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The Honest Business Advisory™ - Strategy For Female Founders

@honestbusinessadvisory

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Multi-Award Winning Business Strategist Helping Female CEOs Grow @honestbusinessadvisory
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Tripling a business in just under 2.5 years and hitting an annual sales target 5 months early sounds great and impressive (I mean it really bloody is).

But here’s the bit that matters:

this all comes down to implementation, leadership evolution and daily practice.

It wasn’t one launch or sales push (this client doesn’t launch at all).

It wasn’t “finally finding the right tactic.”

It was years of very focused behaviour from an fantastic founder who:
-runs the business on numbers, not vibes. 
-She executes the whole plan, not just the fun half. 
-She invests time and getting the reps in when it comes to skill development.

- She uses AI as a helpful tool, not a distraction. 
- She runs real experiments and reports back. 
- She’s built a freelance team and a visibility plan that actually move her forward.

My job in that has been to give her clean strategy, brutal honesty (really straight down the line), commercial guardrails, leadership expansion invitations and a place to bring the whole picture – business and life, and then turn it into a series of ongoing ever evolving decisions.

Her job has been to show up, implement, and keep going when it was boring, slow, inconvenient or emotionally quite expensive.

That’s what this carousel is about. 
Not “look at these results aren’t they fab,” but: this is what it actually takes behind the screenshots to get results right now and to show you who you need to be if you want to be considered to joining my curated roster of wonderful clients.

I’m not a magician, there is no magic pill, it comes down to dancing consistently with strategy, leadership and your beautiful energy.

If you’re a 6 or 7 figure founder on a mission and you know you’re ready for honest conversation that actually makes a commercial big difference to your business and the choices you then have in your life.

DM me “PARTNERSHIP” and tell me what you’re aiming to do over the next 12 months.

If I think I could be a key person to have on your rolodex as you move through your next season of growth, I’ll say and we can jump on a consultation call. taken in Newcastle upon Tyne by @honestbusinessadvisory

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4 months ago

Couldn’t be prouder of this work and it makes me incredibly hopeful when I think about all the businesses that are out there doing similar.

We are truly so much stronger together.

So don’t forget that you get to make a choice everyday.

Lead, fold or crash out. All 3 are valid. You don’t have to pick one 100% of the time.

But I hope you take your anger and disappointment and turn it into growth and stability for your business(es) and community, it matters and makes more of a difference than it may feel today.

Stay fabulous friend.

I can’t wait to work alongside you over the years if you’re on this path. by @honestbusinessadvisory

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8 months ago

Scaling or growing your business is not that glamorous most of the time but it can be life changing & utterly fulfilling to watch what the impact that you create has on the people around you.

If you’re dedicated to going for more in 2025 consider gifting yourself with a support system that is a calm, reliable home for you to retreat to + proven to make your journey more profitable.

There’s just one spot left in my private consulting practice for 2025 (the support that the business in this post uses to create the kind of results you are plotting) & 4 seats available in our inaugural HBA+ 2025 Mastermind should you love the power of 1:1 + group facilitation.

The Mastermind is welcoming a curated small group of female founders across industries who are all working to scale their businesses sustainably to 6&7 figures in annual revenue.

If you’re looking to increase your revenue by 40-100%+ in the next 12 months - you’re in the right place, we need to chat!

#businessforgood #femalefounders #scalingbusiness #scaleyourbusiness #growthstrategy by @honestbusinessadvisory

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2 years ago

The decisions that worked at one stage don’t always keep working at the next and you might be feeling that right now. You change.

The business changes.

The world certainly has changed.

It can all feel really confusing and deflating.

These are the types of conversations I find myself having with wonderful business owners a lot and it’s not really that surprising.

Let this be permission for you to chase after what you want.

But also let it be confirmation that maybe it’s not the business model and it’s actually something else which is what it normally is for a lot of founders I speak with.

The accepting or decision making part is often what they find tricky and I get it. It’s scary, it feels like a risk or sometimes all a bit flat.

My biggest piece of advice is to encourage you to lean into self trust and not stay in the limbo or avoidance stage for too long. That’s what does huge damage to founders and what they’ve built.

You have to make a decision and keep moving.

The most successful founders I work with, learn to do this at pace and move on. We then roll with the punches of whatever the consequences are in front of them.

