Corona pop, mud pies, Sindy dolls. Blondie at full volume in the back of my Dad’s Vauxhall Victor, singing like nobody was listening, because at seven years old, nobody was.
That girl had no idea what was coming. The good bits or the hard ones.
My career started in 1989 at the checkout of Iceland Frozen Foods. Saturday girl. Minimum wage. Scanning frozen peas and learning, without knowing I was learning, everything that would eventually matter.
Over sixteen years I climbed from that checkout to regional systems manager to IT management. I wasn’t handed any of it. I grafted. I figured things out. I showed up when it would have been easier not to.
When I look back at those years on the shop floor, I see the entire foundation of how I run my business today. People skills. Systems thinking. How to read a room. How to keep going when the pressure’s on. How to lead without a title and earn trust without demanding it.
I just didn’t know it was called entrepreneurship yet.
In 2008, my world stopped.
My dad died suddenly. And the grief didn’t arrive quietly, it detonated. Every bit of pain I’d been quietly carrying for years shattered at once, and I didn’t know how to put myself back together.
I went to counselling. I made hard decisions. I walked away from things that weren’t mine to carry anymore. And slowly, over about two years, I rebuilt. Not back to who I was, forward into who I actually wanted to be.
I found meditation. Creativity. Graphic design. I found that when everything else fell away, I still had my instincts, my curiosity, and an appetite for making things that meant something.
Losing my dad was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. It was also the moment I chose my own life. I don’t say that lightly. I say it because I think you need to know it, because if you’re reading this, you’ve probably had your own version of that moment. The one where you finally stopped doing it the way everyone else expected.
Life begins at 40, they say. For me, that was literally true.
I launched my business the year I turned forty. Cast a wide net. Offered everything to everyone. Worked fourteen-hour days, seven days a week, and felt guilty every time I stopped.
Sound familiar?
It took me longer than I’d like to admit to understand that the problem wasn’t my work ethic. It was that I was following a blueprint built for someone else’s business entirely. Scale-first. Team-assumed. Hustle as a virtue.
I’m a solo creator. I always have been. And the advice that gets handed to people like us was never really designed with us in mind.
So I stopped following it.
I refined. I focused. I found my niche, not in what I could offer, but in what I could see that others couldn’t. The gap between a consultant’s reputation and the structure supporting it. The warm relationships sitting quietly in someone’s contact list, going cold through neglect and no real system for tending them.
That’s what I help with now.
Not funnels. Not growth hacks. Not a forty-seven step framework that requires a team to run.
Just honest strategy, built around the relationships already in your world and the business you’re genuinely trying to grow.
I live in Bristol now, Brummie born and bred, but Bristol got under my skin and never let go. I’m here with Martin, the man who stole my heart, and our feline furbaby Stevie 🐾 (We lost our beloved Sprout in February 2024 after fifteen wonderful years. Some gaps don’t close, they just become part of you.)
In 2023 I dived headfirst into AI, not because it was trendy, but because I was looking for a better way of working.
In 2024, I co-launched Scale with AI with Dave Meier, building simple sustainable systems for solo creators who are done making things harder than they need to be.
In 2025, Helping consultants build a Relationship-First business that stands the test of time without burning out.
And in 2026? I’m quietly turning messy businesses into simple, sustainable systems that actually work.
That last part isn’t a pivot. It’s everything coming together.
Build relationships that last.
With courage & conviction
As I was reading this, I could just picture a phoenix rising from the ashes. That’s how I feel about my life. When people can turn tragedies into treasures, it’s a supernatural experience and adventure.