Lessons from 2025: “Bouncing Back” After The Worst Year Of Your Life

2025 was hands down the worst year of my life.
I’m not even trying to be dramatic here, but sadly it was.
And yeah, I got married in 2025.
And so this is absolutely no reflection of my husband as he makes me incredibly happy and my wedding day was actually the happiest day of my life.
So I guess the question is, how can 2025 possibly have been the worst year of my life when it actually contained the happiest day?
Well, I’ve been sitting with this question a lot for the past couple of weeks as I’ve started to reflect on this year, as you do at this time of year.
And I’ve realized I’ve learned a lot this year.
It’s probably the year I’ve also learned the most.
So look about myself, about others and about what really matters in the world.
So despite it being a bad year for things that happened, it’s been the best year in terms of self development and growth.
So this episode is a very self reflective one, which is apartment this time of the year.
It’s not quite a personal interlude, but it’s probably a hybrid episode as we delve into a lot about human behaviour, some hard hitting truths about life as an entrepreneur and some challenging questions to ask yourself for 2026 if you want to find true happiness and success in your life.
And this is not about trauma dumping.
I am not, you know, using this as a confession box.
I’m using my year as somewhat of a case study.
So please stay tuned for a rather deep episode to close at 2025, but one which hopefully will help you think a little bit differently and question some of your 2026 goals.
Hello and welcome to Sniffing Out the Bullshit, a podcast for ambitious entrepreneurs who want help wading their way through the bullshit jungle of entrepreneurship and then the tools, skills, and mindsets that are actually required for success.
I’m your host Sabrina Chevannes-Denman the No Bullshit entrepreneur.
So we should probably start with why 2025 was the worst year of my life.

Well, I think I want to start with the smaller things because at the time I thought all of these things were kind of a big deal and I realized I sound like 1 burgundy there.
But you know, I did think they were kind of a big deal.
I was stressed about them all.
I lost sleep over them.
I wasted time in my business because I was worrying about them.
But now things all get kind of put into perspective and I would love something semi positive to come out of tragedy to help us all realize what’s really important in our life.
And I think that’s kind of the theme for this, this episode really.
It’s, you know, realizing that things aren’t always as important as they seem.
So I guess it started with hiring mistakes again.
And I thought it’s not here because I feel like I’ve seen a lot of posts recently talking about hiring mistakes and I’ve really struggled to find good stuff pretty much since COVID.
And it is a funny old time out there because so many companies are saying the same thing.
They they’re like, we just don’t have any good stuff anymore.
And it’s, and I quote, I’ve heard people say they are hiring idiots because they’re desperate.
But you know, at the same time I’m hearing that there’s so much talent out there and they’re all complaining that there aren’t enough jobs for them.
So it doesn’t really make any sense.
But all I know is that I’ve struggled because many candidates now seem to want double the average salary for their position, but yet they only want to work three or four days a week and fully remote and fully flexible and with limited holidays because that’s what social media leads them to believe is completely normal.
And of course, what they deserve because it’s because they, they know they’re worth and all that stuff, you know, right.
And look, we already have a fully flexible, fully remote workforce and we have them for a long time.
So we’re used to working in this way.
But it also does require a lot of discipline, a lot of honesty for it to work.
And many people have these qualities, but others do not.
So anyway, I hired a couple of people this year because they were basically the best of a bad bunch.
So even though I knew they weren’t exactly the right fit, I hired them because we really need to hire to keep up with the demand.
But unfortunately by the time I realized that these guys were more harm than good and they’d caused me to lose clients and stuff, I I obviously had to let them go, which is never easy.
And of course I know that no one’s going to respond well to being fired, but it certainly does confirm your decisions when they react extremely badly.

