This coming Friday (22^nd October 2021) is Wear It Pink Day in aid of breast cancer research. 

This is very personal for me this year, as I have been fighting this disease since March 2021.

I’m pleased to say I got the all clear last week and am now cancer free!  Tempered by the fact that I have to now have some further low level chemotherapy for a few months yet. 

It feels like a long journey to get to this point.  Since I found a lump at the end of February and discovering it wasn’t ‘just a cyst’, I’ve been on a rollercoaster of emotions.  Just the amount of medical jargon and appointments is staggering.  As someone who isn’t often ill, it’s been a real eye opener.  With no family history of breast cancer, this was a huge shock.

The weird thing I have found with breast cancer is that I have never felt ill.  The treatment makes you pretty unwell (chemotherapy works incredibly well, but has some serious side effects) but I always feel like I haven’t really been ill or had cancer.

M...

Podcasts are really having a moment right now – everyone is listening to them and some people go a step further to actually making one. If you’ve been hiding under a table waiting for the podcast craze to blow over, you might want to grab some snacks, because you’re probably going to be there for some time… Podcasts are anything but a flash in the pan (no offense, Clubhouse…), our busy modern lives and relentless impatience mean we want to be consuming content ALL of the time.

Podcasts give us on demand content, that we can plug in to while we’re exercising, driving, working or doing the washing up, and we love that convenience so much we’ve invited the podcast into our home, its hung up its coat, kicked off its shoes, and is very much here to stay.

When you’re ready to emerge from the safety of your ‘I’ll-just-stick-to-my-website-and-instagram-ta-very-much’ table, here’s 5 ways a Pod can Cast a hefty chunk of cash into your business…

1.  An audience that trusts you is an audience th...

Hello! I’m Emma, and I’m a coach for freelancers. One of the most common issues freelancers come to me about is finding clients. It can all feel a bit overwhelming and scary, especially when you see all the hard sales tactics out there (cold DMing or, even worse, cold calling? No thanks). 

Finding clients is really only about two things - being visible (showing up and showcasing your skills and knowledge) and building relationships (genuinely, not with some kind of hunbot copy and paste approach). There are so many ways you can do this, some in your comfort zone and some just outside it. Choose the ones that align with your values and goals. 

Here are ten ways you can get visible and build relationships, to find clients.  

1. Share a carousel on Instagram of all the ways clients can work with you. Not only will it make it clear what you do, but it’s also a post you can share to your stories going forward. 
2. Write a post on LinkedIn with 5 reasons why potential clients should work wit...

There are so many positive benefits for small businesses to create and maintain a business website.

However, I’ve watched as so many avoid creating one or maintaining an existing one due to time constraints and instead opt for a short-term, reactive approach to marketing and sales.

Opting to market yourself using social media or paid advertising without a robust website is a waste of your time and money as you don’t have a base to send your traffic to to find out more about your business.

You also lose out on building up your authority with search engines like Google who silently index and rank you for select keywords and keyphrases.

Our audiences are not just on social media when they are online, they use search, they look for recommendations and ensuring that your website is seen and heard ensures that you can be found by them when they search for you.

In this post, I aim to help persuade you, the small business owner looking to promote your business online using your website, t...

It's the million dollar question, right?

Do you find that you get to the end of every week and realise that you’ve done nothing to actually move the needle in your own business? And that in between client work and school runs you’ll be lucky if there’s a solid half hour where you can focus on creating and implementing a strategy for your own business growth?

Moving your business forward is all about bitesize activities that you can stack: individually they’re small actions, but together they create a force of momentum which starts creating the shifts towards your overall business and life vision.

People often think that the earliest stage of business is the hardest, but I believe it’s the established and ready to scale phase that can be the most challenging.  Being in demand with clients means that many business owners realise that they’re on the cusp of a business that could be really special, but they just have no team, time or headspace to focus on strategic business development....

