Hi,
I'm Petra

My Story

Six years ago, I did not have the courage to go to the post office by myself.

I had everything that was meant to add up to a good life. Financial safety. Trips. The latest gadgets to take the edge off. A husband I leaned on for everything, including the small things I should have been doing on my own. From the outside, the picture was of a woman who had everything she wanted, who was thriving. From the inside, I was a shadow of a person, performing well, telling myself the lie that all was well.

There was no purpose. No agency. No autonomy. And underneath all of it, no self-trust. Not a wobble of it. None.

The quiet nudge that would not go away

It was 2020. Lockdown. The world stopped, and the noise I had been using to drown out my own knowing stopped with it.

That was when the nudge started feeling more present. A quiet voice that I’ve been silencing with trips, outdoor activities, and compulsive shopping. This silent voice saying this is not it. Steady, patient, forever present and impossible to negotiate with.

It did not care how safe the bank account was. It did not care how nice the next trip would be. It did not care about the next thing I could buy to feel briefly better. This is not it, it kept saying. And you know it.

By 2021, I could no longer ignore it. That was the beginning.

The years of shedding

What followed was not a glow-up. It was a stripping.

It began with a divorce. The end of a marriage I had built much of my outer life around, and the start of years I would not have signed up for if you had shown me the brochure.

The financial security went first. The structure I had been leaning on for everything was gone, and I had to find my footing inside a kind of independence I had never practised before.

Then my health collapsed. The stress landed in my body in a way nobody could explain. The doctors could not find a cause. For more than six months I lost weight while eating normally, watching my body shrink without anyone able to tell me why.

Eventually there was a small piece of stability. I found my own place. I started to put a life back together, slowly, piece by piece.

And then my mum became unwell.

I held all of it at once. The grief of being a daughter watching her mother's health change. The search for a job, because the bills did not pause for the inner work. The year-long coaching programme I had said yes to, because something in me knew it was the path even when I could not yet see where it led. And the early, tentative steps of building a coaching business of my own from scratch.

And yet, in the middle of all of it, something quieter was happening underneath. I was finding pieces of who I actually was. Not the polished version. The real one.

I found the courage to speak to strangers. The courage to stay in the coaching programme even when I could not yet see the return. The courage to begin building something of my own. The courage, eventually, to walk to the post office on my own two feet, and to laugh about how big that used to feel.

The foundation was not built on the outside first. It was built on the inside. The business came after, because by then there was a me solid enough to build a business on.

The founder seat I sit in now

Today I run that business as the CEO of a small company. I lead a team. I hold the financial responsibility. I sit with the tough decisions this position requires: the hires, the spend, the direction, the calls that have my name on them because I am the one accountable for them.

I do this work while coaching, deliberately. The lived experience of holding the founder seat, while still doing the inner work that got me into it. I am not coaching from a book. I am coaching from inside the role you are in.

Why I work with startup founders

I work with startup founders, small business leaders and entrepreneurs because I know the specific gap you are in.

You have built something real. From the outside, it looks like you have arrived. Maybe you have hit revenue you once dreamed of. Maybe you have a team that depends on you. Maybe the photos look right and the metrics look right and the LinkedIn post lands well.

And quietly, underneath, the version of you in the seat does not fully trust herself yet. The vision wobbles in private. Decisions take longer than they should. Confidence is performed, not felt. The inner foundation has not quite caught up with what you have built.

I know that gap because I lived a version of it. I know how to walk through it because I had to walk through it myself, and because I am still in the founder seat doing the work daily.

The five things my clients leave with are the five things I had to build for myself:

Self-trust deep enough to hold the next decision without spiralling
Clarity of purpose you can name in a sentence
A vision steady enough to hold through the wobbles
Real, body-level confidence, not the performed kind
A foundation strong enough to scale on, so the business can grow without breaking you

Together, we:

Rewire the patterns that keep you second-guessing
Build the self-trust you cannot fake your way to
Find the clarity of purpose that does not wobble under pressure
Hold a vision steady through the difficult quarters
Create the inner foundation that lets you scale without breaking yourself doing it

This isn’t surface work. This is self-leadership from the inside out.

Why This Work Matters

Because too many brilliant, soulful, visionary humans are stuck in lives that drain them. Not because they're lazy or broken but because no one taught them how to build a life that's theirs.

This work isn't about being more impressive. It's about being more you. Fully. Clearly. Unapologetically. When that happens, you don't have to scream to be seen. You don't have to fight to be taken seriously. You lead because your energy speaks for you.

My invitation to you

If some part of you is reading this and recognising yourself in it, that is the nudge.

It is the same nudge that started my journey of self-discovery in 2020. It does not stop. It does not negotiate. It just asks, quietly, is this it?

You do not need to have it figured out to begin. I did not have it figured out. I had a husband I could not stop leaning on and a post office I could not walk to alone, and now I run a company and coach the founders building theirs.