Vicki La Bouchardiere

Vicki La Bouchardiere Stress reduction specialist for business owners Your business was supposed to give you freedom. So why does it feel like a prison? They set boundaries.

If your brain won't shut up about work at 3am, if you're envying people with "normal" jobs, if you're wondering whether the juice is even worth the squeeze anymore - I get it. I've been the business owner who lost everything. I've had the anxiety, the depression, the severe mental health struggles that come with running a business badly. And I've spent 18 years helping established business owners

find their way back to sanity. What I Actually Do:

Here's the thing: I'm not a marketing coach. I won't help you scale, get more clients, or double your revenue. What I will do is help you stop feeling like a dogsbody in your own business. Help you set boundaries that people actually respect. Help you function like a capable human being instead of an overwhelmed, always-on stress case who can't switch off. I work with business owners (not startups - you need to have been at this a while) who thought they needed better time management or productivity hacks, when what they actually need is to fundamentally change how they operate and how they let others treat them. My Approach:

I use coaching and evidence-based clinical hypnotherapy. Intensive, focused work that actually shifts things - not endless sessions where we talk in circles. Whether your brain works like everyone else's or you've always felt a bit different, I help you understand how you're getting in your own way. We look at your thought patterns, your state management (basically, how you feel and function day-to-day), and the beliefs that are making everything harder than it needs to be. The Reality Check:

It doesn't have to be this hard. You don't need another person telling you to hustle harder or wear your stress like a badge of honour. You need someone who understands that you're not broken, you're not failing - you've just been operating in a way that's making you miserable. I work alongside my partner Kevin Whitehouse (40 years in accountancy, now a business mentor), so I understand business from every angle. We live together, work together, and discuss cases daily. This isn't theoretical coaching - it's real-world understanding of what it actually takes to run a business without losing your mind. What Changes:

My clients stop being available 24/7. They delegate. They take actual holidays. They stop obsessing over that one difficult client or staff member at 3am. They remember why they started their business in the first place - and it starts feeling like a pleasure again, not a burden they're trapped under. If This Sounds Like You:

I send regular email tips - a mix of sanity-saving perspective, humour, and life philosophy that helps you stop taking everything so bloody seriously. They're short, they're real, and people tell me they actually help. If you want in, drop me a message. Let's talk about making your business feel less like a prison and more like the freedom you signed up for.

Excuse the hairdo. I spent 90 minutes this morning being tortured by an optician like I was in some kind of black site d...
27/04/2026

Excuse the hairdo.

I spent 90 minutes this morning being tortured by an optician like I was in some kind of black site detention facility, and it's reminded me exactly what I tell my clients about learning new skills - sometimes it's going to feel like it's going t**s up. You might feel awkward and like you’re failing spectacularly, but that's just part of getting better at it.

Bear with me on this.

I went for my first contact lens fitting today. Now, I've only been wearing glasses for about 12 years - started in my mid-40s when my arms suddenly weren't long enough to read a bloody menu. And now I'm so spectacularly long-sighted that I need them pretty much all the time, which is ironic as f**k because before I wore them, I always thought glasses made people look intelligent and sophisticated.

Turns out when YOU'RE the one wearing them constantly, they're just an annoying lump of plastic on your face that gets smeared with fingerprints and slides down your nose when you're trying to look professional.

So, contact lenses. Seemed like a good idea. Kev wears them and makes it look easy. "It's a walk in the park," he said. "You'll be fine."

Lying bastard.

The woman doing the fitting must have trained with MI5 or something, because I've never felt so physically dominated in a clinical setting. She practically had to pin me down like I was a feral cat at the vet. My blink reflex was so strong she could have used it to generate electricity for the building. I swear she had one foot braced on my upper lid, a crowbar wedging the lower one open, and was using her full body weight just to get the bloody things in.

Eventually she managed it, and they felt... weird. But fine. Ish. The optician explained my brain would need time to adjust to the varifocal lenses - seeing long distance in some areas and short distance in others, which I thought, yeah, okay, I can live with that. My brain's had to adjust to worse (hello menopause, my old friend…).

