Career meandering: Building a blog-based business and closing it
An honest title, a story to share.
If you’ve ever curiously wondered about leaving a job and starting a passion project, you might find interest in my story. It’s not a rags to riches. It’s not a failure to success or the other way around. It might not be that inspirational.
It’s just a weaving story of events, decisions and learnings that have made me who I am today and which I can say I am grateful for.
I’ve been meaning to share it for a while, but to be honest, I think there’s been some shame lurking and of course I’m scared that someone will say ‘you should have done this’ or judge me for parts of it. Yet if one person finds this enriching or insightful to read, then I’m happy. To be honest, I’m content just sharing and owning this story as it is.
‘You either walk inside your story and own it or you stand outside your story and hustle for your worthiness’ Brene Brown
Starting innocently with a low fat yoghurt
In 2012 I started a blog, after the mortifying revelation of finding out there was 16g of sugar in my beloved toffee low-fat toffee yoghurt. On the same day I then examined all cereals to discover there was sugar in Branflakes. I mean Frosties was obvious, but Branflakes and Allbran – how could they? They were healthy and didn’t even taste sweet. Well not to my sweet munching 2012 self anyway.
In my what-I-ate occupied world back then, I was compelled into writing my first ever blog post titled ‘Did you know how much sugar is in some yoghurts!?!’. Without that much deliberation on a name, I called my website Happy Sugar Habits, in a bid to share with anyone who was interested, that low-fat toffee yoghurt was misleading and Allbran was laced with sugar.
Before I knew it I was blogging twice a week and becoming the ultimate sugar geek. Sugar statistics and science I consumed - no label was immune to my analysis. I struck the Google goldmine when I accidentally got to the top of the search results for ‘How much sugar is there in Nakd bars’… and proceeded to get 1000’s of visits a week as a result.
Connecting with all the curious Nakd bar eaters from all over the UK is an achievement I’ll accept with some pride!
At the time of starting Happy Sugar Habits in 2012, I was working as a process consultant at a big company where on the one hand I loved the people and the environment, but on the other, I wasn’t feeling quite right with where my career was going but had no idea what I wanted to do instead.
I had some savings and I also had a scary feeling that I would continue comfortably along the wrong path for me if I didn’t do something drastic about it, so I went the drastic route and wrote a resignation letter with the mindset that it will force me in some other direction.
I had vague notion of ‘I’ll blog about sugar and turn it into something’.
You could say it was a quarter-life crisis of sorts.
Looking back I was somewhat naive and a little more scenario planning wouldn’t have gone a miss. This was before there was so much online noise about leaving your job and starting a business. I now appreciate the value of doing things on the side or experimenting with careers or businesses whilst you earn and getting proper mentorship to transition. I wasn’t following any guidance bar a few blogs and had no idea how to set something up, however I had an unwavering mindset that I could figure anything out and be successful in anything I put my mind to.
‘Everything is figureoutable’ Marie Forleo
My employer was great I have to say – a testament to good management and if anything, the guilt I felt for the partner who had nurtured me for my three years was the hardest part. However I wasn’t helping them by being in something that wasn’t a good fit.
In the end, instead of just leaving, they offered me a 6 month sabbatical to go ‘find myself’ with the hope I would return having given my career some more thought. .
This seemed sensible, so off on my sugar themed sabbatical I went.
To quit or not to quit
I learnt here that if you’re not currently feeling fulfilled in your work and are toying with other options, to spend some time trying to pinpoint why e.g. it’s your manager, the culture of the company, the lack of purpose or the bulk of the work itself.
If you’re working for someone who is half-decent who appreciates your value, and you give them the offer of some solutions, then they could be more willing than you expect to help you work some options that will give you freedom to explore e.g. a sabbatical arrangement, 4 days a week, role change etc.
You only fail when you don’t try right?
So anyway, off I blogged. Sharing, writing, learning and creating - believing deep in my heart it would be a success. I found myself on the ultimate crash course in marketing, websites, social media, widgets and the rest of it. I taught myself everything which I’m incredibly proud of.
