38 surprising lessons from 15 years of running Do What You Love❤️ (with a giveaway!)

PLUS Up to 50% off ALL classes!✨My annual gratitude sale is on now with FREE stationery gifts (while stocks last!) ✨

“Don’t spend your time building someone else’s dream.’ – advice received from a mentor many years ago

Fifteen years ago, when I first set up my company Do What You Love, I was in my early thirties. Now I’m 48. In that time I have got married, had two children, moved house 8 times, trained as a yoga teacher and Reiki Master, produced and delivered a raft on online courses and written six books, made many mistakes (probably from a lack of sleep, ha ha) and learned a lot of surprising things about working for yourself in an everchanging world.

I have a weird knack of sensing things coming over the horizon before most other people notice – that might be why I set up an online course business in the dark ages of the internet, before Zoom and Tiktok (and lifetimes before Substack), when almost no-one was teaching (or learning) online. This radar can be an advantage, but it also means I tend to start things before I know what I’m doing and learn how to do them by doing them, because there is not yet a manual for whatever it is. As a result I have learnt to fail fast and move on, evolving with changing markets, customer tastes, technologies and my own changing priorities (because nothing stays the same, in life or in business).

This week, as Mr K and I celebrate fifteen years of our little business, it feels like a good time to share some of our hard-won lessons, in case they are useful to you. Many of them apply to life more generally, not just to business.

I am deeply indebted to my company – which now feels like an old friend – for making it possible to live and work the way I do, alongside my husband, from a rural place we love, supporting people all over the world.

I am deeply indebted to all the people along the way who have advised and supported me, and worked with me to make things happen.

But perhaps most of all, I am deeply indebted to YOU for being part of it all. I appreciate you more than you’ll ever know.

Today I want to celebrate by sharing the most important lessons I have learnt from the past fifteen years in business, offering a 15^th Anniversary Giveaway (scroll to the end for that!) and announcing that my Fifteenth Anniversary Grand Gratitude Sale is now on with up to 50% off ALL my classes, including:

• A brand new writing + career development immersion LIFE+TIME (30% off, plus a free stationery gift if you register before midnight GMT on Nov 30 2025)

• My electrifying writing + Substack growth immersion INK+FLAME (30% off)

• My raved-about BOOK PROPOSAL MASTERCLASS, now in instant access format (30% off)

• A host of carefully curated bundles to support you on the path ahead (all a massive 50% off, with instalment plans available for most)

All individual courses are 30% off and all carefully curated bundles of courses are a massive 50% off! That is how grateful I am!

You can find more on the sale (plus details of the giveaway) below, but first the lessons. I hope they resonate with you and support you in bringing your own dreams to life in the years ahead, avoiding the mistakes it took for me to learn what I’m sharing today.

The manifesto I wrote for Do What You Love more than a decade ago, which I still 100% believe in.

38 surprising lessons from 15 years running my company, Do What You Love

Basically, as an ideator your job is to build.

Sometimes it’s also your job to burn things down along the way, but mostly it is to build.

Most of the lessons I have learnt are about the things to build, and the way to build them.

STRATEGIC LESSONS

1. Build trust in the quality of what you offer. This happens through an ongoing commitment to care, clarity and consistency. How you do anything is how you do everything. Bring a high level of love, commitment and attention to everything you do, whether it is a free offering, or a paid one.

2. Build assets. This is essential in an uncertain AI-present world. Income-generating assets might include intangible things like a suite of digital programmes that you can sell over and over or license, or a paid membership or other recurring revenue stream, and tangible things like you can make and sell or license, like books and art and products, or things that accumulate value with time, such as land and property. Ideally create multiple streams of income, with various lead times for return on effort, so you never get in a bind. Don’t forget assets don’t just include things you sell, but also things that can help you sell the things you carefully make, including your own skills, a trusted reputation, a well-functioning website, an email list, and an engaged community reached through multiple channels. The things you offer for free can also be real assets, which can serve your people in the short term (while they get to know you), and allow you to serve them in deeper ways in the long term. With every asset you create, make it the best quality it can be, regardless of price.

3. Build your understanding of technology – threats, opportunities and functionality – it is already hard to run a business or build a thriving career with a total avoidance of technology, and I think this will become almost impossible in the future. You don’t have to use everything, but it’s worth embracing a few things that can really help. Read my take on doing what you love in the age of AI here.

4. Build a road between the outside world and your inner world, and travel it often. We can learn much from observing what is going on in the world, sensing the zeitgeist, and being aware of what other people are doing. But we only really get good things made once we turn away from all that and get quiet, to make the things that only we can make. By the same token, if we isolate ourselves from the world for too long we become out of touch. But if we stay plugged into the world for too long, we can become frazzled, and frozen by fear. I remind myself this often, and try to move between the two.

