The EMpire Diaries

"One Facebook post. That is it. One post in one Facebook group, and from that one post she got 88 sign-ups."

Becky runs a GCSE science tutoring business. She didn't spend thousands on ads. She didn't become an influencer. She just got intentional about how she marketed her business, and 1 post brought in 10,000+ views, around 300 comments, 88 sign-ups and 2 new students within 24 hours.

In this solo episode, Emily takes you behind the scenes of Visible & Paid, her 6-month marketing programme for ambitious women, as Cohort 1 comes to an end. You'll hear the real results (Becky's lead magnet, Deb going from sleepless nights to her face on every estate agent board in her village, Kelly's sales up 25% in a month her shop was barely open) and the 6 shifts that take you from The One-Woman Show to a business that actually pays you.

Whether you ever work with Emily or not, you'll walk away with something you can implement this week.

In this episode we discuss:
🔁 Shift 1, Break The Cycle: why doing more is not the answer, and the marketing audit that shows you what's actually making you money
👑 Shift 2, Own The Room: building the confidence to be the face of your business (yes, even if someone from school sees it)
🎯 Shift 3, Show Up On Purpose: why you don't need to post every day, the 4 jobs every piece of content needs to do, and how to write a hook
🧲 Shift 4, Attract On Autopilot: exactly how Becky's lead magnet turned 1 post into 88 sign-ups
💷 Shift 5, Ask For The Sale: why you keep talking people out of buying, and the power of shutting up after you say your price
🕊️ Shift 6, Build Your Freedom: knowing your numbers, profit vs revenue, and designing a business that supports your life
🤝 Why the women you surround yourself with matter as much as any strategy

If you've ever...
✨ Felt like you're the marketing department, sales team, accountant AND tea maker
✨ Posted on social media and prayed for the best
✨ Thought "I just need more followers"
✨ Hidden behind your logo because you're scared of being judged
✨ Offered a discount before the client even had a chance to say yes
...this episode is for you.

👉 VISIBLE & PAID COHORT 2 IS OPEN
6 months of live coaching, accountability and a room full of ambitious women. Starts Thursday 7th January 2027. Only 15 places.
Find out more and book your free 15-minute call: https://www.empoweredwithemily.com/visible-paid/

🎙️ Hosted by Emily Mallender, business and marketing strategist, speaker, founder of EMpowered and creator of Visible & Paid. 14 years building businesses, 30K+ business owners supported, and on a mission to help brilliant women get visible, confident and paid.

🔗 Links
Visible & Paid: https://www.empoweredwithemily.com/visible-paid/
Join The EMpire: https://www.skool.com/the-empire
EMpowered Live 2027, 12th March, Sheffield: https://live.empoweredwithemily.com/
Website: https://www.empoweredwithemily.com
Instagram: @emily.mallender
Email: [email protected]

Know a woman working her backside off who needs to hear this? Send her this episode.

Keywords: women in business podcast UK, female entrepreneur, marketing for small business, how to get more clients, lead magnet, Facebook group marketing, content strategy, personal branding, confidence in business, how to sell without being salesy, business coach UK, mum in business, Visible & Paid, The EMpire Diaries

"I'm not going to come on here and apologise for not showing up every single week."

The SAS expedition with Ant Middleton, AI agents running my business, hospital dashes, a migraine 30 minutes before a London keynote, and 1 year since the darkest point of my life. This is the honest EMpowered catch-up. No highlight reel.

It's been a month of family emergencies, business growth and big reflections. I talk about putting family first without the guilt, working the room on my own at Ideas Fest, what Ant Middleton shared with me after Everest, how AI agents have changed the way I run my business (and the security risks no one is warning you about), the transformations inside Visible & Paid, and what the first year of EMpowered really looked like.

Content note: from around 42 minutes I talk briefly about a time when I didn't see a way out. Please look after yourself.

