I’m Tracey Hopkins and I am the Owner of  The HR Consultancy Business School 

In 2013 I was coming out of a Corporate career that I had worked really hard for but which no longer suited me – I had big plans and big dreams and a whole lot of passion and self belief. I’d seen lots of other people leave the Corporate world and seamlessly transition into successful self employment and I was very confident that I had what it took to do the same thing.

I was ready to be in charge of my own time and to exchange my 90 min commute for a 20 second walk from the kitchen to my lovely new home office.

I had a 10 year career in Human Resource Management and Consultancy behind me and I knew that people needed what I was offering.  So I was very confident that it wouldn’t be long before I had replaced – and exceeded – my Corporate salary and would be enjoying a much better standard of living.

Fast forward a few months and one big reality check later and I wasn’t  feeling nearly as optimistic or confident.  I had realised that my skills and experience were not  the ones I needed to actually find Clients, that it was going to take more than a website and headed paper to start making money, that I hadn’t the first idea how to go about using social media as a business tool, networking was a minefield, I didn’t know how to set my prices and I actually dreaded anyone asking me how much I was charging as it felt so awkward and embarrassing.

It wasn’t looking particularly good – to put it mildly.

But I was really committed to making it work so I set about figuring it out – it took some time and quite a few wrong turns along the way but I stuck with it and fairly soon things started to turn around for me – I became more visible, I started to build up a client base, I finally started making some money – my business was becoming successful.

People started coming to me to ask for advice because they were struggling with the same things that I had been dealing with and within 12 months I had moved completely away from the HR Consultancy Practice I had set up and instead started using my Coaching skills to support other HR Consultants so that they didn’t make the same mistakes that I had made.

You learn a lot about yourself when you set up a Business – you learn what you are really good at and what you need help with, you learn that not everyone who says they will support you actually does, you learn that you have to put a financial value on your work, no matter how uncomfortable that makes you, you learn that no matter what you think you are doing, what you are actually do is learning how to get really good at Sales and Marketing. And The HR Consultancy Business School is here to help you with every bit of it!