When I say badly, let me put some context into this because this year I had the absolute pleasure of being a victim of several phishing scams and having multiple revenge websites against me.
And every time I managed to get 1 taken down, they’d just put another one back up.
And they would use AI to manipulate pictures of me in the most vile possible way and even go into details because just use your imagination.
And they would basically then send these links to anyone I’d speak to on LinkedIn, thereby ruining my chances of networking properly or even remotely making a sale.
And they’d then send me an e-mail saying they’d stop it if I just gave them a couple of grand because they deserved that extra money because I fired them.
And look, I refuse to be blackmailed.
So, and if you follow me and you know my stuff, you know that I’m a very principled person.
So I just kept fighting it.
But doing this totally drained me.
Like I just couldn’t focus on work anymore.
And I lost way more than a couple of grand right from the work that I lost and, and everything else.
So I guess the question is, shouldn’t I just paid for them to go away?
And that’s what most people tell me at the night.
Is it worth the effort?
Just pay them.
But The thing is, I don’t believe in giving in to the blackmailers.
It’s not a money thing, it’s a principal thing, right?
And plus, even if I did pay them, what would stop them continuing with the blackmail and demanding more money, right?
Like I would pay them the 2K and then they’d come back and do worse and then say, oh, actually now I need 5K.
So I don’t think it is a solution.
And so I ended up just stopping fighting it.
And I just let them try to ruin my life, essentially.
I didn’t fight the websites, the messages or the sabotage.
I just let them.
And I thought they’d get tired of doing it.
Like, after all, who has that much time on their hands?
Well, I guess someone who’s unemployed does.
So it’s kind of my fault, I guess.
But the sad news is, is that they didn’t stop.
The sites are still out there.
The phishing scams haven’t stopped either and they are coming up with more ways to try and sabotage my name.
But the difference is, is that I stopped caring.
So I started to think about who’s, you know, responding to these links.
I thought anyone who believes those nasty things out there are probably not the sort of people I want as clients anyway, right?
So instead I just focused on building my own reputation and doing good work so that this will over shadow the nastiness with time, hopefully these guys will get tired and they’ll move on to the next fixing, God help them.
But the problem is it’s so easy to ruin someone’s reputation now, like with AI, it’s nuts, right?
It’s quicker and easier than ever for people to do nasty things.

And like this, this is this also totally relates to my other big stress that I’ve been dealing with this year, right?
We had a scammer clone our agency website and post loads of fake jobs in connection with our company and they’ve been scamming hundreds of people out of their hard earned money, all in our agency name.
It was so horrible.
Like I even had to hire someone just to deal with the number of nasty emails coming through because it was so tough.
Like we tried to explain to each person that we were also the victims of this and it’s not us and they should report all of this to action forward of the police.
But unfortunately, it didn’t stop most of these people leaving their one star trust pilot views and DM me nastily on Instagram or LinkedIn.
Now, I’ve been running my own creative agency since 2013.
Now that’s over a decade of hard work building a reputation of credibility and reliability and, you know, building My Portfolio only for it to be torn down in a matter of weeks by some really suspicious, spiteful person just looking to make a quick buck.
And really sad thing is that the damage has been so bad that I’m in the process of having to shut down our agency because we can no longer be associated with the brand of a scammer.
So it’s not just me it’s affected, it’s my whole team and clients and everything.
So it’s been painful to say the least.
And getting accused publicly of being a scammer is not nice, even if you know it’s not true.

Because this also happens to me.
When I started a new Instagram account this year, I wanted to do 1 under like a professional name rather than having mixture of my social stuff in there too.
And I learned once again that racism and sexism were still very much prevalent in the world.
And in fact, it’s probably got even louder.
So despite my experience, my credentials and My Portfolio and all the years and clients have got, the moment I started posting on Instagram and on new handle, I got accused of being a scammer like and not a single day went by where I didn’t get sexist and racist remarks all because I didn’t have many followers.
Like these people believed that if I were really good at my job, I should have thousands of followers.
And so I thought oh OK, I tried directing them to my other account and but then they would claim that I bought all these followers and I’m just a scammer looking to steal other people’s money even though none of my content was selling anything at all.
It was really bizarre and I got really upset by this abuse and it kind of made me doubt ever creating content because I thought what’s the point?
Nothing is worth that abuse.
And I reached out to many other women of color who said they also face the same thing whenever they spoke openly and confidently about something.
And I asked how they coped with it and they said that they don’t bother creating content anymore.
And this made me really sad because this is how great voices get silenced.
And I, and I’m not talking just about the scammer thing.
Like I would literally get the N word thrown at me.
I’d have monkey emojis thrown at me.
I’d told be told get back in the kitchen go create an only fans account.
Like all the sick things that you could possibly think of were said to me.
And I realize This is why I probably find so few role models to look up to.
Not because there aren’t any, it’s because they’re being chased away by these people.

