A Brilliant Gamble

Do you get that little voice in your head that tells you you aren’t good enough, no one likes you, you don’t fit in….or any number of other delightfully undermining jabs?

My guest today, Leah Steele, is the expert in Imposter Syndrome. A sufferer herself through her years as a lawyer she eventually developed techniques to deal with her demons and is now helping others to do the same.

In our interview we talk about the signal...

In just under a month, the next wave of Extinction Rebellion protests begin around the UK and elsewhere (w/c 7-Oct). Whether you’ve already been involved or you have other ways of responding to the climate crisis, the question many of us ask is, how can we, as individuals and as owners of small businesses, have any real impact?

That’s why I wanted to speak to today’s guest. Zoe Cohen is a former NHS Trust board member who ...

It’s September and many of us are thinking “Why does the holiday have to end?”.

Well, maybe it doesn’t. On today’s show I speak to Phil Quinnan who stepped off the hamster wheel, not to start a business, but to take some time to reflect and reconnect with himself and his family in the Italian countryside.

In our interview we talk about how he came to this decision, how he made it possible and the lesson’s he learnt by taki...

Catherine is a best selling author, VA and VA trainer.

Virtual Assistance is one of the fastest growing professions today for people leaving the 9-5. VAs are administrators who work by the hour for small businesses. Increasingly they have specialisms - social media management, bookkeeping, design, copywriting - as well organising travel, appointments and taking calls for people like, um, me.

It was a life threatening illne...

How should you spend your day when you work for yourself?

Of course, there is no such thing as a typical day when you run your own business (which can be a problem for you if you’re used to structure!). But given that your time is largely yours to organise it’s useful to be intentional about what you prioritise.

In today’s show I talk about two concepts to help you organise your time around what’s really important.

I will ...

On today’s show I’m talking about failure… but in a good way!

Folks - failure is normal. Most of what happens when you take a Brilliant Gamble is failure. It’s just a part of the process of change. And I want to share with you a different way to think about failure and how to incorporate failure in to your business.

Maybe you don’t like the word failure and you’d rather I called it something else. But I want to take the ch...

Are you putting off building your website? Is it half done? Have you done it but you’re not happy with it?

Today’s show is here at the rescue!

I’m talking to Matthew Eldridge, Owner and Head Geek at Melt Creative Ltd and this episode is Websites 101!

I don’t want you to have any excuses to stall on your website, so in this interview we go back to basics.

We talk about:

• What a website is actually for?
• Email lists
• Lead ...

Creativity is hugely important to developing that sense of balance that so many of us are looking for. And women are particularly bad at this - men spend an average of 4 hours 29 mins a week on sports, hobbies and computer games versus women who spend about 2 hours 29 minutes. What??

And that’s why I wanted to talk to Sandra and Tara from Kick in the Creatives. They have podcast of the same name, a website and a 1000 membe...

What happens when your blog goes viral?

And what about when your blog is something as personal as your experiences of the menopause?

Jennifer Kennedy knows! Her blog is only 18 months old but she has to date, nearly 35,000 readers... and she balances that with a full time job as well.

Like so many of our guests Jennifer didn’t have a grand plan - she just got started, with the help of a friend’s 14 year old who set it up h...

We often think that we’re working up to a big change, that the hard part is making that change happen. So we spend years planning how we’re going to leave our job with the hope that, once it finally happens, we’ll be living the life of our dreams.

But the more I talk to you guys and reflect on the brilliant gambles I’ve taken, the more I realise that that’s only the start of the journey. What happens in the first 6-24 mont...

You might has seen I did a Facebook Live over on our A Brilliant Gamble Facebook Page, which I then shared in the Corporate Escapees Facebook Group (!) about an experience I had a couple of weeks ago when I had some quite negative feedback to an email I sent.

However, the feedback really woke me up. And while it was uncomfortable I also realised that I had stopped doing the things that make me feel connected with myself th...

On this week’s show I’m talking to Rebekah Bostan who responded to my survey on midlife expectations and experiences of work.

Brought up during apartheid in South Africa, making a difference is in her genes. Her mother ran an illegal mixed race school, bringing children from Soweto to learn at a school with white kids and Rebekah learnt that it’s always possible to do something to change things.

Today she combines her corp...

I had a great discussion over elderflower cordial the other day with fellow business ladies about our relationship with money and, specifically, whether you should ever work for free.

Most people who run their own business today create a lot of free content, they blog, they create free downloads, they write for other publications, they do TV and radio spots, they have a podcast! None of this ever makes us money but it take...

There are two things everyone wants to talk to me about - my trip last year with my daughter and dogs and whether they could do it too AND how to start their own podcast.

This week I’m talking to podcaster and digital nomad, Debbie Arcangeles about both of these!

Debbie makes money from podcasting even though she doesn't have a huge audience and she’s found a business model that allows her to live wherever she likes for as...

The whole power dynamic changes when you step out of corporate life and in to entrepreneurship. No matter how much influence you had before you left or how much of a wallflower you were, once you’re on the outside you need to be heard and seen.

In this episode I talk to Eleanor Beaton, an award winning Leadership expert for women entrepreneurs. A former journalist at CBC and the Globe and Mail in Canada, she helps women cr...

On today’s show it’s all about getting the money in.

There are lots of things to keep yourself busy when you run a business and many of them are important. But unless you set aside time to do the activities that get the money in you’re going to find yourself back in a 9-5 job.

I learnt these lessons the hard way, by nearly going out of business because I was spending my time doing what I enjoyed most and not making sales, ...

This week's guest is Miisa Mink, Founder and Chief Doer at DrivenWoman – an accountability club for women who want to achieve their goals and dreams - and the creator of Festival Of Doers.

Miisa has worked with hundreds of women who want to change their lives and in our conversation, she not only tells her own story of finding her joy, but shares the number one trait that stops other women from doing the same.

Miisa has an...

On this week’s show I’m sharing 10 good reasons to leave your corporate job.

Maybe leaving corporate life isn’t your only option – you could stay within corporate life but change company, change working hours, changing to working remotely, change career but stay within big business... How do you know if escaping the rat race for good is the right option right now?

I’ve identified 10 really good reasons to quit the rat race...

If you’ve got itchy feet there are lots of ways to transition out of your current job in to something you’d love a lot more. But I’m not sure whether the best way to do it is to take a bet!

Today’s guest, Marc Hogan, took a £1 bet that he couldn’t put on a one hour show at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival within 12 months. This was 10 years ago and on today’s show Marc explains how this changed everything for him.

The bet was...