298 | How I Started My Membership & Why It Changed Everything

Driving in the passenger seat in my car. So I wasn't driving. I was in the passenger seat of my car and the sun was setting. We were, I think we were on the M25, which is the big motorway that goes round of London if you're not around the UK. And I remember being in a Daydream, a Daydream that took me to all of the possibilities of what I could do with my business. And I just asked a really simple question. What do the people that I want to help, what do they want?

And as soon as I asked that question out loud, I took myself back to those moments when I first started my business, before even my business, Vivid Wire, back to 2010 when I started my business, Violet and May, and thinking about her and what she wanted at that moment. And it was all about belonging somewhere and not feeling alone. And so I created the Vivid Business Club. And today, if you're listening to this on the day that it is published, today is the Vivid

Business Club's third birthday. Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to Vivid Club. Happy birthday to the Vivid Club. Even though you're called Vivid Business Club now, you were born the Vivid Club. There you go. I absolutely love that place so

freaking much. But I want to take you on a little journey, a journey I want to take you on a little story about where I was when I started the Vivid Business Club and the version of me were 14 years ago that needed it, that really needed it. We were in 2025 now, aren't we? 15 years ago, the version of me 15 years ago that really, really needed it. Welcome back to No Rest for the

BB podcast. If you have just discovered me, my name is Claire Hill. I am a business coach and I'm an expert in self belief and productivity. I am here to support you, to get out of your own way and remove all of the barriers to making your dreams happen. That is what I am about and my podcast, No Rest for the Video podcast. This one is all about sharing those stories. Sharing what will help you to

get out of your own way. Whether that is stories from people just like you who are doing the business themselves in the messy middle, or from stories from like me. From people like me, like me. Stories from me about tips of ways to grow your business, make your mindset really robust and

overcome those doubts, as well as help you to be consistent and productive. This is what this podcast is for. So if that all sounds like a bit of you, hit that subscribe and follow button so that you don't miss a single episode. OK, so I'm going to take you back, take you back, take you back, lean back that song. I'm obsessed. Sorry to interrupt myself.

I'm obsessed with naughties radio heart, naughties specifically and naughties music and I know that he is 20 years old, but every single time I hear Mystique or Westlife or Christina Aguilera and Ricky Martin, I'm just transported back to this younger version of me and it just gives me such a boost. And I remember being a kid and my mum listening to like 70s music, thinking why is she listening to that? It's so rubbish.

And I understand now. I understand why she did it because there's actually some research about how you connect to songs in your roof in your teenage years and your early 20s, how you connect to those songs and how they, like, become you. So yeah, I was just thinking about Beyoncé when I was saying that sentence because I got tickets to see Beyoncé in June. Cowboy Carter is literally I think my the my favorite album ever, ever, ever.

I just love it so much. I listened to it from the beginning to the end and I must listen to it now. It's only probably once a week. I listened to the whole thing, but it was every day when it came out, maybe twice. I just listened to it on repeat. I love it so much. I'm seeing her. I've got shit seats, but then am I going to get the good seat or am I just there for the energy? That's how powerful she is. Her energy fills a stadium. That's what I want. I want to fill a stadium with my

inspirational talks. You wait. One day this will be this reel. This will become a piece of content that that moment where it's like, that's what I want to do. I want to fill a stadium with people and help them to strut out of there as their most vivid selves and just say yes to themselves, yes to what they want. Oh my God, that would be the best day ever. God, I can just feel it now. Just being in that room would be amazing.

So that's my big dream. So I'm going to take you back to the moment where I started my first business, Violet May, which was in 2010. And I had, it's all. I always feel like the most magical things come out of the most traumatic. I was in a relationship with this guy and I thought we were going to get married. I was convinced. I was convinced we were going to get married. We spoke about it like all of

the time. But he arrived at my flat that I'd bought and he arrived at my flat and oh, it was the most

embarrassing thing. Well, oh, yeah, I was going to. I was ready, ready to say hello in a nice piece of a lingerie. I don't think I've dressed up like that since. Terrified. He walks in and he's like, I'm, I'm breaking up with you. And I was like, it will a what? I had no idea it was going to happen, no idea whatsoever what ensured ensued. No, what what happened after that was I just distraught. I think I feel like I destroyed myself, which is quite a dramatic thing to say, isn't it?

