Suzy Darke - Visibility Coach
This Freelance Insights interview features visibility coach Suzy Darke.
Suzy helps soulful business owners who find marketing themselves weird, scary or icky. She supports them in 'gentle visibility' - showing up with ease, joy and integrity. Her work is about uncovering and rewriting your visibility stories, ditching anything that feels hard or cringey, and connecting with your audience as the lovely, big-hearted human you are.
I first came across Suzy’s account after someone shared one of her IGTVs. I was struck by how she came across in the video: softly spoken and lovely but with a kind of authority about what she was discussing. She’s the kind of person you want in your corner - positive and encouraging!
Sign up to Suzy’s 'Letters from the Heart' by clicking the button further down this page for weekly notes to comfort and inspire creative souls. Subscribers get access to a library of free resources to help you connect with your clients through beautiful, heartfelt content.
How do you describe what you do for work?
I help soulful female business owners get unstuck and become more visible for their businesses. I'm a visibility coach, and it's all about doing that in a way that feels really natural and joyful. It's not about pushing through it or grinning and bearing it - it's about finding ways to be visible online that feel good, real and doable. I started out as a copywriter and I like working with businesses that have a real soul and heart about them.
What's your favourite thing about working freelance?
I'm going to say freedom, because that covers all the good bits for me! The freedom to do work that I really love, to work with the clients I actually want to work with, and to be myself and not anyone else's version of what that should look like. Plus the practical stuff, like getting to work my own hours and work around my children, like when they're at school and when it's term-time.
Where do you usually work from?
I've got a really small office, sandwiched between my daughter's bedroom and my son's bedroom! We're in a village in Cornwall and I overlook beautiful rolling fields. There are cows in the field at the moment, and the sea is just over there. Even on a really horrible day, the view is still beautiful - I'm so lucky.
What does a normal working day look like for you?
Pre-pandemic, I would normally drop my kids at school and then three days a week I go for a swim at my local pool. I normally start work around 10am and work until 3pm, when I go and pick my kids up again. I'm then a full-time mum, and I probably end up doing a bit of work in the evening and sometimes at weekends, but I try not to. At the moment, my working day is stretched because there are lots of distractions and I'm not getting those short, focused periods to get things done.
What one tip would you give other freelancers about running a freelance business?
Running your own business is a lovely opportunity to be yourself and do what you want to do. If you can, show up as yourself rather than showing up as other people's idea of how you should be presenting yourself or what 'professional' is. If you can do that and define the clients that you really love working with, you'll end up doing work that brings you joy and your business will grow in a magical way. That's the biggest realisation I've had over the last year: being me is absolutely enough. That's the secret to creating a business I really want, rather than a job for myself.
Free resource
Sign up to Suzy’s 'Letters from the Heart' for weekly notes to comfort and inspire creative souls. Subscribers get access to a library of free resources to help you connect with your clients through beautiful, heartfelt content.
