2025 Review: 10 lessons from starting my business

This one is more of a personal blog today as I’m reflecting back on my first year. There are no numbers, no big ‘showey’ announcements, just an honest look at everything that happened in some short (sometimes fun) stories that might help you too.

Hope you enjoy!

1. I started off too ‘stiff’ and polished

I proudly launched my brand on social media nearly exactly a year ago in January 2025, but I made many mistakes.

Firstly I tried going faceless after a year of MLM schemes using this strategy (IYKYK), then I kept a very strict visual structure to my grid (a chessboard essentially) and my writing style pitched me as a team of people when it was just me with a wholly corporate tone (that I’d clearly carried from my consultancy career).

It was no wonder that I wasn’t connecting with anybody - there was nothing warm or inviting about my online presence and truthfully, I was writing as if my audience already knew what I was talking about (which they didn’t!)

So, I began to work with my fear of ‘showing up’ online by sharing more about my personal life and speaking directly to the camera and found it better than I thought. Now I won’t be a hypocrite when telling clients to do the same to help their businesses!

Having now improved this, I have kept my old posts rather than deleting them so that my clients can see my own transformation and honesty from where I started.

2. “Start rogue.”

This was advice gratefully received from other business owners/friends. A messy start is better than no start at all and there’s no point in perfectionism - your audience won’t know if something is ‘perfect’ or how it was supposed to be, they’ll simply tell you what you NEED to know. For example, if there are any buttons not working on your website.

I was a planner by nature - I thought that I shouldn’t launch something until it was all completely done and ready. But you can. You do just enough to get started and then figure it out/cross bridges as you get to them.

For example, I knew I wanted my business name as it was close to my heart. So I registered the company and bought my domain, months before actually launching a website.

I’ve been working on something recently where I originally said “This is something I’d love to try and do at some point in 2026.” Nope. It got booked and done in 2025, ready to now launch to the world in 2026 (stay tuned!)

Preparation is fear disguised as strategy. My best wins and moves this year have come from quick spontaneous actions and decision making.

3. Work with your nervous system

One of my favourite things I did this year was my brand photoshoot in February (even if the photos were used months later).

I left cameras filming to capture natural B-roll footage of me around the photoshoot in between takes, but when I came to edit it I realised I couldn’t use it. My eyes twitched like crazy from living with chronic stress, no fault at all of my lovely photographer who I really connected with!

The B-roll was disappointing but I still managed to do my photoshoot. The lesson here was to work with the circumstances you have.

Knowing about this made me take advantage of the times when I felt truly calm and relaxed, such as a day writing in a coffee shop in a new town filled with plants - unsurprisingly the ideas and stories just kept on flowing to me on this day!

It was also a game changer moving house this year. I started out hunched over a tiny dining room table and a laptop in a noisy city centre studio apartment before moving out to a village in the countryside - as soon as I had more space, rooms, country roads to take walks in and a full office setup, it did help to declutter my mind a lot. Your environment genuinely has an impact.

The final thing here is that rest is a non-negotiable. Burnout isn’t pretty (take it from me.)

4. Stay true to yourself and your morals

In March I was out enjoying lunch with friends in Hickory’s in Chester (IYKYK). Sun was shining, a nice pale Rose in hand, it was a lovely afternoon.

I was asked by my friend’s husband if I did ads (meaning paid ads) as a service. Truthfully I don’t use them myself and so I don’t offer services in anything that I don’t know about or have never tried out.

He would have been my first client but I felt really disingenuous to do some quick crash-course training (that he could do himself) then muddle together a strategy for him, so I didn’t do it.

Instead I will signpost clients to other business owners I know of or have been recommended for services that I don’t offer. This is an industry where you need to keep your integrity.

5. Trust your gut - know when to walk away and say ‘No’

This year I’ve been incredibly fortunate to be introduced to and work with multiple other business owners, who I would undoubtedly refer forward. I met them mostly through existing contacts because ‘good people know good people’.

In May this year, I had a not so great experience with a coach I’d found on Instagram.

