Episode 34: Journey to Business Award Strategist

Date broadcast: Tuesday 3rd June 2025

It’s not often I speak to someone with such an unusual business. There’s plenty of business awards out there but not many people who can help you with the process and actually winning. Emma, mother of two children, aged 7 and 9, shares how she chose the world of self employment to give her flexibility around raising them. It has taken her a few years to create this business which she launched last year. The book she recommended was “Maybe I don’t belong here” by David Harewood. And her advice? If an opportunity comes your aware assess it first but, if the only thing that stands in your way is fear, go for it, because these are usually the best!

Emma Hewitt is a Business Awards Adviser, working with small business owners to build award strategies to boost visibility, credibility and opportunities. She helps clients to reflect and recognise their achievements, find awards that meet their business goals and write award-winning entries. Emma has been self-employed for 9 years, as a franchisee, then supporting small businesses on a freelance basis (including running an annual business award for 5 years). Combined with a background in higher education, she has almost 20 years experience of managing, assessing and advising on university scholarships and business awards.

To find out more about Emma’s work here:

https://welcome.emmahewitt.co.uk/home

To connect with me and join my group:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/unlikelyguru/?ref=share

https://linktr.ee/AnnGirling

Thank you for listening to Tales of Transformation! If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share it with your friends.

Episode 33: Journey from Therapy to Therapist and Queen of Happiness

Date broadcast: 20th May 2025

In this episode we hear how Jo experienced therapy following the death of her biological father. It had such a profound impact on her life she trained in therapy herself and then found the Happiness Club to help as many people as possible grow in mental and emotional resilience. This is a business that she has franchised. We discuss our experience of self employment and growing businesses and also the importance of experiencing contrasting emotions ie you can’t experience joy without pain, love without hate. Listen out for her analogy of the buffet table. And the book recommendation this episode was “Living Untethered” by Michael A Singer

Jo’s bio:

Jo Robinson-Howarth is an advanced hypnotherapist and mindfulness practitioner who runs The Happiness Club, an app based support service for mental and emotional wellbeing. She is mum to two beautiful teenage daughters, one gorgeous cat and one very naughty dog. She lives in Merseyside but hails from Somerset originally.

To find out more about Jo’s work here:

www.thehappinessclub.co.uk

To connect with me and join my group:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/unlikelyguru/?ref=share

https://linktr.ee/AnnGirling

Thank you for listening to Tales of Transformation! If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share it with your friends.

Date broadcast: 06/05/2025

Episode 32: Journey from Music to Writing

In this episode we hear how German born Susanne developed her love of reading and story telling as a child and is now a full time writer. She is also a musician and wanted to be an opera singer but that was not to be. She married an American serviceman and now lives in Washington State in the North West of the US, writing, she’s a foodie and loves to explore the local countryside

Susanne Bacon is a bi-lingual, German-American author, journalist, and columnist with plenty of experience as an event creator, organizer, and manager as well as a business consultant, translator, and public speaker, singer, museum docent, sales associate, and craft instructor. All of these colorful chapters in her life and a very positive, hope-inspired attitude influence her topics and her style of writing.

Susanne Bacon was born in Stuttgart, Germany, She learned her ropes as a writer, first as a freelance journalist with a daily paper in her hometown, then with a trade magazine for which she would end up as the editor-in-chief for over a decade. During this time, she published two books of poetry and short stories in her German mother tongue.

Susanne emigrated to the U.S. in 2010, where she has been living with her husband in the South Puget Sound region in Washington State ever since.

In 2015, Susanne Bacon edited and translated her first, originally German novel, “Islands in the Storm”, a historical novel about the German occupation of the British Channel Islands in WW II. Immediately after its publication, she wrote and published her first American novel, “Delicate Dreams”, which would become the first in a series that she hadn’t even planned on. Her Suburban Times column “Home from Home”, comparing her former German life to her American experiences, turned into another book with the same title. In 2021, Susanne created an off-spin from her Wycliff series, a romantic mystery based on the character of a military spouse, while also writing some dystopian and alternate historical short stories. All in all, since 2015, Susanne Bacon has published 15 novels – the 16th is in the workings –, one book of short fiction, and two books of non-fiction; they can be found on Amazon in English and in German.

To connect with Susanne and buy her books:

https://susannebaconauthor.com/

https://www.facebook.com/susannebaconauthor

To connect with me and join my group:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/unlikelyguru/?ref=share

https://linktr.ee/AnnGirling

Thank you for listening to Tales of Transformation! If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share it with your friends.