This year marks ten years since I started Life-Friendly Business.

And, almost perfectly timed, I’ve recently published the 100th episode of the Life-Friendly Business Podcast.

There’s something about those two numbers together that has made me stop and take stock.

Because when we talk about being “10 years in business”, it can sound like one long, neat upward trajectory.

It really hasn’t been.

Life-Friendly Business began when we were living in Abu Dhabi. My children were just 2 and 7, and I was already several businesses into my entrepreneurial journey.

The launch was covered in the national newspaper, which felt enormously exciting.

Then we relocated back to the UK.

But instead of returning to London, where my husband and I had lived since university, we moved to Bournemouth.

So I wasn’t just building a new business. I was building a new life.

I actively went out looking for friends and connections through networking events and the business community because I knew hardly anyone locally.

I was also still finding my feet in the business itself.

In those early days, I didn’t have the confidence to deliver much of the training myself. I brought in experts I’d met over the years because I thought they knew more than I did.

Gradually, something changed.

I started teaching.

I started mentoring.

I started speaking.

And speaking was definitely not something that came naturally.

I can remember standing up in front of people, feeling myself go bright red, my hands physically shaking.

Fast forward and I’ve spoken on stages around the country, including at the House of Lords, written two books and now recorded 100 episodes of my own podcast.

I’m still me.

But somewhere along the way, I stopped waiting to feel like an expert and started trusting the experience I had accumulated.

The same thing happened with my message.

For a long time, I wasn't entirely sure what my niche was.

I knew what I cared about. I knew I wanted women to be able to build successful businesses without sacrificing the rest of their lives to do it.

But it took time to find the words for it.

Over the years, I’ve refined and refined that message until I reached the point where I could confidently claim my crown as The Life-Friendly Business Mentor.

I know what I stand for now.

I know what I want to talk about.

And I know why it matters.

That clarity eventually enabled me to write How to Build a Life-Friendly Business, bringing together so much of what I’ve learned about building a business around your life, rather than constantly contorting your life around your business.

But perhaps the biggest lesson of these ten years is that your business doesn't happen separately from your life.

Life-Friendly Business has lived through a back injury that left me in terrible pain for months.

A global pandemic.

Home-schooling.

Covid twice.

The second bout was followed by a period I can only really describe as burnout. My tank was completely empty and I questioned pretty much everything.

There have been school runs, school holidays and the transition into parenting teenagers.

My children, who were 2 and 7 when this business began, are now 13 and 18.

There have been times when my attention has needed to turn towards other people I love, including increasingly being there for our parents.

There have been uncertain economies, changing spending habits and periods when the things that used to work in business simply didn't work in quite the same way any more.

I've redesigned offers.

Retired things.

Created new things.

Changed my mind.

Adapted.

Learned.

And kept going.

But I don't want this to turn into one of those posts where resilience is measured by how relentlessly you managed to work through difficult things.

Because one of the things I'm proudest of is that I haven't always kept working.

I've built a business that has allowed me to step back when life needed me.

One summer, I closed my laptop and took the whole summer off to travel around Canada with my family. This summer we went to China for 3 weeks and I left my laptop at home.

I've taken school holidays off.

I've rearranged plans because my capacity changed.

I've learned that sometimes the most strategic thing you can do for your business is not push harder, but recognise what season of life you're actually in.

And I've built things outside my business too.

When we arrived in Bournemouth, we had to create our support network from scratch.

It was slow.

Then lockdown happened and, like so many people, we started standing outside our house at 6pm to clap for the NHS.

We got talking to our neighbours.

Those Thursday evenings continued long after the clapping stopped.

Ten years after arriving here knowing hardly anyone, we now have a wonderful community around us. We still meet every Thursday for a cup of tea..

I love that.

Because when I look back over this decade, success isn't only what happened inside my business.

It's the life that grew around it.

It's also the people who have grown alongside me.

There are clients and members still in my world today who were there in the very early days of this business.

I've watched businesses start, grow, change and sometimes close.

I've watched babies become teens.

I've watched women navigate divorces, bereavements, illnesses, caring responsibilities, menopause, children leaving home and huge changes in their ambitions.

And through it all, I've become increasingly convinced that we need a different way of talking about business success.

Because ten years in business doesn't mean ten years of constant growth.

It doesn't mean every launch worked.

It doesn't mean I always knew what I was doing.

It doesn't mean my revenue graph travelled neatly upwards every single month..

And it definitely doesn't mean I cracked some secret formula and then repeated it for a decade.

It means I learned how to evolve.

How to notice when something wasn't working.

How to make decisions.

How to simplify.

How to rebuild my capacity.

How to ask for help.

How to keep showing up without believing I had to show up at full capacity all the time.

And perhaps most importantly, how to keep asking:

How do I want my life to feel?

Because after 18 years of entrepreneurship, ten years of Life-Friendly Business and 100 podcast episodes, I think my definition of success is actually simpler than it used to be.

I want meaningful work.

I want to earn good money.

I want to make a difference.

I want to keep growing, learning and having ideas.

But I also want time.

I want to be there for the people I love.

I want holidays where I actually switch off.

I want neighbours I can knock on the door of.

I want space for the unexpected.

I want a business that can bend when life does.

That's what a life-friendly business means to me.

Not a tiny business.

Not a hobby business.

Not a business without ambition.

A business designed with the understanding that our lives are happening at the same time.

I couldn't have predicted most of what the last ten years would hold when I launched that new business in Abu Dhabi.

And I have absolutely no idea what the next ten will bring.

But I do know this.

The business will keep evolving.

My life will keep changing.

And instead of trying to keep those two things separate, I'm going to keep building a business that allows them to change together.

Here's to the next chapter.

10 years. 100 podcast episodes. And a whole lot of life lived in between.

To your success,

Erin x