Feedback - what it's like to work together

I’m Kim Crowley, Sydney’s leading personal stylist and the founder of Style Sense.

I’d built a successful business after a move from Fashion Design to Styling, but for a long time, I’ve felt like I was running on a hamster wheel. My business lacked structure and scalability. I was working harder than I wanted to and couldn’t see a clear way forward to grow sustainably or strategically.

That’s why I decided to work with Angela.

The challenge in my business

Before working with Angela, my days were consumed by back-to-back client work, leaving little space for reflection or planning. I had big ideas but they were scattered and unstructured. I knew there was potential to do more, to make a greater impact, and to create a business that worked for me – not just one I worked in. But I couldn’t see how to get there.

The experience of business mentoring

We started with an intensive workshop where Angela and I put everything on the table – my ideas, challenges, goals, and opportunities. It was a mind-expanding experience that gave me the clarity and focus I’d been missing. From there, we’ve had regular mentoring sessions throughout the year, where Angela has been a constant and invaluable sounding board.

The Transformation I’ve experienced:

From our very first conversation, Angela brought a sense of clarity, confidence, and focus that was infectious. She has this incredible ability to step back, take in everything, and connect the dots I couldn’t see. Angela didn’t just listen – she also reflected my aspirations back to me with clarity and created actionable strategies that felt exciting and achievable. It was like she was holding up a mirror to my best self and saying, “Look – this is what’s really possible.”

Angela didn’t come with a one-size-fits-all approach. Everything she did was tailored to me—my strengths, my aspirations, and the unique essence of my business.

During 2024, the impact of our work has been profound. My business has evolved into something I’m not just proud of, but deeply excited about.

Here are some of the biggest changes:

• Clarity and structure: Angela helped me organise the “grey areas” of what I do into clear, structured frameworks and processes like the Colour Capsule Wardrobe©, My Foundational Four, Principles of Smart Casual, Impact Styling and more. These have become the backbone of my business, helping me communicate more effectively and position myself as a leader in both personal and corporate styling.

• Repositioning with confidence: Angela guided me to refine my value proposition and step fully into my authority. She didn’t just tell me I was an expert – because she blends building your Self-leadership skills right alongside your business strategy, she showed me how to own it and communicate it effectively. Whether I’m speaking at high-profile events, being interviewed by the media or pitching my services to corporate clients, I now present myself and my work with elevated confidence.

• Strategic adjustments: Together, we reshaped my services and pricing, removing offerings that weren’t serving me and focusing on high-value work. Angela also helped me set prices that reflect my expertise and the value I create, something I’d struggled with for years, and my clients are saying yes.

• Renewed joy and energy: Angela’s guidance has reignited my passion for my work. I feel clear, energised, and more confident than ever.

• Financial growth: My revenue has grown significantly, enquiries are flowing in and I have a waitlist. What’s more, now clients are even flying in from other states to shop with me, or drive for a 5 hour round trip for a colour analysis – it’s amazing!

• A vision for my next chapter: For the first time, I have a clear roadmap for the future. I’m no longer reacting to what comes my way, I’m shaping my business with intention. Angela has shown me how to scale sustainably, aligning my work with my long-term goal of working less while earning more. What once felt like a distant possibility now feels absolutely achievable.

What Makes Angela Unique

Angela isn’t just a mentor – she’s a partner in your growth.

She has this incredible ability to step back, see the big picture, and connect dots you didn’t even know were there. Her blend of big-picture vision and detailed action planning is incredible – she doesn’t just give you ideas, she helps you turn them into actionable strategies that deliver real results.

If you’re a business owner who knows there’s more potential in your business but you’re not sure how to unlock it, I can’t recommend Angela highly enough. She’s a catalyst for transformation (even describing myself as Sydney’s leading personal Stylist is something I would not have owned before our work this year).

Working with her has been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made and I’d give her a 6-star review online if that were possible!

