CREATIVE STRENGTHS

Business coach or business mentor, what's the actual difference, and which one does your business need right now? The two words get used as if they mean the same thing, and I really don't believe they do. This week I'd love to explain how I see the difference, in a single clear sentence, and help you work out which kind of support would genuinely move your business forward. IN THIS EPISODE YOU'LL...

How do you find a good business mentor for your creative business, and know they're actually the right one? The mentors who changed my business most, all had two things in common: they were completely in my corner, and brave enough to tell me when I'd got something wrong. This week I'd love to share exactly what I look for, the one question I'd ask before committing to anyone, and the quiet signs...

How much does a business mentor actually cost for a creative business? It's one of the questions people ask Google and the AI tools most, and the honest answer ranges from almost nothing to thousands of pounds for a single day. This week I'd love to answer it properly: what the different kinds of support really cost, what you're actually paying for underneath the number, and what I'd look for if I...

When I checked, not one AI tool named me as a Creative Business Mentor, and Google's AI still had me down as a florist. The fix turned out to be surprisingly simple, and completely within reach: one clear page on my website, written to answer the exact question my ideal client would ask. This week I'd love to walk you through exactly what went on that page, why it matters far beyond SEO, and the f...

This week I'd love to explain SEO and GEO in plain English, because there is a part that genuinely surprised me: For the first time, AI search (GEO) is quietly levelling the playing field between the big corporates and small creative businesses like ours. And the thing that tips it in our favour is the exact thing I talk about on Creative Strengths more than anything else: Being known, clearly and...

Marketing has a habit of taking up more room in your head than almost anything else in your business. It never feels finished, and so much of what we are told about it is just do more, be louder, be everywhere, which for most creatives feels like a huge performance. This week, I'd love to show you how marketing can feel so much lighter, because underneath it all, it's really just one simple thing...

How do you find the time and headspace to actually be creative, when the business side of things seems to swallow both? It's the question Rosy wrote in with this week, and I suspect you feel it too, that constant tug between the creative work and everything else that has to get done. This week I'd love to answer it properly, and gently challenge the one idea underneath it that I think keeps so man...

Presenting your prices is where so much of your hard work can quietly come undone: one hedging line at the bottom of a proposal or in a conversation, and the whole thing wobbles. This week, to close the pricing series, I'd love to show you exactly how I communicated my prices. The page a client read before they ever reached a number, the single sentence I used for the number itself, and the small,...

If you charge what your work is really worth, won't clients just go and find someone cheaper? It's the pricing worry I hear most, and this week I'd love to show you why it isn't the threat it feels like. Because a client comparing you to a cheaper option is only ever seeing the one part of your work they can actually see, and once you change that, long before they reach the number, comparison quie...

Pricing the work that comes easily to you is one of the hardest things a creative ever does, because we've quietly decided that ease means low value. This week I'd love to take apart the sentence I hear more than almost any other, "I can't charge more for that, it comes so easily to me," because the speed you're discounting to nothing is very often the most valuable thing you do. What if it isn't...

Pricing your work is one of the most quietly stressful things you do, and I don't think the problem is confidence or your numbers. I think it's that you sit down to price one thing, when your clients are actually paying you for four. This week I'd love to show you the four separate kinds of value you deliver every single time, and why three of them have perhaps been invisible to you all along. IN...

Have you ever asked someone what they think of your business and they come away with a warm but bland "oh, you're doing so well, keep going!", and honestly nothing you could actually use? There's a real reason you received this answer, and it's completely within your power to change it through the questions you ask.  This week, to close the summer series, I'd love to show you the small shift that...

The single most important way a business like ours grows isn't posting more, or being everywhere, or finally cracking the algorithm. It's something much quieter, something you're very likely already brilliant at, even if you'd never think to call it a strength. This week, I'd love to show you why it matters more than almost anything else, and how to do it in a way that feels entirely like you. IN...

It can feel genuinely lonely running a creative business, making the decisions, working it all out with no one to talk it through, sitting with the doubts, quietly wondering if you're getting it right, all in a way people on the outside rarely understand.  So this week I'm stepping out of the summer series for an episode I just couldn't hold back on: because you really don't have to do this alone,...

This is about the peculiar problem of having too many good ideas. Not too few. Too many. And why letting some of them stay exactly as they are, ideas, or hobbies, rather than folding every single one into the business, might be one of the most quietly confident things you can do. IN THIS EPISODE YOU'LL DISCOVER: ◼️ The one thread running quietly through everything you offer and why it matters more...

A quiet fear I see in almost every creative I work with. The worry that we've already said our thing too many times, that everyone must be tired of hearing it, and that we ought to come up with something new. But that instinct, understandable as it is, might be the very thing quietly holding our work back, and the truth, I think, is almost the exact opposite. IN THIS EPISODE YOU'LL DISCOVER: ◼️ Th...

Why work you're genuinely proud of can quietly wash past people and the small shift you can make that changes everything about how they see it. IN THIS EPISODE YOU'LL DISCOVER: ◼️ What people are really paying for when they choose you and why it's almost never the finished thing itself ◼️ What happens in someone's mind when all they can see is the finished result and the one thing they'll end up c...

Someone looks at a service you provided or a product you've made and asks, "how on earth did you make/design that?" and you find yourself shrugging, because honestly, the solution came easily; it was just how you work. But that thing you shrugged off, the part that feels too obvious to be worth mentioning, is so often the most valuable thing you do. This week's episode is about learning to notice...

There's a moment I see again and again: a creative starts talking about their work, and they simply light up, the passion pours out, and the person listening is quietly won over without a single thing being pitched. And then that same person looks you up online, and somehow all that warmth has gone a little quiet. The lovely part is that this is one of the best problems to have, because the very t...

There's a quiet two-minute test I'd love you to run on your business today: on your own, no tools, just said out loud. It shows you two things at once: how clear your business really is, and how much it actually sounds like you, rather than like everyone else doing something similar.  By the end, you'll have a much clearer sense of what's already working, and what perhaps needs a little more of yo...

Part 1 of a new series. You've built something real, you're good at what you do, and yet somehow it all feels heavier than it should, and every new thing you add only seems to add to the weight. I used to believe that meant I wasn't doing enough. It turns out the opposite is true, and it's where this new summer series of podcasts begins: with the one idea that sits underneath all the others to com...

This is an episode I'd love you to save. For the morning after a 'No' you didn't see coming, For the week your inbox goes quiet and your mind rushes to fill the silence.  After all these years, those weeks still find me too. But there's one quiet idea I come back to whenever they do, not a strategy, not a tactic... And once you've really taken it on, the hard days stop knocking you over in quite t...

There's a quiet pressure almost every creative business owner carries, The sense that everyone else has worked out the right way to do this, and that you're somehow behind. Post more. Show up more. Be more visible. I spent a week going right to the source of one of those "shoulds", fully expecting to come back convinced. Instead I came back with something far more freeing: and a question I think c...

A woman in my audience wrote to me this week, ready to take her website down and walk away from it all. Worn out, and quietly wondering whether any of it had ever really been a proper business at all. I've been turning her message over ever since, because I don't think that question was ever truly hers and I suspect you might recognise the voice behind it more than you'd like. IN THIS EPISODE YOU'...

There are three things I'm properly studying at the moment and being a beginner at all of them at once has given me a particular view on something I think is worth sharing. One of the course teachers opened with something I really didn't expect. What she said wasn't really about the subject I'd signed up to learn but it's the thing that's stayed with me longest. And I suspect it might be exactly w...