There’s this fantasy about being self employed, where you work from home and never have to feel overwhelmed, or bored, or dissatisfied by your work ever again.

But like with most fantasies in life, the reality can look a little different.

Don’t get me wrong, I adore my business and the work I get to do each week. I feel grateful beyond words that this is the work I get to do in the world.

But I’ve also lost count of how many times I’ve found myself in a little bit of a funk throughout the past five years of working for myself too.

It’s so easy to make daily decisions on autopilot that don’t actually support us to find a whole lot of joy in our workdays, and sooner or later things can start to feel a little monotonous along the way.

And because we don’t have any co-workers or a boss to check in with it’s up to us to find a way to bring that spark of joy back into our days, to make working from home feel closer to that fantasy we used to dream so much about.

Here’s the thing: there will always be deadlines to meet, emails to reply to, taxes to file, the list could go on and on. But I learn time and time again that my best work happens when I prioritise making my workday as joyful as it can be, instead of just counting down until I can be done for the day.

How that looks like you for might be wildly different than it does for me, but I thought I’d share with you today five little things that are making a big difference to how I navigate my workdays at the moment.

Introducing Keep Going, You’re Doing Better Than You Think

A mini guided journal to remind you of how awesome you are…

Time and time again I see the pressure my clients put on themselves to be reaching new goals and milestones, to be keeping up with the pace of those around them, to be avoiding failure at all cost. And what I also see is how powerful it is for them to slow down a little and bear witness to everything they already have to be proud of, to how awesome they already are.

Because I find that it’s only when we start to really believe in ourselves that we’re then able to move forward with the courage and momentum that we need to keep going along the way.

So this mini guided journal is here to help you do exactly that, to bear witness to everything you already have to be proud of, to how awesome you already are. What you’ll find inside are ten journalling prompts to hold space for you to see that you’re not failing or falling behind, that instead you’re exactly where you’re meant to be right now and you’re oh so capable of moving forward in whatever direction you feel pulled to, too.

My biggest hope is that what you uncover in this guided journal can encourage and empower you to keep going, to know deep down in your soul that you are wildly capable of more than you even know.

I've talked a lot over the years about living and working in seasons.

About how some seasons are for rest, some are for experimenting, some are for staying the course, and others are for intentional hustle too. I'm a big believer in navigating the seasons of our lives with as much intention as we can, in leaning into our natural ebbs and flows and working with ourselves instead of against ourselves in this journey.

And after five years now of running my business and supporting hundreds of clients in theirs too I've seen over and and over again that there are specific types of seasons of business that we all can experience along the way.

Because business isn't linear.

It's messy and complicated and pretty wonderful at times too, but the more intentional we can be with the season that we're in the better we can support ourselves to thrive along the way too.

So let's dive into the eight season of business...

At the beginning of this year I realised that I couldn’t remember the last time I had given my website any TLC, and although it wasn’t technically causing any problems for my business I knew that it was time to refocus some of my energy back into my digital home.

And if you take a little look around you’ll see that things are looking a tiny bit different around here - nothing’s changed all that much, but a few tweaks here and there have left me feeling excited about this website again instead of it just feeling like an afterthought.

I’ve never invested in outside branding and website design, mostly because I really do enjoy doing this type of thing myself, and also because I’m a little bit of a control freak and it just doesn’t feel like an investment I want to make in my business right now either.

But there was one area of my branding where I was in need of some outside help and that’s why I booked in a shoot with the incredibly talented Sophie Carefull so that I could finally stop using the same old photo over and over again and actually show up and share a little more of myself online.

Sophie booked me for coaching a few years ago now and I fell in love with her work so I always knew when the time was right she would be the person I would choose.

I am oh so shy behind the camera but Sophie put me completely as ease and I can’t tell you how happy I am with the finished result. As soon as Sophie sent me the final set of photos over email I was itching to update my site, but I had a few decisions to make first.

So next on my list was to create a little branding moodboard, which I’ve shared above. I decided to keep my current colour palette and fonts, mostly because they still feel like a good fit for me and also because changing them would turn this mini brand refresh into a much bigger job. But I did give my logo a little refresh to something that felt a little more like me, and I pulled over some of my recent photos from Instagram so that I could see how my current visual style blended with the photos from Sophie too.

What I was left with is a little visual guide that I can refer back to whenever I need to reconnect to this side of my business, and it was also just such a great feeling to feel so settled in my visual style in this season of my work too.

The visual side of my business has never been in my comfort zone. My writing, my ideas, and my approach is always where I’ve felt most at home and the visual side has been something I’ve slowly developed and found my feet in over time. So to finally be at a place where I feel super settled feels so good.

If you’re itching to DIY a little brand refresh for yourself right now too here are the biggest lessons I’ve learned over the years:

There’s a collection of short stories that I’m itching to write this year.

I have them outlined, their worlds slowly coming to life in my mind.

But I can so easily get in my own way when it comes to personal creative projects, especially where writing is concerned.