But in business terms, I did lots of things the backwards way around:
Thinking about branding, business cards and logo before revenue streams and putting offers out there to people
Doing everything myself – yes I designed an ebook that took me 5 days teaching myself InDesign in the process (slap hand on face emoji!)
Learning how to set up a website and how to put a FB widget in it - I think I cried getting so frustrated with that!
Trying to write for everyone that’s ever eaten sugar in the whole world (so basically everyone) instead of a small group of similar people (niching 101 fail).
Needless to say, the end of my six month sabbatical came and I’d run a few sugar detoxes but was out of time and out of savings with a dribble of income flowing my way. I used the last savings I had to start training as health coach with the Institute of Integrative Nutrition so I could increase my knowledge and get more coaching experience.
I appreciate this now as a huge learning on how to not start a small business. Revenue is the lifeblood of a business, it allows you to invest and grow and keep your sanity. Without it, you struggle to move out of the “do it all yourself” stage where your emotional health can be compromised by income panic.
I spent six months doing largely the wrong things for the stage of business I was at which meant by the end of the sabbatical I had a popular blog and some smart social media scheduling systems rather than a business.
It would have been quite nice if I had found Todd Herman and this explanation of the different stages of a business back then.
However not being too harsh on myself, as a blog project rather than a business, I was doing really well. I was writing content that people liked and growing my community through the consistency of blogging twice a week.
I was finding and building an audience who liked me and who had problems I wanted to help solve.
I do believe that to build up as an influencer style entrepreneur, there’s value in investing your time into quality content and audience building where you’re not trying to monetise too soon or desperately. But you need a form of investment or income to sustain yourself as you build things up so that your creativity, integrity and mindset isn’t compromised by a heavy pressure to earn whilst you try to find your content-audience fit.
Back to the story. The end of my sabbatical…
At the end of the six months I was in need to earn money again but didn’t want to go back to my consulting career. Luckily my work reputation paid off and the graduate training department accepted to re-hire me into a completely new role where I would be training and inducting graduates. I also coached them in sales and interpersonal skills whilst also interviewing and assessing new recruits.
To my surprise, I absolutely loved this role, it was an absolute joy for eighteen months. I look back with such fond memories and had some of my favourite managers to date. I was back in a team. I was around people all day. It was fun and played to my natural strengths of presenting and engaging. But at that point I was also so excited about my sugar endeavours so my long vision was firmly on my new baby - Happy Sugar Habits.
I loved my health coach studying on the side and I was working eagerly towards my goals.
Thinking back to this time, I wasn’t earning riches, but I was content, at peace, and happy.
I was serving my Happy Sugar Habits audience well, whilst working towards goals and in a people based role that gave me financial stability.
In 2013 and 2014 sugar hit the mainstream. My audience grew but still modestly compared to other influencers. However, I was getting much better at writing and structuring my posts - starting to understand the common challenges people faced and writing for them. I was learning rapidly from coaching clients and receiving lots of e-mails from those sharing their intimate sugary issues.
Due to my content and just putting myself out there, I got a fair few wins and buzzing experiences from being published in some high profile publications like Grazia and The Daily Mail (well you can argue The Daily Mail as being ‘high profile’ but it brought me loads of new readers). I also got offered my own radio show and some great speaking gigs.
Looking back however, sometimes the glamour of some of these things distracted me from what was truly important for a start-up business and I could end up a bit scattered, being more reactive to opportunities than focussed on a few singular goals.
A lot of my time was being spent on marketing and learning about marketing, or trying to post on social media to get more of a following - which I didn’t quite manage to do very well anyway as I thought I had to be like other health bloggers and so wasn’t being as much me.
But I was more like me when I wrote my e-mail newsletters, and I had a very engaged lovely bunch of readers that enjoyed my writing giving me immense fulfilment. I wasn’t the almighty Sarah Wilson or Deliciously Ella but e-mail was where I seemed to build up ‘my tribe’.
