What happens when the only person who knows how your business works… is you? There's a funny thing about small businesses. Sometimes the system is a person. You know which client gets the slightly different email. You know where that file lives, even though nobody else can find it. You remember the three things that need to happen before the next step, plus the one weird exception that only comes up occasionally. It all works because you know. Until someone else needs to do i

What if the problem isn't that you need more help, but that the work itself isn't flowing? I think I've been a Systems Fixer longer than I realized. I just didn't call it that. One of my first clues came in one of my earliest full-time administrative jobs. I was a receptionist, and one of my tasks was entering the shop workers' timesheets. It was monotonous work, made worse by terrible handwriting, project codes I couldn't decipher, and having to track down supervisors to fig

AI hasn't replaced my thinking. It's changed what I have time to think about. I recently saw a post about AI that made me defensive. Not because I disagreed with everything in it. There were parts I understood. The concern was that we're becoming so dependent on AI that we're handing over our creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, and even our human connection to a machine. And I get it. I really do. But as I kept reading, I found myself thinking, That's not how I'm

Not everything needs fixing. Sometimes it needs understanding I've been doing a lot of thinking about how we figure out what someone needs to grow. This started with homeschooling, but as it tends to happen with me, my brain immediately started connecting it to business, gardening, and life. As I continue to read and learn from Developing a Mentor's Heart, one of the ideas I've come across is V-MASK (Vision, Mission, Abilities, Skills, and Knowledge). I'm still learning about

What if the best way to grow your business isn't the way everyone else is doing it? Recently, I've been reading Developing a Mentor's Heart by Tiffany Earl and Heidi Christianson as I explore a different direction for homeschooling my son. Like many parents, I've spent more hours than I'd like to admit wondering if I was choosing the right curriculum, buying the right books, or following the right plan. Then I came across a conversation that stopped me in my tracks. A homesch

Support isn't a sign of weakness. It's often the reason growth continues. Last week, one of my favourite things was... a stick. I know, not exactly glamorous. But that simple stick gave a bent sunflower the support it needed to straighten up and keep growing. It didn't magically make the sunflower taller overnight, and it didn't remove the wind or the weather that had knocked it sideways. It simply gave the plant something steady to lean on until it was strong enough to conti

The biggest productivity boost isn't working harder. It's removing the obstacles in your way. Recently, I've been re-reading The Lean Farm by Ben Hartman. It's one of those books I seem to come back to every so often because each time I read it, I notice something different. While I may never become a market farmer on the scale Ben has, the lessons aren't just about farming. They're about building systems that reduce wasted effort, and that applies just as much to business an

Embracing the Process of Growth Lately, I've been planting buckwheat in areas of my garden where I don't yet have enough mulch or permanent plants. I plan to cover everything with wood chips eventually, but since ChipDrop hasn't come through yet and I'm not about to pay for mulch, I've been making do with what I have. Honestly, buckwheat has been one of my favorite surprises this year. Out of everything I've planted, it's been one of the fastest-growing and least troublesome.

What if the problem isn't motivation, but the size of the first step? Picture this. You ask your child to clean their disaster of a bedroom. They groan, roll their eyes, and disappear. An hour later, you check in expecting progress, only to find them sitting on the floor playing with a single Lego while the room somehow looks exactly the same. It's easy to assume they're being lazy. But what if they're overwhelmed? I came across a post recently discussing the Japanese philoso

Sometimes the issue isn’t your content, it’s what’s happening behind the scenes. A client recently reached out, wondering why her email open rates had dropped compared to months prior. If you’ve ever sent an email, refreshed the analytics, and immediately started questioning your subject lines, your business, and possibly your entire existence… welcome. Naturally, we started looking into possible causes. Was the content off? Had people lost interest? Was something broken? Aft

Not every business change needs a dramatic overhaul. While working on this newsletter, I realised something. My old subtitle used to be: Essential insights and actionable advice for optimising and growing your small business. Professional? Sure. But lately, it has started to feel like a shirt I’ve outgrown. Still wearable technically… but not quite right anymore. So I changed it to: Practical ideas and thoughtful insights for building a business that works for your life. And

If pushing harder was the answer, it would’ve worked by now. I’ve been trying to build some kind of business since my mid-teens. And for a long time, I thought the reason it wasn’t working was simple: I just needed to hustle harder. So I tried. I learned the scripts. Practiced the conversations. Showed up to workshops and events. Pushed myself to “get uncomfortable.” And every time, I hit the same wall. Not because I couldn’t do it, but because it never felt like me. I’m some