7 January 2021|Business Growth, Latest Posts, Launching a business, Marketing, PR, Promotion, Meet the Successful Founder
Vix Meldrew is an award-winning content creator, online educator and female founder. She’s the brains behind Grow & Glow – a personal branding membership that’s helping women across the creative industries to build sustainable and successful businesses and brands. Here she tells us about her journey to female founder, how she created a successful e-commerce business, and gives us the lowdown on her future plans.
“It was 2015 and life had thrown me some real curveballs – my then partner’s infidelity and the loss of both of my parents to cancer in my late 20s. These life events and experiences combined with working 70+ hours a week as a London primary school teacher had left me burnout and feeling overworked, under-appreciated and craving a new creative outlet and community.”
“Despite being knocked for six by the losses in my personal life, I’ve always been a firm believer in making your own luck and so having decided that I longed for a change of direction, I set about creating a future that excited me. I quickly found a new flat in London (I’d had to move out of my former home as it was shared with my ex) and re-branded myself from Miss Jones to ‘Vix Meldrew’. For any ‘One Foot in the Grave’ fans reading this, the inspiration behind this new pseudonym, bestowed by my best mate, was Victor Meldrew and his oft grouchy but affable persona.”
“While my blogging journey began with posts about the night bus, NYC and my favourite jeans, I naturally found myself struggling following the loss of my parents and the end of my relationship and so I refocused to write about mental health – with a side of dating mishaps as I navigated the single life.”
“Tweeting myself flirting and sending a note to #TrainGuy caused quite a stir and you could say I went semi viral. Spurred on by interest around this, I created #VixSwipes, a weekly Twitter feature where I’d swipe on Tinder and share the awful profiles and messages I saw. I guess it was just a way to show solidarity with other singletons as to the experience of online dating.”
“At this point I was still teaching 70 hours a week while also blogging and posting relentlessly to grow my audience. Multi-tasking was truly the name of the game. As the months ticked by, candid posts about my personal life helped grow my audience, and so followed lucrative brand collaborations, awards and media opportunities with the BBC and match.com.”
“In 2017, I met my now-husband Ben and life improved dramatically. I’d also amassed enough of a following by this point to leave the classroom behind and become a full-time content creator. Moving away from sharing tales of my dating life, I realised that I still wanted to weave my passion for teaching into my new life and so I launched my own e-newsletter, ‘Exciting Emails’. Designed to be a virtual vehicle to share weekly tips and insights with the UK’s blogging community, in my first three months I gained 3,000 regular readers and so I began working towards my next goal: offering coaching, content creation courses and launching my own podcast.”
“By November 2018, the ‘Exciting Emails Podcast’ was #1 on iTunes’ business and marketing charts, and I’d coached 50+ creators to help them build their personal brands. Finding myself at another crossroads, I decided it was time to give ‘Exciting Emails’ a makeover and so followed the launch of Grow & Glow in May 2019.”
“Launching to 100 members in under 58 minutes, Grow & Glow is a personal branding membership for creators and creatives. Through access to a plethora of resources, training and support, we help our members to harness the power of their online platforms through content marketing to build sustainable and successful businesses of their own. And crucially, Grow and Glow provides a community of like-minded colleagues who believe in support, empowerment, skills acquisition and leaving an online legacy.”
“In the 19 months since our launch, we’ve amassed 700+ members and counting in 16 countries including the UK, Canada and Australia. I’m incredibly proud of our success to date and truly find joy each day in helping our members to GROW the online presence of their personal brands and GLOW for their audience or customers.”
“Looking to the future, my goals for Grow & Glow are to attract a more diverse portfolio of global creators and creatives while continuing to develop an online education empire with courses, trainings and events relating to every aspect of building a sustainable personal brand.”
As part of our conversation with Vix, we asked her to share some top tips on building a successful e-commerce business. Here’s what she said:
“Before launching your business it’s important to:
1. Identify the niche that you’re business is going to launch in
2. Determine the demographics of your ideal customer base and take time to understand their pain points so you work out how the service your business provides can help them
3. Evaluate whether your product or the service you plan to provide stands out. Does it provide something your target customers really need?
4. Create a content marketing strategy making sure you choose platforms where your ideal customer hangs out. Instagram is typically a great place to start, but take time to consider whether your target audience might also be avid blog readers or podcast subscribers
“Once you’ve worked through these steps, you can start reaching your target customer and educating them on you, your brand and how your product will transform their lives – and you can do all of that through authentic and engaging content.”
About the Author
30-something female founder Vix Meldrew is a primary school teacher turned award-winning content creator and online educator. A digital and social media guru, Vix guides fellow female founders through the process of getting their businesses to Grow and Glow in the online arena. A former columnist for metro.co.uk, Vix has featured in a number of BBC documentaries and knows all about going viral on social media. Now as the founder of personal branding membership platform Grow and Glow, Vix is quickly amassing fans the world over and is working to build her online education empire. Outside her digital office, Vix lives in rural Kent with her husband Ben and Cockapoo Ruby.
In the coming months, Vix will be contributing regularly to The Successful Founder and our sister site, Female Founders Guide to share a series of articles and mini-courses on the follow topics. Stay tuned!
The Importance of Personal Branding
Navigating a career change, transforming your money mindset and reducing work-related stress and anxiety
Running your own podcast and creating your own e-newsletter
Debunking social media myths and thriving in the digital arena
Grow & Glow, visit https://growglow.co.
Find Vix and Grow & Glow on Instagram at: @vixmeldrew @growglow.co.
