Zambian born entrepreneur Caroline Marsh, is one of Britain’s leading female property investors and an inspiration to many. She’s created her own empire and helped many in pursuing their business dreams too with her knowledge.
Her latest initiative is called the ‘Mastermind Alliance’ as part of Global Entrepreneurship. The initiative will see Caroline assist some of Britain’s fledgling entrepreneurs with their business ideas.
“The Mastermind is an alliance of more minds working in perfect harmony for the attainment of a common definite objective, they are all business owners,” she explains.
Caroline made a name for herself after featuring on Channel 4’s ‘The Secret Millionaire’ in 2008 as a philanthropic entrepreneur. Having featured on the show, lots of organisations invited Caroline to inspire their people by sharing her success story.
“After several talks I had a following of people who asked me to mentor them and then an ‘Aha’ moment came – if I could put all that I have learned in a system, and create a platform to teach others to do the same, then I will make even a bigger difference.”
More recently, the rags to riches businesswoman completed the second of her highly successful ‘Concept to Cash in 90 Days’ programme, where a dozen aspiring entrepreneurs were guided and mentored to take their innovative business ideas to market.
“Concept to Cash programme helps you build a foundation of your business. Most people have an idea and usually don’t know where to start, what it takes to make it work. So we provide them a platform, tools, strategies to learn all the fundamentals, in other words it’s an accelerated learning programme.”
Caroline realised she wanted to help other business start-ups when she helped a Brazilian friend start a cleaning business. In 12 months her friend went from 0-11 staff. “I had another ‘aha’ moment. I suddenly found myself inspiring others to do the same, look at their passion and see if they could start a business.”
In Zambia, Caroline worked as part of the cabin crew for Zambian Express for three years until the airline was liquidated. As an air stewardess, Caroline said she learnt the value of a customer, excellence, building rapport, friendliness, time management, building relationships and handling challenges. She collected her redundancy cheque from the senior liquidation handler and she made quite an impression on him. They started to date, and two years later on a holiday in Cape Town, Michael the liquidator proposed. They married in Zambia in 2001, then in 2002 moved back to Michael’s hometown of Swindon.
Caroline learnt her business strategies from successful entrepreneurs and her business mentor, Steve Bolton – a multi-millionaire property investor and serial entrepreneur. After hearing Steve speak at a business conference in Spain in 2006, she was so inspired that she set her sights on having him as her personal mentor. Within six months, Caroline was given a privileged invitation to join Platinum Property Partners, an exclusive franchise community of successful property investors, entrepreneurs and some of the best professional advisors in the UK.
Becoming a businesswoman, Caroline initially felt pressure. “I did feel the pressure when I initially started my property business as the industry is dominated by men, to an extent some would try and overcharge or not tender for my work.”
Now her current lifestyle allows her to take a break when she wants and spend time with her family. “This morning my 17-year-old son asked me this question whether I had a job or lifestyle business? To which I replied lifestyle business.” Caroline has laid the foundations to enjoy the lifestyle she has with her job. “I am so motivated right now to see others make it happen and if I am up late finding and strategizing their business, I am happy its not a chore.”
Caroline offered Krystal-ites some words of wisdom: “You cannot change your circumstance over night but you can change the direction overnight. We all have the remarkable ability to create our world of possibilities, the best time to start is not tomorrow but today”.
Caroline is offering readers a free copy of her Blueprint The 7 Secrets of Success at
www.carolinemarsh.com
by Pavel Choudhury