But THEN came the bit where I had to get them out myself.

Oh. My. God.

I was there for what felt like HOURS, jabbing at my own eyeballs like I was trying to dig for buried treasure in my face. Eyes streaming. Nose running like a tap. Making noises that probably concerned the people in the waiting room.

And about halfway through, I had that exact same feeling I had when I was in labour with my kids - that moment of absolute desperation where you think, "No. F**k this. I can't do this anymore. I'm done. Somebody ELSE needs to sort this out. Somebody else get this baby out because I AM NOT DOING THIS."

But just like with childbirth, there's no opting out if you want a result. I HAD to learn how to do it myself. They were MY eyeballs. MY problem. MY responsibility to stop being such a massive wuss and just get on with it.

So I did some breathing exercises (because I actually know this stuff - breathing activates your parasympathetic nervous system and stops you from having a full meltdown in an optician's chair), calmed myself down enough to stop sweating, and finally - FINALLY - got the first one out.

Then the other one.

Then I had to do it TWO MORE TIMES before they'd trust me not to be a danger to myself and let me leave with a trial pack.

By the third go, the daily disposables were getting properly manky and misshapen from all my fumbling, but I did it. And each time was marginally less traumatic than the last. Marginally.

I've got to put the sodding things in again tomorrow, which I'm absolutely dreading. But I'll do it, because I know the only way to get better at this is to actually DO it. There's no book I can read, no YouTube video I can watch, no amount of positive thinking that's going to make me magically competent at shoving plastic discs into my eyeballs. AI certainly can’t do it, and lens butlers don’t exist yet (but they should!). I've just got to practice until it stops feeling like self-harm and starts feeling vaguely normal.

Which brings me to what happened at a party the other day.

A woman asked what I do for work, and I told her about the hypnotherapy I do with business owners - helping with confidence, fear of failure, fear of success, the terror of sending invoices, relationship problems, the whole "I haven't seen my kids awake in three weeks" work-life balance nightmare, all that stuff.

"Oh," she said. "Sounds great, but I don't like the idea of giving up control to somebody else."

Right. So here's the thing I need to explain, because this comes up A LOT:

Clinical hypnotherapy is NOTHING like stage hypnosis where some bloke in a shiny waistcoat makes you cluck like a chicken while everyone laughs at you.

Clinical hypnotherapy is more like me teaching you how to look after your own thoughts, emotions and behaviours better YOURSELF.

The ultimate goal isn't that you need to see me forever (although if I like you I’m sure I wouldn't mind). It's that I teach you some techniques you can go away and use yourself. It's a skill. Something you learn.

And just like my contact lens torture session this morning, it might feel awkward and clunky and uncomfortable at first. You might feel like you're doing it wrong. You might want to give up halfway through and get someone else to sort it out for you.

But with practice, it becomes more natural. More fluid. More like something you can actually do without wanting to cry.

Some of my clients take to hypnotherapy and self-hypnosis techniques straight away. They love the journaling, the self-reflection, all of it. It clicks immediately and off they go.

Others find certain things tricky and uncomfortable at first. They feel a bit daft. They're not sure they're "doing it right." They want me to just fix them instead.

And I say to them what I'm saying to myself about these bloody contact lenses: the only way you actually get better at this is to DO it. We can talk theory all you want, but until you go out and practice some of this stuff in the real world, you won't improve.

The difference is, I'm there to guide you through it. To help you find your own techniques. To teach you how to manage your own mind better so you can run your business without feeling like you're constantly drowning.

Not to control you. To help you control yourself.

Which, let's be honest, is a hell of a lot more useful than me waving my hands around and making you feel better for an hour before you go back to the same old patterns.

If you're curious about how hypnotherapy or coaching (or a bit of both) could help you with whatever you're struggling with in your business (or life), just reply to this email, drop me a DM on LinkedIn, or if you're seeing this on Facebook (where my messages are disabled because Zuckerberg hates me), just reply in the comments.

