On 20th August 2025, I registered SLOXI Studios. At the time, I had years of experience across fashion, marketing, e-commerce and digital transformation, but building a business of my own was completely new territory.
A year later, SLOXI Studios has gone from an idea I was developing alongside my corporate career to a business with clients, defined services, partnerships, systems and a much clearer direction for the future. The first year has involved plenty of learning, testing, adjusting and figuring things out as I go, so as SLOXI turns one, I wanted to reflect properly on what that first year has looked like beyond what can fit into a LinkedIn post.
From corporate life to building something of my own
Starting SLOXI Studios wasn’t a decision I made overnight. My career had given me the opportunity to work across different areas of fashion and retail, from e-commerce and trading through to digital product management and transformation. Over time, I became increasingly interested in the bigger picture and, more specifically, how all of those areas connect to shape the experience a customer ultimately has with a brand.
Website experience, marketing, content, customer journeys, analytics and commercial performance do not exist in isolation. They influence one another, and that thinking became an important part of what I wanted SLOXI Studios to be.
I wanted to create a consultancy that could help fashion, retail and service-based businesses look at their digital presence more holistically, identify what was not working, understand why and create practical improvements rather than simply adding more marketing activity for the sake of it.
Registering the business was one thing. Learning how to actually build it was something else entirely.
Accountability looks very different when you work for yourself
One of the biggest adjustments has been accountability. In employment, even when you have significant ownership over your work, there is still infrastructure around you. There are business priorities, deadlines, managers, meetings, processes and teams.
When you work for yourself, nobody is deciding what needs to happen next. The freedom is one of the reasons I wanted to build my own business, but it also means the responsibility sits entirely with you.
You have to decide whether your time needs to be spent delivering client work, developing services, following up leads, creating content, networking, improving your website, doing your accounts or thinking about where the business needs to be six months from now. Quite often, all of those things need attention at the same time.
One of the biggest lessons for me has been recognising that being busy and moving the business forward are not always the same thing. Building stronger systems, creating clearer priorities and protecting time for business development have become increasingly important as SLOXI has grown.
You do not need to be the expert at everything
Starting a small business can quickly make you feel as though you are expected to become an accountant, salesperson, legal expert, marketer, administrator and business strategist overnight.
One of the most valuable lessons from year one has been knowing when to ask for support. I have had accountancy support from Jan McArd, business development guidance from Kimberley Moreno, mentoring through The King’s Trust and continued professional development through the Chartered Institute of Marketing.
Having people around me with different strengths has been invaluable. It has also reinforced the fact that asking someone with more experience in a particular area is not a weakness in running a business. In many cases, it helps you make better decisions much faster.
It has also influenced how I think about SLOXI itself. I do not want the business to become something that tries to provide every possible service internally. I would much rather build relationships with good specialists, collaborate where it makes sense and make sure clients have access to the right expertise around them.
Marketing your own business teaches you a lot about marketing
Perhaps ironically, one of the biggest learning curves for me as a marketer has been marketing my own marketing business.
When you are working with a client, there is some distance between you and the brand. You can analyse performance, identify opportunities and make relatively objective decisions. When it is your own business, everything feels much closer and there is naturally more emotion attached to what works, what does not and how quickly things are moving.
Over the past year, I have experimented with different channels, content formats, networking opportunities and approaches to lead generation. Unsurprisingly, not everything has worked equally well.
Instagram has been particularly useful for showcasing social media and content work, while LinkedIn has been much stronger for demonstrating my thinking around e-commerce, customer experience and consultancy. Google has also been valuable for helping people find SLOXI when they are already actively searching for support.
That has reinforced something I regularly say to clients: you do not have to be everywhere simply because a marketing channel exists. Different channels play different roles, and the important thing is understanding where your customer is, what they need from you on that channel and whether the activity you are investing in is contributing to your wider objectives.
Year one involved a lot of testing. Year two is about taking those learnings and becoming much more intentional with them.
Your network is much bigger than your sales pipeline
Before starting the business, networking was probably something I associated primarily with generating leads. My perspective on that has changed significantly.
Of course, meeting potential clients matters, but some of the most valuable relationships I have built have been with other business owners, consultants and specialists who understand the challenges of running something themselves. I have met people I can ask questions, collaborate with, refer work to and learn from.
Being welcomed into communities including BNI Discover in Birkenhead and BNI Horizon in Southport has also given me a much wider local network. Running a business can become quite isolating when you are working from home and spending much of the week speaking to clients through a laptop, so having that wider community around the business has been more important than I initially expected.
Not every useful conversation needs to result in a sale. Sometimes the value of your network is simply having somebody who has already encountered the problem you are currently trying to solve.
Taking a risk does not mean taking every risk
Leaving corporate life to build SLOXI was undoubtedly a big decision, but I have never believed that taking one major risk means every decision afterwards has to be risky too.
I have tried to build the business in a way that gives it space to grow sustainably. That has meant making practical decisions around my finances, investing savings where I believe they can genuinely support growth and keeping a flexible part-time marketing role alongside SLOXI.
There can sometimes be a romanticised version of entrepreneurship where success means immediately quitting everything, putting every penny into the business and working on it around the clock. That was not the route I wanted to take.
For me, creating some financial stability has actually allowed me to make better decisions for SLOXI because not every opportunity has to become an immediate sale. I can think more carefully about the clients I want to work with, the services I want to build and what I want the business to look like longer term.
The moments that made year one feel real
There have been lots of milestones throughout the year that have gradually made SLOXI feel less like an idea and more like a real business.
Signing my first retainer clients was certainly one of them. Seeing recommendations and strategies translate into measurable results for the businesses I support was another. There is something incredibly rewarding about knowing that something you have analysed, changed or created is genuinely making somebody else’s business stronger.
I was also fortunate to receive a £1,800 grant through The King’s Trust, which allowed me to continue investing in the business. Being invited onto BBC Radio Merseyside to speak about our Alder Hey charity campaign was another moment I could not have predicted when I first registered SLOXI.
Becoming an Associate Member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing has also been an important professional milestone, alongside beginning to develop my voice as a contributor to Brainz Magazine.
Perhaps the biggest achievement, though, is simply that SLOXI now exists as a functioning business. There are defined services, systems behind those services and clients who trust me with their businesses. More importantly, I now have a much clearer understanding of what I want SLOXI Studios to become and how I want to build it.
So, what does year two look like?
If year one was about proving to myself that I could build something of my own, year two is about building it much more intentionally.
That has already started. SLOXI is entering its second year with its first service-provider partnership, allowing me to expand the consultancy support available to retail businesses while bringing additional specialist expertise into projects where needed.
I am also launching my first direct-mail campaign with Precision, introducing SLOXI to fashion businesses across the North West. I am investing more seriously in SLOXI’s own content too, including bringing in support to develop my LinkedIn presence more consistently and organising the first proper SLOXI Studios brand shoot.
Behind the scenes, there are also conversations and opportunities developing that I hope I will be able to share as the year progresses.
More important than any individual initiative, though, is the shift in how I am approaching the business. I am entering year two with stronger systems, a better understanding of what has and has not worked, the right people around me and a clearer picture of where I would like SLOXI Studios to be in five years.
There is still a huge amount I want to build, and that is exactly what makes the next year exciting.
Year one was about starting. Year two is about building with much more intention.
Here’s to year two. 🤍