There is a whole conservative movement masquerading as feminism because it claims to be empowering women like trad wives is empowering women to not work.

It’s an incorrect movement.

It’s pretending to empower women to keep them in their place.

At any one point, only 52% of women consider themselves to be feminists anyway.

Loads of women have always hated feminism.

They’ve always hated the fact that they could be empowered.

Loads of women don’t want jobs.

It will be almost impossible for women to have true equality because a lot of women don’t want it.

No Bullsh*t Talks is a podcast for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs.

There’s too much bullshit out there, especially when it comes to business.

This podcast aims to highlight what’s true and what’s not in the world of entrepreneurship, bringing you honest and raw conversations about the roller coaster that is entrepreneurship.

Each week, my guest will be a high-performing entrepreneur, sharing the ups and downs of their journey and helping you prepare for the road ahead while providing you with actionable insights and absolute gems of knowledge.

Stay tuned as I introduce this week’s guest.

Amy Kean is a CEO of Good Shout, a company that helps women find their voice.

She is also the founder of a movement called Unlikable Women where she helps women be proud of their big bold selves.

She has also done two TEDx talks on the fiction of gravitas and embracing weirdness, showing the world how she really believes in being who you truly are.

I present to you this week’s guest, Amy Kean.

Welcome Amy to No Bullsh*t Talks.

Thank you.

I’m so glad that you’re here and it’s been a long time coming.

I feel like like a year.

I know.

It’s like I think every time you write a post I’m like, “Oh my god, we need to talk about this on the podcast.”

And then we’re like, “Yeah.”

And then we just don’t.

But then there was one, I can’t even remember what it was.

I think it was probably the International Women’s Day bullshit.

I just like, I don’t know if it was that.

There was so much stuff.

I don’t know what it was.

What have you been talking about recently?

We were both furious about something.

Yeah.

It will come up in the course of this.

And I was like, “Right, we need to talk about this.”

Oh, I think I do know what it is.

Talk about it.

Okay.

I think I do.

I think it was the clicky girls.

Oh my god.

That’s what we call them now.

The cheeky girls.

The clicky girls.

We are the girls.

Touched by bum.

This is life.

We’ve made a song for them.

Okay, this is the weirdest podcast intro ever.

But I think to introduce herself, because for those of you who don’t know, we get to introduce.

I’m Amy Keane.

Said like that was like you should know.

I’m Amy Keane and I’m not a clicky girl.

And I’m the CEO of Good Shout and just a loudmouth in general.

Social psychologist in training actually because I’ve gone back to do my master’s at LSE.

And yeah, I run a learning and development company.

I also have a side quest movement called the Unlikable Woman, which I love.

Summit.

Definitely Unlikable Woman.

Oh, you are.

You have to be a speaker.

I’ll have to come on.

What would you like to talk about?

Do a little clicky girls dance.

Well, that’s the whole thing about Unlikable Women is that it’s anti-click.

And what’s amazing, we have these summits where we have obviously a lineup of amazing speakers who’ve been called unlikable for some reason in their lives.

But the audience are as much a part of the event as the speakers.

Yeah, I love that.

And it’s so eclectic.

We have all genders.

We have all body shapes, all professions, all types of neurodiversity.

We have pink hair, we have brown hair.

We have it’s just so we have kids there, we have men there.

It’s yeah, really cool.

And it’s the opposite of clicks.

I love it.

Well, we’re definitely going to cover that.

I want to start first with Good Shout because that is your day job, which I also love about your LinkedIn bio.

You’re like, “By day I do this,” and you’re like, “By night, I also do this.”

Because let’s face it, I’m a business owner.

I don’t sleep.

And I’m like, “Yep, that’s about accurate.”

Because that is some of the bullshit I call out, right?

So, I loved that about it.

But tell me more about Good Shout because that’s mainly what you do.

Like you said, the other stuff is kind of side hustly and that’s your main kind of bread and butter.

What is Good Shout and how did that start?

It’s really focused on voices.

When you have an Essex accent, you think a lot about voices.

And I’ve thought about voices ever since I went to university when I realized that I had an accent and my accent was different to a lot of other people’s.

And I worked in advertising for like 17 years.

That’s a really exclusionary industry because only 15% of that industry didn’t go to private school.

And even though I was from Essex and considered common in a really exclusionary industry for many years, I was also the only woman on a lineup at a conference.

And one thing that I noticed over the years is that I was the outlier.

I was the only woman because I was actually often the only woman that would say yes.

Because women often don’t say yes to speaking at events.

I mean, increasingly they do, but back then, they did that less.

And so I originally created Good Shout just as a public speaking training business to get more women speaking at events in a really brilliant imperfect way.

Keeping their accent, keeping their style, not trying to be someone else.

This fake idea of “fake it till you make it” confidence that doesn’t actually exist.

So Good Shout used to be focused on find your voice.

And it’s cheesy, but finding your voice I think still stands.

And now it’s blown up into this broader beast so that any way in which you use your voice in life and at work, we provide training in.

So how to listen, how to demonstrate empathy, how to articulate ideas, how to disagree, how to have conflict, and everything in between.

And we focus on I love working with people who have accents.

I love working with people who weren’t naturally born with confidence because I think those are the people that need to speak more.

Yeah, 100%.

But yeah, I feel like you did a TED talk on this as well.

Obviously, I know because it was for my event and I loved it and everyone loved that talk.

How did you feel about that?

Because it was the same sort of thing, right?

It was about that gravitas that you have and how you can show up and own your voice regardless of where you’re from.

Yeah.

Thank you, by the way, for asking me to do that TED.

My pleasure.

Thank you for being amazing.

An incredible day.

Like the way that you curate is such a skill.

Yeah.

And the way you curated that day was flawless.

Do you know how much that means to me?

Because considering that’s what I want to do, that’s what I do believe.

I realize now that is a superpower.

I used to just think it was easy in that sense, which it isn’t.

But for me it was easier than most people.

But the fact that so many people have said that to me over time now has made me realize that that’s what I should be doing.

Which is what I’m trying to do now with Knobs.

And that’s why I’m trying to curate this really vetted community of entrepreneurs.

Because I know that when you get the right people in the room with the right values and that same sort of everything about them, the way they want to be, it creates this amazing experience that no one can actually do.

And actually you can’t replicate that online either.

It has to be done in person.

So, I’m glad you were there to witness that and you thought that it was.

We cried that day.

We laughed that day.

Every single woman had something different.

It was yeah, it was incredible.

And I was so chuffed that I went first because then I could just enjoy the day.

And as soon as I finished my talk, because when you obviously when you do a TEDx talk you do get nervous.

You are memorizing, very different to any other talk I think.

Yeah.

I was on I think at 11.

After I was done, I ran to the bar and got a double vodka and actually regretted it.

Did you?

Yeah.

Because I got really lightheaded and I was like, “Oh god, I can’t drink all day.”