P.S. Seriously, if you've got business issues that are doing your head in and you're curious about whether this approach could help, get in touch and let's have a chat. I promise I won't poke you in the eye.

I spent Wednesday at Stourhead Gardens instead of my desk. Best work decision all week.Look, I'm supposed to be writing ...
24/03/2026

I spent Wednesday at Stourhead Gardens instead of my desk. Best work decision all week.

Look, I'm supposed to be writing a book. And there I was, Wednesday morning, staring at the document like it might suddenly write itself if I just glared hard enough. Going round and round in circles in my head. Getting absolutely nowhere.

You know that feeling, right?

So I did something radical. I got in the car and drove to Stourhead Gardens.

Away from the screen, away from the document, just walking through this stunning National Trust property... my thinking completely loosened up. By the time I got back to the car, I'd re-established my entire plan of attack for the book. The clarity just arrived, without me forcing it.

Here's the thing - Stanford University found that walking boosts creative thinking by an average of 60%. Your brain literally works better when you're moving.

But we don't do it, do we?

We chain ourselves to our desks from 9 to 5 (or way beyond). Back-to-back meetings. Constantly firefighting. Feeling guilty about taking breaks because there's always something urgent.

And even if we're good and do our morning workout? Congrats - you're now an "active couch potato." That's the actual term for people who exercise for an hour then sit on their backside the rest of the day, assuming they've ticked the movement box.

With better weather coming, maybe it's time to question whether being glued to your desk is actually productive, or just... habit?

Sometimes the best thing you can do for your business is step away from it for a bit. Movement, fresh air, giving your brain permission to think differently. The stress reduction alone is worth it. But the quality of thinking? That's the real win.

Not only did that walk help my fitness, but being in such a beautiful environment genuinely improved my thinking process. Staring at a screen certainly isn't the best thing for you physically, and clearly it's not always the best thing mentally either.

So here's my question: when did you last give yourself proper thinking time away from your screen?

What's your go-to place for thinking?

What do snails and AI have in common? (you'll never guess)...So this weekend, my three-year-old grandson, Rory, was resp...
23/03/2026

What do snails and AI have in common? (you'll never guess)...

So this weekend, my three-year-old grandson, Rory, was responsible for some absolute gold in the family WhatsApp group.

He's been getting really into little creatures lately, and he made friends with a snail. Proper attached to it, he was. Then he noticed something odd around the snail's neck and asked his mum what it was.

She had to Google it.

Turns out, snails have a bu****le right near their heads. They literally p**p out of their necks. And the reason? Their digestive tract is so incredibly short that the waste comes out right there near their breathing hole, not at the back of the shell where you'd expect it.

My grandson's verdict? "Mum, the snail's got a poo necklace."

I'm 57 years old and I'm only just learning this now.

And here's what made me laugh...

Snails p**p constantly because everything moves through them so fast. Short digestive tract, quick turnaround, constant stream of poo.

Sound familiar?

That's basically AI right now, isn't it?

Everyone's churning out AI-generated content at lightning speed - short process, quick turnaround, constant stream of stuff.

The tools themselves have the shelf life of snail poo. Remember when everyone was banging on about that one AI thing six months ago? Yeah, neither do I. It's already been replaced.

I've spent the past year trying to get my head around different AI tools, and honestly? It's exhausting trying to keep up with something that's got the longevity of a snail's digestive system.

AI can write your emails, analyse your data, and probably do your tax return if you ask it nicely. But just like snail poo, most of it'll be forgotten pretty bloody quickly.

So if you're lying awake worrying about whether you should be using AI, whether everyone else has got it sorted and you're the only one who hasn't, whether you're falling behind...

Stop it.

Take a breath.

Half the stuff you're stressing about learning will be obsolete by next month anyway. Learn what's actually useful for YOUR business when you need it. Ignore the rest.

You don't have to keep up with every new thing that gets p**ped out into the world.

And remember: I got to 57 without knowing snails poo out of their necks, and I turned out alright.

