Who is Karen Skidmore?
Business Books Awards finalist 2020, podcaster, and business mentor with 25+ years’ experience, Karen helps entrepreneurs step into their CEO-ship, uniquely combining the being-ness and doing-ness of business to grow purpose-driven businesses. She knows that most business owners and leaders are burning out, trying to drive their business and life forward. And Karen knows this from first-hand experience.
She has run her own coaching and consulting companies since 2004. After an 11-year career with Hays Plc, her children were approaching school age and she realised how much she wanted a more flexible and fulfilling professional career.
Within 6 months of starting up, she was awarded European Social Funds for her Women’s Enterprise Programme and Simply Marketing Workshops, which was instrumental in helping hundreds of women start up their own businesses across Surrey & Sussex. She founded a regional women’s networking group in 2005, created & ran a 100+ membership site for 3 years and launched dozens of online courses and group programmes over the past 13 years.
But in 2012, struggling with adrenal fatigue and hormonal imbalances, Karen was burnt out from constantly launching new programmes and marketing campaigns, exasperated by dealing with grief from losing her father to cancer two years previously. She fought with her health; trying to find ways to fix her low energy levels, severe brain fog and aching body, and struggled to keep up with work and family life. After admitting that she had to change the way she was using her body, as well as the way she was working, she begun to realise she had far better outcomes when she started to embrace her journey. And it soon became apparent that many of her clients wanted this same change.
She now leads her Momentum community, along with her team, and is also Ambassador for The Hunger Project, leading the Unleashed Women movement here in the UK. She’s also written two books and is a Menopause Champion, hosting her annual Embrace Festival and developing menopause support programmes for organisations.
Key projects and initiatives
* Created List Love to support small businesses through GDPR implementation and improve email marketing engagement rates
* Ran a 100+ membership site providing social and digital media training for small business owners
* Designed and ran The Women’s Enterprise Programme funded by the University of Surrey, which helped 200+ women start up a business from 2005 to 2007
* Started up a regional women’s networking group running monthly events across Surrey, Hampshire & Berkshire with 500+ members
* First book published in 2012 “Shiny Shiny: How to stop being a social media magpie”
* Second book publication date September 2019 “True Profit Business: How to play bigger without burning out”
Regular speaker at business events, including Guildford Means Business, Times’ Creme at Excel, Business Mums Summit, Surrey Hills Rural Enterprise and TinyTalk National Conference