This annual review feels a bit uncomfortable to write, because a lot of my “learnings” from 2024 (and 2023) showed up again in 2025.

Which is kind of ironic, because when I run guided annual review sessions with my clients, I always share this quote:

“Some people say they have 20 years’ experience, when in reality, they have 1 year’s experience repeated 20 times.” - Richie Norton

Not overcoming some of my 2024 challenges is definitely the fuel I need to ensure this story doesn’t repeat in 2026. Instead of spiralling into self-flagellation, I’m choosing to see this year for what it actually was: a longer learning curve. One where I’m slowly rewriting patterns that have been in place for decades, not months.

But let’s start with the good stuff, of which there is plenty.

WHAT WENT WELL IN 2025?

I removed sales calls (& client enrolments stayed the same)

In January 2025, I wrote this in my monthly review:

“I really don't like looking at my diary and seeing so many calls. Makes me ponder on how to reduce. Could remove sales calls, but I convert best on these. Not confident with any other strategy at the moment...”

I’d made attempts to reduce calls before. A few years ago a team member took over my 15-minute qualification calls. It worked OK, but it never felt quite right, and eventually I took them back on. So I knew I didn’t want to hire a salesperson.

For the first six months of 2025, I percolated on the different options. I’ll admit I was absolutely terrified of getting it wrong. Like… what if it didn’t work? But I also thought others have done it so why not me? I reminded myself that I’m resourceful as fuck and if it flops, I can always go back. Or I can use calls occasionally as a lever, rather than the whole machine.

I finally landed on an application process with a personalised Loom video response from me. I had a great coaching call with Rebecca Tracey from Uncaged Life, and after hearing she uses a similar process, it was the final push I needed to go for it.

From September 2025, all clients have come via my new application process and amazingly my monthly client enrolments have stayed exactly the same. It’s taking time to refine, like everything. Not speaking to people face-to-face beforehand has come with a few learning curves (letting people in who are too early on, not assessing commitment hard enough). But I’m enjoying refining it, in the same way you refine a sales call over time. The biggest shift is how I feel about my week. One of my 2025 goals was to have two days of delivery and three days on the business. Removing sales calls has now made this a reality and I love going into the week knowing I have three days to focus on high leverage actions and flexibility to take days out.

I updated my sales page

Moving away from sales calls meant my sales page had to work a lot harder for me. I had a sales page, but it wasn't particularly well crafted. I’m genuinely proud of how it reads now. It feels clear, grounded, and like a true reflection of how I actually work and think.

It’s also intentionally not hyped with big, sweeping promises. It doesn’t try to replace a sales call by cramming in heavy persuasion or urgency tactics. That’s a choice. I want people to opt in because they recognise themselves, trust the work, and feel aligned, not because they’ve been talked into it.

Check it out here (and apply if this is the kind of support you’re looking for).

I loved my life, and felt totally in alignment

2025 was the happiest I’ve ever felt in my entire life (despite also having one of my lowest-ever months too!).

I want to live each day like it’s my last and enjoy life’s simple pleasures: hanging out in the garden with the chickens, walking the dogs, strengthening my body, lying in bed with my partner or creating memories with my son. In 2025, I feel like I achieved this. I created a life I don’t feel like I need a holiday from (even though we also holiday-ed hard!).

Day to day, my work-life balance felt really good. Walking the dogs in the morning, slow coffees, not rushing straight into work. It might sound small, but it genuinely changed how my days feel.

We had some awesome, memorable family holidays this year including fossil hunting in Whitby, a week in Billund (the home of LEGO - honestly, so good) and an incredible weekend in London seeing Matilda The Musical and going to Harry Potter World. And that was on top of three trips to our usual haunt in Spain lol. .

In August, we got chickens, which turned into a whole unexpected learning curve that I absolutely loved. There’s something hugely grounding about caring for animals and building little rhythms around them.

We also got a new puppy this year (Rebel the Cairnoodle), who has been an absolute joy. I love having two dogs and our little family feels complete. My relationship with my partner feels incredibly strong. And to top it all off, in December, we got married.

I’ll stop gushing now, but I feel so, so grateful.

I brought in two brilliant team members

Bringing Colette and Lana into the business was one of the best decisions I made this year.

