The Better Bolder Braver Vision

We have arrived!

After a combined 40 years of being on the marketing train, we have arrived at Better Bolder Braver.

This blog post is designed to set out our vision, so that you can be clear about what we are trying to do, how, when and why – so that you know if the Better Bolder Braver community is the one for you.

Frances and Simon co-founders of Better Bolder Braver

Who We Are

We are two humans who’ve been around the marketing block. We are now turning our attention, experience, passion and excitement to a brand new venture – for us and for coaches.

Before we launch into one about Better Bolder Braver, here’s a little history of us:

About Simon Batchelar

(they/them)

Simon has run an online marketing agency for over 18 years, and in that time has transformed the marketing of over 400 small businesses. Their longest-standing client tripled their turnover to over £5m, and they have taken another from starting their blog in a coffee shop to talking on the TED stage. Simon enjoys presenting what we call ‘the marketing journey’ in a clear, fun and engaging way and has, up until now, been hosting the Marketing Success Club – a community for a wide variety of freelancers struggling with how to articulate their vision, mission and values in a way that serves them. The Club was, well, a success (!)… but Simon was aware that by specialising in a particular audience (aka niching) they would build expertise and offer a very personal and focussed approach to marketing support in a way that was relevant all the time for their customers. Simon’s interest in the coaching industry had been growing for a while and the sector felt like the perfect fit for the service they offered, so they decided to shake things up…

About Frances Khalastchi

(she/her)

Frances has 20 years’ experience in Corporate, Third Sector, Startup and Government communications and marketing. She’s managed sponsorships and PR strategies, created brand partnerships, launched products, designed websites and trained several lovely people along the way. For a while now, Frances has been helping coaches improve their relationship with marketing. Her clients face the feelings that marketing brings up and then capitalise on that self-awareness to feel more confident about putting themselves out there and, perhaps more importantly, are clear on who they want to surround themselves with and what energy they want to get back. In all her years of doing marketing, it’s been the relationships with people that she had cared about most.

We met each other digitally at the beginning of this year and realised that we were singing from the same marketing hymn-sheet, so we decided to work on something together. After much chat, playing about with ideas and trying out some bits and bobs with excellent people, what we’ve realised is this:

We want to help coaches feel better about marketing themselves – to attract Better clients, build a Bolder offer and be Braver with prices, planning and purpose.

Let’s break that down into the Who, What, Why and When…

Coaches – The Who (not the band. And DEFINITELY not a ‘customer segment’… we really do try not to use wanky marketing lingo ‘round here.)

Coaches are a tribe of people we really connect with and are inspired by. From their training methods, the mentality, the mindfulness and their generosity of spirit, to their ability to make huge changes in the world – we know coaches to be a good crew of people for us to live amongst.

With our combined experience, we want now to provide coaches with a safe space to play, learn and share, and to foster in them a sense of “what good marketing looks like”. We also want to help coaches be conscious of what comes up for them when they are “putting themselves out there”; to be compassionate to themselves, not take themselves too seriously and give themselves permission to enjoy the spontaneity, self-growth and focus that their marketing ‘practice’ can serve them.

Frances and Simon - Better Bolder Braver - L8

So what are we offering?

Better Bolder Braver is the first dedicated community space just for coaches to grow via marketing. It’s a safe, fun, educational, diverse, accessible space where you will find inspiration, new friends, potential collaborators and resources, be taught and encouraged to develop and practice new skills, shown wonderful ways of being creative and encouraged by others to feel better about putting yourself out there in the world to attract the kind of energy you need to keep going. You will enjoy what you do, earn at least enough money to satisfy your personal needs and stay true to your values. This is all served to you as part of our “Empathy-Led, Human-Centred” marketing approach.

If we were showing you our business plan (we haven’t actually written one, or a marketing strategy, by the way – we’re just talking about the conversations we’ve had) then we might next talk to you about ‘Channels’ and ‘Customer Relationships’. In normal human language, that would be to say how we are reaching people we care about and inviting them (you!) to join our community and to spread the love to others. So here goes…

We have established social media profiles – or “laid down beach towels”, as Simon calls it, for Better Bolder Braver – across all of the usual platforms because we know that you may totally rate Linkedin but hate Facebook (how Frances feels!!), enjoy scrolling through Instagram but can’t deal with Twitter mania (again, Frances), like watching videos (let’s talk about ‘screen-cringe’ some time!) or prefer to digest podcasts whilst cleaning the house, picking up kids, walking the dog or taking a (ok, thank you).