In this episode we discuss:

🏥 Why family comes first, and dropping the guilt of not posting every week

🎪 Ideas Fest: how to network on your own when everyone stays in their comfort zone

🪖 The SAS expedition with Ant Middleton in the Lake District

🏔️ Interviewing Ant Middleton after Everest: protecting your child, pushing limits and grief

🎤 Speaking at 180 Shift in London and being called "straight talking"

🌟 A new speaker programme for real women with real stories

🎟️ EMpowered Live 2027 speakers: Claire Throssell MBE, Esther Ghey and Sam Teale

🤖 How AI agents build funnels, slides and bookkeeping for a one-woman business

🔐 AI security: why you need a real expert before you build for clients

📸 Visible & Paid results at the halfway mark

🎂 EMpowered's first birthday and choosing to stop playing small

If you've ever...

✨ Felt guilty for putting your family before your business

✨ Walked into a room alone and wanted to walk straight back out

✨ Wondered how to actually use AI in your small business

✨ Been so busy holding everything together you forgot to check in with yourself

...this one's for you.

🔗 Links

👑 Join The EMpire: skool.com/the-empire

🎟️ EMpowered Live 2027, 12th March, Sheffield: live.empoweredwithemily.com

🌐 Website: empoweredwithemily.com

▶️ YouTube: @EMpoweredWithEmilyMallender

📸 Instagram: @emily.mallender

📧 Email: [email protected]

Visible & Paid Cohort 2 starts January 2027 with only 15 spaces. Send me the word VISIBLE for all the details.

About your host

Emily Mallender is a business and marketing coach, speaker and founder of EMpowered With Emily Mallender. With nearly 14 years in business, 500+ events and 30K+ business owners supported, she helps ambitious women get visible and paid without burning out.

If anything in this episode has affected you, Samaritans are free to call 24/7 on 116 123.

Keywords: women in business podcast UK, female entrepreneur, Ant Middleton, SAS expedition, AI for small business, networking, public speaking, mum in business, business coach UK, EMpowered Live, The EMpire Diaries

“Your home is part of the operating system underneath your ambition.”

We spend so much time trying to become more productive.

Better routines. Better time management. More discipline. Another planner. Another app.

But what if part of the problem isn’t you?

What if the environment you’re trying to build your business and your life inside is constantly creating more work for your brain?

In this episode, Emily looks at something we don’t talk about enough in business: the impact our homes have on the way we think, work, focus and switch off.

This isn’t about having an Instagram-perfect house, expensive storage or becoming Marie Kondo overnight.

It’s about friction.

The washing you can see while you’re trying to work. The school letters living in your head. The things nobody can ever bloody find. The jobs that keep repeating because there’s no system. The mental load of being the person who notices, remembers, plans and delegates everything.

And for women running businesses from home, the lines between work, family and life can become even harder to see.

In this episode we discuss:

✨ Why your environment can create more cognitive load than you realise

✨ The difference between mess, clutter and actual friction

✨ Why working from home can make it harder to focus AND switch off

✨ The invisible mental load of noticing and remembering everything

✨ Why delegating a task isn’t the same as delegating ownership

✨ What business systems can teach us about running our homes

✨ Why the best organisational system is the one your family will actually use

✨ How your belongings create a hidden management cost

✨ Why clutter is often delayed decision-making made visible

✨ How to create an environment that makes better habits easier

✨ Why September is the perfect time to create capacity before Q4 and Christmas add more complexity

If you’ve ever sat down to work and suddenly noticed 14 household jobs…

If your brain feels like it has 700 tabs open…

If everybody in your house seems to ask YOU where everything is…

If work constantly leaks into family time because your office is also your home…

Or if you’ve ever wondered why life sometimes feels harder to manage than it should…

This episode is for you.

Because you don’t need a perfect home to build an extraordinary life.

You need an environment that works with you instead of constantly working against you.

🎙️ Hosted by Emily Mallender, Business & Marketing Strategist, Founder of The EMpowered Collective and Creator of Visible & Paid.

📧 [email protected]

🌐 www.empoweredwithemily.com

JOIN THE EMPIRE: www.skool.com/the-empire

Keywords: working from home, home organisation, productivity for entrepreneurs, women in business, female entrepreneur, business owner productivity, mental load, clutter and productivity, home office productivity, work-life balance, decision fatigue, organising your home, household systems, ambitious women, working mums, founder productivity, Q4 reset, September reset, Christmas organisation, business mindset

"We've somehow confused visibility with viability. And they're not the same thing."

