Most business content online looks the same.
The perfectly curated feed. The caption about overnight success that skips the three years of struggle before it. The coach on the yacht is telling you that you, too, can have this lifestyle if you just follow her formula.
I got tired of it. And I am willing to bet you did too.
Because behind every polished post is a real woman, with real challenges, making real decisions under real pressure. And she is not seeing herself reflected anywhere.
That is why I started The EMpire Diaries. Not because I had everything figured out. Not because I wanted to perform success at you. But because I was documenting my honest, vulnerable, unfiltered journey of building a business in public, and women kept telling me it was the first time they had ever heard anyone tell the truth about what this actually feels like.
So I turned it into a podcast. Fourteen episodes in, it is one of the things I am most proud of building. I don't want it just to be two people having a conversation and recording it there's real coaching value and action tasks that you can go away and implement for free and see isntant results from.
New episodes every Wednesday at 7am. You can listen at empoweredwithemily.com/podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Music.
The EMpire Diaries is a business podcast for women in the UK who are building something real. Not a fantasy version of business, not the glossy everything-is-perfect version, but the actual version, with all its setbacks, breakthroughs, and moments of complete uncertainty.
Every episode is built around one of two things: either I am sharing something directly from my own journey of building EMpowered With Emily, or I am sitting down with a real woman whose story deserves to be heard.
Because here is what I believe: women's voices are not given enough space in the business world. The EMpire Diaries is my answer to that.
No highlight reel. No performance. No pretending it is easier than it is. Just real women, building real businesses, telling the truth about what that actually looks like.
It started with a need I could not find met anywhere else.
I was sharing my journey online. The wins, yes, but also the messy middle. The days I questioned everything. The decisions that did not work out. The moments of doubt that sit right alongside the moments of conviction.
The response was overwhelming. Women were DMing me to say they had never seen anyone in business talk this way. That they had thought they were the only ones feeling what they were feeling. That my honesty had given them permission to be honest with themselves.
That is when I knew it needed its own space. Somewhere, women could come every week and hear something that actually reflected their reality, and gave them the tools and the perspective to keep going.
The EMpire Diaries was born. And the name felt exactly right, because every business a woman builds is her EMpire, on her terms, by her rules.
Episodes like The 3 Stages of Business Growth and The EMpire Blueprint break down the practical frameworks behind building a business that actually scales. No theory for the sake of it, just the things that actually move the needle.
Why your content is not converting. How to build an organic social media strategy that gets clients. What the Facebook algorithm changes mean for your business right now. The conversations that help you stop spinning your wheels and start building real momentum.
Pricing. Boundaries. Visibility without burnout. The real reason so many women are overworked and underpaid. These are the conversations that usually happen in private, between women who trust each other. I am bringing them into the open.
This is the part of the podcast I am most proud of.
One of the core reasons I started The EMpire Diaries was to give real women's voices a platform. Not the polished, everything-turned-out-fine version. The real version. The kind of story that changes how you see what is possible, and reminds you that the women who build the most extraordinary things are often the ones who have been through the most extraordinary difficulties.
Please note: the following section discusses domestic abuse. If this is something that affects you personally, the National Domestic Abuse Helpline is available 24 hours a day on 0808 2000 247.
The episode that has had the biggest impact since we launched is Episode 8, my conversation with Deborah Jones, founder and CEO of Resolute Women's Support Services.
Deborah survived ten years of domestic abuse. She rebuilt her life with her two children. And then, during that process of healing, she discovered something that changed the course of everything: the systems designed to protect victims were failing the very women they were meant to help.
Rather than stay silent, she turned her experience into action. In 2021 she founded Resolute Women's Support Services, a charity providing trauma-informed, survivor-led support for women navigating life after abuse, including counselling, EMDR therapy, holistic support, and advocacy through the criminal justice system.
But Deborah did not stop there. She launched a campaign called Tag and App, calling for a national GPS proximity tagging system for domestic abuse perpetrators, technology that would alert victims if an offender came within a restricted distance, providing an additional layer of protection that could help prevent further harm and save lives.
At the time that episode was released, that campaign had reached a historic moment, with the proposal being expected to be announced publicly by Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy.
That conversation is over an hour long. It is raw, courageous, and incredibly important. It is also the most listened to episode we have published, which tells you everything about what happens when you give women the space to tell the truth.
You can listen to Episode 8 and find out more about Deborah's work at resolutesupport.uk.
If you are new to The EMpire Diaries, here are three episodes to start with:
The EMpire Diaries is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and all major podcast platforms. You can find all episodes and links at empoweredwithemily.com/podcast.
New episodes drop every Wednesday at 7am. Subscribe so you never miss one, and if an episode lands for you, please leave a review. It makes an enormous difference to how the podcast gets found by other women who need it.
It is for women in business at any stage who want honest, practical content that reflects the reality of building something real. If you are done with the superficial highlight reel and ready for something more honest, this podcast is for you.
Every Wednesday at 7am. Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or your preferred platform so you never miss an episode.
Yes. Giving real women's voices a platform is one of the core purposes of this podcast. If you have a story worth telling or a perspective other women in business need to hear, I would love to talk. Get in touch at [email protected].
Not at all. While I am proudly Yorkshire-based and much of my in-person work is across Leeds, Sheffield and the wider region, the podcast reaches women across the UK and beyond. The content is relevant to any woman building a business anywhere.
Subscribe, listen, and come and tell me what landed for you. The EMpire Diaries is at its best when it is a conversation, not a broadcast.
Join our free community, The Empowered Collective, where the conversation continues between episodes and where you will find women at every stage of business showing up for each other.
Join The Empowered Collective on Facebook here.
And when you are ready to go further, find out more about 1:1 coaching and Visible and Paid, my 6-Month Marketing Strategy Programme, at empoweredwithemily.com.
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic abuse, confidential help is available:
