Darren Jamieson: On this week’s episode of The Engaging Marketeer, I’m speaking to Ann Currie, who went from being a solicitor to renting out a camper van. Now, that’s what I call a career change.
How do you leave the world of legal and law to renting out camper vans to people going on their holidays? I’m going to speak to Ann about how that happened, why she made that decision, and what she’s doing now, but most importantly, what she learned from marketing in terms of promoting her own business renting out campers.
When you first started, you were in a very different career to what you’re in right now, weren’t you? You were a solicitor. What made you want to join the legal profession originally?
Ann Currie: That’s a good question, because I don’t really know where that spark came from, to be quite honest.
To take you back, 10-year-old Ann, up to probably 16 or 17-year-old Ann, wanted to be a writer and a journalist. And 10-year-old Ann went as far as writing a little novel in a jungle, you know, like a journal, we call them jotters in Scotland, little notebooks basically.
So I wrote this novel at the age of 10. It was a very short novel. It was only one jotter, but the whole intention was there. It was a novel about a girl that played tennis and was very good. And I have no idea, because I didn’t play tennis as a kid.
Darren: So you didn’t play tennis, you just wrote a novel about a girl that played tennis.
Ann: Yeah. Didn’t know. OK.
Darren: So did you have ambitions to play tennis yourself?
Ann: No, none at all. I think we were just a bit seduced by Wimbledon. My best friend and I at the time used to have all these tennis matches just out in the street, being in Glasgow, like the upper part of Glasgow, where we would just make up our own games.
So then I wanted to… I started my university degree studying English, but the good thing is in Scotland is that you get a chance to do a general arts degree. So I actually managed to do English, history, politics, psychology, and sociology.
Which then led me to think, well actually, English is not really that useful analysing Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness when you don’t even have a clue what the novel’s all about.
Especially history and politics, because it’s obviously slightly more analytical, and politics is obviously very grounded in current-day society.
There’s a lot of stuff in the news today about politicians saying that it’s a bit of a waste of time doing arts degrees like English and history. We should be doing trades. I disagree with that permanently, but that’s what’s going on at the moment, isn’t it?
Darren: There’s a lot of that. Some of it, I can see where they’re coming from, in the sense that if you’re paying for a degree, you might want to do something that’s a bit more vocational, but equally, these degrees teach you how to be a critical thinker, in my opinion.
Ann: They don’t want those, do they? They don’t want the public to be critically thinking.
Darren: No.
Ann: Exactly. Problem. Exactly. And I think it’s that kind of, if we tell them what politics is all about, they might actually vote sensibly. We don’t want that.
Darren: No, we don’t want that.
Ann: So, history and politics were slightly more critical. I’ve gone off the path a bit, but basically, I did want to be a writer and a journalist, and that ambition was quite firmly held right up until university.
And then I somehow had a crisis of confidence about being a journalist. The background to that is that I am hard of hearing and I wear hearing aids. Suddenly I just kind of thought, could I cope with working in a busy newsroom? Could I cope with going to news conferences?
I suppose my idea of journalism was covering crime. So the idea of going to a big police conference and not hearing what was going on. I think that’s where that came from, with hindsight.
I had the slight misfortune, it’s only a slight misfortune in the scheme of things, to graduate in 1991 when there was a recession on, and that meant it was harder to get a graduate job.
So if we’re talking about careers, my very first career was actually in the job centre. Believe it or not, I worked as a benefits officer in the job centre. Not the best of jobs, but it did teach me a lot about human behaviour and people that didn’t have jobs, that were really on the edge of poverty. It was quite humbling.
Darren: Having that empathy. Is this job centre in Glasgow?
Ann: It was actually, believe it or not, in Chippenham in Roystonshire. My husband now, but at the time he was my boyfriend, and he had a job in Chippenham and I didn’t have a job anywhere. So I said, “Well, that’s it, I’m coming down.”
So I ended up at the job centre in Chippenham, which was quite a culture shock, not least because the accent is totally different. That’s another story.
Darren: Well, you’ve not lost your accent at all, have you?
Ann: No, I haven’t. And I certainly didn’t pick up a West Country one, did I?
Darren: You have not. You’ve held on to that Glaswegian.
Ann: So from there, it was probably my husband said, “Why don’t you think about a law degree?” So I went back to night school and did a law A-level.
I actually found it quite interesting. Again, it comes back to the concepts of politics, history. There’s a lot of sociology in it, there’s a lot of history, legal history, how the legal system came to be, politics, as in how we organise society.
I did find it quite interesting. I got an A in the A-level, which suggests I did have some aptitude for it, so I went ahead. I went back to university to do the conversion course. So it’s a one-year conversion course followed by the one-year professional course that everybody does.
I qualified as a lawyer in 1998. By this time we’d moved up to Merseyside, which is obviously where we are now. In 1995 I managed to get a training contract and qualify in 1998.
And that was me up until 2017. Almost 20 years of being a lawyer.
Darren: What sort of law were you doing then? What kind of clients did you work with?