A business can look incredible online and be haemorrhaging money behind the scenes.

Someone with 700 followers can be making more profit than someone with 70,000. Someone working from their kitchen table can have more financial freedom than someone with an office and a team. And someone shouting about a £20k month might have less money left than the person quietly turning over £8k.

So why are we still using the things we can see to measure success?

In this episode, Emily challenges seven pieces of business advice we're constantly being told to follow and asks one important question:

If nobody could see any of it, would you still be making the same business decisions?

In this episode, we discuss:

✨ Why you DON'T need to be everywhere on social media and the 3P Platform Test for deciding where to show up

✨ Why more followers don't automatically mean more customers

✨ Why pretending your business is bigger than it is could actually work against you

✨ When buying courses and constantly learning becomes procrastination instead of progress

✨ Why repetition is one of the most underrated business growth strategies

✨ What to automate, what not to automate, and why Emily believes in "automating the friction and protecting the humanity"

✨ Why revenue means very little without understanding profit, cash flow, margins and what you're actually paying yourself

✨ How easy it is to inherit somebody else's goals and accidentally build a business you never wanted

If you've ever compared your followers, revenue, team or progress to somebody else's, felt pressure to be everywhere, kept buying courses looking for the missing answer, or found yourself working harder without actually making more money, this episode is for you.

Because there's a huge difference between learning from somebody else's strategy and inheriting somebody else's definition of success.

Maybe you don't want a team of 50 or a seven-figure company.

Maybe £5k reliably coming into your business every month, doing work you love with customers you like, while having time for the people and things that matter to you, would completely transform your life.

The question isn't what success is supposed to look like.

It's: what do YOU actually want?

And if nobody could see your followers, turnover, team, office, awards or any of the other things we've learned to associate with success...

What would you build if you had nobody to impress?

🎙️ Hosted by Emily Mallender, Business & Marketing Strategist, Founder of The EMpowered Collective and Creator of Visible & Paid.

📧 [email protected]

🌐 www.empoweredwithemily.com

JOIN THE EMPIRE: www.skool.com/the-empire

Keywords: business success, female entrepreneur podcast, women in business UK, small business advice, business strategy, profitable business, revenue vs profit, social media marketing, business automation, entrepreneur mindset, sustainable business, business growth, The EMpire Diaries, Emily Mallender

"My problem wasn't that my business depended on me. My problem was that my mind did."

Emily just came back from 10 days in Turkey, the first proper family holiday with her husband and their two kids in almost 3 years. Before she left, she made herself a promise. Not to try and switch off. To actually do it.

Her business runs without her. Systems, automation, a trained team, boundaries. On paper, everything she teaches. So why couldn't her brain do the same thing?

This episode is Emily's honest answer to that question, and the moment she realised she'd spent years believing she was far more indispensable than she actually was.

In this episode we discuss:

✨ The difference between a business that can survive without you and a mind that actually lets it

✨ What a full digital detox really looked like, 2 emails in 10 days, and why even those felt hard to justify

✨ Why exhaustion has quietly become a badge of honour, and what that's actually costing us

✨ The moment on a water slide that changed how Emily saw her own body confidence

✨ Watching her daughter refuse every family photo, and what that taught her about disappearing summers

✨ Using a journaling app instead of her phone, and the one word every single answer came back to

✨ The concept of Preservation Goals, and the uncomfortable question behind it: what do I refuse to lose while achieving everything else?

If you've ever:

• Watched a film while mentally drafting an Instagram caption

• Felt guilty putting your phone down, even on holiday

• Measured your worth by how busy or exhausted you are

• Avoided being in photos because you didn't feel confident enough to be seen

• Built a business to escape a job, and quietly built another one instead

Then this episode is for you.

Because somewhere along the way, so many of us stop building a business around our life, and start building our life around the business. And that's got to stop.

