Episode description

Faye Roddy is a strategic business coach who built one of the UK's biggest cleaning franchises from nothing and sold it in a single thirty-minute meeting. But the version of Faye people see today didn't start in a boardroom. It started on market stalls in Salford, counting pennies for her mum at ten years old.

In this conversation, we go back to the decision that shaped everything, leaving school at fifteen, and the year that nearly broke her: becoming a mum at twenty-two, a medical emergency with her baby son that changed how she saw the world, and walking away from her marriage with £10,000 and nothing else. We talk about the fourteen years she spent building a flagship franchise business while quietly carrying a cancer diagnosis she kept from her own children. And we talk about the "ice queen" mask - what it costs to be the strong one, and what happens when you finally put yourself on the list.

Faye Roddy went from waiting tables in her mum's café at eight years old to building one of the UK's largest franchise businesses - and then walking away from it, twice: once when it was sold out from under her, and once by choice, on her own terms. This conversation moves from a Salford childhood built on graft and independence, through single motherhood and a secret cancer diagnosis, to the moment she handed her life's work to her team in a thirty-minute meeting - and what she's building now, for herself and for other women.

Themes:

• Growing up "old-headed" - independence as both a gift and an armour
• Becoming a mother, and nearly losing a child, at twenty-two
• Rebuilding a life from a £10,000 car sale and nothing else
• Building a flagship business while carrying a cancer diagnosis in secret
• The "ice queen" mask, and what it costs to always be the strong one
• Choosing to sell, choosing to develop others, and choosing freedom

If you've ever been the one everyone else leans on, send this to someone who needs to hear it. Leave a review, or send us a message and tell us what stuck with you. And if you're new here, hit follow. Notes from the Not There Yet is out every two weeks.

Key takeaways

• Being independent from a young age can be both the reason you succeed and the reason you struggle to let people in.
• You can hold a business together while your personal world is falling apart — but it has a cost, and it's worth naming.
• Selling something you built isn't a single ending. Sometimes you have to let it go twice.
• Developing other people's confidence can be the thing that finally sets you free.
• Freedom isn't the reward at the end. It's a decision you make on the way there.
  

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Not lost, not arrived, just not there yet.

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Gemma Lees is a performance poet, journalist, facilitator and fine art installationist from Bury - and a proud Romani gypsy. In this episode, she talks about growing up in a creative, self-employed Romani family, multiple breakdowns and period of homelessness in her early twenties, being diagnosed as dyslexic and dyspraxic at 21 and autistic at 41, and living with fibromyalgia after years of being dismissed by doctors. We talk about what people get wrong about Romani and Traveller identity, why she turns insults into material rather than shame, and how creativity - protest art, poetry, performance - became both her advocacy and her survival. She wants her work to make people "laugh till they cry, and cry till they act."

SHOW NOTES

Gemma Lees is a performance poet, journalist and installation artist who has spent her career turning her own story - Romani identity, late diagnoses of autism and fibromyalgia, a breakdown and homelessness in her early twenties - into work that dispels myths and refuses to be quiet about it. This conversation moves from an oral storytelling childhood through a difficult chapter at university, to the funeral that brought her back to creativity, to the advocacy and installation work she's building now.

Themes:

• Romani and Traveller identity, and the myths that surround it

• Late diagnosis (autism at 41, fibromyalgia after years of being dismissed)

• Creativity as both advocacy and catharsis

• Rebuilding after a breakdown, one decision at a time

• Turning insults and stereotypes into material, not shame

  
  

Key Takeaways

• You don't have to look like what people expect your identity to be for it to be real.

• Creativity isn't a luxury - for Gemma, it's advocacy, protest, and catharsis all at once.

• A late diagnosis doesn't erase the years before it. It just finally explains them.

• Rejection can become material instead of a verdict - turn the insult into a t-shirt.

• "Not there yet" can mean building something, one decision at a time, with no fixed finish line.

If this episode moved you in some way, please send it to someone who's ever been told they don't "look like" what they are. Leave a review, or send us a message and tell us what stuck with you. And if you're new here, hit follow - Notes from the Not There Yet is out every two weeks.

Find Gemma Lees:Website: https://gemmaleesartist.co.uk/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gemmathepoet/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gemmathepoet83Find the The Not There Yet Project: Website: https://notthereyetproject.co.uk/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/notthereyetproject/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethanydwrightSubstack: https://thenotthereyetproject.substack.com/Not lost, not arrived, just not there yet.

Episode Summary

Jenny Marshall has spent close to twenty years in mental health and seven years in private practice, working with people at every point on what she calls "the spectrum" - from quiet, low-level dissatisfaction to something far more serious when it's left unheard.

In this episode, Jenny takes us back to the school reports that called her a "classic underachiever," through the acute eating disorders unit she walked into at 23 with no idea what she was signing up for, to the traumatic birth that made her, for the first time in her career, the person in crisis instead of the one holding it together.

We talk about the marriage, the senior NHS role and the M&S-stocked fridge that looked like having it all and felt like nothing at all, and why she walked away from all three at once. Jen also takes apart the stereotype of the older man with a notepad and a couch, and makes the case that you don't have to be falling apart to deserve a space to talk.

Show notes

Integrative counsellor Jenny Marshall spent her career being the calm one in other people's crises until a traumatic birth put her on the other side of the bed and forced her to look at why "coping" had always come so easily.

This conversation moves from an underachieving childhood to an inpatient eating disorders unit at 23, through a marriage and NHS career that looked right on paper, to the moment Jen chose herself instead. Along the way, she and Beth take apart what people get wrong about therapists, and why "not there yet" isn't a crisis point - it's a spectrum.

Themes

• Being "great in a crisis" as a learned response, not a personality trait
• The gap between a life that looks right on paper and one that feels right underneath
• Why therapy doesn't require a crisis to be valid
• The stereotypes that keep people from asking for help
• Choosing yourself as an act of showing your children something, not just yourself

If this one lands, send it to the friend who's always the calm one in a crisis. Leave a review, or send us a message and tell us what stuck with you. And if you're new here, hit follow - Notes from the Not There Yet is out every other Tuesday.

Key takeaways

• Being "great in a crisis" can be a learned response you don't recognise until something forces you to stop performing it.
• You don't need to be falling apart to deserve therapy - not there yet exists on a spectrum, and it's easier to hear early than late.
• A life that looks right on paper and a life that feels right underneath are not the same thing, and you're allowed to notice the gap.
• The fear of being perceived as having failed is often bigger, and more paralysing, than failure itself.
• AI and social media can be a front door into therapy but they were never meant to be the destination.

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