FoundHer Fire

Not everyone claps for you as you grow.

For years I thought the answer was to work harder, prove myself more or somehow become easier to celebrate.

Now I ask a different question.

Where am I looking for the applause?

Your environment matters more than most people realise.

The people around you shape what feels possible. They influence how boldly you speak, how confidently you make decisions and whether you keep shrinking yourself or keep growing.

That’s why I spend so much time talking about your human scaffolding system.

Your environment isn’t simply where you spend your time. It’s one of the structures holding you up.

Inside FoundHer Fire, we don’t spend our time trying to persuade everyone else to clap.

We build tables where women champion, cheerlead and kindly challenge one another. Where success is celebrated rather than questioned. Where ambition isn’t something you apologise for. Where you don’t have to translate yourself to be understood.

Because you don’t need everyone to clap.

You need the right table.

If you’re an experienced woman in business who’s ready to stop doing it all on your own and start building the scaffolding that helps you crack on, on purpose, applications for FoundHer Fire are now open through our dual access pathways. You can back yourself or your organisation can sponsor your place.

Come and find your table - we’re waiting.

There are websites and then there is my website.

My new shiny website that has launched today and I’m a bit, a lot, proud of it.

You see, it’s not just a website. It’s the years that sit behind it to get to today.

Today, dear reader, my new FoundHer Fire website goes live.

You will see the beautiful brand designed by the genius that is Kayleigh Lloyd, who has brought FoundHer Fire to life. You will see the beautiful copy that Alison White and Beth O’Neill took from my head and crafted into the words on the page. You’ll see the website built by the brilliant team at bjm.digital.

What you won’t see are the conversations that sit behind it, the journey to what FoundHer Fire stands for today.

The women who thought it was just them. The women cracking on, on autopilot, holding the sky up, fixing, always on the verge of exhaustion while still carrying more drive, ambition and determination than ever before, if only they could find their energy again.

FoundHer Fire is the human scaffolding system for experienced women in business. One place where coaching, leadership, community, behavioural science and real life finally join up.

It has taken years of conversations, listening, testing, changing my mind, challenging my own thinking and building something that actually works under pressure.

Today it finally has a home that feels like it fits.

If you’ve been following the journey, thank you.

If you’ve been part of building it, thank you.

To the women already inside FoundHer Fire, you have further ignited my fire with yours.

Welcome to FoundHer Fire.

“I’m fine.”

How many times have you said that this week?

And in many ways, you are.

You’re leading. Delivering. Solving problems. Supporting everyone else. The washing still gets done. The meetings happen. The deadlines are met.

You crack on, on autopilot.

Yet somewhere underneath all that capability is a constant hum of noise.

You’re carrying the leadership load, the life load and all the invisible tabs that never seem to close. You still care deeply. You still want to make an impact. Your ambition hasn’t disappeared. It’s competing with exhaustion, expectation and a brain that’s trying to make sense of another transition, of uncertainity, change.

That’s exactly why I’m looking forward to this conversation with the brilliant Angela Wilkins-Green ACC , workplace menopause consultant and one of the brilliant experts on the FoundHer Fire Bench.

We’re not turning up with a presentation or pretending everyone’s experience is the same.

We’re talking about what happens when confidence shifts, identity evolves and life and work seem to collide at exactly the same time.

We’ll explore leadership, perimenopause, reinvention and why so many experienced women end up wondering whether they’re the problem, when often they’re responding to a whole series of changes that nobody has helped them navigate.

These are the conversations FoundHer Fire exists to create.

Straight talking, practical and grounded in real life. It’s also why we’re opening up our Corporate Pathways, giving organisations a way to sponsor and support experienced women with the kind of ongoing scaffolding that helps them keep leading, without carrying it all alone.

If you’re nodding along, we’d love you to join us. Let’s start the conversation and see where it goes.

📅 Tuesday 14 July
🕚 11.00am BST

Register here:
https://lnkd.in/e_mEPnei

May have been a busy month.

May presented moments to crack on, on purpose as we started the celebrations for FoundHer Fire’s first birthday.

May presented the new branding for FoundHer Fire which has got me all excited.

The brand new dedicated FoundHer Fire website has been building in May.

I’ve hosted masterclasses, I’ve hotfooted it across the country working with brilliant women in business navigating change, uncertainty, transition and the collision of life, load, leadership and business.