🎙️ Hosted by Emily Mallender, Business & Marketing Strategist, Founder of The EMpowered Collective and Creator of Visible & Paid.

📧 [email protected]

🌐 www.empoweredwithemily.com

JOIN THE EMPIRE: www.skool.com/the-empire

Keywords: entrepreneur burnout, switching off from work, digital detox entrepreneur, work life balance business owner, female entrepreneur podcast, business owner mental health, preservation goals, freedom in business, building a business vs building a life, women in business UK, self employed burnout, business coaching, mindset for entrepreneurs, entrepreneur family life, sustainable business, small business owner podcast, The EMpire Diaries, Emily Mallender, Visible and Paid

"Your customer doesn't always need more information. They need fewer reasons to feel uncertain."

Someone finds your business, follows you, enquires, asks for your prices, books a discovery call or adds a product to their basket.

Then... nothing!!! 👻

Most business owners assume it's because they're too expensive.

But what if that's not the real reason?

In this solo episode, Emily breaks down the psychology behind why customers actually buy, why people can genuinely need what you sell and still choose to do nothing, and where businesses unknowingly lose sales throughout the customer journey.

Whether you sell products or services, this episode will change the way you think about marketing, selling and customer behaviour.

In this episode, we discuss:

✨ Why people don't buy based on logic alone

✨ The 7 psychological stages every customer moves through before saying yes

✨ Why relevance, trust and certainty matter more than price

✨ The difference between features and transformation

✨ What "it's too expensive" often really means

✨ How businesses accidentally create uncertainty without realising it

✨ Why ethical sales isn't about convincing people to buy, but helping the right people make confident decisions

If you've ever:

• Had enquiries that never turned into customers

• Been ghosted after sending your prices

• Wondered whether you should lower your prices

• Struggled to explain why people love your business but don't actually buy

• Wanted to understand how customers really make buying decisions

Then this episode is for you.

Because people don't buy the best product.

They buy the business that makes them feel the most certain.

🎙️ Hosted by Emily Mallender, Business & Marketing Strategist, Founder of The EMpowered Collective / The EMpire and Creator of Visible & Paid.

📧 [email protected]

🌐 www.empoweredwithemily.com

JOIN THE EMPIRE: www.skool.com/the-empire

🎟️ EMpowered Live: https://live.empoweredwithemily.com/

Keywords: sales psychology, customer psychology, why customers don't buy, buying behaviour, sales objections, customer journey, small business marketing, business growth, women in business, ethical selling, service business, product business, The EMpire Diaries, Emily Mallender

"You wouldn't say that you fell for a burglary. It's something that happened to you. You were targeted."

Cecilie Fjellhøy was the golden child. Great grades, a career in tech, a master's degree in the UK, and a hopeless romantic who believed in love.

Then she swiped right on a man calling himself Simon Leviev, and in just three weeks, he ramped up £67,000 on her Amex card. By the time it was over, she had lost £200,000 in high-interest loans, filed for bankruptcy, been taken to court by four banks, and become a suspect with the UK police, all for a relationship that lasted six months.

Millions of people watched her story unfold in Netflix's The Tinder Swindler, the most-watched documentary the platform has ever released.

But in this episode, Emily sits down with Cecilie to get past the headlines and find out who she really is behind them, the good, the brutal, and everything in between.

In this episode, we discuss:
✨ How a "true gentleman" with a bodyguard, a private jet and an entire fake team became the perfect con
✨ Love bombing, future faking and the psychological tactics that make anyone vulnerable, not just the naive
✨ The moment she realised the money wasn't coming, and what it actually feels like in your body
✨ Why she calls coming forward "the waiting room", and what stopped her from opening that door sooner
✨ Rebuilding her name, her finances and her sense of self after going public
✨ Turning her story into Love Con Revenge, her own Netflix series, helping other survivors
✨ Why she refuses to say she "fell for" a scam, and what language actually protects victims
✨ The fight she's taking to Parliament next, and why social media platforms are her biggest target

If you've ever:

• Wondered how someone "smart enough to know better" ends up defrauded

• Judged a fraud victim, even quietly, without knowing the full story

• Believed love bombing could never happen to you

• Felt shame for trusting the wrong person

• Wanted to understand what real resilience looks like after devastating loss

Then this conversation will change how you see it.

