I’ve always known I wanted to do something that helped people.
Not in a vague, Instagram-caption kind of way. Genuinely. Watching someone succeed at something, really succeed, from the ground up has always done something to me. It lights me up in a way that very little else does.
I think it comes from my dad.
My dad had a gym. And like a lot of passionate people who pour everything into something they love, the business side of it was never really his strength. He was brilliant at what he did. People loved him, they trusted him, and they showed up for him. But the running of it, the admin, the marketing, and the numbers were always the thing that quietly undermined what he’d built.
I tried to help. I always tried. But my dad was his own worst enemy sometimes, in the way that a lot of driven, proud people are. He didn’t always want the help, even when he needed it. And looking back, I wish I’d pushed harder, started earlier, done more.
Because we lost him suddenly. And when he died, we had to dismantle his gym piece by piece. Not because it wasn’t loved, but because it wasn’t in a position for anyone to take over. It wasn’t stable enough to hand on. And I stood there in that space, surrounded by the things he’d built, broken, truly broken, and thought, I don’t want this to happen to anyone else.
That thought planted a seed. I just didn’t know what to do with it yet.
The Beginning – My Sister’s Cake Business
My first real attempt at helping someone build something was my sister. She wanted to start a cake business, and I wanted to help.
I threw myself into it. Created her social media pages and built her a website on Squarespace. At the time, I was genuinely proud of it. Looking back, and I say this with love for my past self, it really wasn’t great. But it got her online. It existed. And that mattered more than I realised at the time.
That experience did something to me. It showed me I could do this. That I could take an idea someone had in their head and help make it real in the world.
Ashleigh’s Business Development – Going Properly
Not long after, still working full time cleaning, I made a decision. I dropped a day a week, posted in a community group that I was looking to start helping businesses get online, and waited.
My first client came from that post.
I created my social media pages, Ashleigh’s Business Development, and off I went. A friend of a friend who was already working in digital marketing took me under her wing and taught me most of what I know. I built my first WordPress website for my first client. Got access to their social media. Started creating posts and scheduling content. Got my head around Canva. Learned how to use scheduling tools to post consistently.
It was time consuming and relentless, but I was doing it. I took on more clients and built around five WordPress websites (nothing SEO-optimised, nothing fancy, just clean, functional, information-based sites that got businesses online). I started filming content, taking photos, writing captions, and scheduling posts.
The problem, and I can see it clearly now, is that I had no idea what any of this was actually worth. The clients expected a lot, but that wasn’t their fault. They had no idea what the job entailed, and I was too polite to tell them. I was working huge hours for very little money, overdelivering constantly, and quietly drowning.
But I loved what the work represented … people building something of their own.
The Person I Was Becoming In The Background
While all of this was happening professionally, something else was shifting personally.
In December 2023, I quit vaping, which is something I’ve written about in detail elsewhere, but the short version is that it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and it changed everything. I quit drinking around the same time. Tackled binge eating. Started working through years of people-pleasing. Lost my dad and came out the other side of that grief a different person.
Each of those things taught me something about myself. About the way my brain works. About what actually helps people change and what just adds noise. About the difference between conventional advice and what actually works for people wired like me.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I was building the foundations of everything that would come next.
The Collaboration – And Where It All Fell Apart
Then came an opportunity that felt, at the time, like the next step. The same friend who had taught me most of what I knew, someone I trusted deeply, someone I cared about, someone already established in the digital marketing world, offered me the chance to build something together. A proper company. We’d grow it together, take on bigger clients, and do it properly.
I said yes. I left Ashleigh’s Business Development behind for what felt like the bigger picture.
I won’t go into everything, as I’ve written about burnout in another blog, and some of that story belongs there. But what I will say is that the job became enormous very quickly. Websites. SEO. Multiple clients with multiple deadlines. Proposals. Social media management across different platforms. Content creation. Caption writing. Scheduling. Email marketing. Website migrations. Domain purchases. Email setups. Technical problems that appeared out of nowhere at the worst possible time. Paid ads. Google Analytics. Client portals. Project management software. Scheduling systems. Tools I was learning on the job while the job kept moving.
And then more migrations. More domains. More tech. More clients. More problems.
