“If I was employed, I’d 100% be on sick leave right now.”
I said that to a friend about six months ago. I was tits deep in perimenopause anxiety, hot off the heels of an ADHD diagnosis at the ripe old age of 47, and completely exhausted from trying to keep my content marketing business going while AI tried to snatch it out of my hands.
When you work for yourself, you can’t go on sick leave. You can’t message all your clients and say “See you in six weeks, I need a break.” Well, you can. But they might not be there when you get back. More than a quarter of women business owners say they’ve lost earnings because of menopause. And yet we make it our fault, don’t we? We can’t concentrate, so we try to concentrate harder. We can’t focus, so we buy a new notebook. We struggle to show up, so we shame ourselves for not being braver. We throw money at the problem and beat ourselves up when nothing works.
So what’s the answer?
Most of us think, deep down, that we’re unemployable now. I don’t want to go back to asking permission to leave early for the school run, or negotiating when I can go on holiday. And the first time I told someone to fuck off, I’d probably lose the job anyway. How do we keep our businesses going when our confidence and energy are in the toilet? Nobody gives you a menopause policy when you work for yourself. So you write your own.
Perimenopause and the great disappearing act
When perimenopause first arrived, like an unwelcome squatter, I woke up feeling as if someone had taken a powerful hoover and sucked out all my best bits overnight. I was just getting into stand-up comedy. I’d had four great gigs. Then at my first paid gig, I totally bombed. I’d gone from confident, hilarious and loving being centre stage to anxious and full of self-doubt. A shadow of my former self. (I’m not alone: in one survey of over 4,000 women, more than half said they’d lost confidence at work because of their symptoms.) So I put the microphone down and crawled back to my business to hide. My business was my safe place. I knew my stuff, I knew how to do it well, and it was somewhere I’d always felt successful. And suddenly I didn’t.
The world had changed, and everything I’d ever done in my business seemed to stop working, almost overnight. LinkedIn started showing my posts to 45 people instead of thousands. My post about my dog would get hundreds of views. My post about my course? Three people.
I’ve never measured my success or worth in likes, comments or views, but it was impossible not to feel the shift. Back in the day I could post “doors closing on this offer at 5pm” at 4pm and guarantee a few people would jump in. Now I’m lucky if people see that post a fortnight later.
So just as so many of us are running out of energy, focus, confidence and oestrogen, the way we reach our audience and turn followers into clients has been turned completely on its head. What excellent timing. Not.
Why it feels so bloody hard right now
Running a small business has never been a spa day (I took my laptop to the beach once and I couldn’t see the screen cos of the glare, so I didn’t do that again). But right now, it’s taking the piss – it feels like we’re all running on fumes.
At the end of last year, 2.4 million UK small business owners said they felt burnt out. Not tired. Not “could do with a long weekend.” Burnt out. In another survey of self-employed people, over half had experienced poor mental health in the past year, and almost half were struggling to sleep.
And when you work on your own, there’s nobody to notice. There’s no staff room where you can go and whinge to your office bestie. I did ask my husband if I could just be a housewife for a bit but he said that unfortunately we were in a “pre-wealth phase”. Bills need paying whether you feel knackered or not. When researchers asked female founders about their biggest challenges, one in seven said loneliness and isolation, and more than a quarter said mental health pressures like burnout and self-doubt.
Now add perimenopause to the mix. I didn’t put it in my business plan, did you?
Women in midlife are going self-employed faster than any other group in the UK. We’ve had enough of asking permission, so we leave and build something of our own. Then, right on cue, brain fog rolls in. Our confidence packs a bag and leaves without a forwarding address. We stop sleeping. We forget words mid-sentence, which is a real treat when words are your job.
I’ve worked with my accountant for over ten years. She walked into a networking event and I couldn’t remember her name. I burst into tears. Her name is Claire. MY name is Clair. FFS.
And it’s not a quick blip. Symptoms can start years before your periods stop and hang around for four years or more. That’s not a rough patch. That’s a whole chapter of your business. Looking back my symptoms started in 2020. Six years later this perimenopause bronco is still bucking me back and forth. It’s a ride that sometimes I feel I might not survive.
If you’re employed, there’s at least a chance of a menopause policy, an occupational health referral, or a manager who’s been on a training course. When you work for yourself? Nothing. Nada. Nowt. You’ve just got to hope that your clients get it. Researchers studying menopause and work have mostly ignored self-employed women altogether, or left us out on purpose. If menopause happened to men, they’d have an over-the-counter remedy.
No policy. No support. Just you, wondering why the thing you used to be brilliant at suddenly feels like wading through treacle.
It isn’t you. It’s a perfect storm. And no amount of new notebooks is going to fix it. (Not that you should stop buying them, obviously.)
Resilience isn’t what you’ve been told
I remember messaging an amazing coach I knew saying “Can I book a session, I need to work on my resilience” as if it were something I could learn, like crochet. I can still hear her laughing now. It wasn’t something I could work on in an hour or take notes on and revise. Resilience isn’t something you either have or you don’t. It’s not a personality trait. It’s a mix of how you think, what you do, and who and what you’ve got around you. Which means you can build it. Even on a duvet day.