So then I just had a crash.

Anyway, so my talk was about, it was called Why Gravitas is a Work of Fiction.

And what I think is fascinating is that so many women are accused of not having gravitas in their careers.

But it’s such a weird thing.

It’s such a weird word because so rarely is it defined properly.

It’s just you don’t really have gravitas.

You don’t have executive presence.

And so for so many years I grappled with like what do you mean that I don’t have gravitas?

And I kind of worked out that it might be to do with my working-class background and my accent and maybe the fact that I was never really taught to have that kind of poise.

And then I investigated with AI and did some AI searches.

And you know like in those tools you can say show me a photo, show me a photograph of a CEO with gravitas.

And it will always show you a man in a suit who’s about seven foot tall.

And then everything kind of I had an epiphany that maybe it wasn’t me.

Maybe it’s society.

And then like maybe it’s like a tiny bit me but mostly society.

Yeah.

But it’s true though.

I feel like it’s hard because over the years I just think about all the feedback I’ve had.

And I call it feedback because depending on what it is, it’s criticism, you know, or put-downs.

I’ve said I’ve not had gravitas.

I don’t conduct, like I don’t command the room.

I don’t have the confidence.

But then at the same time, if I do come across a bit more confident, then I get called arrogant.

I get called obnoxious.

I get called aggressive.

I get called bossy.

And I’m like which one do you want?

And also I’m just being me.

And there will be times when I’ll be more shy, then other times I’ll be more confident.

It depends where I am, who I’m around, how I feel that day.

And it’s just me.

And it’s like I don’t ever feel like we can win a lot of the time.

Because if you come into a room bursting with confidence, they go, “Wow, she’s arrogant.”

And then if you come in more shy, they go, “Don’t trust her. Look at her. She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

It’s like what do you do?

I mean, you’re safe if you blend in and you don’t really speak.

No one wins that way.

No dream scenario.

You don’t say anything at all and you’re just really lovely to everyone.

What’s wild, everyone has been trained from an early age to judge women and to scan women and try and find the thing that isn’t perfect.

So, we all do it.

I’ve had to unlearn my judgment of other women.

Because when I was probably in my twenties, it was likely that there were a load of women that I just hated because they were better at a bunch of stuff than I was.

They were more confident than I was.

They were more successful than I was.

They had more charisma than I did.

Whatever it was, I probably hated them because I didn’t realize that I’d been socialized to find fault.

God, that’s quite scary actually when you think about it.

If we have to really self-analyze it.

But I think it goes back to even like as kids, it’s the dynamics of a playground even.

It’s like, you know, the pretty cool kids had more friends.

That’s just how it was.

And even from when we were children, we didn’t really understand that.

But if you look back at it, if you go back to your primary school, high school, wherever you are, the most popular kids were the prettiest.

They weren’t the most intelligent.

They were the prettiest, the ones who got the most boys.

And they weren’t necessarily loud.

They were actually quiet most of the time.

They were quiet, petite usually.

And I just feel like that’s what we’re kind of led to believe, that that is the perfect woman in that sense.

Is it still that?

Are we still in a society where we need to be subservient and that is still the ideal woman?

Are we still doing that sort of thing?

I feel like

That’s what I watch on Bridgerton, but it shouldn’t be this day and age.

But well, I guess trad wives are having a, you know, there is a whole conservative movement masquerading as feminism because it claims to be empowering women like trad wives is empowering women to not work.

Is it though?

Or is it empowering them to live off their husbands?

Yeah.

No, that’s the thing, it’s fake.

I understand it.

It’s an incorrect movement.

It’s pretending to empower women to keep them in their place.

What amazing trickery.

I find so many, like I get really riled up with social media.

I shouldn’t really be on it because I just trigger all the time.

And then I’m just like what the— I have to shut my phone because every little thing I’m just like is everyone just stupid or is everyone— I feel like I’m living in a different world.

Because the stuff, for example, the amount of posts that I see where women are saying men must pay for all our dinners.

Like if a man doesn’t pay for all your dates then you don’t have a good enough man.

Or a man must take you on holiday, a man must buy this handbag, a man must do this.

But at the same time, they’re like women’s rights and equality and like we deserve to be respected.

And I’m like I don’t understand why you expect a man to pay for absolutely everything for you.

And then there was this post the other day that went viral.

It was like this man was saying that the best flex a man could have is that he doesn’t let a woman pay for anything.

And I was like a best flex a woman could have is that she doesn’t let a man pay for everything.

That’s what I said.

And they were like, oh obviously you’ve got a loser, obviously you don’t have fun.

And then all these people attacked me for saying that.

And I was like what?

Honestly I’m sitting there going okay, you’re in 2026 and there’s all these big female empowerment movements and all we can do.

And yet I’ve just said I think it’s a flex if we don’t need a man to pay for ourselves and we can.

And I got ripped to shreds for that.

And I’m like what world am I living in?

But yet the same post, there’d be a woman going we can do this or something and that goes viral.

I’m like make it make sense.

It doesn’t make any sense.

And it’s just people want one thing and then say another.

And I just don’t get it.

At any one point, only 52% of women consider themselves to be feminists anyway.

We just didn’t have access, before social media took over our lives, we just assumed the views of our immediate social group were the views of everyone.

Loads of women have always hated feminism.

They’ve always hated the fact that they could be empowered.

Loads of women don’t want jobs.

And this is the thing.

Now we have access to all of these views.

It’s like, I didn’t realize it was this bad.

And this is why I do think it will be almost impossible for women to have true equality because a lot of women don’t want it.

I also think feminism has a bit of a negative term.

I think when you hear the word feminism, people think really obnoxious women who are aggressive.

A lot of people I know have often said feminism equals being a lesbian.

That is what loads of people genuinely think.

So they stay away from the word feminism because they don’t want to fight for that.

Because they don’t want to come across in that sort of way.

Because the patriarchy did an amazing

hate campaign against feminism for years.

The whole idea of the angry feminist, bra burner, all of those things were just repeated over and over again so that they were stuck in our heads.

I think that’s exactly why we got so riled up by this International Women’s Day campaign.

I definitely want to talk about that because I cannot believe that this is still happening.

And I was getting really annoyed with other people, women who were promoting this bloody website.

Because I’m like it’s not real.

“Oh my god, a man made that for his own personal gain.”

And I’m like okay, so do you want to just tell the background on it so that people can know and get as irate as I am?

Yeah.

I’ll spill the tea.

But also, it’s really interesting because again, you assume that everyone’s as digitally literate as you are.

People are not.

Exactly.

And they prefer to live—

What I’ve realized, obviously doing what I do and I’m always calling out the bullshit, some people don’t want to hear that it’s bullshit.

They’d rather live in a happy fantasy world that’s easier to digest than actually finding out that people are corrupt.

People really don’t think that much.

And maybe it’s not that they’re stupid, it’s just that they don’t think.