Ann: I started at a firm where I did a mixture of personal injury, professional negligence, and medical negligence. I really enjoyed that mix of it.
I enjoyed the negligence because, idealistic as it sounds, I did set out to help people. That’s what I wanted to do. That’s what I thought going into the law would enable me to do. I’m going to help people navigate a system that can be difficult.
I don’t know if it’s intentionally made like that, but…
Darren: You set out to make it hard for people to understand, you think so?
Ann: I think so. Sometimes it can be. If you were being cynical, you’d tell yourself it’s made like that so the lawyers can make the money. And this is coming from a former lawyer saying this.
So I did a mixture of those three things. I did that mainly for claimants initially, and then I got headhunted to work for the defendant side for quite a bit in Liverpool, for the insurance companies. Poacher turned gamekeeper, whatever the expression is.
Darren: How did that make you feel then? When you’re originally helping people get money that they’re possibly very overdue because of something that’s happened to them, to then defending people that have perhaps done something very wrong.
Ann: I don’t know if I felt there was something wrong. In my mind it just switched to, this is a problem to be solved.
They’re saying this, we say this. More often than not, in negligence claims, the claimant’s going to win unless there’s some fraud there. So it’s more a case of trying to negotiate a decent settlement that, in my view, satisfies everybody.
That’s possibly where I didn’t go down too well in the law, because it’s kind of, “Oh no, you need to get as much as you can for us.” I said, “That’s really not how I want to work.”
I want to work on a basis that if we can get to a win win, why wouldn’t we? Everybody goes away at least a little bit satisfied, because if you’ve already admitted liability, this is just about working out how much is due.
It’s a tough profession as well because there’s a very strong ethic about billing, working long hours, and that really wasn’t conducive to having children.
I had my children in 2006. I had twins. And I did find that really hard. I remember one day quite clearly actually. I worked for something like 10 or 11 hours, and my husband was obviously at home with the kids, and I fell asleep on the train on the way home and ended up in the wrong station.
It was just one of those moments where I go,
“God, what is this? Why am I doing this?”
It’s just not what I really want out of life.” If you have children, it’s to not see them.
Darren: You realise the work life balance isn’t there, and perhaps you readjust what you’re doing.
Ann: It’s a shame because I did enjoy the work. I did actually enjoy the day-to-day work.
I enjoyed coming in, there was a new file. There was nothing better to me than getting a new file and suddenly working it all out. This has happened, they’ve said this, we’ve said that, and we just need to try and get to that resolution. I always really enjoyed that.
Darren: I guess every file then, it’s a story, isn’t it? There’s a narrative of something that’s happened.
Ann: Definitely. And it’s kind of, why did someone do that?
So I think it was at that point, I think it was 2010, I took a sabbatical just for a breather really. The kids are a bit older. So I took their first year at school off just to get a bit of a breather, maybe to think about, is this really what I want to do?
So the doubts have always been there, probably. They’ve always been there. But eventually the money pulls you back in.
With hindsight, that is not something I should have let myself be sucked back in by. But it did suck me back in because obviously it’s important for a certain degree of security.
I’m not sitting here saying I really want the big house or anything like that. That’s not me at all. But it does give you a certain security.
I was listening to the High Performance Podcast, which has become a recent favourite. I didn’t think it would be my thing, but it had a really interesting episode with Rick Astley of all people.
Darren: Oh yeah.
Ann: It was really interesting because he came from a fairly similar northern upbringing, working class upbringing, which like mine, and he said once I made some of the money out of Never Gonna Give You Up, I felt like I had enough security. He used the word security, and that was almost like a lightbulb moment for me.
Because it was kind of, yes, that’s what the money means. It doesn’t mean the money as such. It just means security to me. It means not having to worry about it.
So I suppose that’s why I kept ricocheting back. It would give you that security.
Then I kind of pushed on through some really stressful jobs. There was far too much to be done. The bosses were great. None of the bosses I worked for were particularly great after that.
Finally, in 2017, I actually cracked and I had burnout and stress. I got signed off sick, and that’s the first time in my life I’ve ever been signed off sick due to stress.
It was such a relief, to be quite honest, which just shows you how bad it was. Up to that point, I’d have been horrified about being signed off for stress, but I just remember coming home and sleeping all day, or sleeping for a couple of hours and then waking up and going, “Oh thank God.” That was it.
So I suppose, if we come back to what people should take away from it, if you’ve got the doubts like me for a few years before, don’t get to that point. Just don’t get to that point.
Explore them and act on them, and work on them. Maybe even go and see a coach or a therapist or someone to work through it, because the burnout and the stress and the breakdown was not something that I’d recommend.
Obviously it’s set me on a nice path now and I’m happy, but at the time, it would have been better to have avoided.
Darren: That’s a really good point. But how would you have known that was happening? Were there signs building up to it?
Ann: The point was that in 2010 I did actually do a counselling course. I’d had some therapy myself back in 2010 because I think it was the work situation.
I didn’t come away from the therapy with very many answers.
What’s also interesting was when I was thinking about this, because obviously my story is one of career changing, I actually checked when I bought this book.