What I realise now is that writing, creating and connecting gave me a lot personally. But I was also putting a lot of pressure on this content to convert to clients. I seemed to get a bit lost in trying to strike this balance but I was super proud of some of my written work when it really resonated with people and helped them.
With reflection, looking back now, I felt my audience (who mainly came from Google searching for sugar grams) wanted more in terms of sugar detox programmes and quick resources rather than the 1-2-1 coaching and so I didn’t have a great service-market fit going on. I ran a sugar-detox a few times but I was concerned about what happened to people afterwards and I wasn’t sure I wanted to be selling a ‘diet’, even if I did try to make it least like a diet as possible.
The only thing that is constant is change
At the end of 2015, eighteen months into my graduate training job and running my health coaching business on the side, I was in a strong place. I had a few thousand people on my e-mail list and a steady stream of income from a few clients. However, an e-mail hit my day job inbox that was a shock to the system.
A voluntary redundancy offer.
It was the ultimate dilemma and opportunity. Continue happily as I was, slowly growing, or take the leap to make this the full-time endeavour I had been dreaming about to realise my bigger vision.
I decided it was the nudge I needed to go for round two, feeling in a much stronger place this time but I was sad to leave a great job.
And so in early 2015, with a bit of a cash buffer, I started basing myself at home as a free agent working on my low sugar crusade. The dream right?
Suffocating from pressure and loneliness
The pressure and the overwhelm of trying to run the business; the lack of support; and the living at home alone (also single I will add) - where I was working all day and many nights on this business - affected my mental health significantly. I tried a co-working space but still couldn’t get myself better as the interactions were still at a more superficial level. None of my close friends were in the same boat as me - so at times, it was hard to relate or they were growing a bit tired of hearing about it all.
As painful as it was, I learnt how important community, relationships, and belonging are and at that point I just didn’t find the right set-up for me (something I have learnt to find now). As an emotional eater, I hit the peanut butter hard (no sugar version of course!). I’ll never forget my Mum coming round to see a giant tub with evident teaspoon grooves in it from eating straight out of the tub – whoops!
Enter Bali and Tribewanted
I’ve written here about my move to Bali at this time but to sum it up, one day I saw a post on about a co-working community in Ubud in Bali. A day’s worth of research and I signed up and booked a flight. I can be a bit impulsive but there was only so much peanut butter I could afford to continue at that rate.
Suddenly in Bali my eyes were opened to a whole other world. I found myself in a close-knit community of like-minded people working on projects like mine where we could help each other. I had found belonging and I was more productive because I felt happy and supported, learning quickly from those around me. With much fewer costs than London and with the ease of jumping on a scooter to go to yoga and buy a green juice, it was a no brainer to my health and happiness to stay.
It was an incredibly special part of my life and to cut another longer story short, I stayed out in Bali for a total of eighteen months, including a three-month stint Thailand (Chiang Mai).
I learnt so much in this period about myself, business, fulfilment and work. And of course I met some of the most incredible people that I will forever share special bonds with.
Behind the Bali scenes
Yet whilst the coconuts were fresh and the sun was shining, Happy Sugar Habits although earning a little more revenue, was still not at the sustainable level it needed to be. My financial cushion was gradually depleting. Of course this created an unnerving pressure, not to mention some comparison to others who seemed to have thriving online businesses.
There was sadness and frustration at times – why couldn’t I crack this nut and work this out after so long? What was I doing so wrong? Was it me?
When I returned from a three month stint in Thailand and landed back in Ubud in March 2016, something about this tropical ‘nomadic’ lifestyle was fading for me.
I wanted this business to work more than anything and not being in the UK was proving a disadvantage as I couldn’t as easily get and work with face to face clients. I was also missing out on collaboration opportunities that were coming up.
It was also around this time that I got a phone call from my Mum. One where she broke down and admitted she wasn’t well on a mental health front. She really wasn’t well and I’d had no idea. I knew it was painful me being away and I had to go home. Bali couldn’t be a sustainable long term lifestyle and I had to face the fears of not being there and making a lifestyle with my ‘remote-style’ business working in the UK.
