MINT Business Club

12/10/2026

Did you know you can actually give me money?

I spend a lot of time on here talking about business, semi-feral ways of working, difficult decisions, self-trust, and the strange things people do to themselves in the name of productivity.

Possibly not enough time saying the obvious bit: I sell this.

I work 1:1 with business owners who want an experienced thinking partner beside them. Someone who can get into the weeds of their business, understand the context, spot the pattern, and help them make a better decision without turning the whole thing into a dramatic reinvention.

I have been told the level of focus I bring to sessions is somewhere between intimidating and transformative. Often both.

That is probably fair. I listen hard, spot patterns quickly, and will absolutely not let you hide behind the thing you’ve decided is the problem if it clearly isn’t.
My main coaching offer is 10 hours of 1:1 coaching and mentoring for £1,300.

Proper time. Proper context. Proper thinking.

We get into your business, your patterns, your offers, your decisions, your capacity, your money, your visibility, your weird little sticking points, and the bits you keep trying to solve with another Canva template.

I currently have space for one new coaching client.

So if you’ve been reading my posts thinking, “I could probably do with Liza in my business,” this is me saying yes, you can.
Message me and we can have a chat.

09/10/2026

I think we have become far too impressed by visibility in the coaching industry.
Big audience. Big stage. Big launch. Big revenue screenshot.

Lovely.

But can they actually coach?

Because coaching is a highly skilled job. A good coach has to challenge your deepest assumptions without destroying your confidence. Hold you accountable without turning into your headteacher. Help you feel capable enough to take risks while still being willing to say, “No, I think you're bulls**tting yourself here.”

That takes considerably more skill than being charismatic on a stage.
And yet we seem to choose coaches based on who we've seen most often.
Some of the loudest people in this industry are selling “access” to themselves that barely exists. You join the programme; there are hundreds of people in it, you get three minutes to ask your question; nobody remembers what you said last week and anything between sessions disappears into a support inbox.

Call it what it is.

That isn't the same as having someone who knows your business, understands the context, remembers the thing you said three weeks ago and will sit in the mud with you while you work out what the f**k is actually going on.

Visibility is not proof of coaching skill.
A big stage doesn't tell me whether you can challenge somebody without breaking their confidence.
A massive audience doesn't tell me whether you can spot the difference between avoidance and a genuinely s**t idea.
And a revenue screenshot definitely doesn't tell me whether you can sit with another human being on a wet Tuesday when the numbers are awful, their confidence has f**ked off and they need someone calm enough to help them think.

So by all means look at the marketing.
Then look past it.
Can this person actually coach me?

07/10/2026

There seems to be an unwritten business rule that when you increase prices you should either do it quietly and hope nobody notices, or bury it in so much marketing language nobody can work out what you are saying.

I don't particularly like either option.

This week I told our customers our prices were going up.

Yep, I run a product business too. Staff, warehouse, the whole deal.

The Tea Enthusiasts has been around since 2004. We haven't increased our prices since 2024. Eventually, keeping prices low stops being generous and starts making the business less sustainable.

Something has to give. I don't want that something to be the quality of our tea, paying our team properly, treating growers and suppliers fairly, or having a business that is here in years to come.

So I told them.

I sent an email and recorded a video from the warehouse. No “exciting pricing update”. No mysterious “changing market conditions”. Just: this is what is happening, this is why, and this is what matters to us.

We had a flurry of orders and customers emailed to say they understood. One said we'd done well to hold our prices for as long as we had. Another said our tea was worth the extra.

I can't tell you every order happened because we were honest. That would be convenient marketing bo****ks. But it did remind me why I keep interrogating these strange business rules.

Customers are adults. They understand costs rise and businesses need to make enough money to keep going.

You don't have to manipulate people into accepting a decision. You do need to explain it and stand behind it.

Running a business means making decisions people may not love: pricing, staffing, boundaries, minimum orders, cancelling things that no longer work, saying no to work that doesn't make sense.

Sometimes the sustainable decision is not the comfortable one.

This is part of why I coach the way I do. I don't just sit outside businesses telling people what they ought to do. I still run one and live with what happens next.