Contingency planning. It’s something that many entrepreneurs find boring to think about, but it’s an essential element of business planning. Having a contingency plan in place helps you alleviate any fears and worries you may have around keeping your business running smoothly and keeping that income coming in should the unexpected happen.

Because we don’t expect anything to go wrong or happen to us, but we need to be prepared if it does.

You need to be prepared for all eventualities

For those who know me, you will be aware that I’ve been going through treatment for breast cancer recently. When faced with my diagnosis, I was also faced with a decision about what to do with my business. When you're diagnosed with something like cancer, the last thing you want to think about is your business, but it was vital for me to try and keep working. I was able to do so, as I'm at home all the time. Unlike someone who works in an office, there's no risk involved in carrying on with my work. 

Bu...

In this weeks blog I am writing about how my business has been affected by my breast cancer. However this could apply to any serious interruption in your business, be that illness, global pandemics or bereavement.

I want to give you the 7 tips that I have learnt in my journey over the last six months since diagnosis.

1. Saying no

Saying no is one of the most difficult things to do, however I have found it much easier since my diagnosis to say no.

I’ve had to turn down a couple of quite big client opportunities in recent times because I just know that I physically cannot manage to do the work. Whilst it’s been difficult to say no and I desperately want to do the work, it has also been a relief not to feel massive pressure in my business.

Saying no is an art and takes a lot of practice. I’ve been doing it for a while now but it still doesn’t come very easily. Keep practising and if you feel that clients are not in alignment with your values or understand your situation then it’s tim...

The idea of taxes shouldn’t stop you from putting up your prices. And neither should it keep you from growing your business. I’m a firm believer that you shouldn’t let tax or accounting dictate how you run your business. You should consider it, but it shouldn’t be the main driver behind how you run your business. 

You shouldn’t be playing small by keeping yourself under the VAT limit. In the UK, the VAT limit is £85,000, and once you get to that level, you have to charge VAT on all your sales. It does mean you can claim back some VAT, but it often means in a service-based business that you will also be paying VAT. 

Be prepared for taxes and VAT

Many people don’t want to be VAT registered as it’s seen as a bit of a pain. That’s not a reason not to do it! You shouldn’t be limiting your business growth to that £85,000 threshold and having to put 20% on everything. You should be preparing for it once you get to the £70,000 mark. You should be thinking about how you might manage the pric...

Lockdown has created both issues and opportunities for many. I’ve recently been speaking to Fleur Emery about how she pivoted her business during lockdown. Fleur is the founder of Real Work, the online co-working space for women - an online coworking community I’ve been a member of for the last 4 months or so. I love how she runs it, and her energy is really impressive, so we’ve been talking on my recent podcast about how she got started and how she decided on her pricing structure for Real Work.

How did Real Work get started?

Lockdown happened, and I was at home with a five-year-old. All my work was suddenly cancelled overnight. The runway of income I had lined up was wiped off the table. I was sat at home with no income runway and a kid. This idea that had been fizzing around in my head become an ‘OK let’s do this’ moment. 

I come from a background in industry and have 15 years of experience in starting food and drinks companies of my own. I came up with this idea to virtually con...

You might need to think differently about your pricing once you start to outsource. There’s a lot to consider and several options available to you, but the route you take will depend on your needs. 

When you’re looking to outsource, I recommend you start by outsourcing client work and the more junior stuff associated with it. For example, I have someone do the bookkeeping for my clients on my behalf. I charge the client and pass the work to my outsourcer. It’s a great way to get started with outsourcing, as it means if the client work stops, so does the cost of the outsourcing. You can then choose whether the client knows that you’re doing that or doesn’t. 

Factor in your time when establishing outsourcing costs

It’s important to realise you’re still managing that relationship, particularly if the work then comes through you to be reviewed, so you need to price accordingly. Is what you’re charging enough to cover that? You’re spending a lot of time looking for clients and building t...