How To Create Space For Your Truest Marketing

I’m hours into decluttering my entire life and I’ve reached the inevitable point where I regret starting this job.

As boxes, bin bags and little trinkets surround me, I’m facing the kind of overwhelm where filling my notes with these words feels like a less productive, but far more enjoyable option.

It’s not just the sheer amount I have to do that feels a lot, but it’s everything this kind of cleaning brings up, too.

I’ve found jewellery from my Nan that I can place in every memory I have of her, my old scrapbooks that tell tales of a far more adventure-led/carefree life than the one I find myself in now and even a card from my late manager with the words “don’t forget me when you make it as a big time red carpet reporter” scribbled in a slant.

I find myself sitting on the floor, in the tiny circle of space in between the clutter, wishing I could tell her that I didn’t even come close to making it. I quit it all and travelled the world like she secretly advised me to over “working lunches”, which were really just midday mimosas.

When I find my ex's jumper stuffed down the back of my drawers, I wonder what the girl, who was stuck in a picket-white fence relationship with a guy who was stable and sensible enough to never really satisfy her, would think if she saw me now.

When I throw away sentimental things with the question “does this really mean as much as the moment it came from?”, or the jeans I can no longer get past my thighs, or the photos of people I now know nothing about, it all feels lighter, even though it’s tinged with a heaviness that nostalgia tends to arrive with.

And this all feels timely with a new year and the call to “restart” woven into the tapestry of changing the number 5 to 6 at the top of the page.

I’ll be honest, I don’t believe in January 1st.

I’m far more aligned with the astrological and seasonal new year, but there’s something about the fresh start of 2026 that feels necessary.

With every bin bag I pile outside my door, and the blank space that arrives in the absence of the stuff inside, I feel like it’s a tangible representation of what’s going on within.

Because 2025 really lived up to its reputation as the year of the snake.

The shedding felt exactly like me throwing out the same Benefit bronzer I’ve had since 2015, which seemed to slip through the cracks of every clear-out I’ve had before this one.

Like all the remnants of what no longer served were slowly, methodically, removed bit by bit, no matter how much I tried to convince myself they could stay another season.

The outdated ways of running my business.
The belief that I should stay small and safe.
The deep fear of being misunderstood or disliked.
The tried and tested methods that never fit, even if they worked.
The shiny pursuit of someone else’s goals that were never really mine to keep.
The watering down of what I’m really here to move because the magnitude of my mission feels too much.

Of course, it’s not quite the same as my beloved Benefit Bronzer getting lost in the rubbish, never to be seen again.

There will always be remnants of those themes waiting in the wings as an understudy in case stage fright strikes as the curtain falls.

But it feels like the kind of decluttering that means you finally have space to fill the gaps with what you really want to be there.

There’s a quiet sense of relief that comes with only having what you truly want, or need, instead of filling space with what’s already there.

That’s exactly how I’m starting this year.

With more that has fallen away than I would have ever imagined, stripped back and simple, ready to expand the blank spaces with what truly lights me up.

And there’s this low hum of excitement every time I anchor into this blank canvas that I get to paint.

Just like the new items I’m bringing into my now blank room, that light me up and feel like me (not 21-year-old Em, who was far more materialistic and bold in style than I am now), my business has the same empty page to work with.

All that is left to do is to have the audacity to fill it with what truly aligns and is so deeply rooted in integrity that it's naturally a magnet for those it resonates with.

But standing in front of a blank canvas is rarely as romantic as we imagine.

Because once the clutter is gone, once the old ways have been cleared out, what you’re left with isn’t instant clarity, it’s space. And space asks something of you.

That’s what I found myself sitting with on the floor, surrounded by half-filled bin bags and an uncomfortable amount of possibility.

What I didn’t realise until I was already in it was that this wasn’t really about decluttering at all, it was about commitment, or more specifically, the ways I’d been quietly avoiding fully committing without even consciously deciding to.

I’d been back and forth so much over the past couple of years that I’d got into the habit of living out of my suitcase whenever I was here, telling myself it didn’t matter because I was “only staying for a bit,” even when that bit kept stretching longer and longer. I could feel that same energy mirrored in my work, where I was technically showing up, technically creating, technically doing the things, but always in a way that felt reversible, like I could pack it all back up again if I needed to.

What caught me off guard wasn’t that clearing the space eventually made me feel better, it was that the creativity came back before the room was finished, before it was calm or tidy, but while I was still sat on the floor surrounded by mess, opening my notes “just to save a few links”. Suddenly, I realised I was writing properly again, in that way where time disappears and your fingers can barely keep up with what’s coming through.

I’d told myself I needed serenity first, that I needed everything to be clear and intentional and aesthetically pleasing before I could create again, but what I actually needed was movement, the act of choosing, the shedding itself, even if it was incomplete and chaotic and happening in fits and starts.

And that’s when the metaphor really landed, because there’s always this moment after a clearing, whether it’s physical or emotional or in business, where the space feels almost uncomfortably empty, where the clutter is gone but what replaces it hasn’t arrived yet, and suddenly the furniture that’s left feels wrong, the default ways of doing things feel hollow, and you’re standing there thinking, oh, I can’t unsee this now.

In business, I see this exact moment all the time.

Usually, after someone has stopped following formulas that never really fit them, or questioned advice they paid a lot of money for, or admitted that what technically “worked” was quietly draining the life out of them. There’s this strange limbo where you’re not doing the old thing anymore, but you don’t yet know what the new thing is, and that space can feel unnerving because there’s nothing to hide behind.

Copying is protective. If it doesn’t land, you can say it wasn’t really yours. If people don’t like it, you can detach from it. But when something is deeply aligned, when it’s actually coming from you rather than through someone else, it feels vulnerable in a completely different way, because rejection would feel personal, and I think that’s why so many of us hover on the edge of our own work without fully stepping into it.

This year feels different.

Not in a “new year, new me” way, but in a quieter, more grounded sense of being asked to commit to what feels true without needing certainty, to create without knowing how it will be received, to let yourself draw something, rub it out, redraw it, and still call that devotion rather than failure.

That’s the energy I’m choosing to anchor into now, both in my space and in my work, not rushing to fill the blank canvas just to avoid the discomfort of emptiness, but letting myself sit with the question of what actually wants to be here, what feels alive rather than familiar, and what I’m willing to commit to simply because it’s honest, not because it’s guaranteed.

And that’s really what this week’s Podcast episode is about.

The quiet decision to stop living out of the suitcase, energetically and creatively, and to start meeting the blank space not with panic, but with curiosity, play, and just enough audacity to begin.