Season 4 | Episode 6 | Leading Through Setbacks

Today, Trudy Heins sits down with Samantha Bottegal, founder of PEKO PEKO and a Fempire Certified Business Coach, to explore one of the most difficult parts of business leadership: what happens when things don't go to plan.

After building a thriving food business from the ground up, Samantha faced one of the biggest challenges many business owners experience but rarely talk about. Trusting the wrong people, navigating leadership setbacks and rebuilding both her business and her confidence.

Together, Trudy and Samantha discuss why strong values create stronger businesses, the transition from operator to CEO, the importance of hiring well, setting clear expectations, and learning that leadership is not about avoiding mistakes but responding well when they happen.

They also explore resilience, accountability, coaching, systems, culture and why setbacks often become the lessons that shape stronger leaders.

If you've ever questioned your leadership, struggled after making the wrong hire, or wondered how to rebuild your confidence after a setback, this conversation is for you.

Connect with Samantha Bottegal

Website: PEKO PEKO
LinkedIn: Samantha Bottegal

Episode Highlights

02:47 Samantha's journey from Japan to business ownership

07:19 Building a business on strong foundations and values

09:24 Recognising it was time to stop doing everything

10:24 The cost of trying to do it all

12:22 Hiring leaders and learning to let go

16:51 When leadership doesn't go to plan

20:04 Difficult conversations and rebuilding confidence

22:43 Trust, accountability and learning from mistakes

24:36 Looking inward before pointing outward

26:05 Overcoming guilt, shame and self-doubt

28:43 Why every business owner needs support

31:12 Building better systems and stronger teams

35:18 Returning to your values as a leader

40:25 Season 4 Quickfire Questions

47:33 Final thoughts and takeaways

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Transcript

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SAMANTHA

Going back to basics, building the foundations right from the start.

An old friend of mine said to me years ago, oh, it would have been 15 years ago, she said, "Sammy, you need to have your values in place. That's the start of everything."

And at that point, I really didn't understand what she was talking about.

It was just so, "Oh God, how am I going to do that?"

TRUDY

Welcome to Fempire Rising, Her Future, Her Voice.

I'm Trudy Heins, and I'm the CEO of Fempire, a strategic business consultant and your host.

If you joined us for season three, you'll know we spent the season exploring the foundations of building a successful business.

But eventually, every business owner reaches a point where working harder is no longer the answer, nor the option.

The very skills that helped her start the business can become the things that hold her back.

And that's where season four begins.

Welcome to The CEO Shift.

This season, we're talking about what it really takes to move from operator to CEO of your business. To stop doing everything yourself, to build stronger systems, make better decisions, lead with confidence, and create a business that does not rely on you for every single thing.

I'll be speaking with women from Australia, New Zealand and around the world who've made that shift and have the lessons to prove it.

Because the goal isn't to do more. The goal is to lead better.

This is Fempire Rising.

Welcome to another episode of Fempire Rising, Her Future, Her Voice.

Season four, as you know, is all about The CEO Shift.

It's about moving from being the person doing everything in your business to becoming the leader your business needs you to be.

Today's conversation is one that every business owner needs to hear because we're talking about something that isn't discussed nearly enough.

We often celebrate growth, but we rarely talk about what happens when leadership decisions do not go according to plan.

Building a business means making difficult decisions, trusting people, learning from mistakes, and finding the confidence to keep leading when things don't quite work out the way you expected.

Joining me today is Samantha Bottegal, founder of PEKO PEKO and a Fempire Certified Business Coach.

Samantha has built a successful business while navigating one of the biggest challenges many business owners face, learning how to step back, trust others, and rebuild after leadership does not go as planned.

Samantha, welcome to Fempire Rising.

SAMANTHA

Hi, Trudy. Thank you for having me.

TRUDY

So before we start, tell us a little bit about yourself and the journey that led you to create PEKO PEKO.

SAMANTHA

Okay, so I started my business journey in Japan, where I sort of fell into having my own business there importing products from Australia.

