Rebuilding my business, gently.

Growing in a slower, more sustainable way for the season of life I am in.

I have a beautiful, clear vision of where I am going, what I want to create, who I want to support and inspire, that fills me with excitement every day. I feel into it in meditation, write about it in my journal, think it through on my daily dog walks and chat about it with a few close friends.

Some days it feels daunting and I sometimes doubt I can do it but I always remind myself that I wouldn’t have the vision and the dream or the desire and the inner compass showing me the way, if it wasn’t for me. On other days it’s all I want to do and I am so full of energy and excitement that I feel unstoppable.

However, right now I’m at the beginning of my first year as a single woman since 2004, grieving the loss of my marriage and the future I thought I had, and I am solo parenting my four children for 80% of the time. Plus I’m also in the 5th year of 6 of my part-time psychology degree. It’s a lot!

So, I am learning to rebuild my business gently, with a whole lot of grace and self-compassion, sprinkled with joy and delight for all the small wins and little jumps forward. It’s a really beautiful place to be and I know I’m growing as a business owner in new, magical ways, even at this slower pace.

As I mentioned in a post last month, I want to share this journey with you, to both keep me accountable and hopefully inspire you too.

In January, I had two goals.

- to double my paid Substack subscribers on Flowing Through The Year (I now have 34, which I appreciate is still really small but it’s growth and it’s achieving the goal I set for myself). Thank you if you are one of these people!

- to launch a new online course to run in February. I am delighted to say this started yesterday and I have students enrolled on it. You can still join! I’ve embraced using a new teaching platform for this, which feels good too. I used to run online courses on a platform that my husband/ex (still struggling to know how to refer to him….I’ll work this out in time!) built from scratch before all these learning platforms were a thing. It feels empowering to be doing everything myself this time and learning new things as I go.

I have a third of the number of enrolments I was hoping for but that’s okay. It’s a start! And it’s taught me the importance of growing my email list again, re-engaging my old audience and finding new people. Paying attention to what people really want and need from me. Being a lot more intentional with my social media and planning further ahead too.

It feels really positive to be here taking small steps, celebrating the wins and planning the next moves. I’m proud of myself and I’m so happy and grateful to be able to share this journey with you. Thank you!