#0 — Theory Meets Reality: The Uncertainty Before Launch

This week has been about building momentum and keeping self-doubt at bay. I registered the business with HMRC, set up a Monzo Business Account (obviously), a Stripe account, and a Google Workplace account. I now have a business email and calendar. Fancy. This is the final week before launch—hence, starting these week notes from zero.

I wrapped up a lightweight visual identity centred around a lovely modern 70s-inspired typeface called Nutgame and experimented with Framer for the first time to build a simple website. Wow. It’s like Dreamweaver took a Time Machine into the future. I totally see why it’s so popular—it’s powerful, intuitive, and makes web design feel easy. Until I needed to tweak that one thing, which would take a single line of code in CSS that I no longer have access to. I digress...

The website content is nearly complete. I’m lucky to have wonderful friends who wrote glowing testimonials, and a friend’s video walkthrough helped me see my copy through the lens of the 99% of people who won’t read every word. A great reminder: less is more, and authenticity beats ‘professional’ wording that’s easier to gloss over.

Pricing was mostly locked in, but a trusted coaching pal gave me a fresh perspective, reinforcing what my gut was already telling me. It also helped me to consider a new tier for more established leaders dealing with greater complexity in their organisations. This insight aligned with feedback from an initial call earlier this week—where I learned my rates were ‘significantly less’ than this lovely potential client’s previous coach. Noted.

I’ve been wrestling a little with what to call myself. ‘Coach’ is broad and context-dependent, while ‘Advisor’ feels more directly aligned with my recent full-time role. But I’ve realised a single label matters less than making my approach clear: I aim to be a strong partner to leaders who care about great design. That clarity matters more than the title.

Oh, and I tried using ChatGPT to write these week notes. I fed it a bullet point outline and my journal entries from the week—it was… okay. But week notes like this thrive on vulnerability and authenticity, which ChatGPT struggled to distill. So I scrapped it and wrote everything here from scratch. A fun experiment, at least.

Right now, everything is theoretical. The conversations I’ve had are promising, and I feel conviction in my path, but until I launch, I won’t know how the world will respond. I hope next week goes smoothly, but I’m embracing the idea that uncertainty is the price of entry for forging an independent path aligned with my values.

I can’t wait to see what happens.

Until next time!