100 Days of Brave by Iolanthe Gabrie: how to build your brave muscle

About the book

A legit business: one that’s proof-of-concept tested, compliant and connecting with your customer. For real.

Practical and frank, 100 Days of Brave is the ultimate guidebook for building a business that will thrive. It’s for women who want to live life on their terms, enjoying the freedom that entrepreneurship provides – but who haven’t the mentors to get their show on the road.

Whether you’re on the cusp of beginning a part-time hustle or you’re in the throes of start-up, 100 Days of Brave presents you with an achievable roadmap to testing and working your business concept.

Source: https://iolanthegabrie.com/books/

About the author

Iolanthe never imagined herself at the helm of a thriving brand. But after a detour from academia in Dublin and a wrestle with retail management, Iolanthe crossed the final frontier: she became an estate agent and an auctioneer.

Iolanthe’s family and friends were about as impressed with this decision as you might imagine – but her intuition served her well: real estate is the ultimate bootcamp for business. In its arid soil, Iolanthe learned to connect with prospects, to market her negotiation skills and to have difficult conversations about money with an agitated public.

After a successful career in property, Iolanthe launched Ruby Assembly in 2009, intuiting that social media would play an important role in global marketing in the years to come. She was right. Serving a diversity of professional categories from real estate to law, finance to franchise and local governments to psychics – Ruby Assembly enjoys a fine reputation for inimitable social media and digital marketing content that connects.

An engaging and generous speaker, prolific business writer and marketing strategy mentor, Iolanthe shares her passion and expertise for very good business via Serious Women’s Business, a 500-strong networking group based in Melbourne.

Source: https://iolanthegabrie.com/about/

Big idea #1 – Being Brave  

The book is split into three sections. Brave beginnings, building brave and being brave.

Ultimately it is about building the brave muscle, the mindsets, the skills, the actions, and the activities, that you need to bring your idea to life as a business or as a side hustle.

We don't have to be creating the next unicorn or tech venture, and Iolanthe is very strong on the fact that any business is a start-up, so whether you are walking dogs, financing multi-billion-dollar mergers or acquisitions deals, all of this is relevant to you.

By the end of part one of the book, you almost forget that you needed any bravery at all. The advice in the book is so practical and outlines what you have to do, you can go off and do it. There’s also lots of good advice in there about what to worry about and what not to.

Bravery is also required to avoid some of the noise - those awkward questions from your family, friends, and ex-colleagues. And that's before you've even needed to dig into the bravery required for hard client conversations and feedback.

Big idea #2 – Brains & Guts

Brave involves both knowing your stuff and knowing yourself.

Iolanthe talks about how you do need to tap into a bit of intuition, a bit of your internal knowledge, to do some of the things that you will need to do as a business owner.

But your business foundation can't be based on woo woo, or intuition alone. You do need to have some substance behind it.

Iolanthe provides a really good amount of caution to those drawn to the Instagram fantasy or influencer types that lie to you about the reality of running a small business and getting one off the ground.

She talks you through defining your initial offering, tricky legal things to avoid, money, hiring, firing, marketing, business development, prospecting, and SEO. She also covers what you should consider for branding, what to outsource and how to surprise and delight your clients and customers.

Big idea #3 – Too Legit to Quit

The first part of the book is about getting clear on your business. The second part is more about creating legitimacy and looking at the part.

You can do this by creating branding that's fitting, professional and walks the talk of your work. You need to be findable, trustworthy, clear, and consistent. It doesn't need to cost millions to do this, and it is a marathon not a sprint.

This is the stuff to outsource (branding, copy, photography, building a website or even social media) because it's probably the stuff that you're going to put off or you might not have the skills to do and may take you longer. But once you've got this stuff down, it becomes the baseline for having some fun with your business which allows you to make it your own and make it memorable.

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