Reflecting On Our First Year of Business

Zoie Newman • September 8, 2026

“As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.” – Rumi


As we enter the month of September, I am filled with gratitude and reflection as we celebrate one year in business. What a year! I found it particularly challenging to write this month’s blog post. How do I talk about all that has changed, and what we have been through in the last year. Needless to say, there were more losses than wins. It hasn’t been easy, but it has been worth it!


When we first launched the business on September 29th, 2025, I had a very different idea of how our first year would go. We would do the business part time while we slowly left our jobs when it felt “safe” to do so. As some of you may know, that is not what happened. One month later I was laid off and the decision to me was clear. I took 24 hours and announced the hard launch of our business. I stood at the precipice of a huge risk and had no clue how it was going to go. I barely remember our first four to five months, and I will admit I was severally depressed, anxious, and ungrounded as I navigated something completely out of my comfort zone.


We landed our first client at the end of February, which finally opened some doors for us to join a business community, start hosting free events with fellow consultants, and launch a newsletter. The first client is the hardest to get, and it’s amazing what that win will do to keep you going. From there the path started showing itself.


As we complete our first year, I wanted to share some of our struggles and key learnings from the past year, and what I hope we achieve in our second.


Your network is everything. I already knew this, but the lesson came back around clearly this year. I had to rebuild my network almost from scratch. Conversations with business owners about their HR and employee concerns helped me understand their needs and connect them to the support we could offer. Building trust required consistency, loyalty to the business community, and a steady commitment to showing up in every way I could. As an introvert this was challenging and exhausting, but worth every moment as we have seen a lot of seeds sprout and meeting some wonderful supportive people.


The hardest part of your first year is figuring out how to sustain the second. Entrepreneurs are often advised to prepare for a year without a paycheck, since landing a first client can take six months or more. What becomes harder, is enduring once that first year is over. We have been fortunate. I believe deeply in our business, and the response we have received shows there is a real market fit. Still, I learned that my focus was not only on surviving year one, but also on building enough momentum to continue. Much of the first year is spent planting seeds and trusting that some will grow, even if the growth looks different than expected. I thought the HR side of our business would take off first, but training has been the greater need. Our greatest asset has been flexibility, along with learning to describe our work in different ways so we could adapt to the environment around us.


Not everyone cares about your business or understands what you’re trying to build. I entered the business community expecting momentum to build quickly. I had poured my heart and energy into the business, and I hoped people would immediately recognize both my passion and drive. What I learned as I built my network up again was that not everyone got what I was trying to create or cared about my passion. Not everyone was going to be supportive or truthful about their desire to partner or thought that what I did brought value to businesses, and some people flat out tried to redirect me or tell me how to run my business. In the first year, when your confidence and identity can feel tied to the success of the company, that reality is difficult to accept. I often felt caught in a cycle where people were more willing to support us once we were successful, but success itself required support. However, I stuck with our why, the core of the business, and what we had set out to do. When you have a strong why and your purpose it clear, whether people get your idea or not isn’t the point. As Oprah once said, “true freedom comes when you understand that not everyone is your mission”. Those who have found us and continue to find us we have pure joy in supporting, everything else has fallen away.


What comes next for us? I have found myself redefining what success means for our business. In the beginning, success felt tied to survival: getting the first client, earning enough to keep going, and proving that this idea had a place in the world. Now, as we look toward year two, success feels less frantic and more rooted. It means building something sustainable, thoughtful, and aligned with the values that brought us here in the first place. Success now also means finding joy in the work, because the more inspired and energized we feel, the more we can grow alongside the communities we serve.


In our second year, I hope we continue to grow with intention. I want us to keep strengthening our training work (including creating an eLearning platform for farther reach), expanding our HR support, and building relationships with businesses that care deeply about the people behind the work. I also hope we keep listening closely to what our community needs rather than forcing the business to become what we originally imagined. This first year taught me that flexibility is not a lack of direction; it is often the very thing that helps the path appear.


More than anything, I am proud that we kept going. We kept showing up when things were uncertain, kept learning when the answers were not obvious, and kept believing in the value of this work even when the road felt unclear. Rumi’s words feel true in a way I understand more deeply now: as we started walking, the way did appear. Not all at once, and not always in the direction I expected, but step by step, conversation by conversation, and opportunity by opportunity.


Thank you to everyone who has supported us in this first year—our clients, referral partners, community members, friends, and fellow small business owners. Your encouragement, trust, and generosity have carried us farther than you may know. As we step into year two, we are doing so with gratitude, and excitement for what is still to come.


