About Me - My Biography

Working with micro and small business is my passion. Marketing for sales and results is the focus.

Especially for owner-operators, and especially women.

I love sales work. And copywriting, and photography. And packaging all that into social media.

But I especially love unearthing the overarching strategy that really pulls it all together for a business.

For many solo entrepreneurs, their marketing and message has been put together in bits, over time, often by different people. Missing the cohesive feel can be a big block to effectiveness and that sense of credibility.

Credibility and longevity is the path.

Like many “forty-plus” women (I mean in years), I’ve done my time in corporate and government, worked alongside 2 premiers, managed grant programs assisting small businesses and not-for-profits, along the way got a Post-Graduate degree in Communication and made a deliberate, targeted career shift. You probably know what I mean. Now, I want to work for people I like. Individuals who are creating businesses with a heart, and who value the cornerstones of personal service and contribution.

But unlike many business owners who have jumped into a world of micro and small business, I’ve been in this zone most of my life, with larger organisations tempting me out – head-hunting me for marketing and promotion projects and contracts. 

I’ve spent a lot of time self-employed being a niche PR-type service (after I sold my wedding photography business)-initiating promotion proposals and opportunities for larger organisations, finding niche marketing opportunities that their large marketing teams did not have the time or resources to recognise and grab.

And being a professional photographer as well as a copywriter is always a bonus.

Newspapers and magazines love being delivered a fully formed story with all the elements complete.

All this is a rather more independent direction than my initial English teaching study. My first part-time job at uni was as a sales rep for a national family photo organisation. Working “at the coalface”, dealing directly with clients, working independently at different locations every week I discovered I loved sales. Straight out of school I’d thought that English teaching was the job for me (loved words, stories, split infinitives, writing the speeches for the debating team…), but I left uni, grabbed my company car and travel allowances, learnt their style of photography and spent each day talking to new people and traveling the country.

But most of all I learnt to listen to what clients wanted.

I worked with other photographers and showed them a shooting style that really sold, and shared with sales people a listening technique made them (and me) more money than the existing push technique.

Yeah for salary plus commission.

And we all did very well.

The company created a job for me as National Training Manager-training the sales team and photographers. Until the company morphed into a franchise model and it was goodbye middle management.

The enthusiasm for my own independent photography business flickered then waned as I learnt very quickly how about 75% of your time and money can be spent just trying to get people in the door.

Writing editorial pieces for bridal magazines saved me – getting full colour, full page stories published for free (with a by-line and image credit for my business) at a time when the paid advertising rate was $5,000 per page. Plus this generated “cred” with newspapers as a writer and promotions person at a time when I had no advertising cash.

It all builds. It’s all cumulative-this credibility building.

Then along came the Premiers’ Department’s $25M grants and events project-statewide and joint national – and they needed an extra media liaison person to work with the major sponsors Courier Mail and The Sunday Mail-me! About 150 or so small volunteer organisations and small traders (mainly regional) were grant recipients; and I looked after their media liaison as well as speechwriting for the Premier and Chairman, and managed media at funded events across the state.

And, as it turned out – speak at functions on behalf of the project.

Public speaking. Yikes. We all survived.

And expanded our skillsets.

And over a 3-year period trained a whole heap of small enterprises to recognise the story in what they do; discover the value that others see in what they do; and confidently articulate and share with audiences how they think and function in a small business environment.

Plus we taught the practical delivery stuff-write a media release in a way that suits media and increases the chance of the story running; do crisis communication preparation (so there are no surprises); and manage a media interview, etc.

It’s still all about listening.

People are so interesting.

What are you up to?