• I was nervous. My mouth was dry and I was far too hot. Like is my face in a chip-pan hot.

• The night before, I discovered I’d have to take the dog (he’s called Wolfie) because my family were going out and we haven’t trained him to be left alone yet. Wolfie’s seperation anxiety was the perfect excuse not to go!

• But I went. Wrangling Wolfie, my heavy guitar and the key fob to get out my front door was not my most elegant moment.

• When I arrived, they handed me the board. The only slots left were first and last. It had to be first, right? Get it over with, then enjoy everyone else.

• Microphones are delicious, gorgeous things. This was only my second time singing into one in front of people. The first was my Swedish Pop Idol audition. They didn’t call me back, so I didn’t get through. Rude.

• I sang an acoustic version of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy.” *yess my friend pointed out the hilarity of me choosing that song whilst doing a crazy thing.

  

• I was most worried about the opening bars. I knew that if I got the first chords wrong, I’d want to stop and begin again. I needed a strong start. Don’t they say something similar about horses?

• I sang the second verse twice because I’d forgotten I’d already sung it. Eeeeeeeeek. Nobody noticed.

• There were only about 10–15 people in the audience, and they were incredibly kind.

• Afterwards, someone told me I’d made the whole room feel calm and that I had a very grounded presence. I found this fascinating because I often receive the same feedback after public speaking, but I felt far less calm while singing.

• Someone else told me she loved my voice and was disappointed I only played one song.

• My face became so hot that I was convinced it had turned purple and was about to burst into flames. In the video, it looks completely normal.

• The moment I finished, I touched my face to confirm whether it was, in fact, on fire.

• It wasn’t.

• I’m going back on 13 August. Hopefully, I’ll play TWO songs.

I was always an artist, but I neglected her. I didn’t draw. I didn’t paint. I didn’t play.
Then, in March 2025, I read We Need Your Art and accepted ‘s challenge to draw every day for 14 days. Fourteen days became a month, then a year, and now I’ve been drawing every day for almost a year and a half. Classic overachiever behaviour. Give me a fortnight-long challenge and I’ll turn it into my entire personality.

That summer, at a retreat, a volunteer taught me how to strum Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.” My partner bought me a guitar for my birthday in September.

Then this Easter, I started drawing portraits of old women’s faces and couldn’t stop. I’ve now drawn more than 50 and hosted an art exhibition in Barcelona and London. You can shop my prints here.

Now I’m playing Gnarls Barkley to 15 strangers and Wolfie!

There is so much power in simply deciding:

I am a person who draws.

I am a person who paints.

I am a person who is learning to play guitar.

I am a person who takes time to create.

Because nobody is going to give you that time.

Nobody is going to arrive at your door with a permission slip and say, “Lauren, we’ve reviewed your to-do list and cleared Thursday afternoon for artistic expression.”

Time for creativity is deeply connected to privilege and money. Artist Self Esteem has spoken about how many of her peers come from generational wealth. I see a version of that in entrepreneurship too: so many of my peers with partners earning significant salaries, private-school networks and inheritances waiting in the wings.

I don’t have those things.

My to-do list never ends because I’m responsible for a company capable of enormous change and growth.

My son is eight. He needs me often, and I want to be with him a lot. He’s so soft and if I look directly at his freckles for too long, I fear I’ll melt with love.

There will always be reasons not to make the art.

The dog needs looking after.

The work needs doing.

The money is tight.

You have to decide.

You have to take the time.

Because we need your art.

With love,

Your favourite Glaswegian artist. I’ll be busking at The Fringe next year :)

PS. If you're waiting to feel confident before doing the thing that matters to you, my book, Be UPFRONT: 24 Rules For Life Changing Confidence is for you. It’s about unlearning everything we’ve been taught about confidence, and learning how to act before confidence arrives. Get Be UPFRONT today.

2025 was the year I…

• Successfully listened to my first audiobooks

I had decided audio books were not for me. I would always get so distracted and confused. Now I understand it’s about finding the audio book that works for you - you have to love the voice and the story! A good narrator will hold your attention (yes even us ADHD folks!) I’ll be sharing recommendations on my Instagram next week.

