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Nicole Johnson became a baby sleep expert through necessity after her first son was born and he refused to sleep more than an hour or two at a time, all night long. As a result, the Baby Sleep Site was created in 2008 to give her the platform to support sleep-deprived parents learn how to get their babies to sleep better. Over thirteen years of business, Nicole has seen a lot of growth and change and in this episode she shares her experiences with hiring contractors and moving into becoming a business with employees, how growth impacted her role within the business, and how she wishes she’d managed the growth of her business differently. It’s not often you hear entrepreneurs share about how their business got smaller, and Nicole is honest and open about the decision she made to stop growing and why. Nicole Johnson is a married mother of two wonderful boys and founder of The Baby Sleep Site. When her eldest son was born, he had a lot of sleep problems – he would wake every one or two hours, all night long! She got busy and thoroughly researched literature and scientific reports until she became an expert in sleep methods, scheduling routines, baby developmental needs, and more. She overcame her son’s sleeping issues in a way that matched her own parenting style, and knew it was her mission to help other tired parents “find their child’s sleep”. If you have your own sleep issues, Nicole and her team at The Baby Sleep Site® can help! Download the popular free guide, 5 Ways To Help Your Child Sleep Through The Night, to get started today.

Tracy Lamourie is a human rights activist and award winning publicist who started her business campaigning to free an innocent man from Death Row. She’s passionate about amplifying important messages and being a voice for those who most need one. In this episode, Tracy shares her knowledge and experience helping her clients gain media attention, providing step-by-step suggestions that you can follow, along with tips around changing your mindset to make media, PR and publicity and part of your business marketing goals.

Shauna Armitage is a fractional marketing director for early-stage startups, guiding founders at all stages of growth in developing an impactful marketing program. Bridging the gap between consultant and agency, Shauna takes a hands-on approach in each and every business. Through her intensive client work, Shauna has helped her clients achieve results such as a 400% increase in website conversions and a 220% growth in sales leading to profitability and scalability. She is a Hubspot Certified professional with a certificate in Women’s Entrepreneurship from Cornell University. In this episode, Shauna shares just what exactly a Fractional Marketing Director does and how she came to create her business. She shares some great tips for marketing your business, even if you’re not a start-up. Shauna’s passion for growth based in not just strategy, but also integrity, really came through in our conversation and I encourage you to implement her suggestions for growing as an entrepreneur.

In this episode, Samantha and Pepper talk about niching, an area many business owners struggle with. Samantha shares about her own fears around the process, but also about how niching has really helped her business change organically, shifting into an agency model working with independent contractors. A Certified Birth Doula and Postpartum Doula and Certified Childbirth Educator, Samantha came to the realization that as one woman, she could only support one woman at any given time. With strengths in leadership, education and organization, Samantha multiplied her efforts by founding DC Metro Maternity, a boutique parenting support agency. She brought on a team of other passionate female certified doulas of color and together, they have been supporting black families in the DC, suburban Maryland, and Northern Virginia areas since 2018.

Jyssica Yelas is an entrepreneur whose digital marketing agency helps businesses create social content. She began her journey into social media for business while at college and moved into running her own business when she was unexpectedly let go from her job. She’s passionate about helping business owners embrace social media for their business, the connections and collaborations that can be grown on the various social platforms, and is a lover of Instagram in particular. Jyssica and I talked about her business journey, how social can be used by businesses and how to determine what you post and what you keep private. Jyssica shared a useful exercise to help you figure out those boundaries which I’m looking forward to completing myself!

Shannon Kenny is a sustainability consultant, helping eco-friendly businesses become more sustainable without sacrificing profit. Her journey into fighting climate change, supporting people in their journey to eco consciousness, began with a piece of plastic packaging she wasn’t certain could be recycled. From there, Shannon began educating herself, and then others, to help them learn how to reduce their carbon footprint and help them understand that any action, however small it feels, does make a difference. In this episode, Pepper Makepeace talks with Shannon about her journey into entrepreneurship and the difficult decision-making and numerous pivots she navigated to get to where she is today. They talk about following your core values and mission to help steer your path through the choices we have to make and the learning curve that comes with being an entrepreneur.

Susan Elford believes relationship building is the key to a successful venture. In this episode she shares how that belief came about, the steps she took to build her businesses and the relationships she’s built. She offers practical steps for how people can start to build business relationships, give back to causes they’re passionate about, and build a business based on caring about other people.

Sagan Morrow is a productivity strategist for multi-passionate creatives, and is also an indie author of romantic comedies. She started back in 2008 as a healthy living blogger and has slowly pivoted into a small business resource for solopreneurs, adding in different strands and interests to her business as she went. In this episode, Sagan shares the practicalities of running a multi-passionate business - from managing an email list and how she describes what she does - and gives great tips on how to create and run a multi-passionate business yourself, without getting overwhelmed.

