HEY I'M LIV
grab a tea... it's long but i'm hopeful that by reading my story it will trigger something in you that may just be exactly what you need.
so the beginning...kicked out of boarding school days before my GCSE exams where I’d chosen fine art, graphic design, photography and fashion - all creative subjects as I was potentially the most non-academic student any school had ever seen. However i thrived in the creative subjects - but told time and time again my creativity would 'never get me anywhere' and 'unless i planned to be the next picasso my topics were pointless'. So I believed that…from a young age.
I did however attend another school, completed my first year of A-levels in fine art, photography and graphic design. Passed and then dropped out of school half a term into my second year.
i craved freedom. independence.
I've never really followed the rules... This page won't either. Because rather than the typical 'about' page. I want you to see this world i've created and truly understand the mission behind it more than anything. As someone that loves to write (and read). This is my story - I hope you enjoy it and i hope You take something away from it.
fast forward perhaps a year after my husband arrived in the UK I transferred to the store I had originally applied for when i first got back to the UK… as a manager. I had a boss that was the most soul-less man I’ve ever come across. I worked at fucking McDonald’s yet I was going home every day crying over it.
No matter what I did, there needed to be more. He was never satisfied. Spoke to the crew like shit on his shoe, demanded but never praised. He would stand clapping at the side of us asking us to go faster when we had already broke record 15 minutes prior. he was truly up there with the biggest Twat's i've had the misfortune of meeting. but he taught me something...
he was thanking me for a charity event i had organised... he thanked me in a Facebook group...but never bothered to say thanks or even 'bye' to me face - left out the back door. i'd been there for 15 hours on a day i wasn't even meant to be at work... now to me it's the small thing's. having the decency as a business manager to appreciate, acknowledge and treat your staff with respect and human deceny is important. he failed.
I share this because it showed me that i was never a good manager.
And I never want to be. I was a great leader. And the two are very different.
My shifts were always enjoyable, there were no crew 'stepping on egg shells' when it was my shift. There was no one crying during or at the end of the shift and still...there were results..
Look after your staff and they will look after you. YOUR TEAM ARE YOUR GREATEST ASSET. YOUR COMMUNITY IS YOUR GREATEST ASSET. YOUR PEOPLE SUPPORTING YOU ARE YOUR GREATEST ASSET!
I was furloughed, times were incredibly hard and my toddler never slept. He would wake up at 11pm like clockwork and want to be up the rest of the night (horrendous IYKYK). SO to stay awake I chose to put the creative skills in me to use.
It had been 11 years since I drew and I’d never drawn on an iPad before so it was very… new.
I shared the drawing I made and my phone pinged …‘can you make me one?’ I was a little taken back. Then another message came through… ‘love it liv! can I have an illustration please?’ So I got straight to work I think I had 5 orders that day off the back of creating my Instagram page and I charged just £10 a print in the hope that if I could get 10 orders a month that would be an extra £100 a month which would be wonderful.
I ended that month with well over 250 orders. £2500+
I WINGED IT and I winged it hard. Sent myself partially blind in the process but nothing a set of blue light glasses couldn’t fix. Now this was June 2020.
By august I decided to add personalised illustrations to phone cases and notebooks as well as offering A5-A1 prints. By September I had to close my order book I had prints up until the end of the year plus a full Christmas order list.
Mason RAyn … exploded. My ‘little drawings’ were EVERYWHERE. I had influencers contacting me asking me to draw for them. Footballers. People wanting illustrated logos. The whole thing just went nuts. I then launched a hoodie. A girl reading a book in bed with one leg up was the illustration on the front of the hoodie. Again they blew up.
i continued to run both Mason Rayn and SUccessful Women's Club for around 8 more months and then i made the decision to close Mason RAyn. it had snowballed, shown me that my natural creative talents weren't useless and opened my eyes to women who like me; are sat on huge potential that just needs unlocking. women already chasing their dreams and women wishing they could figure theirs out... wondering if they will ever discover their purpose. live on their own schedule. earn money by loving and being truly passionate about what they do everyday.
what started with SWC kits turned into a community of women that felt seen, valued, supported and part of something. that to me was everything. a community of women rooting not only for each other but for themselves. i knew i was some how falling in a direction of clothing we had: sweatshirts, hoodies, caps, bags, the notebooks, SWC tumblers, habit pads and other thing's but it wasn't solving the problem. the products looked cute. they provided the feeling for women. but were they actually helping them? no. and was this (clothing apparel) the direction i wanted for swc? absolutely not!
