I do business differently.
In a way that honours my feminine energy, fits around motherhood responsibilities and throws out the rulebook that has been written by and for male entrepreneurs.
In 2008, fresh out of university, I set up a blog. I wanted to write about the records I was listening to (#oldskool), the films I was watching on LoveFilm and the feminist conversations I was having.
It was called Annie Loves, hosted on Blogger and every time I wrote a post - regularly, unselfconsciously - I shared it on Facebook. Everyone would see it because back then, you had less Facebook ‘friends’ and your feed wasn’t dictated by algorithms.
Soon, I had 200 people a day reading my blogposts. I didn’t really care about the stats, but I did care that people were saying they liked my stories. That felt good, as an English grad wanting to somehow move into journalism.
A few years later, I decided that I needed to scrap that blog and start something more serious so I deleted Annie Loves and set up annieridout.com. I decided to no longer share little personal stories and to now write proper book and film reviews.
Silly me, in a way, because the SEO would have been building over those years with all that traffic and I could have changed the name or the direction. But it was too late; the old blog was gone. And I was glad.
My mum asked me if I regretted it and I said: no, I didn’t want to do it any more. Maybe I briefly wondered whether it had been a bit impulsive but I don’t tend to have regrets so I simply moved on.
What I now understand about the online world, 15 years later, is that things move fast. If you’re running a digital platform and start to feel like it’s not the right space for you, it probably isn’t. Try something else. Something that fits with your values.
Also, that if something is beginning to feel too personal, and you’re not comfortable about it, you need to act fast because so much data is captured and stored online. The sooner you properly delete it, the sooner that information disappears.
Lastly, that the business world is run by men and the rules are therefore dictated by them.
When I was running my online course business, The Robora, I followed those rules - made by men - and let their masculine energy filter into how I designed my products, did my marketing and spoke with my community.
It ended in disaster.