MY FULL STORY
I was told, in a hundred different ways, that I wasn't meant for more than this.
Not always in words. Sometimes it was a look. Sometimes it was silence where encouragement should have been. Sometimes it was the weight of expectation - stay small, stay safe, don't want too much.
I grew up carrying that voice. And for a long time, I didn't even know it wasn't mine.
I became a mother at 22.
I was young. I was figuring myself out while figuring out how to raise another human being. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I made a decision that would change everything.
I decided I wasn't done.
I went back to education when my daughter was 7 years old. Part-time, in Singapore, while raising my daughter and building a life. Then I packed everything up - my family, our dog, our entire world - and we moved to Wales. My husband left his job. We sold our property. We bet everything on a version of life we could only half see.
I finished my degree at Bangor University. And in 2013, I won the Most Entrepreneurial Award.
I wasn't just surviving anymore. I was becoming.
Then I built something from nothing.
BubbleTeaFamily. A bubble tea shop in North Wales - before bubble tea was everywhere, before anyone around me really understood what it was.
It worked. Immediately.
Within months I was on a stage pitching to investors. The second pitch I ever made in my life, I walked away with six figure investment.
I want you to let that land for a second. Second pitch. Six figures.
Not because I'm exceptional. Because I refused to let self-doubt make the decision for me.
It didn't all work out. I need you to know that too.
The business eventually closed. There were lessons in that closure that I'm still unpacking. I won't dress it up as a beautiful pivot. It was hard. It was humbling. And it taught me more than any success ever could.
I went on to build Red Chilli Apps Ltd. Websites, apps, digital products. I mentored entrepreneurs through Welsh Government programmes. I co-authored a book alongside global industry experts. I was named one of the Top 50 Inspiring Migrant Women at the House of Commons UK. I was managing and trading with six figure forex trading accounts.
And through all of it, that voice in my head was still there.
Still whispering that I wasn't quite enough. That I'd got lucky. That someone was about to find me out.
In December 2023, life stopped me in my tracks.
I was diagnosed with breast cancer.
I'm not going to make this the headline of who I am. But I'm not going to skip over it either - because you said you wanted the real story, and this is part of it.
Two years of treatment. Two years of sitting with yourself in a way that most people never have to. Two years of being forced to ask the question: what actually matters?
The answer, when everything else falls away, is simpler than you'd think.
Who you are when no one is watching. The voice you speak to yourself with. The cycles you choose to break.
That's what I speak about now.
Not theory. Not borrowed wisdom from a book I read last year. The actual lived experience of building, losing, rebuilding, being knocked flat, and getting back up.
I speak about the inner critic - because I know it intimately. I speak about resilience - because I've had no choice but to practice it. I speak about breaking cycles - because I came from patterns that could have defined me, and I chose differently.
I moved to Liverpool. I kept building. I kept going.
And I stand on stages and I tell the truth, because I believe that one honest story can change the direction of someone's life.
That's why I'm here.
If my story is the one your audience needs to hear -