How I Nearly Broke Myself Building My Dream Business - And How I Can Help You!

How I Nearly Broke Myself Building My Dream Business — and What It Taught Me About Health, Lifestyle, and Success

💬 Episode Summary

In this episode, I’m taking you behind the scenes of how I built my dream business — and how it nearly broke me. From leaving my career in law and starting a personal styling brand while raising three young children, to discovering “passive income” and experiencing burnout, this is a very honest look at the highs and lows of entrepreneurship, health, and lifestyle.

If you’ve ever dreamed of starting your own business, or you’re a woman in midlife wondering what’s next, I think you’ll really relate to this one. I share what I wish I’d known sooner — how overwork can affect our physical and mental health, how to spot the signs of burnout before it’s too late, and how I rebuilt a more sustainable lifestyle that finally feels good.

I’ll also talk about how my experiences have shaped the work I do today, helping women build businesses that fit around real life — with less stress, more flow, and a lot more self-compassion.

💡 Here’s what I cover:

• How I went from law to styling and built a successful business from scratch
• The myth of “passive income” and what it really takes to make it work
• How burnout and illness forced me to rethink my definition of success
• Why self-compassion and rest are essential parts of any healthy lifestyle
• How I now help women create businesses that work for them — not the other way around

🤝 Work Together? 

These days, I work one-to-one with women who want to grow their business without losing themselves in the process. My business coaching days are relaxed, supportive, and practical — a mix of clarity, strategy, and real-life wisdom for women who want success that supports their health and lifestyle, not drains it.

📩 Email: mail@bethgoodrham.com

 🌐 Website: bethgoodrham.com

📸 Instagram: @bethgoodrham

✨ This episode is for you if…

• You’re ready to start (or restart) a business in midlife
• You want to protect your health while building something meaningful
• You’re craving a calmer, more fulfilling lifestyle that truly works for you

