I help female founders build businesses that look successful from the outside and feel that way from the inside (as well as being actually stable, scalable and profitable!). I'm obsessed with one question: why do so many founder-led businesses look like a triumph and feel like a hostage situation? My job is to fix that, and to stop women apologising for wanting both the impact and the money.
Pete is the face of the Clarity Check, affectionately known in the trade as the Shit-o-Meter. He's a five-question diagnostic that tells a founder, in about ninety seconds, whether her business is actually clear or just busy.
I made him because most founders don't have a strategy problem. They have a clarity problem. And a poop emoji gets the point across faster than any 2x2 matrix I've ever drawn.
He's also a very good test of which rooms I belong in. The ones that laugh are the ones I want to be in.
Original signature toolWhy so much online content sounds the same, and why AI is making it worse, not better. The case for putting yourself back into your business, what gets lost when you don't, and the specific moves that bring a founder's voice back from the dead.
Tone: Spicy. Quotable. Hosts have used this one as a teaser clip.The Oakland A's didn't win by buying better players. They won by spotting what the rest of the market was mispricing. I think female founders, and the women who back them, are sitting on the same opportunity. Here's where I'd look first.
Tone: Big-picture. Slightly contrarian. Ends with something to do, not just something to think about.Female founders run a third of the world's businesses on roughly two percent of the funding. We talk about what that actually means in practice, why it isn't a pity story, and what it would take to make it impossible to ignore.
Tone: Mission-led. Best for hosts whose audience cares about the bigger picture.Every founder can tell me what she sells. Far fewer can tell me what she's actually in business to do. This is the conversation that changes that, usually with at least one moment of "oh shit, I've been running the wrong company."
Tone: Reframe-heavy. The kind of episode listeners message you about for weeks."Lifestyle business" is fine until you want to leave. We talk about what enterprise value actually means, the gap between a business and a self-employment trap with better branding, and how to start closing it without burning the whole thing down.
Tone: Practical. Lawyer-brain meets founder-brain. Numbers welcome.Most female founders aren't bad at selling. Marketing is simple, it's about the right product to the right person at the right price at the right time. We unpick where that's breaking down, and what to do about it before another quarter quietly disappears.
Tone: Direct. Slightly cheeky. Built for founders who are tired of being told to "show up more."I qualified as a commercial lawyer because, aged 18, a man at a careers convention told me I shouldn't, I might want a family. Probably not the best basis on which to choose a career, but here we are.
I lasted long enough to figure out I was more interested in my clients' businesses than their legal problems. So I left, and started building things instead. Marble importing (a beautiful failure). Nineteen care homes in eighteen months with my husband (a real education in front-loading infrastructure). A chiropractic centre I took from zero to £218k in year one by engineering the marketing before we opened the doors.
What I learned across all of it: most founders don't need more frameworks. They need someone who can pull their business apart on the kitchen table and put it back together so it actually makes sense. That's what I do now, for the founders I work with directly, and on the podcast I co-host with Kelly Quinn.
I'm a foodie. I'm a film person. I think in stories before I think in slides. And I'm allergic to the word "should."
Halla Tómasdóttir and Kristín Pétursdóttir's investment firm, the one that came through Iceland's 2008 collapse standing up while the country's banks fell over. They credited "feminine values": risk awareness, real due diligence, profit with principles. It isn't a feel-good story. It's a receipt.
The Oakland A's didn't out-spend anyone. They spotted what the market was mispricing. I think female founders are the on-base percentage of the business world: undervalued, statistically excellent, and waiting for the right people to notice.
The McDonald's brothers had the better burger. Ray Kroc had the system. The film is a masterclass in what scale actually costs, and it's exactly the conversation I want female founders to have before they sign anything they can't unsign.
Every episode, there's a moment where a listener will want to pull over to write something down. I aim for that moment on purpose.
Most founders aren't waiting for information. They're waiting for clarity and for someone to say the thing out loud. I'm comfortable being that person.
I like to walk people through stuff so that they can see something hidden, Pete the Poop included, if your audience can take a poop emoji.
I'm old enough to know my limitations but I've got a lot of opinions, and I've got some stories. Some are not dull.
[Real host quote here. Two to three sentences. The kind of thing a host would actually say after a great recording, specific, warm, and ideally mentions something concrete the audience took away.]
[Second quote. Try to get one that's about how you handled a particular topic, and one that's about what you were like to work with as a guest. Both angles matter to bookers.]
Podcasts. Summits. Live events. If your audience is female founders building something real, I'd love to talk to them.
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