Colette started in March as Marketing Manager and it’s been such a relief to no longer hold the entire marketing machine in my head, and to have someone to bounce ideas around with. We meet monthly in person too which is so fun.

We started building a more consistent, long-term rhythm of content. We also restarted Instagram, which has been going surprisingly well. It’s a low-touch strategy of re-purposing my emails into carousels, with three pinned posts to capture people visiting my profile from ads. We now have a steady stream of people joining my email list and I have almost nothing to do with it, which is wonderful. We also wrote eleven blogs and published eleven YouTube videos (fewer than planned, but more on that later).

I finally closed my 5,400-member Facebook Group. It’s been slowly dying for years as I didn’t want to spend time there, but I’d clung onto it out of nostalgia and fear. Now it’s closed, I feel much lighter. The pressure to ‘be on social media’ has gone and it’s pushed me to think more strategically about ads and email strategy instead.

Lana joined as our new Amplify 1:1 Coach and it’s been brilliant. Holding 30–40 clients on your own can feel big, and I often worried I wasn’t serving people deeply enough or that things might slip through the cracks. We’d already put good systems in place, but I still had that familiar “am I doing enough?” feeling. Maybe that’s a mindset thing. Maybe I need to get over it lol.

Either way, having someone else holding client progress alongside me has clearly uplevelled our delivery. Lana holds clients accountable to their goals, coaches them through blocks, and flags when someone needs more 1:1 time with me. Our client support genuinely feels second to none, and I’m so proud of the programme we’ve built.

I became obsessed with handstands

2025 was my fifth year of consistent strength training (3–5 times a week). I’m including this because I’m still amazed it’s become part of my identity, coming from someone who never exercised consistently before 2021. I love being strong. I love how my body feels, and how much it’s boosted my confidence.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve got more into calisthenics (from the Greek kallos, meaning beauty, and sthenos, meaning strength). It’s basically strength training using your bodyweight, so things like chins, dips, handstands, and dragon flags.

This year, I had so much fun with handstands. It’s my favourite way to spend half an hour, and it’s been a big kick up the arse to work on my mobility, as I currently can’t even touch my toes haha.

My current record is around 10 seconds. In 2026, my goal is to focus properly on mobility and skill so I can hold a 30-second handstand consistently.

Delivered a workshop at Summer Camp

In 2024 I went to Summer Camp for the first time, a business retreat run by Carlos and Laurence from The Happy Startup School. I loved it and wrote about it in my 2024 annual review.

So imagine my delight when they asked me to deliver a workshop at Summer Camp 2025.

I was quite nervous, as I knew there would be a wide range of businesses there and I wanted to make it relevant for everyone, which is the opposite of how I’d normally approach a workshop. So I kept it casual, asked people what they needed, and ran it as an informal, vaguely structured Q&A and discussion.

I got some awesome feedback and have been invited to speak again next year too.

Want to come hang out in a field with 150 hippy-ish entrepreneurs? All the details here.

My ads stopped working

I’m putting this down as a win, as the result of this challenge has definitely led to one.

I’d got so complacent with ads. I’d basically been running the same ad for years and years (cos if it’s not broke!). In my mind, I think I just thought, “Cool, lead gen is sorted. You can focus elsewhere.” There always seems to be so many things to do, so it’s great when you don’t have to think about something.

But that meant I wasn’t experimenting or innovating in any way. That wasn’t a problem until it suddenly was a problem. I ran my usual workshop series, Serve At Scale School, and the ads just didn’t perform as they had for the last four years. Then our evergreen ad costs started to creep up too.

I had this realisation (or should I say, ChatGPT pointed it out) that I was spending the least amount of time on one of the biggest levers in my business.

Since then, I’ve completely changed how I think about my ads, and it’s a core focus for 2026.

I ran workshops consistently

Workshops have always been a consistent part of my marketing strategy. They work well for me to build long-term relationships and trust, and they’re often the bridge between someone finding me and eventually joining Amplify.

In 2025, I ran two paid workshops. One was ‘How to Powerfully Lead Group Coaching Sessions’, which I’d already run in 2024 and simply ran again. It was priced at £95 + VAT and had 44 attendees. The second was a new workshop, ‘Create a Curriculum Clients Actually Complete’, priced the same, with 60 attendees.