Landing home
So in May 2016 I touched down on UK soil and at the ripe old age of 30, I went to live at my Dad’s house for the first time in my life, so I could avoid the extreme change in personal expenses of moving from Bali to London.
I had grown up with my Mum but hadn’t been able to live there since I was 24 due to my room being full of stuff. Mum had hoarded stuff to cover my bed and was suffering from hoarding disorder. And this was the start of my journey to help her (a story I’ve started to write about here).
So what about Happy Sugar Habits?
Suddenly living in leafy Surrey and getting myself out to local networking events and the local yoga studio, I started to pick up more clients and was doing better than ever before. Clients were all of a sudden coming to me online easily and I had significantly evolved my brand from low sugar ninja to a compassionate coach that could help people shift away from a restrictive diet mentality (whilst we knocked a few sugar habits on the head if so desired!).
Thus many of my clients were seeking freedom from the scales, freedom from the restriction and a change in their sugary binging ways. As I was writing truer to myself with my own personal journey and experience – which had been successful - I was attracting people who aligned and who I really felt I could help with my coaching.
My learning was that for my health coaching marketing, in-person networking, existing client referrals and local collaborations converted to 1-2-1 clients much more quickly and easier than my online stuff did and if I could go back I would have started here. Most likely because my online channel at that point was mainly traffic from Google. Online was immensely powerful, but I was so good meeting people in person (and I enjoyed it), that this was just a natural way for me to more quickly develop business.
Blurring boundaries
By this point I ended up with a strong readership and an e-mail list of 5,000 people. I had ebooks, a sugar mindset course which was selling a modest amount and I had my handful of coaching clients who loved working with me.
However, I was starting to sense that many of those coming to me online who were willing to pay the higher price for a 1-2-1 coaching service, were doing so because a) they could strongly relate to my writing and b) they had deeper difficult issues than just eating a bit too much sugar. Sugary binge eating, shameful eating and negative self-talk were common themes.
The realisation hit me, I wasn’t really dealing with sugar anymore, this was now 80% mental health and mindset. Some clients were admitting they had anxiety and/or depression to me. I realised that my training as a health coach had boundaries and suddenly I found myself in blurred line territory where I sought to refer a number of clients to professional help.
Clients seemed to warm to me be because I held an open judgment free space for them. I learnt that I have strengths in being a compassionate and empathetic person no matter who is sat in front of me, but that still didn’t make me as qualified as I wanted to be to help them.
Doing what I felt was the right thing
As the mental health dilemma for some of my clients became more apparent, I also found myself in another personal lifestyle quandary.
I was living with my Dad and step-Mum, unable to justify moving to London on a cost basis and I was feeling lonely and a bit down. Without a significant relationship or local friends; without hobbies; without a community; and thinking about Happy Sugar Habits 24/7 I wasn’t in the best place.
And to be honest, I was slightly over having to post, like or look at avocado on toast on Instagram for the 100th time!
I was coaching people in a deep way, but I at this point probably needed a form of therapy myself, realising that things weren’t in place to keep my own mental health on keel.
I also wasn’t at a revenue level I had hoped to be. Some said I needed to increase my prices, but I found this personally challenging given the mental health nature of my work and this boundary issue I was having.
It was at that point, I realised that to truly heal and help the people I was coaching, to really serve those struggling from sugar and food issues as my vision had been, I ideally needed to train as a therapist or counsellor. I was dealing not with sugar, but with mental health issues and this was where more of my interest was now. A friend working in mental health even pointed out that what I could be doing at times could be dangerous.
Right then in my life, after 5 years of being consumed by Happy Sugar Habits every waking moment of my day, I needed some stability and to take a step back, so I made the decision not to pursue therapist or counsellor training at this point. .
I wasn’t ready to commit to a full multiple year degree (let alone afford it) and I realised along the way not only had I learnt a hell of a lot about marketing, I actually really enjoyed the strategising and practical nature of it - so much so that I wanted to explore this.
