KIS News Issue #34 - some links included in this issue may be affiliate links

This Week:

• Behind the scenes of building my own website

• Content creation tools

• 2025 Planning Session - Thursday 12th December 8pm

Life Update: I don’t know about you but I’m well and truly into the thick of festive activities and chaos!

I knew this time of year was going to get busy so I deliberately stripped my work plans for December right back and I only had a handful of things I wanted to achieve.

The first was to finish my new website… and whilst it’s still not finished and very much in a work in progress, I’m pushing myself right out of my comfort zone and sharing the staging site and my working musings below.

The second thing I wanted to achieve in December was to host my 2025 planning session which is coming up this Thursday evening at 8pm inside the Keep It Simple Club. You can join for free with a 7 day free trial to the members club here >>

On a personal note, this week I reached another running milestone - I ran non-stop for 38 mins at a 6:45 mins per km. Towards the end I genuinely thought the end was nigh, however I’m absolutely chuffed with this progress, especially since 12 weeks ago running for 2 minutes without a walking break felt like a marathon effort! Take this as your sign that if you keep going, you can do hard things.

Report to add to your reading list: Pinterest predicts for 2025 was released this week. If you aren’t familiar with this report, now is your time to get reading because each year Pinterest aggregates their vast amount of data on searches and user activity to forecast the biggest trends for the year ahead with alarming accuracy. Trends I’m watching for this year that I think will mean big business: nesting parties and the rise of postpartum support, peak travel as Gen X & Gen Z swap city breaks for mountain getaways and Goddess Complex as the aging Boomer population invest in themselves. I’ll be doing a full breakdown later this week on where I think the money-making opportunities are but in the meantime you can read the full report here >

Mindset Moodboard:

What’s keeping you up at night?

I started a new series on TikTok this week where founders share the refreshingly honest answers we all want to know to 21 burning questions. So often we compare ourselves to the highlights reel of entrepreneurship shared on podcasts or social media and rarely do we see the full picture. And I get it; I really do - it’s hard to be completely transparent as a founder when your personal brand and how you show up online, or for your team, has such significant commercial impact. But the downside is other entrepreneurs and people starting businesses are left comparing their step one to someone else’s chapter 20 and without the full context of what is happening behind the scenes.

This week our founder in the spotlight is a 39 year old interior designer… you can read the full story from how much she is earning, to the biggest misconception about her business, and most importantly, what is keeping her up at night, here.

Behind the scenes of building my own website

For quite some time I’ve been pottering away in the background building a new website for myself. Honestly, it’s something I’ve been wanting to do since May this year and I just kept pushing it down my list. But with the New Year looming the one thing I wanted to get done was this site.

For a while I considered getting someone else to build it for me. But I’ve been through the process of working with agencies to build websites before and I knew that this job just wasn’t one I wanted to outsource. Not because I don’t think others are far more talented and capable than I am, but because I knew I wouldn’t be able to effectively communicate what I wanted. Truthfully, because I didn’t quite know myself.

So instead I’ve gone down the self-build route. Which honestly sounds scarier than it is.

I’ve still got a fair bit of playing around to do and some big parts of the site I want to add in including a blog, work with me section, an integrated shop and product recommendations, but I thought I would share a first look with you all on how it is shaping up whilst I’m still building… Here it is.

With that in mind here’s some musings/learnings on building my own website so far:

1. Getting a great template makes all the difference. This website is an adapted template I bought from Tonic Site and so far so good - I’m pretty happy with it! At first I was filled with dread thinking ‘what have I done?!’ when I opened it all up but now I’ve had some time to get used to it and the ShowIt software it integrates with, it’s actually very intuitive. Tonic have given me a discount code for 15% off if you are in the market for a new site too! You can use HELENASENTME at checkout for 15% off.

2. I should have built mobile first. Intrinsically I know this because it’s absolutely the advice I would give anyone else. But of course I decided not to take my own advice and I built on desktop and now I’m going back through everything to check how it looks on mobile and catching a lot of bugs. I’m sure you’ll see them too in the preview!

3. I did however remember one lesson from the last time I built a website and I sketched out the wire frames of the site and imagery first. This means I sat down with a master copy of the template and on a giant sheet of paper I decided exactly how I wanted to adapt the building blocks of each page, decided on the copy and selected the images I wanted to use. Overall this makes the building process so much easier!

4. I’m iterating as I go. It would be super easy for me to spend months and months tinkering with this site (and trust me it’s taking every fibre of my being not to give in to that urge) and instead I’m sharing a very first look with you all now when it’s 75% built, still on a staging site and not even connected to my main domain. Why?! Because sharing pushes me right out into being uncomfortable and I know that’s the place I need to be to keep taking action.

I’d love to know what you think!

The only two things you need to start creating content

Content creation is on your to-do list for 2025, here are my essential recommendations that pack some serious punch when it comes to up-levelling your content creation as a beginner.

This is by far my favourite tripod. It’s stable and folds up into a bag/drawer friendly size. I favour this over a big ring light and tripod stand combo any day!

My ride-or-die clip on light. After using this clip on light for the last 18 months the battery is starting to slowly lose some of its life but I can still record for at least 3 full hours using just this little light clipped to the top of my phone. Trust me this makes all the difference - my skin looks 1,000x better and I don’t look anywhere near as tired as I actually am! It’s a miracle light.

These two products combined with my iPhone 13 front camera are all I use to create my content. If I need to use a microphone then I use the mic on my wired headphones (I know this makes me feel ancient too).

This might not be the all singing all dancing set-up some creators have, and absolutely I could upgrade my kit and production value, but the reality is my current set up works perfectly well and my content converts. And at the end of the day, that’s the goal.

2025 Planning Session

Don’t forget to register for a free trial of the Keep It Simple Club to attend Thursday’s 2025 planning session. If you can’t make it live, don’t worry, there will be a recording! Plus you’ll have a week to enjoy everything inside the members club too!

Have a great week ahead & remember to keep it simple.

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