My online business strategy has looked completely different at almost every stage of the last six years, and I think being honest about that matters. Here is the real, unfiltered version of my online business model journey:

• 2016 – Travel Blog: My first ever online business venture was a travel blog called The Ineffable Travels. I was 24, living in Italy, had travelled to nearly 30 countries, and writing was something I genuinely enjoyed. It had the passion, it had the skill – but what I did not account for was the time it took to produce content consistently alongside a full-time job, and how long it takes for blog content to rank and convert. I stopped writing after about a year and a half, which was ironically right when it started getting the most traffic. I walked away having learned the value of SEO, affiliate marketing, and how demanding content creation really is.
• 2019 – Career Coaching for Fashion Industry Candidates: I had spent 11 years working in global fashion brands and had been informally helping people get jobs for years. So I turned that into a side hustle. The problem? My ideal clients were students and junior candidates who could not afford to pay for my services. I quickly realized that being able to help someone and being able to build a sustainable business around it are two very different things. I pivoted to executive-level career coaching in partnership with someone else, made money within the first couple of months, but ultimately walked away because I was not passionate enough about the subject to make the effort worth it.
• 2020 – E-commerce Consultancy: This is the one I consider my first real business. I had spent years building five-year plans for a £380 million business at Burberry and launching subsidiaries across Europe. When lockdown hit, and my travel plans fell apart, I looked at my skills and realized I could scale that experience down to help start-up e-commerce businesses. I used LinkedIn to get clients, landed them quickly because of the brand names behind me, and genuinely loved the work. I helped a handbag brand build a wholesale channel that generated almost £200,000 in nine months. I ran workshops, created courses, offered group coaching, and built consistent five to seven-thousand-pound months within the first year. This business model gave me the freedom to go fully remote and eventually move abroad.
• The agency model: I tried this within my consultancy, and it made good money – but I absolutely hated it. Too many moving parts, too many people to manage, not enough of me actually doing the work I loved.
• 2021 – In-person events: I brought 50 women together for a live event, and it lit me up completely. I loved the energy, the community, the magic that happens in a room. Financially, though, I actually lost money on it. Loved it, but not a scalable model on its own.
• 2023 – Mental health e-commerce marketplace: Co-founded with a business partner in the US, built on a drop-ship and affiliate model. We genuinely cared about the mission – helping people find mental health solutions. But running it alongside our existing businesses started to impact both of our mental health. We had to pause it. Lesson: Mission-led businesses are powerful, but you have to be able to hold the weight of the mission without it costing you your well-being.

Find an online business strategy that works for your skills, passions and freedom business goals by learning The Freedom Model Method.