This year has been huge for me.
Not in the having a new child or moving home kind of way or even outward business success way. More so in the deep personal realisation type of way.
Doing these annual reviews have always been insightful, but often I find myself looking back at all the things I’d planned at the start of the previous year and realising I’d done very little of it. I guess one thing these reviews have revealed is that I’m pretty terrible at predicting my own future.
Another thing I’ve noticed from the last few years is that I’ve mostly been rattling around inside of my comfort zone.
Sure I’ve done some new things, but they’ve often come from a sense of pressure or urgency rather than intention. One example is the months I spent setting up a new, convoluted marketing funnel at the end of 2023. I was sure that was going to be the thing that would save me and I pushed myself to finish it. It didn’t save me and I just ended up exhausted.
But this year has been different.
I’m excited to share with you what happened.
Part 1 – What Mattered
When I think about this year these are the things at the forefront of my mind. It’s the stuff that went well and led to many of the surprises in the next section.
Joining a Coaching Program
At the end of 2024 an old acquaintance from way back in my Portland, OR days announced he was running a group coaching program for mid-level creator-types (people with established audiences and income). I jumped on the application eager to connect with some other online entrepreneurs who were a bit ahead of me. I find many of the circles and communities I join people are just starting out, however I’m wielding a 15 year old business and that brings with it unique challenges that only others who’ve been in the game for a while understand.
So, that was my plan going into the group coaching. Connect with the other people in the group. Make some friends. Learn how to get Bootcamp Ideas back on the right track.
That was not what happened.
It was a classic case of me getting the thing that I needed, not the thing I wanted.
Yes, I did connect with the others. They were a fantastic group of entrepreneurs and creatives. But it when more like this:
Months 1-2: Total imposter syndrome. So many cool, successful business while mine was a slowly sinking ship. Months 3-4: I committed to just continuing to show up and discovered a bunch of stories I’d made up about business in the past few years. Months 5-6: Total upheaval of my business as I committed to sitting with uncertainty and rewriting old beliefs.
And as I practiced my courage it made me realise that what I really needed wasn’t to ‘fix’ Bootcamp Ideas, but to have the courage to step into the murk and explore what I wanted to do next. I’ll share more about what that is in this review.
Connecting with Local Business Owners
One of the things joining the coaching group brought into focus was that I really didn’t have many business owner friends here where I live. This is a piece of advice I’ve given many other business owners over the years, and yet I wasn’t putting it into action myself.
When I first moved here, around 7.5 years ago, I attempted to get a group of business owners to meet regularly but struggled to get traction. So I gave up.
At the time this was a healthy thing to do and opened me up to many new friendships I still have today.
But it’s so important to have those people who know what you’re going through work wise. So this year I started reaching out to those I knew worked for themselves to have coffee or lunch and have deepened existing relationships and made some fantastic new friends.
Chairperson at the School
At the end of last year I joined the board at the school my eldest goes to. After a few months I was asked if I could step into the Chairperson position.
I wasn’t 100% sure if I could do it, but I was also going through a period of stepping into a bigger version of myself (see months 5-6 of coaching above) so I said yes. While there have been some challenging moments, overall I’m really enjoying leading the board and having a say in the direction of the school
Also school related: This year I helped out directing the school play which was a very fun way to tap back into my theatre roots.
Workshop Series
Frustrated with my marketing efforts for Bootcamp Ideas towards the end of the year I asked myself a question: ‘I’ve been doing this a long time. What if I threw caution to the wind, forgot everything you’re ‘meant’ to do in marketing, and just trusted my instinct? What would I do?’
The answer that came back very clearly was to just run some workshops.
So I put together a series of 6 free workshops (so far I’ve delivered 5) and started inviting my list to attend. I covered a lot of the problems trainers face, from planning to running classes to marketing.
I’ve learned so much doing these (like less is more in terms of content) and gained the confidence I needed to really lean into sharing what I see working and trusting that is how I’m most valuable. So not teaching ‘best practices’ but actual practical examples and tools.