Maybe there will be a day when I formally train in a form of psychotherapy or counselling but at this point for me, it didn’t feel the right time.
So much to the pain of my business building ego, I stopped taking on coaching clients and went and found a job – a marketing role for interesting small company looking at the future of work which then led me later to move into a sales role in corporate wellbeing to learn about helping people to be healthier and happier at work.
I will admit, making this transition did make me feel some funky feelings.
In Bali, the 9-5 was demonised. My social feeds were filled with messaging that I felt I was going backwards against. Quit your job and live the dream!
It took a lot of strength to say, you know what Laura, this is the right thing for you now and that’s OK. Stay in your lane. And so I am really proud of this decision.
Go and hone your skills, get back on track and you can start another business down the line. Go and do some hobbies and allow a bit of space into your life for you.
But I’m not going to lie, some days I just felt like a big fat failure and I had to work on this mindset.
New starts
This new job gave me structure, people, routine and the chance to pick myself back up a bit. I started dancing, I got super fit and cycled to work, I started dating and I made new friends. When I met my partner (through the dancing I will add) I had time to invest in the blossoming of a wonderful relationship and to be free of that that generalised anxiety around if I was posting to social media enough.
Most importantly, it was at this stage I able to commit to the new goal of helping my Mum with my full mental capacity and attention – supporting her on an enduring physical and mental journey and starting to clear the house.
I let Happy Sugar Habits run for 2 years, diligently replying to all the reader emails I received (probably well over 500) whist turning down various coaching or collaboration opportunities. At one point, craving the familiar writing and connection outside of a demanding sales job, I tried to see if I could re-launch again, doing newsletters once more with a strict focus on reducing sugar so to avoid those mental health minefields.
However focussing only on those with an urgent need to reduce sugar, didn’t align to my recovery from being overly occupied on ‘good’ and ‘bad’ foods. It reminded me that I couldn’t serve those who needed straight ‘sugar diet tips’ anymore because I was living and breathing intuitive eating which didn’t gel with the restrict your sugar intake approach.
I’ve now come to conclusion that different health strategies and approaches are valuable to people at different times, and to respect where people are. Cutting back or changing sugar habits is valuable, as is letting go of the need to restrict and control all elements of your diet 24/7.
In October 2018 I closed Happy Sugar Habits as there were old posts I didn’t feel comfortable with, given that my thinking had evolved so much from what I’d previously written about. Maybe it will be resurrected down the line in a different way, who knows.
Some may say there are things I could do with it all, but right now, the learning and fulfilment from the whole Happy Sugar Habits experience is enough:
Helping my readers and clients makes me feel proud of their successes and has given me a healthier relationship with food and my body that I am enormously grateful for
All the blood sweat and tears was worth all the e-mails I got from people saying my articles really helped them - especially given the age range of these people was from 16-85!
Making mistakes in positioning, service-market fit and niching has made me a great marketing and business advisor to others. I’m always banging on about niching now!
Having the courage to do what’s right for me at the time, has strengthened up my ability to do this and make the harder decisions based on my values when they need to be made
Going on the adventure has given me a hell of a lot to talk about at dinner parties!!
I still of course serve as a light hearted sugar sins confession hall for friends and family – so if you want to tell someone about those three tubs of ice cream, feel free to e-mail me!
Oh and if you’re wondering, yes I eat sugar now but usually just if it’s what I want and fancy.
Learning from the squiggles
I hope if you’ve read this far, you found the story interesting and I hope it helps you look back at some of the positive decisions you made for you and help you feel less bad about any that give rise to some more difficult feelings.
In a world where everyone is trying to forge a path through career, relationships, family and the rest of it with a warped chamber of social media and varying definitions of ‘success’ influencing us, it’s inevitably going to be messy.
Have faith in your path and yourself to make your decisions. Cultivate a self-awareness and know that your own feelings are steering you each step of the way. Oh and watch out for those toffee low fat yoghurts - you have no idea where they might lead you!
Laura xx