I bought a book in 2013 and it’s called What Should I Do With My Life? And I don’t know if we can put this in the notes for people afterwards, if there’s anybody listening or watching this that wants to maybe learn from it or is thinking about a similar change.
It’s Paul Bronson, which is the weirdest name, but he’s a very respected American journalist.
This book is the weirdest book because it’s just a collection of tales of people that were looking for their purpose in life. It’s not even about changing careers, but there’s something about it that spoke to me. It was like, what should I do with my life? Well, yeah, I want to find out what I want to do with my life, because maybe this isn’t for me.
It’s definitely a book I’d recommend, even if you’re not thinking about changing careers. It’s got some really interesting people in it. If you’re interested in people like I am, and people’s tales, then it’s definitely worth reading.
Darren: So on the day you were signed off and you went home, how did that day start? You’d gone into work?
Ann: I’d actually gone into work, a normal day.
Sadly, I can’t remember the exact trigger. I know it was the 4th of July 2017, but I can’t remember the exact trigger. I think I just sat there in tears and said, “I can’t do this.”
So I got up and walked out. I went straight to the doctor and got an appointment and got signed off.
I didn’t really feel better until September, and that was when I finally handed in my notice and said, “This isn’t for me. I’m not going back to the law.”
I went to the job centre again, becoming full circle.
At that point, there was no way I could ever work for anyone ever again. I was so human about it, it’s unbelievable, looking back on it.
I was, “I’m never working for anybody again. I need to set up my own business because I don’t want to answer to anyone.” That was just, it was so awful. I can’t do that.
Up until that point, what’s interesting is that I would never have done that. That would have been far too risky for me as an individual. I’ve always seen entrepreneurship as, “Oh no, that’s not for me. That really isn’t for me. I can’t afford that risk.”
Darren: You don’t typically get a lot of lawyers that go out and start their own business because lawyers are often quite risk averse.
Ann: Well, is it part of the nature of their job, nature of their training? They don’t take risks. But I thought, do you know what, I’m going to leave law behind. I’m going to set up a camper van business. Which is probably as far stretched from lawyer as you could possibly imagine.
Darren: What possessed you to want to do that?
Ann: It comes back to this. I cannot imagine working for anyone else. I really couldn’t imagine working for anybody else.
But we had the camper van, and we weren’t using it as much because by 2017 my children were 11, 12 and doing a lot more stuff at the weekends. So we weren’t going away in it the same way.
So I had the idea, well, should we sell it and use the money to live off while I decide what to do? And I actually thought it’d be a better idea to try and rent it out so we could keep it, because we loved it. Absolutely adored it.
I loved what it represented in terms of freedom because while I was so stressed, that was the one place where I could sleep. We’d go away for the weekend and I’d sleep for 12 hours, whereas at home I couldn’t sleep. I was insomnia central then.
Darren: So it kind of became your happy place then.
Ann: Very much a happy place, yeah. So I wasn’t really ready to part with it at all.
So we came up with the idea that we would rent it out and that would be like a springboard for me to learn all the skills about websites, social media, marketing, and it would just be then being able to keep it and not working for anyone else.
That was actually all quite useful. And to take that a step back, you probably think straight into website, straight into social media. I actually had a blog prior to that, documenting all my running, triathlon, open water swimming.
So I’d already got a blog, and I was a little bit used to WordPress. I’m not saying I was a pro, not like you guys, but I was already proficient enough and knew my way around enough for a website.
And I’d done social media obviously to promote the blog, and I’d also worked on the social media for the last law job that I was in. So there was already some background there that enabled me to take that step.
And I’ll tell you this, because this is the power of suggestion. My cousin who lives in America, but my parents were Irish, told me, and I didn’t actually know this because my grandparents all died before I was born, that my grandparents on my dad’s side owned quite a successful agricultural shop, but with the entire district, it was the place to go.
I was like, “Oh, so they were entrepreneurs.” Right. OK. And it’s in the blood then. You just didn’t know.
You might think that sounds a bit ridiculous, but it just gave me a perspective shift. That’s all it was. It was kind of like, well actually, if my relatives can do that, then why not me?
So that’s how it all came about and how it seemed to feed into the writing that I enjoyed doing because social media is about writing.
It’s changing obviously. It’s a lot more about videos now, but back in 2017, it was a lot more about the image and the writing.
Darren: How did you find renting out the camper van then?
Because I know a few people with camper vans, and there’s one guy in particular I think we both know, Michael Roberts, who loves his camper van, and if he could marry that camper van, I think he would.
The idea of him renting that camper van out to somebody else would be like loaning his daughter to somebody for the evening. It’s just not something that’s going to happen.
So how did it feel, giving somewhere that you’ve already said is your happy place, where you were able to sleep and get a full 12 hours undisturbed sleep, giving it to a complete stranger?
Ann: It was tough. There’s no doubt about it, it was tough initially.
But eventually we came to see it as the business. It was the business.
And a cautionary tale, if you are thinking about a camper van, then be prepared for quite a lot of damage because it happens a lot.