But I think I did. I mean, I was 2425 when it happened and I was very much in victim mode, very much in. So much bad stuff has happened to me already. How can more bad stuff happen? Does this mean that I'm literally going to have bad stuff happen to me for the rest of my life? That was totally in victim mode. But at that point I'd only just got a like my, I bought my flat and I felt really safe in that flat. That was like, oh, I'm home now. I'd never knew what homesickness

was. I never, I never missed home when I unless I was a really young kid, but I never wanted to be there, so I didn't want to. I didn't miss it. And then I went to university, lived with my girls. Actually, to be fair, I probably got a little bit of homesick there, but I knew it wasn't permanent because we were, we moved every year while we were at uni. And then I lived some two other places and I was made homeless and I was like, I can't do this anymore.

I I've got to just buy somewhere. And this was before, this was the period of time, this was 2007, you know, when you could literally buy, you could, you could get like 110% mortgage or something. They don't do that anymore. So I've got a mortgage and got my flat and I remember closing the door for the first time just thinking, I'm home. Kiss me goosebumps. I'm home. Oh, it's the best thing ever. And then I met this guy and I just thought he was just so much

fun. He was just so much fun. But I wasn't for him. I wasn't for him. And I'm really glad that we split up now. But at the time, Oh my God. And I destroyed myself because I was just in this victim mode of I thought everything was going to be OK. I thought that I had, I'd, I'd found that moment of, you know, I think I, I thought I, I was just done. I was like, right, I'm done. I've found him now. Let's just settle as needed to

settle. Really, really wanted to settle, but he wasn't, it wasn't to be. But as a result, after I, I mean, Oh my God, I was, it was horrific, the break like how I was with the breakup. I lost so much weight. Oh God, I was like a skeleton. It was awful, awful. But I didn't have I had my friends were looking after me, but I probably needed and my sister. I went to stay with my sister for a bit as well. No, I didn't. No, I did.

I did. I saved for a little bit, but I think the I needed to look after myself, but I didn't need like I probably should have gone somewhere for like a retreat. They didn't have retreats back then. I would have probably helped but yeah, Oh my God, I felt horrendous from that. I started sewing again now when I was at university and when I was. So when I was really young, when I was like 4-5, I started

sewing. I started doing cross stitch maybe 6. I was really young anyway, started doing cross stitch and then I just started to do more and more and more of it. And I loved having a needle in my hands. And then my mum taught me how to use a sewing machine, which I'm really grateful to her for. And then I started making my own stuff. So I started making bags. And my very, very first, my very, very first business, I made bags for my friends at

school. I'm sure if you've listened to the podcast for a while, you know that already. So I had that business and I just sewed all of the time. Like any, any moment that I wasn't doing all of the young carer things, I would try and sew. And what I really, really loved and what what I still love and I need to do more of is what I want to do more of is actually hand sewing. What I really love is sewing on sequins and gems and beads and stuff like that.

Really, really love it. Little shout out to Shamma. Everybody who knows this podcast knows Shamma love you. She gave me some of her mum's. Her mum sadly passed away when she was 17 and her mum used to soloed and she had all these beautiful beads that were just sitting there because Shama didn't use them. And I remember her giving them all to me. I've still got some. I used to love just sitting there just sewing these beads

onto things. But I came up with this design to make a ribbon rose and I'd seen it somewhere or I'd seen this was before YouTube, so or maybe YouTube was just starting. But I, I just discovered this way that you can make a rose out of this ribbon. And I started making jewellery and I worked out how to make a ring from why I'm ribbon. I then worked, I've got some chains. So I made necklaces, I sewed them onto head headbands and made these great big fascinators.

I did tiny tiny little roses and massive, massive roses and the

roses I I made I did some for a shoe designer and they ended up on Beyoncé's feet. I am anking Kardashian's and Oprah Winfrey, which is really cool. I made so much for the I'm just thinking to myself now I've told this story on here, but bear with me. But I just made and made and may. But the the the reason I'm talking about Violet and may again named after my Nana. By the way, who was Violet May? Violet and May was such a fantastic learning curve for me

because I was on my own so much. So when we'd split up, I was then single. Then I met somebody else, but that's another story. But I was, and he didn't live around here, right around here, but he didn't live near me. So I was just in my flat, living on my own, working on my own because I got to the point where I gave up my job and I was doing Viola and made self-employed. I had nobody, nobody. And I remember going to, well, nobody on my wavelength was

running a business anyway. I can remember now I had no I wasn't part of a membership. I didn't know what a business coach was. Instagram didn't exist. It was just Facebook. I would do some posts and maybe get out there in Facebook, but Facebook groups weren't really a thing either. And I remember a moment when me and my sister went up to London to see, I think it was Jersey Boys. And I remember trying to talk to her going, I'm just not well, Jen.