16/03/2026

Watched that Manosphere thing. Had thoughts. About your business, actually.

There's a difference between a movement and a counter-movement, and it's worth understanding.

A movement creates new rules because the old ones don't work anymore. Women's liberation wasn't about going back to anything - it was about building a new map for a world that was changing. It was uncomfortable, messy, and took decades, but it was fundamentally about moving forward.

A counter-movement is different. It's a reaction to change that feels too fast, too chaotic, too threatening. Instead of creating new rules, it tries to restore old ones. Not because the old rules were better, but because they were clearer. They promised certainty.

That's what I saw watching the Louis Theroux documentary everyone's banging on about. The Manosphere one.

These blokes are preaching traditional family values while sh****ng everything that moves. They're selling courses on becoming "sovereign men" while being completely enslaved to the algorithm. They claim to be all about logic and stoicism, then lose their s**t the moment Louis gently questions them.

The contradiction is staggering. But watching them, I didn't see stupid. I saw stressed.

They're grabbing onto rigid rules because the world feels chaotic. The "old ways" promised certainty - do X, get Y. Follow these steps, get this result. It was a map. And when Louis challenges that map, they double down. Because admitting the map is bo****ks means admitting they're lost.

Sound familiar?

I see the exact same pattern in business owners every single week. Smart, capable people making decisions based purely on panic, then dressing it up as strategy.

They say they value work-life balance, then take client calls at 9pm on Sunday. They claim they want to be seen as premium, then say yes to every budget project that comes along. They talk about wanting focus and clarity, then pivot their entire business model because someone on LinkedIn said they should.

Ask them why, and watch them double down. "My industry's different." "I can't possibly say no right now." "Once I get through this busy period, then I'll sort it out."

It's not logic. It's fear dressed up in a business suit.

The Manosphere guys want rules because rules feel safe. Stressed business owners want the "right strategy" for the same reason. Both are looking for certainty in a world that doesn't offer it anymore.

But here's the thing about grabbing onto rigid rules when you're panicking: you end up living in complete contradiction to what you actually value. You preach one thing, do another, then justify it with increasingly mental gymnastics.

The men in that documentary aren't confident. They're terrified. And the more terrified they get, the louder they shout about their rules.

Your business doesn't need another strategy. It needs you to stop making decisions from a place of stress and calling it logic.

Because when you're calm and confident, you don't need rigid rules or the "one right way." You can actually think. You can set proper boundaries. You can say no without spiralling into catastrophic thinking about what you might miss.

You can run your business like an actual leader instead of someone constantly firefighting while pretending it's all part of the plan.

The Manosphere guys are looking for certainty in all the wrong places. Are you?

Another day, another existential crisis solvedYesterday we had another hot seat day at Rose Cottage, and it was bloody b...
12/03/2026

Another day, another existential crisis solved

Yesterday we had another hot seat day at Rose Cottage, and it was bloody brilliant.

Someone commented on LinkedIn that it can be hard to open up in front of a group. And yeah, it absolutely can be. It's easier to protect your ego than be honest about what's eating away at you. But you can only solve problems when you're open about how you feel.

We had a small group - all highly experienced, all amazing at what they do. The majority facing similar challenges. Marketing efforts that used to work aren't landing the same way. Enquiries slowing down. That nagging feeling that maybe they need to evolve.

Then came one of those moments. One guy was sharing his struggle with marketing - knowing what he needs to do but finding it all such a massive faff. Another bloke looked across the table and said, "Oh my god, that's exactly how I feel."

That's why these sessions work.

Our marketing expert - who had his own hot seat and challenges - said something brilliant: "You have to choose your poison. Choose which form of discomfort you want, because nothing's going to feel like a walk in the park."

We're sold the dream that everything should feel easy. But the reality? It takes work and often doesn't feel comfortable. Hearing that from people who've actually been through it lands differently than just hearing Kevin and me bang on about it.