All of it, all at once, with no clear lane of my own with the pressure of someone else’s timeline and expectations pressing down on me.
I’m someone who learns by doing. That’s fine when you’re working at your own pace. It’s not fine when you’re on the clock for someone else and not entirely sure what you’re doing. I found myself feeling like it wasn’t mine. Like I was just working for someone again, carrying weight I didn’t know how to carry, feeling the pressure of not being fast enough, good enough, certain enough.
The combination of too much work, too little clarity about my role, my own inability to say no, and the sheer volume of what the job demanded was already a lot. And that was just the job. At home I was a mum to two teenage girls with everything that comes with that. The school runs, the emotional support, the being needed constantly, and the never really switching off. Normal life doesn’t pause because work is hard. It all just stacks.
I broke. Quietly and completely.
I walked away. Sacrificed everything I’d built under that collaboration to get out of the stress of it. Kept a couple of personal clients. Went back to cleaning and picked up a job marking digital marketing courses, something I’d started just before the move, and tried to catch my breath.
Not A Life Coach – Building Something That Was Actually Mine
Coming out the other side of that, I still had the itch to help people. But I also had years of personal change behind me. The quitting, the grief, the people-pleasing, the burnout, and I realised I had something to say about all of it.
Not A Life Coach started to take shape. A space to be honest. To share what I’d actually been through. To help people push past the internal barriers that keep them stuck, not with polished advice but with real lived experience.
And here’s the thing. I didn’t hire anyone to build it. I did it myself.
I built the website from scratch on WordPress using Elementor. I designed the logo (a single-line butterfly, chosen deliberately because it represents transformation and is also a personal sign that links to my dad). I sorted the branding, the colours, the fonts, and the social media pages. I wrote the blogs about quitting vaping, about people-pleasing breaking me, and about why conventional methods never worked for my brain. I set up WooCommerce, connected MailerLite for email marketing and wrestled with plugins and settings and all the technical bits that nobody tells you about until you’re knee deep in them at 11pm.
I’m telling you this not to brag. I’m telling you this because that is exactly what I’m going to help you do.
I know where it gets confusing. I know where people get stuck. I know what questions come up at every stage because I asked every single one of them myself. And I know that none of it is as complicated as the internet makes it look. It just needs someone to strip it back and walk you through it without the noise.
The Detour – And Why It Didn’t Stick
Struggling financially, I turned to affiliate marketing. Built the website, the Pinterest, and the social pages; sorted the branding, all in a day; and threw myself into it.
But it wasn’t mine. It wasn’t my passion. I was going through the motions rather than building something I actually cared about.
And so I did what I always do when I don’t know what I’m doing. I started consuming. How to go viral. Canva tutorials. Website building tips. Self-help podcasts. Just consuming and consuming and not doing. Lost in information, looking for direction I couldn’t find because I hadn’t stopped long enough to actually listen to myself.
I felt lost. All these skills, all these experiences and I couldn’t work out what to do with any of them.
And Then It Clicked.
I’d been too broad. Trying to be everything, help everyone, do all of it and doing none of it well as a result.
So I stripped it back. Asked myself two questions.
What am I actually good at? Getting businesses online. Back to basics. No nonsense, no complexity, no trying to do everything at once.
What do I genuinely love doing? Helping people who have a dream get it off the ground. Watching someone go from “I have no idea where to start” to actually starting.
And there it was.
I’d been through the business side … the building, the breaking, the learning, and the burnout. And I’d been through the personal side too … the quitting, the grief, the people-pleasing, the imposter syndrome, all of it. And what I realised is that those two things aren’t separate. They never were.
Because most people who want to start something aren’t held back by lack of skill. They’re held back by not knowing where to begin and by everything going on inside their head that tells them they’re not ready, not qualified, not enough.
I know both of those things. Intimately.
That’s why I’m building this. Not a course on going viral. Not an agency promising the world. Just honest, practical help for service-based businesses getting online for the first time, stripped back with no noise or overwhelm, combined with real talk about everything that gets in the way of starting.
Because sometimes the only thing stopping you isn’t you.
Sometimes it’s just not knowing where to start.
And that’s exactly where I come i
