We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Halimah Deoliveira a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Halimah, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about the early days of establishing your own firm. What can you share?

I started the Be You In HD Marketing agency hosting one off workshops on identity to increase brand awareness for the community of muslim women I wanted to serve but also to educate those outside of the community I served.

The key challenges were that I was starting a firm for muslim women in business. I had to take into consideration that it was so niche that the community I was serving had never seen what I was doing before. They were naturally opposed to the idea. Every project I worked on required so much marketing and background conversations about relevance in the community for what I was doing.

Also I used my own capital to fund all the projects. Not until year 3 did I start receiving sponsorships and funding from the community and other organizations.

Hind sight is 20/20 I would start off not using my own money and look for like minded women and collaborate on projects together to earn the revenue and from the profits start my marketing agency.

Advice: Partner with other people and organizations to raise awareness and capital Double down on group events and conversations vs one on one clients and conversation to create greater brand awareness and impact.

Halimah, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I started Be You In HD marketing agency because it was what I needed when I first started my career and business. There were no firms who understood my values and beliefs so a lot of the advice I couldn’t use in my business.

We host events, workshops and webinars to help women start, sustain and scale their businesses. We provide 1 on 1 strategy sessions to businesses making $100k+ and group coaching for businesses under $100k.

Muslim women operate their businesses from a specific code of ethics and we work to ensure they uphold their values while running their businesses. It’s evident in every part of their business branding, content and partnerships.

I’m most proud of all the women (muslim and from other faith traditions) who have achieved their goals and dreams for their families in the last 7 years of running Be You In HD. We have helped dozens of businesses grow to 6 and 7 figures, buy homes, send their children to college, travel and so much more.

Our goal is to provide each client with a tailored strategy to increase profit and social impact.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

As a business strategist for my marketing agency, the most effective strategy for growing our clientele has been a combination of targeted outreach (we choose clients we want to work with based on the impact they want to make), personalized engagement, and consistently delivering results that exceed expectations. This approach fosters trust, word-of-mouth referrals, and long-term partnerships, ultimately driving the growth of our client base. Our relationships and partnerships have grown to include clients with similar values as our current clients.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

The pandemic was a pivotal time for everyone and it was no different for my brand. Pre-pandemic 90% of our events were in person and we were project based every 3-6 months we had new 1 on 1 client work.

We pivoted in the pandemic to 100% online and we took on more permanent work and added “Done for you services” to our list of services and started an online group coaching community for women in business globally. This allowed us to do more with less. Instead of booking 1 on 1 calls throughout the day we held weekly meetings for our group coaching for entrepreneurs and had virtual hot seat coaching each week.

We were also able to charge a premium for the done for you services as many of the businesses had seen a drastic increase in sales and needed the sales and social media support.

This pivot gave me a peak into what it would be like to pivot and for me to work on my business vs in my business as I needed to hire more contractors to take on the workload.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.HalimahDeOliveira.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyouinhd
• Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/profile.php/?id=100000005481745
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/halimahdeoliveira

Image Credits
Credit Images 3-8 to Najmah Abraham