One guy thought his campaign had failed and was ready to bin it. When the marketing expert dug into the numbers, he said, "Mate, your response rate is bloody good. Keep doing more of that." Classic case of giving up just when something's working.

Someone else felt embarrassed about procrastinating over something simple. They came away realising it wasn't something fundamentally wrong with them - just needed different tactics. That lowered their stress and quietened the self-beating-up voice.

Here's the thing about stress: you literally cannot make logical decisions when you're stressed. Blood flow goes away from the strategic thinking part of your brain. So when someone shares and visibly relaxes - that's when clarity comes.

One guy said at the end, "I almost didn't come today. Almost convinced myself I didn't have time." But he was so glad he did. They all left looking lighter, brighter, ready to take on their week.

This isn't group therapy or a pity party. When business owners help each other, they give practical advice they've actually tested. Brilliant minds helping brilliant minds.

Kevin and I have to lose our egos sometimes because we hear these ideas and think, "S**t, I should have thought of that." But we don't have all the answers. We're just building an environment where the answers show up anyway.

Professional loneliness is real. Working in isolation, making decisions alone, wondering if you're the only one struggling - it's exhausting. Networking events can make it worse because everybody else looks like they're succeeding effortlessly.

That's not what happens here. And before you panic thinking "oh god, not another group demanding my time" - relax. Most of our clients don't speak to each other between sessions at all. They've got enough trouble keeping up with family and existing friends. But when they turn up, they pick up exactly where they left off. Deep conversations, real support, then back to their own lives. Just strategic touch points throughout the year when you need them.

It's one of the reasons we get powerful results in small groups at our home - it's non-threatening. Yesterday's group have known each other for years, so they were comfortable from the start.

We're bringing hot seats to the next Rhinefield House event too. Bigger group, hotel setting, but the same magic when people realise they're not alone.

The beauty of hot seats? You don't have to be in one to benefit. Business owner issues are so universal you can hear someone else getting advice and think, "Yeah, I need that too."

One person asked the marketing expert what it would cost to work with him. The answer? "You probably can't afford me at the moment." But he still gave incredibly helpful advice to everyone. That's the quality of people in our world.

If this sounds like the sort of group you'd like to be part of - one that's there when you need it, responsive to your actual needs rather than forcing you through some rigid curriculum - get in touch.

I’m in our garden room, waiting for hungry business owners to descend on Rose Cottage for today's hot seats session.Eddi...
11/03/2026

I’m in our garden room, waiting for hungry business owners to descend on Rose Cottage for today's hot seats session.

Eddie's already losing his s**t with excitement. And because apparently I'm a glutton for punishment, we're also dog-sitting Dottie and Haggis for our mate Jon. So yeah, three dogs, too, and whatever chaos unfolds over the next few hours. Living the dream.

These quarterly sessions are honestly some of my favourite days. Don't get me wrong, the posh hotel events at Rhinefield House are bloody lovely, but there's something about cramming people around our table, making lunch, and getting properly stuck into what's actually going on that just hits different.

And here's where it gets interesting - half the time, the business isn't even the real problem.

Case in point: one of today's attendees is rocking up from his brand new house. Last time he was here, he was completely stuck. Convinced he needed to wait until his business was running perfectly before he and his wife could make the move they'd been dreaming about for ages.

We unpicked that bo****ks pretty quickly.

Turns out, he didn't need perfect circumstances. He just needed permission to stop waiting. He left here, drove home, casually asked his wife "fancy moving this year then?" and they actually bloody did it. New house. Done. Just like that.

That's the magic of getting smart people in a room together being brutally honest about what's really holding them back. Sometimes it's crap systems. Sometimes it's limiting beliefs you didn't even know you had. And sometimes it's just realising you've been trying to solve the wrong sodding problem for months.

It's why these sessions work so well. It's solution-focused, it's positive, people actually help each other out, and over time they become proper mates rather than just business contacts who nod politely at networking events.

Because let's be honest - running a business can be lonely as hell, even when you're surrounded by people all day long.

