It’s important you get to know the person behind this website, and that’s why I’d like to share some of my story with you.

MY STORY

It was a big step to leave my CEO role and start a new chapter; running my own business.

As a Chief Executive, I had a challenging but rewarding career in the field of social justice, and a lovely, albeit stressful life in London.  But like so many women with a corporate career, I worked round the clock and found myself on the brink of serious burnout.

For several years, I’d considered starting my own business. But with a large mortgage to pay, I was wary about giving up the security of my job. Eventually I got to the point where the toll on my relationships, health, and overall quality of life became unsustainable and something had to change. 

Having made sure that I was financially secure, I took a (very) deep breath, handed in my notice and headed to Southern Spain for a year long sabbatical to figure out how to create a life which was more aligned with my purpose and values.

But not before heading to my local book shop to stock up on books about starting a business - only to discover that the vast majority of authors were men. This was hugely disappointing for two reasons.

First, because science shows that having visible role models who look like us - and hearing them tell their authentic stories - is hugely empowering for women entrepreneurs. This effect is based on the concept ‘Seeing is believing’.

And second, because I shopped with a number of women-owned brands - from Chrissie Rucker’s The White Company to Laura Tenison’s JoJo Maman Bébé - I knew they had a story to tell which wasn’t being chronicled.

So while I was on my sabbatical, I started to research women’s entrepreneurship and female founder stories. I learnt about the myriad challenges women face in building startups - from having to do more with less, to the layers of unconscious bias which too often leads to investors favouring founders who have similar backgrounds, educations, or experiences to their own.

I also discovered that while most women do what I did - take the time to educate themselves about starting a small business - all too often they‘re given generic advice that does absolutely nothing to enhance or improve their business, and leaves them feeling self-doubt and frustration.

The result? A staggering 78% of women entrepreneurs are stuck at a low-income level, trying to keep their head and revenue above water, turning over less than £50,000 a year (and typically closer to £25,000 a year), asking themselves “Do I really have what it takes?” Meanwhile male-led businesses are five times more likely than their female counterparts to turnover £1 million/ year.

It doesn’t have to be like this.

I realised that the skills I’d spent more than two decades honing would be invaluable to the women-led brands I felt drawn to work with. And that my experience as a Chief Executive - setting the company's strategic direction, maintaining profitability, building a team and managing the overall operations - was a perfect fit for what these business owners were lacking in their understanding.

Having started to feel rudderless on my sabbatical, I found a new way to connect with my purpose. Championing social justice is a thread that’s run through my career and here was an opportunity to support UN Global Goal 5 - gender equality and women’s empowerment - by eliminating the barriers to entrepreneurship for women.

That’s why my mission is to provide the highest quality, evidence-based business coaching and consultancy to women-led businesses so that they’re equipped with the tools, capacity and capabilities they need to build purpose-driven brands and to overcome the barriers that get in the way of them realising their ambitions

How what I did as a CEO helps my clients

Very much like the way I work with my consulting clients, my role as a CEO was to work collaboratively with my team to define our goals and vision for the future, and to figure out and implement the roadmap (strategic plan) to take the company from where it was to where we wanted to be.

To create this roadmap, we followed a similar strategic planning process to the one I use with my clients: a process which aims to answer four seemingly simple questions: 

1. Where are we now? 

2. Where are we going? 

3. What are the best ways to bridge the gap? 

4. How will we measure our progress towards our strategic objectives? 

These questions sound straightforward but creating and implementing a strategic roadmap meant making a set of clear choices about what we did - and just as importantly what we didn’t do. Once we’d made those choices, we focused all of our resources on those activities which would best help us realise our goals.

The end result was a fast-growing, purpose-led business which because it was financially secure, was able to pay its staff well while also building up a substantial financial buffer.

The skills I developed as a CEO, and use now 

As the leader of any organisation, you need to develop the right combination of hard and soft skills in order to influence others to follow your vision and increase the chances of your business being successful. The skills I developed as a CEO are very similar to those I use now as a business consultant/ coach and include:

Strong communication skills: Communication was an essential skill because, as the highest level of management in the company, the ability to communicate effectively helped the team to understand and trust the decisions I made. My role as a CEO was also to negotiate, gather information and discuss potential solutions with a range of stakeholders.

Creative problem solving The ability to reach a unique and innovative solution through a methodical approach proved to be an invaluable skill. Creative problem solving helped me steer the business through market changes, personnel and financial challenges, as well as an economic downturn.

Financial literacy: One of my biggest responsibilities was to ensure the business was successful financially. This required a substantial level of financial literacy, business management skills, a basic understanding of accounting and cash flow knowledge.

Accessibility; Being a successful CEO means being a good listener, making time for others and being approachable. I used a range of strategies to encourage staff members to communicate their ideas and concerns and and improve my relationships with them. By adopting a coaching or mentoring style of leadership, I strived to bring out the best in my employees, and create a purpose-led culture.

Initiative and ambition: In this context, initiative is the knowledge or power to act before others do while ambition is to set high goals for yourself, even when just starting out. As the person with the most responsibility in the company, it was my job to make sure we delivered the ambitions and high goals which we set for ourselves.

Motivation: As the leader of the company, employees look at your example to stay motivated. This meant keeping high energy levels and making my presence and actions visible. I motivates my teams in other ways, too, with things like incentive programmes and creating a caring company culture where employees motivate one another to excel through competitions or other activities.

Ability to assess performance: The ability to assess your own performance and that of your team is an important skill for a CEO to develop as this helps you determine if previous actions and behaviours were effective or productive. I used past decisions to help me determine how to handle similar situations in the future. This helped me to decide where to invest in training and resources for my employees, as well as to target areas where the company might improve.

Decisiveness: As a CEO, I had to make quick decisions to keep the business on pace with its goals, while dealing with deadlines and enquiries from a variety of internal and external sources. Decisiveness was a skill that came with confidence and experience, and meant that I was able to make big decisions that could affect the whole company.

In this article about business coaching, I explain the hard and soft skills you need to be able to support people on their business journey.