Scale Her Up: Female business stories and expert tips for business growth and success

Brenda Hector
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Weekly

If you are a female business owner, self-employed freelancer, or girl boss who wants to build a successful business i.e. work less hours, make more money, and get better results from your staff, then this is the podcast for you. Hosted by Dr Brenda Hector MBA from ActionCOACH UK, this podcast provides relatable and accessible business advice and inspiration from successful businesswomen who have been there and done it before you. This podcast is where you can • hear female business stories • share business success • learn how to overcome business challenges • get advice for businesswomen aspiring to success • find out what needs to change • discover how we can bring about that business revolution Only 1 in 3 UK entrepreneurs are female. UK men are 5 times more likely than women to build a business of over £1million turnover If UK women matched UK men in starting and scaling businesses, it would add £250 billion to the UK economy (Alison Rose, The Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship 2018) As a woman in business, a business coach, and a business growth expert, Brenda’s mission is to help business owners grow their companies, achieve their goals and live the lifestyle of their dreams. She's the help you need to grow your business.

  1. 23h ago

    Made Redundant in the Financial Crash, She Started Her Own Business — and Merged It With Her Dad's Ten Years Later: Debbie Rennie of Instinct Marketing and PR

    In this episode of Scale HER Up, I'm joined by Debbie Rennie — owner and managing director of Instinct Marketing and PR, a marketing consultancy based in the northeast of Scotland. Debbie's background is in-house marketing, but her route into it wasn't straightforward: she started in finance, retrained in marketing part-time, worked at NCR in Dundee doing global product marketing, then in the charity sector, and then in a recruitment firm that made her redundant during the 2008 financial crash. At that point, newly married with no children, she decided to go it alone. At the same time — and separately — her dad was running his own small marketing business he'd set up in 2002. For several years they were effectively friendly competitors. Then, in 2015, it stopped making sense to stay apart. They merged their businesses. And after COVID changed the shape of the industry and her dad started thinking about what came next, Debbie rebranded to Instinct in 2021 and moved the business fully forward under her own leadership. Today Instinct is a small, deliberately bespoke team — three people internally plus freelancers and a contractor in Australia — working with founder-led SMEs and some corporate organisations across a wide range of sectors. They're embedded partners, not transactional agencies. Debbie is particular about that distinction. We cover: Why Instinct calls itself a consultancy rather than an agency — and what that means in practiceThe full arc: finance, marketing, employed, redundant, self-employed, merged, rebrandedThe oil crash, COVID, cash flow, and what mental toughness actually looks like in the thick of itSitting in a meeting breastfeeding a two-month-old while having a serious conversation about the businessThe COVID idea Debbie had to gift unused service time to charities — and what actually happenedWhy she works with founder-led SMEs and what the cross-pollination between sectors bringsWhat she'd do differently: believe in herself more, ask for help earlier, and stop underchargingBeing a flexible employer — and why that carries through to how she runs the teamThe husband who doesn't always understand the business but has total belief in her anyway Quote of the episode: "Resilience is absolute key. In business, the mental toughness of that whole journey is the most important piece." — Debbie Rennie Playlist songs: "Good To Be Alive" — Pete McCredie"In The Water" — Pete McCredie

    Made Redundant in the Financial Crash, She Started Her Own Business — and Merged It With Her Dad's Ten Years Later: Debbie Rennie of Instinct Marketing and PR

  2. 3d ago

    She Helped Fix the Edinburgh Tram Project, Then Built a £3.2M Consultancy From Scratch at the Start of COVID: Cath Leech of Anturas Consulting

