From the outside looking in on Slow Fashion Australia, everything seemed great. Clare (the founder and designer) had beautiful products, happy photoshoots, a studio, and even a shopfront. To anyone scrolling past, her slow fashion brand looked polished and thriving.
But behind the scenes, Clare was stressed. She felt out of alignment, she was exhausted, and she struggled to see the pathway ahead. A major piece of the puzzle was also missing: sustainable profit.
This isn't a story about a start-up brand in the first few years navigating the challenges of the fashion industry, though. These struggles can happen at any time, and when Clare reached out to me, she'd been in business for 18 years.
Clare is resilient, strong, passionate, and smart. She built her label from the depths of her personal story, designing body-loving fashion that women adore. But at some point, the joy began to fade. The “shoulds” of running a business piled up. The overwhelm crept in. She started to struggle.
That's when she got stuck in the same loops.
Clare shared with me, “When you do everything yourself, you can get really stuck in your own head. I recognised I was having the same thought loops that were preventing me from making changes in my business. The same ones for five years.”
And like so many slow fashion founders, Clare was carrying the weight of her business mostly alone. She was designing, making, marketing, and selling, all while second-guessing herself and questioning if she was doing enough.
And the hardest part was that the loops weren’t new. They had been circling in her head for five years. That’s half a decade of energy spent stuck in the same patterns.
After 18 years of figuring as much out on her own as she could, Clare realised she couldn’t move forward without help.
So she took the leap and started working with me.
After two sessions, she said, “The difference in how I feel about my business and how it’s going two months later is quite staggering. The safety that I felt opening up to Claire was amazing. Exploring the mindset stuff and the self-limiting beliefs that held me back, that stuff has been super powerful and made a massive difference.”
And in just two months, Clare completely shifted the way she runs her brand.
She raised her prices. She launched a new collection. She moved studios. She began creating organic content instead of relying on ads. She saw a surge in visibility, engagement and sales. And, most importantly, she started to feel the joy return to her business.
Now she owns her worth.
Clare has been running her label for nearly two decades, but she told me something that hit home: “I feel so much more confident and empowered and I’m really owning my worth more than I have ever before in 18 years of running my business.”
Yes, we hit epic sales milestones. Yes, she smashed some big goals. Yes, the strategy stuff is important. But giving someone the confidence to see and trust their own abilities in business... That's magic.
And this is what happens when a founder steps out of survival mode and into sustainable systems. The TFA Framework doesn’t just teach pricing, branding, or marketing. It teaches a new way of thinking about your business, one that supports you as much as it supports your brand.
But you have to be prepared to ask for help, and you have to be ready to make changes.
Because getting help works. But asking for help is hard.
We live in a society that glorifies hustle culture. We’re taught to figure things out on our own. We wear exhaustion like a badge of honour. We tell ourselves that working 12-hour days is what it takes to succeed.
But it’s not sustainable. And it’s not what life is about.
Yes, running a fashion business is a challenge. But when you find your flow, when you put better systems in place, and when you get the help you need, your business can be wildly profitable, wildly joyful, wildly successful.
Clare is living proof. She's using the strategies from my TFA Framework, she's stepping up, she's stopped boxing herself in, and she's started backing herself to grow.
The TFA Framework is a 12-step mentoring program I created for slow fashion and sustainable brand founders who want to scale without burning out or selling out.
It’s the system I used to take my own conscious fashion business from in debt to over $500k without ads, and it’s the same system Clare used to completely transform her outlook in just two months.
Here’s how it works...
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12 weeks → Practical strategies and tailored mentoring.
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10 spots → Small group for maximum support and real results.
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1 goal → To help you build a profitable, purpose-driven fashion brand you love.
You’ll learn how to...
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Price with profit and purpose.
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Build a brand story that sells itself.
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Optimise your website for conversions.
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Use SEO to grow your traffic.
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Market your brand organically — no ads needed.
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Create systems that save you time and energy.
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Scale sustainably, aligned with your values.
If you're ready to grow and if Clare’s story resonates, you already know it’s time for change.
You don’t have to stay stuck in the same thought loops. You don’t have to keep second-guessing your prices. You don’t have to keep exhausting yourself with ads that don’t feel aligned.
There is another way.
We kick off in September with an intimate group of only 10 slow fashion founders. Over 12 weeks, you’ll learn how to increase your sales, build a brand that feels good and pays you well, and finally run a business that supports your life instead of draining it.
12 weeks is all it takes.
Claire x
