The Best Things in Life in October

Summer is over and it's off into Autumn we go. Although beautiful, hot sunny days are behind us, the pretty falling leaves and Autumn colours are coming which gets us very excited! Here's our favourite things in life in October...

Katie

Best Things in Life?

Quorn… We’ve had a summer experimenting with Quorn for our tasty Not Dogs and the more I’ve researched into the brand and mission it’s been refreshingly surprising to find out the untold story of the work for sustainability and the passionate people striving to help the environment and us! To find out more here’s a link to a recent study I’ve enjoyed lately.

Photo Books… For my birthday gift this year Jane created an amazing photo book filled with memories of our summer adventure this year, to have a book to pick up from time to time and flick through means that I can be reminded of the fun we’ve had in this lovely little keepsake that’s just mine to enjoy!

Tiny Temporary Tattoos… I love this predicted trend at the moment, stylish temporary tattoos made in metallic colours like gold and silver. Spotted during Paris Fashion Week and not long after on Beyonce, I’m excited about watching this trend grow and already there are some inspiring creations surfacing on Instagram.

My Woman of the Year is...

My fellow Katie & Jane adventurer, Jane Whitehead. I’ve spent more time with Jane over the summer than I have with anyone else, and when it’s 4am in the morning and she is perfectly topping our vegetarian hot dogs (no standard is ever dropped!) while I’m running down the queue talking to our customers apologising that we only have 12 hot dogs left, you realise that there must be only a handful of people in life that can be on this kind of adventure with and make it work. This summer was all about pulling together, being resilient and remaining happy, positive and inspired despite all the twists, turns and pressure, and we did it! Here’s to the future…and so much more fun.

The Most Important Thing I've Learnt in the First Year of Owning a Food Truck is...

To not be afraid to stand out if you really believe in something. Sometimes it’s hard for others to see your vision, (these ideas always start out a bit crazy!) but the belief you have in the idea, making it a reality and finding out people like it as much as you is honestly the best part!

My Current Favourite Pin...

Jane

Best Things in Life?

New Autumn/Winter Shoes! I have realised I have a shoe rotation system (sad I know!) and this is the month to pack away my Spring/Summer shoes mainly consisting of Havianas (and jelly sandles this year!) and get out my Autumn boots and Winter Uggs. On a recent trip to Rome I brought two pairs and have spotted some similar in Red magazine since!

Miranda Kerr Empower Yourself - after buying Miranda Kerr's first book, Treasure Yourself, in Melbourne a few years ago I've been patiently awaiting her next publication Empower Yourself which features affirmations for living healthily and feeling positive. I had to wait three weeks for it to come over from Australia but it's worth the wait and is a really inspiring, positive read for people of all ages.

The Honestly Healthy Cleanse - Having spotting the inspiring author, Natasha Corrett of Honestly Healthy on Instagram, I really enjoyed her regular posts so decided to pick up her and her business partner, Vicki Edgson's, latest book 'Honestly Healthy for Life'. I loved it so much that I also got their first book 'Honestly Healthy: Eat with your Body in Mind, the Alkaline Way' published in 2012 and discovered the Honestly Healthy Cleanse which I am now doing. The 5-10 day cleanse is not a detox - I was pleasantly surprised to see how much gorgeous meals I'd be eating along with green juices and snacks. I'm only on day three at the moment but feeling very good!

My Woman of the Year is...

Katie McDermott! Co-founder of Katie & Jane, Countdown Keeper and Not Dogs, and one of my best friends is an inspiration to me; she works amazingly hard yet has fun with everything she does, she is there for me no matter what and we work so well together as a team. I'm very proud that she's recently been recognised by Nivea and Stylist magazine as an 'inspirational female who encapsulates the bring it on generation' so take my word for it and go and vote for her now here! 

The Most Important Thing I've Learnt in the First Year of Owning a Food Truck is...

It's God-damn hard work... but worth it! Maybe naively I didn't think pulling a food truck and selling vegetarian hot dogs up and down the country would be as hard as it's been, but I also didn't imagine how much fun I've had too. 18-hour shifts with no breaks, long queues and 'interesting' customers have made it the hardest work of my life but because of all the passion we have for creating a long-lasting brand that people love - the hard work is so worth it! It's not about making a quick-buck for us (we haven't!), it's about seeing the look on people's faces when they see our little purple truck or bite into their first Not Dog - that's what it's all about!

My Current Favourite Pin is...

A Stylist Celebration!

We're very proud to be featured not once but twice in this week's edition of the fantastic Stylist magazine.