They showed unprofessionalism at multiple touchpoints (my partner asked me if I thought I’d been scammed at one point…)

But in spite of this, I was still ignoring my gut and thinking of investing around £1,500 (!!!) thinking that the coaching would transform my mindset and confidence in being a business owner and promoting my services. I would describe myself as a bit lost and stuck back at that time.

Sometimes you need a big, bold lightbulb moment to show you someone’s true colours, I often say this to my friends for comfort when they beat themselves up for going back to exes multiple times before hitting realisation.

The lightbulb moment came when this coach posted a reel slating my struggles that I had shared with them in my 1:1 with them. It was in a true ‘mean girl’ tone.

That was the cherry on top of the cake that decided I would not work with them. I was horrified and would like to think I would never betray a client’s trust by sharing what they tell me in their discovery call, unless of course I have their consent and am telling a great story about their success or transformation from this point.

Anyway about five months pass when I’m on a call with a mutual contact who casually begins to tell me about this coach (I recognised who they were talking about from a key statistic) and how they had described themselves as ‘dead’ and getting no bookings/dropping their prices despite having tens of thousands of followers.

This led to me to remember one of my favourite quotes from my beloved sixth form tutor: “Karma’s only a b****h if you are.” (Food for thought if they ever read this.)

6. Pull back to spring forward, timing is everything

As previously mentioned, I think I launched too soon when everything was clunky and unclear and I was in the wrong mindset.

I had a huge menu of free PDF downloads (that sit in the bottom of your inbox, let’s be honest) and found a message request one day where someone had messaged me (with kindness) saying that they couldn’t figure out what it was that I did.

I stripped it all back/burnt it to the ground/whatever you want to call it and completely started over in the middle of the year. Reset. Refocus. Relaunch. With the help of a fellow content strategist I changed my brand identity, service offerings, names, copy, everything.

But rather than reviewing, the transformation on my mindset and confidence was the core of rebirthing it all. It takes a lot of patience, faith and confidence to keep building something for a year when you’re not seeing much profit yet. I owe a heck of a lot to her, and still have a note on my desk of what she said to me as we parted:

“You’re so creative! You know exactly what you’re doing, just take your time and enjoy the process. <3”

I realised I was playing too small, too scared to show up and to actually ask to be paid for my knowledge and experience. My whole ideal client changed as soon as I did deeper identity work, increased my confidence massively and reminded myself exactly what it means to be a badass.

(If you ever want to hear the story about how badassery was born, please join my email list and I’ll tell it to you…)

During this time I didn’t post for months, alongside all of the new services I was putting together it was one of the busiest summers I’ve ever had life-wise. It was luckily good things, but it was a LOT and I’m allowed to say that.

Despite radio silence on my socials (not recommended) I was pleased to see that I was still gaining new followers (genuine business owners, I check this out) even though I wasn’t actively posting, I thought that counted for a lot. Especially when a couple of them messaged me to tell me that they loved my (old) content.

7. Get comfortable with outsourcing

With great power (owning a business) comes great responsibility. Some of my favourite quotes I have ever heard from other business owners that I admire are:

“I tick one thing off my to-do list, then another ten pop up. Constantly” - Claire Boon, Bouquet & Bells.

“As a business owner something will always be on fire. Probably you.” - Lewis Kemp, Lightbulb Media.

I have learned with a lot of things in life that you either pay with your time or your money. Another business owner I really admire told me that they paid for a cleaner so that they could dedicate that time to running their business. I think it’s a smart move.

Building a business around a 9-5 isn’t for the weak, so after a lot of conversations and internal battle I decided to outsource the initial build of my website.

I chose the platform, designed the page structure, provided copy and content along with full brand guidelines. My web developer kept on telling me how easy and fast I’d made his job by knowing exactly what I wanted, and repeatedly told me that I knew exactly how to do all of it myself.

The truth is, yes I do know. I’ve been doing additions and maintenance since.

But in paying him I got my website built in a few months when I would have done it in about two years and delayed my business starting up with the way I was going. I’m now more comfortable in saying that I’m one person and if you just can’t do it all, then it’s absolutely fine to outsource.

