The Best Things in Life in January

Happy 2014! We're continuing our blog series 'The Best Things in Life' inspired by a regular top 'best thing'; Red magazine. We follow the Red questions asked to contributors in each edition of the lifestyle magazine but add our own question for good measure too!

Katie

Best things in life...

A fresh new year – I love the feeling of starting over with the New Year, setting new goals to reach and thinking of all the things I will try to accomplish in the next 12 months!

A diary – This goes hand-in-hand with the above; I love getting a new diary and filling it with all the things I have planned in the upcoming year. Of course this year I’ll also have my most favourite diary – our app Countdown Keeper to keep a track of all my events, birthdays and celebrations!

Giving back – This year I wanted to give some of my time to helping out at my local shelter for the homeless and lonely on Boxing Day. The Coventry Open Christmas Shelter provides 24 hour food, clothes and a place to sleep for a week every Christmas. While I was there I helped kit out people with new clothes and toiletries that had been donated and spent time chatting and playing cards. If you would like to get involved next year head to www.coventryopenchristmas.co.uk

The moment that changed my life was...

It sounds such a simple thing, but I decided to throw caution to the wind and say yes to starting a business with Jane the moment she showed me her mind map! I had been worrying about how I’d survive financially and it was starting to hold me back and making me have second thoughts, even though I knew it was what I really wanted to do. Jane had created a mind map of all the options she had for starting a business and once I saw it that was it, I couldn’t resist just going for it! Mind maps have become a key tool we use in planning our many business ventures now!

The thing I'm looking forward to achieving in 2014 is...

Our second year of business and enjoying the journey! There is nothing more exciting than chasing your goals and dreams with a great partner and going into this year I’m excited to see where we will be and what twists and turns our business has taken this time next year!

Jane

Best things in life...

New Year spent in Southwold! Every December mine and my best friend's families venture to Southwold for a week to see in the new year in the fresh sea air. We spend time walking the dogs, eating delicious local food and having fun in our beach hut - I couldn't think of a better way to see in 2014.

New Kikki.K stationery... I love stationery, especially when it's flown all the way from Australia from my favourite stationery shop Kikki.K. Opening a fresh notepad, filling in a new diary with un-used pens and starting the year right by filling in my wellbeing journal are a few of life's little pleasures!

Books! All the books on my Christmas list were ticked off this year given to me from various family members. I'm excited and intrigued to be starting Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO this week and am already halfway through Build a Business from Your Kitchen Table jointly written by Not on the High Street co-founders Sophie Cornish and Holly Tucker. I have a resolution this year to read all the books I own (before buying anymore!) so have a lot to get through!

The moment that changed my life was...

Although I feel the need to say 'when I met my future husband' that's not me so I'm going with 'the day I decided to take the plunge, quit a stable job and launch Katie & Jane!' This was such a big thing for me; I'm from a family who like steady jobs (teachers mainly!) so having their support despite them not understanding why was a major factor in going for it! Having my own business comes with its ups and downs but I wouldn't change it for the world. I have an amazing co-founder who inspires and motivates me every day, I've been able to meet lots of new people and I love living my life on my terms. Getting excited for the new year instead of fearing going back into work is the best feeling in the world.

The thing I'm looking forward to achieving in 2014 is...

Starting all our app ventures! Although the plan for Katie & Jane was to initially focus on social media, we couldn't get away from our passion of creating meaningful lifestyle apps. Our first app Countdown Keeper will finally launch in January and we already have a plan to launch a number of further apps in 2014. It's going to be an interesting learning-curve for us venturing into the exciting world of apps... I can't wait!

Learning Online - A New Year's Resolution

Katie & I have promised to both complete an online eCourse in 2014 as part of our new year's resolution setting, not only to further our business but also to get more from our free time too. We found SkillShare earlier in 2013 and were inspired by their courses so much we decided to put our own social media course on it.

eCourses are a simple way of learning more in your own time yet with SkillShare there are practical activities throughout and an end of course project so you can really get hands-on and feel you have achieved something. With our 'Create an Effective Facebook Strategy' eCourse we set a Facebook strategy as the final project meaning students will be able to go ahead and utilise what they have learnt throughout the course in the real-world.

A few eCourses that have caught my eye (apart from our own of course!) are...

