The First 10 Months of Building Optima: Change, Clarity and Consistent Growth
When I look at the growth of Optima Operations Consulting over the last 10 months, the numbers matter.
But they aren't the part of the story I'm most proud of.
As of September 22, 2026, my website has generated approximately:
1,793 visits
1,400 unique visitors
2,900 pageviews
1,093 direct visits
265 visits from Facebook
150 visits from Instagram
110 visits from Pinterest
And when I look at the graph, I can see something I couldn't see when I started:
consistent growth.
Not perfectly linear growth.
Not viral growth.
Not overnight success.
Growth built through months of changing, learning, refining and. most importantly, finally embracing the vision I had for this business.
The First 10 Months Weren't Really About Growth
When I started building Optima, I thought a lot about what I needed to create.
A website.
Services.
Templates.
Content.
Social media.
A podcast.
Blogs.
Resources.
Offers.
Like many entrepreneurs, I was building while simultaneously trying to figure out exactly what the business was supposed to become.
And that meant things changed.
A lot.
Pages changed.
Messaging changed.
Offers changed.
My audience became clearer.
Products evolved.
My content strategy shifted.
The website was reorganized.
I tested ideas that didn't stick.
I created things that eventually needed to be rebuilt.
And there were plenty of moments when I wondered whether I was changing too much.
Looking back, I don't think I was.
I was finding the business.
My Vision Became Clearer as I Built
One of the biggest lessons I've learned is that you don't always find clarity before you start.
Sometimes you find clarity because you started.
The more I worked with business owners, created resources, wrote blogs, recorded podcasts and thought about the problems I wanted Optima to solve, the clearer the vision became.
I didn't want to create another business telling entrepreneurs to simply work harder.
I wanted to help business owners create structure.
I wanted to help the entrepreneur who has a million ideas but doesn't know what to prioritize.
The business owner who has everything stored in their head.
The mompreneur trying to build a business between school drop-offs, activities, family responsibilities and everything else life brings.
The founder who has created something successful but realizes the business now depends on them for almost everything.
The goal became increasingly simple:
Help people build businesses that operate with greater clarity, structure and intention.
Because structure creates freedom.
Then I Had to Implement the Vision
Having a vision and operationalizing it are two completely different things.
And this is where I started applying the same principles to Optima that I talk about every day.
I needed to stop simply creating and start building an ecosystem.
That meant connecting the pieces.
My Business Foundation Assessment helps business owners understand where the gaps are.
The Action Planner helps turn those results into priorities.
The Optima Path, Assess → Act → Build, creates a clear path forward.
The six business foundations, Vision, Operations, Process, Leadership, Growth and Personal, provide structure around what actually needs to be built.
The templates, SOPs, workbooks and resources help business owners implement it.
My blogs educate.
My podcast allows me to go deeper.
My social content introduces the ideas.
My AI Business Advisor helps entrepreneurs think through their challenges.
Suddenly, these weren't separate things I was creating.
They were pieces of the same vision.
And once that became clear, everything started becoming easier to connect.
Then the Website Started Moving
This is why the website growth means so much to me.
In January, traffic was small.
February grew.
Then it dropped.
March and April weren't spectacular.
There wasn't a straight line upward telling me:
"Yes, Saskia. This is definitely working."
I had to keep building without that reassurance.
Then things started changing.
Traffic increased significantly in May.
July climbed again.
August became the strongest month on the graph, approaching 500 visits.
And by September 22, hundreds of additional visits had already been recorded for the month.
The graph finally started reflecting what had been happening behind the scenes for months.
The foundation was being built.
1,793 Visits Is Just the Beginning
Could I compare 1,793 visits to businesses generating hundreds of thousands of website visits?
Of course.
But what would that accomplish?
I'm far more interested in comparing Optima today to Optima in January.
That's the comparison that matters.
I went from a website that very few people knew existed to approximately 1,400 unique visitors and 2,900 pageviews.
More importantly, people are arriving from multiple places.
Facebook.
Instagram.
Pinterest.
Direct traffic.
Search and other sources.
Every blog I publish gives someone another opportunity to discover Optima.
Every podcast creates another piece of content.
Every Pinterest pin creates another path.
Every social post reinforces the message.
Every template expands the resource library.
The individual actions might look small. Together, they're building an ecosystem.
Consistency Looks Different When You're Building
I've talked a lot about consistency over the past year.
But I think we sometimes misunderstand what consistency actually means.
Consistency doesn't mean doing exactly the same thing for 10 months.
It doesn't mean refusing to change your strategy because you've already invested time in it.
And it definitely doesn't mean continuing something that isn't aligned with where you're trying to go.
For me, consistency has meant consistently showing up for the vision while being willing to change how I get there.
I've changed.
The website has changed.
My offers have changed.
My messaging has changed.
My strategy has changed.
But the underlying reason I'm building Optima has become stronger.
That's the kind of consistency I'm taking into the next stage of this business.
Now I'm Looking Forward to Consistent Growth
The first 10 months were about building, changing and finding clarity.
They were about experimenting.
Learning.
Listening.
Creating.
Rebuilding.
And eventually having enough confidence in my own vision to stop wondering what the business was supposed to look like and start building the business I actually wanted.
The next chapter feels different.
I'm not starting from zero anymore.
I have a growing website.
I have a library of resources.
I have a podcast.
I have content.
I have frameworks.
I have an assessment.
I have the Optima Path.
Most importantly:
I have clarity.
Now the goal isn't to reinvent everything again.
It's to keep improving what I've built.
To create better content.
To improve the customer journey.
To continue growing organic traffic.
To turn visitors into subscribers, assessment takers and customers.
To learn from the data.
To optimize what's working.
And to consistently show up.
Create. Optimize. Operationalize.
It's interesting that the journey of building Optima has ultimately mirrored the methodology behind the business itself.
Create.
The first stage required building something that didn't exist.
Optimize.
Then came the changes, learning what worked, eliminating what didn't and getting clearer about the direction.
Operationalize.
Now it's about turning that vision into repeatable systems that can continue working and growing.
Maybe that's why I'm grateful the first 10 months weren't perfect.
Because they taught me something I want every entrepreneur building something new to understand:
Your first version doesn't have to be your final vision.
You're allowed to change.
You're allowed to refine your offer.
You're allowed to rewrite the website.
You're allowed to realize that something you created three months ago no longer fits.
You're allowed to get clearer as you go.
The goal isn't to build everything perfectly the first time.
The goal is to keep moving toward the business you actually want to build.
Here's to the Next 10 Months
When I look at the website graph now, I don't just see traffic.
I see every change.
Every late-night idea.
Every blog.
Every template.
Every page I rewrote.
Every time I questioned something and decided to improve it.
Every time I chose to keep going even when the numbers were small.
The first 10 months gave me something far more valuable than a perfect business.
They gave me clarity about the business I'm building.
And now?
I'm excited to see what happens when that clarity meets consistency.
The foundation is built.
The vision is clear.
Now it's time to grow.