5. Build down as well as out. Don’t just focus on growing your orbit. Deepen your relationships with the people who are already in your orbit. Let them see who you are, and get to know them as best you can.

6. Build the business or career that is a vehicle for how you want to live now (or in the near future), not twenty years from now (because that time may never come).

PRACTICAL LESSONS

7. Build a good system to help you get organized, so you can focus on what really matters. Somewhere there is a graveyard of brilliant ideas that never made it to market simply because of a lack of organization. That’s a tragedy, for the ideator and for the person who could have been served by that thing. Having ideas is an occupational hazard of anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit, but we have to nurture our own capacity to discern what’s THE idea for now, what’s a good idea for later, and what’s not in alignment with what we are trying to do, even if it’s a brilliant idea. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

8. Build boundaries, and make it easy for people to respect them. Be clear what you will and won’t do. Be clear when you will deliver things, and what people can expect from you. Be clear when you are working on work things, and focus in that time, then try not to think about it outside of that time.

9.Build buffers. Keep a financial buffer in the bank in case things are slow, or unanticipated things happen. Also build in time buffers – everything takes longer than you think. Doing things at the last minute is a wholly-avoidable stress, if you build in a time buffer. On a related note, set your own deadlines. Stick to them as if someone else set them. If you really have to move one, do it and let yourself off the hook. But don’t do that every time, or nothing will ever get done.

FINANCIAL LESSONS

Note: These are observations and tips for things that have helped me, not financial advice. I am not qualified to give financial advice.

10. Build a transparent and easy-to-use money management system which is separate to your personal affairs. By that I mean as soon as you start receiving money for your products or services, start using a separate bank account. Please. And don’t manage your business on an Excel Spreadsheet. These days there are many brilliant, simple to use tools which can give you details of how your business is doing at the click of a button. In case of interest, some of the simple but essential tech we use in for processing and managing sales in our business include the following (no affiliate links here, just information!):

• WooCommerce for Wordpress (although Shopify seems to be a good alternative for product-based businesses)

• Stripe

• Paypal

• Xero

• Metorik

• Campaign Monitor

• Dropbox

Even if you pay other people to take care of your paperwork and accounts (which I highly recommend), make sure you understand what it all means. Also, never forget that any sales tax does not belong to you. You are just handling it on behalf of the tax authorities. If you want to sleep at night do not spend it. Ever. It’s a good idea to put it in a separate bank account, so you aren’t even tempted.

11. Make it easy for people to pay you. Find a payment system that works for you and is easy to use (from the point of view of your target customers). Don’t let a complicated payment system be a barrier to them buying what you offer. (Whatever you are selling, there’s an app for that. – see above)

12. Always pay others on time. In our case, Mr K always aims to pay freelancers/other small businesses within 72 hours of receiving an invoice. Even though we might lose a few pence of interest we could have earned by keeping the money in the bank for a few extra days, we know that cashflow is a minefield for many small businesses, and quick payments can make a huge difference. Not surprisingly it helps build strong relationships.

13. Build an awareness of your propensity for risk. Respect that as much as your nervous system needs you to. Do take risks, but only gamble as much as you can afford to lose. Having said that, the good news is that most things work out better than you dared to expect, and when you do have some funds, if you spend £1 to generate £2, it is usually money well spent.

14. Build your willingness to spend money on things that help you have good ideas. In my case, I believe that money spent on travel and books (and notebooks, and hotel rooms/airbnbs to give me room to write) is never wasted. Going on several retreats early in my business journey was a gamechanger for me, bringing me into contact with likeminded people and offering the headspace to dream big, and make plans. I reinvested almost everything in the early days to learn as much as I could, as quickly as I could, and to meet other likeminded people.

15. Build your willingness to invest in your own development – books, courses, mentoring and so on. Every penny you invest in your own growth and development will come back in spades – not just in money but in your experience as a human being. (Did I mention all my career change, personal development and writing courses are on offer at 50% off in my 15^th anniversary gratitude sale right now? Just sayin’…)

16. Build your willingness to spend money on things that help you explain what you do and what you offer. For me this is about investing in photoshoots, and props for those photoshoots, to use across my website, Substack and all my social channels, to give a visual flavour of what I offer, and to ensure a coordinated look and feel so people start to recognise my work in different places.

17. Build respect for your own work and value it accordingly. Think of all the things you are willing to invest in, which are offered by other people (see above). You value what they offer. Why shouldn’t other people value what you offer? If you pay attention to the quality of everything you offer, they absolutely will value it – but only if you value it first.