I first contacted Angela as I was filling out my 2024 calendar in December and feeling like I was spinning my wheels without any clear business direction. She came highly recommended by a trusted colleague and I knew that if I didn’t do something different, I would never make a success of my business supporting neurodivergent children and teens – a mission close to my heart after the challenges our own family faced with my daughter. I wanted to be a guiding light for other families and I was ready to make the change and trust the process.

The first thing Angela did was help me identify and understand my own strengths as a business owner, providing a foundation for my work and my confidence. These strengths have become my anchors—they’re what keep me steady and allow me to ‘fly the plane,’ so to speak, as I get my business off the ground and keep it in the air. Angela also brought clarity and purpose to my ideas, guiding me to create clear pillars and parameters for my business and communicate them beautifully.

Along the way, Angela has given me two invaluable gifts. First, she has shown me how to persevere through the hard—not just to get through tough times but to grow through them. I’m learning to lean into challenges, to ‘struggle well,’ and to keep moving forward when things get difficult. Second, she has encouraged me to step out of my comfort zone. Angela has helped me find the courage to truly own my expertise, to be vulnerable, to take on new challenges, and to expand my skills.

If I could share only one takeaway from working with Angela, it’s that she has given me a new lease on life. Most definitely in business, but more than that, she has given me the courage to grow in every aspect of my life and live out the next chapter with deliberate intention. Thank you Angela!

I had been trying to launch my business for what felt like forever, but I just couldn’t get unstuck. I realised that, before I could focus on my business, I needed support with my ADHD. When I heard Angela on Tracy Otsuka’s podcast, I instantly felt she was the right fit. Angela not only has extensive experience with business strategy, but she also understands ADHD firsthand and is also in the  recovery community too. I thought, ‘If anyone will truly get me, it’s her.’ I needed someone who could balance small business know-how with an understanding of how I think.

Earlier in the year, Angela and I had already worked together on my strengths profile, and I felt at ease with her from the start. She’s warm, approachable, and has this genuine way of making you feel you can be yourself without any pretences. That was non-negotiable for me.

Since we started working together, I have moved forward in ways I never imagined possible. Angela’s support helped me build confidence, find clarity, and really trust my own process. I’ve released videos, hired a virtual assistant, and am now actively working on my website and marketing content. The feedback I’m getting from what I’ve had the courage to share so far has been really positive, and I’m starting to see that I can absolutely do this—and that what I have to offer is valuable.

Angela brings a unique mix of kindness and professionalism. Her feedback is honest and direct, yet always encouraging. I appreciate the way she blends expertise with empathy, and her humour makes our sessions fun and productive. She’s been patient when I’ve missed an appointment, ADHD style, and her knowledge of tech has been invaluable- email marketing, Delenta, Fathom, Canva and more. Having recordings and written materials to refer back to has been incredibly helpful. She even goes the extra mile to create videos to ensure I’m clear on every step.

I’d recommend Angela’s coaching and mentoring to any woman looking to launch or elevate her business. Her heart, humour, and expertise make her easy to work with, and you always feel she’s got you – even when your head is spinning. I’m truly grateful I made the choice to invest in her services; she provides incredible value and makes the journey enjoyable and impactful!

Angela is an amazing business strategist with a unique skillset and comprehensive approach involving both a strategic and forensic review of a business, to provide clarity, certainty and renewed impact and enthusiasm.

I worked with Angela to review and recalibrate my business and was so impressed with her abilities and tools to really delve into my strengths, values, leadership style, brand, financial goals and the real ‘why’ of my business. We covered every aspect of my business, including really nailing who my clients are, what services and products are most useful to them, best marketing approaches and most efficient business supports.

Angela has an incredible brain that is able to connect the dots, reflect and identify things I couldn’t see for looking. I had so many light bulb moments while working with her! I love Angela’s mantra that your business should serve you, as much as it serves your clients – to design a business around the life you want. In this sense, Angela is so much more than just a business strategist – she takes a holistic approach to her clients that provides real confidence and clarity and ensures the end result totally aligns with the person you are.