Firstly Not Dogs is featured in the article '23 Courses to Make You Rich' in the magazine's 'In the Money' section where they focus on the next big industries and the skills to learn to help you launch a new business. Looks like we're onto a winner with Not Dogs as Stylist's research with Mintel show that 'the rising demand for healthy fast-food will spur the growth of gourmet food trucks' although we wouldn't call us 'gourmet' by any means - our food is just something we, and thankfully many other people, enjoy!

Secondly, I get to gush about my amazing co-founder Katie as she's made it through to the final 25 of the 'top ambitious, strong and adventurous women' in Stylist and Nivea's #bringiton30 competition. As it states these inspirational 25 women are forging their own paths in life and business from creating charities to travelling the world they are all very worthy candidates but, being biased, I'm voting for Katie of course and would love you to do the same!

Katie's piece talks about how Not Dogs was created, the passion we have for our business and how we want to disrupt the world of vegetarian food in a positive way. But, as an extra encouragement for you to vote, Katie is not only a fantastic business women but a supportive, funny and amazing individual too and I'm very happy to be able to call her my friend and co-founder!

Vote for Katie here: http://www.stylist.co.uk/home/microsite2/nivea

And you can pick up a free copy of Stylist magazine featuring us this week.

Thanks!

Jane x

As The Not Dogs Summer Tour ends... A Look to the Future!

As our Not Dogs Summer tour comes to an end, we thought we'd put together a round up of our journey so far! To give you an idea of just how much of a whirlwind adventure we've had... by the turn of this year, 'veggie hot dog truck' was just an idea on a list of other crazy ideas, by March we had secured Quorn as a supplier and by June we were on the road embarking on a summer of fun taking Not Dogs to the masses at festivals all over the UK!

After visiting five festivals, we ended our summer of festival fun at Festival No 6 in the beautiful setting of Portmeirion in Wales. The people, place and music made it one of our best festivals so far - again with so much amazing and exciting feedback from festival-goers, both veggie and meat-eaters! We spent nearly every moment we were there in our little purple home, so we didn't see any of the acts - but we were very close to the main stage so we could hear them and had a great view when we could look up from the sausages!

Thank you to all our new found fans who queued and waiting patiently for a Not Dog - and we are sorry we sold out on Sunday, we couldn't believe it either! Sunday was also my birthday - and thinking back to what I was doing a year ago, it was very strange to think I was spending this birthday running my own business & serving up veggie hot dogs with Jane, it was definitely a birthday I will never forget!

From Festival No 6 we headed straight to Stokesley in Middlesborough where we had been invited by Quorn to park up our truck and serve all the staff Not Dogs for lunch. We had a great day presenting to the sales and marketing team about our summer and going behind the scenes to see some top-secret products being made! We are looking forward to going back very soon!

As we left Wales to embark up North, we received the news that we'd made it to the final two in the Virgin Food Fest competition - a search to find the most exciting food entrepreneurs. In less than a week we were filming a 45 second elevator pitch in Virgin HQ's Battleship Building and creating an event stand for the finale that would mimic our food truck! The final took place earlier this week where we met Paul Lindley, founder of Ella's Kitchen, Hemsley & Hemsley, Sir Richard Branson and the judge of our category 'Tastiest Start up', Acting Editor of Guardian Food magazine; Mina Holland. 

We met so many amazing people and lots of new fans of Not Dogs, and even took a great #sausageselfie with Paul Lindley! The event was great fun, and the Q&A with the judges on stage was inspiring and insightful. We were busy writing down every word Sir Richard Branson said about making a fool of yourself to get your brand noticed when he directed a question straight at us asking us how we had made fools of ourselves so far! Of course after the summer we've had it wasn't hard to reply!

Unfortunately we lost out to a great finalist Killer Tomato - a Mexican street food chef in London chosen as the winner by Mina Holland. Despite not being crowned the winners, we honestly had the best day out meeting some very inspirational people, and most importantly people who were routing for us throughout the day and after the event. The support from so many people who had us as their winner was absolutely overwhelming - thank you to everyone we met!

So where to next? It looks like this journey isn't going to end anytime soon! We are now embarking on an Autumn tour kicking off with University Freshers Weeks. Tomorrow we will be at Leeds University for the day, followed by Bournemouth and ending in London over the next couple of weeks - we're so excited to take Not Dogs to students and see what they think!

And so ends our first Summer tour, we've got a huge thank you list to get working on, it's been the toughest work we've ever done, but we've had so much fun, met so many characters - and we're so excited to have created a brand and product that so many others love just as much as us. Here's to the future!

You can keep up to date with where Not Dogs will be next over on our website, Twitter & Instagram channels.

Katie x

Exciting News... Not Dogs Announced as Finalists in the #VirginFoodFest

We're very proud to share the news that our vegetarian food brand Not Dogs has been chosen as one of two finalists in the 'Tastiest Startup' category at the Virgin Foodpreneur Fest! We found out while travelling with our little purple truck to Quorn HQ in Middlesborough this week and had to pull over we were so excited!

