Dare To Be Brave with Joy Foster

Rub your hands together and slowly pull them apart. What do you feel? Warmth? Tingling?  ⚡ For Jodi Law, this sensation is energy. And as a transformational energy medicine practitioner, she believes we can tap into the body’s natural energy to take control of our health and wellbeing. It’s an area Jodi leaned into after more than 30 years in acute health care as a senior cardiac nurse. It’s a jo...

*Trigger warning: this podcast episode discusses infertility .* Your husband quits his job to help you build the next phase of your business only for the panic of the pandemic to hit just a couple of months later. Your thriving face-to-face career supporting women in their 40s through complex fertility issues needs to pivot…fast…but you’re homeschooling one child while breastfeeding another. And y...

Life is rarely a straight line; it’s often more of a doodle full of unexpected twists and squiggles.   Just ask Annie Ridout. Her journey – from being ousted from her job while pregnant to creating a thriving, multi-dimensional career as a journalist, author, poet, and entrepreneur – will feel so relatable. After vowing never to be at the mercy of someone else's power to pull the rug from und...

“In the end, we only regret the chances we didn’t take, the relationships we were afraid to have, and the decisions we waited too long to make.” – Lewis Carroll You’d think escaping violence in your home country and arriving in the UK with £300 not knowing anyone a soul would be a pretty high-stakes moment for anyone. But for Sue Harper, it was being in a job and feeling like she should be doing s...

Would you make decisions based on whether you can say yes to joy, peace, connection and ease? And how different might your life be if you did? 🤔 Prioritising joy, peace, connection and ease is how Bea Marshall moves through her life now. So whether it’s coffee with a pal or giving a keynote speech, each situation or activity is assessed on whether it ticks all four boxes. Why? Because Bea spent s...

A ‘lifequake’. That’s how Helen Kewell describes the moment she collapsed at work after experiencing burnout. Having been someone who would push through tough situations, someone whose identity was built on doing and achieving, Helen says she felt she was being stripped of her sense of self as her body said no and forced her to just ‘be’. But after feeling like she was disappearing and being force...

Imagine growing up on a council estate in Manchester, attending a school ranked one of the worst in the UK, with parents who fled their home country to build a new life. From this unlikely starting point, Claire Hoang was encouraged by a teacher to pursue her dream of working in TV, and against the odds, Claire worked her way up to a role as a social media specialist at ITV Studios via the BBC, De...

Ever feel like balancing your career, family, and dreams of starting your own business is impossible?   And after struggling to juggle a corporate job with small kids, Erika Robinson made a bold move – she waved her job goodbye to corporate life and launched her own business.  But just months after opening Picnic, her children’s play centre, the pandemic hit. 😳 Fast forward, and not only is Erika...

"Wear the shoes, buy the tickets, do the stuff, make the memories." This isn't just a catchy mantra for Michelle Betts – it’s the philosophy that has carried her through life’s biggest decisions, including two major career breaks.   Following a decade at the same company, Michelle dared to take the leap and start her own social media consultancy. And after being named ‘The Most Infl...

It’s Q4 of 2024, and we’re in the golden quarter! 💛 It’s when peeps like to flash their cash thanks to events such as Diwali, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Christmas, making it a prime time for both product- and service-based businesses alike. But because it’s so easy to get stuck in the daily grind working in your business – particularly during peak periods –  this episode is perfectly timed t...

Have you ever faced redundancy? It’s one of those moments that can feel like the rug is being pulled out from under you, but it can also open up a whole world of new possibilities! For Anna Ison, leaving a job she loved after 20 years became a gateway to a whole new, exciting chapter – working as a social media manager from the comfort of home. 💻✨ But what’s life really like as a social media ma...

There was a time when requesting to work from home (WFH) was like asking for the moon. But once the pandemic hit and working from home became a necessity, we said hello to a diary full of Zoom meetings and saw nooks and crannies of our home become our workspace (thank you garden shed). Of course, working from home has become the norm for women as they juggle work around illness, childcare or looki...

“I looked around and found that in the increasing busyness of life, people were, while being in almost constant communication, losing connection with others.” – Amita Dinmore Do you have a powerful vision brewing? A dream that’s been percolating away for ages?  When Amita Dinmore was inspired to trade in her teaching career for a bigger purpose – opening a community café in Hazelwood, Derbyshire –...