18. Build respect for the value of your (life) experience. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the brilliant young people with quick thumbs and quick minds, who seem capable of anything in half the time it takes those of us who are older. But nothing can replace your life experience, so be sure to draw on that as you craft your unique offering. Have confidence in the skills, experience and abilities that you have. Tell people about them, so they can have confidence in you, too. (And if you are a young person reading this, you are way ahead of the game, and I salute you for not following the crowd. Keep going!)

RELATIONAL LESSIONS

19. Build trust in your own instincts. If you get a good feeling about someone or something, you are probably right. If you get a bad feeling about someone or something, you are probably right. Act on that feeling sooner rather than later.

20. Build your team carefully. My bookkeeper and accountant have been with me since the very beginning. My business changed course when I started writing books and the team that came on board around that time – web developer, designer, photographer and make up artist for shoots etc – are still with us now. They all work on a freelance/contract basis and I appreciate them so much. In terms of employees, we have made some brilliant hiring decisions, and some terrible ones (the latter, without exception, because we rushed it, or ignored our gut feelings). Terrible ones take an enormous amount of time and energy to undo. These days our team is the smallest it has been in a decade, and it is just right. From day one make sure you have at least one person in your corner whose only agenda is to encourage you – if you can’t find them in your immediate vicinity, go and seek them out in offline or online communities (like this one!). And avoid negative people at all costs.

21. Build your own community, and keep it close. Nurture your community with as much love when it is just a handful of people, as when it grows to the many thousands. (The way you do that might have to change because of your fixed capacity as a human being, but the intention behind it can remain the same) And make sure you own the data for your community, rather than being at the mercy of a particular communication channel, because they come and go. (-> Encourage everyone to get on your email list, so you can take them with you if you move your online world to a new location).

Also, never forget to focus on building a community, not just an audience. It’s a two-way conversation – those relationships are precious and life-enhancing AND they are the best source of information about what your customers want and need right now, so you can evolve your offerings as your customers evolve alongside you.

22. Build your capacity to politely say no to some things, not least because it will increase your capacity to enthusiastically say yes to other things. These days it takes me about three seconds to decide if an opportunity is for me or not. I turn down way more interview requests etc than I agree to – when I am head down working on a book, I don’t do any media at all. And I turn down almost every brand partnership invitation. If you hear about something from me, you can trust that it’s something I genuinely love, not something I am sharing because I was paid to talk about it. (-> see ‘Build trust’ above) Also, the wrong brand partnerships take an inordinate amount of time and headspace. The right ones are easy and joyful. The difference is immense. I should add that I understand it’s a privileged position to be in to have things to say no to, but this is something I have learned the hard way – from eagerly saying yes to everything in the beginning, and sometimes getting burnt by it.

23. Build your capacity for joy on the job. Let’s take social media for example. Choose a place to be. Do what you do - do you - in that place as well as you can, as consistently as you can, without affecting your wellbeing or enjoyment of life itself, and do it in a way that brings you joy. In other words (which pretty much explain my entire Substack strategy): Have a good time.

SPIRITUAL/EMOTIONAL LESSONS

24. Don’t chase the money and hope you’ll like the work. Instead, follow the impulses of your heart, and find a way to make them generate money, if that’s what you want and need.

25. Don’t underestimate the impact on your happiness levels of being master of your own time. If you are going to go to the effort of doing your own thing, make sure you set it up in a way that frees you up, not ties you down.

26. The intensity of life and work ebbs and flows like the tide. One of the best things you can do for your long-term wellbeing is to acknowledge your own rhythms, and organize your work in accordance with them. Another is to put things in place to allow you to step away at short notice in case of an unexpected life rupture.

27. Learn to move on from your mistakes. You will make mistakes. We all do. The faster you can learn from them and move on, the easier your life will be (and, possibly, the stronger your business will be).

28. Surround yourself with people who are doing it too. Some of your old ‘friends’ will fall by the wayside when you step onto a new path. That’s the opportunity cost of building something yourself, but the ones who fall away likely weren’t your best people anyway. And as you open new doors, new people will walk through them, which will be a joy.

29. Remember, all things are impermanent. Us entrepreneurial spirits are usually optimists, and often don’t think about the ending when we are beginning something new. But everything changes, and all things come to an end eventually. Remember this when you are negotiating contracts, releasing digital products, building your business and so on. Also, allow the truth of impermanence to comfort you when things are hard – whatever the situation, it won’t last – and to celebrate the good times, as they won’t last forever either. That’s just the nature of the universe. Which is also why it’s best not to hold onto something beyond its time. Something else will be waiting.

30. Do it because you love it. Stay committed to your craft. If you don’t love it anymore, change something. This is your LIFE, friend. (You might enjoy this recent TEDx talk from Jonathan Fields on the joy and importance of making things.)

