KIS News Issue #49 - some links included in this issue may be affiliate links

Update: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - we live in a hot country now.

Seriously though, what is this weather?! I honestly don’t believe there is anything better for your mental health than lighter nights and warm, sunny days. Oh and the fact I can dry 3 loads of laundry outside in a day!

This week I’ve been building away behind the scenes and upgraded website and platform for Espresso AI. I’ve also been getting ready for my summer in Italy which starts on Thursday 😍🇮🇹. I’m sharing below my process that has got me from working full-time to working term-time including a new Business Design Guide for you to download to help you work through this process too if building a business that works on a cyclical basis is something you are also hoping to achieve. Enjoy!

I’ve also been looking at my analytics a lot lately and I got a new suggestion from my AI assistant (yes I have an automated AI assistant looking at my newsletter tracking and suggesting improvements based on the data 😂) and this month the suggestion was to test out a Monday evening send time as that is when most people tend to open, read and click my newsletter. So let me know what you think…

What I’ve been listening to: With the launch of her new podcast Aspire, Emma Grede is everywhere right now. I listened to this interview with Gwyneth Paltrow on Goop’s podcast and these are the notes that made it into my second brain that I want to remember:

• Consider how you are going to create trends and be ahead of the curve - not just participate in someone else’s innovation.

• Grede, in-part, credits the success of Skims and Good American (brands which she co-founded alongside members of the Kardashian family) with her ability to create products that had never been seen on the market before and ensure that would be at the forefront of pop-culture and leverage the influence her co-founders had over their audience. Think one-legged shape-wear and new cuts of denim in a range of 19 sizes.

• Be fast - no meeting needs to take an hour, decisions should be made quickly and if you are thinking about something for more than 3 days then that’s a sign you need to move on it now.

• Practice being happy - it’s just as easy to feed the positive as it is to feed the negative. The best businesses come from people who are open and spot opportunities which is difficult to do when you are on a downward negative spiral. Happiness is a practice and a choice you have to make for yourself every day irrespective of circumstances.

What made me stop and think: I saw this post on Instagram about the spectrums of goals and achievements. Here’s what it said:

Rest is healthy until it becomes laziness

Routine is healthy until it stops you from living

Tracking ia healthy until the numbers control your worth

Wellness is healthy until it becomes all or nothing

Exercise is healthy until it becomes an obsession

Healthy eating is healthy until it becomes a restriction

Achieving goals is healthy until you sacrifice your mental health for them

What I’ve been watching: Truthfully, I’ve been watching Tractor Ted on Amazon prime with my toddler. IYKYK.

What I’ve been building: My husband and I have built a new AI app in the wellness space and launched to user testers with some amazing feedback. It’s already generating early nominal revenue which is incredible at a very low cost-base. *This is another sign to learn about this whole AI thing because you really can build something yourself (neither of us have written any code) and get it live, in the market and making money in just a few weeks. 

This week in pictures:

BUSINESS MOVES TO WATCH

Businesses and people that caught my eye this week.

Bala launches Mama range for pre and post-natal fitness

Bala—the brand known for making workout gear aesthetically pleasing (think wrist weights and pastel dumbbells)—has just launched a new line focused on motherhood. Why it’s interesting: we’re seeing an increase in consumer brands tapping into marketings’ worst-kept secret - mother’s have some seriously influential buying power. With brands like Stanley reinventing themselves and their bottom lines with must-have products for mothers, I think we’ll be seeing a lot more consumer brands riding the motherhood wave as millennials reach peak parenting.

Maggie Sellers and her sister Katie had a really insightful discussion on this here. (Motherly)

Touchland was acquired by Church & Dwight in a deal rumoured to be worth $880 million

Touchland—the sleek, social-first hand sanitiser brand you’ve probably seen all over Instagram—has just been acquired by Church & Dwight (the parent company behind brands like Batiste and Arm & Hammer). The deal is rumoured to be worth $880 million after earn-outs.

Why it matters:

• This is one of the biggest DTC brand exits in recent memory.

• Touchland built its empire with smart branding and viral social marketing.

• It’s a reminder that functional products can go premium when paired with design and distribution that makes them feel desirable.

If you’re building a brand: this is the case study to study. (BoF)

CAN WE REALLY HAVE WORK/LIFE BALANCE?

This week social media has been choc full of clips of Emma Grede’s interview on Diary of a CEO and her statements on work life balance. Her position is clear - there’s no such thing as work life balance and anyone telling you otherwise is lying.

Here’s my take.

If you are working for a company, I think it is short-sighted and slightly tone-deaf to think that anyone asking a question about work-life balance as part of their questions on company culture during an interview is inherently work-shy.