She’s a warm, wonderful and wise woman who is an absolute pleasure to work with and who I highly recommend for any business owner.

Working with Angela was a pivotal choice. As a founder navigating an international business, I was seeking not only strategic clarity but also a sounding board and guide who could provide both insight and grounding on this journey. Angela was that and more – an intelligent, intuitive strategist with a unique ability to listen deeply and challenge wisely.

She offered crystal clarity on my purpose, aligning my business vision with my strengths, and providing me with tools and models I continue to lean on for strategic planning, self-leadership and marketing.

A core superpower of Angela is her ability to get such a good grasp of your business and priorities and then come up with specific, outside-the-box ideas and options that you would not get access to on your own. She elevates us out of the mire and up to our higher business purpose, vision and strategy as a high energy ideas generator.

Angela is dedicated to helping us female solopreneurs be clearer and therefore more successful. She’s experienced, highly creative, savvy, caring, a connector, and such fun to work with. I particularly enjoyed the face-to-face, personal, warm and generous nature of our sessions, the creativity and focus, the stimulating and inspiring discussion and planning that all led to the unfolding of fresh possibilities.

On the days I wobble, I now have a centre to come back to and the sense of someone having my back as a support and mentor – I’m not doing it all alone anymore. I’ve already recommended Angela to fellow female solopreneurs who need support and clarity… for all the reasons above.  She gives her heart and soul and I know she’s helping many women who feel they’re drowning and overwhelmed.

https://www.safarisforthesoul.com.au/

“I first heard Angela speaking as a guest on an ADHD podcast, and I was instantly inspired. I felt stuck in my busy life and thought reaching out to her would bring a breath of fresh air and guide me into a deeper understanding of myself and where I wanted to go. The strengths profile was a key draw for me, and Angela’s ability to interpret and explain it was eye-opening. She helped me see areas of growth I hadn’t been aware of.

Through our work together, I’ve gained so much. My vision is clearer, and I now have more self-compassion and self-understanding. I feel more confident and positive, no longer stuck in a rut. I’m kinder to myself, which has allowed me to achieve more without feeling frazzled.

Angela has exceptional listening skills and an incredible ability to get to the heart of things. Her practical and meaningful explanations have made such a difference. Celebrating milestones, like finishing a course I was working on, was especially rewarding.

What I loved most about working with Angela was how easy everything was—booking sessions, doing them online and receiving follow-up notes and resources. There was never any judgment, just understanding and support.

I would highly recommend Angela to anyone looking for greater self-understanding or guidance in navigating a new direction in life. Thank you so much, Angela, for your unwavering commitment and support!”

I’m Sarah Gillis, the Founder of Aspire Australia, where for over 25 years my team and I have been helping clients to reunite with their partners, bring their parents or extended family here or start the next chapter of their career in Australia and realise their dreams of migrating to Australia.

Creative and practical advice

Originally, I sought Angela out to help with rebranding my business and repackaging our services. I needed to clarify and define what I was offering and was anticipating a pretty straightforward experience.

But right from the start Angela saw the differentiation opportunity I’d missed, and tabled an idea that could quickly and clearly communicate the value we offer to clients. From there, we developed a 7-Step Migration Action Plan (MAP) that visually defined exactly what we did in an easy and compelling way.

As the owner of the business, you can get so ingrained in what you’re doing, that you can’t see how it looks to someone else. Before this initial work we did together, we’d not necessarily considered how little the client knew about the process and laid it out so clearly for them. Our new MAP immediately built trust and credibility for Aspire.

The difference you made

Angela had, and has, so much experience of other businesses – how they work and how customers and clients respond. So her advice is not theoretical, it’s creative, and it’s also practical.

In our case, she seemed to just know that once the MAP was implemented on our website, it would provide distinct points we could use as hooks to explain the entire migration application process, step by step, to people. And it did, allowing us to break it down, to make it accessible and reassuring and to also make their financial investment easier to understand.

