Looking to start 2026 with more calm and clarity in your business? I currently have spaces for 1:1 mentoring starting in January, and would love to support you.

Discover 1:1 mentoring

Last week I wrote how I made my business more spacious by adding asynchronous offers to it. I love creating courses and programmes—it allows me to use my brain in a different way than in my 1:1 mentoring, and express my creativity differently.

You might want to add more space (and financial sustainability) to your business too. In this post, I share how to get started with self-led offers in your business, and how to use what you know and do already. And, I’ve created a workshop guiding you through creating self-led offers, from start to finish, just for you as paid subscribers as well.

Getting started with self-led offers

Self-led offers can take many shapes and forms, from downloadables like e-books, patterns and templates, to courses with video and audio. Simply put, creating them happens in four steps: deciding on a topic, picking a format, creating the content and then hosting and selling your offer.

Picking a topic can feel daunting—these four questions can help you decide.

Deciding on a topic

Question 1: What complements your business?

Some self-led options might be really obvious for your business (though no less valuable!).

If you’re a life coach, a self-led course on goal setting can complement your 1:1 work nicely. If you have a fabric or wool business, a pattern is a great addition. If you run a stationary business, an e-book on creating a journaling habit makes sense. As a yoga teacher, you could offer an email series with 10 days of short recorded yoga classes.

If you find it hard to think of something, try taking your vision and values of your business as a starting point. If you have a candle business and your vision is for people to create comfortable, sustainable homes, what else could contribute to that? Can you create a mini-course around decluttering, thrifting or otherwise designing that comfortable, sustainable home?

What can’t you stop talking about?

Question 2: What do you find yourself talking about a lot?

This is how my course Substack for small business owners was born. After digging into Substack for 6+ months before making the move myself, I found myself explaining Substack to so many people that a course became like a natural thing to create.

Question 3: What are your clients and customers curious about?

Supporting many clients with their newsletters led to Small business newsletter magic. And redesigning my own marketing and sharing my experience with others, led to my gentle marketing programme Grow.

Are your clients and customers curious about creating their own daily art practice? Would they love to get into reflection and journaling more? Do they want to discover their own style and refresh their house decor?

Question 4: What is obvious to you—but not to others?

If you’ve been doing something for a while, it might be completely obvious to you.

You’ve designed so many cards for weddings and births, that it’s not even special to you anymore. You’ve figured out how to use a piece of software or a tool on your own, so you think everyone else will figure this out too.

Sharing your skills and experience is valuable.

But that’s not the case—and, taking a course by someone who is knowledgeable is often a much more pleasant process than having to figure everything out yourself.

Don’t worry that you’ll put yourself out of business.

Just because you’re offering a series of recorded yoga classes, doesn’t mean people won’t attend your live classes. Just because you’re helping people to design their own cards, doesn’t mean they’ll never book you.

In fact, they’re more likely to spend more money with you if they’ve bought a self-led product before.

You won’t put yourself out of business. Self-led offers create more business.

One of my former clients got to know me through my Substack-course. When she started watching it, she knew she wanted to book a 1:1 mentoring package. She loved how I explained things, how I organised the course, as well as the knowledge I was sharing. And we ended up working together for over two years, on her own Substack and much more.

Do you already use self-led products in your business? Would you like to? What would you like to add? Leave a comment to join the conversation.

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That feeling of guilt because you’re not working 8 hours a day?

Telling yourself that you can’t charge (more) because you enjoy what you do so much—and even feel like you would do it if you weren’t getting paid for it?

Not allowing yourself to rest until you’ve worked “enough”?

All of these are stories that are keeping you from running the business you crave.

In this month’s workshop I walk you through four myths about work that you might hold, and invite you to explore your own. We’ll then reframe them and replace them by stories that do serve you, your needs, your business and your life.

📌 Have more questions about running a slow, gentle and profitable business? Submit them for this quarter’s mini-mastermind using the link at the bottom of this email, and I’ll answer them at the end of the summer.

The workshop

This month’s workshop will inspire and encourage you to create your own rules about business, and challenge those old stories whenever they crop up.