    In this episode of Scale HER Up, I'm joined by Cath Leech — managing director of Anturas Consulting Limited, an Edinburgh-based infrastructure consultancy she co-founded with her husband Rob and business partner Sheena. Anturas supports clients delivering major infrastructure projects — predominantly mass rapid transit, rail, and light rail — providing strategic advice, governance, and the kind of efficient, collaborative delivery structure that gets complex projects over the line on time and on budget. One of their most significant commissions has been the Edinburgh Tram Project, where Cath's team has been involved since the first phase was being salvaged after its troubled start, right through to the delivery of the second phase through COVID. The business was formally scaled up at the start of 2020. It now has 23 people and is turning over around £3.2 million. That's not despite COVID — it's partly because of it. When projects had to go remote, Anturas could suddenly draw from a national talent pool and bring in clients they couldn't have reached before. Cath is a chartered civil engineer who spent years working across contractors, design consultancies, and client-side organisations before founding the business. She became managing director not through a sophisticated recruitment process — she's the first to say so — but because her business partners recognised she was the best person to lead the growth while they stayed in their technical lanes. We cover: What Anturas does: the "cog between organisations" that gets major infrastructure projects to communicate, collaborate, and deliverThe Edinburgh Tram Project: walking into something that hadn't gone well, and helping deliver something Edinburgh now couldn't do withoutHow COVID became an unexpected enabler — and what it means to build back toward face-to-faceThe forming, storming, norming, performing journey of three co-founders — and why it took five years to really get thereWhat a civil engineer has to unlearn to become an effective managing directorWhy asking for help is a sign of efficiency, not weaknessThe BHAG she never let herself have at 18 — and why she'd do it differently nowWomen in STEM and the broader skills crisis facing infrastructure Quote of the episode: "You don't have to be a certain type to run a business. If you're passionate about something, running your own business might be the best way to fully recognise that passion and dream." — Cath Leech Playlist song: "Small Town Boy" — Bronski Beat

    She Helped Fix the Edinburgh Tram Project, Then Built a £3.2M Consultancy From Scratch at the Start of COVID: Cath Leech of Anturas Consulting

  3. Oct 23

    She Said She Wouldn't Eat in the Cafe. Her Husband Said "You Run It Then." She Had No Business Training. Here's What Happened: Jane Cox of Glendoick Garden Centre

    In this episode of Scale HER Up, I'm joined by Jane Cox — co-owner of Glendoick Garden Centre, the third-generation family business on the Perth to Dundee road that's been running for 73 years. Jane didn't grow up in the business. She came up from London, where she'd worked in publishing, and married into it. She also came with opinions. Specifically: she wouldn't eat in the cafe. Her husband Ken's response, as she tells it, was fairly direct — "You effing run it then." So she did. With no culinary training, no business training, and a chef who turned out not to know how to cook, she set about transforming what the garden centre served and how it operated. That was 27 years ago. Today Glendoick Garden Centre is a third plants, a third cafe, and a third non-plant retail — bookshop, clothing, home, gift — built up gradually from Jane's ideas. She's the ideas person, she's always been the ideas person, and she freely admits that some of those ideas were mad. She never got the woodland ice rink. But she got most of the rest. We cover: What Glendoick does: rhododendron and azalea specialists, nursery, mail order, and a garden centre that's almost a mini department storeThe cafe transformation: fresh food, proper coffee, cooking everything from scratch — and dealing with the chef who hadn't known how to cookLearning HR, delegation, margins, and Excel sheets on the fly — while chopping carrotsThe family business dynamic: in-laws who mostly said no, a husband who gave her the platform, and what that taught her about honing an ideaWhy bringing in a consultant changed the business — and what it means to let go of your egoHiring mothers returning to work after children, and why it's been a game changer for loyalty and retentionThe COVID story: over a million plants, 5.5 hours of watering a day, orders across 200 pieces of paper, and a kitchen table covered in postcodesPost-COVID: the joy of people fighting over plants like a January saleWhere she is now at 64: a strategic role, and honest thoughts about the future of physical retailWhy she thinks plants may be the one thing AI can't touch Quote of the episode: "Give them the opportunity to flower, because they will." — Jane Cox Playlist songs: "I Will Survive" — Gloria Gaynor

    She Said She Wouldn't Eat in the Cafe. Her Husband Said "You Run It Then." She Had No Business Training. Here's What Happened: Jane Cox of Glendoick Garden Centre

