On September 15th, I turned 38 years old and get told I’m a “young’un” quite often! Whenever I have my birthday, I like to try and write a post about the things I’ve learned in the past year.

This year has had some BIG learnings for me – I’ve taken on my first outsourced person and I’m training him to do the things that are going to help me and my marketing hugely which will allow me to concentrate on growing my business and that in the long run will help him have more work! I’ve also had to learn about delegation for me. I tell my clients and potential clients that it’s ok to hand over the reins to some of their business so that I can do those tasks for them to grow their business and I’m having to learn that it’s ok to do that too!

I’ve had some business lessons along the way including the start of my podcast, editing more podcasts than I was this time last year and the time management that needs to be in place to do all of that.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned this year though is that life is short and it’s important that you take the time to fit in doing the things you love. Someone close to me lost her little brother in August. He was only 32 years old, and it’s come as a huge shock to us all. His sudden passing has made me realise that I don’t need to work until 10pm at night (unless of course I want to!) and that I can take weekends off to do the things I love. That realisation led to me taking a 3 day weekend last weekend and on October 5th I’m booked to go to a book launch in Bath in October. Jodi Picoult is going to be at Toppings, and I’ve loved her books and dreamt of meeting her for years and the fact that I now have a ticket to make that happen is a huge tick off of that bucket list.

I’m learning to find out more about me too. I’m finally liking the person that I’ve become and I’m proud of myself for all of my achievements and more importantly than all of that – I’m grateful to have made it this far in life and I hope I can continue on the way I have been.

What lessons have you learnt lately?