Female Disruptors: Jane Baker of Limitless Living International On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry
“What’s simple to you is incredibly difficult or mind blowing for someone else”
As a part of our series about women who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jane Baker.
Jane The High-Ticket Disruptor, is powerhouse high-ticket sales expert, 8-figure serial entrepreneur, two times №1 best selling author, was nominated as one of the UKs top100 female entrepreneur, and philanthropist who counts celebrities and FTSE/FORTUNE 500 companies as clients.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
Sure, I’m Jane. The High Ticket Sales Disruptor. I’ve been selling high-ticket offers and building businesses for over a decade. I left school at 15, just before my 16th birthday. Which also means I left school without a single qualification.
At 16 I briefly worked in a call centre for just under 8 weeks where I struggled to sell a single thing, in fact it was worse than that because I had to give one customer a refund, so I lost the company money ! Naturally, I left thinking I couldn’t sell and that I hated selling. Yet a few years later, aged 19, I’d started my first business on a total whim (I literally woke up one morning and decided to start one) and have since grown the business to be a worldwide 8 figure success.
I always knew I was destined for more, I just didn’t know what more was. I started my first business just because I thought I’d give it a go. It led me to where I am today, I love business and I absolutely love selling which is a lifetime away from where I was at 16. That’s why I’m on this path, because I believe everyone and anyone can make it, can love selling, can sell amazingly well and they totally deserve to achieve it all!
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
In my mind, everything about my work is disruptive. The way I started my first business was disruptive compared to how people say you should do it. The work I do now is disruptive because I’m encouraging people to ignore everything they’ve previously been told or think about selling and asking them to
Burn the sales scripts, throw away generic sales trainings and ditch the idea that you’re either born a natural salesperson or you’re not. Specifically in the High-Ticket market.
I teach my clients how to lean into their own unique way of selling based on their personality type and that of their prospect. In fact, those who work with me are asked to focus on making the buying experience for their offering the best it can for the client based on how they like to buy.
Hardly anyone talks about taking into consideration how people like to buy or sell. Which means many people end up believing that they don’t like selling or are rubbish at selling, when often the issue isn’t that they don’t like selling or can’t sell. What’s usually happened is that a bad experience around selling and buying has left them feeling the selling is icky.
Sales theory desperately needs a makeover, which I believe I have achieved with my DISRUPT method covered in my latest book.
I don’t use scripts or encourage people to market or sell in ways that don’t feel good to them. I teach people how to lean into their selling superpower.
I am my own best case study, having scaled to 8 figure turnover in business at just 31 years of age.
Once I learned how to lean into selling my own way, I was able to sell effortlessly. There is lots of talk about the fact women can’t sell as well as men. I and many of my clients are proof that is nonsense.
I went from dropping out of school as a teen with no qualifications to building a 6 figure business before scrapping that, starting again and scaling to where I am now.
I’m a serial entrepreneur who has the good fortune to be able to count celebs and FTSE/FORTUNE 500 companies as clients.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I think the funniest mistake I likely made when first starting was around how I started. I woke up one morning, decided I’d start a business and an hour later I had a business. Social media pages, website, the lot. No business plan, no strategy and not a clue what I was doing.
The lesson I learned was actually a good one, imperfect action trumps perfect action. If I had waited for the perfect moment I’d never have done what I did. Which would mean I’d never have made it here today.
I don’t actually believe we ever make mistakes, not really. Every mistake is just something that someone else may have done differently or that didn’t quite work out how you wanted. In the end there’s always a lesson to learn from it, which means it wasn’t a mistake it was a lesson we needed to experience or learn!
We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
Mentors come in all shapes and sizes, I’ve learnt more from just being out there engaging with my audience and with entrepreneur friends than I ever have in other areas. There’s a long list of people that have had an impact on my journey, if I were to name them all, we’d likely be here all day.
Some of the people who have had the most impact likely don’t even realise they’ve made an impact, they’re clients who have brightened my day just by allowing me the privilege of being on their journey with them. Friends who enable me to share in their celebrations with them. Those people who purchased from me in my first business and started this whole journey. The people who read my emails and take the time to reply.
The small everyday things impact and inspire me more than anything else!
But I wouldn’t be a multiple #1 best selling author without Abigail Horne. In the past year I’ve also totally transformed my life outside of business and gone on a powerful spiritual journey that’s enables me to step into a whole new level, where Sarah Stone, Nichola Sproson and Tina Pavlou have guided me and unlocked doors to a new level of success I never really thought possible previously.
