Networking Wasn't Working, Here's What Finally Did For Sian

I decided to coach young people with anxiety and exam stress after delivering pastoral care in schools for 12 years and being frustrated by the huge gap in care provision between the school and counselling options due to long waiting lists and students being unwilling to engage with mental health services.

I am a kayak, archery and bushcraft instructor, and having seen the transformation that occurs in young people completing Duke of Edinburgh Gold expeditions, I specialise in coaching outdoors.

Leaving education also meant leaving my home, so for the first six months of my business I was living in a static van in the middle of nowhere while my narrowboat became habitable and this meant no internet or phone network. Not the easiest of situations and I was spending a fortune on lattes while running my business from cafes and pubs.

I had paid someone to design my website before launching the business, was networking like a demon and was posting three times a week on social media, but all my clients were finding me via recommendations from friends and former colleagues.

Then my coach told me about The Curious Academy’s Digital Marketing course. It was quite a large time commitment for a small business - two three hour sessions a week, but it was government funded and was highly recommended by someone my coach worked with. The start also coincided with my coach disappearing to central America for three months so I wanted both support and structure.

I felt I was rocketing from one idea to another, trying to drum up business and wasn’t getting anywhere, so what did I have to lose?

Starting the course, I wanted to gain clients via my website, feel confident in updating the site and improve my social media marketing so that I could reduce the amount of time networking and increase the amount of time I was actually coaching - the whole reason for leaving education in the first place.

The minute I arrived at the Curious Academy I felt welcomed and looked after. Louize and Matt have worked hard to create a team who are friendly and instantly make everyone walking through the doors feel at home. Louize was our particular course leader and struck the perfect balance of delivering invaluable knowledge, facilitating time for hands-on work, creating accountability and supporting student moments of despair (mainly my own - it was an exercise in letting go of the money I had previously wasted on my website and various marketing strategies and allowing myself to be excited by what I was learning how it would improve my future).

Each session, quite frankly, blew my mind in learning about marketing techniques and for the first half of the course I felt completely overwhelmed by what felt like a huge amount of work and knowledge that I couldn’t figure out how I would manage. Louize was incredibly supportive throughout my overwhelm, kept reassuring me it would fall into place - and it did. Suddenly it all made sense and the overwhelm gave way to empowerment. Everything made sense and I felt confident about my website, my social media strategy and knew how I would manage my business on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis.

This course gave me time to redefine my dream clients and my USP while training me to optimise my branding and traffic to my website; ensure my website continued to be relevant and exciting; to use AI effectively in design and to help initiate social media content - without losing my own voice; to re-structure my week and clarify my short term and long term business plans.

The most exciting part of all this is feeling that I’m in control of my website (which now truly reflects who I am and what I do), my branding and my social media strategy rather than surrendering control to someone else, having clarity about my daily structure and my business goals. 

I also cannot stress how important my fellow students have become to my support network. We are each others champions and because our businesses are complimentary rather than competitive, we find opportunities for each other, are tentatively working out if we can create packages together and having learnt about each others’ businesses while learning different strategies, are able to give each other meaningful feedback in ways that other networking groups can’t.

The Academy venue is light, airy, clean and care is taken to ensure there is space for focused, individual work alongside areas for group interaction and feedback. The facilities are excellent and the emphasis is on removing barriers to learning.

It is so easy to feel lost and alone when starting a new business. It can seem as though everyone else is easily gaining clients and that you need to spend more and more money in order to drive your business. Networking can feel very repetitive with no tangible results because it takes time to build connections. Due to the Curious Academy, I have renewed confidence in my work; feel able to market my business efficiently rather than chasing the latest new, sometimes expensive course or marketing idea; have a trusted, supportive group of fellow entrepreneurs who know my business inside out and who each want the others to succeed; and have a clear plan of how I want to develop my business.

If you’re a small business owner considering whether to take this course. Do it. Be open and be prepared to overhaul your digital marketing because Louize’s expertise will be apparent from the moment you sit down and the support on offer is invaluable. You will learn so much, be able to take back control of how you show up in the world and reach the dream clients you need to take your business to the next level.

Lastly, if you or you know of someone who has a teenager who has anxiety or suffers from exam paralysis due to stress please do get in touch. We walk and talk in woods, on beaches and in parks, allowing nature and space transform de-motivation and paralysis into energy and empowerment. My website is siandaviescoaching.com and you can find me on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.