And I suppose there’s a difference.

But with International Women’s Day, it’s been around since 1907 or something.

Originally a workers’ rights movement, utterly essential.

Lots of women all over the world still aren’t allowed to go to school.

And there are so many countries where women are genuinely treated like second-class citizens and their lives are in danger every single day of the year.

But International Women’s Day rose in prominence from the 2010s.

And every single year, we started to celebrate it more as feminism entered the corporate world.

There’s a website, and I believe a management consultancy bought internationalwomensday.com in about 2003 or maybe 2013.

They have no affiliation with the movement whatsoever.

They have nothing to do with the UN.

They’re not a feminist organization.

They were a management consultancy called Aurora Ventures.

They very cleverly bought the URL.

And now every single year they claim that there’s an official International Women’s Day theme.

But every year it’s the most infantilizing, grotesque theme that sets feminism back a hundred years.

We’ve had “accelerate action” or “balance for better.”

Every single year, whatever the theme is, there’s always a selfie pose that’s supposed to accompany it.

So whether it’s a hug or this “give for gain” one, it’s just ridiculous.

There was one a few years ago encouraging women to hug themselves.

Any digitally literate person or feminist would look at that and think it’s fake.

On the website, they sell merch.

They partner with massive organizations.

If you look at Companies House, they make a huge amount of money.

They’ve created this theme, made brand deals with big corporates, who also aren’t looking closely, and those companies pay them loads of money.

They say they’re promoting International Women’s Day, but they’re just putting money into the pocket of someone exploiting it.

It’s crazy how it’s even allowed to still exist.

Yeah.

And I thought, same as you, I thought people had wised up.

This year they really hadn’t.

I was seeing everyone throwing their little parties, having panels, with long lines of middle-class white women talking about how hard their lives are.

And they were all saying the theme this year is “give to gain.”

The pose this year was this.

With a golden halo.

“You must give to others in order to gain.”

And do you know what’s so weird about this?

Just before this podcast, I was ranting about how people constantly expect more from me.

They expect me to give, give, give.

So many people have said that to me, “you need to give to gain.”

And I’m like have they somehow subliminally put this into people’s heads?

So now people expect me to just give endlessly in order to maybe get something back later.

But really they’re just exploiting me.

And now women are promoting this theme because they don’t understand.

They’re trying to interpret it in a positive way.

Like with toxic positivity or motivational quotes, you can twist anything to sound good.

So they’re thinking, “yeah, you give so you get back.”

But they don’t realize it’s nonsense.

And I saw women posting, “here’s how I intend to give to gain,” and it was wild.

So yeah, the greatest trick was buying that domain.

I had enough this year.

Even The Guardian did an expose saying all of this.

They tried to contact the company, but it was impossible.

The UN has distanced themselves from it.

And even that didn’t get huge traction.

It’s infuriating because International Women’s Day is still necessary.

Potentially more now than it has been in years.

There’s the manosphere, there’s a backlash against women, driven by people in power.

We need it, and it’s being watered down and corporate-washed.

So I wrote an open letter with another woman called Belinda.

We now have a thousand signatures.

The letter basically says stop.

Please stop.

I don’t think they’ll listen.

We’ve tried contacting them everywhere.

LinkedIn, their website, even mailing their registered address.

The hope is that if enough people see it, they’ll realize it’s fake.

Next year, we might have to call out everyone publicly who uses that theme.

I hate that it’s come to that.

Who knows what the theme will be next.

Who knows what the theme’s going to be?

I think it would be something like “submit to save.”

Oh my god.

You’d have to create custom AI agents to scrape every time that theme gets used.

Then respond to every post saying this isn’t real and explain why.

Just bombard every post with it.

That would cause such a stir.

I actually think that would make a massive impact.

You’re a genius.

And this is the thing, in the UK we see that it’s fake.

Maybe some other countries have figured it out too.

But this is International Women’s Day.

It’s global.

There are companies all over the world being fooled by this.

They’re making like a million a year from it.

It’s actually fraud.

Yeah.

It really is fraud.

I wonder if the UN could do anything about it.

Or if we could.

But actually, if we created a massive movement around it, that alone proves something.

It shows what women can do collectively.

If we took this down globally, that would be the best International Women’s Day campaign possible.

Think about it.

That’s why we wanted to do the open letter.

To prove that change is possible when people work together.

Yeah.

Even just for one year.

Let’s take some people down.

Yeah, I’m in.

What would our theme even be?

We could retaliate with something equally ridiculous.

Like “accelerate aggression.”

I don’t know.

Give them a taste of their own medicine.

We should do a full campaign.

Same format, same style, but it’s actually about calling it out.

Take down to take back.

That’s the theme.

Yeah.

We’ve literally just brainstormed that live.

That’s what happens when you get the right people in a room.

Ideas just flow.

Revolutions start like that.

Exactly.

But I want to talk about International Women’s Day itself.

Because you said it’s still needed.

And I agree.

But women seem divided on what it actually is now.

It started as a labour movement.

Now it’s turned into corporate nonsense.

Panels, tokenism, ticking boxes.

Look how diverse we are.

But it’s the same people, the same format.

And most of the time, women don’t even get paid to speak.

That’s what really gets me.

I’m tired of being asked to speak for free on International Women’s Day.

It’s insulting.

They wouldn’t do that to men at the same level.

So why do it to women?

And then you’ve got men running these events.

Monetizing them.

Charging for tickets.

Not paying speakers.

I know people who do this every year.

They do it for Black History Month too.

Which somehow feels even worse.

Yeah, it is worse.

And then they say, “We’re donating to charity.”

Meanwhile they’re profiting from it.

It’s outrageous.

You’re asking women, or black women, to share expertise for free while you make money.

It’s completely backwards.

So what do we do?

How do we bring it back to what it was supposed to be?

Because right now, it’s lost.

I want feminism to get messy again.

Right now, it’s too polished.

Too corporate.

Too safe.

And that’s because capitalism got involved.

A lot of people are using it to build personal brands.

So they stay palatable.

They say the right things.

They don’t offend anyone.

They play within the system.

But nothing changes that way.

The gender pay gap stays the same.

Year after year.

We need to go back to activism.

Real activism.

And decide who’s actually up for it.

Because if you’re just here to build your brand, that’s fine.

But step aside.

Some people genuinely care.

Not just about women here, but globally.

Because we don’t have equality yet.

Not even close.

And I can feel it shifting.

There’s frustration building.

A collective anger.

We’ve asked nicely.

We’ve done the panels.

And nothing’s changed.

So now it’s time for something else.

Something louder.

Something uncomfortable.

Honestly, it feels like a messy revolution is coming.

I think it’s scary though because you said that you can feel a revolution.

But think about the women who do speak up.

There aren’t many.

Like you know, two of them are in this room.

Like we do, but look how much bullsh*t we get for it.

