How I Built a Sustainable Business Around My Best Life Using Social Media

Some days you look at your calendar, your kids, your aging parents, your pets, your to-do list and wonder, “Where on earth does a business fit into this?”

That was my reality when I decided I was not going to build my life around work. I was going to build my work around my life. I still managed to build a sustainable business as a content strategist and social media strategist, starting at age 40, with four kids, four dogs at one point, and zero formal business training.

This story comes out of a conversation I had on the One Handshake podcast with host Jillian Vorce.

Jillian focuses on how relationships drive opportunity and introduced me as someone who built a business after 40, rebuilt a career more than once, moved countries, and now helps others show up consistently online.

That framing made me realize just how much of my “strategy” has always been rooted in real life, not theory.

In this blog, I want to show you how I built a sustainable business as a content strategist using social media, relationships, curiosity, and imperfect action, so you can decide what “your best life” version of business might look like.

This might be the permission slip you need to give yourself. Go ahead! Do it your way.

How I Built a Sustainable Business as a Content Strategist and Mom

I did not grow up dreaming of becoming a social media or AI strategist. I moved from the Netherlands to the United States as an au pair when I was 18. I became a nanny, then a stay-at-home mom of four. For many years, my “job description” was carpools, school events and PTA meetings.

Everything changed on the day I dropped my youngest off at kindergarten. He was number four. I walked back into my quiet house, looked at the clock and realized there was a stretch of hours between 7:30 and 2:30 that suddenly belonged to me.

The internet and social media were taking off. My husband, who had gone to business school, asked if I could figure out Twitter because marketing was changing. So I did what I still tell my clients to do: I followed my curiosity.

I took a certification course to become a social media manager. It did not teach me how to run a business, but it gave me the confidence to say, “I can do this part.”

“I didn’t know what I didn’t know, so I just did it my own way.”

For years, my schedule was strict on purpose:

• Work: 7:30 to 2:30 while the kids were in school

• Summers: roughly 40% of that time because everyone was home

It took me nine years to hit my first six-figure year, and I am not ashamed of that timeline.

“I would rather grow slowly on my terms than fast on someone else’s timeline.”

That is a big piece of how I built a sustainable business: I accepted that it needed to fit inside my real life, not a fantasy one.

Why I Built a Sustainable Business Around My Life First

On the podcast, Jillian and I talked about how easy it is to judge business success by a single metric: revenue.

She reminded me that what you keep matters more than what you make and that there is enormous value in flexibility, especially for parents and caregivers. She has seen plenty of entrepreneurs build something huge on paper while their personal life quietly falls apart.

I have watched friends close their businesses, take jobs “for the benefits” and then lose those jobs when the economy shifted.

In the process, they lost the job and the business.

I wanted something different.

“I am very fortunate that I’ve been able to build the life that I want and have the schedule that I choose.”

Staying the course with my content strategist business meant:

• I could still be the one scheduling dentist and eye appointments and school meetings.

• I could work less in certain seasons and more in others without asking permission.

• I did not need to negotiate time off to attend a school concert or fly to help a family member.

That is part of what building a sustainable business means to me. It is not just recurring revenue. It is the freedom to make decisions based on what my family needs, not just what my business needs.

Relationships Built a Sustainable Business Long Before Funnels

When you hear “content strategist” or “social media strategist,” you might picture complicated funnels and massive ad campaigns. That has never been the core of my business.

My business has always been relationship first.

Early on, I started networking locally and realized most small business owners had no idea what to do with social media. So I created a club called Hands-on Social Media, Hands-on Networking.

We would meet in person, bring our laptops, connect with each other on all the platforms and I would teach basics like setting up a Facebook page or Twitter account.

One of my favorite origin stories is from that season:

“One of the first pieces of money, one of the first bills I made, was for 20 dollars. I rented a classroom at a local college for 100 dollars. Six people paid 20 dollars each. I made 20 bucks and I taught.”

Ten years later, one of the people in that room hired me on a monthly retainer for her law firm. Talk about a crazy lead gen timeframe!

That tiny workshop turned into thousands of dollars of business a decade later. Relationships compound in ways you cannot predict.

When my family moved to rural Vermont, I tried in-person networking again. I spent months driving an hour and a half to events.

Then the pandemic hit and everything shut down. Suddenly, the only relationships we could build were online.

That is when my online presence became the main lead-generating engine:

• Showing up consistently with content on social media

• Hosting my Strategy Talks video podcast

• Speaking at virtual and in-person conferences

• Commenting thoughtfully on LinkedIn

• Moving good conversations from comments into DMs and booking short virtual coffees

“Almost every single client is directly related to the relationship building and networking that I have done.”

Even tricky moments, like when clients fell behind on payments, came down to relationships.

One year I had two clients who could not pay me for a while. I knew they were struggling with cash flow, not unhappy with my work, so I chose not to burn those bridges.

Later, one of them paid back a large amount and rehired me. The other has been catching up and referring people to me.

Relationship-first does not mean you ignore money; it means you zoom out and look at the long-term picture.

Pricing Lessons That Built a Sustainable Business Over Time

Here is the truth: for a long time, my prices did not match my expertise.