I imported salmon and all sorts of things and wholesaled to hotels, restaurants, bento box makers, supermarkets.

So that started my journey in food, and I started working with a lot of chefs in Japan, hotel chefs and small business chefs and so forth.

And they taught me a lot.

I also became a Japanese housewife. My previous marriage was to a Japanese man.

TRUDY

Okay.

SAMANTHA

So I learned a lot about Japanese culture.

TRUDY

Yeah.

SAMANTHA

And the culture and everything.

So I lived that for 10 years.

I was totally immersed in that culture, and I knew Japanese food intimately.

So when I came back to Australia, I did separate from my ex-husband and I became a single mother.

So at that point, I had been working with Japanese men, Japanese businesses.

I was also in the film industry a little bit there and food.

TRUDY

Oh wow.

SAMANTHA

I was making documentaries with Japanese TV back here.

It was hard. There was a lot of work. Everything needed to be done yesterday. It was full on.

So I thought to myself one day, and I still remember the place I was, "What can I do that doesn't involve Japanese men, and I can use my skills?"

Not that all Japanese men are bad.

TRUDY

No, no, no.

SAMANTHA

So I thought, "You know what? I can cook Japanese food. I've been a Japanese housewife. I understand Japanese food intimately. I'm going to start a Japanese cooking school, and I'm going to call it PEKO PEKO."

TRUDY

And what does that mean?

SAMANTHA

It means "I'm hungry", a fun slang way to say "I'm hungry" in Japanese.

And so I started this Japanese cooking school.

It was homestyle, so how to make miso soup, how to cook rice properly, meals that Japanese mothers and women would make at home.

I started to teach Australians.

And then I met my second husband while I was doing that.

And he's an incredible foodie.

He comes from a Ukrainian-Italian background.

TRUDY

Oh wow.

That's a cultural mix.

You're like a melting pot right there.

SAMANTHA

Yeah, absolutely.

So he came on board helping me with that.

I was still doing a bit of film at that time, so he also helped me with that.

He was sort of like my Crocodile Dundee type thing on that side of things.

And he was also helping me with the cooking school, my backup, so to speak.

TRUDY

Great.

SAMANTHA

Anyway, so we did that and it was quite successful.

And all of the people that were coming to the cooking school were like, "Oh, you should start a cafe, you should start something. You've got this incredible food, you should do something."

And we sat there and thought, "Oh yeah, okay, we could."

Anyway, an opportunity came up.

We realised that we didn't have anything steady.

We needed to step into something that we could grow, and we started PEKO PEKO.

And we had no idea what we were doing.

We had an idea about food.

He was very good with practical systems.

I was like, "Oh, we have to make everything from scratch, everything fresh to order."

He's like, "No, no, no, this is how we're going to do it."

He was very good at processes because he has a background in that.

We got together and, with our food knowledge combined, we created products that were not quite Japanese, were a little bit different.

Also, we're both into healthy food because when I came back, all I saw was bread and pastry.

There was nothing but carb overload and deep-fried food.

I was just like, "What is this?"

We couldn't find anywhere to eat.

So that's another reason why we started.

We found a gap in the market.

So we started this business, and nearly 23 years ago we started.

TRUDY

Goodness gracious.

SAMANTHA

Yeah.

And like I said, we had no idea what we were doing.

We flew by the seat of our pants.

I had a baby at the time.

Well, a new baby came along within the first two years.

I also had a young child, I think she was seven.

It was full on.

So now, 23 years later, we have 80 staff, two outlets, quite a big wholesale business.

We have a very well-recognised brand.

Most people in WA know who we are, and even people who come from Brisbane, Melbourne, they're all starting to get to know us now.

TRUDY

Congratulations.

SAMANTHA

Thank you.

It hasn't been easy, but we've survived.

TRUDY

Yes, and so many businesses don't.

So kudos to you.

Tell me, what vision did you have though?

When you started the business, the vision was obviously around creating wholesome food, but what did you want it to be?

