2025 Unwrapped: Panic, Persistence, and Private Joke ®

26th December, 2025

As 2025 draws to a close, I wanted to spend some time reflecting on how far Private Joke ® has come since it's relaunch this summer, and share some learnings particularly around rejection, celebrating the tiniest of wins, and how essential it is, as a more "creative" entrepreneur, to detach your identity from business outcomes.

I've always believed in candidly sharing my journey creating PJ as, despite what social media might lead you to believe, it is NOT sexy. I sat down on Boxing Day, surrounded by half-drunk mugs of far too milky tea and cold bacon sandwiches, to write this. It was cathartic and helped to really drill down on what worked, and what didn't.

Whether you're reading this as a fellow entrepreneur or as someone who also believes the next generation should put foreign language learning front and centre, I hope it is valuable, interesting, and hopefully, jussssst hopefully, a lil bit funny too.

❤️,🫒. 

1. January-May: Quiet Exhaustion

The first five months of 2025 were numbing. I was head down, working silly hours for an EdTech startup with a cool product but a toxic culture, squirrelling away all my pennies into the deposit for a beautiful home in Kent.

After deciding against a PGCE to train as a Secondary French & Mandarin teacher the summer before, I felt nothing but shame and exhaustion every time I thought about promoting languages.

It feels WILD to admit that now, just 1 year later.

...  But, the gameplay was also confusing and chaotic, and I kept oscillating between wanting to make 18+ themed versions (people said they wanted these, but didn't actually buy them), or going down the long, slow road: more educational, single-language games. 

After moving into my home, I unpacked all my old games, notebooks, and language textbooks from university. Munching on Fish & Chips on the floor of my bare living room, I spent the first evening in my new home mapping out what PJ could look like if I was to give it another go. Just one more lil push. Almost on autopilot, and without any expectations, I emailed some schools I'd worked with in the past asking to come and do language workshops.

2. May-June: Building Momentum

While working full-time, spending my evenings decorating the house to get ready for lodgers, I took almost all my Annual Leave to deliver workshops at St George's, Ascott and The King's School, Canterbury, as well as for the Festival of Play both in Dundee and London. It wasn't my intention to start working on the game, but people were curious. 

So I followed that curiosity, and ended up running with it. GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT.

Standing in front of hundreds of students over those couple of months, watching them giggle while exploring languages, as well as the serendipitous nature of how quickly and easily I'd booked the workshops made me think that maybe it was time. I was ready to start building Private Joke ® again. 

3. July-August: Creating Single-Language PJs 

I pulled the trigger on my high-pressure EdTech job and left in July. My confidence had been fast eroded when, one day, I learned that through the Franco-British Young Leaders, I'd be meeting Kier Starmer and Emmanuel Macron at the signing of the Bayeau Tapestry in July. This pulled me back into my language world, and was an exceptionally cool experience.

Mainly because when I was a student in Beijing I had a miniature pet Turtle called Emmanuel Macron. At the end of the academic year, I had to set him free into a pond and to my surprise, (and that of my best friend), I cried. For hours. If my 22yo self knew that I'd meet the real life Macron 7 years later, she wouldn't have believed it. Dreams do come true, boys and girls. 

Anyway. Towards the end of term, I created a quick "Last Lesson of Term MFL Game" bundle pack for £35, just to see where demand was at. The result?

• £105 in sales. Good use of the game with teachers using it as a quick warm-up activity, or a full lesson on languages. This had about 12+ different languages within, so it was more of a fun, one-off, rather than targeted language support.
• A few of those teachers then bought Christmas cards later in the year, which gave me hope that they remember the game, and are invested. 
• In the end I ended up slashing the price at just £5 to get the game into as many schools as possible, which was a good call. 

I then spent the summer getting settled into my new home, recreating the single-language editions of Private Joke ® in French, Spanish and English.

Then, PANIC. 

As I approached 30, I panicked and cycled 400km solo to Amsterdam on my rusty old bicycle ... in 4 days. I can't even begin to describe this trip lol. 

4. September: Panic Season

This was a huge month for me personally. I threw a big party to celebrate turning 30, took myself on a very "Eat, Pray, Love" trip to Seville, and settled into a new part-time job.

Professionally and PJ-wise, however, it was a wake-up call. I'd booked in a good number of meetings with Heads of MFL over the summer, built excitement around the new single-language editions of Private Joke ®, and showcased its use in the classroom. 