If I wanted strong arms I could go to the gym and lift weights. Resistance breaks down the muscle and it repairs to be an even stronger muscle. Resilience is like that – it’s built under pressure and through experience.
Resilience, we’re told, means pushing through. Being consistent. Showing up no matter what. Which is lovely advice if you wake up as the same person every day. (I have at least one week a month where I’m a total goblin.) Perimenopause didn’t get the memo about consistency. One week you’re sharp, funny and full of ideas. The next you’re standing in the kitchen wondering why you came in, unable to remember the word for “colander”. “Be consistent” advice was designed for people on an even keel. When your energy, memory and confidence change week to week, it doesn’t just fail to help. It becomes one more thing to feel rubbish about.
The research doesn’t actually say resilience is about being tough. One study followed business owners for five years to see what predicted their success. It came down to three things: hardiness, resourcefulness and optimism. And the biggest of the three? Resourcefulness. Not grit. Not hustle. Being able to work with what you’ve got.
Another study found that resilient founders do better because they learn from what goes wrong and build belief in themselves over time, and that the support around them plays a part too. And when researchers asked women founders what made the biggest difference, the answer came back again and again: community, peer support and people who get it. So resilience isn’t about never falling over. It’s about having a plan for when you do.
It’s knowing what your marketing looks like on a good week and what it looks like on a duvet day. It’s having a few things ready to go for when your brain has left the building. It’s having people around you who’ll say “this is normal, you’re not failing” instead of “have you tried waking up earlier?”
Yes, Sharon, I did. But I was pinned to the bed by anxiety. As it turns out, perimenopausal women are already massively fucking resourceful. We’ve been juggling, adapting and making do for decades. What if we stop calling it failure and start calling it strategy?
Why this matters for your marketing
Here’s something that made me feel a whole lot better about those 45-view posts.
Professor John Dawes at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, one of the big names in marketing science, worked out that only around 5% of your potential clients are actually ready to buy at any given time. The other 95% aren’t ignoring you. They’re just not there yet. They’re busy, or skint, or haven’t realised they have the problem you solve.
He’s clear that 95% isn’t a precise number, more a way of showing that most of your buyers aren’t ready right now. But the point stands. Most of your future clients are quietly watching from the sidelines. They might not like, comment or share. They might not even see half of what you post. But one day they’ll be ready, and when they are, they’ll go with the person they remember.
Which is exactly why disappearing for three months every time perimenopause knocks you flat is so costly. Not because you’ve let anyone down, but because you’ve been forgotten just when someone was getting ready to buy.
So the goal isn’t to be everywhere, all the time, at full volume. It’s to stay quietly, steadily visible. Even on foggy days.
Three ways to build marketing resilience
1. Have a duvet day version of your plan
Most marketing plans are written for your best week. Lovely, until you have a bad one and the whole thing collapses, along with your self-esteem. I teach my clients the “Minimum/Maximum Method”. Visibility is a spectrum, not an on/off switch. On my best weeks I can post every single day, write a few emails, do a few videos, and I might even go networking. On my worst weeks I’ll just post once a day. I have a minimum and a maximum that I can do and depending on how I feel, how resourced I am and what my capacity is, I move up and down the scale between my minimum and maximum.
So choose your scale. What do visibility and consistency look like for you on your best days, when you’re firing on all cylinders? And what does it look like on a duvet day: the absolute minimum that keeps you visible when you can barely remember your own password. One email? One post? One reply to someone else’s post? Choose your scale and give yourself grace to slide up and down it – be the sexy marketing pole dancer of your own business. Doing less isn’t failing. Doing nothing for six weeks and then panic-launching is what hurts.
2. Bank content for the low weeks
When you’re having a good week, and you will, write a bit extra. Not to post now. To save for later. A few posts, an email, a story you love telling. Keep them somewhere you can find them when your brain has left the building. Future you will be so grateful she might even forgive past you for snogging that dodgy guy that one time.
3. Get some people around you
I know. You went self-employed partly to get away from people. But this is different. You need a few people who understand what you’re going through. People who’ll tell you that 45 views is normal now, that your offer isn’t rubbish, that you’re not the only one who cried in the car. The research is clear that support is part of what makes founders resilient. Toughing it out alone isn’t brave. It’s just lonely.
So, what now?
Nobody gives you a menopause policy when you work for yourself. So let’s write yours. That’s exactly what I do with my amazing, hormonally challenged clients. Together, we’ll build you a marketing plan that fits your real life. One that keeps you visible on your best days and your duvet days, sounds like you, and doesn’t need you to turn into a 5am-cold-plunge LinkedIn robot to make it work. New notebooks optional but strongly encouraged. If that sounds like what you need, book a chat here.
And if you’re not ready yet? That’s fine too. I’ll be here when you are.