Sarah Dawkins, the director and founder of Celtic Sanctuary, explains why the business should win the home business category of the Guardian Small Business Showcase competition.
Celtic Sanctuary was set up with a vision to own a property and land in South Wales, where people could come to learn how to improve their own health and wellness through nutrition, diet, exercise and meditation. This will be done through individual classes, single day sessions or overnight stays of up to a month.
In our infancy, we are operating from our home as an online-only business, running a website as well as Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook pages to market ourselves. These social media sites are slowly attracting followers, who are liking and following our pages and blogs. As we grow and build products, we will eventually be able to market to our followers.
Currently, we are building an e-course to sell from our website at the same time as holding down full-time jobs. The e-course will be paid for (by clients) in advance and will then be emailed out automatically to the client every week. It will be around 12 weeks long (we’ve not yet completed it). This e-course will also form the basis of the treatment/sessions that will be run from the business premises, once we have bought it.
I also offer one-to-one coaching via Skype for anyone wanting help to make the healthy lifestyle changes. This allows me to work from home, without incurring travel costs.
As well as all this, I am undertaking several courses to build upon my existing knowledge to meet the future and ongoing needs of our prospective clients.
All entries which meet the competition criteria are published and our judging panel select a shortlist of the top three for each category. Winners are announced at an awards ceremony in summer 2016.