Like every time we write a post, which is it’s just our raw emotion most of the time, we I feel like a lot of our content has similar sort of feelings in that sense.

We get up there, we’re like, “Fuck, this will piss me off.

Let’s write about it.”

And that’s generally what we do.

And I think that’s why we get traction from those posts because it’s very real and it’s very raw.

But then in the comments, we’ll get a bullsh*t ton of criticism.

I’ll get a load of hateful DMs and and and do you know what?

Like half the time I’m just like, it’s their issue.

It is, but it still hurts.

Like to get so much hatred like all the time.

And like every time I get a racist comment, I still get upset.

Even though I know it’s nothing to do with me, it’s their issue, I still genuinely get really upset.

There was one the other day they wrote on like a post of a podcast I was a guest on, so it wasn’t even on my profile.

And they were basically just like in massive capital letters like, “Get out our bullsh*t country.”

Like on the comment.

I’m just like it’s like really vicious and it’s like I don’t I I’m like reading it like oh my god and loads of the times it’s just like that.

And if I was the subservient quiet sitting like I said go to an event and don’t say anything, I wouldn’t have that.

But then I always feel like what change is ever going to be made if you just shut up.

Like what difference has ever been done for people just sit there and be quiet.

I actually think in some ways it sets us back.

Like the more we don’t say something, the more we don’t push back.

We are then that same woman that they think they can manipulate and and it’s and that’s what causes the problem.

So, I feel I need to do that and yes, I’m going to get bullsh*t but it’s worth it for the bigger picture, but it doesn’t make it easy.

And I think that’s why so many women don’t want to do it because they just self-preservation at the end of the day.

And they’re just like, it’s not worth it.

And like so many people I know, they’ve written a post and I was like, “Good for you.”

Then they delete it because they get a few comments and they can’t handle it.

So, how what do women do if they want to be part of it, but they’re too scared?

Something like 68% of women won’t speak online anymore.

68% of women.

Yeah.

And for 72% of those women is because they’re scared of being harassed because well harassment works.

And that’s why they do it.

And what I’m trying to do at the moment, I ran a free webinar a little while ago and I’ll keep doing them called Speaking Up for Good, which is it’s for all genders, but it’s to help and encourage people to speak up little by little.

Almost taking a marginal gains approach, like maybe do this first and then get a bit braver and then do this because it’s not going to change unless more of us speak.

It definitely won’t.

And there’s a concept in psychology called the spiral of silence that I think was established in the 70s which refers to how silence is literally the worst thing that can happen to any social movement because if you see other people not talking about something you assume it’s not a big deal.

Yes.

And so that means that minority views just don’t get any traction because people just assume they’re not.

That’s not important.

I might care about it, but I’m guessing no one else does because no one else is speaking even though everyone’s sitting there caring about it.

So the one thing that we have to fight against is silence.

And so what I’m trying to do, so I run a course for women called Powerhouse, which is about getting senior women to speak, women with authority to speak, and then running these free webinars to try and encourage people.

The really interesting thing, and I can say this until I’m blue in the face, but people don’t believe me.

I think I’m at a point now where I’m genuinely desensitized to the hate because I’ve been getting it for so many years.

I used to think I was, but I think I know that every single time it happens, it plays on my mind.

I seem like I’m not.

People always say to me, “How do you do it?”

And in person, I know that deep down inside it still affects me.

I think racist comments again are different.

I think that’s a different kind of personal attack.

I think it would hurt, but it’s supposed to.

They want it to.

That’s the thing.

Of course, that’s what then I get annoyed at myself for letting it hurt.

And I’m like, “Oh my god, this is what they want.”

I’m beating myself up for how I’m reacting about it.

And that sucks.

And then it does make you hesitate every single time you do want to write something and you want to speak out about it because like you said, silence is bad.

But then I do think is it worth this?

And do you know the amount of times I keep saying to people in comments and I’m like just because you don’t see it happen doesn’t mean it’s not true.

And like just because in your little bubble you don’t see evidence of that doesn’t mean it’s not happening all over the world.

And I think that’s what people don’t realize and they’ve got their own little bubble of things and it just doesn’t exist in them.

But then when you see it, it takes time to see it with your own eyes, but don’t dismiss other people’s experiences.

Yeah.

But even when increasingly even when people do see stuff with their own eyes, they’re still choosing to opt out.

We did a good show.

We did some research because I was noticing particularly with stuff like international wars and humanitarian issues, human rights issues, I was noticing people speak less for sure.

The war in Ukraine was really interesting because everyone seemed to talk about it.

Yeah.

And it was like, yeah, no, this is really bad.

Let’s all talk about how bad it is.

But then year on year, I’ve just noticed people saying less stuff.

It might be fatigue, but also we did some research to try and establish why.

And there’s a certain level of apathy now towards social causes.

And yes, it’s humanitarian, you know, human rights violations internationally, but also the climate, the government being a bunch of dicks.

40% of people in the UK intentionally opt out of social conversations.

Wow.

And I guess it’s also to stop like people get really emotional over those things and you know like as soon as you talk about those topics, they’re very divisive topics, right?

And so they just avoid them because it ends so emotional and people end up in such big arguments over it.

I remember once I was at a social event.

It was actually at like an agency thing and they were all like talking about politics and I was like I’m just going to opt out of this one because I was like I just it’s politics and they were drinking.

And they were like why?

And I said because I just don’t talk about politics with people anymore.

And they go but why?

I said because it always ends up in an argument.

And then basically they badgered on at me so much that it ended up in an argument.

I was like, it’s kind of my point.

So it ended up in an argument about it because I refused to talk about it and yet like this is and I think that’s it.

That’s what and even I’m as someone who’s very outspoken still chooses to opt out because I just can’t be bothered to deal with that drama that you’re getting back.

So I get it.

I get it.

Well, also people don’t know how to disagree.

This is one of the things that we teach at Good Shout is all the different ways that you can actually disagree with curiosity.

You can be disagreed with without taking it personally.

You can have better conversations about where your views don’t align without bullsh*t hating the other person.

Yeah, for me it massively comes down to respect.

That’s what I’ve always said.

You can totally disagree with people.

There’s people that come in my comments all the time and they disagree with a lot of stuff I say.

But they’re always respectful.

They always give their viewpoint.

They always give their kind of experience.

And I’m like, well, that’s really interesting.

That’s not my experience.

But it’s also interesting that you’ve come up with that and I respect them for it.

So, I’m not going to get too much into that ranty bit because I feel like I’m going to get annoyed.

So, I’m going to talk to you about like a woman because I love that you’ve done this now.

So, I want to hear more about it.

Like I said, I feel like I identify with being a likable woman.

I remember when you were start posting about it, I was like, “That sounds like me.”

And in a way like it’s funny because you’d think it sounds offensive and I was like, “No, I love that.

That’s so true.”

But tell me about it.

Tell me how it became about like what it is and what your vision is with it.

