Letting the Light In. Yolanda Brooks

21/03/2026

Note: cone find me on Yolanda G Brooks

It’s my professional profile, and it’s where you’ll find me.

Pages are hard to grow, and honestly exhausting !

13/03/2026

Interested in my words? Go to Yolanda G Brooks. This is where you'll find me.

10/03/2026

What I’ve Learned About Starting My Own Business
TLDR: pinch of salt: listen to the ideas, but listen to your gut harder.

For many of us, naming your niche when you’re just starting out is, frankly, 🐂 💩 - and can actually stifle your creativity and development in terms of knowing who you are and who you serve.

IF YOU’RE JUST STARTING OUT

The “If You’re Starting Out, Follow Me and Do It This (probably copied) Way” coaches will tell you that identifying your ideal client and your core offer is the first thing you should do.

I watched & listened, and subsequently felt incompetent, imposter-ish and like I had no business being in business if I couldn’t identify these elements by Day 3.

WHAT I’VE LEARNED IS THAT…

🏞️ your niche and your ideal client CAN begin as a vague idea, or the kind of broad audience you’re told to avoid. It does not mean that you don’t have what it takes - it means you’re learning a whole new thing about you and the kind of work life you want to create. Give yourself grace to learn in good (calm) time.

🏞️ you’re told to narrow it down mostly by people who took time to find THEIR niche, but have picked up this idea as a way to coach new business. Take the advice with loving pinches of salt: learn what you can, and if your gut tells you something feels off, listen: let it percolate but don’t make it your bible.

🏞️ it’s a great plan if you know exactly what you’re sharing and who you’re serving.

BUT…

❓ If you don’t know who or what, it’s because your service and business identity are not yet fully formed - that is something that develops over time, and that’s OK.

SO HOW DO YOU SPEED IT UP IF YOU REALLY WANT TO, OR NEED TO?

💌 What I’ve seen again and again is that the basis of a business is its identity - and this comes from our own personal identity. Your business is not a separate entity to you entirely

Let me explain a bit more…

💌 Your business comes from your dreams and goals, so it’s going to contain more ‘bits’ of you than you realise. When I first started out I looked at it as a thing that had to be well-formed from early on, and my personality was secondary.

What I’ve learned is that my business is ME: my language, my intention, my character, my identity. I can’t not be me, because when I try to be an image that’s more accepted, it doesn’t work. So I stopped wearing other people’s ‘clothes’ and put mine back on. No more disguises.

💌 You can not separate business and life. Work leaks into life, life leaks into work: that phone call to book your car in to the garage hangs around in the area of your brain meant for work decision-making, and takes up energy, making it all feel more stressful.

Seeing it all as a Big Picture has really helped be get everything done more efficiently when my tick list is ALL the ‘things of the day’, not separating them into work and domestic.

💌Your personal identity is foggy, or changing, which means your foundation is unsteady. So you’d really benefit from finding your foundations: your core values - the ones that make you you. This isn’t merely picking out the ones that sound good on the list of ‘how to be a nice person’, but ‘what’s ACTUALLY important to me’.

Life values aren’t as easy to identify as you think. They get muddled and clash sometimes. You may identify ‘Love’ as a core value, but not realise there’s something beneath Love, holding it up.

💌Your work values will be different to your life values. They may well be very similar if your identity is strong, so notice where they don’t overlap.

WHY ARE VALUES IMPORTANT?

💛 Because they are the basis of HEALTHY boundaries.
💛 Because they are the foundation of your behaviour when stress makes it difficult to think straight.
💛 Because they form your core identity and remind you who you are.

If you made it to the end, I salute you! 🫡

This is the work I do with my clients who are struggling with their clients and offers. I hope it’s been a good read, a useful read, or maybe even an entertaining read.

Homework: if any of this poked at your brain, or pulled a heart string, maybe here, in this work, you’ll find the missing link.

25/02/2026

February
As promised, this year’s Secret Coffee Club will continue to be rooted in mutual support, honesty, and the kind of real conversation that reminds s us were not alone, and that our happiness and health are what drive our business forward!
And coming this year! We’re turning the dial further toward aligned movement.
You know that Coffee Club is not traditional networking: there’s never any pressure to perform.
But reflection is what actually shifts things. And whilst our conversations are reflective and helpful always, perhaps another nudge in the right direction would be useful.
So, each month we’ll explore a different way to look at where we are, and where we’re dreaming of being next: ways to build awareness, courage and clean progress without burning out or pretending. Something I’m still working on for sure.
This month, we’re leading with the Compass Question, designed to allow yourself to be honest and clear, whilst dropping the emotional barriers of Should and Need To in favour of Want and Deserve. The Compass Q is all about orientation to the happiness and health our businesses rely on us to have.
Bring your notebook!
See you Thursday - with 2 new friends to meet!