SO i wrote. a personal development workbook... 'Becoming her' and the mission, the reason...it all clicked when i held the first physical copy on my 30th birthday... (remember - all before 30.)
My misson had nothing to do with clothes. it had everything to do with helping other women who are where i was. women who wanted more. who who wanted to plug into the creative world. learn skills that could change their life. allowing them to quit the job they hated. do the school run. give them the confidence to walk in a board room of suited men and drop the mic.
i want women to WIN. no matter where they're starting from. so i started with the mindset that will give them the belief, confidence and tools to begin their journey of becoming.
success is different to everyone. and here it's nothing to do with materialistic things.
it's everything to do with the life we get to live from the courage, belief and relentless drive we've got. and that's not a given.
That's why i'm now building the school. a place for women to do the 100% not the 20-30-40%
inside the school you not only will learn multiple creative skills that can be turned into profitable businesses, we do the mindset, build out the brand, create the eco systems, do the strategy, learn the platforms, we show you how to build, scale and sustain and we do it with a regulated nervous system.
we do it together.
The experience gave me the understanding of everything i want to be and everything i do not...
By February my hoodies were stocked in a boutique. And a few months after that I had products with my designs on stocked in NEXT stores!
I was starting with £0, I opened Mason Rayn because I wanted art for my kids bedroom…
THIS is where I realised who it was I wanted to speak to in my brand and what I wanted them to know...
This period in my life definitely shaped me, it showed me rock bottom. And ever since I’ve been working my way up.
my cleaning boss was familiar with the law - said she was behind me every step of the way and that after six months she would hand over all of my pay slips.
my brain loved to tell 17 year old me that i was capable of surviving in a foreign country with £220 to my name so off i went...
and the irony... the girl that got thrown out of school for not fitting the system took it upon herself to build her own... because i was always meant to.
In October 2009, I moved solo to northern Cyprus. now i am a firm believer in that we take paths in life for a reason. some good, some bad and if it's bad - there will be a lesson and a better path from there...
within 3 months of living in cyprus I met my husband. before I knew it i was pregnant at 18, married at 19 and back home in the UK at 21 with no job, no ‘qualifications’ an immigration battle to figure out and two year old that relied on only me at that point. This was when I knew I would do whatever it took to change our life. And i am not afraid to sugar coat it... it took a lot of inner work. and it took a bloody long time to figure out.
as a 21 year old i applied at the only job i believed would take me... Mcdonald's
I had a job interview - they hyped me up told me I was an 'easy yes' and to expect a call when I got home later that day to let me know I’d got the job but instead I got an email to say 'unfortunately you wasn't successful.' (why? … To be revealed).
now I was in a really dark place. I had no money, I’d moved back home - living with my parents, the only items I could fit in my case were mostly my son's possessions. i had no idea when i'd next see my husband and the only job i thought i stood a chance at getting didn't want me...
My mum had a cleaner at the time… she offered me a job (an older lady with a small team of mostly young polish girls working for her). I jumped at the opportunity to work whilst also applying to another McDonald’s 12 miles away... I got that job.
I now had two jobs. My son went to nursery 7am - 6pm five days a week - I would clean houses 8-4 and then work the night shift at mcdonald's either: 5-2am or 10pm - 6-am on rotation it was HELL.
I was exhausted and I missed Mavi and I missed my husband. BUT I knew if I could keep up the hours for six months I’d have proof of income for our visa application to get my husband to the UK.
I was a young girl I didn’t know any better but I trusted her.
Six months came and when I asked for my pay slips she became aggressive and told me 'there were no pay slips.' Her company wasn’t signed to HMRC and all the earnings she had told me she’s deducted tax from she hadn’t. Meaning I had basically been earning £3 an hour for six months. which was not going to pass the visa's financial requirement.
I quit instantly. Fell apart. Lost so much spark. I’d lost time. Time with son. Time I could’ve worked double shifts at McDonald’s instead - had I of known. I had to restart everything another six months, which when you're struggling mentally and exhausted and crippled with mum guilt six months feels like the longest time and it wasn't six months to see my husband it was six months to even APPLY, which can then take a further 6-12 months for a decision to be made.
My job at McDonald’s was going well, I worked my way up to shift manager quickly. I worked every hour I could. i was so so grateful for the job. i did everything and anything including wrapping bin bags around my legs and clearing a sewage leak... finally after 18 months from moving back to the UK my husband got his visa to join us.
I found out I didn’t get hired originally back as the 21 year old girl desperate for a job to survive... because I had a CHILD. So the likeliness of me calling in sick or having to pick my child up for X reasons was the reason I apparently didn’t get the job... From the horses mouth.