Like I, I don't feel well, like my brain and my energy, I just do not feel well. Like I'm not talking to people. There's like 5 days where I'm not talking to anybody at all. I'm not leaving the flat. I became like a recluse because there was no need for me to move. Like I ordered stuff for the business on eBay, so it came in a letterbox. I was sending stuff online or you know, I did do fairs and stuff, but they weren't, there

were few and far between. So people were making orders through Facebook to me or through messages or, you know, like, and I just would pack them up and send them it. There wasn't, there wasn't enough people and Oh my God, it destroyed. And The thing is as well, I, I didn't have a family, so I would sit and so for sometimes 14 hours a day non-stop, just sitting in the same spot with the poor light literally ruined my eyes. Same spot, sewing, sewing, sewing, sewing, not having any

conversation. I was miserable, miserable. So then when I got offered a job to go because I was then I, I did start working again a little bit because by the way, I wasn't making any money because I was just sitting on my own all day. Of course, it wasn't making me any money and I had a mortgage to pay. So I went back and did personal care, worked in a homeless shelter, did some actual care for adults with learning disabilities.

So personal care. And then I got offered a job and my old job and they said, can you come back as a temp? And that was working in the communities with homeless families and homeless individuals. I was like, yeah, brilliant. That'll do me for a little while. First day back then my phone got stolen. That was another story, sort of a story. I carried on doing Violet and

May and I would. I wasn't paid for my lunch breaks there, so I would take sitting at my desk one hour a day out of my day and I would sew at the desk, which I thought was pretty clever. Even when I got to manager, I did that. And then we were faced with redundancy and because I had left and come back, I wasn't, I didn't qualify for any redundancy, which that was a

bloody kick in the teeth. But anyway, these things happened to shape us. So I thought, right, I'm going to go and be a teacher right to 40 schools became a teacher. The rest of that bit is rest is history. Because what happened is I carried on Violet in May for another year or so. So it was about 2013 to 14 that I, I stopped doing Violet in May as it went for about 3 1/2, four years. But being a teacher, you haven't got time at that point when I was training, I did not know how

I was going to make any money. So I just did dribs and drabs. But that version of me that's sitting on that sofa on her own in a flat just sewing, I just felt so bad for her. And then when I started Vivid Wire, what, three or four years later, so that started 2019. So five years later. So Violet and Vivid Wire is 6 years old now. When I started Vivid Wire, I was ahead of the game. I knew where my challenges were going to be. I knew where my my struggles were going to be.

I knew what not to do. So when I started Vivid Wire, I really felt like I was ahead of the game. And so very quickly, once I'd saw I had Vivid Wire for 15 months and then I left school, left teaching, I very quickly found a community. I I knew that that the tsunami of negative thoughts and everything that I was trying to

run away from arrived. It's another thing while why it was so difficult when I was doing Violet and May that the negative thoughts are just the doubt and the unworthiness. I was just so horrible to myself. So when when it started to happen with Vivid Wire, I had enough self-awareness to say that I think that there's a way out of this. I don't have to struggle on my own. And I found a membership which I won't name, but I felt very grateful for that membership.

And a very specific reason was that once a week where I clicked on a box in an e-mail and I was transported into an online room where there were other business owners like me, There was a Facebook group, there was learning same as mine. But it was that that just that something to look forward to, something to like structure my day around.

I loved it. I loved Wednesdays. It was Wednesdays at 1:00 I remember, or 12:00 I remember Wednesday afternoon, favorite day of the week, because I could structure my whole day around going to that online session. I loved it until I didn't, and I felt incredibly stupid in there. I was made to feel stupid, insignificant, inadequate, and small. Incredibly small. It wasn't a very nice place to be.

And those of you who listen to the podcast, who you know, who you are, who I've spoken to about it, you know what that membership, and I think a lot of people left that membership thinking that that's it, I'm done. I don't, I don't want to be part of online communities because that was too bad and I don't, it used to be really good. And I don't know what happened to the founder for it to change in the way it did, but something changed.

Maybe it didn't. Maybe it was the growth and development and actually maybe I had outgrown it, or maybe it was because the founder had to do that to help different people. So no judgement there. Actually, I'm going to take that little back, big back. But I did feel really small in there. And that's a fact because I'm going to validate my own emotions there. I was made to feel small. And there was one conversation that happened where I witnessed. It wasn't even me.

