My spacious business: 12 months in

One year ago I completely changed the way my business is set up so that I could free up space in my diary. I'm so glad I did: here are my biggest highlights from the journey so far.

Staring out of my local coffee shop gawping at the cherry blossom. We made it!

Hello! 

It’s been just over a year since I intentionally shifted the way I was doing business completely after a Big Burnout. The goal was to prioritise space and free time, book less committed hours in the diary and grow in a different way.

I wanted to write an update on how it’s going.

(The short version is, it’s completely changed how I feel about working for myself. For the better.)

Before, I had a vibrant consultancy business that was heavy on 1:1 clients and Zoom calls in the diary. I loved helping women with their sales but was drained from so much time on screen, and would worry that if something huge happened, I may not be able to sustain it.

Now, I have what I would describe as a spacious business that allows me to support clients in the way I love, while also freeing up lots of diary time to feed my creativity.

This is the first time in my working life where I feel like my business is sustainable and does not consume too much of me and I want to shout about it from the rooftops.

It feels kind of naughty to have this much space, if I’m honest. It goes against every piece of work programming I received growing up. And probably, yours too. A diary that only ever has 5 hours of calls in it per week feels even lighter than my university lecture timetable (6 hours per week, if my memory serves). Sometimes, it’s only 3 or 4.

My year long experiment of having much more space in my diary has taught me a lot, and I want to share what it’s taught me with you.

Why am I telling you this?

Because I WISH someone had told me this was a thing! Most women don’t choose to work for themselves because they want to work all of the time. Certainly the women I work with are looking for balance, time for creativity and to build a long term business that pays their bills. And yet, all too often, women DO end up with businesses that dominate and take over, because they don’t know how else to do it. I want to change that and I hope reading this will help you make a start.

Highlights

In the last 12 months, my spacious business has allowed me to write and launch a book that became a bestseller. I have doubled my income and halved my working hours. I have done this alongside a vibrant home life and juggling 2 kids who seem to be on holiday more than they are at school and who therefore require a lot of my time.

Moving to a more spacious business setup has supported me through a huge life moment that would absolutely have derailed my ability to work in my previous setup (I’ll get onto that). In short, I’m doing this review because I think - no, I KNOW that spacious business is the model that suits way more women than that actually have one. I wish more of us did have one, because burnout would happen less, longevity would increase and the female economy could grow even faster. I think more women WOULD have one if there were more examples and more people who talked about it. So, I’ve decided I’m going to talk about it a lot on Substack. Please do follow along if you’re interested in growing a spacious business of your own.

Hi / Happy New Year!

Before I get into it, is it completely ridiculous to say Happy New Year in April? Well, humour me because I’m doing it anyway. You see, to me, January just is not the right time to declare it. The days are at their shortest. I’m huddled up against as many radiators, hot water bottles and thermal undergarments I can find. “Newness” to me doesn’t feel like having to stay in from 4pm each day due to the dark and soggy walks in the forest that involve no leaves on the trees and far too much getting soaked. Endlessly trudging through boggy puddles while sodden is neither energising nor ideas-inducing. Nope, can’t do it. Soz.

Not even the lovely new notebooks that adorn my desk after Christmas can convince me that January is a genuine “start” of a new season of creativity, even though I love writing in them.

Whether it's my mediterranean sun-loving blood, my Aquarius rebellious streak, or my peri-menopausal sensitivity to the dark, nothing about the bleak midwinter makes me feel shiny or inspired and it feels a little…phony to pretend otherwise.

In any case, it can’t just be me that thinks Q2 is really Q1?!

And then, round about nowish, it all changes. One minute the clocks are returning to their rightful hour, BST, the next I emerge, energy intact, ready to “seize the day”. Yep, I’ve definitely spent a past life as a bear in a cave, hibernating.

Right on time, here I am, emerging from my winter with gusto. Saying hello, staring out of the window in my local Gails, gawping at the cherry blossom. Hi!

(Sidenote: I see a lot of business owners apologising for not showing up in their “normal” pattern, for skipping a week of emailing, or a month, or longer. I don’t think it needs justifiying per se - especially if, like me, your priority is to have the space you need, in all seasons.)

So tell me, how was winter for you?

My winter was a mixture of highs and lows

I am very ready to see the back of mine. Not that it was all bad of course. Here are some of the things I discovered this winter:

• What it feels like to step into the identity of becoming a published author. (Great!)

