The principle underneath it stayed with me: you don't plan from the past.

I hosted a session with Katie Hess - Flower Alchemist, founder of Lotus Wei, on Friday, and it taught me something about how founders get stuck.

In the room was an exceptional group of female founders. Different stages, different industries, but so much in common: deeply talented, accomplished women with years of expertise and hard-won experience running their businesses.

And here's the thing about running a business for years, often alone — it's a lonely journey. You accumulate scar tissue. So when you get a room full of founders who finally feel safe, the conversation can tip quickly into venting.

Cathartic? Absolutely. Valuable? Not really.

That's where Katie and her team came in — with their flower essence sprays and elixirs — and gently cut the whining short. The defensiveness. The excuses. And in its place, they left us with one question:

What if it could work out?

Seneca said it long ago: "To be happy, you must eliminate two things — the fear of a bad future and the memory of a bad past."

The principle underneath it stayed with me: you don't plan from the past.

You don't build your strategy around what has already happened to you. You plan — and you act — on the basis of what you want in the future, with the assumption that everything is going to work out in your favour.

The founders who came in carrying years of "here's why it's hard" left thinking about what they actually wanted to build next.

That's the shift. And it's available to all of us.

Katie and I are now working to put together something really special for female founders - a 3 month initiative that will be help us achieve breakthroughs and change the business game with the power of flower essences.

DM me if you are keen to know more!