"It's a genuinely helpful process"
October 23, 2023
A new coaching company is benefiting from fully-funded expert support to grow, despite thinking it was too good to be true.
“Honestly, I didn’t really believe it,” says Anna, Director of Anna-Louise Coaching, a
nutritional health, fitness and wellness coaching company based in Lichfield.
“As businesses, we usually find that getting something for free means that it’s just an off-the-shelf product that isn’t actually that helpful. Or it’s a veiled sales-pitch so that you actually have to pay for the useful stuff.’’
Sound familiar? After all, there’s no such thing as a free (business) lunch. Is there?
“Well it turns out there is,” continues Anna.
“What really surprised me was that it’s a genuine 1-2-1 service that fits around your business’ growth needs, even if you don’t really know what those needs are!’’
Anna-Louise contacted Staffordshire County Council’s Get Started and Grow scheme after going into her coaching work full-time and taking more of her business online.
“I contacted Get Started and Grow for the social media support, but Kathryn from Concept Communications, the local specialist that is commissioned to help, didn’t just go for the easy option. We’ve had a good few meetings already, where she’s gone away and done a lot of work, and then really challenged my whole marketing approach to be honest.
“I was previously attracting a lot of people who go past the consultation and then decide they can’t afford my service, even though I’m incredibly competitively priced – so my target audience needed looking at. And that’s the process that we’re going through now – looking at different markets, possibly more affluent with time to genuinely invest in themselves, whilst still staying true to my ethics – helping those people that really need the help.’
“I really feel that Kathryn cares about my business, and me! She’s really engaging and it’s all very personalised. We’ve had the opportunity to look at my website content and structure, improve my SEO performance, and I’ve even got to grips with using a new social media platform that is providing a lot more engagement as the user base is a better fit for my business.
Getting in touch with Get Started and Grow is what every business owner should be doing to be honest!”
Get Started and Grow is part-funded by the UK government; offering businesses based in Staffordshire and under five years old fully-funded and personalised back-office support to grow.