Did you have anything, or were you literally just one day at a time?

SAMANTHA

We were one day at a time.

We were absolutely in survival.

We needed this to work.

We worked really, really hard.

Troy was working 120 hours a week.

We were the business.

We needed to be there.

I had the baby on my back.

We were in survival.

But we had a vision that we wanted to create a business that people could come into, they could get restaurant-quality takeaway food that had no additives, no artificial flavours, that was low-carb, healthy.

We wanted people to recognise that healthy flavour and come back again and again and again.

So we stuck to that vision.

We stuck to our values.

And nowadays people come, some people come three or four times a week.

TRUDY

Wow.

And what a model of a successful business for that recurring revenue and customer satisfaction.

And I'm sure they're the ones that do a lot of your marketing for you.

SAMANTHA

They do.

And they say, "Well, we should have shares in your business."

And now that we've got a system in place that can measure those people coming back, we know who's coming back, we can see it all with our systems.

TRUDY

Great.

SAMANTHA

It's very comforting, and we feel very honoured that people come back every week, a couple of times a week.

And look, I've even had people that have said to me, "I've grown up with your business."

TRUDY

Oh wow.

SAMANTHA

Yeah.

"I was just a toddler when you first started back there."

I mean, we started in the middle of nowhere, in a suburban area where nobody came to.

And some old guy, when we first opened, said, "Nah, nothing's ever worked here. This is not going to work."

TRUDY

We were just like, "Oh my goodness. We've got everything stacked against us, but yet here we are, and we're going to push through."

Which leads me to my next question.

At what point did you realise you couldn't continue to do everything yourself?

SAMANTHA

Okay, so as I said, Troy was working 120 hours a week.

And to be quite honest, I had to call an ambulance a couple of times.

TRUDY

Oh dear.

SAMANTHA

Because he thought he was having a heart attack.

He had panic attacks.

And I was trying to juggle the family and be there as much as I could.

I felt like I was offloading my children to people, and we were just like, "We can't do this anymore."

We'd get really sick if we had kept going like that.

At the start of it, it was important that we did.

We needed to be there.

We needed to set up our own culture, our own values and so forth.

And we did that.

And then he said, "You need to get me a manager. I can't do this anymore."

TRUDY

I can't do this anymore.

SAMANTHA

And he had the energy and the strength to do the everyday, be there every day and do that.

He eventually, a little while later, stepped out of that because we might have had a bit of PTSD.

TRUDY

And I think we all do get to a point where the passion, even if it's a temporary thing, fades.

And you need to recognise that because you're not giving the best of yourself.

It's important to be able to take that step back and recalibrate.

SAMANTHA

Yes, absolutely.

So we did hire some people, but I'll be perfectly honest, we didn't know how to hire managers.

We didn't know how to measure their success.

We were putting systems in place a little bit at a time.

But if I had sought help at that time, right back at the beginning, it would have saved me a lot of stress.

But we continued to fly by the seat of our pants.

We did engage some people, and back 20 years ago, it was a little bit different.

You didn't have the same availability of technological systems and skill systems and all of that.

We didn't have that.

So it was really hard back then.

TRUDY

That's right.

And I think looking back 20 years ago, and we're obviously a similar vintage, so we've been in business for similar sorts of times, it was very labour-intensive.

Business has evolved and the support systems have evolved so incredibly that you can be a little bit more process-driven or strategic about how you run things.

But you did the right thing.

You identified that there was a point when it couldn't be sustained and it was essentially putting a ceiling on your growth.

Now, I know that more recently you brought in a general manager, and that's about the time that we met a couple of years ago, and that didn't quite go how you'd hoped.

And I'm not asking you to go into unnecessary detail, but what happened and how did you learn from that experience?

SAMANTHA

So by that time, we'd opened two stores.

We had managers in place.

We had head chefs in place.

We had quite good systems.

Looking back now, I think the systems could have been better and the foundations could have been much better.

