Fearless and Flawed: Women In Charge

What if the fix you find for yourself turns out to be the business?

Meredith Cook cleaned the baseboards before she left for the hospital. The birth plan was tidy, the yoga was done, and then everything went a different way. A C-section, a hospital ward that didn't feel like the right place to be, and a long stretch of feeling alone. A pediatrician told her that women find a fix for their child or themselves, tell everyone, and that's where million-dollar businesses are made. She didn't find her purple bow right then.

Meredith is the founder of Green Compass, a soil-to-shelf organic plant wellness company she built with her husband, Sterling, and sixth-generation North Carolina farmers. She was a stay-at-home mom with no business background. The company grew entirely by word of mouth, with no PR and no paid ads.

Serena and Sara talk with Meredith about the day her mom told "all of Charlotte" and the attorney at a farm event who said "My husband doesn't even know." She explains why her team asks "Is it Meredith approved?" and why she sends every supplier ingredient to a lab instead of taking anyone's word for it. She's also candid about what it took to hire a CEO and keep the mission seat, and about the moment she opened her laptop in a room full of consultants and mimed typing.

What you'll hear

The purple bow. A pediatrician's image for what happens when a woman finds her own fix, and what Meredith did with it.

"You don't take their word for it." Identity testing, and the certified ingredient that turned out to be a fruit powder.

The Vada moment. Why nobody talks about periods, and how that silence follows women for years.

Hiring a CEO. Why Meredith calls handing over the seat growth.

Faking it. The strategy meeting, the laptop, and a husband whispering across the table.

Burnout. Filling everyone else's tank from empty, and the question she left for our next guest.

Serena and Sara close the conversation with Meredith's answer to what fearless means: "I was able to do it scared."

If her story moved you, share it with a woman who needs to hear it. Subscribe to Fearless & Flawed wherever you listen.

You can love the stage and still worry that someone will realise you don't belong there. Aleksandra Plazinic knows that feeling, and she's written a book about it.

This week, Serena Reynolds and Sara Ferrer welcome Dr. Aleksandra Plazinic, communications coach, lecturer and author of From Fear to Fearless Female Speaker. She set out to write about public speaking and recognised her own imposter syndrome in the pages: the overpreparing, the proving and the question of whether she'd done enough to earn the room's approval.

If you've ever replayed a presentation in your head, cringed at your recorded voice or read too much into someone's expression, this conversation will feel familiar. Aleksandra explains why confidence starts before delivery, and why trying to please everyone can get in the way of sharing something useful.

You'll hear about:

• Moving from proving yourself to serving your audience.
• Owning your accomplishments instead of immediately chasing the next goal.
• Starting with your body when your mind is busy telling you everything that could go wrong.
• Finding an outfit that helps you feel confident, without losing yourself in the preparation.
• Giving yourself room to pause, think and sound like a human being.

Along the way, Serena and Sara share their own speaking insecurities, question the pressure women face over their appearance and discover that even an embarrassing childhood haircut has a place in this discussion.

Follow Fearless & Flawed for more honest conversations with women who own their imperfections. Explore more episodes and join the conversation at fearlessandflawed.com.

Sasha McDowell did not set out to become an entrepreneur. After her employer refused her request for part-time or hybrid work, she left the nonprofit management career she had trained for, started something on the side and assumed she would eventually return. Instead, that experiment became Epicycle Group, a leadership development firm helping senior leaders and teams navigate complex people challenges.

In this episode, Sasha joins Serena and Sara to talk about building a business when experienced owners cannot agree on pricing, services or the “correct” path forward. Rather than seeing that uncertainty as a disadvantage, she learned to treat it as permission to experiment.

Sasha also discusses why she will not guarantee a CEO an outcome, what knitting taught her about accepting mistakes, and how relationship goals changed the way she measures a successful year. The conversation explores entrepreneurship, leadership, perfectionism and the idea that legacy is built through daily decisions, not saved for the final chapter of a career.

Listen for a candid reminder that there may be no perfect formula, and that can be good news.

Find Sasha at epicyclegroup.com.

Most women negotiate as though they’re asking for a favor. But as behavioral economist and Decision Alpha founder Etinosa Agbonlahor explains, asking to be paid is not begging, it’s a conversation about the measurable value of work already delivered.

In this episode of Fearless & Flawed, Etinosa joins Serena Reynolds and Sara Ferrer to unpack the psychology behind pricing, negotiation, and financial confidence. She explains why your worth as a human being should never be confused with the price of your services, then introduces a practical “pricing house” built around your cost floor, your customer’s willingness-to-pay ceiling, and the competitive alternatives in between.