• Went to my local bookshop’s anniversary event

I attended the 30th anniversary event of The English Bookshop here in Uppsala. I was totally blown away that so many of the guest speakers were Irish and Scottish. Made me love bookshops even more and feel less home sick.

• Started listening to interviews with authors after I finished a book

This is a new kind of ritual for me. I close a book, feel slightly in awe / bereaved, then immediately go find the author talking about their book. It’s fascinating to me, when I’m sitting in absolute awe of the art I’ve just consumed, to then listen to their doubts, their rewrites, the chapter they cut at the last minute. I just search their name in the podcast search bar and voila!

• Learned that authors get paid every time you borrow their book from the library

This tiny fact made me ridiculously happy. I already loved libraries but this added a new layer. Borrowing a book becomes a vote! Obsessed. My local library only has two aisles of English books and I’m in there most days - what’s your excuse? 😉

• Started selling my books on Vinted to fund more books

My own little book fund. Books in, books out.

• Started reading as a writer, not just a reader

This was the biggest shift. I noticed myself noticing. How did the writer hold my attention? (Thanks ) How did they make me laugh out loud? (thanks Jenn Beagin) How did they crack my heart open with one tiny sentence? (thanks Lily King) I’m learning how to articular WHY I like, or don’t like, something…I’d love to keep a reading journal one day. (Hat tip to for inspiring this post and writing great books and teaching us how to keep a reading journal)

Pre-ordered my book Be UPFRONT yet? Think of it as a Christmas gift to your future self and a big act of support for me. I’d be so grateful.

Pre-order here

I’d love to hear your own reading reflections from this year. What book did you love? Any new authors you’ve fallen for?

So I got to work on my mum’s typewriter. Halfway through, my mum and dad gifted little Lauren a bright red Olivetti typewriter. Never once did it occur to me to ask them to buy me the book. Nor did any grown-up ever suggest it. I chose the hard path. It felt noble and impressive. Mrs Campbell, my Primary 5 teacher, couldn’t get enough of the fact I did this. I reckon she was talking about me and my typewriter in the staff room.

I think this might be my earliest memory of wanting hard things.

Thirty-one years later, my life has been a series of wanting hard things. Trying to get hard things. Choosing hard things. Achieving hard things. I was the first in my family to go to university. I started my first business at 23, with no role models or safety net. I moved to Sweden during a global pandemic with a two-year-old. I’ve chosen entrepreneurship for 17 years. I’m proud of so much, and I’m also tired. I’m satisfied but disappointed. I’m hungry for more hard things and, at the same time, wish I could flip a switch and want easy.

When I look back, I think when I was growing up, choosing hard felt impressive and brave because I didn’t see many people around me choosing things I thought were hard. Of course, I now understand that in their own context my parents chose hard, too - raising a family and running side hustles on top of their 9–5s, building stability that was very different from how they grew up. But as a child, I saw myself as the one doing the hard, extraordinary things. I built an identity around it early.

Hard things weren’t just a challenge, they were a story about the adult I was becoming.

And if I’m really honest, I think part of why I pushed myself so hard was because nobody around me ever pushed me. There was love, yes. So much love, There was pride and support and encouragement, yes. But there wasn’t ambition or possibility coming from the people older than me. There were heaps of praise but nobody said, “You could go further,” or “You’re capable of more,” or “Let me show you the bigger way.” So I became the one who had to generate the upward momentum. When no one around you pushes you higher, you learn to push yourself, and sometimes you learn to push too hard for too long.

I’ve already chosen a word for the year, for 2026. And it’s only now I think that word represents ease. My word is inevitable, as in my ambitions are inevitable. And this feels like ease in disguise, it feels like the pressures off, that I don’t have to push too hard.

But when things start to feel easy, I don’t trust my process or trust myself. I think “It can’t be this easy, dumb ass! You are missing something” So I stop trusting my inevitability which is the last thing I want to do. If I don’t trust it, nobody else will. This is why I am working hard to change this story. One way I’m doing this is by writing this down for you (and me).