  4. Oct 20

    She Studied Fashion. Her Parents Founded an IT Business in 1992. Now She's CEO and Growing the Team: Pamela Malpas of One Office Technologies

    In this episode of Scale HER Up, I'm joined by Pamela Malpas — CEO of One Office Technologies, a second-generation family IT business that's been running since 1992. Pamela didn't exactly plan to end up here. She studied fashion at Heriot-Watt in the Borders, went into visual merchandising in Aberdeen, and was working in marketing in Edinburgh when her dad suggested she come in and try it. She walked through the door intending to do marketing, and never did a day of it. She's a self-described "born fixer" — and once she got into the business, the operations side pulled her in and never let go. One Office Technologies is an IT partner for small and medium-sized businesses: the outsourced internal IT department that builds strategies, plans, budgets, and implements the technology that keeps businesses running. Pamela runs it alongside her brother, who came up through the business as a photocopier engineer and now handles account management and sales. Their parents — who founded the company — have now fully stepped away. And Pamela has discovered that helping a founding generation retire is its own kind of project management. We cover: What One Office Technologies actually does — and why getting the IT fundamentals right matters more than chasing the latest tech trendThe danger of reacting too quickly to new technology: cloud, AI, and building blocks that fallThe transition from reactive support to proactive, planned IT strategyWhat Pamela learned walking into the family business "to do marketing" and ending up running operationsHow she and her brother navigated taking over — and helped their parents learn how to retireThe responsibility of inheriting a business someone else built from scratchWomen, risk aversion, perfectionism, and why done really is better than perfectA walk in the sunshine that ended in a drenching — and everything it says about keeping your blinkers onThe coach, the pod of 10, and the wider support network that keeps her goingWhy opportunities don't always present themselves the way you'd expect — and how to stay open to them Quote of the episode: "Don't make decisions for fear. Because you're scared of something, don't avoid it — head into it. Get comfortable with the feeling." — Pamela Malpas

    She Studied Fashion. Her Parents Founded an IT Business in 1992. Now She's CEO and Growing the Team: Pamela Malpas of One Office Technologies

  5. Oct 16

    She Moved to Scotland at 18 with No Plan, Applied for the Wrong Job, and Ended Up Running the Region — Sarah Medcraf, Moray Chamber of Commerce

    Sarah Medcraf moved to Moray at 18 because her boyfriend was in the RAF and she thought, "if it doesn't work, I'll just move back to Yorkshire." That was 2009. Today she's the CEO of Moray Chamber of Commerce, a director of Scottish Chambers of Commerce, and one of the most quietly compelling voices on what it actually takes to lead a business, a team, and a region through everything from a global pandemic to a wildfire season. She didn't take a straight path. She applied for a marketing role she wasn't qualified for, got turned down, and was offered a different job on the same phone call. She spent the first four or five years digging in and proving why she was there. It wasn't until she came back from maternity leave in 2018 that everything clicked — she finally knew what the region needed, what the chamber was supposed to be, and how to get there. In this conversation, Sarah talks about imposter syndrome in a way you won't have heard before — including the uncomfortable truth that it gets harder, not easier, as you get older and learn how much you don't know. She talks about the importance of knowing when to sit in the mud with someone, and when to get the whiteboard out. And she shares two ideas from this episode that I guarantee you'll be using by next week. The pizza boardroom. The I love me folder. You need both. Moving to a new region at 18 with a wing and a prayer — and what happened nextThe job rejection that led to the right job, on the same phone callWhy the chamber is nothing like the "stuffy old man's club" people assume it isImposter syndrome gets harder as you get older — here's why, and what to do about it"Do you want comfort or solutions?" — the one question that changes every difficult conversationWhat the first week of COVID looked like from inside the chamber: 78 phone calls, zero answersEmotional contagion: why Sarah's mood sets the tone for her whole team every morningThe pizza boardroom — how to run a boardroom without forming oneThe I love me folder — the simplest, most effective thing you'll do this weekWhy women focus on the one negative instead of the 99 positives — and how to stop Quote of the episode: "Do you want comfort, or do you want solutions? Tell me what you need, and we'll deliver that."— Sarah Medcraf Playlist song: This Girl Is On Fire — Alicia Keys

