How I am finding focus in my business right now

+ a workshop to help you ground into your business and make a gentle plan for 2025

Craving to feel more confident and intentional about your marketing? Looking for a way to gently and effectively market your business without being ‘on’ all the time? I’ve got you! Join the waitlist for Grow, my marketing group programme returning in March 2025.

A few weeks into January, I feel ready to ground into the year, into my business and into what I want to focus on. I feel the need for more of a bird’s eye view before diving into the day-to-day again. And I feel the desire to re-evaluate some things that had slipped in late last year.

In this post, I take you through my process of grounding and planning, sharing my reflections about the upcoming year with you. I also created a gentle and effective 20-minute paid-subscriber workshop for you to support you to do the same, by helping you ground, find focus and make a gentle business plan for 2025.

Grounding

I notice that at this time of year, I feel a deep desire to really check in with how I’m doing in my business. I want to use the fresh perspective I have after taking a break to evaluate whether I’m still doing things intentionally.

These are two things I’m paying attention to so I feel more grounded in my business:

Calendar and to-do list

I’ve had years where before the holidays I just moved everything I didn’t get done to immediately after the holidays. As you might guess, that led to massive overwhelm on my first days back at work. I’ve gotten much more careful with this, for example by not scheduling client calls on the first day back to work, giving myself time to settle in, check my email and start on January’s newsletter.

But I realised that I needed more space to write the newsletters for the launch of my marketing group programme Grow. I had planned quite spaciously, so was able to move things around.

What can you move off your list or calendar? Where can you use some radical prioritising?

Grounding brings calm and confidence to my business.

Less business-spillage

I deeply love my business and doing the work I do. It energises me and fills me up. But I notice that in times when I feel busy, or when I’m very tired, or just in a rough patch, I can sometimes let my boundaries slip.

I noticed late last year that I was filling a lot of my spare time by thinking about the business. This can be joyful but I know that for me there’s a tipping point where ‘joyful’ can turn into ‘pressure’. I started reading an inspiring book about marketing that set my mind whirring with ideas right before bedtime. I found myself checking my email on moments that I didn’t really have the space to answer and process emails.

I’m going to shore up those boundaries again by being really intentional—and by gently becoming aware of when ‘joyful’ turns into ‘pressured’ and I need to step away.

How do you feel about your current (business) boundaries? Where do you notice a need to shore up your boundaries, or to be more flexible?

Focus

Throughout the year, I like to semi-regularly check in with myself about at least three areas in my business: money, the vision for my business, and expanding and experimenting.

Money

I’ve got a clear goal for my business finances for 2025. It’s about a quarter higher than my goal for 2024, but I feel pretty good about it. It feels doable.

I’m checking in with my goals when I do my monthly accounts. The biggest thing that helps me keep an eye on my finances without being stressed is by not setting monthly goals anymore. I pay myself a salary each month, but I also know that some months I’ll make more than I do in other months. Rather than putting pressure on myself every month, I’m keeping an eye on my annual goal instead.

📌 Need some help with your business finances? Check out the two workshops I created on money mindset and on creating your financial ecosystem.

Vision for my business

We often create a vision for our business when we get started and then lose track of it along the way. But your business vision can be a useful and powerful compass to keep coming back to, and tweaking when necessary.

I have two guiding questions that I come back to: how do I want to feel in my business (and how do I currently feel)? and what do my business to look like (and what does it currently look like)?

I want my business to feel spacious, fulfilling and gentle. I want to feel creative and connected.

In terms of what I want my business to look like, I want it to fit into 3 spacious days. I want to market gently and effectively, without being ‘on’ all the time. I want to offer products and services that are slow, gentle and profitable, both in the approach I take to 1:1 mentoring and courses, as well as to what I charge.

📌 Get more support with your business vision through my workshop, Clarify your business vision.

Expand and experiment

I want the things I do to feel expansive—and I want to approach new projects as experiments, rather than setting them into stone. Whenever I try something new in my business, or come up with a plan, I check in with myself: does this feel expansive? Can I approach this as an experiment, and thereby take the pressure off? What do I need for this to feel expansive and like an experiment?

Which areas or guiding words are your focus areas? How will you come back to them again and again?

Business plan

I have a loose business plan for 2025.

A key component of the plan is knowing what I need to make this year. The other key component is having a plan about how I’ll be making that money.

This is where it’s important to me to keep my plans loosely. In the past I’ve followed through with plans just for the sake of following through—not because the plans still felt exciting or inspiring. Once I stopped doing that, my business started feeling much more ‘me’ and it became more sustainable.

The core of my business is offering support to small business owners, freelancers and creatives, helping them to create a slow, gentle and profitable business. My biggest, and most intimate, offering is 1:1 mentoring, which will probably always remain a key part of my offerings (and that brings in the most money).

At the same time, I approach all my offerings as building blocks that I can pick and choose, and can fit into my year whenever I need and want to.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve build up these components and, if it feels right, I can also add new ones. For instance, my course Substack for small business owners is one building block, as is Small business newsletter magic. Grow, my marketing group programme that I’ll be relaunching soon, is another. And I’ve got a list of ideas for shorter and longer courses that at some point I might get to.

While I allow myself to offer a course or programme when it feels good—or change my mind—I’ve noticed that I can’t fit in these blocks at any time of the year. Last year I landed on a Spring-Autumn schedule with my biggest launches and that felt really good.

My plan for 2025:

• Grow, my marketing group programme, will run from March 15 to July 15, and will launch soon (sign up to the waitlist to get bonus resources, perks and early access)

• Small business newsletter magic, relaunching in Autumn, though I might do a waitlist-only launch before that (get on the waitlist here if you’re interested);

• 1:1 mentoring: this is more or less ongoing, although I only work with 6 clients a quarter, which means that sometimes (like right now) I’m fully booked for the current quarter.

How are you feeling about your business right now? Where do you feel the desire to ground more, find more focus or make a plan? Have you already done so? Leave a comment and join the conversation.

Workshop: Ground, focus and plan: crafting an intentional year in your business

If you desire a sense of groundedness and focus too, and have a gentle plan for the year that feels good, I’ve got just the thing for you: a short 3-part workshop that walks you through grounding yourself in your business, helps you develop your focus areas, and supports you to create a gentle plan for 2025.

The workshop

I’ve created a 25-minute workshop to support you to start the year with intention.

It consists of 3 parts:

1. Ground: discover what makes you feel grounded in your business (and act on it);

2. Focus: develop the focus areas that are important to you and your business;

3. Business plan: create a gentle business plan for 2025, incl. your financial goals, what you’ll be selling and taking into account your personal seasons.

» Paid subscribers: you have immediate access to this workshop right here «

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.

» You can access to the workshop in two ways:

• as a paid subscriber you get access to this workshop, the previous ones on money mindset, creating your financial ecosystem, creating your business vision and a slow, gentle and profitable approach to selling as well as behind-the-scenes posts and our community features (accountability club and mini-mastermind);

• or, buy the workshop as a standalone workshop for €20 here.

Take a look at the workshop 📽️

As always, thank you for being here, for reading and commenting. I hope you had a gentle start of the year and are settling back into a routine that feels good. I’ll be back towards the end of the month with a new free resource to celebrate the pre-launch of my marketing programme Grow. x

Female Owned is more than a newsletter. If you are ready to do business differently, I’d love for you to become a paid subscriber and become part of our gentle community of small business owners, freelancers and creatives. You’ll get bonus resources (the accountability club! the mini-mastermind! the new mini podcast series!) and behind-the-scenes posts right in your inbox.