Cecilie isn't a victim in this story. She's the woman who turned her worst six months into a mission that's reaching millions.

🎙️ Hosted by Emily Mallender, Business & Marketing Strategist, Founder of The EMpowered Collective and Creator of Visible & Paid.

📧 [email protected]
🌐 www.empoweredwithemily.com
JOIN THE EMPIRE: www.skool.com/the-empire

EMPOWERED LIVE TICKETS: https://live.empoweredwithemily.com/

📖 Order Cecilie's book, Swindled Never After: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Swindled-Never-After-Survived-Relationship-ebook/dp/B0DXQDVK7Y
🌐 Find out more about LoveSaid, Cecilie's survivor-led organisation: https://lovesaid.org/

📺 Watch Love Con Revenge on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/search?q=LOVE%20CON%20REV&jbv=81685732

Keywords: Tinder Swindler, Cecilie Fjellhøy, romance fraud, romance scam survivor, Simon Leviev, Love Con Revenge Netflix, financial fraud victim, online dating scams, love bombing, LoveSaid, Swindled Never After, fraud awareness, scam survivor advocate, coercive control, romance fraud recovery, women's podcast, The EMpire Diaries, Emily Mallender, financial abuse, dating app safety, online safety UK

"New levels bring new devils. And I'm done pretending mine don't exist."

Everyone tells you to chase the next level. Push forward, grow the business, hit the goal. What nobody tells you is that your problems don't disappear when you get there. They just change shape.

In this deeply honest solo episode, Emily pulls back the curtain on the last few weeks of running EMpowered, and it's not the highlight reel. It's launching a membership, running month three of Visible & Paid, taking on consultancy clients, and writing a brand new keynote talk from a squeaky deckchair on a pile of rubble at 4 am, all while juggling a festival clash with the World Cup, a last-minute childcare scramble, a family bereavement, a national gymnastics competition and her dad's baptism. In one weekend.

This episode is risqué, unfiltered and exactly why The EMpire Diaries exists.

In this episode, we discuss:

✨ Why "new levels bring new devils" is the truth behind every business highlight reel

✨ The mindset and identity work behind why women undercharge, hide and self-sabotage

✨ Launching a membership with zero big launch strategy, on purpose

✨ Running consultancy, one-to-one coaching and group programmes without dropping a single ball

✨ Building and delivering a brand new keynote talk under serious pressure

✨ Sharing a story on stage she'd never told anyone before, not even her husband

✨ Putting family first when work and life collide at the worst possible time

✨ What it really costs, financially and emotionally, to build your own flagship event from scratch

If you've ever:

• Felt like burnout is the price of ambition

• Wondered why nobody warned you that success would feel like this

• Juggled business, motherhood and everything in between and still felt like you were failing at all three

• Put on a brave face while quietly falling apart behind the scenes

• Wondered if it's time to just pack it all in and get a "normal" job

Then this conversation is for you.

Because behind every successful business owner is a version of them that had to fall apart a little to grow. This episode is Emily's.

🎙️ Hosted by Emily Mallender, Business & Marketing Strategist, Founder of The EMpowered Collective / The EMpire and Creator of Visible & Paid.

📧 [email protected]

🌐 www.empoweredwithemily.com

JOIN THE EMPIRE: www.skool.com/the-empire

🎟️ EMpowered Live: https://live.empoweredwithemily.com/

Keywords: entrepreneur burnout, scaling a business, business owner mental health, women in business, female entrepreneur, work life balance, business and motherhood, imposter syndrome, small business owner UK, business coaching, mindset coaching, Visible and Paid, entrepreneurial pressure, honest business podcast, women supporting women, female founder, business growth, self-employed burnout, work life juggle, EMpowered, The EMpire Diaries, Emily Mallender

Esther Ghey, mother of Brianna Ghey, joins The EMpire Diaries to talk online safety, forgiveness and the legacy her daughter left behind.

