Menu
Founded in 2018, Indie Essentials is a Content Marketing company that helps ethical and sustainable companies get found by their customers, focused predominantly on B2B marketing.
Fiona Brennan works with founder-led businesses and exhausted marketing managers to help them get a handle on their content marketing, from creating the content strategy and delivering it, to supplying team training to deliver the messaging coherently.
“If I had known then what I know now, it wouldn’t have taken me so long to form the right business for me. Indie Essentials didn’t really become a defined Content Marketing Business until 2018, 6 years after I started out on my own.”
After a career in the music industry as a Record label manager, which Fiona loved, gaining vast experience in marketing, sales, working with distributors and building relationships, things changed in 2012 when Fiona was a new mum. Whilst on maternity leave, and with a return-to-work date looming, Fiona knew she wouldn’t be able to afford childcare to be able to go back to work. She took the plunge to leave her job and work for herself.
For several years, Fiona was taking on any freelance work, asking her friends and contacts for anything they could send her. Fiona struggled for several years. She wasn’t finding the love and the joy that her previous job had offered her. Over time, she organically homed in on what she wanted to concentrate on, and that was Content Marketing. Indie Essentials formed its identity in 2018.
“I was frustrated and insecure at that stage – I didn’t have faith in my skills. I was playing small, but I knew what I could do and what I was capable of, I just lacked the confidence and didn’t know how to get there.”
“I knew it could be better. I could see other people doing similar work to me which I knew I could do better, but they seemed to be flying, with bigger clients and contracts. I just didn’t know how I could break into that world and get myself in front of bigger companies that I knew I could help.”
I was working too many hours.
“It wasn’t a sustainable way of doing business.“
“The Covid pandemic made me feel like my business was just a house of cards, and anything could come along and knock it down.”
It didn’t feel like I had the right foundations and security in place.
I wasn’t charging enough.
“I would take on any work. If they seemed nice, and they were offering it to me, I would take it, I was afraid to say no, because I didn’t know where the next client was going to come from. I wasn’t even thinking about sales, I was just happy if I could pay my bills each month.”
Fiona joined BBB in May 2022.
“After having a bad experience with a client, Tracey helped me understand that if I keep doing the same things, I’m going to end up with the same bad clients. I needed to make some changes or I would end up with the same results. The decisions I had been making up until that point, were not in my best interests, and Tracey showed me how BBB could help me break out of that cycle.”
BBB helps you step up into the business you know you can have, by helping you overcome the things that are holding you back.
“It’s always been a challenge for me to invest money in my business. So it took me a while to join BBB and I was totally holding myself back. If I wasn’t able to decide to invest in my own business, how could I expect clients to invest in me to support their business?
“One of the most important things BBB has taught me is the importance of having a money mindset. They’ve given me the tools to be able to think about money differently. This means I’m now charging more for my work, making sure I get paid on time, deciding to invest in the business, so I feel like I have a secure business and the world’s not going to crumble away beneath me.”
“I also needed help knowing how to position myself in front of the right clients. I had very much positioned myself as a freelancer, and not a specialist. Working on this with BBB has been incredibly helpful.”
“I’ve done all the Sales Challenges that BBB has offered during my time with BBB so far and turned up every single day to do the activity, and that has resulted in me bringing in so much work. It’s been absolutely transformative, making me think differently about how I do sales. It’s made me see all the opportunities I already had in my sales funnel. The reason I’m in such a good position now is undoubtedly because of the work I’ve done over the past 12 months with BBB – it's paid off!
“When I have a tough moment, having the BBB Community around to support me has been invaluable. These people have been through the same cycle, been through to the other side of it, and are there to encourage you to keep going. You can go into a BBB session feeling like you’ve just had a horrible past month, and you leave the session positive and hopeful for the month to come. It keeps you out of the misery loop and stops you getting stuck there, and instead looking at the positives you can take forward.”
“Goal Setting – this has kept me accountable. I look at my goals every day as I now set daily actions, and it’s so satisfying to go in and tick them off.”
“It’s the first community I’ve joined where I’ve felt I’ve got a lot to learn. Everyone is like-minded, we’re working on similar goals with similar values and outlooks on life, and I’m there to not only be supported but to support others – it's a huge benefit.”
“I now feel like I’m a grown-up business, I’m no longer bumbling through hoping for the best. If something goes wrong, like I lose a client, I have back up plans. I’m strategic, I’m planning and I’m consistent.”
“Everything has changed, and the work I’m delivering is much more interesting. The clients I’m working with now are the right kind of clients – more established and bigger – and BBB have helped me position myself to get in front of them. The businesses I’m working with now are very much aligned to my own goals, and I feel like I’m making a difference. I walk into meetings with more confidence that I can help them, and I’m taken seriously.
I have structured my business to work for me, I have control, and I have better balance.
“I now have the ability to say NO. I’ve always been terrible for just saying yes, but now I’m making the right decisions for me and my business.
“I’ve gone from insanely stressed, where I was worrying where my next client was coming from, wondering if I’d invoiced enough to pay the bills and working all hours, to having set clear boundaries that work for me, like being able to turn my laptop off when my children get home from school, and not working evenings. I have structured my business to work for me, I have control, and I have better balance. Strong boundaries in business have also gained me respect from the people I work with, in and outside of the business, and it’s really helped with getting paid on time.
“The 28-Day Self-Esteem Reboot was life changing for me. It helped me recognise that the world in my head is not the reality for the rest of the world and built my confidence. I now have the confidence to step up and do the things I need to do. I no longer think my clients are doing me a favour by giving me work. Me and my clients know I’m here, I know my stuff, and I can help them.
Fiona has also joined the BBB Partner Programme, and is now earning a passive income stream through referring to BBB.
“If you’re considering joining BBB, go to a workshop! Find out what it’s like and what it’s all about. It’s so worth doing this. It’s a few hours of your time, and you’ll get so much out of it. Then have conversations to find out if this is right for you.”
“If you’re stuck and don’t know how to move forward to the next stage, you’re lacking confidence and other people out there in your industry seem to be flying when you’re not, BBB can help you. They’ll work through all that ‘head trash’ holding you back, which will set you on the road to making your business better and your life better. “
