The Client
10Eighty has worked with Condé Nast since 2015 supporting employees in their career. Joan Hecktermann had been an Art Director at Conde Nast for 20 years. When she took redundancy from the business in 2021, she had a number of ideas for starting her own business. One of these was to co-own and run a business offering painting and sketching holidays in Tangiers, Morocco. The holidays would comprise small groups, combining painting, sketching, private house tours and in-depth knowledge of this beautiful city and its surrounding areas.
Joan takes up the story:
“It was a painting holiday, rather than a formal course, and also a transformative experience for our visitors. We wanted to start at ten in the morning, give our visitors the help and support they needed in every aspect of painting, through until about four o’clock.”
10Eighty’s Approach
Joan needed support to discover her entrepreneurial strengths and develop a realistic business plan, so she was matched with Trevor Merriden, a 10Eighty coach and mentor specialising in helping clients start and scale new businesses.
Through a series of online consultations, Trevor worked with Joan to scope out her business ideas. This included how to establish the business, how to thoroughly research her potential business market and put into place marketing ideas to win early visitors.
Crucially, Trevor also gave Joan a series of templates, procedures and disciplines around business revenue, costs, cashflow and time management give the business the consistency it needed to establish and bring her business ideas through to fruition.
Outcomes
Joan fulfilled her dream – she and her business partner set up and has already delivered a successful series of painting and sketching holidays in Tangiers. The holidays are proving very popular, with another series scheduled to take place in the remainder of 2023 and 2024. Photos and details of the holidays can be seen here – Tangier Painting Holiday.
Client Testimonials
Joan says: “Trevor’s guidance was extremely useful. It helped me and my cofounder understand our relative strengths. And it made us realise exactly that, while we loved the creative aspects of what we wanted to do, we needed better organisation to make it all happen.
Without Trevor and 10Eighty, I think we would have been far less able and ready to make it happen. We would have been taking a stab in the dark, so I felt I got direction and assurance from knowing the steps to take. Trevor gave us the structure we needed to make it all happen.”
Click below to read about how we supported our client through career transition and business mentoring.
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