    She Moved to Scotland at 18 with No Plan, Applied for the Wrong Job, and Ended Up Running the Region — Sarah Medcraf, Moray Chamber of Commerce

  6. Oct 13

    From Library Cards to 60 Staff: The Accidental Entrepreneur Who Built a Publishing Institution — Lesley Whyte of Bibliographic Data Services

    Lesley Whyte didn't set out to be an entrepreneur. She was studious, academic, and fully expected a career inside universities. What she didn't expect was that a job in Dumfries, a chance meeting with an IT-minded colleague named Eric, and a radical idea about how libraries could access information would lead her to co-found a business that now employs 60 people and underpins how libraries and publishers across the UK work every day. Bibliographic Data Services — BDS — provides metadata for books, music, film, and computer games to libraries, retailers, and e-tailers. It's a niche that didn't really exist when Lesley started out in 1987, and a business model she and Eric had to essentially invent. When they launched in late 1994, the internet was barely a word most people had heard — and yet it was the internet that made BDS possible. In this episode, Lesley talks honestly about the confidence she didn't have as a young woman, the slow accumulation of experience and self-belief that changed everything, and why she thinks women need to stop standing in each other's way. She also shares one of the more striking stories you'll hear on this show — her mother's reaction when Lesley announced she was starting a business. This is a conversation about the long game: building something over three decades, finding the right co-founder, adapting to technology, and choosing, every time, to believe that what you're doing has value — even when the people closest to you aren't so sure. How BDS got started in 1994 — and why the internet made it possible when nothing else would haveThe Princess Diana publishing story: how BDS proved its model on the day the world changedCo-founding with Eric — a partnership that has lasted 30 years and never had a dull momentWhy Lesley had no idea she was an entrepreneur until she was already oneThe mother who said "the last thing you need is to start a business" — and the church member who called it criminalWhy women are sometimes the least supportive of other women — and what Lesley thinks we should do about itAI at BDS: using it to cut the laborious work while protecting the human expertise that makes metadata valuable"Be brilliant" — the mantra John gave Lesley that she now uses with her whole team Quote of the episode: "If we don't allow women to advance, then what's the point in educating them?" — Lesley Whyte

    From Library Cards to 60 Staff: The Accidental Entrepreneur Who Built a Publishing Institution — Lesley Whyte of Bibliographic Data Services

  7. Oct 9

    Her Mum Spotted a Job Ad in the Newspaper — Now She's MD of an Employee-Owned Company That Works for the UN and the EU: Lucy Harrier of Prepress Projects

    In this episode of Scale HER Up, I'm joined by Lucy Harrier — managing director of Prepress Projects Limited, a copy editing, proofreading, and publishing services company based in Perth, Scotland. Prepress Projects has been going since the early 1990s, started by a husband and wife team. In 2022, it transitioned to employee ownership — a succession model that kept the business and the jobs in Perth. Fourteen of the 16 staff are women. Their clients include UNICEF, UN Women, the UN Population Fund, and the Publications Office of the European Union. Most of their work is with overseas clients — they've worked with over 53 UNICEF country offices across the world, from Vietnam to Afghanistan to Uzbekistan. Lucy came to Prepress from a completely different direction. She had a PhD in plant molecular biology and spent nearly a decade as a lecturer. Her mum spotted a small ad in the Courier and suggested she apply. She joined as a publishing assistant, enrolled in an MSc in publishing at the same time, and 20-plus years later is the MD. We cover: What employee ownership actually means for a business — and why it was the right succession option for PrepressBrexit: how it wiped out ~15 EU agency contracts overnight, and the creative solution (a Luxembourg partnership with Lexilux) that got them back inTrump-era UN funding cuts: what geopolitics does to a small company in Perth with a global client baseAI and copy editing: not a threat, but potentially a bigger opportunity — because AI-generated text still needs a human to check itThe Institute of Directors: why becoming a Chartered Director transformed how Lucy approaches her role, and why she recommends it to anyone stepping into a directorshipResilience: navigating Brexit, a lost major UK contract, and personal bereavement at the same timeThe Monday Motivation: what Lucy publishes to the team every weekA meeting in 2026 where a business contact spoke to her male colleague and ignored her entirely — and what happened next Quote of the episode: "Treat people how you want to be treated yourself." — Lucy Harrier Playlist song: Human — Rag'n'Bone Man ("It doesn't rev me up, but it gives me peace.")

