From homeless hostel to owning £1M business
A businesswoman who lived in a homeless hostel at 17 has shared the journey she went on to turn her life around.
When Inge Hunter, now 34, was 17 she was placed in a hostel following the breakdown of family relationships.
In 2007 she was given a single room with a mattress that was covered in blood stains and cigarette burns.
She says this rock bottom moment was the catalyst in her building a successful life and entrepreneurial career as a tech start-up boss.
She said: "On the night I was placed in the hostel, with prostitutes living underneath me and unsavoury men always hanging around outside I cried until 3am.
"I cried until there was nothing left and then I had this intense realisation that I was all I had.
"It was terrifying but also the most free and sure that I'd ever felt in my life.
“I thought to myself ‘no one is coming’ and that was scary but also freeing. I knew I could rely on myself and I chose to hustle and create a path for myself that led to success.”
Inge went from surviving on £4 a day of benefits to being a savvy local entrepreneur who has grown five businesses and a married mum of two.
From her hostel room Inge started a cocktail making business - she would sell bootleg booze to club-goers waiting in queues.
She said: "I'd buy leftover booze from a friend who worked in a bar.
"Then I'd make long island ice teas and cosmos with the alcohol and sell them in plastic milkshake containers in the street.
"Homelessness breeds entrepreneurship skills - I had no other choice but to hustle and I saw it all around me with the girls in my hostel. Some of the ways they were making money were illegal but we had no choice but to develop the skills to make money independently."
After her cocktail business Inge worked in a bar and moved into events management and wedding planning services.
In 2009 she found a safe place to live with a childhood friend, CJ, who later became her husband.
Then Inge went to university to study business management & marketing and by the time she graduated with a first she had given birth to her first child.
Inge said: "CJ's family gave me a safe place to stay and the trust to come and go as I needed to for my work and my goals.
"They encouraged me to go to uni and CJ's mum would even sit in the car with the baby while I attended lectures so I could pop out and breastfeed."
The base of support and safety gave Inge the headspace to grow her ideas and skillset to create Clue Content, her start-up based in Newmarket.
In 2023 she won Great British Entrepreneur of the Year and her company, Clue Content, won best Marketing Start-Up Business in the U.K. 2024.
Clue Content is a full service marketing agency with 14 members of staff based in Newmarket, Cambridgeshire.
The agency’s creators visit businesses all over the UK to mass produce videos and images for social media to build a bank of content for brands that will promote and drive their business forward.
Inge said: "Using my team saves all the complications of hiring one individual as a social media manager for the same price as their salary.
"We use data driven analysis to create content that converts.
"Our clients are busy entrepreneurs and corporate bosses who want to outsource their content creation to a trusted expert team.
"I have my sights set on huge growth for Clue. We want clients like Monzo and Virgin."
Inge added: "One day I will make enough money from my businesses to invest into the kind of girls I spent time with in my hostel. Girls who were given charity when they needed investment and their skills nurturing.
"One day everything I do will come full circle.
"Every company that we work with at Clue Content moves me closer to that big vision.
"Our clients believe in me and my company to do a great job for them.
"Which gives me the courage to believe that one day I'll be able to be a part of breaking the system that I was able to crawl out."