Wow, I even just wrote I’m working HARD at this. Do you see how deep in this story I am? Blimey.

A part of me thinks if I sit back and put my feet up (in my vision, I’m in a huge red arm chair smoking a menthol cigarette in front of an open fire) that everything around me will crumble.

This nervousness is valid because my business is not in a place where I can take my foot off the gas, YET. Because my books are not generating high enough monthly recurring revenue, YET. Because I’m not done wanting hard things, and never will be. I know they say never say never, but truly I do mean never. YET I need to find a way to be less skeptical of ease.

Is ease even the opposite of hard? Can they both exist at the same time..? I don’t know. I do know that I’m suspicious of ease. People with ease are wealthy. I’ve yet to meet anyone who lives an easeful life that isn’t wealthy. I have no doubt you exist (if it’s you, hello) but because I’ve not met you yet you can’t in my story (no offence). So for me ease feels a bit like a trap door.

And let me be clear about something, because this matters: I am not talking about rejecting ambition. I’m not trying to want less. I’m not looking for a smaller life. This isn’t a story about “stepping off the treadmill of capitalism” or choosing a minimalist existence in the woods. That is not my truth, and it’s not my desire.

• I want to change the world.

• I want UPFRONT to grow.

• I want to write and publish books.

• I want to create work that shifts culture.

• I want to have, HUGE impact.

• And yes I want to be wealthy. I want generational wealth for my grandchildren.

And I know that I WILL do all these things. Deep down I know that. The last 17 years of building businesses and making money and impact would suggest it is very likely. What I am trying to unlearn is the belief that the only path to get there will feel really hard. That “hard” is a requirement for greatness. I’m trying to be less suspicious of ease.

This suspicion is one of the reasons it took me six years to go full-time at UPFRONT. I refused to believe, and refused to accept, that work that felt so joyful, purposeful, electrifying could ever become a profitable, scalable business. That something could be both easy and successful. That something that came naturally to me could be enough. So I clung to the notion that it would be too hard. For SIX years!

PALS! How wrong was I? So what else am I wrong about? This is an exciting question. I feel a bit fizzy thinking about it.

I’m starting to question the story. Because sometimes I look at my life and see a woman who knows how to bootstrap, rebuild, move countries, start again, take risks, hold weight, and endure. ALL THE DAMN TIME. And my partner is the same. This is why we make these hard decisions together. This is why we said yes when my son asked for a puppy. This is why he said yes to running a marathon with me when I’d only ever run 5k. Once. But I’m also someone who wants to be less wedded to this habit of hardness. It has come from beautiful, gorgeous things like courage and confidence and also things out of my control, like conditioning and inheritance. All these things are true at once.

I don’t believe wanting hard things is my whole story. I will always be a woman who can do and will do hard things. I’m learning to become a woman who doesn’t only do hard things.

And maybe that is the hardest thing of all.

And maybe, if you’re being honest, part of you is terrified of wanting ease. Terrified that if you stop choosing hard, people might finally see how tired you are. How much you’ve been carrying. How much you’ve done with so little help.

I see you. Truly.

Because wanting ease isn’t about wanting less. Wanting ease isn’t about shrinking your life or your ambition or your hunger for impact. Wanting ease is about wanting a life that doesn’t exhaust you or cost you your entire nervous system.

It’s about wanting a life where your greatness doesn’t depend on your exhaustion.

And I want you to know this: you are allowed to want ease and extraordinary impact at the same time. You are allowed to want wealth without exhaustion. You are allowed to want joy without earning it through suffering first.

You are allowed to rewrite the story, even if it feels strange or too tender.

If you’re standing on the edge of this shift, unsure what it means, unsure who you’ll be if you stop choosing hard, I want you to know something: nothing about you will crumble. The things built on truth will stay. Trust it.

If you’re curious, even a tiny wee bit, let that curiosity in.

You can still want the world.
You can still want the mountain.
You can still want the huge, impossible, extraordinary things.

