I gave a talk last Friday at the Digital Women conference in London and I think the part that resonated with people there was this idea of building their business their way.

This is a concept I’ve been really excited about for a long time. It’s what we named the toolkit I co-wrote with Nottingham University.

For me defining your version of success and not losing sight of why you started your business in the first place is a key fundamental to living a joy-filled happy life.

It’s when we start looking over our shoulders at other people’s success that doubt and negativity sets in.

And a whole bunch of advertising for business coaches and programmes and memberships groups and webinars focus on our fears that we’re not good enough. That we’re not doing enough to grow our businesses. That we’re not scaling fast enough. Earning enough.

Add to this the ever noisy Government who keep telling us that if we grew bigger business with employees and office space we would be supporting the GDP of the entire company.

In fact by running small businesses and not scaling up we are responsible for the country being £250 billion poorer! Can you feel the pressure?

So we have Government on one side telling us to scale up, grow up, become more entrepreneurial, stop playing at business.

And on the other side we have a whole host of business coaches telling us that we should be earning 6 or even 7 figures like they do if we want to feel successful.

What a crock of shit!

Enough already!

Let’s start with these coaches who are selling us a dream.

When you started your business, what was your aim?

Mine was to run a business that meant that I could drop Robin off to school and pick her up, that I had the freedom to choose the people I wanted to work with, that I would be an example to Robin that women could do it for themselves. And so I could pay my rent, my taxes and have a little left over for holidays and nice clothes. About £26k would do.

Now it took me a long time to get to £26k. The average freelancer earns less than £20k and now I earn a lot more than that. But I’ve never left sight of the fact that that was my aim. And when I’m like I need to grow more, I ask myself what for? And remind myself that I already have everything I wanted.

Yes, I want you to earn more. And if you want private jets and diamond rings then all power to you.

But lets check out reality here a little bit, before we start whipping ourselves because we’re not doing as well as we think we should be doing.

If the average freelancer earns less than £20k and the average wage for the rest of the country is around £26-28k, then if you’re smashing £28k you’re already better off than half of the country.

And let’s look at those 6 & 7 figure claims. The Institute for Fiscal Studies tells us that only 310,000 people earn over £160k in the UK. And the majority of them and male , middle ages and live in London. That 310,000 is against the 31,000,000 people that pay tax in the UK. And 43% of adults don’t even earn enough money to pay tax!

So if you’re earning enough money to pay your mortgage, put food on the table and have shoes without whole that well fucking done!

And then onto the insane pressure the Government is putting on us because we aren’t doing enough for King and Country. Despite the fact that a large proportion of us have squeezed children out of our bodies and looked after them – that apparently isn’t enough! No we have to grow large corporations as well as children.

No!

If you run a business and just want to keep it to you, and, you know maybe a VA of 2, then all power to you.

If that means you have the freedom and flexibility to do as you please then that’s fine with me.

When I first started my business I had a coach encourage me to start an agency and employ people and get a fancy office in town. And for a while it did sound nice, but then I stopped. Because I already had the pressure of feeding and clothing my daughter. I didn’t want to be responsible for other people’s mortgages and I choose to start my business to have freedom, not have more pressure. So I declined.