This new approach transformed an unknown experience into a process with certainty and that made sales conversions easier and elevated the brand, giving us confidence in the market too. And that was just the start.

The results and what I value

I trust Angela, her judgment and her wealth of experience. That’s really important because there are a lot of sharks out there.

She’s honest and direct. Having her on my support team means I feel confident and motivated. Encouraged. She’s not sucking up to me and telling me what you think I want to hear – she’s sharing what she sees and what she feels needs to change. I need clear steps, nothing wishy-washy. Angela creates action plans. That’s useful. That’s valuable.

Angela also has a great network and often puts me in touch with people she knows in areas of business where I wouldn’t know where to start.

Thanks to our work together I ended up moving from an office the size of a cupboard to investing $50K fitting out a new office, and hiring six staff.

And all businesses change over time, so it’s about every couple of years I come back to talk through the next steps with Angela. I value that continuity.

I recommend you

If a business owner is feeling uncertain about what to do next or has multiple pathways, ideas and options and is feeling confused, or if they know they want to achieve a very different outcome, but can’t see how to get there… If they don’t have someone external and neutral, someone without self-interest to talk with, they should definitely connect with you.

I know when that conversation happens, when they see how quickly she develops insight into their challenges and issues and begin to lay out a way forward they’ll see her value and hire Angela on the spot!

Just like I did.

I’m Carolyn Tate and I describe myself an ex-banker, who then became a small business owner 23 years ago. There’s been a continuing evolution in my business focus over the years and I am now an educator and a writer. My passion is writing books that make a positive impact on the world, and I support women to find their voice and write stories of purpose, justice and equality.

Connecting the dots that I cannot see

Throughout my entrepreneurial journey I’ve regularly repositioned and recalibrated my business and brand in the marketplace. Then I’ve developed a fresh strategy and determined new services and how to successfully market them. The challenge has been managing the ups and downs of business as a solo operator. Even when I created and was running my business school about five years ago surrounded by people, I was still a solo Leader and the key decision maker and that’s hard.

How we work together

We all need thinking partners.

Each time I’ve shifted into a new business territory Angela helped me understand what it means. She’s critiqued, analysed and suggested, helping me find clarity when I needed to make good decisions.

Angela is not a theorist, she actually owns and operates businesses and so has empathy for the challenges we face because she’s experienced them herself.

Trust is important and I can tell her anything and everything about my business – the turnover, what’s working, what’s not, my frustration and fears. Angela considers issues not just from a business perspective, but from a personal perspective. And because she knows me as a human being as well as a businesswoman, she understands what I really want in terms of my values and therefore, what’s going to stick and what’s not. She makes sure I’m not setting false goals – goals based on what the market or some guru tells us we should want!

Angela helps me stay focused and keep my eyes on the prize, regardless of what’s happening around me.

The balance we strike

For me, there’s a constant tension between what’s profitable and marketable vs purposeful and sustainable. What’s often missing in the coaching world is a dose of reality. Angela is always honest, making sure my ideas are viable (commercially and professionally) as well as personally satisfying. Her insight comes from having been around the traps, having worked with so many businesswomen and from working for herself, and on herself, for so long.

That experience means she’s developed wisdom and I benefit from that.

The questions that lead to clarity.

That wisdom shows up in every session we have.

For example, I’ve raised the challenge of getting more people to my Writers Circles. Angela asks critical questions to help me identify the real problem that needs to be addressed. And then our discussion moves into creative and iterative thinking to solve the problem. She always has fresh ideas that move me forward on a clear and positive path.

She’s also able to integrate ideas into the bigger picture of my business and life because she understands my long-term vision. She’s connecting the dots that I don’t necessarily see. A great recent example was the idea she had about creating an anthology from my participant’s stories – it blended marketing, revenue and credibility and I’m excited about it! She helped me see how I could expand the reach of my Circles geographically to increase reach, impact and revenue.

What do you value the most?

It’s her business acumen, and her ability to get to the heart of things.