They don’t always have to be hard.

And if no one has told you this before, if no one has ever looked you in the eye and said it, let me be the first: (you have to read these aloud in your best Glaswegian accent)

You deserve a life that is not hard all the time.

And I hope, one day very soon, you let yourself try.

P.S I’m trying to get better at writing long form because I love a challenge and love to do hard things - think I already mentioned this :) so if you read to the end THANK YOU. And if this made you think or feel something, I’d love you to tell me what that was.

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It’s a trick because he knows that when he looks at rock climbers and surfers on his daddy’s phone, there are no sadverts. In the last 24 hours I’ve been the target of many sadverts, have you? One was selling me a tool to make my jawline like J.Lo’s (she is 50 and has the jawline of a 30-year-old, so why don’t I want the same for myself?). Another selling me a candle shaped like a very fat naked body that I’m meant to burn on my desk so it “encourages me to eat less.” And of course, the anti-wrinkle cream promising to defy all natural signs of aging. And then more, because there are always more:

• A gummy that “melts belly fat while you sleep.”

• A pair of leggings “make your thighs half the size”

• A protein shake marketed as a “meal replacement for busy women”

• A skin-tightening wand that looks like a tiny taser and claims to “reverse gravity.”

• A “hormone-balancing powder” that, when you read the ingredients, is mostly chalk and vibes.

We all know sadverts have been around for along time (check these vintage sadverts out) and we have witnessed the devastating cultural consequences. I am terrified by the trend of celebrities becoming rail thin in very little time and the popularity of weight loss drugs.

All of these Sadverts are built to make me feel sad so I buy their dumb product. None of these products exist for my partner. He sees backpacks, climbing ropes, electric bikes, fancy torches. Tools for doing more. I see tools for being less.And that is the trick. I’m being told every day that my value lives in the distance between who I am and who the sadverts think I should be. That aging is failure. That any body that is not a size 8 is ugly.

The Sadverts are designed to trick you into feeling sad about your self so they can trick you into buying a product that makes you feel less sad.

My son is 7 and he can already spot the trick but the grown-ups are the ones who have to get better at spotting it. It thrives on us believing the sadverts. So next time you see a sadvert - call it what is is and remember:

• There is nothing wrong with your jawline.

• There is nothing wrong with your hunger.

• There is nothing wrong with your face changing.

• There is nothing wrong with your body being a body - a living, aging, human thing.

The Sadverts are sad because they want you to forget your power.

But you, you are in charge and I think you are amazing.

If you’re raising kids who deserve better than Sadverts and shame, buy my children’s book “Taylor Meets The Trick”. And if this resonated with you, leave a comment - your words will help us build a community here.

For a split second, time did something strange. I felt the room shift. I smiled. I laughed. I said “Goodbye.” And I kept going.

I didn’t apologise.
I didn’t shrink.
I didn’t perform.
I didn’t over explain.
I didn’t try to make this stranger or the other people in the call more comfortable.

I actually didn’t think much more about it until I saw this LinkedIn post from Jessica. It stopped me in my tracks.

She wrote that this moment was the exact reason she signed up to the Bond. Not because I was heckled, but because of how I responded. Because she saw a woman choosing confidence when it would have been so easy to choose self-doubt.
And that touched me. Because there is still a part of me that wants to please everyone and there is still a younger version of me who wants to be everyone’s friend.

Her words reminded me why I do this work. Why confidence is a practice, not a performance. Confidence is about staying rooted in who you are when someone tries to pull you off centre. And visibility will always involve moments like this.

So here is the reminder I needed, and maybe you need too:

You will be judged.
You will be misunderstood.
Someone will say “I’m not listening to this.”
And you will still be okay.

You don’t need to apologise for the way you show up.
You don’t need to contort yourself to be palatable.
Your voice, your story, your truth, they are allowed to be here.

The rest of the live stream was kick ass. And the heckler, well I’m kind of grateful to her for reminding me and everyone else in the room why UPFRONT exists.