At the end of this workshop, you’ll feel more confident in the beliefs about work that you want to hold, and how these shape and support you, your life and your business.

Take a look at the trailer 📽️

📌 Watch the workshop by becoming a paid subscriber of Female Owned.

Not yet a paid subscriber? Upgrade your subscription to a monthly or annual paid subscription and dive into this workshop and all the other small business workshops. You’ll also become part of our lovely gentle community with the monthly Accountability Club, the quarterly mini-mastermind and seasonal behind-the-scenes posts.

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Lead magnets, or freebies, are an excellent way of growing your newsletter list or waitlist, and even more so, of giving a taster of the kind of word you do. Nonetheless, many of the small business owners, freelancers and creatives I speak to struggle to think of the ‘right’ lead magnet, or wonder how to use it.

If that’s you, this workshop is for you.

📌 Have a question about lead magnets, or about another business topic? As a paid subscriber you can submit your questions to the quarterly mini-mastermind, which I’ll be writing at the end of this summer—scroll down for the link to submit your questions.

The workshop

This month’s workshop will inspire you to create lead magnets that are joyful and effective, give a good sense of the work you do and create connection and community.

At the end of this workshop, you will feel inspired about creating lead magnets that fit your business, and have a plan to start creating them.

Take a look at the trailer 📽️

📌 Watch the workshop by becoming a paid subscriber of Female Owned.

Not yet a paid subscriber? Upgrade your subscription to a monthly or annual paid subscription and dive into this workshop and all the other small business workshops. You’ll also become part of our lovely gentle community with the monthly Accountability Club, the quarterly mini-mastermind and seasonal behind-the-scenes posts.

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They’ve gotten less as my business started to grow, but certainly still show up from time to time. What I’ve learned is that fears and uncertainty will never go away—but we can put together a toolkit of resources and encouragements to help us when fear strikes. This is the kind of work I also do with clients, because the fear you might feel is felt by so many small business owners, freelancers and creatives too.

📌 Have a question about fears and uncertainties in business, or about another business topic? As a paid subscriber you can submit your questions to the quarterly mini-mastermind, which I’ll be writing at the end of this month—scroll down for the link to submit your questions.

The workshop

This month’s workshops will encourage you when you feel fear and uncertainty, will help you challenge the stories and support you to take gentle steps forward.

At the end of this workshop, you will feel encouraged and calmer about your business, and will be ready to take some really gentle steps to move forward.

📌 Watch the workshop by becoming a paid subscriber of Female Owned.

Not yet a paid subscriber? Upgrade your subscription to a monthly or annual paid subscription and dive into this workshop and all the other small business workshops. You’ll also become part of our lovely gentle community with the monthly Accountability Club, the quarterly mini-mastermind and seasonal behind-the-scenes posts.

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In the early years of my business, I absolutely felt uncomfortable about launching and sought out all the resources I could to do it ‘right’. If you’ve been with me for a while you can probably predict what happened: I quickly burnt-out on the plans I tried to follow, felt overwhelmed and pressured.

While I still find launching a lot, especially emotionally and mentally, I do feel like it’s getting easier. And that’s a good thing, because as a small business owner I have to launch from time to time, especially since I so much love to create courses and programmes.

I don’t have the secret to launching. But I have developed a way of launching that works for me. As requested by some of you, I’ll be coming back to the topic of launching and selling regularly in the rest of 2025. I won’t make every month’s workshop about launching and selling, but I do have these planned:

• getting clear on your offer + creating a launch/sales page;

• marketing your launch + types of sales emails;

• joyful ways of selling;

• the emotions of launching;

• creating + using lead magnets.

The workshop

This month’s workshop is all about creating a slow, gentle and profitable launch plan. I’ll help you clarify and shift your feelings around launching, make decisions that shape your launch and create a to-do list.

At the end of this workshop, you’ll have reframed your feelings about launching and will have created a broad outline of your launch plan.

📌 Watch the workshop by becoming a paid subscriber of Female Owned.

