Hello All,
I hope you’re having a positive start to this year. I’m just back from a short trip to Toulon, the French military port town. There’s nothing like sea air to recharge the batteries. I’ve been reading a lot on my various travels this year, as you’ll see below, and having read The Art of Rest I’m really trying to prioritise my own version of rest and recovery as we grow, to lead by example. As you know, our 4 pillars of secure Lifestyle are Physical, Digital, Reputational and Emotional, and the products and services we promote across the Emotional Security pillar of our work include ‘Ancient and Brave’ who we feature below this month. Having now met their female founder Kate Prince at a recent Women’s Chapter event, I decided to gift a selection of their products to the whole team, and we are now over the moon to have them as a gifting partner.
We are also very excited to be welcoming new colleagues to Team UMBRA and will be introducing them to you to them in due course. This, coupled with more interest in our UMBRA+ membership, which we are really proud of, and some more press which we are really grateful for, has meant it has been a really productive year so far. We always want to hear from anyone struggling to navigate our sector as it is our greatest honour to champion the best ways to stay and feel safe. We are fast becoming known for being a sounding board and helping our clients and wider community to brainstorm the best and most proportionate solutions to problems and issues.
Now please enjoy an update on our Spring activities!
Kate
Follow my day-to-day here!
SECURE LIFESTYLE AS A SERVICE: UMBRA+
We have been travelling far and wide to meet and talk to our clients (and by that we also mean our Candidates, Collaborators and wider Community that follow and support us). We are proud to say that our Membership (UMBRA+) is proving popular as a way to be proactive and forward-plan your Secure Lifestyle needs. We are working increasingly through other trusted Private Client Advisors (and have been invited to undertake some really interesting ‘wargaming’ sessions recently to help forward-plan our clients lives alongside legal, tax, trust, property and education specialists – we are grateful that the word is spreading. To book an introduction to UMBRA+ and how it helps our private clients (1-2-1, online, in person, or a team lunch and learn) email secure@umbrainternational.com.
Meanwhile as you know by now, a Secure Lifestyle starts with great people at the core – so drop the UMBRA Select Team a line on select@umbrainternational.com to discuss any upcoming requirements you have – there are a plethora of UK/Europe and International roles we are working on. We are so grateful to loyal candidates who, once placed by the team continue to work with us with their clients to promote the idea of Secure Lifestyle services in a simple and risk-resilient way.
PRESS
We are grateful to Tatler for this piece of recent coverage about the benefits of proactive Secure Lifestyle especially when coming to it for the first time.
INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY
This year we marked IWD with The Women’s Chapter Event, a talk at FT (thank you for having me), followed by a and a fantastic evening with Holly Tucker of Holly&Co and eight other female founders. In the spirit of International Women’s Day/Month, I want to shout out to Holly and her team, and also to Sam Jackman at Boost who I met at the Holly&Co evening. Both women are leading businesses that impact retail and healthcare respectively, and both are raising investment as we speak. If any of our UMBRA network are interested, please do reach out to them. I will always use the UMBRA platform to champion those who need it the most and who currently do not get access to the funds they need to grow their businesses, and by extension, the economy.
WHAT I’M READING
Centennials and The Art of Rest – the former about the most successful businesses that have endured over a century and the 12 lessons we can learn from them, and the latter a fascinating walk through the top 10 ways people get rest from a global survey called ‘The Rest Test’. It goes without saying of course I’ve also been reading the brilliant blog written by Team UMBRA’s Kim and Alex Godwin Brown. Reputation Security is here to stay and we are proud to be able to help our clients through the work of people like Alex, both proactively and through crisis comms.
WHAT I’M LISTENING TO
I recently got to talk about all about the trials and tribulations of a growing business with Kevin Brent who interviewe me for ScaleUp Radio. I’m also really enjoying hearing about Edward Enningful’s life and I had a double dose on a flight recently listening to both Diary of a CEO and Dua Lipa’s podcasts – Dua has set up Service95 – a Podcast and Book Club that promotes deep conversations with diverse global voices. Here’s also to our hero Stephanie Shirley’s IWD message.
WELLNESS
Nutrition is a good place to start when it comes to our wellness journey. That is why all at UMBRA HQ are on a health kick with the help of Ancient + Brave, a female-founded, B-Corp company providing pure, potent and sustainable supplements to help you think, feel, and look your best. Click here to see what my other recommendations are for a healthy body and healthy mind. Thank you to Ancient & Brave for letting us use the discount codes- “HELLO20” for subscription orders and “WELCOME20” for single orders.
WHAT’S COMING UP
We are a few months into the UMBRA Website 2.0 project so if you’d like to be considered by the Team as a Brand Partner for our UMBRA+ Members please do get in touch by emailing info@umbrainternational.com.
Remember you can book in at any time for a discussion about any aspect of your Secure Lifestyle – no problem is too big or too small for Team UMBRA and our network of the UMBRA Collective hive mind. Email secure@umbratinternational.com.
One final ‘ask’ to you all – if you’re a central London venue and want to work with us on our Armed Forces Day event in June, do get in touch. As part of our 4 Pillars of Impact (we love our 4 Pillars at UMBRA HQ!) is Veteran Support. Working with team members whose families are serving brings it home to me how much we as a business still need to do to encourage others to sign the Armed Forces Covenant (really easy to do; see here for more info), but also how easy it is to hire reservists and veterans in your workplace or organisation as well as supporting those for whom loved ones are often away. We don’t even need a big space, so if you have somewhere in mind for us please email info@umbrainternational.com.
That’s it from me – have a safe and healthy few months ahead.
Kate