Transcript

0:00

Hi, I am Beth and welcome to a new episode of the podcast called How I Nearly Broke Myself Building my Dream Business. This is gonna be a fun one. I know that time is precious and days are busy. So if you're tuning in, I am really grateful to have you here. And if you are a new listener, welcome to the podcast. I hope you're going to love it here. Just to set the scene in case we haven't met before. My name is Beth. I live in Birmingham in the West Midlands with my husband. I have three children and I am 55 years old. I make podcast episodes, which are designed to make you feel a little lighter, a little brighter, a little more positive, and also to perhaps explore or light a fire in you. If you've been thinking, Ooh, there's something out there that I fancy trying, but I'm just not quite sure how to go about doing it. Certainly one of the biggest things that I focus on is when I get to the end of my days, will I look back and think, oh. I wish I'd have tried that. Why wasn't I brave enough? And that's what I'm hoping for you too, that if there is something that you fancy trying or something that you want to find out more about that I can help you on your way. The purpose of today's episode is twofold. First, I wanted to share the behind the scenes of how I've built my business and how it nearly broke me because it nearly did. And secondly, because I've learned so much along the way, I wanted to pass on to you what I've learned so that you don't make the same mistakes that I did. Think of this as a friendly chat over a cup of tea where I share some gems of wisdom, which I've gleaned after working for myself for 15 years. I see a lot of women around me thinking about what they could do next with their lives. Lots of women our age have maybe been in a career for 20 years or so and they're ready for a change. Perhaps you are one of these women, or perhaps you've worked in a school so that you can accommodate family or in some other role that has centered more around what works for the family. Rather than what you would love to do, and maybe now you want to explore a passion project or build something for yourself, but you're not sure quite where to start. And then of course, there's the issue that there are so many options out there and we are sold so many success stories. And if you're anything like me, you love a shiny new object that you end up either trying everything and not making any real progress. Or staying static because you're scared of making the wrong choice. Now, if you are happily involved in your career or what is known as economically inactive or retired or in some other stage I haven't thought of, and you are very happy there, that is great. But I always find it really interesting to hit other people's stories, especially if they're challenging ones, because first I'm a little bit nosy and they either reassure me that I'm not alone. Or I glean something from them, which I can use in my own life. And that's something which I find quite comforting. And of course, if I hear something that I think might apply to a friend, I'll share it with them. So hopefully you might do that too, if you've got a friend or family member that you think this might be helpful for. So first of all, let's rewind back to 2009. I know it's a long time ago now, which is where it all began. Back in 2009, I left my career as a lawyer and I started building my personal styling and fashion blogging business with three young children, age 10, eight, and one. It was an effort, but I put in the hours, I did the reps and built a successful service-based business and also what was the start of an online business, although I didn't really realize that at the time. My days looked like shopping days, wardrobe consultations, talking in schools, presenting events at lawyers, barristers, chambers, and in the evening writing my blog. Looking back, I didn't really realize how successful my blog was. I just did it because I loved it. That's the first hint, and it gave me a creative outlet in the evenings. My fledgling business morphed into a business where I represented brands, styled photo shoots and brand campaigns presented on TV and radio. Styled TV ads appeared in the press and did 1,000,001 other things that I can't even begin to remember now. But I do know that I look back fondly on that time and it kind of feels like a fun rollercoaster with lots of energy in it and it, it was a crazy time with three young children in the mix as well. All of that took me to around, I would say 2016, which is when I came across the concept of passive income. Which let me tell you, is an oxymoron because there is absolutely nothing passive about passive income. The concept of no longer trading time for money appealed to me because I was at that stage where if I wasn't well or if I was on holiday, I wasn't being paid. It was literally I turned up, I delivered my services and I got paid. And as a business model, it was great to start off with. It was something that I was ready to pivot away from. And whilst I still loved working with clients one-to-one, I also wanted more flexibility in my week. So what passive income meant for me at that stage was creating a digital product, maybe a course, a membership, eBooks, or workshops that I could sell whilst I slept. And it sounded like a dream come true. It also sounded really easy, and yet it wasn't. In the early days, I knew nothing about how to create this business, of which I dreamed. I invested thousands of pounds in my education. I bought every course under the sun from all the big entrepreneurs you can think of in the us. The first course I ever bought was from Marina DeGiovanni, and that was about how to create online courses. I distinctly remember listening to it, sitting in my living room, just being absolutely enthralled by the prospect of this type of business model that I could do from home where I was sharing my knowledge. It would fit around the kids. It really was the answer to everything for me. And then of course, what happens is that your details end up being shared with other people who run courses. So you get targeted by other entrepreneurs and you invest in their course on how to run a membership and how to launch using different launch styles for your. Courses, then how to build funnels, how to run Facebook ads. And then a lot of the courses that you buy offer a membership after you've completed the course. So you join that to learn more of the strategy. And before you know it, you've spent thousands of pounds and got a degree, a master's and a PhD in building an online business, really. And all you've started out wanting to know was how to record and sell a program to help women feel great about themselves in their clothes. I was intent on figuring out the secret formula to make the business work. And the more I struggled, the more I went in on myself and turned on myself and doubled down and worked harder and harder and harder. And then something happened and I felt as though I was back at square one. And I think this is true for a lot of people