This week I celebrated my first year anniversary of running my Home Styling business. Although I started sharing content on my Home Styling Instagram in 2019, it was always a little side project; whereas on the 3rd October 2022 I took the leap of going self-employed and dedicating my time to creating a successful Home Styling business.

So todays blog is maybe a little self-indulgent as I look back at how far I’ve come and how much I’ve achieved in the last twelve months, and you know what I feel PROUD.

I can honesty say I’ve put my heart and soul into making my business a success, through an awful lot of hard work, determination and often very late nights, and have loved every single minute!

I have been very fortunate to have attracted some incredible clients, who I’ve been able to support with turning their house into a home, and ultimately that is my main focus; to help my clients over come the challenges they face with knowing what to do, to add a personal touch to their home from colour suggestions, to room layouts and furniture selections.

 

“Sonya was great and a total interior design saviour. I had really been struggling to figure out my paint colour ideas and it had all become a bit overwhelming, but after a chat she was able to see what I was thinking and put together a great selection of colour palettes- so now I know where to start in creating my own home’s aesthetic.”

Back in March I decided it was time to launch a full website, rather than the landing page I’d initially started with.

Websites are not cheap, so at the start I took advantage of the free landing page which was provided when registering my domain as to have some visibility on the website, was better than nothing.

I was very fortunate that one of my oldest school friends, who runs his own Graphics Design business is a bit of a dab hand at creating websites, and agreed to help create mine, which saved me a fortune.

I had a very clear vision of what I was looking for, shared the layout, prepared all the written content, supplied endless photos and Ian added his magic.

I couldn’t be happier with the end results.

Having a website not only allows potential clients to find out more about my services and see examples of my work it also allows a space for me to share my blogs which I share every fortnight; topics can range from practical advice such as Recommendations to help make the most out of a small space in your home to inspirational topics like sharing 8 interior instagram accounts that will leave you in awe.

Which nicely moves onto the decision to start my Substack account.

I originally launched a Flodesk page to start building a mail list, although for what I was paying in terms of a subscription versus what I was gaining, just didn’t make financial sense.

When you’re running a new business you have to really scrutinise how and where you’re spending your money and if something isn’t working out as you’d initially thought it would, it’s time to stop and invest into something else.

So when I heard JP from JP’s Love and Life’s was launching onto this new platform, Substack (well it was new to me), I needed to find out more.

Transferring my very small, yet perfectly formed mail list to Substack means that all my posts (including the blogs I share on my website) are now delivered directly to my subscribers inbox.

It’s all well and good sharing regular blogs, however you need people to pop over to click and read them, and being reliant on social media platforms to share when a new blog has gone live is by no means ideal, or a guarantee anyone is going to bother, so a newsletter to inform my subscribers there’s a new post that’s gone live is the perfect way to ensure my content is getting out there.

Plus not only is Substack a FREE platform, there’s the opportunity to actually get PAID for people to read the content you’ve written!

So what’s not to love?

Alongside blogging regularly over the last 9 months I’ve been very fortunate to write and style regular articles for Preloved magazine.
Just this week I worked on my 6th edition which will be out next month, all relating around the topic of HOMESTEAD.
I’ll share a behind the scenes as we get closer to the new edition being launched.

It was supporting Sophie from Stone & Sage on a couple of photos shoots where I discovered my passion for photo styling and earlier this year I decided to launch Photo Styling as an additional service, alongside the other services I offer; Home Styling, Home Organising and Interiors Personal Shopper.

One of the most incredible Photo Styling jobs I had earlier this year was styling a seven-bedroom manor house in Buckinghamshire, it was such an amazing experience.

Reflecting back on the last twelve months I’ve been very fortunate to have worked on some amazing projects, for some really lovely clients.

So, as a thank you I’m offering 12% off all my services during the month of October. If you’re interested in finding out more, please contact me and let’s see how I can help turn your house into a home.

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