In December I have worked on something truly exciting that I can’t wait to share, but Christmas adds a lot of pressure onto an already busy life (especially when you’re hosting…) I nearly outsourced a service again to gain my time back, but managed to find the time to do it myself due to some cancelled plans. Phew!

I’ve added services for this scenario where my clients scream at me “just do it for me!!!” (Hopefully with a ‘please’ in there somewhere.)

8. Focus on the numbers that matter, THAT’S strategy

The coach who shall not be named from #5 told me exactly how to gain 10,000 followers on Instagram by posting every single day.

This wasn’t right for me (who was already burnt out at the time), nor was it aligned with my business goals (if 10,000 people each asked me for a discovery call it would take me YEARS to fulfil just the calls, never mind any work for them!)

I tell all my clients that followers do not equal customers (also demonstrated in #5…) and the age old truth, quality is better than quantity. A few genuine gold-dust pieces of content per week will do so much more for you than posting each day for the sake of it.

This also means that you don’t need to jump onto trends unless they actually help you - when I was in Sri Lanka in April I saw an influx of AI-generated dolls of business owners on my feed. I could have panicked and made my own in the middle of my vacation to ‘fit in’ and follow the trend, but chose not to because for me it wasn’t necessary for my business goals or to disrupt my holiday.

Strategy means aligning your marketing with your business goals, which may not actually be follower growth. Out of ten new followers, you may only need ONE to become a paying customer. I use the saying “you only need ONE” a lot to friends when they’re going for a new job interview or a date.

9. Stay adaptable and ready to move

I started out with all of my products and marketing within one platform when I first launched. It was free, lightweight and it did the job but the longer term plan was to move away from it when I had my own website.

One day I noticed that the feature for product reviews was gone without any warning or communication so I emailed their support team. They told me that it was gone and to add reviews for my products I needed to insert text or images myself. I felt like this took away some trust and verification that a customer had genuinely wrote a review, so felt disappointed. This kickstarted me to move away from it quicker than I thought I would have done.

But having spoken to business owners who survived a pandemic and brought their businesses out of the other side of it, one thing I have learned is that you must stay adaptable and ready to move/innovate/update your terms at all times.

10. Accept that you’ll always be learning. Actually, enjoy it!

On the subject of quick pivoting, I have been asked why I have created a DIY guide for each service area except for social media.

The answer to that is if I tried to create one then it would become a full time job keeping it updated with the number of features tested and rolled out by social media platforms! I give my kudos to other creators I’ve seen who do try to create learning materials and keep up with this eg. the ones who quickly produce guides in response to Instagram updates.

What I have created is more evergreen knowledge that I’ve gathered over the years, needing minimal updates such as when a new law comes out or when I notice that some practices or tools are generally moving on.

An example was choosing to add AI prompts into all of the guides - they didn’t have them when I first started, but as I’ve used AI progressively more for strategy it felt right to pass the knowledge on to my customers who buy them too.

My lesson here is acceptance. Acceptance that in this industry, you will always be learning. I don’t feel like you can claim to be an expert unless you’re making the conscious effort to keep yourself up to date on things and polishing your skills.

I follow trends online (this does keep me chronically on my phone), but it’s worth it and a necessity.

I am always following people who inspire me, reading their resources and joining onto their webinars (even if it’s on a topic I already know about - you never know if they may just teach you one new thing about it!)

I also love to keep on refreshing my knowledge with the odd online course. Does it cost money? Sometimes, but the investment is worth it because I know I’m showing up with the (up-to-date) knowledge and experience that my clients are paying me for.

I was so impressed with a new strategy I learned recently that I even ended up squeezing in launching a whole new service area! I think it’s an underrated game changer for clients to open their minds to if they want local leads.

Don’t just talk the talk, but walk the walk too. (I think that’s the saying…)

It’s been a real ‘starting up and learning’ sort of year, but it’s set the foundations where I’m really looking forward to working with some more clients in 2026.

Let me know if you can relate to any of these!

Wishing you all a wonderful Christmas and New Year,

Siân x