running businesses like this, and it's just not talked about. Very much at all. So COVID hit the day that I launched my flagship styling program. So I launched an online program called Your Style Solution, and basically I took everything that I'd learned through the 10 years of styling, women one-to-one, and put them into a program for women to take in their own time and at a time to suit them. It consisted of lessons, PDFs, lots of support if they wanted it, and it was designed to help women go from feeling overwhelmed and lacking in confidence and not loving what they wore to building a wardrobe that they loved. So I launched this program, as I say, the day that COVID hit, it had promised to be such a good launch. I'd had thousands of people on my webinars, but I think the uncertainty in the world meant that people's buying habits had changed. Additionally, it was the first time I'd launched and I didn't really know what I was doing, and I was being kind of, for want of a better phrase, a good girl. I was following the formula that I'd been taught, not daring to deviate it. Not daring to deviate from it because what did I know about any of this? That experience left me feeling really deflated. Yet when I look back now, I have so much compassion for myself, and I just realized how hard I was on myself. I continued on my journey and learnt how to create lots of free bs, otherwise known as lead magnets. I added thousands to my email list at a time when it was really easy to do that. So I remember one weekend I launched a new lead magnet, which was about packing. That's right. The Essential Strategic Packing Guide. And I think I had 800 people sign up for it just in the course of one weekend. And that was all going great. I was building my email list. I was using Facebook ads to get new leads into my ecosystem. And it was kind of working, but then. My Instagram and Facebook were hacked, and I lost not only the platforms, but also their advertising capabilities. And at that stage, I wasn't nimble enough to see the challenges as opportunities, and I felt hugely, hugely deflated. And like a failure. So I made an even bigger investment. I paid for a business coach because I truly believed after all these years that this was what I needed. My hope was that she would take all the tiny parts of my business, which I felt were laid out on the floor, like an airplane engine, and put them all together. And at long last my business would head down the runway and would finally take off. Was I right? No, I wasn't. I was completely wrong. Hiring that business coach turned out to be a complete and utter waste of money. I didn't get the support or clarity that I needed. My coach who for the purposes of this episode we're going to call Shania, was more interested in playing her music in Nashville and creating pretty graphics on Canva than she was on understanding my business. All the data in it, I was left feeling more confused and overwhelmed than ever. Not only that, but I felt embarrassed, ashamed, and stupid, and I had to tell my husband what had happened to That was such an awful time. I can remember it so clearly, and I remember feeling so excited when I first listened to that webinar that Marina DeGiovanni did to where I'd ended up that I just couldn't quite believe how I'd got there. Everything that I believed about myself, I started to question, I. Always thought that provided I worked hard enough, things would work out okay. I assumed that I'd got a relative level of intelligence. I assumed that I would be able to figure things out. And so it just put everything into doubt for me. And I dunno if you've ever been there, but it is a really, really horrible, really, really lonely place to go because the only way you can get out of it. Is to talk to other people about it. And when you feel embarrassed and ashamed, that is the last thing that you want to do. What I truly needed was someone who could see the bigger picture, someone who was interested, someone who had walked the path and knew what it entailed. Someone who understood all that I was grappling with and who could help me to put it all together but back to the story, over the course of building my business, if there was a way to create a passive income online, I tried it. Workshops, eBooks, memberships. Online courses, you name it. I tried it. I worked my socks off. I pivoted, I tweaked, I adapted, I adopted, I listened and implemented all that I could. I believed that if I just kept on trying, something would click, and then along came another experience, which almost broke me. I was running a live webinar full of excitement and hope with almost a thousand people on it. But instead of support, I faced an unexpected wall of vitriol from some of the women attending. Mid presentation when I was reading their comments, my mouth went dry, my hands started shaking. I wanted to throw up every fiber of my being told me to close my laptop and hide, but I carried on and later the launch strategist, who I'd been working with and who was great by the way and who had been on the webinar with me, told me she had never seen anything like it. I was so embarrassed about that episode as well. And ultimately the stress from that experience probably combined with what had happened in the previous three years, triggered some really terrifying episodes of vertigo with doctors saying it mirrored the after effects of a small stroke. That was one of the darkest, scariest times in my business journey, and I was forced to step back, reevaluate, and truly ask myself, where do I want to go from here? And the thing is still, I felt like a failure. So through all the many years of trial and error, frustration and heartbreak, I finally identified the parts of my business that I really, truly loved. And they came down to blogging, podcasting, helping other women who were in a similar situation that I had found myself in running my Amazon business, which is a whole other story in itself, and affiliate work with just a few small brands that I really, really loved. Finally, I learned to understand myself and discovered that my human design is what's called a manifesting generator, which is someone who is multi-passionate with lots of energy and lots of different interests, and that's why I think shiny objects had always been so exciting and appealing to me. If I felt that I'd put my all into something and it wasn't working, I could easily become distracted. Hands up if you are someone like this with something new. I heard about something different that I wanted to try, but what I had to do was get really, really quiet with myself and do lots of journaling, lots of thinking, and it's only recently that I've started to step back and cut down my hours, and that is when I've had the clarity, surprise, surprise. I mean, it's not rocket science, is it? To realize what it is that I absolutely love doing. So I've stopped chasing every shiny object. I've stopped looking at what everyone else is doing. I've stopped listening to all the amazing success stories that we hear, and instead, I'm