Part 2 – What Surprised Me
This section is about the sneaky, surprising insights that I couldn’t have predicted.
3-Month Break
Towards the end of my time with the coaching group I stumbled across a problem. I was trying to explore what work and business might look like next for me but I was finding the week to week of running my current business was really distracting. I had just launched a program for Bootcamp Ideas and I didn’t get the sign ups I was hoping for leading to cancelling it.
So I decided I’d do something I’ve only ever given myself permission to do after each of my children were born. Take an extend period of time off. I started with 30 days with the option to continue for 90 days if I was finding it helpful and my business hadn’t burned down.
For the first 30 days I mostly rested, weirdly I was exhausted. I slept a lot. And was fairly aimless. I realised I would need the full 90 days.
This lead to a bit of a chain reaction of events:
- The workshop series I shared above. Returning to just writing a newsletter each week was lacking the real-time feedback I was craving.
- A friend recommended The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. I requested a copy for Father’s Day and WOW! Just doing the Morning Pages and Artist’s Dates was like returning to myself, the real goofy sometimes, serious sometimes me. I didn’t realise how distracted I kept myself all of the time.
- I cut out coffee for 2 weeks. My coffee intake was at it’s highest ever but the thought of even cutting back had felt just too hard to bear. Yet a few week’s into The Artist’s Way is suddenly felt doable, so I cut back with full permission to myself to go back to daily drinking at the end, but also with the goal of not drinking coffee everyday. I’m happy to report that months later I only have 2-4 coffees each week and feel completely different and less stressed.
- I allowed myself to come back to playing games with friends. Board games, video games, table top RPGs. Essentially, allowing myself to play again. I still struggle sometimes with guilt, but when I just allow it to be play I always feel better afterwards.
Sharing More About Human Design
One of the things that came out of coaching was realising how much I use Human Design as a useful tool in my life and business (I even trained as a Human Design Guide in 2021), but that I feel funny sharing it with others. I would really worry that people wouldn’t take me seriously if I talked about this system rooted in Astrology.
My coach pointed out that regardless of Human Design’s roots, this feeling of being afraid people won’t take you seriously if you take your business in a certain direction is really common to all business owners. What if I just tried sharing more about it?
So I did.
And it felt very awkward at first but every time I would share something someone would email me, message me or mention on a workshop how helpful and insightful it was. This has given me the confidence to share more and more and while I don’t want to be defined by Human Design as I like to use lots of tools and resources, it feels pretty cool to be able to share this one more.
I loved it! I knew my human design type already, but didn’t really know how it impacted my group fitness/bootcamp business. I am a mani-gen 4/1, so it was great that he was on the call had the same profile numbers in his chart and you discussed them further, but super interesting about the arrows – all of mine point to the right which now makes a lot of sense!
Bootcamp Ideas: The Slowly Sinking Ship
I guess this is not really a surprise. Or even a realisation. But really an… acceptance.
During coaching I worked out that I could make Bootcamp Ideas continue working as a business if I 5X’d it. My coach then asked me if now I knew that I was excited about doing that.
My answer: No.
I’ve been trying my little heart out for 4 years now to turn my income from tracking downwards to going up again. Doing something like that for so long really effects your mindset. Like I feel defeated before I even try something.
It’s hard. So many community and paying members have been with me for years. I felt like if I changed direction I was letting them down. And new people are still finding me and emailing to say how much they love my material. That keeps me going but the reality I’ve been denying for so long is that it’s just not enough new people.
I always hoped if I just kept showing up that in time the business would turn back around again.
I’d been bailing water out of the boat without really letting myself entertain the idea of just stepping off onto a new boat. Because the boat was surrounded by fog and I couldn’t see any other boats. I was going to have to jump off the boat and paddle around a bit in the deep water to see what boats were out there.
And that was fucking terrifying.
But I did it and now I’ve found a boat and I want to see where it’s headed but that means there’s no one left to bail the other boat (am I pushing the boat/ship metaphor too far? I hope you’ve followed me.).