31. Think ‘service’ not ‘selling’. If you are nervous about asking for money for your time, expertise or creations, remember what moved you to offer it in the first place. It is likely that there was an element of wanting to be of service, to offer something that people need. The thing is, it can’t help them if they don’t know about it. So tell them about it. (To walk my talk, I’ll do it here: I have spent the past fifteen years building a raft of life-changing courses to help you do what you love and live well – from navigating change to calming your mind and organizing your life, from writing from the heart to getting a book deal – and ALL of these courses are on sale at up to 50% off right now at dowhatyouloveforlife.com. I made them for you. I hope they support you on this wild and beautiful road of life.) See, it wasn’t that hard.

32. If you don’t like something, change it, or change the way you are looking at it.

33. Regret nothing. Do your homework, make informed decisions and then accept whatever happens – success or otherwise – knowing that you did the best you could with the information you had at the time. If it doesn’t go to plan, no stewing, no regrets. Just make a few notes about lessons learned and then move on. With hindsight you’ll see that the thing that went wrong had to go wrong in order for you to get wherever you get.

34. Words change minds, hearts, lives. Use them wisely. Do everything you can to get better at sharing yours – by which I don’t mean technically better. I mean better at sharing in a way which feels real to you, and reaches into the hearts of others.

35. Celebrating is not showing off. It is important to recognize that all you have sacrificed was worth it, and that all the effort you are putting in is working. You are building this life step by step, day by day! Of course you can celebrate privately, but every now and then doing it publicly inspires others. (If it annoys them, it’s probably because you have shined a light on something they really, really want for themselves, which might just be the catalyst they needed to change something and start pursuing their own dreams).

36. The world needs your medicine. It really does. Please believe that. You can only support the people you want to support if you believe in your work and offer it to the world (and tell people about it!)

37. You don’t need anyone’s permission. (You might need their logistical or other support, but you don’t need their permission). What a blessing and a joy. Recently I posted this, and I meant every word.

38. Money gives you options, but true wealth has little to do with money.

Which all goes to say… life is short. Do what you love. And have fun while you do it ;-)

And as Max Ehrmann said in his wonderful poem Desiderata, keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. What if your best days are still to come? Just imagine that!

Beth Xx

PS Don’t forget to scroll down for details of the GIVEAWAY and my 15^th ANNIVERSARY GRAND GRATITUDE SALE!

PPS Any questions about the kind of work I have done over the past fifteen years? Come and join my private writing community SoulCircle - we have our next Ask-Me-Anything Q&A coming up on November 22, and before that our beautiful Late Autumn Live Writing Circle on November 16.

CELEBRATORY GIVEAWAY!

***This giveaway is now closed. The winner, chosen at random, is: Sarah Thompson. Congratulations Sarah! I will be in touch by email to arrange your prize.***

THE PRIZE: A complimentary place on my brand new writing + career development immersion LIFE+TIME and a personalized, signed copy of my first book Freedom Seeker (or other signed book of your choice, from those I have written).

Before you ask, yes, if you win and have already registered to make sure you secure your free stationery gift before the deadline, don’t worry. You’ll get your fee returned to you, and you can still have the lovely gift :-)

TO ENTER: Restack this essay on Substack Notes with your response to this question (and/or leave your response in the comments of this post on Substack):

✨What is the most important life, business or career lesson you have learnt in the past fifteen years?✨

DEADLINE: 4pm UK time on Friday November 16, 2025

The small print:

- No purchase is necessary. - This competition is open to anyone anywhere in the world over the age of 18.
- One person who restacked this essay/post or has left a comment on this post by the deadline responding to the question above will be chosen at random to win the stated prize. The winner will be announced here and on Substack Notes @bethkempton shortly after the deadline.
- The choice of winner is final and no correspondence will be entered into. There is no cash alternative. However, if the winner has already registered for LIFE+TIME, their registration fee will be refunded.

Claim your free gift when you register for LIFE+TIME at dowhatyouloveforlife.com by midnight GMT on Nov 30, 2025

FREE GIFT when you register for LIFE+TIME (or any bundle containing LIFE+TIME by midnight GMT on November 30, 2025 (while stocks last!

If you register for LIFE+TIME or any 50% off bundle containing LIFE+TIME (namely The FLOURISHING WRITER bundle | The BOOK DREAM bundle | The NOW OR NEVER bundle*) by midnight GMT on November 30, 2025, you will receive a lovely free stationery gift in the post. The gift includes a Japanese notebook, some cute stickers, a limited edition set of letterpress postcards and a unique writing prompt, created for me with a little bit of help from my children. It’s very special. Please note stocks are limited so sign up soon to be sure to get one before they run out!

I look forward to supporting your journey in 2026, and for many more years to come.

Beth Xx

*Instalment plans are available for LIFE+TIME and also for most bundles