focused on building something sustainable and deeply fulfilling, you may remember that one of the things that I said I love to do as part of my business was to help the women who were as lost or are as lost as I was in those early days of their business, or even when they're a little bit more established. That is something that really, really lights me up. What it's done is make me realize that my sometimes hideous experiences weren't for nothing. They've really prepared me to be the kind of business support to women that I wish I'd had myself.'cause you see, I've been there. I get it. I get all of it. There is nothing that anyone could say to me who is running their own business that I wouldn't get and go, I understand it. Unless somebody said to me, I don't find this at all difficult. I think it's a breeze I'll have every minute, and isn't it brilliant? Then I might not be able to identify with them quite as much. So what happens when I work with women today is that I bring everything I've learned to the table from bogging, building websites, building an email list, creating funnels, using social media, and Pinterest writing eBooks. Hosting, webinars, podcasting, presenting, and using pretty much every tech platform that there is. I get it. I understand. I know the fears, the frustrations, and the mental shifts it takes to hold your nerve in business. I also know that running your own business is way more expensive than we ever imagined and we are ever led to believe. More than anything. I love working with women who need a second pair of eyes on their websites and funnels an ear to share their hopes, dreams, and fears with someone who has walked the toughest of times and who has come out the other side. Basically, I made the mistakes and spent the money I faced, the setbacks, the illness, and the burnout so that other people don't have to. That is one of the ways that I square off having been what I've been through. Something that I've been doing for the last 12 to 18 months or so is supporting women who are nurturing their businesses, often alongside their families or elderly relatives, by offering one-to-one business coaching, I do these as a day together where we can go for a walk, we can talk about ideas, we can sit down together often in a local pub, and during our day together we will go through your business or your business plan or your business ideas from start to finish. And what I'm really interested in hearing about is. You and your business, where it came from, where you want to take it, because it's probably like a baby to you. I love doing a time audit to figure out how many hours you can truly devote to your business and how best to spend that time so that you meet your goals. I like looking at your offers and how you market your business. I love auditing current marketing channels, finding the numbers. It's all about the numbers that matter, and determine where to concentrate your efforts. Specifically, I love looking at numbers from your website, your podcast, your social channels or whatever else you've got up and running to identify where your customers are coming from, which content works best for you, and how to optimize it. Then another really important segment is auditing your opt-ins, landing pages, email nurture sequences, and looking at your list building strategy. And at the moment I'm working with life coaches, PT instructors, photographers, women who run yoga businesses and women who have in-person and online stores and brands as well. It's taken me a really, really long time to get here, but I can now look back and see that all of that time and all of that money that I spent and all of that effort put in wasn't just in vain. And I know right now I'm talking about business, but I do think that this can apply to any stage of our life if we just have a mindset shift to think, okay, that wasn't a waste. It didn't turn out in the way that you wanted for that particular business, but it has led you somewhere so much better. And actually you can now take what you've learned along the way through all that trial and that effort and continuing to keep going where a lot of other people would've maybe have called time on things, and you can use it to good effect going forward. You can help other people. You can show them the way, you can be their friend. You can be their guide, you can hold their hand, you can stop them from making the same mistakes that you did. And that is something that I'm really passionate about doing. So if you've got a new idea or you're at the fledgling stages of your business and you'd like the support from someone who understands and who has been where you are now, please just feel free to drop me a message via my website. I'll link in the show notes via Instagram. You can find me there at Beth Goodham. Again, I'll link in the show notes or via email, at mail@bethgoodham.com. As I mentioned at the start of the episode. I come across lots of women who I know are just on that cusp of thinking, Ooh, I'm ready to try something else. Maybe I'd like to go on that course. Maybe I am ready to give up this job, this career. That has really been something that's facilitated the family whilst they were young, which is great, we all do that, but maybe you are ready for something for you now, solely for you. It might be a passion project. It doesn't have to be a business. It could be a hobby. It could be a philanthropic type of situation. It doesn't have to be a business. But if you are thinking about committing some time and some energy. And probably a little bit of income if we are honest, to starting something new. Whether that's a bit of tech setup, whether it's a little bit of support, doing some graphic design, whether it's taking a course and you want someone to chat to about it, whether that's just a quick call or whether you want to come and spend a day with me and we can map everything out, then I'm so here for that with you and for you. So just put it into your little melting pot of ideas of next steps that you're thinking about taking in life. And do come and give me a nudge or a poke or a message if it's something that you would like to explore a little bit further. Because I am all for us taking the time to find out the things that we love to do as well. And to try and incorporate them into our lives in a way which makes sense, not only for us, but for everyone else around us as well. I really hope you've enjoyed this episode. I know I've shared some things that are a little bit deeper than surface level and, I hope that you've really found that helpful. As I mentioned at the start, I really quite like listening to people's slightly struggly stories'cause they make me feel less alone and a little bit better about life. Not in a bad way, but just in a very reassuring way. So if all I've managed to do with this episode is that, then great. And if you are interested in taking it a little bit further with me, then you know where to find me. I hope that you have a fabulous day and I look forward to seeing you again soon. Lots of love, and bye for now.