And this echoed my thoughts also after going kind of mega viral on LinkedIn somewhat accidentally after declaring that I am the only black female chess master in the UK.
Now I wanted to start talking more about my chess achievements because I’ve decided to do more chess workshops next year and show lots of people who know me don’t even realize that I’m a chess master.
I used to be a professional player and played for England etcetera.
So I thought that I would just do more posts on them.
It was what I thought was a harmless post because, you know, I, I didn’t think that it was even a big thing.
But speaking to those people, they were like, you should talk more about it.
Like it was never made a big deal of was growing up.
So I thought, OK, let’s see what other people think.
And you know, it made me reflect on why I was the only black female chess master in the UK.
I just asked myself a few questions.
So I won’t post about it, right.
But Oh my God, were the responses shocking or actually were they shocking?
Like, I mean, I shouldn’t really be surprised by it all right?
But it was the usual.
It was the why are you making everything about race again?
What’s the big deal?
And and the ones who are more brazen and just said, well, isn’t it obvious?
Black people just not intelligent.
So I’m the I should be the only one.
And actually, I just got lucky.
And you know, when you have a post that goes really viral, you have literally hundreds of negative comments coming your way in such a short space of time and it can really take you back.
And I know it’s like really negatively impacted a lot of people.
And I’ve had a conversation with people about this because they see my comments and they write to me.
And this is the reason why I bring this up, because so many people I know crave going viral.
They think it will mean that they’ve made it somehow.
But in reality you usually go viral when you’ve basically divided people.
So naturally you’re going to get loads of haters and it’s never easy to take.
So I just say be careful what you wish for.
And my advice on this is you need to get someone to philtre out the comments for you because some stuff is really not easy to read.
I don’t mean ignore the dissenting comments because I’ve literally just written some stuff on this.
I believe that you should be learning from opposing views.
And I’ve spoken out about people who just block people because I don’t want to hear someone disagree with them.
I don’t believe in that.
I mean, the personal attacks, I’ve had to hire someone to kind of go through them and just philtre out the really, really bad, nasty ones which are just there to attack you.
And you know, no one should be a victim of attack.

And actually, on that note, the the bits of me this year that I thought couldn’t be a top to really were were the physical attacks that I had.
So sadly I got I got mugged in London and they stole all of my podcasting equipment, the video podcasting stuff.
So thousands of pounds worth of stuff and 10’s the reason why I’ve not recorded no bullshit talks episode in quite a while.
So yeah, that was that was tough.
And then it was the IT was the random attack I got in London where I just got physically beaten up for no apparent reason and the guy was like stay down bitch and just kept on kicking me and like, I don’t know.
Both attacks made me really scared to live in London for you know, which is which is horrible.
It was definitely too scary to leave the house for a while and I just didn’t get it and it made me question so many things and just put me in this really weird place.
So that really affected me this year and it really messed up my year.

And yet, as I said, I also got married this year and it was genuinely the happiest day of my life.
It was so perfect and I was so happy.
And that’s literally what everyone said though, like they’ve never seen me that happy.
And I was, although the run up to the wedding was, was kind of stressful and taught me so many things again.
And what, what’s wild is that so many people I’ve spoken to have said the same thing.
They’ve lost so many friends because of their wedding.
Like it’s so weird to see how people have gone through so many similar things and people act badly when other people getting married.
It’s strange.
And you know, like my my husband and other people pointed out something they were like all the people who let me down for my wedding and shocked me with their behaviour were actually all single.
Now, I don’t know if that’s a coincidence, but when I spoke to other people who had the same sort of things with their wedding, it was the same situation.
It was like they can’t genuinely be happy for their friend.
So they tried to sabotage the big day, unconsciously or not.
And you know, like it shows you that they obviously don’t see you as a real fun because they can’t genuinely be happy for you.
And it’s the same thing I see in this entrepreneurship world is that people try to tear the people down because they’re jealous of their successes instead of just that being happy for them.
And when you start to do well, other people start to treat you badly instead of supporting you because they’re jealous that you’ve done well instead of them.
So it’s really changed my perspective on who are really friends and who I want to spend time with going forward after that.
And the whole wedding planning thing actually made me realize something.
Again, the same thing as I said about this episode is that nothing is ever as important as it seems because and I actually was, I was targeted all this stuff on Instagram and it was like, you know, all the wedding planning and boys and you know, doing all this stuff.
And again, it just like I was DIY and stuff.
So I was already going low key.
But all the things that I was worried about in the run up to the wedding, all those things I want to see perfect on the big day, when it came around, I just didn’t care.
And you know, even I said the day was perfect, which it was.
We had something really scary and horrible happened on the day and it threw a massive spite of the works and everything got turned upside down.
And it distracted us from so much that like we forgot to do certain things, we didn’t put up certain derivations, we missed loads of different elements that we wanted to do for the guests and we made mistakes with stuff.
But do you know what?
No one cared.
No one noticed.
Like it was still the most perfect day.
And so it just kept on making me think, why are we always worrying about things like they are so crazy important, like they are life or death?
And all that mattered on the day was that the people I loved the most in the world were there for me and I could spend time with them because that’s all I ever wanted anyway.
Because you just don’t know on the last time you’re going to see them is so you should just be cherishing every moment with them.
And that’s what I did.
Like I got to spend so much time with my Big Brother Clint that weekend.

