About
I’m Amanda Newell. I’ve spent most of my working life building things — businesses, practices, skills, knowledge — usually from scratch.
I started out in the City of London, firstly working for an entrepreneur, assisting with all aspects of his business world and without realising it learning a huge amount by osmosis. I was still in my mid-20s when I was recruited to run the day-to-day admin, HR function, facilities, training and all sorts of other things a busy law firm in SW1 needs.
An unfortunate accident on the way to work one morning changed my trajectory. Dusting myself off — literally and metaphorically — I decided to return to education and take myself off to university. I’d already qualified as a reflexologist and aromatherapist and had been practising alongside work. Now I wanted to get into healthcare. My original plan had been physiotherapy, but I rather liked the breadth of podiatry practice, so plumped for that.
I worked as an aromatherapist and reflexologist alongside a contract cleaning business I’d set up to fund my way through university, got involved in some horse training too — my hobby at the time — and a few years later qualified as a Podiatrist, joined the HCPC register and opened my practice.
In the years that followed I worked across various clinics and in domiciliary settings, providing reflexology and aromatherapy alongside podiatry.
One winter I started a Master’s degree purely for personal interest — Anthrozoology at Exeter, a specialism of Anthropology — which extended my skills into ethnographic research methods including interview, survey and observation. And when Freya, my beloved dog, arrived in my life as a bundle of very excitable craziness, I ended up doing dog trainer training too, just because it was fun and interesting — and eventually that became a pleasurable new avenue of work as well.
After some years of knowing something wasn’t right, I was eventually diagnosed with an autoimmune condition that brought my podiatry career to a close.
How The Business Support Started
Over the years, quite a few people had gravitated toward me asking for business support — a friend wanting to start her own care business, someone else getting a contract dog sitting service going, and then a hypnotherapist — a client’s husband — who worked in business but had never worked for himself. Jotting down a long list of ideas I was sharing while caring for his wife’s feet one day, he said: ‘You should be offering this as a service’ — and promptly paid me for my time and ideas.
When my career had to end, I remembered that moment and decided to shape all my experience into the business I now run here.
What Happened In Between – My Current Business
And there were the few years between one thing ending and the next beginning. To keep myself busy and focused I developed a passion for artistic photography and surprised myself by building a YouTube channel from zero to 1,500 subscribers in under ten months — a decent number for a very niche subject. Two books written, a live online workshop created and filled for its first run, and two features this year in Amateur Photographer and Gathered Light magazines. Various speaking invitations have followed too.
If you’d like a feel for who I am, I appear — bravely, given I’m pretty shy — in some of the YouTube videos, albeit in the corner.
I don’t do jargon, and I don’t offer positive self-talk as a solution to real problems. I do being human.
We all need to be positive — but positive action is what turns things around, not a narrative without substance.
I now love bringing all my skills, experiences and training from different parts of my life to serve your business too. Whether you want to draw on my experiences setting up a new small business, help with day to day administration or to utilise my design, art, copy writing and experience with WordPress to build and maintain that new website… I’m really enjoying getting stuck in helping in a variety of businesses so don’t hesitate to reach out for that first conversation…
….come and have a free Zoom — or a real-life coffee if you’re local. My contact details are here.
Training and Credentials (some of them anyway)
BSc(Hons) · MA Anthrozoology, University of Exeter · HCPC Registered Podiatrist (formerly) · Editorial training, Cornerstones Literary Consultancy · Digital marketing · Management and leadership · Ethics · GDPR with a focus on healthcare data management · Cyber security awareness · Advanced Photoshop · Canva · Art and design.