s s e l h c e e p s e Th : h c a o c h c e spe one year on Catching up with Freelancer of the Year 2017, Luke Nicholson By Tristan Grove
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remember being on stage with 15 other people, all of them with really interesting, brilliant businesses. I didn’t think I stood a chance. Then my name was called, and I was in shock. I felt my legs carry me to the front of the stage, and my brain was just thinking ‘what on earth is going on?’ I was overwhelmed – somehow, I’d won! I was completely speechless…” The irony is not missed by speech and accent coach Luke Nicholson, who won the 2017 Freelancer of the Year Award. Now one year on, I caught up with him to find out what May/June 2018
he’s been up to since then. “Winning the award has brought me an enormous amount of recognition over the last year – not just from people in the media, but from clients too. “It’s been really nice to get a new student who I’ve never met before coming in and congratulating me on the award. Maybe because they’ve seen it on my website or maybe in an email or some other publicity.” Being Freelancer of the Year has also given Luke’s business, Improve your Accent, a serious boost “from an awareness point of view”.
He tells me: “It put me on the map, letting people know that a speech and accent coach actually exists.” Speech and accent coaching is not the type of job you get a brochure for on careers day at college or university. So why don’t we go back to the beginning: how did Luke get into this niche area? WHERE IT ALL STARTED Luke has always had a passion for languages and the spoken word. While studying German and Italian at the University of Birming15
