dreams do become things

 

In late July of 2015 I was sitting in the little bungalow I had rented for a month in Ubud, Bali unpacking my bags (again) and placing my things around the room to make it feel like home. As I set up my mobile office: laptop, pens, 6 notebooks… I giggled at myself. Who the fuck travels the world with 6 notebooks, I thought. I do. But this is ridiculous. There has to be a better way.

 

But I had a system. A system that required that many notebooks. I started researching and landed on the only solution that seemed plausible: a Filofax divider that I could translate my seven notebooks into one, organised, systematic method. I wrote about that system and how it worked in an article titled: My pretty peach planner has revolutionised my life. It’s a love story.

 

That article received a lot of traction, excitement and engagement with countless emails asking if I could recreate my system and make it available. I liked the idea. I had no idea how to start. I’d always had an online, non-physical, location-independent business. How and where do you even begin with creating a product.

 

Over the years my planning, manifesting and journaling method evolved but I kept using the same old Filofax and refilling the pages every 6 months until it started to look scruffy and crack at the edges. Over those same years, I would sometimes lose myself in a rabbit hole of research on developing my method into a physical product. Every time I ended up on the Alibaba site looking at stationary factories based in China. It was disappointing and not what I wanted. I wanted to feel good about what I was going to create and put out in the world and this plastic mass-production option seemed to be the only one available to me and never felt right.

 

One day in mid-2019, while I was living in Mexico, the nudge to revisit the idea became stronger and stronger and again I spent countless hours looking for a small, kind and ethical printing house, preferably in Europe, that would take on my little dream. Finally, after many, many emails I received a response. After that everything fell into place with such fluidity and ease it was as if all I had to do was hold space for the vision.

 

The dream of sharing my life-organising and self-reflection method took on a life of its own: the name arose from a discussion with a friend, the change from Filofax to organic linen hardcover came from the desire to limit the use of plastics, the evolved version of my system was mapped out across many, many google docs and tenderly handed to a designer to turn into the vision I held in my heart for her. I share the story of this birthing of ideas in a podcast interview on living an intuitive life on ‘La Luna Eres Tu’ here:

 

 

5 years from its original conception, 1 year after that dream was put into motion, on an unusually hot June day a big delivery truck pulled up outside my Brighton flat with a palette of brown boxes: the first 500 Plannhers arrived earthside and into my little hands. With the help of my neighbours whom I later rewarded with chocolate and wine, we shlepped those boxes up into my flat filling up an entire section of my living room.

 

I spent the next 6 months going to the post office every day sending Plannhers to every corner of the world with so much love and gratitude. There’s nothing like the feeling of knowing that something you have made is going to live, love and support another soul in another corner of the universe.

 

Plannher continued to organically grow. Two weeks ago a new and edited version landed with two new colourways, and its own home with a website out in the world plus a fulfilment warehouse that posts each order out on my behalf. Our beautiful Instagram community is steadily growing and I have hired my first employee to manage customer service and marketing for the brand. It has been such an incredible journey and a powerful reminder that when you stay with what is and allow the unfolding of things dreams do become things.

 

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for your love and support with this dream of mine. It means everything to me.