The founders who struggle are unfortunately the ones who either don’t make a decision or make one but aren’t really bought in and then find it really challenging to lead themself at their maximum potential.

Listen to what you want, challenge your own assumptions and beliefs, look underneath the first answer or idea you are presented.

You aren’t alone in this but you do have a choice to be one of the ones who evolves and really flys. taken in Newcastle upon Tyne by @honestbusinessadvisory

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2 days ago

1 year on from a celebration of a lifetime, and turns out the woman who wasn’t that fussed about getting married (it only took us 12 years), absolutely adores being a wife. 🤍 taken in Grantley Hall by @honestbusinessadvisory

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4 days ago

When you have strategic partnership support, you’re not given generic advice from me about scaling or expanding your team.

We’re in the weeds together with specificity around your specific situation, worts and all.

Data, feelings, desires it’s all on the table because adding more people into the mix is not the same as building capacity or sustainable growth that doesn’t keep you up at night worrying about making payroll.

We look at hiring through the lenses of how your right next hire can change what your business can do next.

When you’re established in business it becomes less about can we afford another person (although that doesn’t really go away) and more about what will this hire unlock and what needs to be true for it to pay off?

Cough cough, we take radical responsibility for them actually being able to succeed in their role.

That’s the difference that really enables growth to sit around - ultimately this comes from founders and leaders accepting that growth is not a one off event and more so a never ending adventure with many twists and turns.

If you’re in a growth stage and are ready for high level, high touch true advisory support - book a consultation call and let’s chat more about where you’re going! taken in Newcastle upon Tyne by @honestbusinessadvisory

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10 days ago

Achieved another 30 days of successfully resisting booking a trip to NYC 🌞🍂

Despite my husband asking me… ‘have you sorted an wedding anniversary present yet?’, me responding ‘ha no, have you?’ and his response being, ‘no, do you wanna go to New York in November and then we can both be sorted?’. taken in North East England by @honestbusinessadvisory

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11 days ago

The point of this post isn’t to make Strategic Partnership sound difficult (it really isn’t, it’s one of the most self-affirming, gorgeous experiences that you can gift yourself).

It’s to make the opportunity you have in front of you clear.

You are not hiring me because you know nothing about your business. You already are the expert in it. You’ve carried the risk thus far and got it to where it is and no doubt it’s been a ride.

You’re hiring me because you know that this next stage is more complex than the last (really what we mean here is that there are more consequences attached to the decisions you make everyday) and you want to actually enjoy the process of it with someone who wants to have fun with you at the same time.

That is where this relationship becomes valuable.

You get a strategic partner who learns the business properly. Someone who understands the history, notices the patterns, remembers what has already been tried and can help you see what is possible next.

Someone who can help you:
- make a bigger decision with more confidence
- spot an opportunity before it passes
- protect the value you have already created
- strengthen the parts of the business that are ready to grow
- challenge an assumption without trying to take over
- stay clear when things become complicated / hard

You do not need to be perfectly organised, endlessly confident or certain about every next step.

You do need to be willing to bring the real business into the room, engage with the work and stay in the CEO seat.

That is where the best work happens.

You get to lead with a wider view, better questions and sharper decisions as you lead.

Strategic Partnership is for established service-business owners who have built something good and want to see what it is capable of becoming next.

The opportunity is not just more revenue or growth.

It is a stronger, more robust, valuable business that feels good to lead everyday and aligned to the life you are building.

If that’s something that feels right for your next season of business, book a consultation call so we can see where we fit together. by @honestbusinessadvisory

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13 days ago

Pull up a chair friend 🌶️🍿
1. I’m not a fan of Founder birthday offers. Your business is turning 10? Huge, celebrate it. You turning 43 however is not a commercial event. I just think we can do better and ‘if’ you need a birthday to make sales, you need a sales system. 
2. Most (I really mean somewhere around 98%) IP-led B2B AI tools are built on some half decent IP and a prayer. Nowhere near enough consumer insight data and not enough IP. I’ve spent this year cleaning up the aftermath of what happens for the business owners who are buying and trusting them. Some of those audience trust rebuilds are going to take nine months+. Your people matter and are watching. 
3. Authenticity and sharing all the shit you’re going through is not the buying signal / conversion event you think it is. Be human, absolutely - share who you are and the challenges. Ditch the stiff corporate act, fine. But sharing has a fine line and a big chunk of buyers are adding you to the “not for us” list + your team didn’t sign up to be part of the story!!  