If you're sitting there thinking "Christ, I could do with some of that" - that mix of practical business sense, mindset work, and actual human beings who get it - then let's have a chat. Our programmes include these sessions, and the next one's in about 12 weeks. There might be a spot going if you're quick.

Right, someone's just pulled into the drive. Time to hide the good biscuits.

Dearly Beloved, We Are Gathered Here Today to Get Through This Thing Called Life...You know that feeling when you sit do...
10/03/2026

Dearly Beloved, We Are Gathered Here Today to Get Through This Thing Called Life...

You know that feeling when you sit down at the start of a new quarter, set your goals with genuine optimism, and then life decides to absolutely bo****ks up your plans?

Yeah. That.

Maybe you get knocked on your arse with illness for three weeks. Or your biggest client project falls through at the last minute. Or you're dealing with a divorce, a house move, caring for an elderly parent, or just the relentless chaos of running a business when everything feels like it's constantly on fire.

And suddenly, that journal you started with such good intentions? It becomes a painful reminder of everything you're NOT achieving. So you stop opening it altogether. Because who wants to keep staring at a list of goals you're "failing" at?

I used to do this all the bloody time. I'd be journaling away, feeling productive and on track, and then something would knock me sideways and I'd just... stop. Because looking at my unmet goals felt like looking at hard evidence of my own inadequacy.

But here's the thing: the times when you think you really don't want to journal are probably the times you need to do it most.

Most business journals are designed around one thing: tracking progress towards goals. Did you hit your targets? Tick. Did you complete that project? Tick. Did you achieve what you set out to do? Tick, tick, tick.

Which is fine when life is cooperating. But when is life ever that bloody straightforward?

As a business owner, you're not clocking off at 5pm and forgetting about work. Your business doesn't exist in some neat little box separate from the rest of your life. It's all tangled up together - your work stress affects your relationships, your health impacts your productivity, personal drama sucks the life out of you and makes running your business feel impossible.

And here's something nobody tells you: problems and challenges in business are completely normal. You are a problem-solver. There will always be something to work on. And when things are finally going well? We inevitably try to expand, take on more, push ourselves further. It's almost the way we're designed.

So if your journal is only measuring whether you ticked off your goals or not, you're setting yourself up to feel s**t about yourself every time life throws you a curveball. Which, let's be honest, is most of the time.

That's why earlier this year, Kev and I made a change to the 12-week journal we designed for our clients. We added something we call the Daily Character Check.

It's simple. At the end of each day, you rate yourself on how you showed up - not on whether you achieved your goals, but on how you handled whatever the day threw at you.

Give yourself a 0 if you abandoned your plans and avoided challenges. A 5 if you followed your plans loosely and handled challenges inconsistently. Or a 10 if you committed to your plan and/OR tackled challenges with a great attitude.

And this is the bit that matters: you can give yourself a 10 even when everything's gone to s**t and you've achieved precisely nothing you set out to do.

Let me give you an example. Last month, I was ill for pretty much the entire month. Started with a cold, developed into sinusitis, and it absolutely floored me. I'm not talking about soldiering on with a sniffle - I was properly wiped out - I actually ended up in bed for three days halfway through it all which is virtually unheard of for me, and I was really struggling either side of that.

All my goals? Completely scuppered. A whole month of plans down the drain.

After three days in bed, I started to become a bit more mobile. And you know what the temptation was? To try and catch up. To open my laptop and get sucked into six hours of emails. To revive the household. To make up for lost time.

But I didn't. Well, I let myself do little bits of those things, but I made myself a proper schedule around getting rest. I said to myself: as soon as I start to feel tired, I'm going to rest again. I allowed myself to sit on the sofa and watch TV. I cleaned up my diet completely - no alcohol, no processed foods, I even weaned myself off caffeine because I didn't want it interfering with the sleep my body desperately needed.

And when I looked at my journal those days, I often gave myself a 10.

Not because I'd achieved anything so to speak. Not because I'd ticked off a single goal. But because I recognised that supporting my recovery was the smartest thing I could do. I showed up to the challenge of being ill with the best possible attitude.