Better Bolder Braver on Linkedin

Better Bolder Braver on Instagram

Better Bolder Braver on YouTube

Better Bolder Braver on Spotify

Better Bolder Braver on Apple Podcasts

Better Bolder Braver on Medium

… We wanted to make sure we were practicing what we preach and putting ourselves out there in a way that would be meaningful and diverse. You can, in fact, already enjoy some lovely trailers on our podcast and YouTube channels from Simon.

On the subject of authenticity, you may notice that we are still firming up our branding and our social media presence is still lean. It is evolving organically. ‘Getting it out, not getting it perfect’ is probably our favourite mantra, as you will learn.

Frances and Simon - Better Bolder Braver - L9

What will this community give you?

The resources that you will get from Better Bolder Braver range as follows:

Closed, safe, small group workshops exploring all facets of our Empathy-Led, Human-Centred marketing journey… from getting to know your clients before trying to sell them things… engaging with your engagers, trusting and being trusted, being clear in your mind about your values, intentions, your offering and your boundaries and then being able to articulate these important “details”.

Interactive video masterclasses with experts in marketing, coaching and more – all talking candidly, openly and generously about their marketing practices, demons, challenges and fears as well as offering invaluable insight, advice, support and other marketing enlightenment gems.

Myriad contents, polls and chat about marketing themes and concepts… and how doing marketing things can make a difference but also how it can make us feel.

Tips and Tricks for how to do Better, Bolder, Braver marketing and how to be kinder to yourself throughout.

Reflective moments for you to take stock, breathe, hold up a mirror and get nice to yourself and also to others in your community. So much of the point of Better Bolder Braver is to help you with a happy marketing energy. Laughing at yourself is a biggie too.

We work with a bunch of other marketing people who we’ve befriended over the years… who we like to refer to as our ‘marketing family’- copywriters, photographers, podcast producers, SEO geeks, GoogleAd word wizzes, community-building guys, ritual designers, UX guys, video producers, branding peeps, social media and PR specialists, publishing friends and more. We are, of course, also surrounded by fabulous coaches, and also have some excellent therapist friends, psychologists and philosophers around us too, all helping us help you with the ‘how marketing makes us feel’ bit. Whilst these people will not be present on the community platform – that’s just a playground for coaches – they are on hand to help us help you. So you’ll hear and learn from those guys too in some way… in the community or as part of our courses, which we will tell you about later. We are happy to introduce you (free of charge!) to any of them that you would like to work with, but more than anything we are about empowering you to feel that you can largely do your marketing yourselves, if that is what you’d like / budget for.

Frances and Simon - Better Bolder Braver - L6

How much is being in the Better Bolder Braver community?

Yep. Money. Question first… How does charging for your services make you feel? As you can imagine, if we did not charge you for this, we sadly would not be able to provide to you, include you or invite you to support others and be part of your growth. Indeed, we are actively looking to embolden you to develop a healthier relationship with money, pricing, charging for what you serve and asking for payment yourselves… and how we price this community is no different. Our monthly membership fee is $25 for the first 50 Founding Members (we use round numbers, not “charm prices”). This is about a quarter of the price of an average monthly London gym membership, about the same as 10 cups of decent coffee, but way more than soap (unless you buy your toiletries from Liberty & Co, which by the way is a nice treat too once in a while).

We ourselves met in another fabulous community, The Happy Startup School – and one of our fellow tribesman, Stephen Dargan recently said something that we thought was a great way to end this post…

“You have to have rewards, otherwise it’s fucking dull… and there is too much dullness in the world already.”

So, go on… treat yourself and do a good thing for you and your marketing. Join Better Bolder Braver today. We very much look forward to seeing you there.

Also, if you are a member of the Association for Coaching, do keep your ears pricked for the AC’s last podcast of its current series, Boost your Coaching Business hosted by the podcast producing expert AND coach, Rob Lawrence which features none other than… us! The lovely guys at the AC have also invited us to host ‘a signature programme’ for them in 2022, which we will be able to share more about in due course.

Take it easy and see you soon!

Let’s Go On This Journey Together

Access our content, courses, groups, workshops and events and meet other, like-minded coaches.

This is more than just training and it’s far better than a Facebook group. This is the community that will empower you to become Better, Bolder and Braver.

Join the community

A marketing plan you’ll actually use

The Reframing Marketing book next to the 6 box marketing plan

The Coach’s Marketing Plan

We believe that coaches already have all the skills they need to get their marketing working. This plan will help you map it all out and stay on course.

The key to making your marketing a success is to make it manageable. Marketing doesn’t work well when it feels overwhelming or complicated. It does work when it feels enjoyable and authentic, which means you will attract more of your ideal clients.

This 3-step marketing plan is written specifically for coaches and it will empower you to work on all the essential areas of your marketing and make a plan that you’ll actually use.

Download your marketing plan