Working With Natalie

Working With Natalie Digital Marketing Expert and Business Consultant proudly based in Hertfordshire!

How is this consulting related? Well, the other day I bought a Lion’s Mane coffee from Black Sheep after one too many ch...
26/06/2026

How is this consulting related? Well, the other day I bought a Lion’s Mane coffee from Black Sheep after one too many cheeky wines at a business meeting.
I got the dreaded nursery call and had to rush back to Preston from Manchester pretty sharpish. In my rush to prove I’m just a regular Mum and not some midday drinking, fun loving animal I purchased the aforementioned beverage. Fast forward 8 hours and I’m laying in bed WIRED. I feel as though I could write a sonnet. I didn’t, but with my new and entirely inappropriately timed mental clarity I took to Google.
Little did I know that functional mushrooms are literally the key to hacking my life’s problems right now. So, it’s 10:30am, a totally reasonable time to be consuming this drink and the heats got me schlepping around my house like a melted welly. I reason a little extra help RN will not go amiss. Excuse me while I discover the cure to world hunger - JK we all know that’s the billionaire’s.

15/06/2026

“We used to love this place…” *gulp*

Once the shock fades, anger follows as the next stage of the Change Curve.

This is often when customers become more vocal
👉🏻 Complaints about prices
👉🏻 Frustration over menu changes
👉🏻 Negative reviews

Small Business Owners - this can be the stage that makes you question EVERYTHING.

But anger is often a response to
- disrupted expectations
- emotional attachment
- perceived loss of value
- uncertainty around change

It doesn’t always mean your business decision was wrong.

I often see businesses making tough decisions simply to remain sustainable in a rising-cost economy.

The challenge here is learning how to hold boundaries, to communicate early and clearly and most importantly - to not absorb every emotional reaction as a failure.

Save this post and follow for the next stage in the Change Curve series

Tag a small business owner to help them grow their customers with this one simple tool.Harness persona mapping and you’v...
04/06/2026

Tag a small business owner to help them grow their customers with this one simple tool.

Harness persona mapping and you’ve got half the battle won, big business are doing this so why shouldn’t you?

21/05/2026

I could only make this video once the rage fuelled mist had settled so here goes. I’m sick of seeing social media “gurus” trying to teach business owners that meta can somehow be tricked into generating them a ton of likes and follows. Or that somehow this will support your business goals.

There are a few points to be made here so let’s go.
1. Meta is more finely tuned at sniffing our AI content than ever before, and of course it is! AI content can pose a fraud risk! Check out the policies, once you hit a threshold of inauthentic content you are straight on the their radar, effectively risking a shadow ban.

2. Content creators are only selling their social media content, by promoting these ideas they’re getting you to engage with their post - this is what the meta algorithm actually encourages, so their account grows through their efforts at misleading you.

3. You don’t need a million followers if you are selling a product or service, you need the right interested people seeing your content. So, how do you find them? I recommend learning about persona mapping. A practice followed by the big boys to support how they sell to particular demographics.

Follow for more actionable tips and tricks.

14/05/2026

“You’ve increased your prices?!”
“You’ve taken my favourite item off the menu?!” 👀

If you’ve ever made necessary changes in your business and been met with confusion, frustration or resistance… welcome to the first stage of the Change Curve: Shock & Denial.

For customers, even small changes can feel uncomfortable — especially when they’re attached to familiarity, routine or perceived value.

But for many small businesses right now, rising supplier costs, energy bills and overheads mean changes aren’t optional… they’re necessary.

What customers often see:
❌ Price increases
❌ Smaller menus
❌ Product changes
❌ Different ways of doing things

What business owners are often trying to do:
✔️ Stay sustainable
✔️ Protect profit margins
✔️ Avoid burnout
✔️ Keep the business alive

Shock & denial doesn’t always mean customers are rejecting your business.
Sometimes they’re simply reacting emotionally to unexpected change.

The key? Communication, consistency and giving people time to adjust 💜

Follow for the next stage in the Change Curve series.

One of the most important things about this project was that the business already operated well before scaling nationall...
13/05/2026

One of the most important things about this project was that the business already operated well before scaling nationally.

