Kat is joined by Celine who shares her extraordinary journey of resilience and transformation during the COVID-19 pandemic, where she lost 99% of her language school business. Rather than succumbing to despair, she emerged stronger, eventually building a successful business group and winning awards. Through candid conversation with Kat, Celine reveals how positive habits, mindset shifts, and celebrating wins became cornerstone practices that not only saved her business but revolutionised her approach to leadership. KEY TAKEAWAYS Celine transformed her response to COVID-19 from initial fear to purposeful leadership after a friend asked her "who do you want to be in this situation?" - a question that sparked her leadership journey. She discovered the power of 'all or something' during the pandemic, shifting away from her previous all-or-nothing mindset to embrace smaller, consistent actions in both business and personal practices. Her implementation of celebrating the wins at the start of every meeting revolutionised her company culture, creating measurable improvements in team morale and engagement, as evidenced by recent anonymous culture surveys. Celine established non-negotiable daily practices like meditation, walking, and yoga before COVID hit, which became crucial anchors in helping her maintain stability while leading her team through the crisis. She overcame limiting beliefs about being a woman in business and 'being bad at maths', realising she could build a successful business group by embracing her authentic leadership style and surrounding herself with complementary talent. Through applying the Stockdale Paradox principle during COVID, she maintained an unwavering faith in travel's return while being realistic about immediate challenges, helping her preserve her business until recovery. Following the pandemic, Celine took bigger risks than ever before, acquiring three businesses to form a group, achieving more growth than her original pre-COVID trajectory would have allowed. Her journey through menopause and COVID led her to reject what businesswomen often feel like they should be doing, instead embracing a more authentic approach to business leadership that acknowledges the whole person rather than trying to fit a traditional business mould. BEST MOMENTS "I can just be me and I don't have to be good at everything if I've got really great people around me, I don't have to be cutthroat, I don't have to be a business whiz." "When you look back, you think those first couple of weeks of COVID, it was such a weird time, wasn't it? Because nobody knew what was happening." "All of our meetings always start with celebrating the wins, you literally see and feel the energy, even on a team's meeting and definitely in the room, it sort of elevates everybody." "Life doesn't have to look like what you thought it did or what everyone else thinks it does." "I thought I had to be somebody else in order to be successful in business." "All part of that, who am I going to be through this? I think I realised, well, I'm going to have to really look after myself and I'm going to have to make sure that these are my non-negotiables every day." ABOUT THE GUEST I have been in this business for longer than I care to remember. Language learning and teaching have always been more of a passion to me than a job. I feel strongly that the experience that the young people have with us is one that they will remember for a very long time and what I love about our team is that we all care about what we do. English is an ever more important language in the world and yes, it is a huge benefit to these young people to come to the UK to learn it. However, I believe that it is also a huge benefit to them to experience a different culture, be away from home and have to cope with all that it entails and meet and befriend people their own age from all over the world. Celine is the Founder and Group CEO of the UKLC Group, leading providers in language programmes in the UK and Ireland for students of all ages. ABOUT THE HOST Kat started her career as a teacher, before moving into Tech where she worked in different executive roles within teaching and consulting working across the globe, both in the public and private sector. Despite appearing 'successful' on the outside, she paid a heavy ‘life’ price. In 2016, her whole world collapsed. The reason? The compound effect of years of unhealthy and toxic habits that destroyed her health, relationship and career. She suffered a severe breakdown and lost everything. In the middle of this she got headhunted for her first CEO role. She rebuilt herself by changing just one small habit, and built a series of positive habits which has transformed her professional and personal performance, resulting in becoming the healthiest and happiest version of herself. She is a positive habits international keynote speaker and teacher, giving talks and delivering high impact programmes to organisations across the globe. LinkedIn Instagram
