Permission to stop, start, and evolve no matter the timing

My experience of starting afresh in 2024 and the mentality I'm taking into 2025

It’s been one year since I returned to work post maternity leave. The return was more brutal than I anticipated —not because I’d forgotten how to do my job or had a personality transplant since becoming a mother— but because I’d stopped all client work for almost a year and was building my business back up from zero.

Rebuilding a client base from scratch was a grind. 1 star. Would not recommend to a friend.

But I’ve also found great freedom and creativity in starting a fresh page.

By March, with paid contracts still sparse, I realised part of the problem was that I didn’t feel aligned with or excited by much of the work I was pitching for. I’d done a lot of paid media consulting in recent years and was reluctantly falling back into an area of marketing that no longer felt right for me.

If I was struggling to land projects I didn’t even really want to do (wonder why lol), I thought, then fuck it I may as well aim for work and clients that I do want to work with - what’s to lose?

(Shoutout to

Tish Dignam

’s clarity coaching for helping me work through all this - I highly recommend if you’re feeling uninspired by work.)

So, I pivoted my focus to:

• Working on digital and content strategy projects and with clients prioritising real connection over scale.

• Helping businesses grow without relying on social media via the Anti Social Growth Audit.

• Writing this newsletter to interrogate what we mean by and want from “growth” as founders, solopreneurs, and freelancers going forward.

Thinking critically about my skills, values, and experience alongside wider cultural and industry shifts and realigning my professional direction has felt rejuvenating. Taking small steps in a new direction this year has made taking bigger leaps in the future feel possible.

As we head into 2025 I want to maintain this starting from zero mentality.

The start of the year or returning from a period of leave are obvious points to reflect on changes you want to make but you can decide when to stop, start, or change things on any day.

As a reminder; starting afresh does not render your past experience irrelevant because nothing ever can. Beware the sunk cost fallacy!!

You bring the sum of your experiences to everything you do which is why you have an entirely unique approach to every job, project, or role. You will be better at anything you do next because of everything else you’ve experienced and achieved even if one role is in banking and one is in gardening.

We’re at an inflection point.

The tide is turning in the conversation around digital growth and social media. We’re tired of losing months of the year to our phones, of producing content for content’s sake, of trying to keep up with platforms that demand more and give back less. We’re thinking critically about the way we spend our days and lives online. We will have to keep changing, adapting, and starting things afresh in 2025 and beyond.

I’m so looking forward to experiencing and exploring this shift with you here next year.

Here are a few of my favourite pieces around the same theme for your holiday reading pile in the meantime:

club reticent - our year of zest and realisations by

Valerie

:

“You are uniquely you, with or without the friends you have or the brands you wear. You are not a Glossier girl or a Rhode girl; an Alo girl or a Lululemon girl; a pilates princess or whatever predictable and algorithmic caricature social media wants to pigeonhole people as. You are not a black cat gf, he is not a golden retriever bf—you are both people. You're not a Scorpio or a girl boss or a trad cath. Stop it with the slogans. You are someone's daughter or someone's son, you're a wonderfully unique person and you're called to live, not perform.”

Many Such Cases - It’s Obviously the Phones by

Magdalene J. Taylor

:

“There aren’t going to be spaces to exist and meet if people would rather stay home and scroll. “

One Thing - The New Rules of Media by

Kyle Chayka

:

“The most compelling publications or media brands are the ones that can throw the best parties, because it shows they can mobilize an IRL group of interesting people, who are then consumers and customers and clients.”

Playground - Insights: algorithm - out, human curation - In by

Auste Skrupskyte Cullbrand

:

Being constantly served by a machine feels like a big bubble of life – a bubble that’s bursting with sameness, one that needs shaking up.

Also can’t not share this podcast from Taylor Lorenz from this week on the TikTok ban in the US; it’s the best (easy to digest) thing I’ve seen on why it’s happening (it is happening) and what it means for US small businesses reliant on the platform.

And in case you missed it, here’s my recent piece on late stage social media:

This is late stage social media

(which can be summed up really by this Note from Carly Burr):

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Whether you’ve been with me all year start or only just found Broken Growth, THANK YOU for reading, reflecting, and building alongside me.

I’m switching off until January and hope you can too. Have a great festive break and wishing you a happy and healthy 2025.

See you on the other side!

Matilda

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If you’re new here hi! I’m Matilda Lucy, a London-based digital strategist supporting businesses to grow sustainably beyond social media. If you’re interested in working together in 2025 check out my website or reply to this email and say hello.