    Her Mum Spotted a Job Ad in the Newspaper — Now She's MD of an Employee-Owned Company That Works for the UN and the EU: Lucy Harrier of Prepress Projects

  8. Oct 6

    She Was Told She Was Their Best Performing MD — But She Didn't Fit In. So She Built Her Own Agency: Rowan Morrison of We Are Rationale

    In this episode of Scale HER Up, I'm joined by Rowan Morrison — co-MD and co-founder of We Are Rationale (or Rationale, day-to-day), a brand agency based in Edinburgh specialising in regulated markets — financial services, healthcare, health tech, med tech. They're also a B Corp, which means values-driven impact isn't an afterthought. It's built in. Rowan set up Rationale with her co-founder Sven Clouston six months before the pandemic. She is a Women's Enterprise Scotland ambassador and a member of the 93% Club — and this conversation goes into both. She dropped out of school. She was the first in her family to go to university. Entrepreneurship wasn't something she saw people like her do. She came up through marketing, landed in a senior role she didn't ask for, was dragged into it by a mentor who saw something she didn't, and eventually broke out to set up something of her own. She was also told by a previous CEO, in what was apparently intended as a pep talk, that she was probably his best performing MD — but that she didn't fit in. She was delighted. We cover: What Rationale does: brand and creative strategy in regulated markets, emotional connection even in B2B and insuranceSetting up six months before the pandemic and growing steadily through itHow a female mentor saw something in Rowan before she saw it in herself — and dragged her into leadership kicking and screamingDr. Martens at board meetings, challenging authority, and not being anyone else's version of a managing directorThe 93% Club: 93% of the UK went to state school, but a very small percentage own the wealth or run the businesses — and what that means in Edinburgh specificallyHiring for diversity of thought: why she wants people in her team who take things in directions she wouldn't haveAI: where it's useful, where it's not, and why using AI to do your creative work is "feeding the lion that will eat you"Being proud of yourself as a mum and a business owner — and her sons telling her they're proud of herThe David Bowie quote that sums up her philosophy Quote of the episode: "You don't ever have to be someone else's version of who you are." — Rowan Morrison

    She Was Told She Was Their Best Performing MD — But She Didn't Fit In. So She Built Her Own Agency: Rowan Morrison of We Are Rationale
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About

If you are a female business owner, self-employed freelancer, or girl boss who wants to build a successful business i.e. work less hours, make more money, and get better results from your staff, then this is the podcast for you. Hosted by Dr Brenda Hector MBA from ActionCOACH UK, this podcast provides relatable and accessible business advice and inspiration from successful businesswomen who have been there and done it before you. This podcast is where you can • hear female business stories • share business success • learn how to overcome business challenges • get advice for businesswomen aspiring to success • find out what needs to change • discover how we can bring about that business revolution Only 1 in 3 UK entrepreneurs are female. UK men are 5 times more likely than women to build a business of over £1million turnover If UK women matched UK men in starting and scaling businesses, it would add £250 billion to the UK economy (Alison Rose, The Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship 2018) As a woman in business, a business coach, and a business growth expert, Brenda’s mission is to help business owners grow their companies, achieve their goals and live the lifestyle of their dreams. She's the help you need to grow your business.

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