Love Photo Apps: Make Awesome Images Using iPhone Photo Apps 

Clear the Clutter: Design a Daily Writing Goal

Lettering With Texture: Dimensional Type With Layers And Color

Katie may try...

Create Your First E-Book Using Free Tools
Legal Advice for Entrepreneurs & Start-Ups

And finally, just for fun! Create Your Own Custom Sushi Roll

In celebration of 2014, there's currently 14% off our $23/£14 eCourse until 12th January 2014 - use the code KJFB12 here: http://skl.sh/19S61F6

Happy learning!

Jane x

Katie & Jane is One Year Old!

We wanted a record on our blog of our one year birthday... we're very proud of what we have achieved in the first year of our business Katie & Jane and are so looking forward to many more birthdays to come!

It's great to be really excited to start a new year with a positive mind-frame, going into January with a job and lifestyle you love - bring on 2014!

Happy New Year!

Katie & Jane

Katie & Jane: Our First Year in Business!

The 1st January 2014 is a significant date for Katie & Jane; our first birthday!

On reaching this milestone and nearing the end of our first year we wanted to reflect on the past 12 months, our best & worst bits, the moments that mattered and the important things we've learnt.

In November 2012 Jane & I were reading everything we could get our hands on to fill our brains with positivity & confidence. One of our favourite inspirations was Sir Richard Branson (of course!) and little did we know when reading Screw Business As Usual by the man himself that just under 10 months later we would be featured by the team at Virgin Unite as entrepreneurs and be working with Virgin Trains. What a great first year journey!

When we started with our social media mission 12 months ago, we knew we would be competing in a saturated market so we had to do things differently. We went with our intuition that in the near-future, the percentage of social media management taken in-house rather than outsourced to agencies would increase and felt there was a place for researched, bespoke and tailored social media training (without the jargon!) for in-house teams so they could make informed decisions about social media. We were sure that training delivered by the two of us who had not only created & delivered social media strategies but also managed & ran the social media activity on the ground could be very valuable for a company. Only time would tell if our intuition was right!

Without losing our passion for this concept, we pushed on through the naysayers and people we met who told us we should be running Facebook & Twitter accounts for other people’s companies and are now proud to have worked with a variety of companies this year, from exciting start-ups, national brands and the likes of Virgin Trains and Inner Me  who understand the value of placing social media knowledge within their own teams rather than outsourcing. So... our intuition was right!

In other areas of the business, we are very proud to have self-funded Katie & Jane and it feels great that we have worked together to reinvest in our business for long term growth, not just on the social media side but with app development too. One of the greatest reliefs of the year has to be that Jane & I really are a great team, we thought we were, but this year has absolutely proven it. We both are in tune to the same goals, so we both work with a steely determination to get there – and we have a huge amount of fun on the way too!

Although we both want tomorrow, today, we are learning how to balance moving forward at pace, while making sure we reflect on our learnings and keep our focus too. We keep positive, bounce back from setbacks and always stay true to ourselves. So many people seem to equate business success with financial gain, but honestly the freedom of creativity, building your own dream instead of someone else's and creating something that someone else is prepared to invest in are the monumental achievements that keep us striving forward.

We have learnt so much about the app world this year, from our tracking and monitoring of current trends, to mastering the search for a great developer that ‘gets’ your project and goals. There have been setbacks along the way on our journey so far, but we haven’t given up and our first app will hit the App Store in early 2014. Seeing it for the first time was our most memorable highlight of the year. A huge amount of work has gone into creating our first app (of many!) and it’s currently in beta testing and looking very good! Being a team of two Virgos, with Jane’s unbelievable eye for detail and our high standards it's taken a while for us to be completely happy with it and we want to make sure we bring out a product we are proud of, so stay tuned!

Last but definitely not least, we both love our blog. It was a surprise to both of us how much we’d get out of writing about our work, life and play. We love to hear people tell us what they've gained from reading our blog and it can get slightly addictive looking at our reader numbers! We're really looking forward to writing many more posts in 2014.

We're also really excited to be kicking January off to a great start at Birmingham’s Innovation Centre as part of their e4f (Entrepreneurs for the future) initiative, so here’s to 2014 and year number two!

Happy New Year,

Katie x

p.s All of our images in this post are taken from our Instagram channel!

Entrepreneurs for the Future: Katie & Jane invited to e4f!