And it was truly magical because now I don’t ever get to spend any more time with him because he’s gone.
He was just taken away from us.
We have any warning or any explanation.
And that’s why this year has been the worst of my life.
And oh God, I didn’t expect to actually cry.
But talking about it, it’s still so hard.
I’m still in shock, so in disbelief and it’s it’s completely shattered by world seeing my family agree like that my nephews have a father, my parents losing a child, a fortress too much and so oh God, Oh yeah.
I’ve not really been able to work since my mind’s been all over the place really, and.
That’s what made me realize that all those things that happened this year, I just don’t really matter.
It puts things in perspective and worrying about those things seems kind of pathetic now really.
You know, my, my brother was working his butt off so that he could take an early retirement to be with his kids and of course his wife and spend more time with them.
But he never got that chance and I just don’t want that to happen to me.
I don’t want that to happen to anyone.
Like all of this has made me realize that I want to help people spend as much time as possible with their family because I am so grateful that our family spent so much time together this year, but we assumed we’d have several more years together.
We never thought anything like this would happen, but we just can’t take our time for granted.
And as an entrepreneur, we’re like led to believe that hustling all day every day is just part of what we have to do to make it.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
And I know there’s a lot of content out there talks about work life balance and the anti hustle movement, but some of them oversimplify it too, right?
If you’re just starting out, you can’t just yoga in the day and do a four hour workweek and expect to run an 8 biggest business in just six months despite how many courses you’d buy promising you that exact fantasy.
You unfortunately have to do lots of hard work but not all day every day.
And there is something in that cheesy phase about working smarter and not harder.
Like I just think there’s not enough strategy behind achieving goals and getting the life that you actually want, and instead we just seem to be copying others because they look like they’ve got it all worked out.
But several people are chasing someone else’s definition of success and copying a life that doesn’t actually exist and wondering why things are not working out for them.