Whether you're a knitting ninja or a paintbrush prodigy, YouTube is THE place to share your creativity! But how do you turn your creative skills into a thriving channel? 🧶✨ Meet Anya Johnson, a crochet queen building a YouTube channel to supplement her income while she makes time to look after her grandchild. From her colourful ‘Granie’ Squares to her cosy, rainbow-bright Confidence Cardiga...

What do you do if you’ve been out of work for a while, especially if your confidence is in freefall because you feel too old for the job market? Sarah Glassey says she felt like she wasn’t just in a pickle after being out of work for nine months, but “stuck in a whole vat of pickles in a factory”. And with the stress and some major ANTs (automatic negative thoughts) making their presence felt – “I...

What have you done recently outside your role as a partner, parent or professional? A guilt-free activity that is purely about having fun and leaves you saying, “I can’t believe I just did that”? If you’re like most women, chances are you are prioritising everyone but yourself. But author Eve Rodsky believes that carving out time to explore the gifts, talents and interests that make you you is a n...

⭐ Trigger warning: this episode touches on domestic abuse. If you are affected by any of the issues raised, head to TechPixies.com for details of organisations that can offer support . How do you build a business when you can’t put your face or name online? That was the reality for Mimi Glenn, who, having escaped domestic abuse, was found every time she was resettled and tried to go for a new job...

Redundancy, death of a parent, separation and divorce. 🫨 If you were faced with all three in the space of a year, would you dive back under the duvet and retreat from the world, or would you hit the reset button? For Kathryn Conway, life’s lemons offered a chance to reassess the path she was walking through life, and it led her to the door of TechPixies. Drawn to the caring sense of community and...

“We don’t wait until all our teeth have fallen out to go to the dentist. So why do we wait until we’re in crisis to deal with our mental health?” 🤷 This is just one of the brilliant nuggets dropped by Kathryn Cettina, who jumped onto the Sparkle and Thrive Podcast to chat about MYNDUP, a platform that aims to ensure mental health care and wellbeing in the workplace is proactive, not just reactive...

You need to pull on a pair of brave pants if you’re serious about making some major shifts in your life. But once you’ve got some tools in your locker, those shifts needn’t be as scary as you first imagine. Just ask Clare Learoyd. 💪 Forced to pivot from a plan for face-to-face to online Pilates classes as the Pandemic took hold, Clare Learoyd has gone from feeling afraid of social media to a comp...

We all want to spend time doing the things we love most. But commitments – job, family, home – often keep us rooted in the same daily grind. For Helen Baker, who’s chosen to go after her ultimate dream of having the time freedom to sail around the world with her partner aboard a yacht, this podcast episode reveals the steps Helen’s taken to make this dream a reality faster than she thought possibl...

A car park full of sticky notes? Say what? 🤔 You’ll have to tune in to find out exactly what our guest Helz Jones means by this, but let’s just say that it’s a genius trick for capturing dreams and goals. Because if you’re anything like Helz, once you get cracking on a vision for your life, you’ll find that ideas designed to help make your dream a reality will pop up by the truckload. Three years...

‘What do I do next?’ 🤷🏽‍♀️ If you’ve ever been made redundant or taken a career break, you’ll know how never-wracking it can feel to yourself back out there. Because if you’re anything like Gillian Brayshaw, you’ll have sat on your sofa, your confidence shot to pieces, with all the ANTs (automatic negative thoughts) running riot in your mind. 🐜 But we have just the thing to help you regain the...

What if the world was full of kinder workplaces? 🤗 Companies that didn’t just pop #BeKind posts on social media but actually followed a framework that created work cultures based on community, connection and inclusivity? Becs Crosby is on a mission to help companies do just that and is carving out a successful business for herself in the process. And she’s doing it all from a ‘shoffice’ (a shed/o...

How do you go from having a paralysing fear of being on camera and hating the thought of being on social media to managing successful social media campaigns, hosting webinars and implementing marketing strategies for clients? All within 15 months. 😲 Thanks to our trio of transformational training programmes and teaming up with other talented TechPixies, Carolyn Boddington has crushed her crisis o...