Angela sees what people’s problems are because of her experience and knowledge.  She’s quick, sharp, and incisive and able to quickly understand what’s blocking their growth and what needs to change.

After every session we have, I feel empowered and hopeful. Let’s be honest, we can sometimes find ourselves in a cloud of doubt as a business owner, wondering what we’re going to do next. One of my biggest challenges has been the tendency to jump from one thing to the next without thinking it all the way through.

Because Angela knows my purpose and my vision, she’s able to hold me true to them, and make sure my actions are aligned. She helps me stay the course and not succumb to bright shiny object disorder! That’s what builds traction and it’s one of the most valuable things about working with her.

There’s still a lot of work to be done in my business to evolve it, but that commitment and focus is far easier when I have Angela on my team.

Who do you recommend Angela to?

I’ve often referred women to Angela who are doing meaningful work in the world and are ready for the next step up or for recalibration.

They’re women wanting to streamline their business or take it up to another level. They’ve been working for themselves for a long time, are great at what they do and have good connections and loyal clients.

They’re at a point where they know that they can do better.

They’re frustrated they’re not making progress and are stuck in a loop. They want to do better and need to spark some fresh thinking. That’s where Angela adds immense value.

I know they’re in good hands with her. The feedback I get confirms this – so I’ll keep sending women her way.

I’m Amanda Lecaude, the Founder of Organising Students. We’re specialists in organisational skills and time management with a focus on academic and executive function coaching for students. Along with their parents, caregivers and schools, we equip our students with the tools, skills and strategies for study, school and life.

Moving from one business to another

When I first met Angela, I already had a successful business, but I had an idea in mind for a new opportunity.

After running a pilot workshop for students and receiving great feedback, I knew there was potential to expand. I needed someone to bounce ideas off, to help me develop a strategy and anchor me in accountability as I juggled the business I already had and the business I wanted to evolve into.

I’d seen Angela present at a conference and her approach to marketing and depth of experience resonated with me, so I got in touch. I’m so glad I did.

What happened

I flew from Melbourne to Sydney for our first strategy intensive in 2015. In that first, of now many experiences, we captured all the initial ideas  and then narrowed them down to formulate a plan.

It was fantastic working with someone not immersed in my business. Angela could see things from a different, fresh and independent perspective. We were able to formulate a realistic, tangible, staged plan to turn the vision we’d created into a reality.

The result

I formed a new segment of my business that very day.

With support from Angela since then, Organising Students has evolved from simply hosting School Transition Workshops to a multi-faceted business with mentoring, keynotes, products, webinars and staff.

Working with Angela has made this journey easier. I might have got there in the end. But who really knows? While I had the ideas in my head, it was her ability to ask the right questions that drew out the solutions. Her suggestions and insights have been invaluable. The plans we’ve made together and the processes she’s advised me on have all been so helpful.

I’ve become well-known in my industry and the Organising Students brand now has great credibility. I’ve been invited to speak on podcasts, give keynotes at conferences and I had my first book published in May 2024. Our turnover has quadrupled and our services are booked-out with extensive waitlists.

So, the question now is, where to from here?

My next steps

The beauty of working with Angela is that she plants seeds for the future as well helping me focus on the here and now. Our long history means she understands that I’m an incubator and that I need time to consider the options we develop together. The space allows me to make better decisions, but she doesn’t let me stagnate either!

In our last strategy workshop, in addition to working through immediate and short-term strategies, we explored options for franchising and licensing. We’ll revisit them when I’ve had my incubator time.

What I especially value

I love that I can tap in and out when I need Angela. She understands me and my business thoroughly and continues to bring fresh ideas to me. In the years we’ve worked together, I’ve never felt the need to see what or who else might be available to help.

I’ve still got all the notes from when we first started working together. So many of our original ideas have been developed and become the backbone of Organising Students and they are still in place – like the Student Success Plan. They’ve morphed and evolved and remain as the original thinking was sound.

Anyone in the small business space who doesn’t have someone to support them in this way will benefit from working with Angela.

I’m grateful for all of the value she has added.