But at that point, I thought, "Yep, it's set."

TRUDY

You don't know what you don't know though.

Benefit of hindsight.

SAMANTHA

Yeah.

We needed a general manager, operations manager.

TRUDY

Sure.

SAMANTHA

So we hired without having, I just don't think that I had the knowledge of how to hire someone in senior management.

I don't think I asked the right questions.

I didn't outsource any help to hire this person successfully.

So again, I sort of shot from the hip a little bit.

"Oh yeah, you seem really great."

We had an interview and everything was good and we vibed really well.

But unfortunately in business, there are a lot of people that target you, and you have to be very discerning who you bring in or who you work with.

TRUDY

Absolutely.

SAMANTHA

There are a lot of people out there that can come along and say, "I can do this for you, I can do that for you."

It's quite easy to get swept away in that.

You have to learn discernment and have the right systems and foundations in place to know that that person either suits your culture or doesn't suit your culture.

So this person came into the business.

And I was mostly involved by this time.

This is like 15 years later.

Troy was in the background, he's doing other things, and I thought I was in control.

I thought, "Yep, this person's good. I'm going to work with him and we're going to make this great."

But there was a lot of smoke and mirrors.

There was a lot of confusion.

There were a lot of excuses.

And I was getting swept into the confusion.

There was clarity, but there wasn't clarity.

It was strange because I believed everything that this person told me, but I wasn't getting the right reports because I didn't have the systems in place to make sure he had accountability around what he was doing.

I was getting some reports through and they weren't correct.

It was awful.

And at the same time, what had happened is we'd built this business.

We got bigger.

We had all these people.

We had 60 to 80 people, and I didn't have the right financial team in place.

Because when you're at a smaller point, you can have one bookkeeper and they can run the whole thing.

But when you get bigger, because we had taken the next level, I didn't realise that we actually needed a new team.

TRUDY

You need to scale the support as much as the business.

SAMANTHA

Absolutely.

And at that time, we had a bookkeeper, but they didn't have the right skills to be able to support me and also to be able to keep this person accountable.

So it was just a disaster all around.

And our bottom line was severely affected.

And that doesn't come out for one or two years.

TRUDY

No.

That's not an immediately measurable thing, is it?

SAMANTHA

Yeah.

So after 18 months or two years, my accountant's like, "Something's not right here. You need to make some changes."

And my partner was saying, "It's not right. It's not right."

But I wasn't listening.

I was like, "Yeah, yeah, it's okay. Look, I've got it all under control."

I was confused.

I was frantic.

I wasn't sleeping at night.

I was worrying.

And we had COVID.

The cost of living had gone up.

So there were all these excuses about, "The price of the products is really high now. We're paying more for staff. We're doing this, we're doing that."

So all the excuses were there that made sense, but there was a lot of confusion around it.

Now I know if there's any confusion, you have to take a step back and look.

Now one of our things is transparency.

We will have nothing else but transparency.

That's non-negotiable.

I learned a lot about that.

But anyway, in the meantime, our bottom line went down really fast.

So we made the move and we parted company.

And that was about 18 months ago.

And now we've gone straight back up to where we originally were, and everything's in place.

In the meantime, we put in a data input person.

We put in a highly qualified bookkeeper.

Now we have a senior bookkeeper.

So we have a group of people that all have our back.

But like I said, we grew quite well.

We didn't grow quickly, but we grew to that next level and we didn't have the right foundations in place.

And that was a big lesson.

TRUDY

And that is critical.

It is something that, with clients that I work with and businesses I talk to, you might start off looking at wanting to be a $100,000 business, for instance, and you put the foundations in place for that.

You may have aspirations to be a $5 million business.

You need to put those foundations in before you're a $100,000 business so that the foundations are set and the business grows to meet them, not the other way around.

SAMANTHA

Absolutely.

And I'll be perfectly honest, we did fly by the seat of our pants all the time, and we were always one step behind.

TRUDY

Well, we should have been 10 steps in front, designed, strategic, foundations, everything in place, and then we would have been okay.

