Personal Brand
Sally is an ex-nurse who wanted more time and flexible working life.
She discovered a way to bring all her experiences together – Ward Sister and Nurse Specialist on an oncology unit, including end-of-life nursing, it made her realise and appreciate what’s important in life.
Her passion for psychology has always been part of her career and bringing up 3 girls just added to that.
Tapping into her creativity allowed her (with children) to have a career as a stylist which spanned 14 years.
This past history, experience and wisdom have enabled Sally to grow her Personal Brand Business to help lots of people like you, become more aware, secure and happy with their own personal brand and how to use it in developing their business growth.
She has a passion for Training and passing on her wide-ranging knowledge, she runs her own membership group NOBS (don’t ask ????) and trains, coaches and mentors many 1-2-1 clients as well as groups.
As a Speaker, she is very at home on the stage, with various members of the family being singers/actors and she has always had a passion for working with an audience!
People say…
‘Sally, she was very knowledgeable, personable and friendly, I was totally engaged throughout the session”
‘’I came away with lots of practical ideas of how to align the various elements of my personal brand and this was a very holistic process and outcome. I came away far clearer, more excited and more confident Thank you Sally!’’
You can find out more about Sally here Sallyinkster.com
What do you do?
Well, it’s personal brand. Personal brand is not branding. Branding comes after brand. So personal brand is who you are. Completely and utterly. All the warts, the great bits, the training, your past, your skills, your values, it goes on forever. So it’s a big subject with a little word, but it’s personal brand all about you.
Why do you do what you do?
Right from when I was four or five, I wanted to be a nurse and I think I’ve looked back at my life and I think something in my core just likes to help people. So when I was at school, I was always the one. If somebody was and I was always the one looking after them, I was always the first one to offer to help.
I’m happier when I’m helping. So I went into a career out of nursing. I became a cancer nurse. I was talking, listening and treating people. I then came out of nursing for personal circumstances. My husband moved abroad. We have three kids and a dog and a big house and oh my goodness. So no more nursing brought up children, got bored, fell into becoming a stylist.
A stylist and a cancer nurse sort of sounds as if they don’t have a lot in common, but actually they do. It’s all about making somebody feel better about who they are at that particular moment. So with my cancer patients, they lost hair, they lost breasts, they lost legs. So I would help them with body balance and body confidence even back in my nursing. So when I started a second career, I sort of fell into styling. I did that for years, I did that for 12 years. I loved it. But then my youngest daughter went off to university and I thought, you know, I want to do something now that is going to make me as proud as when I was being a cancer nurse.
How do I do that? No idea. So what do I do about it? I went and found a coach. Trying to work out what I wanted to do by default, I gave myself a personal brand. As soon as I looked at it and thought, Oh, that’s what I did, why didn’t somebody tell me I had to do that? 12 years ago, when I started up in my own business with no idea because I was a nurse who helped for free.
And so when I went into styling, although I actually didn’t do it for free, I always felt I should have been. So if I had somebody who’d help me with my personal brand back then, I would have been much more monetarily successful in my styling job than I ever was. So that gave me my lightbulb moment. That’s what I wanted to do.
I love training. I have trained at school and nursing in my styling. I like to take complicated things and make them simple so that other people can get it really easily. Far easier than I did when I found it complicated and had to make it simple.
Who do you work with?
I think as a business owner, you quite often like to work with people who are like you in a way you were before. You are who you are now. So I love working with ex nurses who are jumping from the NHS, but because they’re very similar to people who are jumping out of corporate to work for themselves, because when you jump from being in a big organisation to you, life is so different.
You think you’ve got all these skills, you’ve worked in big companies, you’ve run this, you’ve run that, you’ve done the other, and then you pop out corporate and, Oh my God, you’re on your own. There’s nobody who does your filing, there’s nobody who does your accounts theres nobody who does the ordering for you. You’re completely at a loss. And actually, what happens is you lose your self-confidence.
When it plummets then you find it really hard and you have to build that up. The best way to build it up is to have little wins, but base it on all those great things you were before, which you still are. So they’re the sort of women I work with, but that doesn’t mean to say I work with anybody. Entrepreneurs, I love working with creatives, holistic therapists, anybody to do with health and wellbeing, so very wide.
Why did you decide to work with Susie on the Women ‘N’ Business programme?
I think Susie comes over so well that when she’s excited it makes other people excited and I totally understand what she’s doing with it. And I completely love the fact that Susie recognises that personal brand is like the foundation, and if they don’t get that right first, they can’t do the other things to build up their building.
What was your biggest takeaway from the programme?
I think the biggest thing was realising that a lot of people really are right at the beginning of trying to understand what business is, what business working on your own is of what personal brand is. And so whenever I work with a group it always brings me back down to ground. I know a lot and I can pass on a little bit, and that’s a lot for other people because they have no knowledge.
What is your number one tip for women in business in 2022?
I think what it goes back to is finding the belief in yourself and knowing even if you’ve lost your self confidence that you can get back to where you were and that when you do your personal brand, it is about finding you.
And that isn’t always about business, that’s about personal family and you. It helps everything. So people who are in careers or people who, you know, even are not working, doing a personal brand can really lift you up. So it’s it’s not counseling, it’s not therapy, but it’s learning about yourself.