Because what if they’re terrible?

What if I don’t have the skills to craft a story and bring a new world to life through my imagination?

Over and over again I ask myself these unhelpful questions and bringing these stories of mine to life inches further and further away.

So this past week I’ve been reminding myself of something that I held onto when I first started my business: good enough can come later.

I remind my clients of this often too.

When they’re starting a new blog, exploring a new creative craft, or maybe launching a new service or offering in their business.

Because good enough can only come if we get stuck in and do the work to actually become awesome at what we do.

That’s why working with beta clients, investing in further learning, and having introductory pricing can be so valuable when we’re first getting started in our business.

Because if we sit around and wait to be good enough we’ll never actually get there.

After four years now of running my own business, I’ve had to slowly find a home within the job role of marketer.

It’s the role that I know so many of us can struggle with - we dream of doing the work we want to do in the world, but rarely do we dream of having to stand on our soapbox and sell it.

But I’ve found that marketing can actually be a very intentional, simple, and purposeful part of your business, and sometimes it can even be a little fun too.

Because at the heart of marketing, for me, is just human connection.

It’s bridging the gap between your business, your services and your products, and the clients and customers whose lives your work will have a positive impact in. 

Where I see a lot of my clients get stuck is when they over-complicate their marketing strategy. When they focus on all of the bells and whistles - the sales funnels, the opt-ins, the social media campaigns - and forget to focus on connection and communication first. 

Because if you build a business that resonates and connects with the people you’re here to serve, and nurture those relationships every step of the way, that connection ends up doing almost all of the selling for you. 

You don’t have to stand on your soapbox and scream at uninterested passers-by, because your dream clients and customers are already right there paying attention to your work. 

So today I want to share with you my own marketing philosophy, in the hopes that it can hold space for you to explore how you can approach your marketing with more intention, simplicity, and purpose moving forward too. 

I had lunch with an internet-friend-turned-real-life-friend a few weeks back.

I'd recently sent out a Weekly Letter sharing why I'm not focusing on increasing my income right now in my business, and she asked why I didn't include actual figures in the email.

The truth was, that email was all about not comparing our own financial goals to anyone else's and I didn't see the point in sharing another number for anyone to measure themselves against. 

Though, as anyone in my real life will tell you, I'm a complete open book so I told her my number and she was a little shocked.

Why, I asked?

She shared that she just guessed it would be around half that amount, considering how honest I am about how much time I take off each year and how I don't work a typical 40 hour workweek. 

And it got me thinking about how much we've really internalised the lie that we have to work every hour under the sun to be able to make a sustainable income in our business. 

Because here's the thing:

Last year I wrote a book.

A mini book, less than 50 pages long, called Nobody Is Going To Do Your Business (Or Your Life) For You: & Other Stories, which is a collection of essays on the lessons I've learned about bridging the gap between where we are now and where we truly want to be in our creative work and life.

If you're subscribed to my Weekly Letters, you might remember me sharing it with you last November and you might have already read it too. I also recorded an audiobook to accompany it, and for this new season of Make It Happen I'm sharing that audiobook with you in the hopes it can be of some support and encouragement for you in your creative work and life right now. 

You can dive into each episode of this new season of the show below, and you can subscribe to the show and listen along through iTunes this way too. 

A couple of weeks ago I booked my very last six month coaching spot for the year, which means I'm now fully booked for the next seven months ahead in my business.

It feels a little crazy to write this down - it's taken a little while for it to sink in, and the gratitude I feel for the fact that I continue to be able to make a sustainable living from doing awesome work with such incredible creative humans is more than I know how to put into words.

As service based creative business owners, being "booked out" can be talked about like this elusive status that defines your success as a business owner. There are so many articles, courses, and classes out there teaching you formulas and strategies for filling up your client schedule that it can be a little overwhelming, because in reality being "booked out" isn't actually the goal - doing awesome work with the people you're here to serve and running a business that is financially thriving and sustainable is. Being booked out can just help facilitate that.

Here's why I like to book up my client schedule in advance:

No more feast and famine

Booking clients in advance means that you can break out of the feast and famine cycle in your business - you're no longer living month to month because you're booking out client projects in your schedule, taking payments in advance, and you're able to project and manage your income with more clarity and ease along the way.

More control over your time and schedule

Booking and planning your client work in advance means that you can take a more birds-eye view of your schedule - you can book out work in advance in your calendar, build in time to rest and take a break, and just feel more in control of your workload moving forward.

Peace of mind

More than anything, booking clients in advance can just give you a whole lot of peace of mind and ease that anxiety that we can navigate as business owners - you know that you have work booked in for the foreseeable future, you know that you have enough interest in your services, and you can focus more on doing the work than worrying about where the next client is coming from too.

This is now my fourth year of running my coaching business and my fourth year of being booked out in advance, so I want to share with you today the biggest lessons I've learned along the way in the hopes of them being of some encouragement and insight for you in your own journey too.