Turns out I was the hardest working, most reliable member there.
THIS IS REALITY - we as women are judged like the cover of a book that no one has ever bothered to read,
And It’s still very much happening now - complete discrimination against mums in the work place.
now for the story that started what i have built… I walked onto one of my opens one week day morning 6:05am… a woman sat at window 2 in her car on our drive thru demanding a manager. I go over to see her… she is screaming. Screaming because she didn’t get enough toffee syrup in her toffee latte… I offer to take it from her - to add more in and within a second she chose to take the lid off and throw the whole cup straight at me.
I was SO done. DONE with the way the general public treated and looked down their nose at the industry. DONE with having to be verbally abused daily by the public that truly believe it’s acceptable to scream and shout at (YOUNG) workers. And DONE with working for a company that literally didn’t care how we was treated. i knew despite giving everything to this god awful company i wasn't an asset to them... F THAT!
I was crying in the office telling my boss that this was the final straw that I’d figure something out and I’d leave one day... and I’d create my own business and I’d document the journey to help other women and I’d have a blog and call it ‘all before 30’ because at 26 I knew... I truly believed with everything in me that i would find ‘my thing’ before 30. he laughed, eye rolled...
fast forward 2 more years and I’m on the phone in lockdown crying to a friend because I was 28 and still hadn’t found ‘my thing.’ I started to lose all hope. But within two weeks - once the kids had gone to bed, I was bored senseless. My husband worked away (even in Covid.) so I picked up my dusty unused iPad and bought a drawing app so that I could attempt some art work for my sons (we now had 2 boys) bedroom.
The next day I opened up a new Instagram account… Mason Rayn Illustrations (my boys middle names).
What happened then was beyond my wildest dreams.
I was on cloud 9, but the imposter syndrome and the inbox anxiety alone would keep me up at night even though I never had any 'hate' or rejection. I just felt terrified every time a DM came through. Maybe it was the fact it was getting so big and I was winging it? I felt like a fraud. Who knew making money doing something you loved was actually possible? Who knew making money by teaching yourself a creative and digital skill could make you money? These were my thoughts. It all felt wrong, even though it wasn’t. The imposter syndrome was brutal. The pressure and then the realisation that I had no time for anything or anyone soon kicked in by 2021.
THankfully at this point i had a boss that really supported me and saw what i was doing...
I’d gone from working 5 days a week at McDonald’s to four hours a week to ‘keep my foot in the door.’
i'll never forget serving a big mac to a girl wearing my hoodie...i even became a 'school run mum.' But Every minute of the day I was working on prints. It was effecting my relationship with everyone my partner, my kids, my friends etc. I’d already increased the prices. i was really protective of my time. i wouldn't even watch TV because i was scared of 'waisting' time. i’d grown an audience that was obsessed with every thing I posted. there were articles being written about me online, podcast hosts wanting to interview me. Women inviting me to speak at their masterclasses. It wasn’t slowing down not even a little. it was incredible... but it wasn't sustainable. it wasn't healthy and it was looking like a one way ticket to burnout because i was falling out out love with illustrating. had no real idea what i was doing. i didn't even have a website. didn't know what a brand was. didn't know anything to do with business. but wow... did i learn.
in february 2021 I took a month off to comitt to raising money for a girl who lost both parents close together. She was young and I felt the need to help. So every order placed in January 100% profits were given to her. I always strive to give. I Take that very seriously.
During that month I realised I wanted to draw for me too...to de-stress, switch off. so I did… I wanted my art to inspire, empower...to motivate females and to be really bloody iconic, rebellious, sassy... i wanted women and girls to be reminded of their own potential... So I started posting illustrations of women with boujee. empowering quotes and … again the they blew up.
Successful Women’s Club was then born.
swc is the mirror for women just starting out, women pivoting, women who want more.
i am proof that you get to rewrite your story. over and over again.
you get to bet on yourself.
you get to say 'watch me.'
you get to design the thing that doesn't exist.
YOu get to discover a new way.
there are people that need to hear your story.
there are businesses that only you can build.
and there is a world that will be there for you every step of the way...
welcome to Successful Women's CLub.
The home where women learn the creative, digital, mindset and business skills that actually change their lives. A brand built to help you build confidence, make money, create opportunities and rewrite every expectation society placed on you.
From the notebooks to the workbooks to the upcoming school of SWC, everything here exists for one purpose; to help you become the kind of woman who builds her own table and then changes the world from it.
Thank you for being here, now LFG!
Liv
XO
be one of the first to receive the school prospectus
JOIN WAITLIST