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
I don’t think there is a negative, if there is a negative, it’ll be that person’s feeling towards it. There are things that I can think of that are classed as disrupting the industries that I don’t like but that others rave about.
I think the thing with disrupting is you’re just creating a new space for the right people to find something that’s right for them. Without the disrupting we all end up in the same box and quite frankly that’s not how life or business is supposed to be.
When you disrupt a space it’s not to say that everyone in that space must now come over to you and how you see or do things, but rather it’s just creating a space where the right people can come, people often describe it as “coming home” when they say they discover me, my theories and teachings.
Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
- “What’s simple to you is incredibly difficult or mind blowing for someone else”
What I do comes so naturally to me, I’ve definitely struggled with imposter syndrome. I operate outside of the box and my brain just thinks differently to almost everyone I know but to me it’s just me, it’s just incredibly simple. There have been times where I’ve thought I wasn’t as good or I shouldn’t share something because it’s just too simple. I was reminded that what is simple to me is not for others, they don’t know what I know, it’s not simple to them, they don’t operate with my brain either.
2. “You’ll never guide yourself wrong”
Learning to trust myself has been such a huge thing for me, I grew up being told I was always wrong and never good enough. So trusting myself hasn’t come naturally. I was once told that I could never guide myself wrong, I would never purposely put myself in a situation that was wrong, dangerous or do something that wasn’t right. Trusting yourself is really important and has definitely been such a game changer for me.
3. “You don’t need my permission”
This is actually one I share with my clients, almost all clients will message asking can they do something, can they do this or that and I reply the same to all of them. You don’t need my permission. You don’t need anyone’s permission and yet particularly in the online space you’ll find people feeling as if they do. Permission to say something, do something different, do it in their own way. The only permission you need is from yourself, there are no rules!
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
I’m going to show the world that not only can a woman be successful but she can dominate a market that was once solely dominated by men and do it in a way that’s completely different to how it’s been done for decades.
That industry for me is Sales.
I’m currently in the process of buying an island in the Bahamas which I have some really exciting plans for. More will soon be revealed.
I’m going to continue to expand my business into a billion dollar empire and help others do the same.
I also intend to grow the Baker Wilkins Foundation which I launched in 2020 with my husband. The foundation was set up to provides funding to individuals and organizations in my home town, to assist individuals in starting/growing their own business, existing business currently in need of financial and/or mentoring support or providing funding to organizations to create/launch projects that benefit the local area and the individuals who reside within it.
In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by ‘women disruptors’ that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts?
Being totally honest, I’ve never considered the fact I’m a woman to be a disadvantage. I’ve never walked into any meeting or sales conversation and worried that I wouldn’t get it or be taken seriously because I’m a woman. So sometimes I think the biggest challenge women face is themselves and the beliefs they hold about what disadvantages they may have because they’re a woman.
Do you have a book/podcast/talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us?
Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic
I learnt that fear isn’t always what we think it is. This book really transform my relationship with fear and the role it played in my life.
Another book that had an impact on my thinking, for another reason, was my first book — She Lives Limitlessly. When I was at school I was told by my English teacher that I’d never write anything. Once my book went live and became a bestseller, it was apparent that she was wrong and I was right.
One lady sent me a message to say she made £30,000 in her business in a matter of weeks after reading my book and that’s just feedback from one person.
Imagine if I had listened to that teacher or anyone else who projected their own limitations onto me.
Above all, becoming an author hammered home the point that the only belief about what any of us are capable of that matters is our own. It’s important to surround ourselves with people who buy into our vision no matter how off the wall it seems at the time.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I’d love to inspire a movement of people who just believe they can and go and do it, whatever ‘it’ is for them. Believing you can and taking that action is one of the biggest life changing things you could ever do.
My intention when I started my business was to live limitlessly. My company is called Limitless Living. I hope to inspire a movement of people who find their way of living limitlessly.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Worrying is like walking around with an umbrella waiting for it to rain”
I am a recovering over worrier, growing up I lived in an environment where I just worried about everything. But worrying just robs you of the now, it robs you of the amazing moments that surround you everyday and half the time what you worry about never happens anyway.
How can our readers follow you online?
I’m on all social media platforms as @IAmJaneBaker
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
Female Disruptors: Jane Baker of Limitless Living International On The Three Things You Need To… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.