People aren’t malicious. There’s only one or two people that were a bit careless, as in don’t care how it got damaged. Most people are OK about it, but it’s just life, isn’t it?
And you just have to think, it’s a hunk of metal. So it might have been my happy place, but that’s worked for me then. That’s not where I am now. It’s now serving me in a different way.
It’s kind of, this is part of the business. It’s a godsend. It’s done this for me, and now it’s doing this for me. What more can you ask for?
That’s why you have insurance.
I’ve got to be honest, as you know now I’m not doing that anymore, and if I’m being really honest, the damage side of things wore us down a little bit.
It did get a bit wearing. “Oh yeah, sorry we damaged it,” and then you’re repairing it again and again and again.
And also being tied to the house. It’s kind of the irony of being in a business that involves travelling, and you can’t go travelling still.
So for those two reasons, that’s why we stopped that last year. March 2024 we stopped.
So we don’t have a camper van now, which I’m quite sad about. But I think we also needed a break from owning it, so that we can put that behind us and then eventually hopefully we’ll get another one in the future.
Darren: So you will get another one.
Ann: I think so in the future. We just need a bit of a break.
Life’s twist and turns, isn’t it? The children are not children anymore. Still my children I guess, but they’re twins as I said, so they’re at university now. So everything’s a bit more expensive.
So we just compromised on, maybe we’ll get renovations.
Darren: What was the worst damage that it had when it came back?
Ann: The weirdest one, I’ll tell you the weirdest one, because there’s quite a few.
It was always the pop top roof that always seemed to be the flash point, because the roof where you push it up, you have it down when you’re driving, push it up to give you the head room, that’s often got quite damaged.
The weirdest one that caused the most damage, but in consequence it didn’t correspond with the actual damage, someone put their phone on the air vents.
They brought one of these things where you stick your phone on and you can put it on the air vent so you can see it.
Darren: Yeah, I’ve got one myself in my car.
Ann: It broke the vent. Which you’d think, oh well, just pull that out and put it in again, maybe £30 or £40 for a new vent.
We had to have a whole new dashboard.
Darren: No.
Ann: They couldn’t fix it that way, and explained why, and I can’t remember the detail, but it was more like £200 as opposed to £30.
That wasn’t great really. I felt a bit sorry for the person because obviously they had to pay. I did feel a bit sorry for the person on that one.
But overall I enjoyed it. I don’t want to leave that with a really negative picture because compared to the law it was a doddle.
Darren: And less stress I imagine as well.
Ann: A lot less stress.
There was obviously a bit of stress involved. The worst bit was someone bringing it back damaged but it’s going out again the same day. So you have to either try to fix it quickly or offer something else or give a discount.
But what I enjoyed the most was people coming, and I’ve always wanted to do this, I’ve always wanted to be in a camper van and now I’m living the dream.
People were just so happy and excited. And then they come back and they had a great time.
If they damaged it then that’s not so good, but generally, I’m making it sound like everybody damaged it. Not everybody damaged it.
But the people that came back were having a great time. I just loved that.
It was kind of like helping people facilitate their dreams. So I did enjoy that aspect of it.
Darren: It was a Volkswagen T5, wasn’t it? I know Michael Roberts’s Volkswagen is a T4. From what he puts on social media, you can damage that by looking at it.
I presume yours was a bit more robust than his.
Ann: Mine was newer than his. And then I replaced.
Basically at one point I did have two vans and I was managing the bookings for somebody else’s. So I had three on the website.
Then I sold them, they were getting a wee bit tired with all the damage. So I sold them both and bought one brand new one. So yes, that was a little bit more robust.
And I’d love to tell you that having a new one, I thought it would mean it wouldn’t get damaged. I don’t know how naive I was.
But yeah, his is just a bit older, I think.
Darren: You’ve got to admire the love and care he’s put into that van. He’s had it rebuilt a couple of times.
If anyone’s listening to this thinking, I would like to rent my own camper van out, what are the top three things you’d say they should look out for before they do anything?
Ann: Make sure you’ve got a really good rental agreement, a good contract, lots of good terms and conditions. Obviously I did draft my own.
I didn’t have to pay for a lawyer to do that. But if you haven’t got a friendly lawyer to look over it for you, then I would unfortunately recommend that you spend some money getting that done, and make sure those terms and conditions are really watertight.
I would also make sure that you do a really good inspection before and after. I had an inspection sheet and I would mark it all up and make sure everybody was happy with what was the pre-existing damage.
And then crucially, when it comes back, make sure that you inspect it thoroughly.
It always feels a bit awkward, and people are coming back and you really loved it, and then you go, I need to just check, and it really puts, it’s a bit of a mood hoover, shall we say.
But you really need to do it. I didn’t do it once and I got caught out.
So yeah, that would be the three top tips. Unfortunately they’re really boring, but they’ll save you money, and it might save you a little bit of heartache as well.
Darren: It’s the same from the person renting the van side as well. They should be doing a look around and inspecting as well.