I do lots of creative projects as therapy.

My first book, The Little Girl Who Gives Zero bullsh*t.

Oh, yeah.

I need to talk to you about that because you just randomly wrote a kids’ book and it’s called Zero bullsh*t.

I was like, it’s actually for adults.

Like, yeah, it looks like a kids’ book.

But the reason why I wrote that is because at that point in life, I was giving loads of bullsh*t, as in I was caring loads about too many things that were absolutely irrelevant.

So I thought, let me write this book, put it out into the world, and then it will fix me.

And it did.

So I wrote it as I give a lot less bullsh*t now than I did.

So Unlikable Woman was another form of therapy.

And I tell you the origin story because it’s so silly and it’s all about me and my silly internalizing of other people’s feedback.

Talking about feedback again, I worked in advertising for 17 years and the advertising industry is incredibly fast-paced.

You need the thickest skin possible.

It’s brutal in so many ways.

And in that 17 years, I was told that I wasn’t bullish enough.

I wasn’t direct enough.

I wasn’t arrogant enough.

I didn’t have enough gravitas.

So, I thought I was a pretty nice person.

I was always accused of being too nice.

And so, then I left advertising because it did start to kill my soul a little bit because that’s advertising, you know, it’s lies.

It’s manipulation.

Started my own business, Good Shout.

And as soon as I started my own business and I was in charge of, you know, this business is paying my mortgage.

It’s my reputation.

You’ll know this, of course.

It’s my life’s work.

It kind of my livelihood lives or dies depending on the success of this entity that I’ve created.

I take it really seriously.

I started to get people, freelancers, etc. that worked for me criticizing me for my tone.

And the coincidence was that it was whenever they let me down and they’d let me down.

I’d say, you know what, this isn’t good enough in the way that I’m talking now.

So maybe my voice was…

No, my voice isn’t raised.

I’m just talking how I’m talking.

I would say, this isn’t good enough.

You’ve let me down.

And all of a sudden, I was being criticized for my tone.

I was being called a bullsh*t.

I was told that that is absolutely unacceptable.

How dare you speak to me like that?

But the common denominator in all of these instances was they’d let me down and they’d bullsh*t up, and me reacting wasn’t okay.

Yeah.

So rationally, I know that that’s the thing that they all had in common.

It doesn’t stop you internalizing it.

There was one example.

I won’t name names, but she worked for me for three months, this woman.

And when I say she did nothing, she did nothing in that three months.

She would rock up late, later than she should.

We’d have, you know, stand-ups every morning.

She’d say the same thing every day.

She literally wasn’t doing a thing.

And so when I started to say to her, I need to start seeing some results.

It’s been a month.

It’s been two months.

She would say instead of saying, actually, you know what?

Hands up.

I’m a bit lost or I need a bit more guidance, and I was giving her plenty.

She would say, I don’t like your tone.

Actually, the way that you’re saying that to me is not okay.

Throwing out all the therapy language, etc.

Rationally, I knew it was because she was doing bullsh*t all.

But that got to me because I consider myself to be a pretty nice person.

And you know, obviously she didn’t see out her probation, but that I internalized and it started to wear me down and I started to second-guess everything I said.

I started to really tiptoe around people.

Is this okay?

I’m really sorry.

It’s not quite good enough, but I’m sure you tried, etc.

And I thought, Jesus Christ, this has decimated my sense of self.

Being accused of being unlikable, being accused of being a bullsh*t.

And it got to the point where I realized that I had shapeshifted so much to become this lovely submissive is that okay kind of person.

I was done.

And that’s why I created the Unlikable Woman Summit because it was almost like I have to [ __ ] own this.

And you know what?

If you’re going to call me a [ __ ], fine.

I’ll be one.

I’ll be a [ __ ] [ __ ] because I want to pay my mortgage.

And so I created the Unlikable Woman Summit.

Although first of all I just started writing posts on social media saying I’m unlikable because I am honest.

I am unlikable because I’m direct.

I am unlikable because I give feedback.

And I realized that loads of women have also been in a similar position.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There’s a lot of us and when you that story you just told me about your employee, I’ve been in that situation and it’s the same.

I think it’s a defensive thing and like you said the therapy language, it’s got worse since COVID, and it’s like anytime you say anything now they’ve got an answer for it.

So it’s like you’re toxic.

You are damaging my mental health.

You are like, you know, all the buzzwords have come out now and you just can’t do anything.

And that’s why I think they say unemployment is so high or what to expect if that’s what you’re doing and bosses are too scared to even…

Like the fact that I’ve at some point been scared to even come into my own office because of my team.

That’s pathetic.

And like you said, it’s really bad.

But that’s why I think I resonated when I saw your Unlikable Woman Summit.

And I know you’ve had some big…

You had Fearne Cotton come.

That’s incredible.

Like you’ve had some, and I just keep seeing your vagina dress in different bits of papers and people outraged about all these things.

And randomly, I’ll see some…

I think I was out in the day, I saw someone talking about it.

I was like I know her.

She’s amazing.

And it was like so I just keep seeing the outrage that you’ve been…

And you’ve been in the papers quite a lot recently.

You’ve been making a stir and in a great way in my opinion because you’re actually making noise about the things that matter.

What’s been going on?

Like honestly.

And I like it was about a giant vagina.

So we had, and you’re right, I’m so flattered and honored that all of these women, high-profile women, have trusted us with their story because the point is that we have a lineup of women who have been accused in the same way that witches were.

They’ve been accused of being unlikable, being too much, being this, that, and the other, and it nearly ruined their lives.

We had, in the first year, we had a woman called… Do you know Dr. Charlotte Proudman?

Do I know her?

I feel like I know the name.

She nearly lost the right to practice law.

So, she’s a lawyer, family courts lawyer, does so much free work for rape victims and domestic violence victims.

I think I do know her name.

She got accused of… well, she got taken to court because she described a judge as sexist because the judge said to a victim of domestic violence, “If you’re so clever, why didn’t you leave?” because she was a senior woman, a successful woman.

You’re so clever, why didn’t you leave?

Dr. Charlotte Proudman tweeted saying, “Lovely to see sexism in the year 2023,” or whenever it was.

She got taken to court.

She nearly got her right to practice law taken away from her.

She got called a feminazi.

She got bullied by her industry peers.

And she shared her story with us.

She is on the right side of history, yet she’s been called an unlikable woman.

And it’s just so infuriating and disgusting.

These women are changing the world.

We have Misha B.

Oh, yeah.

You know Misha B.

She was accused of being a bully on live TV at the age of 19 on X Factor because they thought she was going to win.

Of course, when you hear this woman’s voice, you know, it’s rare that you are around someone that has that much star quality.

Being around her is like, oh my gosh.

Yeah, she’s just something else.

I can see why she was accused of being a bully on TV because she would have [ __ ] won and it was Little Mix’s year and they wanted Little Mix to win.

