- Built From Experience
Kate founded Blindspot for Business because the coaching she needed did not exist.
When she reached the point in her own creative business where she knew she needed support, she went looking for a coach. What she found were generic frameworks, one-size-fits-all programmes and advisors who had never run a creative business in their lives.
Nobody who understood the difference between a positioning problem and a process problem. Nobody who knew what it felt like to be the person everyone needed a decision from. Nobody who had ever looked at the end of a busy quarter and wondered why the effort did not show up in the numbers.
So she built what she could not find.
- Before Blindspot
The business that came first
Before Blindspot, Kate built Stems and The Grey Home Company. A floristry and interiors brand based in West Sussex with two shops, an online business shipping products worldwide and a reputation that took a decade to earn.
The business worked with exclusive hotels and wedding venues across the South, held a contract with the region’s leading independent funeral directors and stocked an interiors range that was largely exclusive to its own shops. It was the kind of business that people talked about. Known in the area. Trusted by its clients. Built on quality and relationships rather than marketing spend.
Kate ran it for ten years with a permanent team and a network of freelancers for the bigger events. She built it from scratch. She scaled it. And she experienced, first hand, everything her clients now bring to her.
The work-life balance that never quite worked. The delegation that never quite stuck. The process that was supposed to free me up but always seemed to need me in the middle of it. The hiring decisions that kept me awake. I have been exactly where you are.
- A Defining Shift
The year that changed everything
When Kate decided to sell, she did something most business owners never give themselves permission to do. She stopped.
A deliberate year out. Travelling. Decompressing. Stepping back far enough to see clearly what she wanted to do next. Not a holiday. A sabbatical with intention. 12,000 miles across the UK and Europe in a motorhome with her Labradoodle, Barney in tow. A chance to gain the kind of perspective that is almost impossible to find when you are inside a business that needs you every day.
That experience sits at the heart of the Blindspot methodology. You cannot grow beyond what you cannot see. And most founders cannot see their own business clearly because they are too close to it, too busy and too alone with it to get any distance.
Most business owners won’t be afforded a year. But even a day out of the business, regularly and intentionally, Kate believes is a game changer. It is one of the first things she works on with every client she takes on.
- Psychology Meets Business
The background that makes the difference
Before the business, before the coaching, there is a foundation most people do not expect.
Kate has a degree in psychology. But it is what came after that is harder to describe and more difficult to replicate. For five years she worked in a highly sensitive field, applying her understanding of human behaviour at a level most people never encounter. Studying how people think under pressure. How environment shapes decision-making. The nuances of human interaction when the stakes are genuinely high.
That depth of experience shaped how Kate sees people. It is the reason she can read a room, name a dynamic and get to the root of something that a founder has been circling for years, often within the first session. It is also why the Blindspot methodology is grounded in genuine psychological rigour rather than adapted from a business framework someone else designed.
Her work since has been built entirely on that foundation. The business experience made her credible to founders. The psychology made her useful to them.
I am fascinated by the gap between how we think we make decisions and how we actually make them. That curiosity has never left me. It is what the Blindspot methodology is built on.
- Creative Founder Challenges
Why creative businesses specifically
Kate did not set out to work exclusively with creative business owners. She arrived there because it is the world she understands best and where she can do her best work.
Creative founders face a specific set of challenges that generic business coaching tends to miss entirely. The identity wrapped up in the work. The difficulty of raising prices when the thing being priced is something you made. The team dynamics of a studio where everyone has a strong point of view. The feast and famine of project-based revenue. The loneliness of being the most senior creative in the room while also being the one who has to make every commercial decision.
These are not problems a spreadsheet fixes. They are not problems an ActionCoach framework was designed for. They are the specific, nuanced, deeply human challenges of running a business where the work and the person doing it are almost impossible to separate.
Kate knows this world from the inside. Which means she knows exactly where the real problems hide. If you want to find out more, it all starts with the Founder Profile.
- The Coaching Experience
What Kate is like to work with
The people who have worked with Kate tend to describe the same things.
Honest
Straight talking without being blunt. Kate will tell you what she sees, including the things that are harder to hear.
Warm
Emotionally intelligent and genuinely empathetic. The hard conversations happen but they never feel like an attack.
Rigorous
Kate knows her stuff. The psychology background, the business experience and the methodology combine into something that goes deep quickly.
She is a great sounding board. She is not afraid of the difficult conversation. And she genuinely cares about whether the people she works with grow.
- Founder Feedback
What founders say about working with Kate
- Core Coaching Principles
What Kate stands for
These are not aspirational statements. They are the principles that shape every coaching relationship Kate takes on.
Self-awareness first
You cannot grow beyond what you cannot see. Everything starts here. It is the foundation of the Blindspot methodology and the first thing Kate works on with every founder she takes on.
Honest over comfortable
Real help sometimes means saying the thing that is harder to hear. Kate does that. With care. The founders who get the most from working with her are the ones who want to be challenged, not just supported.
Implementation, not just insight
Understanding the problem is half the work. The other half is actually doing something about it. Kate is not interested in coaching that produces insight without change.
Built for creatives
The challenges of running a creative business are distinct. The identity is wrapped up in the work in a way that other businesses are not. Generic approaches do not just miss the point. They can make things worse.
Perspective as a practice
Stepping back from the day-to-day is not a luxury. It is how clarity happens. Kate builds it into everything she does and helps her clients do the same.
- The Right Fit
Who Kate works with
Kate works with founder-led creative business owners. Branding, design, web, digital, video. Typically a team of three to fifty people, anywhere from three to twenty years into the business.
The founders who get the most from working with Kate are self-aware enough to know something needs to change but not yet sure what it is. They are ready to look honestly at how they operate, not just at what their business does. They want to be challenged, not just supported. And they are done with generic advice that does not account for the specific reality of running a creative business.
They do not need to be in crisis. But they do need to be ready.
- Always Still Learning
On personal development
Kate practices what she teaches.
The core philosophy of Blindspot, that you cannot grow beyond your own self-awareness, applies to Kate as much as it does to any client. She reads widely, particularly around psychology, human behaviour and the science of decision-making. She listens, she attends, she keeps her finger on the pulse of the creative industry she serves.
This is not a side note. It is how she stays useful. A coach who stopped learning stopped being useful. Kate has not stopped.
In Kate’s words
I built the business I could not find. Not because I thought I had all the answers, but because I had lived the questions. Every founder I work with is dealing with something I have dealt with myself. That is not a small thing. It is the whole point.
- Ready to work with someone who genuinely understands your world?