On Wednesday we'll be heading to the live finale in Battersea in London where we'll hear the judges; Sir Richard Branson, acting Editor of the Guardian Cook magazine Mina Holland, founder of Ella's Kitchen Paul Lindley and bloggers Jasmine and Melissa Hemsley, announce the winning brand!

This is what Virgin Startup said about Not Dogs:

Created when founders Katie and Jane found themselves frustrated at the lack of satisfying veggie fast food options at festivals, Not Dogs proves that you don’t need meat to create a hot dog that ticks all the boxes – and with imaginative toppings that include fried eggs, beer-caramelised onions and crushed nachos, they’re way ahead of their traditional counterparts.

On Wednesday there will be a 'people's choice' competition where competitors are encouraged to create a buzz around a particular hashtag given out on the day (along with #VirginFoodFest) so it would be amazing if you could show your support and look out for our tweets, retweeting and tweeting where you can, on @notdogsUK.

We're so pleased that in just nine months Not Dogs has gone from a little idea on our 'Mental List' to us spending the summer travelling up and down the UK  in our lively truck and now being finalists in a Virgin competition. Thanks to everyone who has supported us on our journey so far... we can't wait for 2015!

Kickin' Katie & Plain Jane x 

The Best Things in Life in September

The summer months are now over so it's time to look forward to a new fashion season, getting cosy with open-fires or searching for some Winter sun in a faraway country! Think we'll do all three! Here are our #bestthingsinlife for September...

Katie

Best things in life?

The month of September! One of my favourite months as it’s my birthday! But also because it signifies a fresh start and instead of miserable memories of going back to school it reminds me of new uniform, the latest cool lunch box to pack my sandwiches into and of course new school shoes! I’m looking forward to motivating myself to end the year on a high, and will of course be adding all of the things I have to look forward into my Countdown Keeper app – who needs Summer hey?

We both love Nivea products and Stylist magazine, so when we found out we’d made it into their #BRINGITON 30 shortlist, a competition designed to find 30 (under 30) go-getters and dream-makers with big stories to share, we were absolutely stunned! The judges are Jenny Garrett (LinkedIn Top 10 Power Women 2013), Gemma Crisp (Stylist’s Assistant Editor) and the Nivea Team – our fate is now in their hands!

Long coastal walks – I enjoyed a long weekend in Saint Agnes in Cornwall to get September off to a good start by walking along the rocky coast from Saint Agnes to Peranporth, stopping for a birthday toast and some delicious Cornish ice-cream! We also took in the sights of St Ives too which was beautiful!

The musician that inspires me is…

Stevie Wonder! There are so many artists and bands that I love and listen to everyday, but this time 2 years ago I was watching Stevie Wonder headline Bestival on my Birthday while all my friends serenaded me with ‘Happy Birthday’. It sounds naïve but I had forgotten just how many amazing hits he has and it was a true inspiration to watch him delight thousands of people, especially while he sang ‘Isn't She Lovely’ with his daughter on stage.

The pin that sums me up at the moment…

Jane

Best things in life?

My birthday weekend in Cornwall. I was surprised by my best friends with a weekend away to Cornwall and what a weekend it was! We ate amazing food at Jamie Oliver's Fifteen and Lewinnick Lodge, surfed at Fistral Beach and then spent the whole afternoon drinking champagne and eating pizza at the beach bar. It was lovely to spend time with my favourite people and just enjoy each other's company, drunken dancing included!

Getting through a summer of festivals! Not Dogs has made the summer of 2014 a very memorable, fun and exciting one although it's been the hardest work of my life! All the good times outweigh the tough times and we may be mad but we will be back at even more festivals around Europe next summer which I'm very excited about!

Books! My birthday list this year was very conservative although it did have tonnes of books on it from cookbooks to business books - a very varied bunch. I jumped straight into The Fault in Our Stars by John Green which I haven't been able to put down since my birthday - fantastic book so far!

The musician who inspires me is...

Beyonce... of course! I've loved Beyonce since she was in Destiny's Child although it's been since she released her latest visual album 'Beyonce' that I've really felt inspired by her. I find her strength outstanding; she's a mum, wife and businesswoman and one of the only entertainers who doesn't seem to have a problem singing and dancing (amazingly) on stage!

The pin that sums me up at the moment…

Countdown Keeper reaches 30,000 users! #collectmoments

Four months ago we launched Countdown Keeper into the App Store, the very first app by Katie & Jane, and we are so excited and thankful that we have now reached more than 30,000 users!