Under the old way of thinking, I'd have given myself a zero. I was incapacitated, unproductive, useless. And that would have been demoralising as hell.

But the Daily Character Check let me see it differently. I was doing the very best I could under challenging circumstances. And that deserved credit.

This isn't just about being nice to yourself (though God knows we could all do with being kinder). It's about maintaining your self-esteem and sense of capability when things aren't going to plan.

Because if you start thinking of yourself as a failure every time life gets in the way, you're in trouble. It's like being on a diet, having one biscuit, and thinking "sod it, might as well eat the whole packet now." That black-and-white thinking gets worse when you're stressed, and it can completely derail you.

And here's the thing about stress that most people don't realise: when you're beating yourself up for not getting things done, you're actually adding to your stress levels. And when those stress hormones are firing, it makes logical, rational thought more difficult. The fight or flight response literally takes blood flow away from the area of your brain that needs it most for clear thinking. So you're not just being hard on yourself - you're actually making it harder to solve the problems you're facing.

I see this with clients all the time. Something goes wrong - a project falls through, a client messes them around, they lose a big opportunity they were counting on - and they start beating themselves up. "I knew I shouldn't have done it that way. I knew this was wrong. I'm such an idiot."

But sometimes things just happen that aren't your fault. You don't have to blame other people, but you also don't need to flagellate yourself. You just need to pick your t**s up and get on with life.

And that's what the Daily Character Check helps you do. It helps you ask: okay, that didn't go to plan, but how can I show up well today anyway?

Your big project fell through? Can you spend time reaching out to old clients, asking for referrals, doing something aligned with filling that gap? Then you can give yourself a high score for responding well to disappointment.

You're going through a major transition in your business - maybe hiring someone to take over your role so you can focus on growth? It's completely normal to feel uneasy about that. It would actually be weird if you had no reaction at all. Uncertainty is uncomfortable. But you can still give yourself credit for moving forward despite that discomfort, for recognising that growth opportunities rarely come without a hitch.

The journal Kev and I made for our clients isn't just about work goals. It covers all the areas of your life - your business, yes, but also your home life, your relationships, your health, your lifestyle. All of it. Because for a small business owner, work never happens in isolation. It's all part of the same messy, complicated, beautiful thing called life.

And working with us means learning to see your life as that whole unit - recognising how it all dovetails together, and how keeping yourself sane and healthy and functioning well has a direct impact on how your business runs.

I've been journaling for about 10 years now, and I wish I'd had this Daily Character Check feature years ago. When I was going through menopause. When my father died. When I was dealing with difficult periods in building this business. I think I would have been so much kinder to myself.

So if you use a journal - even if it's not ours - try adding this for yourself. At the end of each day, give yourself a score out of 10 for how you showed up. Not for what you achieved, but for your attitude, your resilience, your willingness to tackle challenges or be kind to yourself when you needed it most.

Because keeping that dialogue open with yourself, especially when things are difficult, is crucial. You can't just ignore yourself when things aren't going to plan. That's when you need your journal most - to check in, to remind yourself how you've coped with challenges before, to give yourself credit for turning up with a good attitude even when everything feels like it's falling apart.

Life gets in the way. We sit down at the start of each quarter and write our goals feeling full of hope, but inevitably things happen. And being able to keep a sense of positivity and self-respect throughout those challenges? That's not just nice to have. That's essential.

“Dearly beloved. We are gathered here today to get through this thing called life”, as Prince would say. It's messy, unpredictable, and rarely goes to plan. But you can still show up well to it. And that's worth celebrating.

Let’s go crazy!

(Who can tell I’m off to see a Prince tribute on Friday? LOL…)

Dr “Everything Sometimes Be Not Alright” Vicki

P.S. If any of this resonates with you and you're struggling with keeping your head above water in your business, get in touch. Let's have a chat and see if we're aligned to work together. Sometimes all it takes is someone who actually understands what you're going through to help you see things differently.

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