The turning point came when an agency in another state found me through networking, hired me to work with their clients and paid me more than any of my own clients were paying me directly. I knew they were adding their own fee on top of mine.

That was my moment.

If they could confidently charge that much for my work, why could I not?

“I realized I was the one underpaying me, not my clients.”

From that experience, I created a simple pricing rule:

“If two people pay it without blinking, the price goes up.”

Here is how that plays out:

• I design or repackage an offer as a content strategist or social media strategist.

• I pick a price that feels a little stretchy but still believable.

• If two or three clients say yes without hesitation and I deliver great results, I raise the price.

• I repeat until the price and value feel aligned, both for me and my clients.

One of my services started at $399. Today, the evolved version of that service is $4,000, and clients still feel good about the investment.

Shifting from hourly pricing to value-based pricing was a big part of how I built my business. I stopped selling time. I started selling outcomes, strategy and confidence.

It also changed how I buy.

“If it solves a problem for me now, I will buy it, even if it’s more expensive.”

When I understood that about myself, it became easier to design offers that solve specific problems quickly for the people I want to work with.

How I Built a Sustainable Business With Agile Systems

Right before the world shut down in 2020, I went to New York City for an Agile marketing workshop.

Agile comes from software development and is usually taught to teams inside larger organizations.

I sat there thinking, “This is great, but I am a team of one.”

On the train ride home, everything clicked. I was not just a team of one. For each client, we were a team of two.

I could apply Agile principles to how we worked together and to my own business.

Within three months of implementing Agile ideas, I gained back 10 to 15 hours a week. That extra time, combined with businesses rushing online, helped me reach my first six-figure year without adding chaos.

Agile helped me:

• Prioritize the work that actually moved the needle

• Limit how many big projects I tackled at once

• Create a rhythm for my content and social media instead of constantly “winging it”

• Treat experiments as learning cycles instead of pass/fail tests

Jillian called our conversation “a mini master class in what it actually takes to build a business” and I think Agile deserves its own chapter in that master class.

It is one of the reasons I can say I built a sustainable business around my best life , not just a busy business.

What Built a Sustainable Business Really Looks Like Day to Day

From the outside, people see the orange glasses, the speaking stages, my Strategy Talks show, my AI and social media work and the “content strategist” label.

That is real, but it is the highlight reel.

Day to day, what it really looks like is this:

• Working school hours for many years and expanding slowly as my kids grew up

• Saying no to opportunities that did not fit the life I was building

• Being willing to start tiny, like teaching six people in a rented classroom for a small profit

• Nurturing relationships for years before they turned into clients

• Allowing myself to learn in public, make mistakes and adjust

Underneath all of it is one trait I keep coming back to:

“The one thing that I’ve always had is curiosity.”

I did not enjoy traditional classroom learning, but I love learning by doing. That curiosity took me from the Netherlands to the United States.

It led me into social media when it was still new. It now helps me navigate AI as it reshapes what is possible in marketing and content strategy.

If there is a secret to how I built my business around my best life using social media, it is this: keep your curiosity alive and be willing to take the next small, imperfect step.

Try This As You Build Your Own Best-Life Business

If you are trying to build a business around your life, here are a few places to start:

• Audit your life first, not your revenue. Look at your real responsibilities, energy and non-negotiables. Build your offers and schedule around that.

• Choose one primary visibility channel. For me, social media plus my video podcast became engines for building relationships. You do not need to be everywhere.

• Treat every interaction as relationship building. Comments, DMs, coffee chats and conference hallway conversations can turn into opportunities years later.

• Watch your pricing cues. If people keep saying yes with no hesitation and you are delivering strong results, that is data. Use it to raise your rates.

• Borrow simple systems. You may not adopt Agile completely, but you can work in focused sprints and limit how much you juggle at once.

• Lean into how you learn best. If you learn by doing, give yourself permission to do that instead of waiting for the perfect course or degree.

The goal is not to copy my path as a content strategist. The goal is to design a version of “your perfect business” that fits your life, your responsibilities, and your season, while still letting you show up online with clarity and consistency.

I want to thank Jillian for this fantastic conversation! Be sure to check out the One Handshake Podcast.

10 smart AI prompts you can use based on this blog

Here are 10 prompts you or your audience could give an AI tool to get help with ideas like the ones in this article:

• “Help me design a weekly schedule so I can Built a Sustainable Business while working school hours and caring for my family.”

• “I am a content strategist starting a business after 40. List 10 realistic ways I can find my first clients using social media.”

• “Turn my relationship based marketing approach into a simple LinkedIn networking plan I can follow for 30 days.”

• “I undercharge for my services. Help me create a step by step plan to raise my prices without losing my best clients.”

• “Using Agile ideas, outline a two week sprint plan for creating and posting social media content consistently.”

• “I run a small service based business. Give me three example offers I could move from hourly pricing to value based pricing.”

• “Draft a kind but firm email I can send to a client who is late on payments while keeping the relationship intact.”

• “Create questions I can use in virtual coffee chats to turn casual conversations into real opportunities.”

• “Write a simple content strategy for a video podcast that helps me attract clients and build long term relationships.”

• “Based on my story of starting a business later in life, help me outline a personal brand message that leans into curiosity and sustainability.”