I also ran three free workshop series and a handful of standalone workshops throughout the year.

One clear learning from 2025 is that workshops work best for me when they’re familiar rather than brand new. Re-running and refining something I know inside out feels lighter, converts better, and takes far less out of me than creating something from scratch under pressure.

They’ve also become my safest lever in lower-energy phases. When confidence wobbles or motivation dips, workshops remind me that I’m good at what I do. They generate income, yes, but they also generate momentum and trust, both with my audience and myself.

More than anything, workshops continue to be the cleanest way for me to warm people up. Many clients attend multiple workshops before joining Amplify, and when they do, they arrive clearer, more committed, and better aligned. That alone makes them a format I’ll keep prioritising.

Had the most incredible few days in Italy (& an exciting new collaboration)

This year I spent a few days in Italy with Dominique and Louise after what started as a simple Zoom conversation about an idea they had for a retreat. The intention was to create a space for business owners who think a lot, live through conditioning, and hold much of their stress and decisions in their bodies.

Dominique has spent decades immersed in Tibetan movement and healing practices. Louise came to this work as a client before training in it herself after a life-changing shift. I went out to experience it for myself and was honestly blown away. Our first retreat together is in March 2026, and I feel super grateful I get to do things like this and call it ‘work’.

Want to join us? There are a couple of spaces left. Read all the details and apply here.

I did a Spanish lesson on Duolingo every day

I mean, why do I care so much about losing my streak? It’s actually ridiculous. But it works, and I’ll take it.

CHALLENGES AND LEARNINGS

This wasn’t so much a year of learning new things - it was a year of being forced to live the consequences of things I already knew. Ouch.

I took on too much (again) and in April hit an all time low

Ugh. I wrote this in my 2024 review too, and clearly didn’t learn from it.

Q1 of 2025 was hard. I was delivering three different programmes while massively overcommitting on priorities. I was trying to re-write Amplify, run a paid workshop, set up ads to a low-cost product, start and implement a new YouTube course, and collaborate on a retreat.

Writing it out now, it feels utterly ridiculous that I even attempted that. The worst part is, I knew it was too much. I wrote in my weekly and monthly reviews that it was too much. And I kept going anyway.

April is where it all caught up with me. It was the first month I’ve ever enrolled zero clients into Amplify, and combined with a cycle dip and complete exhaustion, it sent me to a really low place emotionally.

What I see very clearly now is the link between stress, hormones and mood. I know it sounds obvious, but I think 2025 was when I fully accepted that my nervous system can’t hold too much uncertainty and pressure at the same time. My body literally shuts me down. That’s a lesson I’m taking very seriously into 2026.

April was awful, but it was also the month that forced a redesign I’d been avoiding.

I told myself I was doing one thing while actually doing five

This is closely linked to the overcommitting piece, but it’s slightly different and more uncomfortable to admit. My message has been “one offer” for years. Amplify as the core. Simplicity. Focus. And yet in practice, I found lots of ways to rationalise doing more than that.

The retreat was a passion project. The Mastermind felt contained - it ran all year and only needed filling once. Weeks That Work felt different because I love working with Greg. Say What You Think could eventually be folded into Amplify. You get the picture.

Each decision made sense in isolation. None of them felt especially reckless. But together, they pulled my focus away from the thing I actually want to grow the most. And then I’d end up frustrated that I didn’t have the time or headspace to properly refine Amplify or hone my marketing strategy, finding myself consistently “just missing” my Amplify goals.

The learning here is simple and fairly brutal: if I want a simple business, I have to live that simplicity, not just talk about it. I’ve already started implementing this. We decided not to run Weeks That Work in 2026. I’m not hosting a mastermind.. There will be no other offers. If you see me launch something new, please feel free to call me out on it.

The only exception to this is the retreat - partly because I committed to Dominique and Louise and wanted to see that through, and partly because I just want to. I’m not pushing it out broadly to my email list. Instead, I’ve reached out directly to the people I’d genuinely love to have in the room.

Which leads to another important learning. When I’ve been in a cash crunch in the past, I’ve had a habit of creating an entirely new offer, which is a huge amount of work. What I actually need to do instead is far simpler: go to the people who already know and trust me, and make a clear, direct offer behind the scenes.