Oh god.

Anyway, so yeah.

So we have… and yes, we have Fearne Cotton because Fearne Cotton has been a people pleaser her entire life.

So for the second year, I thought it would be a lot of fun, as you walk into the summit, for women to walk through a giant vagina.

So, we created this gazebo thing and we had pink fluffy carpets and you had to walk through, and we were playing the big scene from When Harry Met Sally, and we had pink curtains.

So, you’re just walking through the thing just to like set the tone, but that immediately relaxes people.

It’s so ridiculous.

You’ve got like a screaming orgasm, you’re walking through a vagina, like you just can’t not laugh and just don’t take it seriously.

And that’s the perfect way to kind of feel at ease when you walk into a room full of strangers and you’re about to be vulnerable.

I like it.

It’s funny as hell.

And we had a sign saying, “This way to hell,” because we have a whole like see you in hell type thing.

And the theme for this most recent one was “Thou shalt not.”

So all the things that women aren’t supposed to be, or just humans aren’t supposed to be, greedy, lustful, rich, opinionated, all the things we’re not supposed to be, our lineup were.

The problem was, and this is the reason why it was in the press, is because the venue itself is just a community center.

It’s also owned by a church, but it’s not publicized as such.

I was actually raised… you know, I have respect for every religion, of course.

I was raised a Catholic.

I wouldn’t say that I’m religious now, but I do, you know, I was raised to have respect.

It was publicized as just a community hall, a performance theater, right?

They never mentioned anything related to that.

There were no T’s and C’s.

We actually held a summit in a church last year and we had to go through loads of red tape.

We had to get all our songs approved.

We had to say we won’t, you know, we won’t talk about X, Y, and Z.

And that was fine.

Anyway, so when it came to getting our deposit back, which was a grand, the owner of the venue said, “No, we’re keeping your deposit because you had a giant vagina at the entrance. And if we’d have known that your event was going to fly in the face of everything that the Christian church stands for, then we wouldn’t have accepted you. You also had a sign that said, ‘See you in hell.'”

Yeah, that one, I think, is actually probably more offensive than the vagina.

I know, but we were like, why didn’t you mention it on the day, guys?

We would have…

And so I again talked about it on social media, said this is kind of gross because it’s just women expressing themselves creatively.

Is there a problem really?

All people come… Jesus came out of a vagina.

I wonder if men had a similar conference and it was like bro code and it was like promoting, I don’t know, something worse.

I feel like a lot of the times that these events are held, they’re promoting something a lot worse again, but they’re just not in your face.

Like what’s talked about in that room could be a lot worse and they’re allowing it.

It’s just because you had a big giant vagina on the front of it.

They didn’t like that.

But say if people were talking about, I don’t know, you could have a bloody meeting in that community hall about, you know, sex trafficking or whatever and people won’t even know.

But if you did it discreetly, for me it’s a double standard.

Yeah.

Well, so an editor of a magazine got in touch and I gave him my side of the story.

He contacted the venue to get their side of the story and magically we got our deposit back and they still printed the story.

Oh wow.

I love how like the magic of PR.

So it does work and the threat of having a social media following.

I do like… yeah.

And you have to… the thing is it would have been so… the owner of the venue sent us this really long email saying essentially it was disgusting.

It was disturbing.

All of these things about us being unholy.

And it would be really easy for me in particular to have felt shame for that.

He was calling me disgusting.

He was saying our community was something untoward and bad.

It would have been so easy to be like, “Oh god. Yeah, I guess we are there.”

And so what I’m learning now is to just not believe these people.

When you know that you’re a good person, you just have to not believe the [ __ ] talkers, the haters because they’re doing this for a reason.

Yeah.

I feel like it’s easier said than done though with that sort of stuff.

It’s so easy to… and you’re right, like you got all that criticism about the event.

I feel like you could totally have been like, “Oh, maybe I was too much.”

That’s the other thing.

Being called too much is a common thing, right?

And I feel like you could easily have been like, “Oh, maybe you should tone it down. Maybe that was bad. It was a bit outrageous.”

But actually, what’s wrong with being creative, like you said, and expressing yourself in the way you want to?

You weren’t offending.

And that’s the whole thing.

It wasn’t even offensive.

It wasn’t hate speech.

It wasn’t any of that.

And so, oh, it’s kind of crazy.

Yeah.

But I think it’s time to talk about the clicky girls.

Okay.

The clicky girls.

And then we are definitely doing a little song for us.

Yeah.

Do you remember the dance?

I do remember them saying…

So, I think it was just thought they were doing a bit sort of… I don’t think it was much of a dance.

Again, that was X Factor time.

It was one of Simon’s little things and I do remember them saying, “Don’t be shy, touch my bum.”

I do remember.

Was it “This Is Nice” or something?

Maybe.

Turn… oh my god.

Isn’t it weird?

Would that be number one now?

God, no.

It was number one.

I think that was just again… but that was the whole thing about… isn’t it why LadBaby started doing his things?

Because Simon Cowell just always went to number one.

Everything he touched went to number one.

But that is how… how bad was our music if that went to number one?

Mr. Blobby went to…

Oh yeah, but that was kind of funny.

But yeah, and then Bob the Builder, I’m pretty sure that went to… all that.

Oh god.

God.

Do you remember Jive Bunny?

No, it was Jive Bunny.

Oh, okay.

That was it.

Listen to it.

It was like a montage of 50s songs.

Maybe I do.

How does that go?

Well, no, it’s an entire montage.

I’ve been doing it for a long time.

For me, I’ll have to look that up.

I probably do.

I feel like Crazy Frog as well.

Oh my god.

Also, one of the first songs I ever bought for myself was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Oh, I remember that soundtrack.

Yeah, I remember.

Also, there was Do the Bartman, The Simpsons.

Oh my god.

I guess these days, isn’t it the Demon Hunters song is…

Oh yeah, I see.

I only know that because I teach in a school still.

So I feel like I see the kids with their little jumpers.

You teach in a school?

I teach chess for kids.

Oh my god.

So I teach every week at schools and so I’m still around kids all the time.

Yeah.

Oh, that’s nice.

I know.

So just add another thing to a million things that I do.

But yeah, I love it.

I love it.

That’s probably one of my favorite parts of the week now in a way just because it gets away…

I think I used to find it really…

It is tough, don’t get me wrong.

I teach a classroom full of… they’re between five and 11 and I teach 90 kids a week.

It’s a lot of kids.

So, it’s hard work, but it’s still somewhat easier than dealing with adults.

Like, there’s a lot less [ __ ], honestly.

And it’s something so pure about those kids and it’s just like the stuff they come out with.

It’s actually just so much nicer knowing that there’s, you know, not this mal-intent and it’s just…

So yeah, I love teaching kids.

It’s much nicer.

So, at Good Shout we have Good Shout for Girls, which is public speaking training for girls aged 13 to 16.

