A handover often starts with good intentions.

Someone decides that a process needs to be written down. They open a document and begin listing the steps.

First, do this.

Then, check that.

After that, send the email.

The document grows. Screenshots are added. Links are included. The person who created it feels a little more confident that someone else could now take over.

Then the handover is tested.

There's a category of work that doesn't have a name.

It isn't a task, exactly. It doesn't appear on a list. Nobody asks for it, because you can't ask for something you don't know is missing. It happens before the thing people can see: before the meeting, before the brief, before the project begins. Because it happens in that space, it tends to go unnoticed.

I think of it as the before. And I've come to believe it's where a lot of the most useful work actually happens.

The meeting brief written before anyone asked for one. Not just a summary of the agenda. Anyone can do that. The notes that actually change what happens in the room: the question prepared in advance that shifts the whole conversation, the context gathered the day before so the hour is spent deciding rather than catching up.

There's a process inside every small business that nobody ever wrote down.

Not because the founder is disorganised, and not because it isn't important. Usually because when it was built, she was the only one who needed to know it. She was the process. And when things are working, nobody thinks to extract them from the person doing them.

Then the business grows. The process doesn't move. It just stays where it always was: in the one head that holds everything.

I come across this constantly. Not as a crisis. That's the thing that surprises people. It's just a feature of successful small businesses. You build something, it works, it becomes normal, and the normalness of it means nobody ever stops to ask where it actually lives.

Inbox zero is a bit of a vanity metric. A clear inbox you have to fight to keep is just another job. What you're actually after is the headspace, and that comes from a different place.

I named my main way of working "In Your Corner," and people often ask what that actually means in practice. Here's the honest version.

New tools are seductive, especially in a slick demo. Here are the four questions I ask before a client signs up for anything, and why the most powerful option is rarely the right one.

If your business stalls every time you step away, that's not a workload problem. It's a structural one. The knowledge is in your head, the decisions land with you, and somewhere along the way you became the only load-bearing wall in the building.

Your VA is great. They do exactly what you ask. So why does your brain still feel just as full? If delegation has started to feel harder than just doing it yourself, this one might be worth a read.

It's a fair question, and one I get asked a lot. The line between the two isn't always obvious until you've experienced both – but the difference isn't really about what gets done. It's about what stops living in your head.

The most useful thing I do is often the thing that was never on the list. It's still the part I find hardest to put in a proposal, and the part that matters most.

Working from home every day can make the "deep work" gear hard to find. Here is how booking a morning at a local coworking space helped me clear my backlog, plus my practical tips for getting the most out of your session.

When founders describe what they need, it's always tasks. Concrete things with a start and an end. But there's usually something harder to name sitting underneath. This one is about what that actually is.

On a Thursday morning, I got a message from a client. "Faaack. I have seven days to change email service provider because my ADHD ass forgot the deadline." Seven days. We used six. This is what nine years of working together makes possible.

Some of the most useful things I do for clients never appear on a to-do list. Jennifer had been meaning to fix her quoting process for weeks - each time, client work took priority instead. On Monday she mentioned it in passing. By Monday afternoon, she had a tool.

Nobody checks on the founder who's quietly holding it all together. From the outside, everything looks fine. But there's a particular weight to being the only one who sees across everything, and it doesn't really announce itself. If any of that sounds familiar, this one's for you.

I run a business built on carrying other people's mental load. For a long time, I didn't notice that nobody was doing that for me. My own marketing sat unfinished. My blog went untouched for months. Not because I didn't care - but because by the time I'd finished holding everything for everyone else, there was nothing left.

If you've ever felt that, this one's for you.

This time of year often brings reflection. Not the loud kind with big declarations, but a quieter stock-take of what’s shifted, what’s settled, and what actually matters. This is a gentle reflection on finding steadiness again, investing in alignment, and building a business that feels lighter, calmer, and more human.

A great client experience isn’t about grand gestures. It’s the little touches — a smooth welcome, clear updates, consistent docs — that make all the difference.

End-of-year energy can make you want to fix everything at once. Instead, here’s a calmer way to wrap up your business before the holidays — without burning out.

Time blocking and productivity hacks only go so far. Real progress comes from planning around your energy — noticing when you work best and matching the task to the moment.