Same as when you get a rental car, because there’s no point bringing the car back to Enterprise or another company and they say, “There’s this scratch on the side,” and it was there before, but you’ve got no proof.
Ann: Exactly. I like to treat people as I want to be treated. One of my values is integrity. So I would never ever try to pull a fast one.
But as you say, not everybody’s like that. A lot of these hire companies, the hire doesn’t make them any money. It’s trying to recover the damage. It’s trying to say that the tyres were better, you know what I mean?
Darren: Last time I rented a car, it was from Enterprise, and I don’t want to slate them off or anything, but the guy giving me the car probably asked me four or five times about the insurance for the car that they wanted me to take out.
Saying that if I didn’t take that insurance out, and it had so much of a scratch on it, it was like £500 excess it’s going to cost me.
“It’s only £120 for the insurance.” I don’t want it. I don’t need it. And they were so forceful with it. That’s clearly where they make their money. That’s their upsell. That’s where they get their commission, getting people to buy those little extras.
It was really off-putting. Made me not want to do it again.
Ann: I was lucky enough to have a self hire policy, that’s what it was called. I didn’t even have to go to the insurance company every time. I just did the hire.
I did all the checks, like a money laundering check. I had to check you are who you say you are. I had to check your driving licence.
That bit was all fine really.
If you were not a lawyer and reading all the terms and conditions, you’d be like, “Oh my goodness, what am I getting myself into here?” It does sound quite frightening.
But bear in mind those terms and conditions are covering worst case scenario. So it’s not always like that. But you need it because it happens. So you need to be careful with it.
But as you say, the camper van’s gone now, until you decide to get another one in the future.
Darren: In the future, just for you, just for you, when you’re ready to quieten down.
But you are now working in events.
Ann: Yeah. Sort of events, to be honest.
I kind of consider myself like, and I know this is to purists like yourselves, I know you’ve obviously got your digital marketing agency and I have been to you guys for help, you are very good. Shout out to Emily and your team.
Darren: Let’s not shout out to Emily too much. She gets enough praise.
Ann: But I know it overlaps and they are different disciplines, but I kind of see myself as marketing and communications now.
And I kind of see myself as doing that for smaller businesses that don’t have the budget, basically.
So it’s coloured out because my major client is an events company in Scotland. So you are right, I’m in events, but I don’t see myself as specialising in that, I guess, but it is where a bit of expertise has arisen.
Darren: So what is it you do for them then, in terms of marketing?
Ann: In terms of marketing, it did start as purely being social media, social media writer and manager. But now I’m actually doing the marketing plan.
We’re looking at how do we get sponsorship. I do all the communications.
There’s always an athlete guide that goes out. I’m not saying I write it. Richard Rice, who’s the event director, but I make sure it’s all OK and it fits the brand.
I’m quite interested in branding, to make sure that things fit the brand and the brand voice.
I’ve written a couple of press releases. I’ve written some policies. We wrote an accessibility policy which we didn’t have, in terms of making sure that people with disabilities can access events, particularly swimming events.
There’s all of that. And then the marketing is just, how do we get more sales, that’s it in a nutshell, isn’t it?
Then obviously social media, the writing, just everything really, in terms of getting that message out.
Darren: In terms of getting more sales, what have you found to be the most effective that you’ve done, or they’ve put into practice?
Ann: I’m not going to sell myself very well here, but I think sometimes it is just about the reputation of the events, to be quite honest.
It’s almost like their friends are saying, “Oh I did the Ghost Swim event and it was amazing,” and that’s it.
So it’s just trying to convey that it’s a serious brand.
We’ve actually grown it quite a lot now. When I started, I think I started working with it back in 2021, just after the pandemic.
I can’t remember the exact figures, but at Loch Lomond, which is what we call the flagship swim, I think there was about six or seven hundred swimmers, and this year we had 1,100 or just about.
Darren: Wow.
Ann: So yeah, we’ve just, and I think it’s just constant, and if I’m going to do myself a favour, consistency. It’s consistency of posting, consistency of being on, making sure the website’s up to date, it looks good, the social media’s got the messages going out all the time.
We don’t have to be viral all the time, but you have to have good information, consistent branding, nice messages, great photos, which we’ve always got because we have got a great photographer. And I’m lucky enough now to have four years of great photographs to call on.
It’s just that consistency really.
Darren: Photographs is important, isn’t it? It’s so much easier to do social media and any sort of marketing if you’ve got great photographic images from the client themselves.
Ann: Definitely.
And I think it would be interesting to have this chat with you, because there’s a lot of stuff in the media recently about, well, is social media dead?
Are we actually using it as a social media? If you go on to Facebook for example, probably only 10% of the feed is from your friends, and most of it’s either adverts or BBC One plugging their show or the latest music artists plugging their singles.
It’s become much more of an entertainment platform.
That does make it harder for smaller brands that don’t have the budget to compete with, really.
So it’s a case of keeping up with it.
There’s a lot more scope now. We do have videos. I do try and get videos, and I try and put the amazing photos that we’ve got together as a slideshow to make it a video in a reel.
