We recently connected with Victoria Hawkins and have shared our conversation below.

Victoria, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you come up with the idea for your business?

When someone is inspired to create a business, it is often because they have found an incredible passion for a specific field or industry— however, that passion rarely comes with instructions, direction, or clarity. Between Friends Consulting was born from the experiences of two entrepreneurs of a start-up coffee shop, Between Friends Coffee.

My business partner, Jaimie and I founded Between Friends Coffee in 2016 after seeing that there was a need in the community for a local, independent coffee shop. We were passionate and eager to contribute to our community; but even though we had this amazing idea, we didn’t have any clear direction as to how to get started within the food industry nor what we would need to be successful long-term. In the years that followed, we learned a lot. We worked incredibly hard to figure out what it takes to get a business operational and how to keep positive momentum, even during a global pandemic. Because of our success, other entrepreneurs, both within our community and beyond, began to ask for advice or recommendations for certain services that their company needed. Collectively, Jaimie and I come from marketing, design, and entrepreneurial backgrounds prior to opening our coffee shop. We knew that our background experience, along with the skill sets and knowledge we gained over the past several years with our start-up, could be used to offer other entrepreneur’s a no-nonsense resource for all their branding, marketing, training, and business services.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Between Friends Consulting was founded in 2019 by two business owners with the goal of helping entrepreneurs increase profits and cultivate a wholesome and successful business within their communities. We are proudly moving into our fourth year of helping other entrepreneurs do what they love without all the guesswork and missed opportunities.

We are a one-hundred percent woman owned business and believe fully that regardless of who you are and what experience you have, you can create a powerful, successful brand. All you need is a lot of passion and a little direction. We are excited to be able to provide the latter to so many incredible people day after day.

How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?

Clear communication is at the core of any successful relationship, and this is especially true in business. If you want to build loyalty (and you do), you will first need trust, and trust is built through clear communication. In today’s modern world, most of us primarily receive both our news and communicate with our friends and family on social media.

While we utilize different social media platforms in separate ways, we are very intentional in keeping our mission and our values congruent across all our platforms. We want our clients to know exactly who we are, what we do, and why we do it. We are quick to respond to customers on each of our platforms and create fresh content at least once a day. Brand congruency and consistency builds trust— and trust fosters loyalty.

If you have multiple revenue streams in your business, would you mind opening up about what those streams are and how they fit together?

Between Friends Consulting was founded as a sister company to our coffee shop, Between Friends Coffee, after my business partner and I saw the opportunity to fulfill a need within the business community that we were already in.

Now more than ever before, every business model has opportunities for multiple streams of revenue. Thanks to almost limitless online resources, social media platforms, and a culture of convenience, you have the ability to monetize elements of your business that are already developed and operational. With our literary themed coffee shop, Between Friends Coffee, we have several diverse revenue streams. We have:
– an online store of merchandise that is drop-shipped for us at no initial investment
– white-label roasted coffee beans
– a sister consulting company, Between Friends Consulting
– a sister publishing company, Southern Willow Publishing

As business consultants, we have always taught our clients to diversify their business with supplementary and complementary sources of income. In the post-COVID business world, that practice is even more crucial to a business’s longevity and depth of success.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.betweenfriendsconsulting.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/betweenfriendscoffee/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BetweenFriendsCoffee
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/between-friends-coffee
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/betweenfriendsc

Image Credits
Black and white headshot provided by: Anissa Estrello