And the stress wouldn't have been there as much.

But it's a lesson learnt though.

And I know that, in conversations we've had at other times, you've said it's not something that you hold yourself to blame for, which I think is really good because ultimately, when it comes down to it, it's a lesson that so many others now can benefit from you learning in your coaching side of things.

But it's also something that so many others have done before you.

Ultimately, all it is is life and the evolution of business.

And there are people out there that do that.

You've just, like I said, got to be really discerning who you bring in.

SAMANTHA

Absolutely.

TRUDY

And know when something is beyond your skill set and potentially you do need to outsource that to a specialist.

And it might cost you money to do those sorts of things, but the reality of it is you've seen the flip side of the cost when you don't, which is a lot higher.

SAMANTHA

Yeah. We could have lost the business.

TRUDY

Well, also your health and all the other things that are so much more important.

So looking back, what do you think the first warning sign was?

SAMANTHA

The confusion.

Now I know if I feel confused or I feel I don't have clarity around a situation, I know that's a red flag.

That's a big thing.

Or there were always excuses.

And I tended to trust that at the end of the day it was going to be okay.

But the confusion is a big thing.

If I don't get the right answers and I don't get the right accountability, the right reports, and even in the reports, if there's a little bit of confusion, I want to know what that is.

We'll drill down into it now.

TRUDY

And I think that's really important for our listeners to hear.

It's your business.

And if there is confusion, sometimes it could be a lack of knowledge of something.

So it's not that just because there's confusion that there's anything untoward.

But you must ask.

You have a responsibility to ask.

And you don't need anyone's permission.

It is your business.

So if you are confused and you need clarity, get that.

SAMANTHA

That's right.

And I think that people are sometimes a little bit intimidated by staff.

They don't feel like they can ask the right questions.

They're worried about the reaction of that person.

Look, from my point of view, if that person is not suited and that person reacts to your questions and that person cannot give you the answers, they need to be managed out.

TRUDY

They're not the right person for your business.

SAMANTHA

I'm very clear on that now.

And I've done a lot of personal development through this business, in a relationship way with Troy and me, not counselling, more development, but whatever you need.

Also business.

And I've learned a lot about myself through that personal development.

And one of the things was I had a little block where I couldn't ask the right questions.

I was a little bit intimidated by people with those strong personalities who thought they knew more than me.

I couldn't stand up and have the courage to be upfront.

Now I do.

Now I'm straight down the line.

TRUDY

But I think that can come from so many different places.

And I know that women will often feel intimidated if they have to go and question a male, particularly if it's one that's quite brazen.

Women in business, if they don't have all the degrees, will feel intimidated by going and asking somebody that has the letters after their name.

When the reality of it is, you're the one that's built this business.

So you're the one that actually commands the respect.

You've got the runs on the board.

They haven't.

So I think we need to reframe a bit of that.

We are in this position of having the ability to ask questions because it's our business and we're fully entitled to.

SAMANTHA

Absolutely.

And when I went through this period, I was going into the business and there was a clear separation of myself and the staff that had been put in.

And everybody was not like they are now.

My staff and I are very, very close.

But there was a deliberate wedge that was put in.

When I went in there, there was a feeling, and I was like, "This is not the right culture. Something shifted. Something's changed."

And when the first time that happened, I should have listened to my intuition.

TRUDY

Before we get back to the conversation, I've got a quick question.

Are you still running your business?

Or honestly, are you leading it?

If you realise that you're carrying too much, making every decision, or feeling stuck in the day-to-day weeds, it might be time for some support.

At Fempire, our Certified Business Coaches help women make the shift from operator to CEO through practical guidance, accountability and real-world business experience.

Whether you need support with leadership, strategy, systems, marketing, finance or growth, there's a coach who can help you.

To learn more about working with a Fempire Certified Business Coach, visit fempire.com.au.

Now let's get back to the conversation.

SAMANTHA

I should have spoken to the manager at the time and had clear answers from her.