I didn’t follow through on updating Amplify

Not really surprising given the last two challenges I shared. I started off strong, updated modules one and two, then stalled. I ended up feeling so frustrated with myself, as I just want the curriculum to reflect my most up-to-date thinking.

I guess my brain automatically re-prioritised this goal given how much I over-committed, because the reality is the curriculum is still a very high standard. It’s just that I find myself saying more often than I want to on live calls, “Oh, I don’t actually do that anymore. I do this.”

This is firmly on the agenda for 2026, with a new plan for how to get it done. Namely, telling all my clients exactly when they can expect the new marketing modules, as I’ve realised I only create things when I’m externally accountable to real people.

YouTube felt heavy

I started my YouTube channel in 2023 and dabbled a bit. It was meant to be my big focus for 2024, but wasn’t. In 2025 I wanted to find a consistent groove and publish one video a week. I didn’t lol.

In total, in 2025, I published eleven videos and the channel grew by 50%. It’s quite clear that if I put more effort here, it would grow.

I spent all year beating myself up for this inconsistency. Instead of acknowledging what I already wrote in my 2024 review:

I guess what could be actually going on here is… I’ve enrolled consistent clients into my programme for years now, without doing this stuff. I’d like to grow my YouTube to diversify, but it’s not essential. And so it always gets pushed.

That learning was already there. I just didn’t let it be true.

I kept treating YouTube like a priority I was failing at, rather than an optional growth lever I wasn’t choosing to prioritise right now. That internal mismatch, saying “this matters” while behaving as if it doesn’t, created way more friction than the platform itself ever did.

So the real learning isn’t “be more consistent on YouTube.” It’s to stop pretending something is essential when it’s actually optional.

If YouTube is going to be part of my strategy, it needs to feel light and realistic, not another stick to beat myself with. In 2026, I do want to create more videos. But the core role is to build trust with my email subscribers, not to see crazy growth on YouTube.

Life threw me some curveballs

Alongside the business stuff, 2025 carried some heavy personal moments too.

I had to face some hard fertility truths after over 8 years of desperately wanting another child (a puppy is a wonderful alternative lol). My son was in a serious car accident, which shook me more than I realised at the time. We lost all of our chickens in one go to the fox, in a way that was genuinely pretty traumatic. There was also some intense family stuff that hit unexpectedly, and a week-long migraine that completely wiped me out.

I felt compelled to share this because earlier I wrote that 2025 was one of the happiest years of my life - and both things are true. I don’t think you get the joy without the rough edges. All of this significantly affected my capacity and nervous system, and it made me deeply grateful for a business model that can withstand real life, even when I make it harder than it needs to be by saying yes to too many things.

WHAT AM I EXCITED FOR IN 2026?

Re-write Amplify. Yes, I know - I wrote this last year too. But by the tiny gods of follow-through, this will get done. Clients are being told next week, the plan is locked, and this isn’t a “someday” project anymore. It’s the focus.

300 net subscribers a month. My offer is excellent. My marketing is strong. My team is brilliant. Our systems are solid. 2026 is the year I stop under-leveraging all of that and fully commit to getting my work in front of more of the right people.

A more dynamic ads strategy. This builds on the above. No more set-and-forget. We’re testing, iterating, and treating ads as a living growth engine rather than a background task.

Ruthlessly filtering who Amplify is and isn’t for. This means clearer messaging, firmer boundaries, and far fewer “maybe” conversations. The goal is depth and alignment, not volume for the sake of it.

Doing 40 things before I’m 40. I loved the year I did 52 things in 52 weeks. So this feels like a fun personal focus. I want more memories, more play, more challenge and more stories.

THIS YEAR’S THEME

2025 made me take a long, hard look in the mirror at the patterns I’ve been circling for years. Seeing the pain, even writing the implications and learnings down, but not fully integrating them in a way that changed how I operated.

I see that now. And that clarity is what makes this next chapter possible.

2026 is all about RUTHLESS FOCUS.

Ruthless focus on locking Amplify for the year.
Ruthless focus on who Amplify is, and just as importantly, who it isn’t for.
Ruthless focus on only selling Amplify.
Ruthless focus on protecting white space in my calendar and keeping stress levels low.

Hope you enjoyed reading.

Read my other annual reviews here: