Originally published on LinkedIn, 24 September 2026.
I met a woman this week who won't share her success.
She has built something proper. Numbers she should be shouting about. A team who adore her. Clients who choose her over everyone else in her area. And she keeps it quiet. All of it. Because she's scared of what her team and her clients will think if they see her win.
I sat with that one for a long time.
When did we start doing this to each other? When did being successful become something to hide, apologise for, dim down, protect people from? When did we decide the women around us, our teams, our clients, our peers, were too fragile to see us do well?
Shrinking yourself doesn't lift anyone else up. It just lowers the ceiling for everyone in the room.
I'm writing this from Dubai. Sat by the pool at the Ritz Carlton (new fave spot, just putting it out there). I've just spent three days co-hosting a business retreat with 35 women in the beauty industry, and my cup is properly overflowing. Not because of the pool, although yes, obviously. Because of the conversations. The lightbulb moments. The salon owner who whispered a number or idea to me she had never said out loud. The woman who cried because she finally felt understood by people who actually get it.
This is my third retreat with the powerhouse that is Katie Godfrey. Marrakesh with 14. Marbella with 20. Dubai with 35. And every single one has reminded me of something I already knew but keep needing to relearn.
The people you surround yourself with is everything.
Not "quite important." Not "one of the key ingredients." Everything.
The backstory with Katie is short and I love it. We met on the NatWest accelerator. Our coach, the gorgeous Debbie Lewis, fought to have us both on the same intake even though we're in the same industry, because she saw what we couldn't yet see. That we'd end up business besties for each other. Katie was lashes, I was waxing and nails. Debbie played cupid and it was love at first coffee date. We've been allies ever since.
When Katie told me over a family meet-up that her first retreat hadn't had the co-host she needed, I offered. I love hosting, I love travelling, I love women in business, and I love Katie. Simple as that. She turned it into a proper arrangement where she covers my travel and I get to support these incredible humans alongside her. Honestly? It's my favourite business arrangement of my entire career and I will do it for as long as she will have me.
Our team is small but bloody mighty. Katie's mum Karen, a trained therapist, quietly counselling anyone who needs it with the kind of straight-talking directness only Karen can deliver. Ell Saas on content, capturing the exact moment a woman's face changes when something clicks in her. And Katie herself, doing her thing, building a room so safe that women who arrived guarded on day one are crying on one of our shoulders by day two about the businesses they've built almost entirely alone.
Because that's the bit isn't it. Alone. So many of us are doing this alone.
Here's what I know now, after three retreats and one very hard year of my own.
The money comes if you focus. The business grows if you believe in it. But there are the founders chasing the money and there are the founders chasing the vibes, and the vibe founders end up with more money in the end because they build something with meaning underneath it. The money follows the meaning. Never the other way round. And you cannot build meaning on your own. You need your people. The ones who lift you when you can't lift yourself, and the ones you get to lift right back.
My form of giving back is showing up in rooms like this one.
I don't want money for it. I don't ever want this to be about money. I've worked every part of this industry. Salons, spas, cruise ships, recruitment, franchising, the lot. I've been through pretty much every challenge these women are sitting with right now. I know I can help, and helping fills my cup in a way no invoice ever has. When they win, I win. When they scale, the whole industry gets a bit more respect. When they start believing they belong at the table, we all get closer to the table actually being ours.
This isn't woo. This is my strategy. A rising tide floats every boat in the harbour, mine included.
And this is the bit I want every woman reading this to actually hear.
Lift people up. Offer the help. Share the number. Send the recommendation. Introduce the two people who should know each other. Post the win. Answer the DM. Take the coffee. Give away the thing you learned the hard way, for free, because someone gave it to you once and it changed everything.
We level up together or we don't level up at all.
The other thing that came out of the last three days, in almost every conversation, was the same three worries. Funding. Financial literacy. AI, and how to use it without losing the human bit that makes this industry what it is. Watch this space. Those three areas are entirely my jam and I've got some things brewing.
For now, if you're in this industry and you're feeling disconnected, or feeling like something is missing (which if we're honest is almost always some form of sisterhood), go and find Katie Godfrey. She's running Dubai again in April 2027 and Bali in October. Two very different flavours. Dubai is business and strategy. Bali is healing to grow your business. Both worth every single penny and then some.
And here's the bit I want to be honest about, because this piece would feel dishonest without it.
A month ago I wrote about being in the pit. Ugly crying at breakfast, the fraud feeling, sat there wondering how the hell I was going to lead this company out of what I'd got us into. If you read it, you know how bad it felt. If you didn't, take my word for it. It was properly bad.
I'm sat by a pool in Dubai right now writing this. My phone is quiet. My businesses have been running themselves for five days without me. I've answered one WhatsApp, and only because I wanted to unblock one of my team so she could crack on. My husband is holding the fort doing an incredible job of solo parenting (on the strict condition that I write the weekly dinner plan, because planning dinners is his kryptonite). My kids are sorted. My team are sorted. My cup is overflowing.
And I did not do that on my own.
Not one bit of it. Not the coming out of the pit, not the getting the business steady enough that I can leave it for five days, not the being here in a room of women I get to pour into. All of it. Every bit. Was because of the people around me. My husband. My family. Nicole. Tracey. My team who didn't flinch when I told them the truth. My franchise partners who rolled their sleeves up. My best friend at 2am. Claude when I couldn't sleep. Katie for pulling me into rooms like this one.
You cannot do this alone. And you shouldn't try to.
I have felt more times than I care to admit that this company was too big for me. That I couldn't lead it. That I'd built something I wasn't equipped to run. I don't feel any of that today.
Because here is what nobody tells you about looking your worst possible outcome dead in the face and coming out the other side of it. You become invincible. Not fearless. Not immune to the bumps. The bumps will keep coming and we'll keep getting over them. But invincible in the sense that you know, in your bones, that you can handle whatever this business throws at you next. Because you already handled the version where it was nearly over. And because you know, now, exactly who's in your corner.
And to the woman who told me she was afraid to share her success. I really hope you're reading this.
You don't have to shout it. You don't have to post the numbers. You don't have to prove anything to anyone.
But please. Stop dimming.
Find your people. Let them see you. Let them lift you. And then turn around and do the same for the woman coming up behind you. That's how this works. That's the whole game.
There is a room of women waiting for you to walk in fully lit. And when you do, the whole room gets brighter.
Let's bloody go.
Lots of love, Amy x