How Nic learned to love her business again with Spark Sessions

Welcome to Thought Leader Stories

This series highlights the incredible stories of ambitious changemakers, experts, and thought leaders. Read on to explore how we helped them transform their business and amplify their impact—on their own terms.

As told to and written by copywriter, Nailah King of The Content Witches.

MEET Nicole Sidoti

Nic is the Founder and Creative Director of Studio Clvr, a website design agency. Following a successful corporate career abroad in London and New York, she returned home to Sydney. The return marked the end of her corporate career but would be the inciting event that kickstarted her business.

New Beginnings

Back at home for the first time in years, Nic was ready to start over and give entrepreneurship a shot. Soon, she built a team as her client base and business grew.
But over time, she realized that something wasn’t clicking and knew something needed to shift to make sure she was moving forward in her business. She started within marketing but didn’t align with the Bro Marketing and Hustle Culture that has come to be associated with the start-up world.

Nic grew to love and preferred working on websites and wanted to transition to primarily doing this kind of work. Her team had to change with shifting priorities, and Nic scaled back the business.

"A session with Sarah will give you clarity on your business that you are not going to get anywhere else. Sarah has the ability to take a microscope to what you do and how you do it. And help you see things in a way you can't see yourself because you're too close to it. At the end of the day, everyone is too close to their own business, and you do need somebody else to be a sounding board.

But Sarah's so much more than just a sounding board. She does spark ideas. She does make an effort to really get in and understand what it is that you do, how you do it, and who you do it for, and those are critical aspects to moving any business forward."

More Than a Pixel Pusher

“When you first start out in business, it’s easy to take everything that comes your way. Turning work away is inconceivable, and so you end up doing a bit of everything. I was a white-label freelancer for corporates and other design agencies, creating marketing graphics for their clients. I was creating ads for the side of bus shelters for government departments. I was producing magazines for peak bodies and not-for-profits. And I was making websites for small consulting firms. It was all very disconnected, and when you’re working that way, it doesn’t feel like you’re achieving anything. I was ready for the next stage of growth. For me, that meant highly strategic websites that had just way more impact for my clients and was far more meaningful for me than just being a pixel pusher.”

For Nic, having scaled her business out and back in again created a disconnect and made her business feel increasingly less like hers. She knew her work wasn’t lighting her up and felt undervalued by her clients. In 2020, like many other businesses at this time, following the start of the pandemic, Nic decided to take the opportunity to take a deeper look at her business and find opportunities to make changes to help her shift to doing work that moved her business and career forward. Nic started with a rebrand; while exciting, it ultimately needed to be more focused.

What was going to move the needle for Nic?

Creating a framework that would have her not only start doing work that aligned her skillset with the work she wanted to do but also have a structure in place to effectively market her services and impact in ways that were true to her values and mission.

"I knew I needed a framework around what I was selling and the way I was framing my work so that I could properly put things into buckets, and if things didn't belong in the buckets, they had to just go."

Sparking a connection

“I’d started meeting people like Sarah, who I felt I could connect with and who were facing some of the similar issues that I was in terms of the marketing world and the way that we were all expected to market, but didn’t want to market in that way.”

Before Spark Sessions, Nic worked with Sarah in one off consulting sessions because she was marketing in ways that aligned with the direction Nic was going in.

Sarah’s expertise with frameworks, as well as seeing Sarah’s own in action, made Nic confident that she was the right person to help her co-create a powerful framework of her own.

“I knew Sarah had been doing some things with frameworks, and I’d seen her own framework. So I knew she’d be able to whip me into shape.”

For Nic, Spark Sessions are delivered in a format where she knew she could be more successful.

Having previously been part of other programs where the content was provided entirely through recorded videos that ultimately she never watched, she knew that having one-on-one, individualized support would be the best way for her to take her initial idea, the spark, and develop it.

"I'm looking for someone to help me really shake things up and who'll get a bit deeper. And I think that's what I felt, you know, I definitely needed a one-on-one scenario to make that happen."

Re-igniting The Spark

“Spark Sessions were very much aligned with my mentality around how I want to do business and how I want to build relationships with clients and talk to clients in a way that’s just more authentic and genuine instead of constantly feeling like I was failing at the ‘snake oil salesman’ tactics the growth hackers around me were promoting.”

After completing Spark Sessions, Nic left with a completed framework aligned with her values and way of doing business. Her content now has a direction, and she’s equipped with the tools to keep creating consistently and with purpose.

Nic continues to thrive thanks to maintaining solid relationships with her existing clients, delegating tasks and responsibilities that aren’t serving her, and sticking with what she does best.

I feel like everything has a bit more focus and a bit more purpose. And in that sense, things are more intentional as opposed to what they had been previously. And just to be able to have that consistency, and I know this is something Sarah bangs on about all the time, rightly so, to have that consistency in writing.

Along with everything she’s gained, after experiencing feeling misaligned and detached from her business, Nic is most excited about how re-energized she feels in her business. Her work with Sarah has her actually excited about her business again.

Thank you, Nic, for sharing your story! We can’t wait to see what’s next for you.

Ready to spark your own next big idea?