Meet Our Mentors: Heather Travis
Heather Travis, an artist and business coach who helps multiple companies from diverse industries grow their online presence.
Meet Heather Travis, an artist, digital marketing strategist, and proud Grey Bruce resident.
As an artist, Heather paints canvases and murals for homes, businesses, and more. Her artworks often incorporate a rainbow of colours, flowers, and geometric shapes in playful abstract arrangements and have been sold throughout North America and the UK.
“My goal is to paint happiness,” she said. “The colours and the images I put onto a canvas make me happy. My goal is to make other people happy!”
Though popular for children, her artwork is enjoyed by people of all ages. Heather believes that art should be something a person grows with, not just a replaceable image.
In addition, Heather coaches small businesses, agricultural groups, and creative companies to improve their digital marketing skills. As a freelance strategist, she understands there’s a lot to consider when marketing online, but like any other skill, it’s completely manageable with some guidance.
“Women have great ideas. Women have huge ambitions. Women have big desires and big opportunities. It’s there.”
“One of the things we see a lot is businesses being told you have to pay somebody to manage [social media] for you, or they're very intimidated by it. My goal is always to [help you] be able to do it. If you could figure out how to make the government happy with paying taxes, you can figure out social media,” she said.
One of her favourite aspects of business coaching is learning about the different industries she’s involved with. These different perspectives help foster her creativity.
Heather knew she wanted to be an entrepreneur since she was young. Growing up in a family of entrepreneurs, she knew the lifestyles would latch onto her eventually.
However, one of her biggest challenges with entrepreneurship was finance. Her worst mistake was not having a separate bank account for her taxes.
“So many entrepreneurs make that mistake,” she said.
Fortunately, Heather managed to push forward because she embraced her mistakes and treated them as a learning opportunity.
“Sometimes things don't work,” she explained. “But, I'm not ashamed of them. You learn from your mistakes, you move on, you pick yourself up, and you keep trucking.”
Heather is aware that her entrepreneurial experience may be different from other women because she hasn’t faced many obstacles based on her gender.
“I don't feel like I myself have encountered hurdles. If I encountered hurdles, I didn't feel like it was because I was a woman,“ she said.
However, she still acknowledges that societal attitudes need to change to better support female entrepreneurs. Women are often expected to complete domestic labour, which takes time away from their careers.
“I would say the barriers for women are not in the entrepreneurial realm,” she stated. “It's in the societal realm, in that we still put the majority of workload for household, child raising, etc, onto females. And we have seen it with the pandemic with women. 'Oh, Dad's just allowed to work in the basement with the door shut all day. And Mom has to somehow do her job, home school, and continue doing all the household chores.' I have seen it. Many women have complained that this is happening, and that's not okay.”
However, she explains that such challenges can also motivate women to become successful entrepreneurs.
“Women have great ideas. Women have huge ambitions. Women have big desires and big opportunities. It's there. No woman entrepreneur I know has not had to make sacrifices of a personal nature, and I can't say that categorically for male entrepreneurs that I know.”
Because of her confidence, resilience, and open-mindedness as an entrepreneur, Heather has inspired several other women to jumpstart their entrepreneurial careers.
She acknowledges she owes a lot of her success to the many people who supported her throughout her entrepreneurial career. Thus, by joining Fast Lane Plus™ as a mentor, she can return the favour by helping other entrepreneurs.
“I have worked with incredibly talented, incredibly generous, incredibly thoughtful men and women, and I have learned immensely from all of them,” she said. “Other than one CEO trying to kind of push me down, no other male has ever tried to push me down. They've only ever tried to lift me up; same thing with the women that I've worked with.”
Heather will be a valuable asset for any entrepreneur because of her experience coaching, mentoring, and uplifting other businesses. One of her biggest strengths as a mentor is her ability to listen, learn, and grow along with her clients.
“My biggest lesson [throughout my career] is that I’m always learning,” she said. “I think being an entrepreneur, you never have it all figured out, ever. And, I think you need to be comfortable with that, because that [unpredictability] could seem a little daunting.”
Click here to learn more about Fast Lane Plus™ and apply if you want someone like Heather Travis to mentor you on your entrepreneurial career.