Not yet a paid subscriber? Upgrade your subscription to a monthly or annual paid subscription and dive into this workshop and all the other small business workshops. You’ll also become part of our lovely gentle community with the monthly Accountability Club, the quarterly mini-mastermind and seasonal behind-the-scenes posts.

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In other words, do these plans and the business as you’re running it, allow you to be human?

What being human means for you might be different from what it means to me. Allowing yourself to be human might look like making time for your weekly swimming class. It might be setting a timer so you get up more regularly from your desk. Or to take a nap before the kids come home. It might be satisfying your need for creativity, whether within or outside your business. For many of us, allowing space for our humanness has to do with taking space and time for ourselves—to rest, to move, to read, to be.

In general, our humanness is the thing that traditional business advice tends to ignore. Or even explicitly repress, when we’re advised to hustle, to push through, the keep going.

The workshop

I made a 20-minute workshop in which I walk you through making more space for yourself and your humanness in your business. I’ll help you identify signs that you’ve lost sight of your needs, and we’ll make a plan to make smaller and bigger changes to truly allow yourself to be human.

The workshop is filled with supportive questions and examples, and a workbook where you go deeper.

At the end of this workshop, you will have recognised the parts of your business where you are not making space for yourself, and have made a plan to change that.

📌 Watch the workshop by becoming a paid subscriber of Female Owned.

Not yet a paid subscriber? Upgrade your subscription to a monthly or annual paid subscription and dive into this workshop and all the other small business workshops. You’ll also become part of our lovely gentle community with the monthly Accountability Club, the quarterly mini-mastermind and seasonal behind-the-scenes posts.

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I loved our time away and it was much needed, but when we returned I also felt a deep desire to reconnect with my business. Perhaps because I took time off, I felt more clarity and perspective than I had when I signed off for the holidays.

Much of this desire to reconnect with my business feels like grounding to me. Like settling in, rooting in, really getting back into my business.

Reconnecting with my business also means checking in with my focus areas: money, business vision, and expanding and experimenting. These are the things that I come back to throughout the year—they function as guiding lights, as a compass for my business of sorts.

And from finding focus I was able to make a really gentle business plan for 2025—in pencil, always, to allow myself to change my mind.

This is a very useful process for me I often come back to a couple of times a year. I’ve decided to share it with you too in this month’s paid subscriber workshop, and would love to hear what you think.

The workshop

I made a 25-minute workshop in which I walk you the 3 parts that I focused on myself: grounding into your business; developing and checking in with your focus areas; and creating a gentle business plan for 2025. The workshop is filled with supportive questions and examples, and a workbook where you go deeper and really get your plans on paper.

At the end of this workshop, you will feel more grounded in and focused about your business, and have a plan for the months ahead.

📌 Watch the workshop by becoming a paid subscriber of Female Owned or buy the individual workshop here for €20.

Not yet a paid subscriber? Upgrade your subscription to a monthly (€6/month) or annual (€60) paid subscription and dive into the workshop. You’ll also become part of our lovely gentle community with the monthly Accountability Club, the quarterly mini-mastermind and seasonal behind-the-scenes posts.

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I thought quite a while about whether I wanted to create my own reflection-workshop this year. The last thing I want to do is to add to the noise and overwhelm.

But then I realised: cutting through the noise and offering tools that are truly gentle and effective is what I do best.

And there is genuine value in reflecting on your year in business. Looking back on what happened this year allows you to celebrate, the big and the small steps. By reflecting you’ll feel more grounded and confident in your business and choices. And reflection allows you to sow seeds for new choices, projects and ways of working in the months ahead.

With that in mind, I created a non-overwhelming, gentle and effective workshop for you, consisting of 3 parts:

1. Actions and events, prompting you to review what you did in and with your business, incl. the numbers;

2. Reflection questions and values, a handful of questions to help you go deep into your year;

3. Shedding and sowing, inspiring you to decide on what you’ll be taking with you to 2025, and what you will leave behind.

You can dip in and out of this workshop whenever it suits you. Each part builds on the previous, but you can always answer only those questions that feel most useful to you.