The conversation explores why low prices can signal low quality, how anchors quietly influence buying decisions, and why presenting multiple packages moves the question from “Do I want to work with you?” to “How do I want to work with you?” Etinosa also shares the story of a $600,000 pricing project that changed her understanding of what was possible, and why authority, outcomes, and implementation can completely reshape the value of an offer.

What You’ll Learn:

• How to separate your personal worth from the value of your work
• How to use the pricing house to identify your floor, ceiling, and position
• Why anchors and multiple options change how customers make decisions
• How the “tyranny of low prices” can undermine trust in your offer
• Why using AI to work faster should not automatically reduce your price
• How to recognize when a client is not the right fit, and walk away

The conversation also turns deeply personal as Serena shares how an abusive working relationship affected her confidence around money, and Etinosa offers an important reminder: pricing is hard because it requires women to unlearn years of conditioning, but discomfort does not mean the price is wrong.

Listen now for a practical, honest conversation about charging with confidence, building authority, and protecting your peace.

What if the most powerful thing you could do as a leader wasn't hiding your worst chapter, but saying it out loud, on the record, without flinching?

This week we sit down with Dr. Liz DuBois Erskine, executive coach, writer, PhD in conflict analysis and resolution, and the woman behind the networking group Ladies Who Lunch. Before the coaching, she was on the inside at Disney and iHeartRadio, and she took very different lessons from each.

Liz walks us through a life that reads like five lives stacked on top of each other: blindsided by a non-compete at 23 and rehired within 48 hours; the boss who sent her home to heal; the pandemic morning her son fell off the boat they were living on, and the next-day decision to quit a job she loved and build a business that tripled her income in a month.

She's refreshingly honest about relapse, recovery, and why owning your hardest moments is the fearless part.

In this episode you'll hear about why how you treat people matters more than what you sell, the Disney lesson on selling the transformation not the product, why shame makes us victims and what saying the hard thing out loud actually does for you, why the critical voice in your head so often sounds like your mother, how so many women become accidental entrepreneurs and how to make it work, and a bonus tip for taming impossible curly hair.

If her story moved you, share it with a woman who needs to hear it. Subscribe to Fearless and Flawed wherever you listen.

Andrea Engstrom built $2 million in sales from Facebook without a single paid ad, by charging confidently for the work that comes easiest to her. Before that, she spent years being excellent at someone else's business. Valued. Recognised. And completely unfulfilled.

In this episode, Andrea breaks down the difference between your zone of excellence and your zone of genius, why the work that feels most natural to you is exactly what you should charge the most for, and what it really took to walk away from $12,000 a month and bet on herself.

She gets personal too: six years sober, the childhood moment that planted the wrong story about her own worth, and why she believes the belief work always has to come before the business results.

Plus the roots before the branches, a botany metaphor that reframes why some women scale quickly and others need more time to build, and why both timelines are valid.

Andrea Engstrom is the founder of the Bold Coaching System and author of Bold Confidence. She coaches women entrepreneurs to build high-ticket group programs that generate $10,000+ months, guaranteed. Find her at andreaengstrom.com.

Subscribe to Fearless & Flawed so you never miss a conversation.

We celebrate exhausted mothers and judge the ones who ask for help, here's why that's dangerous. Kristin Smith, founder of Well-Supported Family, was told at 19 that she'd never amount to anything. Her family was wrong.

After becoming a single mother with zero support, she taught herself infant sleep techniques out of pure survival while working as a nanny, bringing her newborn to work just three weeks postpartum. That desperation became expertise, which became a multimillion-dollar company serving 200+ team members across 14 states. In this episode, Kristin challenges the maternal martyrdom myth and reveals why rested mothers aren't selfish, they're essential.

You will hear:

• Why society expects mothers to suffer and the cost of that expectation
• How she built a national business from a single act of survival
• The judgment mothers face when they refuse to play the exhaustion game
• Reframing failure, feedback, and what it means to support women
• Parenting differently after a difficult childhood
• Why sleep-deprived doctors and midwives should terrify us all

Kristin is a trained birth doula and midwife, mother of two (including a recently adopted five-week-old daughter), and living proof that your origin story doesn't determine your destiny.

Subscribe for more conversations that challenge cultural narratives about work, motherhood, and asking for help.

She tried hand cream at a red light and built an empire. Karen Minsky, President of Dionis Goat Milk Skincare, shares how she scaled a 40-year-old woman-founded brand from a tiny team to 150+ employees across nearly 6,000 retailers, including Ulta and Macy's, by refusing to take no for an answer.