What’s amazing is that they’re better to teach.

They are actually better to teach than adults.

They take feedback better, less disruptive.

You give them a piece of feedback once, they’ll act on it immediately.

They’re more up for learning than adults because they’re still in that phase where that’s what they know.

So to them, there are students and there are teachers, and they have that kind of hierarchy set in stone.

So they know that actually if they turn up, they’re in this lesson, they have to listen.

They’re supposed to listen.

That’s a teacher.

You listen to what they do.

You do what they say.

Adults have this rebellion to them about it.

They’re like, I don’t have to listen to this person.

Why do I care about this person?

And sort of thing and they’re closed-minded and they have this arrogance about them, entitlement about… it’s very different.

Yeah.

It’s a very strange thing.

So I do agree with you on that.

I love teaching kids.

But they’re great.

But I want to go back to these clicky girls because this is what I think sparked us being here again.

Yeah.

And we both have, I think, had similar sorts of experiences because I will quickly just tell you what I’ve experienced.

Over the time I’ve been building NOBS, which is my own community for founders, entrepreneurs, and just trying to get really good quality entrepreneurs in the room, so that means obviously it stands for no [ __ ].

So, it’s people who really want to do business with each other and genuinely want to network and, like I said, not this collab thing as opposed to just like taking from each other.

Very, very different thing.

I don’t want people to walk into the room and sell to other people.

It’s about real connections.

Yeah.

I’ve been obviously going out networking a lot and, you know, trying to find people who I think have got that same sort of value so I can tell them about what I do.

Yeah.

The amount of events I’ve been to over the last couple of years, I’ve just been to so many.

But there are so many groups that I’ve gone to events with and they’ve told me that either I’m not welcome or I’ve gone there and they were like, “Oh, how did you get a ticket?”

And I’m like, “I just bought it.”

They were like, “Oh.”

And I’ve literally gone to an event before for dinner.

I was there.

I was clearly the oldest person by about 10 years.

Everyone looked the same and I was clearly the odd one out.

And that’s where they were like, “Oh, how did you get in?”

Wow.

And it was like there was a criteria, which I got told afterwards, that you had to be a certain age, a certain look, a certain weight, a certain class category in terms of money, where you’re from, otherwise you can’t get in.

And I just bought a ticket thinking it sounded like a good event.

And yeah, I wasn’t supposed to be there.

Oh my god.

Yeah.

And so I started speaking to someone because one of the girls there wasn’t like that.

And she was very different.

So we started talking and then she was like, “Oh, I’ve been to a few of their events and it’s always like that.”

And I didn’t realize.

And then she was saying that she’s been to other events and there’s a whole clique of female founder events.

The guise is, like I said, female founder events, empowering events, but actually it’s all about if you don’t look a certain way, you don’t have a certain petite, pretty, kind of rich girl look, and you are only talking about that sort of thing.

It’s all about how you are, how you look basically, then you’re not welcome at any of these events.

And this is a thing and there are clubs for it.

There are events for it and it’s just like the unwritten rule of who…

And they all kind of know each other or kind of boost each other up and it’s really messed up.

Well, it feels like the equivalent of an old boys’ club.

Yeah, it is.

It’s like replicated.

It is.

It’s pretty much the same, but they’re just not old and boys, but it’s still…

But they’re 20-something young girls.

It’s changed and it’s all these female founder communities and so many people basically have talked to me about, “Oh, will NOBS be female founders only?”

And I’m like, “No, because I don’t want it to feel like that.”

Yeah.

Yeah, that’s [ __ ] shocking.

Although, is it shocking?

I guess it’s shocking because it feels so brazen.

Exactly.

So, that’s what I feel like it is.

I do this all the time now with everything.

I’m like, and people go, “I’m so shocked.”

And I go, “Are you though?”

Like, would you really be?

And I shouldn’t be shocked, but it is because it’s so like they’ve been really open about it to their members.

But I feel like they didn’t expect other members to say that.

And I feel like the members who are in it, they feel almost proud to be in it.

Like they have been accepted by all these tick boxes and so therefore they’re not going to tell other people about it and therefore it’s like a privilege to be in there.

But you were definitely talking about something similar, which is why I was like, oh my god, we need to talk about this because it’s just like…

What was your experience?

I’ve always rejected industry cliques.

Very actively, loudly rejected them.

Especially when it’s women-only groups where you have to be chosen to become a member or you have to apply and beg to become a member.

For me, that flies in the face of any kind of equality conversations.

It shouldn’t be an ambition of a forward-thinking woman to become a member of a secret society.

That just doesn’t…

That’s just…

It’s cognitive dissonance.

It just doesn’t make any sense.

And in advertising, there are some and it is exactly the same as old boys’ clubs.

You have to be recommended by a member.

You have to beg and plead to join.

You have to prove yourself.

And then you become a member of these elite societies and everyone does look the same.

There might be an occasional black or brown face, but everyone does look the same.

They tend to talk the same and have the same interests.

And those groups appear to have power because they actively try to have power.

And I think that’s disgusting.

I actually, without being too extreme, I think it’s [ __ ] gross.

And especially in advertising, which is an industry, like I said before, incredibly exclusionary anyway, really posh… not, you know, it’s not really posh, really white.

You’d have thought that people would have the integrity to try and combat that rather than reinforcing it.

And what happened?

And so because I’m quite, you know, I am quite loud about, you know, it’s my belief.

I’m allowed to have my [ __ ] opinion.

I’m quite loud about that.

I heard that one of these cliques was actively discouraging young women from doing Good Shout courses.

That just speaks jealousy for me.

That’s what it is.

It’s just like…

So what were they doing?

Just saying actually you shouldn’t?

Yeah, I saw emails.

So I got…

I would never give too many details so that the young woman in particular doesn’t get into trouble.

But yeah, I’ve seen emails telling them just not…

Just don’t do Good Shout courses.

We don’t recommend doing Good Shout courses, which to me is really interesting because it feels spiteful.

It is.

Yeah.

Like it’s enough to think I don’t disagree with this woman and maybe I don’t disagree with her politics or her worldview.

It’s another thing to affect someone’s livelihood.

Yeah.

That feels active, you know.

That feels like another level.

I do see that.

And I think like there was a female founder group that someone recommended to me to get in touch with the owner when I was running the TEDx Women event eventually and they were like, “Oh, well maybe they can advertise your event in the…”

culture or society, there’s going to be power dynamics and there’s going to be people that crave power and want it and enjoy it.

If that’s the case, just be transparent about it.

And don’t create this facade that you care about lifting women up and you care about all women and women having a seat at the table.

That’s the thing that irks me, is if you just want power for you and your mates, [ __ ] say it.

Say it.

We want to have an exclusive club and we’re going to give each other business and we’re going to make sure that our own tiny network gets money and that’s how we’re going to function.

Just say it because then at least you’re being transparent.