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The Sage Source: Insights in HR & Development

Why HR Matters Before Your Business Feels "Big Enough"

By Zoie Newman • August 3, 2026
Last month we did a podcast with the Lake Oswego Business Chamber on why small business should consider HR sooner than they think ( Listen here. ) One of the main themes throughout our discussion was on HR as cultural creators for your business, and how to support the environment you envision for yourself and your dream at the very start. This month we wanted to dive a little bit deeper into how HR can function as a partner and business developer for you. 1. Setting your values early and frequently – One area that I find business frequently neglect is the area of what a team and a company wants to value. They discuss what to value in their output and with their clients, how their external position is being perceived but never what their internal culture should feel like to the people that work in the business. If you don’t talk about this, it creates itself and is therefore less controllable and harder to fix if it goes in the wrong direction. Early in our business, I insisted that we as a business partnership sit down and talk about what was important to us. How it should feel to work with us and be around us. What our behaviors and actions would speak to. HR early in a business can mediate this discussion for you and help you create a code of conduct that reflects these values. Having this structure helps later call people back when abusive behavior occurs, helping elevate larger problems in the future. Values work can be a living aspect of your business and should be reviewed frequently. Changes don’t mean you have failed, but help you recognize your progress 2. Holding the leaders responsible – Most small businesses do HR in house, and even though that is cost effective, often, the person running HR does not have the training, education and experience to do so effectively, opening the company to a lot of risk. This is where HR can step in and start holding business owners accountable for ensuring legal and ethical practices are taking place. That those values, mean more than a statement. Business owners need this check and balance and a way to stay compliant. It is what helps maintain trust through the long-term. 3. Labor & Recruitment – One of the more practical ways business owners can use HR at the beginning is helping with retaining and keeping labor. Recruitment is hard and often made harder when a business owner is too busy to give it the full attention that it needs. This can also affect your output and cost you clients, as well as damage culture. If you are constantly churning through employees, unable to hire quality labor, and seeing high turnover, then that constant state of change can lead to a lot of burnout for business owners and those who stay. HR can help stabilize this and create a structure around recruitment for the future. Oprah Winfrey recently said, “HR is the custodians of culture.” I believe that when HR is introduced early and done well, it helps create the kind of workplace where values are not just written down but actively practiced. Culture does not wait until a business is larger, more profitable, or less busy; it begins forming from the first hire, the first conflict, the first leadership decision, and the first time someone’s needs are either heard or dismissed. Small business owners have a unique opportunity to shape that culture intentionally before harmful patterns become embedded. By clarifying values, holding leadership accountable, and building strong labor and recruitment practices, HR becomes more than an administrative function—it becomes a partner in protecting the dream you are building. When we treat culture as something worth tending to from the beginning, we create businesses where people can stay, grow, and contribute.

When Workplace Trust Breaks: How to Rebuild After Conflict

By Zoie Newman • July 6, 2026
Recently in an online course I was teaching around conflict resolution the question came up, “what happens when the other person refuses to let the conflict go?” We talk a lot about resolving conflict, but less about what happens afterward. Even when the conversation is over, the impact may remain. Trust does not automatically return because someone apologized, a meeting was held, or HR closed a case, and the other party might be unable to let go of their anger until real action is being taken. Rebuilding trust requires accountability, consistency, and a willingness to repair what was damaged. What breaks trust? Inconsistency, micromanaging, and gossip are all the obvious answers, but the mishandling of conflict with either avoidance, being overly direct and aggressive or the simple fact that resolution didn’t land very well with one party, can all have its impact. But if it’s the later reason, and you feel you have done everything you can to create a meaningful space to resolve conflict, be empathetic and listen to someone’s needs and trust has still not returned then it’s possible we are trying to move on to quickly. The best action one can take after conflict can sometimes allow for pause. We often talk about pause before responding or engaging in conflict, but it can also be a great tool to use after conflict as well to allow people to process and emotions to cool. One of the greatest gifts we can give others is to show respect and showing respect to someone’s emotions by not rushing past them but acknowledging them and letting them be without fixing it. When repair is possible, we can rebuild trust with this simple model I like from “The Trust Advisor” by Maister, Green & Galford Trust = Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy Self-Orientation We can have accuracy, dependability, empathy and discernment, while also thinking about their needs versus our own. All these steps over time can help you slowly rebuild trust and show goodwill in sticking with the resolution of conflict. When trust is not possible to rebuild, we have our values to guide us. This is where turning values affirmation exercise onto a particular circumstance or conflict can be beneficial to help guide you on your own behaviors. For instance, if kindness is a strong core value for you, then what behaviors can you create and reflect on that continue to show the other person kindness? What actions help you be kind through a difficult or awkward dynamic? Being self-guided in your own actions and forward movement after conflict will be the cornerstone for meaningful resolution when the other party has disengaged from resolution or the relationship. Ultimately, rebuilding trust after conflict is not about forcing closure or convincing someone to move on before they are ready. It is about showing, over time, that repair matters through consistent behavior, thoughtful accountability, and respect for the impact the conflict created. Sometimes trust can be rebuilt into something stronger, and sometimes the healthiest outcome is learning how to move forward with integrity, even when the relationship does not fully recover. Either way, conflict gives us an opportunity to practice who we want to be, steady, honest, empathetic, and guided by our values. When we stop treating resolution as the end of the process and begin seeing repair as part of the work, we create workplaces where trust has a real chance to return.