• What it feels like to hold duality on a whole new level. (Expansive. Conflicting.)

• What it feels like when one of the people closest to you dies. (Earth-shattering. Sobering.)

Let’s talk here about the grief of losing a friend at 42.

Nobody told me how tired I’d feel after the funeral, or how much time I’d need in introspection. Business ownership is still in it’s infancy really, so these are not conversations I’ve had or heard. But it’s important that we do have them, because without the space to regenerate energetically, your business will suffer.

On Instagram, I boundary my time: 30 minutes maximum a day. There, my focus is to prioritise what my clients need to make easy decisions about whether they’d like to work with me. That’s not the right place to talk about how grief can affect you in business because that’s about me, not them.

Substack, though, seems like a good place to open up the conversation. Here, this grieving moment I’m having feels like it can have a little more space to breathe. Plus, I’m new here, I’m still figuring it out, so it seems like as good a place and time as any…

First foray into losing a friend

3 months ago today, on 9th January, my book More Sales Please was published. The highest of high points after a year of work.

Two weeks after that, one of my oldest and very best friends of over 25 years died from a rare cancer that only a handful of people get diagnosed with each year.

I wasn’t prepared at all and until recently, I don’t think she was, either. When the doctors told her it was terminal, she felt healthy and well, and had barely any symptoms, so it was a lot for all of us to get our heads around.

It hit me like a train. I don’t feel old enough to be losing friends in this way. I doubt anyone ever does. Coming off the back of launching the book, and into grief, felt like instant burnout and that panicked me momentarily because I never want to go back there.

In my old model, I’d have had no chance of continuing on. I’d have had to take a sabbatical of sorts. There’s no way I could have been doing multiple calls a day in this season of life. In this new, spacious model, though I’ve been able to honour all calls bar one that happened on the day she died.

And not in a forced way, either. I know better than to do that now and would never “push through” a call with a client, it wouldn’t be fair on either one of us.

No, the win here is that there was plenty of space either side of my diary commitments to rest and recharge. For me personally, that’s meant a lot more time in solitude than usual. I’ve been reading. Writing. Walking. Decluttering. And watching a LOT of period dramas. Who knew?

Is this a traditional grief response? I have no idea. But it’s what I’ve been doing all the same.

One of the books I’ve been reading during this time, which I am LOVING is my friend

Tamu Thomas

fantastic book Women Who Work Too Much and I can’t recommend it more highly. She makes so many ruddy good points on every page, you can’t help but feel seen and nourished every time you pick it up. Please give it a read, if you haven’t already.

At Tamu’s book launch, clutching my signed copy - look how happy it made me!

I didn’t set up my spacious business to accommodate grief per se, but I’ve never been more grateful that it could do that in it’s stride. I’ve created a business which runs on 2-3 hours a day maximum (including client calls, promotion, ideation, the works). It’s often less, and that means I can work AND rest, on any given day, and that is the kind of flex I’m here for.

Having this kind of space has saved my business from grinding to a standstill. I have been able to honour my client relationships AND take lots of time in between sessions, in a way that just wouldn’t have been possible if my diary was overstuffed. I’ve wanted to keep going, I’ve loved every call and check in. And then, I’ve loved getting back to tending to my needs, safe in the knowledge that there is space for both.

At this point I’d go as far as to say building a business that ISN’T spacious is a business crime that will long term affect everything from the money you make, how you feel about your life and the quality of your ideas.

In early January, I wrote about setting yourself up for ease as a guest post on Lucy Werner’s Substack Hype Yourself, which you can read here!

Space is a release valve for anything that is happening: it is there to catch you when you need it.

Last year, having a spacious business meant I could write my book. This year, it has meant I can take all the time I need to grieve without it being a “thing”. And next, it will allow me the opportunity to find my natural rhythm here on Substack. I’m so looking forward to that.

In the meantime, I’m going to the woods to walk and marvel at the bluebells.

Sara x

Do you have any questions about building a spacious business? Are you working more hours than you want to be in your current business, but not sure how to shift what you’re doing to allow for less calendar entries?

Ask me anything, I’m an open book and I’d love to open up the conversation about how to balance life and work for more women in the small business community.

The lovely bluebells at Chalet Wood - my favourite :-)