We opened up the doors of FoundHer Fire to give you a sneak peak into the brilliance of the eco system, your scaffolding system that meets you where you were.

I spent precious moments with my dad as we navigate his beginning of the end.

I inhaled family times and friendships and leaked tears of frustration, anticipated grief, laughter and joy.

I lifed in May. I cracked on, on purpose.

June, I’m ready for you.

FoundHer Fire turns one in June.

Which feels slightly surreal considering this whole thing started from repeatedly watching brilliant women try to hold everything together whilst being expected to somehow optimise themselves on top of it all.

The women I work with were never lacking capability.

They were lacking scaffolding.

Real scaffolding.
The kind that works in the middle of actual life, not some imaginary version where women have endless time, space and capacity to endlessly “work on themselves” whilst simultaneously carrying the commercial load, emotional load and life load.

And I think that’s why FoundHer Fire has grown the way it has.

Because women are tired of performative spaces.

Tired of gatekeeping.
Tired of networking rooms that feel transactional.
Tired of being welcomed into rooms but only to a point.
Tired of environments where they have to edit themselves to fit.

So FoundHer Fire became the room I wished existed.

A place where founders meet leaders.
Where corporate escapers meet start ups.
Where women navigating redundancy sit alongside women scaling businesses.
Where behavioural science, coaching, Practice Labs, peer advisory and lived experience all collide together.

A room where somebody can talk about board strategy one minute and peri-menopause rage the next without everybody pretending those things are unrelated.

Because they are not unrelated.
They are life.

And over the last year I’ve watched women reclaim confidence, recover from burnout, make brave decisions, stop shrinking in rooms they had already earned the right to be in and finally start backing themselves properly.

So to celebrate FoundHer Fire turning one, I’m opening the doors to two June sessions for non members to come and experience the room properly.

Not a polished webinar pretending to be empowerment.

The actual room.

If you’ve been watching from the sidelines wondering whether FoundHer Fire might be for you, this is your invitation.

DM me the word FIRE and I’ll send you the details.

Big love,

Sarah x

Everywhere I go at the moment, whether it’s founders, leadership teams or rooms full of brilliant humans trying to hold everything together through change, uncertainty and transition, I keep seeing the same thing.

We are brilliant at cracking on.

The issue is many of us have become so good at surviving pressure and responsibility that we crack on on autopilot. Head down. Calendar full. Solving everyone else’s problems. Reacting instead of choosing.

And there’s a massive difference between cracking on because life demands it and cracking on, on purpose.

One drains you.
One directs you.

(Mic drop. Flicks hair. Saunters off stage left.)

At Evo Live I spoke about two questions that seem to have stuck with people long after the session ended:

“Are you cracking on on purpose, or have you slipped into autopilot?”

And:

“Who’s at your table?”

Because success is not built in isolation. It’s built in the rooms you choose, the conversations you create and the people you surround yourself with.

Who gets your energy?
Who challenges you to grow?
Who reminds you who you are when your brain is doing laps at 3am?

One piece of feedback said:
“Really insightful, entertaining & empowering. Particularly benefited from 2 key takeaways, Crack on, on purpose & Who’s at your table?”

Another said:
“It was relatable, funny, inspiring and thought-provoking. I really came away from it with a sense of security, trust and community.”

That bit matters to me.

Because my work has never been about motivational fluff. It’s about helping people lead, live and work more intentionally in the middle of real life.

And it’s also why I surround myself with brilliant humans like , people who remind me to show up and give me tools to do it without frying my brain.

This is what happens when someone finally gets the space, support and scaffolding to hear themselves again.

To remember they still have a voice.
Still have options.
Still have ambition. Drive. Passion.
Still have a life that belongs to them too.

So many women arrive feeling like they’ve spent years holding everything and everyone else together while quietly disappearing from their own picture.

And then we notice the dust, the clutter that is holding us back. Then we unlearn, disrupt the patterns that no longer serve us and practice the possible.

The noise lowers.
The overthinking eases.
The courage creeps back in.
The decisions get clearer.
The fire that was buried under responsibility, pressure and survival mode starts flickering again.

This is why FoundHer Fire exists.

Not to “fix” women.
To remind them they were never broken.

Just overloaded, overstretched and trying to navigate life, leadership and load without enough support around them.

Crack on, on purpose.