Small Business Consultant

It's not a time-management problem if there is just too much business for one person to hold. I speak to a lot of established business owners who are convinced they need to become more organised. A better diary. More time blocking. A new project-management system. Perhaps another VA to finally get on top of everything. And sometimes those things genuinely help. But there comes a point where we have to stop trying to make the founder more efficient and look at what the business is actually asking her to hold. How many offers are you delivering? How much client work still needs you personally? How many decisions come back to you? How often does your team need your input before something can move forward? How many things are technically delegated but still require you to check, approve or fix them? Because you can organise your diary beautifully and still have too much in it. And I think this matters particularly for women whose businesses are doing well. When the clients are there and the revenue is healthy, it’s very easy to assume you're the problem because you somehow can’t keep on top of the business you created. Maybe you don’t need to get better at managing everything- maybe there are just things you shouldn’t be managing anymore. That’s a business-design conversation, not a question of "productivity". Save this for the next time you find yourself downloading another productivity app.

Your business doesn’t need to be struggling for you to want something about it to change. In fact, Sun, Sea & Strategy is specifically for women whose businesses are already working. You have clients. You’re making consistent money. You’ve probably been doing this for a few years, and there may be a team, contractors or associates involved now too. From the outside, there might not appear to be a problem at all. But you’ve started wondering whether the version of the business you’ve built is still the version you want to keep running. Maybe too much still depends on you. Maybe you’ve grown into a role you don’t particularly enjoy. Maybe there are offers, clients or ways of working that made perfect sense three years ago but don’t anymore. Or perhaps nothing is obviously wrong- you just know you don’t want to automatically spend the next five years building more of the same. That’s the point at which Sun, Sea & Strategy becomes useful. You don’t need me to teach you how to start a business. And you don’t need to arrive in Spain knowing exactly what needs to change. You need a functioning business that we can properly examine, a willingness to be honest about what is and isn’t working anymore, and enough space away from the day-to-day to decide what you actually want next. Sometimes that means growth. Sometimes it means simplifying, changing your team, improving profitability, reducing delivery or getting yourself out of parts of the business you no longer want to be responsible for. The point isn’t to build a bigger business. It’s to make better decisions about the one you actually want to run. The next Sun, Sea & Strategy retreat is sold out, but future dates are coming. If you’ve built a successful service business and you’re starting to question what the next version should look like, join the waitlist through the link in my bio.

My business retreat starts six months before anyone gets on a plane to Spain. Because I don’t particularly want seven women arriving at the villa on day one and spending the first morning trying to work out what they actually want help with. Sun, Sea & Strategy includes what I call the CEO Runway. In the six months before the retreat, we have three group calls alongside structured CEO reflection work and a detailed pre-retreat questionnaire. It gives you time to start noticing things. What’s working really well? What keeps irritating you? Where are you spending far too much time? What decisions have you been putting off? What parts of the business have you simply carried on with because that’s how you’ve always done them? And perhaps the bigger question- what do you actually want from the next version of this business? By the time we arrive in Spain, you’ve already started thinking. I know more about what’s happening in your business, you’ve had time to notice the things that get lost when you’re busy running it, and we can use our time together to go considerably deeper. Because I don’t think the value of a business retreat should be measured solely by what happens during the four nights you’re there. The work starts before you arrive- and continues after you leave. The current Sun, Sea & Strategy retreat is sold out, but future dates are coming. Join the waitlist through the link in my bio if you’d like to experience it yourself- or join Behind the Retreat if you’re interested in the thinking that goes into creating retreats this way.

I’m delighted to be a Golden Peacock Awards 2026 FINALIST!🏆 Founded by Enfys Maloney in 2023, these prestigious awards celebrate the achievement, ambition and contribution of British small business owners. This year’s shortlist was selected by judges Debbie Gilbert and Sandra Garlick MBE. I’m proud to have my work recognised and look forward to joining fellow finalists at The End of Year Extravaganza in Bedford on 20th November. Congratulations to everyone shortlisted!

A sold-out retreat can still be an expensive hobby. You can have a beautiful villa, gorgeous food, brilliant guest feedback and every room filled- and still discover there’s remarkably little money left once everybody has gone home. Because selling all the places doesn’t automatically make a retreat commercially successful. When I’m looking at whether a retreat actually works as a business model, I’m thinking about much more than whether people want to come. Pricing: Have you priced based on the actual cost of delivering the experience- and included a proper margin- rather than looking at what everybody else seems to charge? Capacity: How many guests can you realistically serve without compromising the experience, and does that number make the model financially viable? Guest experience: Where is it worth spending money because it actually changes how somebody experiences the retreat- and where are you adding expensive things just because retreats are apparently supposed to have them? Operations: How much time, admin, coordination and responsibility sits behind those lovely photographs of everyone drinking coffee beside the pool? And then there’s the question I think gets missed most often: What job does this retreat actually DO in your wider business? Is the retreat itself designed to generate profit? Does it lead naturally into another part of your business? Is it strengthening your positioning? Are people returning? Does the amount of work involved make commercial sense for what it creates? I love creating an exceptional experience for guests. But I’m also running a business. And I don’t think those two things are in conflict. In fact, the best retreats understand both. Save this if running a retreat is somewhere in your future. And if you’re interested in both sides of retreats- the experience guests see and the commercial mechanics happening behind it- join Behind the Retreat through the link in my bio.