People need to know what the expectation and company culture is like at hiring stage precisely so that they can take responsibility for their own work-life balance.

But let’s look at this through the lens of entrepreneurship - do I think you can have a work-life balance and run a business? Yes, but seasonally.

I think the pursuit of work-life balance in the initial stages of starting a business is a complete myth that just makes us feel inadequate.

Instead I think the real pursuit should be of seasonality and recognising how you want to live in each season.

When you first start out in business you are in your building phase. I could sugar coat it but I won’t - it’s hard. You have to work nights, you have to work weekends, you have to fit things in around a job and a life you already have. You have to give things up. Not all of the time - but a lot of the time. It’s why most people quit.

Here’s what people don’t talk about though - that during this building phase you need to prepare for your next season.

For many of us, that’s the season of having young children. Or perhaps it’s the season where you want to travel more, or maybe it’s just that you consciously don’t want to be in that building phase forever.

I also think it’s important to note that some businesses lend themselves more to a flexible way of working (with less personal trade-offs) than others.

The biggest shift for me came when I stopped expecting one business to do everything. I realised that certain models just aren’t compatible with the kind of life I want to live right now.

Take investing—it’s high-stakes, time-sensitive, and relentless. It demands a version of me that doesn’t currently exist while my daughter is at home with me. That’s why I stepped back and chose to take a sabbatical. It’s not the wrong business, it’s just the wrong time.

Instead, I’ve picked businesses and roles that do lend themselves to part-time work. That allow me to set boundaries, work in sprints, and still show up for the school run (mostly on time).

But that didn’t just appear.

It took years of trial and error. I had to design systems that reduce decision fatigue. I actively chose it and invested time, energy and money into building something that worked this way. I invested in automations, support, and structure. I gave up on perfectionism and I started asking: what’s actually necessary here—and what am I doing out of habit?

Business and life is a series of trades - you can’t do all of the things all of the time but I do believe that you can have it all without doing it all.

HOW I’M PREPARING FOR EURO SUMMER AND 8 WEEKS OF HOLIDAY

This week I’m going to Italy for the start of my European summer. See previous section on how this kind of life didn’t just appear out of nowhere!

At the start of this year, I really crystallised what I want for myself, life and businesses over the next few years. My priority and intention is to work term time only (again see above as to why and how I have got to this place).

It would be foolish to expect to that anyone can just jet off for a summer abroad and do nothing - you have to build the system and the structure. So here’s what I have been doing:

1. Focusing on one core product and monetisation funnel. Since I launched Espresso AI I’ve been laser focused on building out the platform of content both free and paid. Despite not posting organically on social media for the last 8 weeks, the historical content has delivered a steady stream of customers into the funnel ready for when the evergreen product is live next week.

2. Being ruthless about where I am allocating my time, energy and resources. This is very difficult for an inherent people pleaser and I’ve really had to work hard and make some difficult choices to do things that serve me and my businesses best. When your time is restricted to nap times and evenings and weekends only - I’ve had to be very honest about what is delivering for the bottom line.

3. Upped my AI game. I know you may think this isn’t possible, but I’ve taken everything a level further with my AI assistants and automations this year. Here are the ones that are working the hardest:

   1. My product creation engine - my husband and I have used this to build an entire AI app in the last 10 weeks which is now revenue generating and in the market.

   2. My sales engine - I set up a workflow for pitching myself for UGC work over April - June as I prepared for potential cashflow seasonality. This whole flow has generated over £12,000 in income in the last 6 weeks and whilst yes, I have to film and edit the work, the heavy-lifting of the back and forth admin and the actually pitching has all been done by AI and AI assistants.

   3. My personal AI assistants - last week I shared that I had built my own AI nutritionist to help me plan and prepare meals. The reality is, I’ve also got two most personal assistants helping me - one focusing on exercise and strength training and the other on daily coaching and accountability. These assistants have been trained on my personal goals and frameworks and check in with me each day in a whatsapp group chat. As I share this, I’m aware that this probably isn’t normal and further underlines how insanely powerful AI is now and how much you can build and do for yourself once you know how it works!

I’ve put a lot of time and thought into building a business that enables me to do this and since I suspect many of you would also like to adopt this structure of working, I’ve put together a Business Design Guide for you with self-reflective questions and prompts that can serve as a springboard for how you might take your own business from 24/7 to a more cyclical structure that enables you to step back and work more flexibly throughout the year. You can get access to it below, and of course, it’s in notion!

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

Was this email forwarded to you? You can sign up for future issues here >