When you use equality and the idea of women’s empowerment to build your brand and your community’s brand and then you don’t live by it in any way, that’s just false advertising.

Yeah, it is.

It’s manipulation.

It’s like taking advantage of…

I really do think that and I feel like there’s so much of it out there.

Like I said to you earlier, if you just come out and say that’s what you want, then that’s a much better way of handling it for sure.

I can take it a lot more, but I think this is the reason why people are struggling at the moment to know who to go to and what to say.

And I think like for… you’ve been doing this for so long.

You help so many women find their voices.

What advice would you give to women out there?

Because I feel like, like I said, there’s so many bad women out there who aren’t, you know, doing things.

There’s so many women who do want to speak up.

They do hate the [ __ ].

They want to call out the [ __ ], but they don’t.

Like I said, it’s so much easier to be silent, but you said don’t be silent.

What advice would you give to women to try and, you know, get that confidence to speak up?

More social media literacy is required.

My advice is don’t believe anyone until they absolutely demonstrate that they are the thing they say they are.

I know that’s really negative advice, but don’t believe anyone until they absolutely demonstrate that they are the thing they say they are.

I don’t think it’s negative advice.

I think that’s really practical advice.

I do believe that because it’s so much [ __ ].

Like same as I [ __ ] all the time.

All these what I call fexperts, like they are fake experts and literally they’re so bad.

It is, don’t believe anyone.

Just look up people, speak to references, actually do due diligence.

There’s just so many people.

Like the amount of [ __ ] that I have on people is wild.

And there’s so many people and, you know, lots of women who I see on social media and I’m like, you are lying so hard.

So much of what you say is utterly dishonest.

I’m fully aware of it and surely other people are fully aware of it.

How can you be doing this?

But there’s, you know, especially young women who absolutely want role models, lap it up.

Do not believe anything you hear on social media.

Actively disbelieve what you hear, what people say on social media because most of it, we know most of it is [ __ ].

And so social media literacy and working out who is full of [ __ ] and who isn’t is such a critical skill.

I think we should do a course, how to sniff out the [ __ ].

I think we should because that’s what my other podcast is called, the one I do by myself.

It’s just called Sniffing Out the [ __ ] and it is literally that.

Take a topic and I just show you how to sniff it out.

But I think we should actually do more stuff on genuinely how to sniff out the [ __ ] and call out…

Like you said, I’m not allowed to name names.

I never name names in what I do when I do my [ __ ] of the month or whatever, and I call out the behavior because you want to talk about the actual behavior, right?

That’s what you want to talk about.

Sometimes you might need to name names when it gets really serious, but it’s very rare.

I just want to call out the actions, but we may need to do a course.

We need to take back…

As I said, we need to really do this because I feel like there’s so much stuff out there.

People are getting scammed all the time and they’re just preying on the naive, preying on the inexperienced, and it’s not nice.

And it’s the whole… particularly on social media, those women who have visibility courses or, you know, they promote I can make you visible in three weeks and they claim stuff like, you know, I went from 500-pound months to 50k months and all of that stuff.

There’s no way that they ever have to prove that that is true.

I know.

And it does feel… it’s the same as life coaches are just as bad.

They’re selling… they’re making women feel really insecure about themselves and they’re selling a dream and there’s very little regulation with any of this stuff.

Social media regulation is few and far between.

All you have is hashtag ad, hashtag spon.

You can tell any lies you want on social media and if you’re confident enough and believable enough, you can sell a dream.

Yeah.

But it’s highly unethical.

Yeah, I think so.

And I think that’s the really difficult thing, is that there’s so many people peddling [ __ ] out there.

I’ve decided I’m now closing out each episode with the same question and it’s what is the biggest piece of [ __ ] that you can’t stand right now?

I don’t think AI is the future.

I think AI is a tool that can be really useful.

I think when people are told that unless you buy my AI course, you will be irrelevant in the future and you will lose your job, I think that’s a really dangerous narrative.

It’s just part of it.

It’s just another tech bubble.

So, lots of AI narratives are [ __ ], intended to make people feel scared about not being cool or not having a job in 10 years’ time.

That I think is really dangerous.

I already said to you earlier, I can’t stand how AI is really changing things.

Yeah.

I really, in a way, think it’s done more harm than good to the world.

I mean, obviously there’s going to be amazing advancements in medical…

Like if it literally saves lives, great.

But in terms of in our space, in entrepreneurship, in marketing, in creative, I think it’s only done damage.

Like people saying, “Oh, it sped things up.”

But to what… at what cost?

Like people are now less creative.

They’re lazier.

They’re not using… they can’t even think for themselves.

At some of these clicky dinners that I’ve been to, the people go around and there’s sort of things and I’m like, “Oh, why don’t we ask questions?”

And there’s usually a question about business.

People are literally on ChatGPT asking them the answer before they come up with it.

And I’m like that is how lame it is.

And I’m like, I can’t deal with how pathetic people are.

So yeah, for me, I don’t like the narrative.

Again, it comes down to scare tactics and it’s that whole…

I think it’s unethical marketing where you’re putting that level of fear into people anyway.

So I think that’s [ __ ] and I think that yes, in AI but also in everything.

So I am with you on that one.

And the thing is we have a choice.

Society doesn’t realize it has a choice as to whether AI takes over our lives or not.

We’re just told by tech companies that have this overwhelming amount of power over us, this is the future.

Yeah.

But there’s so many examples in history where communities were told this is the future and they revolted and they fought against it.

We can fight against AI because I worry about…

I don’t give a [ __ ] about adults, honestly.

I really care about children and how they are raised in an AI-powered world and what that does to their brains.

That is terrifying.

And if I had… you know what, I don’t have kids.

If I had kids, I’d be like, “Fuck this.”

I want my children to think for themselves.

I want them to be creative.

I want them to be original.

I want them to play in [ __ ] nature.

I want them to exist on a lovely planet.

I would be much more of an activist than I am now if I had kids.

Yeah.

I think it’s terrifying, the thought that kids are going to be…

If they don’t know the answer to something, if they’re stuck somewhere, you’d want…

If something bad happened to your kid, you’d want them to have the creativity and the mental resilience to be able to get through a situation rather than thinking, “What would ChatGPT do?”

Like do you know what I mean?

Like I feel like if they are stuck without their phone somewhere, what are they going to do without watching TikTok?

Like you know kids these days aren’t going to survive whereas back in the day people would be making fires with sticks and they’d be able to last a few days and they’d be able to hunt and track and do all this kind of stuff.

Like I mean I sound really old saying this but like wow.

Are you a cavewoman?

That’s how I feel like.

I feel like we learned better skills back then, but now like bloody hell.

I don’t know.

So yes to protecting the kids of our future and yes to being more human and not AI.

So thank you so much, Amy.

You’ve been such a wonderful guest today and I can’t wait for the subset to come out.

Yeah.

Thanks.

Thanks.