The workshop

I made a 25-minute workshop in which I walk you through your year, and gives you clarity on what you want to take with you into 2025 (and what not).

At the end of this workshop you will have feel clarity and calm about 2024 in business: you’ll have celebrated your successes and identified what you’re ready to leave behind and the seeds for the business you want to run in 2025.

📌 Watch the workshop by becoming a paid subscriber of Female Owned or buy the individual workshop here for €20.

Not yet a paid subscriber? Upgrade your subscription to a monthly (€6/month) or annual (€60) paid subscription and dive into the workshop. You’ll also become part of our lovely gentle community with the monthly Accountability Club, the quarterly mini-mastermind and seasonal behind-the-scenes posts.

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As a new business owner, I certainly thought I was asking people to buy from me. I was showcasing all of my wisdom and tips in my newsletter—who wouldn’t want to buy from me then? But I was never explicitly asking people to buy. I rarely mentioned my availability for 1:1 mentoring, and if I did, I did so at the bottom of an email.

Over the years I have become a lot less subtle, and a lot more explicit about telling people what and how they can buy from me.

I’ve learned to be explicit about what I do, what I’m selling and how people can decide whether this might be for them. Because it turns out that if you don’t make it explicit, people often miss what you have to sell.

I’ve now developed an approach that is both explicit and gentle, and that does justice to the kind of business I want to run.

In this month’s workshop I share a slow, gentle and profitable approach to selling. I walk you through both the emotional side of selling and the practical. The workshop will support you to tackle the emotions and stories that keep you from sharing, and experiment with practical strategies to ask for the sale.

Being aware of the stories we carry and having a toolbox of strategies to use makes selling so much easier, in a confident and empowered way.

You’re running a business, so you need to sell. The trick is to find ways of feeling more comfortable with it.

The workshop

I made a 25-minute workshop in which I take you through the emotional blocks that might keep you from selling, share my own examples, and offer practical ways of sharing about your offers and asking for the sale. In the accompanying workbook you can go deeper and answer questions to help you make a plan for sharing about your offers more explicitly, gently and effectively.

At the end of this workshop, you’ll feel more confident about sharing about your products and services, and know a variety of ways to do so gently and effectively. You’ll feel calmer and more confident, and slowly grow the muscle of asking for the sale.

📌 Watch the workshop by becoming a paid subscriber of Female Owned for €6/month or €60/year, or buy the individual workshop here for €20.

Not yet a paid subscriber? Upgrade your subscription to a monthly (€6/month) or annual (€60) paid subscription and dive into the workshop. You’ll also become part of our lovely gentle community with the monthly Accountability Club, the quarterly mini-mastermind and seasonal behind-the-scenes posts.

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I wanted more autonomy and creativity in my days. I wanted to feel more opportunities for growth, both financially and in terms of learning, exploring and creating.

Gradually, as I was building my business, a need for more space and rest was added to these reasons.

Yet for the longest time, these ideas and dreams for my business didn’t translate into a specific vision. They also didn’t much translate into how I worked in and on my business, especially in the early years.

I forced myself to post on social media several times a week, even though I felt a mismatch with my desires and needs there. I fell into old productivity habits, putting too much pressure on myself.

Only in recent years have I begun to clarify the vision for my business and that has made such a big difference.

Having a vision for your business means knowing what kind of business you want to have: from what you want your days and weeks to look like, to the kind of support you need from your business, financially, creatively and otherwise.

But my vision doesn’t just live on paper. It’s deeply ingrained in my business, from the day-to-day to my income goals, my products and services.

And most importantly, having a vision for my business adds so much intention. My vision provides a guiding light for my business which means I don’t feel like I’m flailing, having to try out all kinds of options that don’t really fit.

Feeling more intention in my business means that I’m feeling much calmer and more confident in my decisions. When a thought for a product or service comes up, I’ll think about, do a feelings-check and check it against my vision.

The beauty of a business vision is you can work on it at any time in your business, whether you’re just starting out or have years of experience.