So I want to close this episode on the biggest lessons I’ve learnt this year because I started to ask myself if the happiest day of my life didn’t make it a kid year, then what actually defines a good life?
And I realize that definition is purely subjective, even though we’re probably led to believe it’s not at all.
But you know, during this my time off and the fact that I haven’t been able to work as much, I’ve been doing so much self reflection to get through this.
And I’ve realized that I’ve learned some quite profound things this year.
And I really wanted to share them with you because I certainly wish I had this viewpoint before this year.
So the first point is that I’d say most founder stress is actually self-inflicted and wildly disproportionate.
And you’re probably not going to like hearing that, but I do believe it’s true.
And think about the things that stress you out in your business, right?
Some stuff will absolutely be legitimate and unavoidable.
The perils of running a business.
Or that’s just life I guess.
But many things will be things like worrying about your reputation online, noise, mistakes and other people’s behaviour.
We put arbitrary deadlines on things and give ourselves anxiety trying to reach goals that we upset basically for others to be impressed by.
And I know I definitely did all this, but then I realized none of it actually mattered when something real happened, you know?
So next year I want to be selective over what I stress about.
I’m going to ask myself what is still worth stressing over when something unexpected or major happens.
So #2 is that time is the only non renewable resource.
But yet we pretend otherwise.
Like, we act like we can always make time later, after that launch, after the growth phase, after the exit, you know, But later is not guaranteed.
And building a life on that assumption is kind of reckless.
And so working out our priorities is probably the most important thing that we can do.
And that’s not actually an easy job because everything often seems like a priority.
And I realized this year that when we say, oh, yeah, someday, what we really mean is never.
Like we don’t even realize we’re doing that.
And they think about it, right?
It’s what our parents used to do to us as kids to like, ease their way of an awkward situation.
Like, oh, when can I have a pony someday, darling?
Like dig me wrong.
I’ve never asked for a pony.
I’m just, you know, trying to think of something.
It’s ridiculous that like the parents are like, oh, someday, darling, like, you know, But you know, so if you’re saying someday to something, you’re probably never going to get to it.
So if you genuinely want to get to that thing that you’re saying someday to then make a plan to make it happen with concrete milestones and keep yourself accountable #3 I’d say that grinding for a future version of life is a dangerous lie.
Now, along the same lines as that Sunday point I just said.
Working endlessly now so you can enjoy life later only works if that later actually comes.
And watching someone I love do everything right and still lose that chance completely broke that illusion for me.
So I now want to work in shorter bursts to make my current life as good as it can be.
Because I don’t even know if I’ll have a later life.
So why make myself miserable and stressed now if I don’t even know I will get to enjoy the benefits later?
Now, I love future planning and long term thinking, but there also needs to be a balance between enjoying your life now and preparing for the future.
So take that holiday, buy that designer handbag, go to that spa.
And yes, these are totally all of my guilty pleasures and I’m trying to justify my spending.
But I do believe that we should enjoy the life that we have now too.
We can always make no money if we’re doing things the right way.
So #4 would be around the fact that big teams and constant chaos are not badges of success.
Because I found that many founders are stressed not because they’re ambitious, but because their businesses are badly designed.
And after pivoting somewhat this year to work with more founders or smaller businesses, I’ve realized that they’re not bad business owners at all.
They just don’t have the right systems in place because no one has ever told them about the importance of systems.
Instead everyone focuses on the shiny things, the vanity metrics, the PR, the big wins and stuff.
But things like over hiring and constant firefighting drain so much time and energy without even creating better outcomes.
So this is not a badge of honour that you can proudly call start up culture, but instead this is just poor organization and it can be fixed.
And it’s what led me to do my whole small team’s big profit series that I plan to continue next year.
And I’d say the final lesson is that success should reduce stress, not require more of it.
And this was really the big one for me because so many people said to me that to be successful, you need to endure a lot of stress.
Now, I get an element of that.
As I said, I do believe in hard work, but if a business only works when you’re exhausted, you’re anxious, and you’re absent from your family, it’s not a good business.
I want to help people build small teams, real profits and lives that they actually get to live.
The people who can do their 4 hour work weeks are the ones who are truly successful.
You need to work your way to that success however.
But if you are building for the life you want, you can put things in place to make that happen.
So many people I know work their way and bust their asses to tell their company, only to then become an employee of that company and be even more stressed than ever.
And that’s not the life that I want, nor do I want that for my clients who are actually searching for a quieter life and don’t want to copy the exit strategy of these big hustle bro founders.

So I’ve learnt a lot this year.
I’ve learned about the people I want around me in 2026, about the type of clients I want, the type of content I want to make, how I want to spend my time, and what impact I want to make on the world.
And so I’m going to be making lots of changes in 2026.
And I have no shame in saying that I will be going for the life that I want to lead.
Now, it won’t look like other people’s.
And some people may think that actually it’s not a successful lie or it’s not ambitious enough.
But I finally learned to not care what other people think because all that matters to me are the people that I love and getting to spend as much time as possible with them.
And everything I do from now on is to facilitate that.
So I hope this episode helps you to reflect too and realize that time is precious.
Although I hope that you think that the 30 minutes or so you’ve spent listening to this episode is time well spent and that it will help you achieve your goals in 2026 too.
So however your year went this year, if you also had the worst year of your life, please try to find the good in it too.
I know it’s not going to be easy, but the lessons that I’ve learned this year have been so huge that I know they’re going to have a major impact on my life going forward.
And for that, I’m grateful.
And I’m grateful for all of you tuning in each week to these episodes.
I really hope you’ve enjoyed the season so far.
I’d love for you to message me on social media, whether that’s Instagram or LinkedIn and just let me know what you’ve enjoyed the most.
I would welcome hearing from each and everyone of you.
And so I think that’s it for me and happy holidays and keep sniffing out the bullshit.