In this episode, Karen reveals:

• The legendary origin story of how the founder walked into Cracker Barrel with a live goat to pitch soap
• Her "bull in a china shop" approach to retail distribution (including sneaking into corporate offices to find buyers)
• Why product truth beats beautiful packaging in the beauty industry
• The power of certainty: sending samples and knowing buyers will call back • How rejection became her favorite part of the job
• Scaling a business while raising three boys and staying true to the brand's mission

This is a masterclass in fearless selling, product confidence, and the unglamorous hustle behind the brands in your favorite stores. Perfect for entrepreneurs, beauty industry professionals, and anyone who needs permission to be "that person" who won't take no for an answer.

Subscribe for more stories of founders who built empires on conviction, not compromise.

What if the best way to scale your movement is to reject the platform that promises the most reach?

Kate Assaraf built Dip, a plastic-free haircare brand that's redirected $5M to independent retailers, all while refusing Amazon, influencers, and paid ads. With 20 years of beauty industry experience and a contract manufacturer bankruptcy that nearly destroyed her, Kate made the "crazy" decision to build her own factory in North Carolina. Now she works with 4,000-5,000 zero waste stores, salons, and surf shops across the country, and for some of them, Dip literally pays their rent.

This conversation with Serena and Sara goes into the turning points that shaped Kate's approach. From discovering the plastic crisis while pregnant 11 years ago to testing her conditioner bar with 400+ people before launch, Kate shares the unglamorous reality of building a sustainable business that actually sustains you. She talks about paying herself from day one, doing customer service for four years to understand every issue firsthand, and why she sends abandoned cart customers to a store locator instead of a discount code. You'll also hear about the competitor who copied her signature scent and the misleading blog tactics designed to hijack her organic search, and how Kate's focus on brand integrity over growth hacks continues to pay off.

What You'll Learn:

🧪 Why "eco-friendly without looking eco-friendly" matters — Kate's approach to marrying science and sustainability without compromising on performance or aesthetics

🏭 How a bankruptcy became the catalyst for vertical integration — The moment Kate's contract manufacturer went under with her deposit, and why she chose to build her own factory with displaced workers

💰 The first-week $30K launch strategy — How Kate sold five figures from her personal network alone, and why not burning bridges is the ultimate business asset

🛒 Wholesale loyalty over DTC convenience — Why Kate's abandoned cart emails send customers to local stores instead of offering discounts, and how this protects independent retailer margins

🎤 The karaoke bar pivot question — Kate's answer to what business she'd start if she had to do it all over again (spoiler: it involves private rooms and playlists)

Building a brand with integrity in an industry plagued by fake reviews and copycat competitors isn't easy. But Kate proves that when you center your values, your people, and your retailers, you can build something that scales the movement, not just the customer list. Serena and Sara bring out the humor, the grit, and the hard-won wisdom that makes this episode unmissable.

If her story moved you, share it with a woman who needs to hear it. Subscribe to Fearless & Flawed wherever you listen.

What if the dream you spent your entire life chasing was allowed to expire? What if the thing you thought defined you turned out to be exactly what was holding you back?

Georgia Thomas is a qualified British solicitor who traded corporate law for a social media production agency she built with her husband in Cardiff, Wales. As co-founder and Director of e!studios, she turned founders into category-dominant brands in 90 days. But getting there meant walking away from 14 years of chasing a goal, sitting on a Miami beach in a moment of complete clarity, and spending two years shedding the label "lawyer" from her identity.

This conversation goes deep into the turning points most people don't talk about. The birthday spent at work drinks when her daughter was at home. The pregnancy revelation that forced a maternity retention strategy nobody teaches in law school. The six-figure milestone she hit in nine months while everyone asked when she'd go back to "real work." The cultural gap between the US hustle mindset and the UK skepticism she had to navigate as a founder. And the decision to stay small, build deliberately, and design a business that didn't require her to abandon her life.

What You'll Learn:

1. Why your dream is allowed to expire and what happens when you give yourself permission to let it go
2. The six figures in nine months strategy Georgia used to build her agency
3. The maternity retention plan she built to keep clients during pregnancy
4. UK vs US founder culture and why Georgia had to unlearn American hustle mantras
5. Retention over acquisition and the counterintuitive business model that let her turn down growth
6. The turning point moment on a Miami beach that changed everything

Serena and Sara pull out the real, messy, brilliant moments that shaped Georgia's path from law to entrepreneurship. This is the story of a woman who built something powerful by refusing to play by rules that were never hers in the first place.