I’d love for you to feel the same sense of intention, clarity and confidence that I feel in my business, so I’ve created a workshop for you to clarity your business vision.

The workshop

I made a 25-minute workshop in which I walk you through what a business vision is, how to clarify yours and what it means for your business: from the day-to-day to the bigger picture. In the accompanying workbook you can go deeper and answer questions to help you get at the heart of your business vision, including your values.

I’ve designed the workshop to be useful both if you’re just starting out, and if you’re an experienced business owner—clarifying your business vision is a great way of checking whether your business still fits you, your life and your desires.

At the end of this workshop you will have formulated your vision and what that means for the day-to-day and bigger picture of your business. You will feel calmer, clearer and more intentional about how you spend your time and the choices you make in and for your business.

📌 Watch the workshop by becoming a paid subscriber of Female Owned for €6/month or €60/year, or buy the individual workshop here for €20.

Not yet a paid subscriber? Upgrade your subscription to a monthly (€6/month) or annual (€60) paid subscription and dive into the workshop. You’ll also become part of our lovely gentle community with the monthly Accountability Club, the quarterly mini-mastermind and seasonal behind-the-scenes posts.

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The thing that has given me the most peace is creating my own financial ecosystem: a model in which my income comes from several income streams that all work together. Seeing my business finances like this puts a lot less pressure on my individual services and products—not everything relies, for instance, on booking new 1:1 mentoring clients.

And I’d love the same sense of peace for you, so I’ve created a workshop in which you can try out this financial ecosystem for yourself.

The workshop

I made a 25-minute workshop in which I walk you through the work I’ve done myself, starting with setting financial goals, showing you my financial ecosystem in detail and providing lots of examples of what this might look like for you. In the accompanying workbook you can go deeper into this and sketch out your own financial ecosystem, or tweak your existing one.

I’ve designed the workshop to be useful both if you’re just starting out, and if you’re an experienced business owner—creating this ecosystem is also a great way of reviewing our offerings: do they still fit the vision for our business? Do the prices still fit?

At the end of this workshop you will have created a financial ecosystem or reviewed your existing one. You will feel more empowered and at peace about your income, and see possibilities for changes if necessary.

📌 Watch the workshop by becoming a paid subscriber of Female Owned for €6/month or €60/year, or buy the individual workshop here for €20.

Not yet a paid subscriber? Upgrade your subscription to a monthly (€6/month) or annual (€60) paid subscription and dive into the workshop. You’ll also become part of our lovely gentle community with the monthly Accountability Club, the quarterly mini-mastermind and seasonal behind-the-scenes posts.

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A much bigger part is how we feel and think about money. About our capacity to make money. About the extent we can be trusted with money. How “good” or “bad” we are with money.

That voice in your head that tells you that you won’t make money in your business? That’s rooted in money mindset.

That feeling in your stomach when you sit down to do your accounts (or, when you avoid doing so)? That’s rooted in money mindset.

The fear that keeps you from even checking your bank balance? That’s rooted in money mindset, too.

None of this, by the way, is your fault. But we can, slowly and gently, shift these emotions, feelings and thoughts.

Shifting our money mindset makes such a huge difference to how we experience our own capabilities, our own trust and our own joy in our business.

The workshop

I’ve created a 25-minute workshop in which I walk you through the work I’ve done myself, and do with my clients: seeing, confronting and reframing our money stories, and developing new stories and mantras that are more supportive to you and your business.

At the end of this workshop you will have reframed your money stories and have started to shift your money mindset. I’ve also included worksheets that you can use to dig deeper, further resources to explore and a money ritual to try out as a bonus.

📌 Watch the workshop by becoming a paid subscriber of Female Owned for €6/month or €60/year, or buy the individual workshop here for €20.

Not yet a paid subscriber? Upgrade your subscription to a monthly (€6/month) or annual (€60) paid subscription and dive into the workshop. You’ll also become part of our lovely gentle community with the monthly Accountability Club, the quarterly mini-mastermind and seasonal behind-the-scenes posts.

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