Link in comments.....

08/01/2026

07/01/2026

THIS YEAR’S SOUL WORK-SHOP :

We will focus on the practicalities that we struggle with in the day-to-day running of our endeavors - the ones that drain our energy and make running a business more exhausting than it should be.

⭐What it is:

A 3-hour recalibration for people in business who want clarity without burnout. January gives us a beautiful illusion of This Year Will Be Different. But unless we change how we choose, how we plan, and how we respond to stress, nothing actually shifts.

This workshop is your introduction into tailoring your work to fit your energy and your nervous system to match your drive.

Whether you’re growing a business, rebuilding your confidence, or juggling twelve roles at once (because, life), this is where you create a clear, flexible, nervous-system–aligned plan for the month ahead, one you can actually stick to because it’s built around your energy, your values, and your real life.

You’ll learn how to prioritise and reduce overwhelm, reduce decision fatigue, and create structure that flexes when life inevitably throws those curveballs. And you’ll leave with a repeatable monthly system that keeps you focused, grounded, and moving forward without exhausting and confusing yourself.

MORE IN COMMENTS

01/01/2026

🤔 Now, you might think that having a ‘WORD OF THE YEAR’ is trite, cliché, silly or pointless. I did, in the not-so-distant past. A bit like affirmations that grated my gears rather than inspired me to actually do something helpful.

Affirmations tend to be lovely-sounding but I never felt like they were mine; they felt ‘borrowed’, and like a stand-in to my own dreams that i hadn’t quite got a handle on yet.

Affirmations need to be very personal for them to mean anything to me. There are definitely a few I like the sound of, but I have to play with the words - add one or two, maybe change the order. Make them mine.

That’s how they stick, and have meaning beyond a clever-sounding phrase. They actually speak to a part of you that was ready to be heard.

So I use maybe one affirmation: it’s totally in my words, whether it sounds poetic or not, and it’s inextricably linked to my values and my Word of the Year.

2024’s WotY changed Sooooooo much for me. And might for you, so give it a go?

Think about your values. (The big questions is, do you know what they are?)

I never did. Didn’t even think about them. No clue.

But what I’ve come to learn is that my values underpin everything (most things) I do and say, and even the things I think, feel and believe.

They can change with the setting (work vs home) and they definitely change over time.

In 2024 I’d identified an area of my character I really wanted to work on. I wanted to feel braver, have more courage, do more even though I was fearful.

So Courage was my word. And I wrote the words: “My Brave is Bigger than My Fear”.

This year, I wasn’t sure what I wanted it to be until this morning (3am ish) I heard myself think:

I’m determined to get this done.

And I thought about my biggest block: insecurity in my ideas.

💥 So my Word of the Year is Determination.

💡 My personal affirmation is: My Determination is Stronger Than My Insecurity.

💛If you find this helpful, I would so like to hear yours. Share it, you never know who might need inspiration from you.

~~~
🙌🏼 And if you need a lil help to create yours, drop me a message. 45 minutes & £45 might be all it takes to change your year.

16/12/2025

Vulnerability & Comparison-itis

This morning I’d planned to get my scheduled writes finished. I had a really slow-mo day yesterday; like I’d forgotten to take the handbrake off my brain.

Instead, I saw a note from another writer and Felt A Thing. So I spent this morning writing what came up for me. That used to frustrate me - my ping-pong brain derailing my ‘schedule’. I was practicing accepting this part of my Self, but it was slow going.

Then I paid more attention to Human Design. MY Human Design. Multi-directional, multi-interested, multi-pretty-much-everything. And it’s given me the permission I need to accept this crazy way I work: I respond to what’s put in front of me.

So here is What I Felt and How To Stop It.
Link in comments.

15/12/2025

Attachments to others are the cornerstone of our identities. They are the foundation of who we are are, and who we are not.

Think about the relationships that made you happier, stronger, more secure, and then think about the ones which did not. What’s the difference? Is it the other person, was it who you were in the presence of them, or a combination.

Most of our relationships are more complicated than that simply good or bad, safe or unsafe. They are better measured in patterns and moments that make up the whole.

Any loss, any change, any unfamiliar territory, can destabilise our self-image, leading us to reassess who we are without the external influence by which we measured ourselves.

Read more over on Substack in Attachment, Identity & the Fear of Change.

Link in comments.