11/09/2026
The people you build with have a funny habit of becoming part of the life you are building too, I feel so very grateful to those people who have joined me on my ‘business’ journey.
Business pretends to be about strategy decks, invoices, targets and sensible shoes.
In reality, it asks rather more of us.
Trust, candour, patience, boundaries, the ability to have an awkward conversation without turning it into a small constitutional crisis and, every now and then, the grace to say, ‘Yep. That one was me. I got it wrong.’
The best working relationships I have had were never built on agreeing all the time, but seeing the whole person and the whole picture.
They were built on being able to disagree without making it personal, to speak plainly, to listen properly and to know that a difficult number is just a difficult number, not a character assessment, and I think warmth matters far more than we give it credit for.
Warmth does not mean woolly standards, kindness does not mean avoiding the hard conversation.
Quite often, it is the thing that makes the hard conversation possible.
So choose the people who care about the work, yes, but also the humans doing it.
The people who make the day feel lighter, even when the work is heavy.
The people you can laugh with in between the spreadsheets.
The people whose company leaves you feeling more like yourself, not less.
Because a successful business should leave more than revenue behind.
If we are lucky, it also leaves us with a handful of people we are genuinely grateful life introduced us to, and that feels like a pretty decent return on investment to me.
Who are you glad you get to build with? 🤍
FemaleFounder SmallBusinessLife Leadership
