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What’s next? Shipping charges have to be incorporated into the price?

We all HATE them and it sounds ridiculous. But changing the law to make them built in would be a nightmare and it wouldn't change the fact that consumers still pay for it 💁‍♀️

But that’s how businesses see this change to card surcharges.

Making small businesses incorporate card surcharges into their pricing doesn’t take away the card charges. They still exist and it doesn’t make anything cheaper for you.

But what it has done is make us analyse our figures and realise how tight that profit margin has gotten.

Profit’s not a dirty word, it’s what allows us to buy new stock, create a new range, outsource a task we hate, buy a new tool to improve our process.

So this week as you see pricing or payment changes at your favourite local business, do us a favour: say “No worries.”

We’ve spent weeks agonising over what and how to do what’s best for our businesses without costing you a fortune.

Even if price changes are minimal, it’s taken us hours to update our price tags, signage, settings and accounting systems.

These changes aren’t personal. They weren’t our choice. But we have to make them.

And if you’re resentful about it, don’t take it out on us. We didn’t make the laws and we didn’t ask for them.

Use your voice where it counts.

It’s been 9 months and NOTHING has changed...

You don’t need a perfectly mapped out plan before we talk...

Simply tell me what’s working and what’s not working in your business.

I’ll build you a website that takes away as much of the frustrating, time-consuming, repetitive tasks you hate and replace them with a streamlined flow that makes things easier for you AND for your people.

If you want it fixed before Christmas, it’s truly crunch time.

A website built in October means a website working in November, just in time for Christmas.

Wait a few weeks and you’ll miss the chance.

Book a call now.

You want more time, but you’re still doing everything manually.

You want to be seen as a legitimate business, not a side hustle, but you’ve still got that Canva logo from 3 years ago.

You want to spend less time on admin, but you haven’t answered their questions, and they can’t take the next step until you reply to their DM.

You mightn’t think you’re fighting for your limitations, but not making a choice is still a choice.

Nothing changes if nothing changes.

And when nothing changes, we stay comfortable.

We know what to expect, even if we don’t like it. There’s nothing scary about staying the same.

Except there is.

Because you don’t want to stay the same forever. You don’t want to be thinking these same things about your business in a year or two.

You don’t have to know exactly what that next move is to know that something needs to change.

You’ve just got to stop arguing why it won’t work before you’ve even heard what’s possible. Because we can always find the sweet spot that gets you headed in the right direction.

The aesthetic grid isn't the problem. But it might be a symptom, a sign that you're stuck in a loop.

It’s not about changing everything overnight.

I'm talking baby steps. Because I know any one of them could send your insides on a rollercoaster ride 🫣 That's ok too.

Little by little, what you’re going to see is that nothing catastrophic actually happens when you move away from that perfect grid.

Heck, you'll probably create a new "perfect aesthetic" grid...

But in the process, you're going to grow some tech skills and sales strategy.

Nothing overwhelming. One at a time.

More importantly, you'll learn you can trust yourself to make decisions that help your business to grow.

One day, we can work on a system that does a whole lot more.

But for this week, let's just pick 1 set you’re going to photograph.

Follow these steps.

And see how it goes.

I promise the sky won't fall in. Xx

Unpleasant business lessons I’ve learned over the years...

In no particular order, from different people.

I looked in the mirror and was nothing short of mortified. I’d asked for pigtails and somehow, mum turned my hair into ET. In that moment, I decided to become a hairdresser, because I never wanted to feel that way again. But I was talked out of that…

When I was 8, I found safety and solace in the classroom, in what was a volatile time in my life. I decided to become a teacher.

In Year 9, I dropped a bombshell on my art teacher. “Mr Gray, I’m dropping Art for Maths C. It’ll be better for my OP.” In my teenage wisdom, I thought his tears were because he was losing his top student. Looking back, his heart was probably breaking for a girl who was leaving something she loved, because someone else told her it would be better, for a number she never needed.

Somewhere between doing my high school boyfriend’s assignments and going on dates where we followed firetrucks so he could take very specific photos of them, I let him convince me that teaching wasn’t “helping” people because it wasn’t an emergency service. Thankfully, I out ruled the boy and the career pivot 🫠

Mine was a story of people-pleasing and of choosing others over myself time and time again, because I didn’t trust myself.

Until burnout.

I loved teaching and I was very good at every area of the job. Leaving was a full identity crisis. An unravelling of so many layers I’d built up around myself – each with a purpose – but most that no longer served me.

The work I do now is far more aligned with my strengths, the ways I best work, the things I value at this point in life and my holistic wellbeing.

It’s never JUST a new logo, website or words. It’s a whole new way of seeing yourself and your work, while building solutions that let you spend your time doing the parts of your work that you enjoy the most.

AI stole the word ‘empowering’ from my regular vocab, but that’s the word I use to describe my role. Every single thing I do empowers small business owners to have a more aligned, streamlined and impactful business AND life.

Burnout was the catalyst.

I drove the change. Imperfectly. One step at a time.