When Networking Pays Off! {+ Ask Me Anything!}

come take a sneak peek into my business

May 22, 2025

🎵 My work-song of the week and the one I’ve got on repeat ↓

I dare you not to jiggle while you listen…

Hi, I’m Bella and I’m a nosey parker who enjoys reading features like Money Diaries on Refinery 29 (so good!) and any ‘Day In The Life’ article I can get my hands on.

Lifting the lid on people’s lives, businesses, habits, and routines, is the stuff I live for. It’s never dull. It’s always—even in some small way—riveting.

So today, to pay it forward (or back?), I thought I’d share a sneak peek into what’s going on in my freelance/self-employed business right now. In case you’re like me. A nosey, nosey parker 😉 You can read last month’s edition here.

Psst: For paid subscribers, my monthly ‘Ask Me Anything’ is included in this week’s newsletter. This is your chance to ask me whatever you like. Anything goes. Anything! Well, almost anything…

*My sister and I at a fancy schmancy J. Sheekey soiree last week!*

What do you do again?

I’m a social media manager in London. Currently, I have 9 retainer clients—4 Instagram management, 2 LinkedIn management, 2 IG + LI management, 1 a mix of marketing activities (including social media and email). 4 of these clients have been with me for 4+ years, which is amazing. I feel very lucky to have them. I also do some copywriting and host monthly workshops with the British Institute of Interior Design.

💭 How I’m feeling about my business right now

I feel very content at the moment. Last week, I met one of my clients IRL for the first time ever — and we’ve been working together for more than a year! It was so nice to get proper face time with them. To see their gorgeous studio (based in Notting Hill) and chat through interesting content ideas for LinkedIn.

Which reminds me — if you’re feeling frustrated with social media marketing and haven’t considered using LinkedIn, please do. Reach, engagement, and discovery is much easier over there compared to Instagram, and for many business owners, their ideal clients are using it every single day. Here you can read more about why LinkedIn might just be your biggest opportunity (I’ve temporarily removed the paywall!).

Back to my clients — things are good, they all seem to be happy, and despite working almost every day of my 2-week girls trip around the American South, I too am feeling generally very positive.

This might also be due to the fact that I attended a really fun PR event with my sister after work last week. It was a ‘summer soiree’ at J. Sheekey in Soho, complete with delicious canapes and endless glasses of Nyetimber. Very occasionally I get invited to these events through my Instagram account, The Doors of London, and as mentioned in last week’s newsletter about celebrating the ‘little’ wins as a business owner — it’s never not exciting to be included in the guest-list. Even if it is just because a PR needs to bulk up their numbers!

💬 When networking pays off

At the end of 2024, I attended a networking event hosted for travel designers. I came along as one of the guest ‘suppliers’ — people working in marketing, events, website design, and so on — invited to talk about my services and connect with attendees who might want to work with me in the future.

It was a really fun afternoon with great conversation and even better food, and I went home feeling revitalised but not necessarily expecting work off the back of it.

Then, a couple of months ago, I received an email from someone who hadn’t been able to attend the event, but who’d received a copy of the brochure that included my details.

She got in touch to ask whether I ever ran live workshops. We had a call (a good old-fashioned telephone call and not Zoom… yay!) and yesterday, I hosted a LinkedIn workshop at the fabulous community space, Kindred, in Hammersmith for her network of travel experts.

It was brilliant!

And it just goes to show… networking is a long-game.

🐶 Side project number 1: Dog-focused website/brand

While Winston’s Instagram account continues to grow steadily (TikTok is still slow!), I’m working on improving how much it costs to acquire new email subscribers. At the moment, that number is 41p. That’s not too bad, but it’s not as good as it could be.

This is the ad I’ve been running for the last several months.

I’m going to experiment with a couple of different designs... maybe a carousel that features some subscriber feedback and/or some of the delicious recipes I’ve had created?

I’ll keep you posted on the outcome.

📚 Side project number 2: Novel

I took a break from writing while on my American road trip and couldn’t wait to get back to my characters on my return.

There’s not a huge amount to report on this front, except to say that I think I’m going to start getting up early again (between 6 and 6.30am) to get in some extra writing time. How is it mid-May already?!