*Julie is a finalist in the 2011 IWCYC Challenge - click here to read more*

I started off in advertising over 15 years ago. I worked in press, radio then for Yell. In my previous radio jobs i was dealing with companies such as Safestyle UK, Budget Window, Reg Vardy, Durham Pine and the NHS.

I left radio to go and work for Yell group for a huge increase in salary. Within 6 months i was promoted to deal with a lot of their larger accounts. Within my time at Yell i was the only sales person in the North East and possibly Yorkshire that never ever missed a sales target even through the recession. I won many awards including one of the most prestigious awards in the Uk. It was just after being presented with this award in London that i had a freak accident and totally snapped my achillies. 6 Months off work followed i was in a wheel chair then on crutches for months. Quite a few customers decided to come to my house as they still wanted me to do their advertising for them. This lead to me thinking about setting up my own marketing company.

In January of this year i put my plans into place. I got no funding and decided to cash in some savings so i could do things my way and get the branding and the website right and plan a big launch. I wanted to get a team of people around me who i believed were the best in the industry to work alongside me. By February I had that team in place and I started to go out and see businesses working 7 days a week and some nights till 12 at night. I promoted my company and worked hard to get up the rankings in Google. I am on the front page of google for every area in the North east for a lot of the areas of my work and top in Yorkshire for some of the things i am targeting also.

I have been interviewed on Radio Newcastle, my start up story got in quite a few of the North Easts leading newspapers. I was also asked to go and do a inspirational talk at Sunderland University on my start up story which was a huge success. My launch was at Seaham Hall which went down very well with local businesses as we certainly did it differently. Which as a team we are priding ourselves on being different.

I am still in the process of other things at the moment which will promote my company even more but i cannot disclose them at this time.

I have been in business really trading for just over 3 months. I have topped the search engines and got 12 regular customers on board putting their marketing & advertising spend through me. I have the next 2 weeks fully booked out with other companies wanting to see me. I am already getting phone calls from people who have heard i have set up or which are recommendations from people who are already using me.

I really cannot believe how well it has gone. But if i had sat waiting for the phone to ring nothing would of happened i had to get out there and make a difference myself which i did. It took determination and a lot of hard work which is still continuing now.