When did you join AYS?.

Joining AYS right at the beginning of this year was the light which I could follow home, after a year crisscrossing the Atlantic building my business in the US. At the time, I didn’t believe my ability to see the power in someone’s story and teach them how to turn it into the heart of an unstoppable business, was valued in my own country.

Where you were in your business before you started working with Ruth.

Despite a TED Talk, a sold-out national speaking tour of the UK, becoming both a crowd-funded publisher and a published author, nobody here could teach me how to turn all this into a sustainable business at the time. When the media moved on and the book sales dried up, I found myself in a “minimum wage” job with a ceiling cap on what I could take home, and still all the responsibility for putting a roof over my sons’ heads and food on the table in front of them.

When I first spoke to Ruth, a part of me thought it was my fault, that I was “not smart enough.” The other part of me felt rejected like I just didn’t fit here. Deep down, I was really questioning what did I have to do to be successful here in the UK?

In Ruth, I found not only a woman who had built her business in the time I’d been “in my wilderness” and modelled that success in her own right here but, more importantly, a woman who put her people and their growth right at the heart of what she did – which meant me.

That feeling of being accepted for who I am, respected for my talents, and embraced while being offered her own hard-won experience exactly where needed, made the whole world feel bigger and yet allowed me to feel familiar with it.

Where you are now in your business?

I began to achieve growth almost instantly, I had a full roster of 1:1s and was able to fill my first group programme, Brand Story Bootcamp, right out of the gate.

What has it been like working with Ruth?

Working with Ruth has felt like having a wise cheerleader in my corner, which has allowed me to embrace what I offer and grow it in her generosity, respect, and equanimity. She is a beautiful example of a mentor, colleague, leader, businesswoman and coach, the greatest quality is that she has built her business with exemplary integrity. She is the real thing.

What is the greatest asset of being part of AYS for you and your business?

Ruth has helped me prove that what I do not only has value, but also helped me to see the fear of visibility, the disbelief that our stories have business value, and that uncertainty over which of our stories works hardest, is very real for women entrepreneurs – and we have very specific challenges as we are often mothers who feel need to be careful, and we are building purpose and heart-based businesses in a world that hasn’t shown us our worth often.

So far we have found, 6 people’s modalities, 5 books, 4 signature talks, 2 programme names, a podcast launched with Netflix, and one client got an invite to speak at a TED within three months of working with me. I have been able to turn not only my own success into a real way forward for others, but also show that what it takes to get there is inside us all, to really help people see the magic in their story and have that bigger vision for themselves..