The sisters have successfully transitioned their business from 100% in person to 100% online in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and have recently created an online product tailored to fit their business and niche perfectly. In this episode they talk about how they navigated that transition, their new product and how the marketing has worked for it, as well as their planning process for 2021 so we can all hit the ground running.

Introvert and former camera-shy television professional, Tors is a Confidence & Success coach, female empowerment advocate, and writer currently working on publishing her first books. An avid podcast listener, Tors runs a podcast production agency called Podcastology. She’s brought everything she learned about audio from her past life in television and combined it with her experiences in entrepreneurship to create an agency designed to support female business owners get their podcast up and running. She lives in south Wales with her direwolf, Bear, and they can usually be found wandering the mountains whatever the weather. A lover of sassy tees, Pimms cocktails, and a good book, Tors would often prefer to be curled up on the couch but admits the views are worth getting rained on.

Micheline Edwards is a Transformational Coach who’s spent almost thirty years running a variety of businesses, all while homeschooling her five children. She works as a Certified Holistic Health & Life Coach to help women across the world grow with confidence into a happier & healthier individual. In this episode we discuss how time management lead to homeschooling, the importance of boundaries and how to say no respectfully, and the lessons Micheline’s learned over her thirty years in business.

Deb Matlock works as a professional environmental educator and naturalist, a shamanic practitioner, and an animal communicator. She is dedicated to exploring her own spiritual connection to life, passionately refined her natural ability to experience shamanic – style journeys, communicate with animals, and act as a spiritually-focused life coach. In this episode we discuss Deb’s journey to becoming a business owner, how what she does impacts how she does it, her philosophy around business and how she approaches the failures that come with being a business owner. It’s clear in our conversation that Deb walks her talk and her relationship with her business is something she takes seriously. I had a great time chatting with her and there’s plenty of take-aways that you can apply to your own business.

In this episode, Rhiannon dives into her approach to business as well as review her strategic four pillar approach that she created and credits for her success. She’s passionate about helping women feel better, physically, mentally and emotionally, so they can show up day after day while reaching their full potential.

Meet Rooshy Roy, founder of AAVRANI a premium skincare company that reimagines India’s ancient beauty rituals, while harnessing the power of potent, all-natural ingredients. Their mission is to align inner confidence with outer radiance and empower women to embrace their all natural beauty, challenge expectations and redefine beauty standards at large. In this episode we discuss fusing culture, values and branding, as well as how mindset plays into the success of entrepreneurship even when you’re Googling how to.

In this episode, Stacey Harris talks about how her commitment phobia helped shape her business, and how her business has evolved over the years as she explored what interested her, one small step at a time. She shares how experimentation and evaluation have played into her business growth and gives tips you can apply to your own business.

In this episode, Benedetta and Valeria share how the pandemic has forced their business to change, and how they’ve managed to stay positive throughout the entire process, despite losing their projected revenue for the whole of 2020. They dive into how their morning routine has changed their lives and changed how they approach life, business and everything in between. Benedetta and Valeria are Italian, foodies, sisters, and the owners a food and wine experiences company in Rome (Italy) called Local Aromas. Benedetta is a wine sommelier, an olive oil sommelier, and a professional cheese taster. Valeria is a trained pastry chef. Through in-person experiences, online cooking school, and their YouTube channel, these sisters are on a mission to share Italy's culture and traditions through food and wine.

Tessy Nkechi Egonu. Tessy is the founder of Queentrepreneur Women’s Foundation, a non profit organisation serving women and girls in underserved communities of Nigeria and throughout Africa. Through training programs, exposure, and mentorship, Queentrepreneur Women’s Foundation empowers women to become socially conscious global leaders. They also provide free legal assistance to female victims of domestic violence and human rights abuse and engage in human rights education and grassroots popularization of rights. Their vision is to develop more confident women to be equipped and passionate about leading organisations, businesses, schools and agencies domestically to contribute to a society where women leaders are no longer viewed as the exception to the rule but as relevant assets and necessary additions to organisations nationwide.

Ani Fernandez, the artist behind TonicARTistry, shares with us the marketing and customer service strategy behind her very successful Etsy shop. Ani is an acrylic painter, mixed media artist, jewelry designer, yogi, martial artist, musician and lover of all things artistic and awesome.

Tia Johnson shares her experience with self-publishing and doing everything on her own the first book and how she did it differently publishing her 2nd book. Join us and learn about her process and plus tips for self-publishing your own book.

Anna Sabino talks about her process of testing ideas and getting feedback for her products. She also shares her experience with getting a literary agent and publishing her book with a traditional publisher.