People can usually cope with news they don't like. What they tend to resent is being treated like idiots.

Sexy warehouse picture for anyone under the illusion that I live a glamorous life.

05/10/2026

There are a lot of business coaches who have only ever run a coaching business telling people how to run businesses. That doesn't automatically make them bad coaches. But I do think it should make you ask a few more questions before handing over your money.

Have they ever had to make payroll? Carry stock? Deal with suppliers? Manage staff? Have a customer issue land at exactly the wrong moment? Make a decision knowing that if they got it badly wrong, there was no comfortable financial cushion underneath them?

Have they ever tried to build something around school runs, sick kids, divorce, ageing parents, neurodivergence, hormones, disability or simply having a life that does not behave nicely around office hours? Because that experience changes the advice you give.

If your whole working life has happened in a quiet room with a laptop and a colour-coded planner, your productivity system may be absolute bo****ks for someone with ADHD, two children and a business that involves actual physical stuff moving around. If you have never had to walk out of a chaotic morning at home and straight into a sales call that needs to pay the bills, you may not understand why “just protect your mornings for deep work” makes someone want to throw things.

And if you have never had to make business decisions while genuinely afraid of not being able to pay the mortgage, you may not understand the difference between a brave decision and a reckless one.

None of this means your coach needs to have lived exactly your life. That would be ridiculous. But experience matters. Context matters. The risks you have carried, the mistakes you have survived and the decisions you have had to make change what you notice. So yes, ask about qualifications. Ask about coaching skill. But also ask whether this person actually understands the kind of business and life you are trying to build. Because sometimes you do not need another framework. You need someone who knows what mud feels like.

I think sometimes people get caught up in the marketing of some coaches and forget to ask what can this PERSON do for ME and MY business.

01/10/2026

Would you like business coaching from someone who has ACTUALLY run several successful six-figure businesses across different sectors?

Sometimes while solo parenting, always while parenting. Always with neurodivergence. Rarely while losing my mind.

Oh, and I also have an ILM Level 7 qualification in Coaching and Mentoring.

There’s pretty much only one of me, and luckily for you, I currently have a coaching space.

My main 1:1 offer is a 10-hour coaching and mentoring block for £1,300. We use it to work properly on whatever is getting in the way of you making better decisions, growing the business or actually enjoying the thing you built.

If you’re curious, message me, and we can have a chat and see if we’re a good fit.

21/09/2026

This morning I asked a group of business owners a fairly uncomfortable question: When did you last feel resentful?

Not because resentment is bad or something we need to hurry up and fix. Because it can be useful information. Once they had an example, we looked at whether a boundary could have prevented some of that resentment. What would the boundary have looked or sounded like? And was it actually a boundary for you, or were you trying to control somebody else's behaviour?

We talked about what boundaries actually are and where they show up at home, in relationships and in business. Then we played a bit of word association. What comes up when I say “boundary”?

Guilt is an interesting one because we often treat feeling guilty as evidence that we're doing something wrong. It isn't necessarily. Sometimes it's just evidence that we're doing something differently and it's causing discomfort.

A boundary can disappoint someone and still be reasonable. It can feel uncomfortable and still be useful. And resentment can be a useful clue that we've agreed to, tolerated or continued something long after it stopped being okay for us.

Clarity is kindness, and boundaries are clear.

This is the sort of thing we do in Monday Morning Motivator. I ask the questions, everyone journals their answers, and occasionally I invite people to share something in the chat if they want to. No going round the room. No forced sharing. No performing your personal development in front of everyone at 9.30 am.

Mint Business Club is free and Monday Morning Motivator is part of it. If you'd like to come along next Monday, you can join now.

14/09/2026

Good morning Minties 💚

This morning we gave ourselves a little **September restart with a side helping of Stoicism and Adlerian thinking**.

The big idea was simple:

**Stop spending your energy trying to control things that aren't yours to control.**

Other people's opinions. Whether someone buys. The economy. The algorithm. Whether somebody replies. What has already happened.