4. Demand dried up, so you transitioned it into a cheaper, “more accessible” offer. Now you have a demand problem and a margin problem. Fix the demand.  
5. “Only take advice from someone who’s done exactly what you want to do.” Sure, if you’d like strategy that worked for them 5-25 years ago. Markets move. Some of the most expensive decisions I’ve seen started with this exact sentence / what followed. 

6. “I nearly closed my business four months ago, then I found x thing.” Is that the flex? Buyers are already nervous enough, confidence is at an all time low... You’ve just sent them to your competitor with a head start.  
7. You don’t need 23 AI ‘employees’. Most founders don’t have 3 solid processes that are worth building an agent from. Yes to skills but the AI integration and education space is now an industry in itself, and you’re the target market as a small business owner. It’s also the perfect procrastination tool instead of converting more customers.

8. To the new wave on a personal mission to fix the coaching industry: the best thing you can do for it, is excellent work. Regulation isn’t goin by @honestbusinessadvisory

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15 days ago

The longer you’ve been in business, the less useful generic advice becomes.
 You’ve made a lot of difficult decisions.
 You’ve built the team, won the contracts, dealt with the difficult clients and figured out how to keep the business moving even when it was really bleak.

So no, you probably do not need another person arriving with a 47 step plan for how they would run your agency, clinic, care company, membership, cleaning business or consultancy.

But there is a point where the business becomes complex enough that your own judgement is no longer the only thing required.

You know the history behind every decision. You know why that service line exists, why that person was hired, why that customer was kept, why the pricing was set that way and why the last plan changed.

That context is valuable.

It can also make it harder to see what is still serving the business and what you are simply used to carrying.

This is usually where I come in.

Not to take over, or to turn your business into mine or to give you a template and call it strategy.

I help you look at the whole picture:
- what the business is now
- what the market sees
- where the best opportunities are for this season
- what is creating profit
- what is creating unnecessary complexity
- what your team is ready to own
- what the next stage actually requires from you in contrast to what you’ve got to give
- what legacy or the next 10 years actually means

You remain the expert in your business.

You still make the decisions.

You own your pipeline and sales responsibility.

But what you get is another experienced brain in the room to challenge the assumptions, connect the data and help push you towards what actually is meaningful to you in this season.

That is the value of collaboration at this stage.
Not replacing or overriding your judgement just sharpening the decision making.

Strategic Partnership is for owners of established service businesses who have built something really good and are now in the process of wanting to make the next chapter stronger. taken in Newcastle upon Tyne by @honestbusinessadvisory

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17 days ago

One of the reasons I love this work is that no two conversations are the same.

Sometimes a huge value add can come from the side quest short conversations / the ‘oh not sure that this is important but…’ chats.

It’s why I don’t expect you to fit all of your support requests into one perfect call and call it a day because I get you’ve got loads going on at any one time and often there’s a lot spinning around your head.

I’m not only looking at marketing, finance, leadership, operations etc in isolation or one isolated problem in a vacuum and that’s what often really helps founders long term.

I’m looking at how the whole thing connects, what deserves attention now and what’s lagging.

Sometimes the answer is complicated.

Most of the time it is very simple.

The main project we are focused on moving forward is important but the work around it often is what founders cite as being really valuable to their evolution and success.

That range is what Strategic Partnership is built on: helping established service-business owners who have built something real solid and want a strategic partner who can help them see what is possible, what is necessary and what comes next.

Not just solving problems within their business but noticing the risks, opportunities and decisions that go into protecting it.

Book a consultation call when you’re ready to go deeper and let’s discuss what realistic and stretchy outcomes could look like for your specific business. by @honestbusinessadvisory

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23 days ago

See you for lunch sometime soon yeah?

…we can chat about being money loving, raging feminists, who are on a mission to be disgustingly over-resourced whilst battling various chronic illnesses, and are currently deeply angry at the state of the world but also love our husbands.

Can’t guarantee that we won’t have 6 lines of conversation going at all times and never actually finish any of them either. taken in North East England by @honestbusinessadvisory

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24 days ago