This wasn’t a turnaround project.

The challenge was protecting operational performance while the business expanded geographically and demand increased.

Because that’s where many service businesses start to experience drift:

- engineers travelling further for parts
- response consistency reducing
- repeat visits increasing
- operational pressure building internally

The goal of the new operating model was to support scale without allowing service quality to deteriorate.

Some of the estimated operational improvements included:

⬇️ 30–35% reduction in engineer travel for emergency parts collection
⬆️ 8–12% increase in engineer productive time
⬆️ First-time fix rate stabilised and improved from ~84% to ~89%
⬆️ SLA compliance improved from ~93% to ~97% nationally
⬇️ Repeat visits reduced by an estimated 10–15%
⬇️ Fuel and vehicle costs reduced by approximately 8–12% through more efficient regional coverage
⬆️ Stock visibility and inventory accuracy improved across regional operations

But arguably the biggest outcome wasn’t a single KPI.

It was operational resilience.

The business was able to continue scaling nationally while maintaining the service standards and responsiveness that had made it successful regionally in the first place.

That’s often the real challenge with growth.

Not winning more work -
but building an operating model capable of absorbing complexity without performance slipping underneath it.

Operational improvement is rarely just about systems — it’s about getting people, process, and delivery aligned.

If that’s a challenge your business is currently facing, feel free to reach out.

Once the new model started bedding in, the difference became noticeable quite quickly.Not through massive transformation...
11/05/2026

Once the new model started bedding in, the difference became noticeable quite quickly.

Not through massive transformation headlines -
but through the disappearance of day-to-day operational friction.

🚐 Engineers were spending less time travelling for parts.
⏰ Jobs were being completed faster.
🔁 Repeat visits started reducing.
👌 Clients experienced a more consistent service.

Most importantly, the business started moving from a reactive operation…
to one that felt controlled again.

That’s usually the biggest shift in projects like this.

Not perfection.
Not overnight change.

Just removing the operational pressure points that quietly slow everything down as businesses scale.

And when those pressure points are removed, performance tends to improve naturally.

The interesting part?

Very little of this came from adding more people or more stock.

It came from redesigning how the business actually operated.

Next post - the longer-term benefits this created for the business, engineers and clients.

11/05/2026

I did it again Gilbert…

Designing the solution is one thing.Making it work in the real world is something else entirely.This is usually where go...
08/05/2026

Designing the solution is one thing.

Making it work in the real world is something else entirely.

This is usually where good ideas fall apart.

So instead of trying to roll everything out at once, we kept it practical and grounded in how the business actually operated day-to-day.

We started by understanding demand properly —
where are jobs happening? What parts are being used? And without judgement - how are engineers really working? (not just how it looked on paper).

From there, we built the model step by step:

Defining where regional hubs should sit based on real coverage
Standardising what engineers carry to remove inconsistency
Creating simple, repeatable processes for stock flow and replenishment
Testing the approach in a small number of locations first

Nothing over-engineered.
Nothing theoretical.

Just a structure that could be used, tested, and improved quickly.

Because the goal wasn’t to design the perfect model…

It was to build one that actually works under pressure.

Next - what changed once it was in place.

After breaking down what was really going on, one thing became clear:This wasn’t about working harder.It was about worki...
06/05/2026

After breaking down what was really going on, one thing became clear:

This wasn’t about working harder.
It was about working differently.

The business hadn’t outgrown its people —
it had outgrown its operating model.

Instead of layering more pressure onto engineers or throwing more stock at the problem, we took a step back and redesigned how the operation actually worked.

The focus was simple:

Get the parts closer to the job
Create consistency across engineers and regions
Maintain control without slowing things down

That led us to a distributed stock model:

🗺️ Regional hubs positioned near key locations.
🔨 Standardised van stock across engineers.
👩‍💻 A clear structure for how inventory flows through the business.

The key here was implementing a solution that was simple and effective — a model that reflects how the business now operates.

But the goal wasn’t just efficiency.

It was making each shift easier for engineers,
more reliable for clients,
and more scalable for the business.

Next up — how we actually implemented it.

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