Reflections on another year of building Inkie on our own terms

It is Friday, 31st July, which means I am officially another year older.

As I sit here with a cup of coffee, looking out at the summer morning, I find myself doing what I always do on my birthday, reflecting. It is a natural checkpoint. A moment to step back from the daily grind of running a business, look at where we started, and think about why we are still here.

Running a business is a wild, beautiful, and sometimes terrifying ride. But doing it on your own terms? That is where the real magic is.

A Personal Milestone

If you had told me twenty years ago, when I was twenty and holding my first of four children, that I would be the CEO of a tech company helping thousands of small businesses grow, I would have laughed you out of the room.

Back then, I did not have qualifications past my GCSEs. I had moved to France solo at sixteen and travelled India solo at eighteen. I was fiercely independent, but I had no map. I did not fit the traditional, corporate mould. Every system I encountered seemed to tell me that my way of thinking, my neurodivergence, and my refusal to follow rigid scripts were deficits.

It took me years to realize that the systems were the problem, not me.

When Simon and I built Inkie, we wanted to create a space where people like us, entrepreneurs, creators, freelancers, and neurodivergent founders, could build their dreams without being forced to conform. Today, as I turn another year older, I am incredibly proud of that mission.

Escaping the Corporate Script

The standard business advice out there is exhausting. It tells you to hustle twenty-four hours a day, to build massive corporate structures, and to please shareholders at all costs. It encourages you to use fake, polished corporate templates and performative struggle to sell empty promises.

We refuse to do that. We refuse to be beige.

Inkie is completely bootstrapped and independent. We do not have venture capital pressure, and we do not have investors whispering in our ears. This independence is our superpower. It means we choose who we help, how we build, and what we stand for. It means we can keep our price at one simple, accessible level, forty-nine pounds a month, because access to good marketing should not depend on the size of your budget.

We choose sustainable growth over hyper-scaling, and we choose genuine, human connection over corporate jargon.

Building on Our Own Terms

Building on your own terms means showing up as your authentic self, even when it is messy. It means admitting that raising four kids while running a business is hard, but refusing to perform that struggle for relatability. It means creating tools like Linkie, Maggie, and our automated newsletters because we genuinely want to lift the administrative weight off your shoulders, not because we want to lock you into a complicated ecosystem.

We want to give you your time back so you can spend it on what you actually love. Whether that is spending summer afternoons with your family, focusing on your craft, or simply resting without the guilt of unfinished admin hanging over you.

Our Incredible Community

The best part of this journey is not the technology we build, it is the community of small business owners we get to support. Every time I have a one-to-one session with one of our members, I am reminded of why we started. You are some of the most capable, creative, and resilient people in the world.

If you are feeling overwhelmed by the admin wrapper of your business, or if you are tired of the hustle culture BS, I want to invite you to take a breath. You do not need to do it all alone.

As my birthday gift to myself, I am keeping my calendar open for our free, forty-five-minute one-to-one business surgeries. Let's sit down, have a proper chat about your business, and figure out how to make the marketing side of things feel light, fun, and authentic.

You can book a slot with me here: https://www.inkie.ink/contact

Thank you for being part of our journey, for reading our stories, and for building your business on your own terms. Here is to another year of refusing to be beige.