Instead, bring your attention back to **your side of the fence** — your choices, your actions, your preparation, your boundaries and how you respond.

We coached ourselves through:

✨ What's taking up the most space in my head right now?

✨ How much of that is actually within my control?

✨ What am I trying to control that isn't mine to control — and what would happen if I stopped?

✨ Where am I waiting for something outside of me to change before I act?

✨ What *is* mine to do in this situation?

Then we took that thinking into our weekly priorities.

Instead of setting goals like **"get three new clients"**, which we can't completely control, we can commit to the actions that are ours: make the calls, follow up, send the proposal, make the offer.

You don't have to control the outcome to take responsibility for your part in creating it.

So your coaching question for this week is:

**What is mine to do — and can I put my energy there instead?** 💚

27/07/2026

Summer comes with so many invisible rules. You’re meant to rest, but not drop the ball. Work, but not miss the sunshine. Make memories, but also prepare for September. Keep momentum, but be present. Be a good parent, a good business owner, a calm nervous system, and some sort of hydrated woodland creature with a content plan.

Absolutely not.

For some people, summer is spacious. For others, it is semi feral in sandals, held together with snacks, guilt, childcare maths and inbox avoidance.

So instead of asking “what should I be doing?”, try asking better questions. That’s the work. Notice clearly. Choose deliberately. Let the rest stop shouting.

A few questions for your notes app, journal, dog walk or staring-out-the-window moment:

What does this summer actually look like for you, not what do you think it should look like?
Where is guilt making decisions on your behalf?
What would make the biggest positive difference by September?
What are you tempted to do because it feels easier, shinier or more exciting than the thing that actually matters?
What would future-you be relieved you chose this week?

If you’re resting, rest. If you’re working, work on what matters. If you’re doing a sticky, snack-covered, inbox-dodging mixture of both, stop measuring yourself against someone else’s summer.

There is no correct way to do these six weeks. But there is a difference between choosing what matters and being dragged around by guilt in flip-flops.

I also threw a free 6-page workbook into the mint community for free this morning to help people plan and decide. That's what we do in mint: help YOU run the business that's right for YOU. You can join us for free.

20/07/2026

I’ve been sitting with the feedback from my semi-feral talk at Kraken Networking, and I think the bit I’m most pleased about is that different people took away completely different things.

Claire heard the reminder that when something doesn’t work, you can investigate why, learn from it and make a different choice next time.

Sophie heard the invitation to be yourself rather than the version of you that you think other people want to see, and to let your values steer the business.

Michelle filled a notebook and pulled out health, wealth, happiness and boundaries as the KPIs that actually matter, alongside beans, smarts and f**ks as a more honest way of thinking about what we can manage on any given day.

Alex heard success as the ability to choose. More control over your time, your income, your future and the way you live your life.

And other people heard the line about entrepreneurs being remarkable.

We take something that exists only in our heads, make it real, explain it to other people and somehow get them to believe in it enough to hand over money.

That is not nothing.

It takes imagination, courage, stubbornness and a fair amount of audacity.

I think that is what I hoped the talk would do.

Not hand everyone the same neat lesson, but give people something they could recognise in their own story.

Thank you to Caroline Hagan and Get Kraken CIC for inviting me, and to everyone who came, listened, shared, posted and carried a little bit of semi-feral thinking away with them.

14/07/2026

Tomorrow I’m sharing a version of my story I’ve never told on stage before: the jobs, businesses, divorces, tribunal and patterns that eventually led me to becoming proudly semi-feral.

Come and hear why I’m not a business rebel. I’m an investigator.

📅 Wednesday 15 July
⏰ 10am–12pm
📍 Turtle Bay Durham, The Riverwalk, 1 Framwellgate Bridge, DH1 4SL
☕ Relaxed networking, refreshments and my talk
♿ Turtle Bay lists wheelchair access, but its private event room is upstairs—please check specific access arrangements with the organiser before booking.
🚆 Around eight minutes’ walk from Durham railway station.

Tickets and full details:

☕️ Open to all, grab a drink, networking, hear from an inspirational speaker, expand your network.