If I asked you right now, “Is your revenue goal high enough to pay yourself…
In July 2025 someone I loved dearly had died. My entire world fell apart and I experienced the worst grief I’ve had to date. But as a solo business owner I felt the pressure to continue so I did. The very next morning I got up and went to a networking event and then I had the first goal-setting and planning session with a brand new 1:1 mentoring client. Whilst my world was falling apart behind the scenes and I was having the darkest year of my life I continued to show up for my clients, and with my marketing, as if everything was normal.
A year on I now feel in a place to reflect. I’m a lifelong learner and you can learn from everything if you look for the lessons. The last year taught me so much personally and professionally. And the reality is so many business owners will have to deal with significant grief in their life, but it’s not something that is spoken about much. So I decided that now I’m not in the “thick of it” to reflect on what happened, what I learnt and what changes I’ll be making forward. Even if reading this helps one business owner who is grieving feel better, or helps one business owner shift their business so they are better placed for dealing with grief then it will be worth it.
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A YEAR ON: REFLECTING ON RUNNING A BUSINESS WHILE GRIEVING
DURING THE FIRST FEW MONTHS
For the first time ever I didn’t want to do my marketing
I started my business in 2018 and for all of that time I’ve always been someone who has enjoyed, and been consistent, at marketing their business. I have a weekly marketing schedule that I follow and as someone who prides myself on walking my talk I’ve been ultra consistent. However, now for the first time I didn’t want to market my business. Blogging every week, sending multiple emails and posting every day on social media for the first time ever felt heavy. Did I stick to my schedule? Of course, I did. But did it give me a new perspective? Absolutely.
As someone who helps business owners with their marketing I’ll admit that previously I didn’t really understand why someone wouldn’t be actively marketing their business, especially if they were trying to grow their business. To me if you want to make more sales and to make more money then you should concentrate on marketing your business the best way possible. And I just couldn’t understand why people would know they need to do more marketing, but not do it. And I never really understood people who found marketing hardwork and a necessary evil. But now I do. And that has made me look at marketing differently and now I’m even more passionate about have marketing funnels in place so that even when you aren’t actively marketing your business marketing is still happening and sales are still coming in.
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It made me realise the clients I loved working with and the ones I didn’t
I often tell business owners when they are trying to decide whether to work with someone of not, they should consider if they were fully booked would they still want to work with this person? If the answer is yes – go for it. If the answer is no – then it should be a no. Well, grief did a great job at revealing to me those clients I really loved working with and those I didn’t. Now I’ll be asking myself “If I was grieving would I still want to work with them”?
With lower levels of energy and enthusiasm, it quickly became evident who really lit me up and I was glad to jump on a call with or answer their messages in Voxer, versus those where if felt like hard work. It was during this time that I realised how important it was for me to work with business owners who have big goals – and that they weren’t just dreamers, but were doers. This meant I started to change my messaging to focus on business growth, as that’s what really lights me up.
I had no resilience
As a business owner, you need to resilience. You’ll get knocked down and you’ve got to get back up. I would say I’m fairly resilient, but whilst grieving I realised I just had no resilience. I’d have a sales call, the person would say they wouldn’t want to work with me, and it would feel so personal (whereas previously it wouldn’t). A bad month sales-wise felt horrendous. Even the back and forth of negotiating my speaker fees felt hard. I would get knocked down and rather than bouncing back it. Selling was hard. Negotiating was hard. And as a result my income from new business dropped.
MAKING CHANGES IN 2025
Moving into my ‘Soft Girl Era’
As 2025 rolled around I was super proud of myself for keeping the business running, but as part of my end of year reflection and new year planning I realised I needed to make some significant changes to my business. I’ve never been someone who has been against hard work. I don’t have a problem with hustling, but I started to question what if I took a different approach to business. I challenged myself to step into my ‘Soft Girl Era’ in business. This meant looking at ways to make things easier, which included:
💖 Not taking on task engines
💖 Embracing more evergreen marketing (less launches)
💖 Less overpreparing
💖 Reducing TIkTok from 7 times per week to 5 times per week (This would enable me to have social media free weekends)
💖 Focusing on monthly recurring revenue
💖 Look for ways to rinse and repeat
💖 Encourage repeat business – maximise lifetime client value
💖 Online over offline (Minimise travel unless it is for a paid speaking thing or an event I really want to go to)
💖 Recycle and repurpose
Essentially, I looked at everything in my business and would constantly ask “Is there a way this could be easier or simpler?”. As with any business that has been around for a while things can easily become overcomplicated. So streamlining and simplifying became my best friend. It felt weird at first, but the more I embraced looking at my business from this perspective the more opportunities I discovered.
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THE FUTURE
Making changes for next time
The sad reality is there will come a time when I’ll be running my business and grieving again. Sometimes the grieving won’t be as bad, but there may be a few times where it is as bad (or even worse). Knowing it isn’t a question of if, but when, means I’ll be making changes to the business to ensure that I’ve put myself in a better position. This includes actually thinking ahead of time what changes I will and won’t allow myself to make. For example, this time I carried on completely as normal but maybe next time I would give myself permission to hit pause and completely stop everything other than clients who are already working with me for example. Thinking about this ahead of time when I can think logically rather than emotionally will make a big difference.
Considering my own health
Dealing with a death also made me think about my own health. One of the reasons I originally wanted to have my own business was whilst being homebound after a knee operation I realised how vulnerable I was (at the time I had an office job in Central London that I needed to physically turn up for). That made me realise I needed a way to make money even if I couldn’t leave my home, which I have done. But now I have become very aware of how vulnerable I am because in order to make money I need to physically work. I’ve never been that interested in having a passive income source. I make small amounts through affiliate income, but now, I’ll thinking about developing additional income streams and setting myself a minimum monthly target so that I know in the future if I were to need to take a break I would still be able to make money.
Continue working towards building a business I truly love
Grieving made it so evident to me what I enjoyed about my business and what I didn’t. I’ll continue to refine my offer suite so that I love delivering all of my offerings (You can check out most of the ways you can work with me here). And I’ll also continue to ensure my messaging gets clearer and clearer, and my application process gets even more robust so that I only work with clients who I’m truly excited with. For me the focus is absolutely on doing work I love with people I like.
That’s it. You now know what my reflections were from running a business while grieving.
As I said at the beginning you can learn from every experience in life – good and bad. As someone who had always been full of energy for my business I never even considered there would be a time when I wouldn’t feel that way. Grieving totally took away my energy and enthusiasm, but this reflecting will mean my business will only be better in the future. Better for the good days and better for the bad days.
This is far from my usual blog post, but I hope you’ve found the read useful and it gives you permission to be kinder to yourself whilst grieving or encourages you to make changes in your business that will help should you find yourself grieving in the future.
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