But it is tricky, and we just have to keep watching because social media has changed quite dramatically even since 2017, because 2017 I’m pretty sure people were reading it and now they don’t want to read it.
They want to continually evolve.
Darren: We find many businesses are using Facebook to promote their business by posting organic content on their pages, and for the most part it’s a complete waste of time because people aren’t seeing it, people aren’t reading it, people aren’t interacting with it.
Depending on the age demographic they’re going for as well, if it’s a younger demographic, then it’s even more of a waste of time because Facebook isn’t used by people that age.
They need to be using things like Snapchat and TikTok for that because that’s what people are using.
People are going to TikTok and searching now. Google isn’t being searched as much.
For the first time in history, Google searches are down because people are searching on TikTok, they’re searching on Instagram, they’re searching on AI, they’re searching on ChatGPT, they’re searching on Claude, that’s where they’re looking for things.
If businesses aren’t adapting to that, and they’re not using AI, if not to create content themselves, which I think is a bad use of AI, they should be the ones that are appearing in the searches when people are searching for it.
But this over reliance on Facebook, and doing what we’ve always done. “Oh, we’ll go to Facebook and we’ll post something on our Facebook page there.” That’s great.
Probably four or five people will see it. It’s a waste of time.
Ann: If I can buck the trend a little bit on this swim page in particular, we’re doing all right there because we actually have a real core of engaged fans.
Darren: Is it a page or is it a group?
Ann: It’s a page. It’s actually a big page, but I think because people come out of the events with a, you know, open water swimming does give you a buzz. It’s an adrenaline.
Darren: Oh yeah. If you’re posting pictures on it and it’s got people in it that are following the page, then yeah, they’ll engage with it and they’ll tag themselves in or they’ll share it with their friends because it’s them. That’s a great way to do it.
We’ve got a client that does race meets. So they do track days, they do marathons, that sort of thing, and they’re posting images all the time of all the athletes that are taking part in it and they’re being shared by them because it’s pictures of them.
That’s fine. That’s a good use of it.
It’s when other businesses do it that don’t have that community aspect and they’re just posting stuff on their page thinking this is going to get me business, this is going to get me enquiries. It really isn’t.
Unless you’ve got that big community aspect, which obviously the open water racing has, then it’s not going to work for most people.
Ann: Yeah, it is interesting. It’s just evolving.
So I suppose what I’m saying is maybe in my career, I’ve gone from civil servant to lawyer to entrepreneur, camper business owner, to marketing and communications.
Can I touch on this point, because this was something that exercised me quite a bit between 2019 and 2022.
I kept toying with the idea of getting a marketing qualification because having come from, I actually have been quite academic. I was quite a swot at school. I don’t mind admitting I loved school and I loved learning and I loved books.
You love a qualification, you love a certificate.
Darren: You do.
Ann: I do. I love being told I’m great, but doesn’t everyone?
So I toyed with the idea of getting a marketing qualification, and I was looking at the best ones to do an online part-time qualification. You just get lost in that, “Oh, is this really a good qualification to get? How do I know if this is any good?” Basically, without going back to uni.
So I ended up on events and didn’t do anything about it.
I was talking to a friend in my running group and she said, “You’re probably equating getting a qualification with being a lawyer, because obviously you do have to have a qualification for that.”
She said, “But if you’ve got the experience, what does it matter?” And I said, “You know what? You’re so right.”
Because in this day and age as well, you’ve got YouTube to help you through, Canva for people that don’t know, this is the graphic design tool. Most people probably do know and have heard of Canva.
I’m not artistically inclined at all. It’s the one subjective skill that I feel I lack for everything else.
I learned to use Canva by just sitting on YouTube. There’s so much stuff out there, isn’t there?
So I think, again, for anybody listening to this, career change, you don’t necessarily need a qualification.
It may be desirable, and I’m not saying I wouldn’t do something in the future, but I don’t think you need it.
Experience is just as important.
And here’s an interesting thing as well. I signed up last year to do a strength and conditioning course, because that’s where, that’s the big thing at the moment in fitness and it does help obviously to be stronger and try and prevent some injuries while you’re running.
I signed up for that last year but realised quite quickly that that’s nothing without the experience of actually doing it.
So for me, that’s a lesson, and I thought maybe I could pass it on. You don’t always need the qualification, and actually experience is just as important.
Darren: I agree. You don’t need qualifications unless it’s something you personally want to do because you want to have it for yourself because it’s something you want to see whether you can get it.
You certainly don’t need it.
My nephew went to university and did, I think it was a computer science degree, but he dropped out in the second year because he thought, “This is a waste of my time.”
He started a business in SharePoint for companies like NatWest and one of the big holiday booking companies. He built the whole basket for them.
He then sold that business. He’s got something like one and a half million. He’s now in Chicago and he’s setting up another business for that same company for America.
And he dropped out of university so he didn’t get a degree.
So yeah, you don’t need a degree to be successful. You don’t need a degree to say that you’re good at what you do.
And it comes to application, what you do with it, and the experience that you get.