And that’s what this year has been about for me, giving myself permission to explore other things which might result in me letting go of a 15 year project that’s very dear to my heart.
A New Relationship with the Fire Brigade
I’m going to bullet my thoughts on this as it’s a bit easier for my brain:
- For 7 years I’ve volunteered with our local Fire Brigade.
- It’s been a fantastic way to make friends and do things completely different to the day-to-day of running an online business.
- It’s a big time commitment between call outs (which can happen at any moment), weekly training, truck and vehicle maintenance and additional training to upskill in different areas (eg. one rather large training we did this year was to become a Fire Medical Response brigade meaning we now also respond to some medical incidents like cardiac arrests.)
- This year my wife’s business has gone from strength to strength which has been amazing. It also means I’m less available to respond to emergencies when she’s working because our kids are still little.
- One of my insights from my time off was that I wasn’t connecting with others as much because I often leaned towards work that was more flexible (eg. content creation) so I could be available for call outs instead of the important connection work I need to do (eg. calls, interviews, catch ups). I’ve put more boundaries around my work time and sleep now.
I’ve learned a volunteer organisation will often take all the time you can give it and still ask for more. Towards the end of this year I’ve had to let go of being one of the regular responders in our brigade and look at a more sustainable relationship. One that I can continue for many years while still making space for doing the work I love.
Part 3 – What’s Emerging
In this section I’ll share with you what’s on the horizon for next year and where I can feel my energy is heading.
My New Boat: Coaching
I’ve wanted to be a full-time coach for years and years.
I’ve dabbled in coaching a lot over the years. I was a coach when I was running bootcamps. Then about 10 years ago I started one-to-one coaching and running business coaching programs for fitness trainers. I’ve written hundreds of newsletters, run workshops, made videos, all of it dancing around using my innate coaching gifts.
But coaching was never the main thing.
This coming year I want it to start being the main thing. I’ve already begun developing my listening and question skills. I’m revisiting useful tools and exercises I’ve done over the years.
There are lots of different types of coaches. I don’t want to be a business coach, focused on systems and strategies. I want to be the type of coach that’s often called executive coach or leadership coach where the focus is on the person not the business. It’s all about helping the person grow into the fullest expression of themselves so that they can tackle and navigate the problems they face. This is the work I’m interested in. Helping people be more independent, more empowered and looking less to others to solve their problems for them.
I didn’t cut drastically back on coffee this year because I listened to a podcast about how bad caffeine is. I cut back on it because I created the space to get back in touch with who I am on a deeper level, and when I did that letting go of coffee felt like an obvious thing to do.
Another example: My coach (or anyone else in the group) didn’t tell me to take 3 months off from Bootcamp Ideas this year, but by holding the space for me to feel the discomfort I was feeling around work I came to that idea myself.
Helping Partnerships and Collaborations
Another area I’m particularly excited to explore is around helping create more effective partnerships, where 1+1 doesn’t equal 2, it equals 10.
This naturally extends to one-off collaborations too as business owners are often teaming up with brands and other similar businesses for cross-promotion and other marketing efforts.
I can see how my own experience over the years of marketing and product collabs (both ongoing and one-off) and using tools like Human Design that highlight how we work differently could be really helpful to others trying to navigate this.
I’m not 100% sure where that’s going yet, but I have put together some reflection questions that I’ll share in my newsletter in the next few weeks.
Wrapping Up 2025
For years I sat passively waiting to see what was next for me.
It felt like the next thing always just came along at the right time. But that’s not true. Looking back there was always a period of reconnecting with myself before the next thing arrived.
The other thing that’s held me back has been perfectionism. My logic has been that because I built one business that lasted over a decade, the next thing needs to be even better. And I need to be 100% sure before I start.
But that’s just not how I operate. I work best through learning by trying things out with people. That’s where my success has come from and I haven’t been allowing that to happen in my new coaching venture.
But here’s to sharing more imperfect things in 2026.
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You can also reach out if you’re interested in hiring me as your coach.