The Bond has taught me that we learn in community, not alone.
So tell me what does this story bring up for you?
A memory? A reminder? A question?
Drop it in the comments so we can keep this conversation going.

There’s a strange loneliness that comes with being the only one awake after the big glow of something dreamy happening. A few hours earlier, more than fifty people had come out on a Sunday to celebrate me and my book. There were friends I expected, and friends I didn’t - Stella, Andi, Suzy, Laura - faces I love, faces I hadn’t seen in years and totally new faces. People who’d quietly cheered me on from afar. I was surprised by how calm I felt. How real their support was. How happy.

At one point, my little boy was playing in the corner with Farhana from the venue, and I remember looking over and feeling this deep ease. My family was in this room full of people celebrating us, and it felt really delicious.

But later, walking alone through London, I started thinking about the solitude of success. In my fantasies, I’ve always imagined success as communal - speeches, toasts, shared dinners, arms around shoulders.

But it isn’t always like that. Sometimes success is a quiet hotel room, your family asleep, and you out in the night, searching for a good veggie burger and a way to make sense of how full your heart feels. There’s so much of it no one else can understand, no matter how much they care. I lived every inch of this journey for three years — the drafts, the doubts, the tiny steps no one saw. And then, suddenly, the thing I’d been working toward was here. It’s a bit like being an actress after the curtain closes, makeup still on, heart still banging. Everyone goes home, but you’re still standing there, blinking under the ghost of the spotlight, wondering how to come down from the high.

This is the part of success we don’t talk about enough - the quiet after the applause. The solitude after the storm. The still moment where you realise: I did the thing I said I would do. And though it doesn’t feel sad, it does feel singular. Because that moment belongs entirely to you.

If I could tell my future self one thing, it would be this: So many people believe in you. Your work matters. Your ideas are quietly changing the world. You are allowed to feel both full and alone at the same time. Because this, this strange, beautiful in-between feeling, is what success actually feels like. And there’s so much more of it ahead.

I think this feeling shows up in all kinds of success - break ups, new jobs, creative projects, and small personal milestones. Have you ever had that mix of fullness and aloneness after doing something brave? I’d love to hear your version in the comments.

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I don’t hear men having these conversations.

I don’t hear men wondering who folded the laundry so they had time to meet a deadline.

I don’t hear them saying, “My wife made this possible.”

I don’t hear male founders giving their wives equity.

I don’t hear male artists calling their wives their collaborators.

But I do hear women saying things like, “I was able to quit my job and build this business because my partner has a full-time salary.” Or, “My husband takes the kids in the morning so I can write.” We say it with gratitude. But also with guilt. With awareness. With something that feels to me like an inner reckoning.

Because some women are always thinking about this. We think about who’s picking up the slack. We think about how to share the spotlight. We think about whether we’re allowed to want more, to be more. We think about what it means to take up space and who made that possible.

And I don’t think most men are thinking about it. Not in the same way. Not with the same weight. Not because they’re careless or cruel but because the system was never designed to ask them to. My partner would chip in here with a grand notion of how women and men have had differing evolutionary pressures, pushing men to care less than women about those around them, about credit, and community cohesion - all pinned to reproductive investment. That’s his bag, and he might be right, he probably is. But I’m here to speak to our current situation, the harm it does and how to change it.

This isn’t about praise or performative credit. It’s about the truth. About responsibility. Behind many visible, ambitious women is a messy, complex web of support. But only half of that web is being spoken about. I want us to get better at naming the structures and the people that make creative work possible.

We need more men asking:

Who made my work possible?

Whose time, care, or labour gave me mine?

What do I owe, and how can I honour it?

We need more men to say, “I didn’t do this alone.”

Because none of us do.

And thank you, Christopher Watson, for always letting me take all the credit.

I’d love to know what this brings up for you, please say hello in the comments (this is my first ever substack posts so every comment will spark a lil happy shimmy) and tell me your take. I always read every single message I get and they always make my day!

Thank you to Sara and Cariad’s podcast episode for inspiring this post.

I’ll be back next week, go cause a ruckus!