Our aims for the app were simple; we wanted to create a fully customisable app that helped people to get excited about events, or look back on events with fond memories, celebrating the little things in life and encouraging people to collect moments, not things.

Since the launch we've absolutely loved seeing all of our users posting their events across social media and using the hashtag #collectmoments - that's honestly the best thing about launching an app!

We've got an update for the app that should be out in the next month or so, and then we'll be working on some bigger changes to improve the overall experience - hopefully by the end of the year and ready for all those count downs to Christmas!

In the meantime here's a look at the app in action from our lovely community of Countdown Keeper users. If you would like to download the app for free click here and you can find us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram too.

 

Thank you so much for all the support from our friends, family and growing community of Countdown Keeper users, stay tuned for the next app by Katie & Jane!

Katie x

Social Media Recipe for Success: The Sequel - Part 3 - Who, Where and Why?

We briefly touched on exploring social networks and discovering your audience in parts one and two of the social media recipe for success sequel but, we know that the myth of being active on hundreds of platforms rather than being really successful on a few targeted ones is an important issue.

The aim of social media is to connect directly with an audience in a timely, unique and engaging manner allowing them the opportunity to get to know the brand personality further and truly communicate in a way that means something to audience members. We are often baffled when clients want to be active on every social media platform they've ever heard of when they're either not using the 'power three' correctly as it is or their audience simply aren't on many platforms. Here's a few steps to ensure you're on the right path for your brand...

Step One: Who?

Who is your social media target audience? A good place to start is by looking at your brand's target audience and going from there. The social media target audience will be different to your usual customers in most cases; they will be more defined and probably different on each network.

It's also a good idea to think about which type of person you aspire to have as part of your social media community. We've seen some brands end up with poor social media success after focusing on who their current audience is, many of which aren't on social, as opposed to who they'd like to be communicating with online.

In order to identify who your social media target's personality is delve deeper and think about what online media sources they like to read, which brands they love and even which celebrities and high-profile people they follow. Start to research into your ideal target and everything around them online to build up a fully-rounded picture.

Step Two: Where?

You know who you want to be targeting but now... Where are they!? Of course, the majority of people from all walks of life will be active on the 'power three'; Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Here's a few key stats for you...

• There are 1.28 billion monthly active Facebook users with over 223 million people on Facebook in Europe
• Facebook's most common age demographic is age 25 to 34 and 53% are female and 47% male
• Twitter's primary age demographic are users aged between 18 and 29
• Users tend to use Twitter for news consumption, 83% reported seeing news on the platform
• YouTube's users are split equally between male and female and 46% are under 18 years of age
• YouTube is the third biggest driver of traffic to websites after Facebook and Stumbleupon

If they are right for your brand, these three are a good place to start to build up your online presence and to learn how to make social media work for you but, the new guys need to come in somewhere too - if they are where your target audience are active on of course, remember quality over quantity!

• Within internet users, Pinterest is now more popular than Twitter!
• Pinterest attracts older people - 23% of internet users aged 50+ use Pinterest
• Instagram has over 150 million users with 90% being under 35 years old and 68% of users are female
• Instagram is one of the most engaged networks with about 60% of users logging in on a daily basis
• 300 million people use LinkedIn and its key audience are aged between 30 and 49 years old with a high income and education
• 40% of users check into LinkedIn daily and spend 17 minutes on the site per month

Step Three: Why?

We always say how important setting objectives are so that you know where you want to be online as a brand and can set mini-goals to get there but, looking into objectives further, setting defined objectives for each of your audience segments and also objectives for each of your platforms.

For example, you may have identified parents aged between 30 and 40 as one of your target audiences for your Facebook page - a goal may be to recruit some of these users as ambassadors in six months time in order to do that your objectives for this target audience and platform could be...

1.    Create an engaged community of 1000 Facebook fans with 5% engagement rates within two months

2.    Identify potential ambassadors within four months through daily contact with fans, frequent questions put to fans and research into key influencers

As with all goals whether they are being set for social media or not, they need to be SMART; specific, measurable, assignable, realistic and time-related.

Take a look at our previous two blog posts that accompany this success series or click on the right for all our social media posts.

Happy planning!

Jane x 

Take our online Facebook eCourse to plan your first social media strategy here. 

Download our handy social media toolkits here.

How To Become a YouTube Superstar!

Twitter Lingo or 'Twermingology'!

Simple Social Media Advertising Tips

Facebook & Twitter? I’m not Pinterested!

Pinterest - The Only Social Network Needed for Luxury Brands?

Twitter Lists and How to Use Them

New Facebook Competition Guidelines - What You Need to Know

Social Media Competition Guidelines Made Simple!

The Hashtag & How to Use it by #katieandjane