Letting Go of the Agency Model, Therapy, and Finding Our Dream Home: My 2025 Year in Review
It’s that time of year where I do my Year in Review wrap up where I lay out the wins, losses, changes, and big lessons I’ve learned from the year. This is not a teaching episode or business value-packed episode but rather it’s a girlfriend style chat, sharing the real, the raw, and behind the scenes messy middle of being a business owner and a mom of littles, and figuring it out as I go.
This will be a short and sweet episode that hopefully encourages you in your own journey and as always, lets you know, you’re not alone in the messy middle!
Hello, World!
I like to start off with the negative and end with the positive. So let’s start off with lessons learned:
Lessons learned:
Remembering what season I’m in, and reprioritzing values.
In a couple episodes back I shared "What to Do When Your Business Pivot Fails: A Guide to Course-Correcting" and that is where I really shared this whole story so if you want to hear what happened in the first part of the year go back and listen to that one, but basically I was scaling up my business to an agency model and part of it was like I just felt like that’s what my peers are doing, it was almost like an ego thing, like I’m good enough to have a design agency, but after a few months realized it’s just not the season for me to do that. My kids are 5, 2, and 1, and I am a stay at home mom, we do not have a childcard situation that’s regular at the moment, I do have help once in a while but I’m the sole caregiver. So anyway, for all the details go listen to that episode, but yeah that was a big lesson. A little bit of eating some humble pie by scaling back again to solo work but it’s where I feel like I need to be right now. Plans can change, things can change and it might not be this way forever, but right now I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.
Self care needs to be prioritized:
I went through some major burnout in the summer and feeling really disconnected from myself and my body and honestly like struggling a lot. And I think as moms to young kids especially it’s so easy to not do things for yourself that are important because you’re pouring so much out to your kids and family but it as a real reminder this summer when I was going through a hard time that I need to take care of myself or I can’t give to my family and commitments like I want to.
And for me this meant:
Replacing my identity of how much money I make or how “successful” my business is with who God says I am. And that one is huge. If I equate how much money I make or how many clients I serve with my self worth, it’s a dangerous place to put my business and my identity but remembering my value is tied to who I am in Christ and that I am called for a purpose and I’m living that out in my day-to-day life that really helped me regain purpose and perspective.
Going to therapy. I started seeing a therapist semi reguarly all through the summer and fall and it was incredibly helpful for my mental state and just to unload on someone who is a safe space
I started regularly working out - huge win for me - and that really helped my mental state
Regained footing in my work hours, how much time can I commit to work and so forth
Having time to myself of not working.
3. The Ups and downs of entrepreneurship are real:
This year I experience the slowest season I have in years, and I think there are definitely things that contribute to that from my marketing and things I could have done, but also soooo many service providers I talked to, this is the common refrain was that business is slow. So a big lesson for me during these slow seasons how can I make this work for me:
Cutting expenses
Taking on fewer clients at a time so I can turn around clients faster, make bigger profit
Taking routine sales and marketing actions - which I can admit, can fall by the wayside every now and then
Geting clear on marketing that works for me and executing
Surrendering all the outcomes to God knowing He has always provided and taken care of me and all I can do is my part and trust for the rest
Wins for 2025
Celebrating the wins of the year. These are in no particular order and they are a combination of business and personal:
If it felt like not in alignment I cut it out quickly - the agency model, letting go of contract workers who weren’t a fit, pivoting quickly
Introduced a new offer which is a petite version of my signature service, the full brand and website, the petite version is a smaller scale version of that. This is actually something I don’t offer publicly but is a downsell offer behind the scenes. But creating this new offer helped streamline my signature service and showed me areas I can improve my processes so that was a big win
I started homeschooling my son. I bought a curriculum, Sonlight if anyone’e curious and it’s been really wonderful. He’s taken to it like a fish to water and just the other day he said “mom I love being homeschooled” and I was like, aw. I love teaching him and I feel like I say this a lot but I don’t know how long I’ll teach him for , but for right now it feels great. Is it hard, is it challenging, can it be draining, yes… but it’s also really wonderful too
Did a Brand + Website Giveaway - I learned SO much in this process. I’m not going into all of it here, maybe if you guys want me to I can do a podcast episode just about this and what I learned from doing a big giveaway but I entered 2025 wanting to give back to my community and so hosting a giveaway and doing a brand and website for Amy, who was the winner, was truly awesome. I will link to her brand and website in the show notes if you want to see it. That one was so fun, her brand is fun, playful, engaging, bright, and yeah it was fun to create.
I surprised my husband by seeing the F1 movie in theaters, ok I call this a win because the logistical hassle of getting this together was a feat on my part but also, this was the first movie we’ve gone to theaters for since Top Gun Maverick and it was fun.
I restarted my podcast - after taking a 9 month break from Janaury to September, I came back to podcasting and I LOVE it. This is part of my marketing plan and I love it. It’s long-form content that can live on forever like a blog post and I love this format of sharing and it’s been a great way for me to show up. I currently am doing a bi-monthly format where I do 1 guest and 1 solo every month and love it and it’s working well so that’s the plan going into 2026 as well.
By the way, if you’re interested in being on the show, I’m looking for guests for 2026, so reach out to me, send me an email if you’re interested!We purchased and moved into our dream home! Fawad and I have been looking for a house for about 2 years and so this was so exciting to find something we truly love love love and it’s in the best location in Lee’s Summit like we were hoping for and it’s truly been a dream come true. AND it’s allowing me to flex my interior design muscles and that has been super fun, buying furniture, painting, decorating, it’s been so fun and it’s just nice to have more space and be in a neighborhood with lots of kids and great for walking, it’s everything I hoped for and such a blessing that we were able to do it. And on the flip side, our house went under contract within 2 days of putting it on the market and just everything fell into place and it was truly the Lord lining everything up for us and it was so cool.
I was honored to design for 14 businesses this year on either their brand or website or both and that is just an honor. I’m always so honored by people trusting me with the design and visual direction for their business. I love what I do so much and I have the most incredible clients. I hope to do this forever!
I came out with a new opt-in called 7 Quick and Easy Ways to Elevate Your Brand designed for the woman coach or service provider who is short on time and I will link to that in the show notes if you want to grab it, but creating a new opt-in including a welcome sequence can be such a task so it’s nice to have that out there and gaining new subscribers every week.
I started tracking my analytics. I know, we’re ending on a snooze fest but this one is big for me, just because I don’t really like looking at analytics, but I was encouraged to do so by a couple of my business friends and so I started and now I’m excited to check in with them and see how everything is growing, what can I do better, and it’s been really good to see growth or opportunities for growth and know exactly where I can put more energy and effort.
I hope this was encouraging. I hope this was interesting to listen to or yeah, just fun to hear a little bit of behind the scenes with my business and my life. But I just thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for listening to the show (or reading here!).
I truly appreciate you and I'm excited for what 2026 has. So I hope you'll stay tuned and I can't wait to chat with you in the new year. Until then, I hope you have a beautiful rest of your day!