When we’re recruiting for people, for example, people coming with degrees, just because they’ve got degrees doesn’t mean they’re any good at what they do.
It’s what have they done on their own back? What websites have they built? What marketing have they done? What social media have they worked on?
It’s all very well coming in saying, “Oh I’ve done a degree in computer science with a module on web design. I’m qualified to be a web designer.”
What websites have you built?
“Oh well, none because we didn’t do any on our course.”
Well, then you’re clearly not interested, are you? It’s clearly not for you.
So unless you physically want that certificate to stick on the wall, and if you do, that’s fine, some people love a certificate, but you don’t need it.
It’s not going to teach you anything really that you can’t get from your own experience and from online.
Ann: Definitely. So I just thought that might help people.
Given my story is about career change and I’ve already done one, two, three, possibly more. I’ve still got another 12 working years, so who knows.
Darren:
What’s the next career change that you’re going to do?
Ann: I don’t know. I was just watching social media now with interest, because if that changes then who knows what’s next really.
Bringing it back to where we came in with 10-year-old Ann. She really wants me to be a writer.
And I think, to get emotional, she does want me to be a writer, and she does owe it to me to explore that a bit more.
I don’t know where that’s going to take me. I think I need to get another book.
Darren: You still have that book that you wrote?
Ann: No, I don’t unfortunately. My mum was a terrible one for throwing things away.
Darren: Never throw stuff away.
Ann: I know. So I don’t have it.
I can picture it though, and I can picture all the time I spent writing it.
So I think the first step must be to get a blog going again.
And I’m going to state this on here so I actually do do it.
Perhaps get a Substack going and just get writing.
I don’t quite know, there is an element of time. I am already quite busy.
It’s quite interesting as well because everybody’s going on about having a plan and a five year plan and this, and you tell me to have a website and I don’t even have a website.
But the work has come in. I have had enough work to keep me going.
This year has been my most successful.
So I think also you don’t always need a plan. You just maybe need to keep your head down.
Darren: Speaking of not writing a plan, you mentioned getting a blog going and you want to do a book.
One way that you can do a book, and I know loads of people that have done this, if you set out to write a book, it’s quite daunting.
You say, “Right, I’m going to write 30,000, 40,000, 50,000 words on a book and I’m going to do so many words per day.” It’s really hard to do that and stick to it.
But if you’re writing a blog and you’re writing blogs every day on a particular subject, whatever it may be, I’ve seen people then take those blogs and form that into a book.
That is your book. It’s just much easier to write a 500-word blog or a 400-word blog once a week than it is to try and write a book.
Then you’ll find that everything you’ve written over the last year or the last two years, that’s a book. It just needs to be put together.
And I’ve seen lots of people do that and release it as a book and it works.
Ann: Right. OK. Always good advice.
So I do think I need to get the blog.
I had the blog and it was all about fitness and triathlon and open water swimming because I was getting into all of that at the time.
I spent a lot of this year doing a lot of reading.
I didn’t realise, when I was looking at when I actually bought that book so that I could tell you, I bought it in 2013.
So this career change has been festering for quite a while, and trying to find your actual purpose.
Listening to a whole lot of podcasts has really helped. There’s loads out there.
I was really surprised at the High Performance Podcast, how good it is. It’s almost like a little therapy.
The fact Rick Astley is on it, it’s going to be good.
Darren: You have to pick it carefully. There might be some people on there, but there’s been some really good episodes.
Ann: The one with Dame Judi Dench was really interesting. She’s not everybody’s cup of tea and she said a couple of slightly left field things at the beginning, but actually a lot of it was really interesting.
She’s in her 80s now, so she’s lived a life, so she’s got things to say.
And How To Fail by Elizabeth Day. That’s been, again, kind of that business of fear, like a lot of us, fear holds you back. It was the fear of, “Oh you liked my blog. Well, you’re going to have to try, aren’t you?”
Because that can hold you back from writing a book.
Who’s going to read a book that I’ve written?
It could hold you back from writing a blog.
It could hold you back from posting on social media.
Why should I post on social media? Who’s going to read what I’ve done?
It can hold you back from doing a podcast.
I know lots of people that would like to do a podcast, but they think, “Who’s going to listen to me?”
Darren: Yeah, people will. Everybody has something interesting to say. Everybody has something that’s inside them that’s worth getting out.
Ann: Definitely.
There was a quote as well. I can’t remember, I need to find a source of it and it will go on my blog as soon as I start it.
It might be Winston Churchill, but it was like, even if you set out to do something and nobody likes it, one person will be happy because you’ve done it.
I’m paraphrasing dramatically, but that’s it.
It’s kind of like, if I set this blog up, at least I’ll be happy. 10-year-old me will be happy.
So I don’t know.
Darren: You owe it to 10-year-old you. 10-year-old you is the most important person to you.
Ann: She definitely is.
So yeah, you got me thinking. That might be the last career change.
I had no idea.
I was just interested as well, and you’re obviously a social media expert, so it was interesting to see what you were thinking.
But it does look as if social media is just going to keep on evolving, so who knows in 12 years’ time.