We’ll be kicking January off to a great start having recently been invited to work from e4f – Birmingham’s Entrepreneurs for the Future initiative, based at Birmingham Science Park’s Innovation Campus.

Joining the likes of DigiVoodoo, Yogi, My Campus Ride and e4f graduates, Sync Interactive, we will be making the most of the co-working initiative, networking with other entrepreneurs in the tech space and meeting some very inspirational people during the first two months of 2014, we can’t wait!

e4f helps start-ups that use technology in innovative ways to launch, develop and grow their businesses by nurturing them in a dynamic community space, to find out more visit: www.e4f.co.uk

Katie x

Merry in Malvern: Stoking the Fire, Herding the Sheep and Sleeping Among Shepherds Huts!

Each year my closest group of friends and I make sure we get together a couple of weeks at Christmas before our lives get too busy. This year we decided to head to my friend Rowena’s home town of Great Malvern for a cosy Christmas getaway, and we weren’t disappointed!

We arrived late on Friday night, with just enough time for a catch up by the open fire at Rowena’s childhood home and have a little look outside at the gorgeous Shepherds Huts that have been lovingly restored by Rollin, Rowena’s Dad. Rollin has dedicated so much time and commitment to renovating them and it hasn’t gone unnoticed... only last week he was featured on George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces and you can catch it on 4oD here.

On Saturday we were woken up early by the sound of Rowena shouting outside, it was hard to tear myself away from the beautiful morning view as I opened the curtains, but (after taking an obligatory picture) we rushed downstairs to find that a herd of sheep had broken through the back fence and were having a great time running around the garden!

After gently herding the sheep back into their field and a good full English breakfast with Rowena’s old school friend, we put on our winter woollies and headed out for a trek up the Malvern Hills. We parked at the foot of the hills next to a lovely new cafe called Cafe H2O at the Malvern Hills GeoCentre where we indulged in a cup of tea and a delicious teacake and studied the interactive maps available of all the potential routes. We decided to take on the highest point of the hills, and walk the Worcestershire Beacon.

This isn’t the first time we’ve walked the hills, we also did this back when were at University, which as we walked at pace, brought back some wonderful memories. Emma told us about her Three Peaks challenge for charity, and we all decided that in 2014 we need to embark on a challenge as a group. So, there is nothing like making something happen than to write it down for the world to see – in 2014 we aim to climb Mount Kilimanjaro!

We finally reached the highest point after a few stops to take pictures of the breath-taking view which looks out over Worcestershire and Herefordshire before we made our way back down again. All that walking and talking left us a little frazzled but nothing a little Christmas Market couldn’t sort out! We made our way into Malvern Town Centre where we browsed the many independent stalls and paid a visit to the Great Malvern Priory to find carol singers and Christmas storytellers!

Great Malvern is a gorgeous getaway from city life and I’d thoroughly recommend it to anyone looking for a countryside retreat. If you get chance while you are there, pay a visit to the gorgeous Grange Farm Nursery, an award-winning garden centre located in Guarlford where you can buy a whole host of trees, shrubs and beautiful plants. As I drove down the long & windy roads of Hanley Swan on my way back home, I left Malvern feeling totally relaxed and ready for a Christmas full of friends, family and fun!

Have a lovely Christmas,

Katie x

Virgin Unite Loves our Pinning Skills!

This month, Virgin Unite featured Katie & Jane on their inspirational website after they chose our Pinterest board 'Feel Inspired' as one of their favourite entrepreneurial boards.

We were reading 'Screw it, Let’s Do It and Screw Business As Usual' by Richard Branson about this time last year, as we were at the crucial tipping point of taking the leap out of the 9 to 5 and into the rollercoaster world of working for ourselves.  Little did we know when reading it back then that only 12 months later Katie & Jane would be selected as one of Virgin Unite’s featured entrepreneurs.

We've really enjoyed populating our 'Entrepreneur Interviews' blog section after speaking to Nataly Kogan from Happier, Inc. Nikki Cooper, creator of Inner Me and Becca Reeves from Hattie's Wines over the past few months so this is a real highlight to celebrate the end of our first year of business.

Follow the link here to read about our journey, find out a little more about the great work done by Virgin Unite and of course see our winning Pinterest board!

You can watch Richard Branson talk to Pinterest Co-Founder and CEO Ben Silbermann via Google Hangout here where they share an insight into their own entrepreneurial journeys.

Jane x