I witnessed the conversation thinking I don't want to be in a space where I'm made to feel like I can't achieve my dreams. But where? Where are people lifting me up? There's lifting me up in here. I used to put things in the Facebook group and people wouldn't like answer me, and then someone else would comment and loads of people would. It was like there was these clicks in there. I felt so lonely because I was paying for something and this is

the thing. I was tired into it because I'd paid for like 3 months at a time and when I choose chose to cancel even though I had time leftover, I was kicked out immediately. How rude is that? Disgusting, disgusting. So I, I, I just, I didn't understand how you could be part of a community and still feel lonely. It just wasn't it. It just became something that just made me feel worse than I already did. So I was that right. I'm getting out of there. And then I started and then that

was the moment where I went. People were asking how do you, how do you grow Vivid Wire? How do you do this? How do you do that? I thought I could just become a business mentor or a business coach. I've been, I've got like 20 years experience helping people. I do know what I'm talking about. It's not like this is my first business. I'm doing pretty well. I could, I could, you know, I've got a story to tell and I've got experience. I could help other people. And that's when I started.

That's when I became a business coach and I put out, I remember emailing my list for Vivid Wire saying I'm going to offer some free sessions, does anyone want them? And I got all these emails back. It was so exciting. And how many people actually I ended up coaching after that?

Amazing. Why don't we be suing the river Business Club, which is so cool and just then that moment when I'm in that car, my my husband's driving we're driving away from a holiday, I'm looking at the sunset and going I can create my own membership. I can do that and that was three years ago. I think the the, the number of people now that have come through the River Business Club that that it's changed their lives because it's changed what they can see as possible for them.

That's what is different about the Vivid Business Club. You get in a room where you feel that possibility. You can feel that actually it might not be bullshit. It might actually be a dream, might actually be something that you can create and make happen. No matter what, no matter what story you've been told before, you can decide that for yourself. How powerful is that?

So the Vivid Business Club was born and the day that you are listening, if you're listening to this on the 24th of September, it's around the birthday. I think the birthday is actually the 23rd. But if you're, if you're listening to this right now, today is the Vivid Business Club birthday event in London. So right now, as you're listening to this, I'm preparing and going up there and I'm very excited. We've got, I think it's 20 people in a room with it.

Oh my God, I can't wait. I'm already so excited because the magic that happens in that room, the way that I and I there is a teacher thing. I can hold that space for people to explore what's really possible for them to get to know something about themselves that makes everything make sense so that they move forward with their business with more clarity, more courage, more confidence, and even more

importantly, more consistency. So they've always got their own back. They trust that what they're saying is going to happen because they've got the evidence to support it. They say yes to themselves. They say yes to being in a room with people that lift them up. But it's more than just lifting up. It's being in A room with people where you feel safe enough to be vulnerable enough to make the magic happen.

That is really where it's at. If you're not in an online space or a physical space where you feel so safe that you can be vulnerable in order to feel that magic can rebuild, because that is what happens when you want that magic to boost your business, to boost you, to believe that what you want to believe is possible, you need to get vulnerable.

But if you're not in a safe space, if you're not in a room where people aren't judging you or that they're just there to support you, it's all about wanting you to win too, then that is where the magic is missing. That is it not being in a safe enough space to be vulnerable to make that magic happen. And that's what the Vivid Business Club, what the Vivid Business Club is. And I think that that's really where that's really the opportunity that the Vivid Business Club provides better

than anybody else. And what I am able to do for you too, because I didn't feel like that. I know how it feels. I know how it feels to be in a space where you constantly feel like you are judged or made to feel small. And I, I refuse for that to happen for you. And you have the opportunity to join the very business club because the doors are open and they will be open for the foreseeable.

So if you're listening to this podcast, whenever you listen to this episode and something within this podcast episode has resonated and you feel like it's like clicked into place for you. I really encourage you to go and start that 7 day free trial completely on me. Test drive us for free so that you can see if we are the right fit for you. If you can see that what you want to believe is possible can actually happen by being in that room. The I do have a song that I have written.

I do and I really want to write it if I really want to sing it. I know it's cringy and geeky, but I read somewhere like, if you're not cringy enough, then you're not. I can't remember the rest of it, but I'm I want to get out of my comfort zone and pee my pants about singing on a reel. I might even get my guitar be like, what is it when you sing all around the campfire? I don't know. Anyway, then I'm going to leave that note. Now I feel really vulnerable, but obviously, I'll create a

safe space on this podcast. Whatever you're doing for the rest of the day, I hope it's a productive and glorious one for you. Don't forget to subscribe and follow. If this was the first episode and you've just found me and if you want to learn more about the Vivid Business Club or all of the other things that I can do for you, then check the notes. No, Yep. Check the links in the notes. OK. Have a wonderful rest of your day, babe Speeches.

Thank you so much for listening to the No Rest for the Vivid podcast.