I felt confident that I would book around 5 Student and/or Teacher CPD Workshops, giving me a good injection of cash to create new language games and onboard specialist content creators ... but as the first, second, third, fourth nudges were sent following my detailed proposals, I started to panic. Nothing. I hadn't converted a single workshop.

Thank God I had secured a part-time job, and had a lodger. 

Panic Season was grim, but it taught me a lesson.

• It's good to be optimistic, but hedge your bets.
  • I had a "best case scenario" (e.g. all 5 meetings convert and I can spend 100% of my time building PJ) and a "worst case scenario" (e.g. no meetings convert, I have to get another job, and things build slowly). 
  • In the past when I've not allowed myself a Plan B, something within me becomes unlocked and this sort of rabid dog-like character just goes hell-bent on making it work. I didn't have it in me this time around. 
• The education sales cycle is LONG. Teachers need to know and trust that this product is going to save them time or money - ideally both.
  • One of the teachers I spoke to in summer had been following my content on LinkedIn for 2 years, just as the game had been invented. 2 years is a long, long time and the game has come on leaps and bounds since then.
  • My LinkedIn gets a lot of engagement, and it is pretty much my only social media platform these days. My friends think it's hilarious, but it works. 
  • Selling something to MFL departments that are already financially stretched? In a country that is closing university MFL departments left, right and centre? It's grueling, but not impossible.
  • I know and recognise that Private Joke ® has a long way to go in terms of its specific usecase in UK classrooms - it is great for speaking confidence, taking risks, humour, creativity, discovering the nuances of a culture and untranslatable words. But I'm not going to be lazor-focused on UK schools anymore. I'm taking PJ global, without borders.
• Cycling from Dover to Amsterdam for European Day of Languages. Document the JOURNEY. People love the journey. 
  • I documented my cycle trip across Europe on LinkedIn, and wove this with the launch of the European Day of Languages bundle, for which I found two corporate sponsors for. This enabled 5 UK State Secondary schools to get all three games in English, French and Spanish, and was a huge success.
    • Corporate sponsors for UK Secondary Schools are something that I want to look into more seriously for PJ Workshops next year. 
  • When I catch up with people at conferences now, even months later, they still mention the cycle trip. People buy from people, and it gave me hope that after my building season in the UK is over, I don't have to stay in the UK for PJ to continue to thrive. 
  • Nonetheless, I very much loath Instagram. Not posting there has potentially been a significant missed opportunity, but it is something that I am looking at rectifying in 2026 with the introduction of PJ Ambassadors. 

5. October-December: Chaos Season

I'll be honest, balancing a part-time job, managing lodgers, preparing for my driving test (which took me FOUR attempts), and flinging myself from conference to conference both up and down the UK and left and right of Europe, often speaking for free, and selling little to no games or workshops, exhausted me. So much so that I've had to recognise that for the next few years, Private Joke ® will be my fun, creative project on the side. Nothing more. 

I'd drifted into UK Secondary School CPD territory, where teachers with DECADES of experience were sharing free resources, classroom tips, and the nuances of the curriculum. Private Joke ® does not fit in the curriculum. It is a highly creative, nuanced and quirky way to explore language.  

Despite running myself into the ground this past month, I had fun designing and selling Christmas Cards, which did better than I'd expected. The French ones almost sold out, sales in British and Spanish did well, and I did manage to sell an ok number of German Christmas Cards in the end too. 

What's Next for PJ in 2026?

I plan to leave the UK at the end of summer 2026. After spending the last 2 years building a foundation for myself - the job(s), the house, the driving - it's time to launch myself into a new culture and a new language. Wahoooooo, adventure time. 

I plan to sustain Private Joke ® by recruiting a team of Student and Teacher Ambassadors, releasing new editions of the game in German and Italian, and will continue to run PJ workshops, which I can deliver in-person from now until the summer. After this, they will either be delivered by Ambassadors, or online by myself. 

The irony is that by building Private Joke ®, and trying to showcase foreign languages to everyone else, I haven't been able to immerse myself in overseas adventures and languages. Staying in the UK is suffocating me, and I think a lot of people my age feel this way. I miss chatting with Beijing taxi drivers, going to bars with my friends in Paris, and tutoring multilingual students from a remote town in Spain. It just doesn't make sense for me to be here in this chapter of my life, yano?

I am so excited to continue building Private Joke ®. Thank you to everyone who supported the game this year! ❤️