Client Story: Rebalancing your business for more space and ease
A client came to me recently with a difficulty that in her own words was one she once dreamed of having.
We’d worked together a couple of years ago when she was just starting out turning her creative passions into a business.
Fast forward to today and on the surface her business is thriving.
Alongside her handmade products she now also runs 1:1 consultations for other business owners, group workshops for makers and has built a network where the offer of collaborations are a regular occurrence.
Like she said, it’s the dream scenario of many early stage business owners who hope, but don’t know, what’s coming next.
The thing is, it didn’t feel that way for her.
Behind the scenes she felt stretched too thin, with a long to-do list constantly running in her head, unable to switch off and worried that it would all fall apart at any moment.
She described how her work had been overspilling into other areas of life and the creeping frustration she felt that she had let it get this way but didn’t know what else to do.
Her dominant thought was “It can’t go on like this”
And yet, she didn’t want to let any of her customers down, or risk the income that she had worked hard to build.
As she spoke I recognised the binary choice she had painted for herself.
A natural response when faced with a difficult situation.
It feels like the choice is either yes or no - we continue the same way or we stop completely and let it all crumble.
Instead, I asked my client to describe a typical work week to me.
As she did, I noted down all of the individual tasks and we grouped them into categories.
Over the next few sessions we then worked through them one by one, figuring out what could be dropped, what could be done differently and what could stay as it was.
We kept the core activities that only she could do but set clear boundaries around how and when these were done.
We reconfigured her offers (and pricing) to make them feel energising and rewarding for her.
We created space in her working week so that she could work at a pace that felt sustainable.
We did this, not by wiping the slate clean and starting from scratch, but by looking carefully at what was already there and reshaping it.
The key shift was recognising that her business was not a single entity.
Instead, it’s more like an ecosystem or tapestry - made up of offers, workflows, pricing, boundaries and decisions.
Each one of these things can be shifted, simplified, or reimagined.
When my client started to see things in this way, it opened up a whole new set of possibilities.
If you’re feeling the tension of a business that is no longer working for you then you can try this for yourself.
List out the core areas of your work and figure out which one needs your attention.
Start by making some changes there before moving onto the next.
And if you’d like to do this with support then check out the Foundations Review - it might just be exactly the step you need right now.
In a focused 90-minute session, we’ll unpack what’s feeling heavy or misaligned, and identify the changes that will bring your business back into balance.