What do you say to a mother who has turned the most unimaginable loss into a movement that could protect millions of children? In this episode, I sit down with Esther Ghey, founder of the Brianna Ghey Legacy Project and one of the UK's most important voices on child protection and online safety.

Esther shares Brianna's story with extraordinary honesty and courage, reflecting on her life, her transition, the challenges she faced online and the devastating events that changed everything.

Recorded just one day after the Government announced plans to restrict social media access for under-16s, this conversation couldn't be more timely or more necessary.

In this episode we discuss:

✨ Brianna Ghey's life, transition and legacy

✨ The real impact of smartphones on children's mental health

✨ Online grooming and the dangers of Snapchat culture

✨ Phone-free schools and what the research tells us

✨ Forgiveness after unimaginable tragedy

✨ Mindfulness and resilience for young people

✨ Parenting in the digital age

✨ The Government's social media ban for under-16s

✨ The Brianna Ghey Legacy Project and the campaign for change

If you're a parent, teacher or school leader, please share this episode. It could matter more than you know.

To find out more about Esther's work and the Brianna Ghey Legacy Project visit www.briannaslegacy.org

🎙️ Hosted by Emily Mallender

Founder of The EMpire | Business, Marketing, Confidence & Visibility Coach

JOIN THE EMPIRE: www.skool.com/the-empire

📧 [email protected]

🌐 www.empoweredwithemily.com

📖 Order Esther's Book

🌸 Support the Brianna Ghey Legacy Project

Keywords: Brianna Ghey, Esther Ghey, Brianna Ghey mother, Brianna Ghey legacy, Brianna Ghey murder, online safety, children's mental health, smartphones and children, social media ban UK, social media age restriction, under 16 social media, phone free schools, online grooming, Snapchat dangers, knife crime UK, transgender children, parenting in the digital age, child protection, Brianna's Legacy Project, mindfulness, resilience, The EMpire Diaries, Emily Mallender, women's podcast, empowerment.

What happens when 10 women come together in one room and start having the conversations most people keep to themselves?

This episode of The EMpire Diaries is completely unscripted, unfiltered and unexpectedly powerful.

During my Content, Confidence & Visibility Weekend, a group of incredible women began sharing their thoughts, experiences and struggles around confidence, money, judgement, self-worth, visibility and what it really means to be yourself in a world that constantly tells you who you should be.

The conversation was so honest, so relatable, and so important that I couldn't not record it.

What followed was a raw and vulnerable discussion about the challenges women face, the stories we tell ourselves, the fears that hold us back and the courage it takes to step outside our comfort zones and become the person we know we're capable of being.

In this episode we discuss:

✨ Confidence, self-belief and personal growth

✨ Money, wealth and our relationship with success

✨ Insecurities, self-doubt and imposter syndrome

✨ Fear of judgement and what other people think

✨ Relatability versus credibility in business and life

✨ The pressure women place on themselves

✨ Authenticity and learning to be yourself

✨ Stepping outside your comfort zone

✨ EMpowerment, resilience and backing yourself

✨ The power of community and honest conversations

Featuring Karen, Becky, Paula, Jenny, Nicola, Beth, Cilla, Rhianna, Ruby, Jane and Helen, this conversation is a reminder that no matter where you are in your journey, you're probably not as alone as you think.

If you've ever doubted yourself, worried about being judged, questioned your worth, struggled with confidence or felt like you're making it up as you go along, this episode is for you.

Because behind every confident woman is a story most people never get to hear.

🎙️ Hosted by Emily Mallender

Founder of The EMpire | Business, Marketing, Confidence & Visibility Coach

JOIN THE EMPIRE:
www.skool.com/the-empire

📧 [email protected]
🌐 www.empoweredwithemily.com

Keywords: Women in Business, Confidence, Self-Belief, Money Mindset, Personal Development, Female Entrepreneurs, Empowerment, Visibility, Imposter Syndrome, Authenticity, Leadership, Community, Mindset, Women Supporting Women, Female Founder, Self-Worth, Business Growth, Entrepreneurship, Motivation, Resilience.