What started as an accidental floristry business became fifteen years of building, breaking, and rebuilding. I'm proud of what that taught me, and even more excited to help you skip a few of my mistakes.

At 22, when I was studying floristry, a friend asked me to do her wedding flowers. I got an ABN so I could buy from the flower market (not because I had some grand plan to run a business), and that accidental floristry business became my first company.

During those years, there were parts that didn’t make it onto LinkedIn, for example - I worked retail the entire time I ran that first business. Weekdays on the shop floor, weekends doing wedding flowers, often flying between Brisbane and Melbourne for bookings from all over Australia. Alongside it, I ran a side business called Boozy Blooms - floristry classes over wine, because if I was going to be exhausted, I figured I may as well also be having a glass (or two). I never went to university, or studied business. Instead, I learned everything by doing, and by making a lot of mistakes along the way.

I met the people who'd become my business partners in my next founding journey because they wanted to build something ambitious and disrupt the wedding industry. They pitched me a wedding company with multiple venues and brands, so couples could book everything - venue, styling, florals, catering, photography, stationery and more - in one place, instead of stitching together a dozen vendors themselves. Obviously, I was in.

We signed our first lease with no money and no bookings, and turned a working wool mill into our first venue over more sleepless nights than I can count (cut to us sleeping on the floor of the venue/construction site on blow up mattresses).

Eight years later, Nudo had grown into 7 venues, 11 brands, an acquired catering company, and a team of 250+. I went from "creative director" - which in practice meant wedding planner, florist, maintenance officer, event manager and salesperson all at once, but that was too long to fit on a business card - to COO, running the operations of a multi million dollar hospitality group.

Oh did I mention I'd never worked a day of hospitality in my life. What can I say - I was a retail girlie. So I learned. I stayed curious with my team, let them teach me as much as I led them, asked a million questions, and built my expertise along the way.

Somewhere in between a team growing every week, a two year lockdown (hello covid), sitting in board meetings I had zero formal training for - I learned the thing my whole consultancy is now built around which is the gap between a good business and a great one is almost never the idea. It's the people, the structure, and whether your leaders actually know how to lead.

I stepped back from my day to day role at Nudo (always remaining a proud co-founder), and now have the privilege of coming into other people’s businesses to do fractional COO work, people and culture support, and leadership coaching for service based business owners hitting the same walls I did.

I'm Melbourne based, engaged to my partner of 11 years, and in my downtime you'll often find me stuck into some sort of craft or new hobby. Get to know me and you'll hear one of my favourite sayings pretty quickly - “busy hands, quiet mind”.

If your business has outgrown the way you're currently running it, I'd love to talk.