill.
You can learn those skills.
And once you do, marketing becomes a whole lot less mysterious and a whole lot more manageable.
I've spent the last few years figuring this out with other business owners.
Since starting my business in 2018, I've worked with coaches, consultants, freelancers and other small business owners who are brilliant at what they do but don't always feel quite so confident when it comes to marketing themselves.
I've taught people how to write their own content, helped them find the words for what they do, worked on their messaging and written LinkedIn content for them when they simply don't have the time or inclination to do it themselves.
And the thing I've noticed again and again is this:
You don't need more marketing tactics. You need to understand how to communicate your business.
Once you know how to do that, you can make better decisions about what to say, where to say it and how often you need to show up.
You become less reliant on templates, formulas and someone else's idea of what good marketing looks like.
You start trusting yourself.
That's why I created The Word Shed.
I wanted to create somewhere you could learn the skills to market your business well, without having to become a different kind of person to do it.
A place where you can bring your half-formed ideas, ask the questions you're too embarrassed to ask, get honest feedback and actually practise putting your ideas into words.
Because I don't want you to need me forever.
I want you to get better at this.
I want you to understand your own marketing well enough to know what you're doing, why you're doing it and what to say when you sit down to write.
And I want you to have people around you who are doing the same thing.
That's The Word Shed.
A place to learn, practise, get feedback and build a business in your own words.
And when I'm not talking about words...
I'm usually walking around the lake near my house, drinking an unreasonable amount of coffee, or wondering why my children think everything I say is cringe.
I'm still very much the person who left that office in 2018.
I've just finally found somewhere I fit. I made a Clair shaped space in the world and decided to fill it.
And I want to help you find that feeling in your business too.