Do Less. Be More. Play Bigger.
Welcome to my blog
Selling the right things to the right people at the right time
How strategic are you being about what you sell to your clients? When you are struggling to attract enough reliable and predictable business, it can mean you do your best to stay flexible and open for any new work. It can feel that by offering a big menu of services,...
The Do’s and Don’t’s of Payment Plans
There are many good reasons to offer a payment plan to your customers, but there are also a lot of assumptions that many business owners make about how they go about offering them, particularly whether they ought to be charging their clients more for taking up the...
How can your business operate without you?
If you run a busy business, it’s easy to feel responsibility for not only getting new leads and winning over new clients, but also for delivering the work and all the admin tasks that go along with that. For most business owners I speak with, having a business operate...
No time to business plan? It may be that your brain is overloaded.
Are you an over-thinker? Does your brain only know how to solve short term tactical problems? One of the biggest barriers to growing my own business over the years hasn't been because I didn’t have enough clients, or good enough products, or even enough time; it's...
How to fire your client
It’s not nice, but it happens! No matter how good your selection process is for winning clients, you will find yourself working with someone who you don’t want to work with anymore. They may not be paying their invoices on time, or they are consistently late to...
The 3 simple rules for sustainable business growth
There are lots of ways of how to take your business to the next level, but having been working as a business coach for more than 15 years, there’s no doubt that the general theme to most business growth strategies and tactics is ‘how to have more’. This is why I...
How hanging out with safe people can hold your business back
Having people around you who support what you do is important; it can be a very lonely job running your own business. Being able to pick up the phone, meet up for a walk or coffee and talk about what’s been going on in your week with someone you trust and feel...
Why down-sell products rarely work
There’s plenty to think through when deciding if your new product idea is going to be worth investing your time, energy and money in. Is it something that your clients *really* want? What price should you charge? How do you go about marketing it? But there’s one...
Do we over-egg the life shit stuff?
We have the habit of overestimating the life shit that comes our way. And underestimating the power and influence we believe we already have. This was the hard truth that I was told yesterday by one of the world’s leading experts on mindset and women’s leadership. As...
How to trust yourself to make good decisions
Being able to make good decisions is one of the keys to adopting a CEO mindset and growing a successful business. But decision fatigue is real; the more decisions you have to make each day, your ability to make decisions becomes worse. We’re faced with thousands of...
Breaking the YES habit
Last week, I was writing about the difference between being a freelancer, business owner and CEO, and the phrase that seemed to get the biggest reaction was … “You may think you are a business owner, and call yourself a business owner, but your current work schedule...
Being CEO in your business
Wow, what a week! I’m writing this just as I come to the end of our first week of our next new Momentum planning cycle, which is always a high energy, back-to-back week of calls, and I wanted to share with you today my thoughts about being a CEO in your business....
How to write a business proposal that wins you the work
“Send me a proposal” When you’re ending a great sales call with your ideal client, these are the words you want to hear. You’re excited. They’re excited. You both just want to get started on working together. So why do so many of us grapple with writing a business...
How patient are you at winning over ‘pregnancy clients’?
I want to write to you today about patience. I’ve been staying with my mum since Thursday last week. She’s 81, incredibly independent and wants to stay this way for a long while yet. But she’s had another operation on her hip; to correct the one she had in 2019 which...
How and when to hire an Operations Manager for your small business
Having a good Virtual Assistant (VA) to support you in your business is an essential first step to building your support team and releasing yourself from the trap of being a busy freelancer. Not only does a good VA free you up from day-to-day admin tasks, they also...
Relearning Lessons: What was on repeat for 2021
It is said that the lessons we *really* need to learn in life, show up time and time again. We don’t learn it once and be done. Life has a way of circling back and giving us another experience or challenge to navigate to make sure we *really* get the lessons. Many...
The Big VAT Ceiling Problem (and how you can avoid getting stuck under it)
If you are struggling with the thought of VAT registration, you need to read this. Perhaps you have a fear of losing clients if you have to put your prices up 20%, or you simply don't know how to approach the whole situation. You can become VAT registered at any time,...
Your Dream Team: who do you need to hire to help you grow?
Do you believe that you are the one to do anything and everything in your business? In the first few months of start-up, there is no doubt that you do almost everything yourself. From answering your emails and sending out proposals and brochures, through to writing...
The Growth Ceilings: what to do when your business growth plateaus
Have you wondered why you are not making the progress that you thought you ought to be making by now? It doesn’t matter how much harder your work, how many more hours you put in or what money you throw at your marketing, there comes a point where your growth gets...
Energy tracking and how to achieve more, with less stress
Our work culture is not working for us anymore! For the past thirty years, our obsession with doing more in less time has exponentially increased. The access to the first home computers and the World Wide Web has opened us to an endless stream of technology to make us...
Shifting with the seasons; why we can’t stay in spring or summer all year
image Hi Karen Walking into my Plotting Shed this morning, there was a distinct chill in the air. For the first time this season, I shuddered and realised it was time for ceremonial switching on of the wall heater. I love the shift in seasons. It reminds me that...
How our fears can be our greatest strengths
Back in 2017 ... those pre-covid days of being able to attend conferences with hundreds of other people! ... I had spent an incredible weekend at the One Woman Conference. There were 400+ women at this event and I had the honour of being invited up on the stage as one...
How to start your week off right
There's absolutely no doubt, that what you do on a Monday morning sets the tone for the rest of the week. And often the weeks proceeding. I've learned the hard way. If I start my week faffing about and scrolling through social feeds, the rest of my week will follow in...
Happy Revenue (and why ‘get more clients’ isn’t always the answer to growing your business)
"Get More Clients!" It’s the message that many marketers want you to hear. Making money is, of course, an important function of your business but when the numbers in your bank account may feel smaller than you think they should be, money has this habit of taking up...
The Profitability Sweet Spot: a simple pricing formula to use with your next proposal or programme
The problem with selling services, such as coaching, advice and consulting time, is that it’s very easy to get caught up with how much you ought to be charging. Emotional stories such as “I’m not that worth that much” or “There’s no way my clients will pay that” whip...
The 3 onboarding documents to help you set a clear, professional working relationship with new clients
I’m writing about boundaries this month; those often invisible lines that we need to have to protect and fuel our time and energy. Last week I wrote about the 4 work boundaries to increasing profitability and avoiding burnout. This week, I want to shine the light on...
The top 4 work boundaries to increasing profitability and avoiding burnout
As a woman of a certain age, I’ve grown wise to the fact that there are two things that are most precious to us. But too often we can spend our whole lives giving them away without a moment’s thought. When we have lots of these two things, we take them for granted....
Comfort and growth can’t co-exist: a one year reflection
This time last year, life, as we knew it, changed. As I sit here and reflect over the past year, and of course acknowledge the trauma that happened to so many, I am also in awe by how many people have shifted and grown their businesses. Comfort and growth can't...
Why health is the number one investment in your business
Fatigue, stress and hormone imbalances have become serious problems for many business owners, particularly those of us in our 40’s, 50’s and beyond. And it’s caused many to pull back and play small to protect themselves. When we feel exhausted, we can talk ourselves...
Money energy in your business: how to stop chasing pie-in-the-sky figures that burn you out
Your business instinct is far stronger than you give it credit for. However, if you are worn out and feeling frazzled (and hey, don’t we find ourselves at the end of our tethers most days right now!) it's easy to find yourself fire-fighting your way through your...