Darren: Who can say? It might even be dead. AI might have something of its own that replaces it.
Ann: I’m not well versed enough to predict what’s happening, but it does seem to me that people really don’t want to post their lives online anymore, and it’ll just become another entertainment forum.
Everybody’s going about the decline of TV and people on their phones.
I reckon we’ve just replaced watching TV with being on our phones. We’re probably not spending dramatically more.
The argument is that phones are slightly more addictive than the TV, but if you’re watching a good TV programme, you’re just going to sit there, aren’t you? You’re not going to change.
So why is that different from being on your phone?
Darren: A lot of people now are dual screen. They’ll look at a TV programme and they’ll look at their phone at the same time. I try not to do that. I really try not to do that.
Ann: Willpower. Takes a lot of willpower not to do that.
Darren: Oh yeah. Even when you’re watching something you really enjoy, that you’ve looked forward to, you still find yourself, arm reaches out for your phone and just checks.
“I wonder what someone said on WhatsApp.”
Oh no. No. I’m watching this.
Ann: I must admit that’s the one thing. I still have my Twitter account, but I deleted the app.
I watched Celebrity Traitors last week and as soon as it finished, I thought I’d love to go to Twitter and see what everybody’s thinking. I really was.
That’s interesting to me because it’s kind of like, actually yeah, we are still interested in connecting with people and seeing what’s what.
I was watching on my own. Husband’s not interested, and obviously the kids are at uni.
So it’s kind of like, but I want to say about Alan and Paloma and all the rest of it.
Anyway, that’s a total aside.
We’re almost out of time, but you’ve got me thinking there now.
Darren: I’ve been thinking for a while I should delete Twitter because I use it less and less.
I’ve not tweeted for a very long time and whenever I look at Twitter I’m disappointed. It annoys me.
It’s either garbage, and Twitter’s algorithm from Elon Musk is deliberately showing you things that are going to annoy you because it wants to enrage you to respond. That’s how it’s working.
I just think what’s the point in having all this negativity in my life? Do I really want to open an app and see the latest comments from Piers Morgan and Tommy Robinson? Neither of which I follow, but that’s what I’m seeing anyway.
I’m going to delete it.
Ann: For me, it’s a shame though because before he took over, that’s where I met a lot of my running tribe.
I found a lot of people and they became friends in real life. I’m here to tell you that people that I met through it, it was called Run Chat UK, hashtag UK run chat, you just put that in and see what people are thinking.
They had a chat hour every Sunday and I met quite a lot of people and I met them in real life then because we meet up at races.
So for me that was the power of social media for good. It’s just a shame it’s become such a cesspit.
As you say, social media evolves, and Twitter has evolved into something that isn’t really useful anymore.
Darren: No, it’s not really relevant. Get rid.
Ann: I will. I will. I’m going to do it.
Darren: So Ann, anyone listening to this thinking, I’d love to get in contact with you. I’d love to talk to you about potentially renting out my own camper van, what advice you could give, or I’d like to talk to you about social media.
What’s the best way they can get in touch with you?
Ann: I think at the moment probably on my Instagram, which is not the most professional because it’s anc88 is the handle on Instagram.
Darren: We’ll pop a link to that below the podcast.
Ann: Yeah, we can do that.
And I’ll send you the links to, I’ll send you the details of the books.
There’s also a book, because initially having the camper van business wasn’t enough on its own, so I did other bits and pieces. That’s what you call a portfolio career.
There’s a quite good book on that as well.
So again, for people, if they want to take away, it’s quite an interesting book to help you build that.
Some people might be thinking, build a side hustle before you leave the main job. So you could think about that as well.
So yes, on Instagram. We’ll give you my handle.
Darren: All right. We’ll pop the links to the books that you mentioned below the podcast as well.
So anybody listening, look in the show notes on iTunes or Spotify. If you’re on YouTube, then scroll down. It’s in the description below the video.
Ann, thank you very much for being on the podcast. I’ve loved hearing how you’ve gone from legal eagle to camper hippie to social media practitioner. It’s been great.
Ann: Thank you.
More about Ann:
Ann Currie is a former solicitor who made a bold career shift in search of a happier, more balanced working life. After nearly 20 years in law, she left the profession following burnout and went on to build her own camper van rental business, using it as a practical way to learn marketing, websites, and social media from the ground up. Ann now works in marketing and communications, primarily supporting smaller businesses and events that do not have in-house teams or large budgets, bringing a strong focus on clarity, consistency, accessibility, and brand voice.
You can connect with Ann here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ann-currie-a9b23b33/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ann.currie88/?hl=en
Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ann.currie88/
About your host:
Darren has worked within digital marketing since the last century, and was the first in-house web designer for video games retailer GAME in the UK, known as Electronics Boutique in the States. After co-founding his own agency, Engage Web, in 2009, Darren has worked with clients around the world, including Australia, Canada and the USA.
iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/engaging-marketeer/id1612454837
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenjamieson/
Engaging Marketeer: https://engagingmarketeer.com
Engage Web: https://www.engageweb.co.uk
