About Claire Marshall and Brand Mixology
I spot the thing
you're too close to see.
I'm Claire, founder of Brand Mixology. I bring together brand, business and an ongoing fascination with people - what makes us tick, what matters to us and what we want from the lives and businesses we're building.
I work with founders and experts who care deeply about what they do. Often, the experience, stories and point of view that make them distinctive are the very things they overlook. They've lived with them for so long that they don't see what somebody else might see.
My job is to help bring those pieces together, work out what they mean for the business, and turn them into positioning and marketing that feel like you. My own route here is probably why I love doing that.
My story.
I was never that kid.
The one with a ready answer when somebody asked what they wanted to be. Mine would probably have changed depending on the day. Through school, university and into my corporate career, I kept waiting for that one thing to become obvious.
Trying to get it right.
I tried to tick the boxes I thought I was supposed to tick, and gave myself a hard time when I didn't. It wasn't a case of doing everything by the book and then deciding to change it. For a long time, I just felt as though I wasn't getting it right.
Something I wanted to understand.
For years, the thought of a needle could make me fall to the floor. A brilliant experience with hypnotherapy changed that, and I wanted to understand how. If a thought could have such a powerful effect, what else was going on in our minds?
I went on to train in hypnotherapy. It gave me a new focus and something different to get my teeth into. But the decision to build a business from it came later.
Having Jack changed what I wanted.
When I had Jack, I wanted to be a present parent rather than keep juggling a corporate career around motherhood. I also wanted to see whether I could make something of this skill I'd acquired.
That was when I stepped away from employment and began building a business. Not because I'd suddenly worked out my whole life, but because I wanted to try a different way of making it work for us.
The work began to change.
I started creating brands in the hypnotherapy space. Doing that meant learning about online businesses and digital marketing - a side of marketing I hadn't really worked in during my previous role. I found myself genuinely excited by it.
And I loved sharing what I was learning. Working with other founders and experts, at different stages of their businesses, became the part I wanted to do more of. My understanding of human behaviour came with me, but the work was moving towards brand, marketing and business.
A lot of change. Not much certainty.
During my 40s, I had a child, started a business, left the safety of employment, relocated twice and eventually left a relationship. Alongside all of that came the hormonal changes that can make this decade feel quite something in its own right.
To say I struggled with my identity would be putting it mildly. So many of the things I'd used to describe myself had changed. I was trying to work out who I was, as well as what I wanted to build next.
There wasn't one neat moment when it all made sense. Slowly, I began to see how the parts I'd thought of as disjointed actually belonged together. Those years of upheaval gave me something I couldn't have planned.
What I bring to the work now.
Brand Mixology grew out of bringing those experiences together. The business thinking, the brand building, the marketing, the understanding of people - and the experience of trying to find yourself when the old descriptions no longer fit.
Now I help other founders see what they bring to the work they do, what they want to be known for, and how that connects to the business and life they want. Then we turn it into a clear direction for their brand and marketing.
I love putting the spotlight on the incredible, passionate people I work with. Helping them see the value in things they've dismissed as ordinary, and finding a way to make those things work for them, is a very good use of everything that brought me here.
Good people to bring along.
Along the way, I've met brilliant people across marketing, PR and the other areas that help a business grow. Where a project needs their expertise, I bring them in. It means the founders I work with get the right support, and I get to support other small businesses and freelancers doing work they care about too.
If this sounds like your kind of conversation.
If you'd like to know what working together could look like, let's have a chat.
Explore working togetherWeekly Mixology.
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