But again, I was confused.

I was like, "What is going on?"

TRUDY

No, well, you trust in the person that you put in and you think, "Well, maybe their way, they've done this before, they've told me they're so great. They've told me how great they are. So maybe I'm the one that hasn't quite got it right."

And you're right.

I think your intuition is something that we often discount, but it doesn't often lead us astray.

SAMANTHA

The other thing I learned the hard way is that person had said there needs to be a clear line of command.

Which I get.

You at the top, then me, then the managers, then that.

But what had happened, and I said, "Okay, I understand that being the CEO, there has to be a hierarchy."

It needs to go through you.

But I was cut from the rest of the people.

And that's not okay.

I should be able to walk in and say whatever I want and talk to the people and have clear communication with everyone.

Not micromanage.

I'm not talking about micromanaging.

But I mean coming in and having clear communication with staff, not having to go through a particular person to get it.

TRUDY

No.

And I think it's really important for the staff to see that because you're the only one that can communicate the vision and the direction of the business because you're the only one that realistically has it.

So they need to understand that to get on board the train.

And if you can't do that with your staff, then there is a whole disconnect there, which clearly you experienced.

SAMANTHA

And that's what happened.

TRUDY

It's great that you've moved on.

But thank you for talking about it.

Because as I said, I know so many businesses have probably experienced it and they don't talk about it and they are scarred from it.

And then they don't want to do it again, which then again is such a blocker because you can get the right people in place and it can make life easier.

It's just about being more discerning in that initial stage.

SAMANTHA

Yeah.

And I see that now.

I see the difference.

A completely different scenario now.

But the other thing I had to look at was I had to sit back and look at myself.

What was there for me that enabled this to unfold?

And for me, it was a bit of, I still wanted to be in control of that situation.

And I didn't trust the people around me who had my back.

I didn't allow the people around me who had my back to step in and help me.

And so that's, with my business partner, he was quite aware of it a long time before I sort of woke up.

But I should have trusted him.

I should have sat down and said, "We need to look at this."

But I didn't.

I was like, "I can do this by myself. I don't need any help. I've got it all under control."

And now I know that with the people that I can trust and the people that I can bring into this, maybe a coach or my partner or whatever, I need to sit down and share the burden.

Have completely frank and honest, open conversations with them and accept the help.

TRUDY

Because they can see things from a totally different perspective.

It's the old adage of on, not in, and all of the things around your business.

But it is somebody that's maybe not quite so emotionally invested that can see a different perspective and maybe can bring you to that.

So anyway, look, let's move on because obviously things are on the up and up.

One difficult leadership experience can sometimes make people reluctant to trust.

How did you rebuild your confidence again as a leader?

SAMANTHA

So I did sit in a bit of guilt and shame, embarrassment.

I felt bad.

I lost confidence temporarily, obviously.

But I went back and when we hired the new person, it was a completely different framework.

And I had to go back and learn the lesson.

I had to look at how we're going to hire this person, what the expectations are, transparency, accountability.

I had to go back and set the foundations again.

But it did affect my confidence for a short time there.

TRUDY

Sure.

SAMANTHA

But I feel like because I challenged it head-on and went back in again and did it a different way, now I feel like I have much more confidence.

TRUDY

Great.

SAMANTHA

I've gone to the really awful place, but I'm not stuck there.

TRUDY

You didn't sit in it.

SAMANTHA

No, I didn't sit in it.

And obviously there's pressure of everybody watching and so forth, but I can't think about that.

It's onwards and upwards.

And I think I have a lot more respect from our current staff members because we actually got rid of the rot.

And some of them were like, "Oh yeah, I felt it wasn't right."

And I was like, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Yeah, what's my place?"

And so forth.

But I feel like we have a lot more respect now because we've come in hard and gone, "That wasn't right. This is what we're going to do. These are the new systems we're putting in place, new procedures, new everything, closing up all the gaps."

And everybody feels safe now.

TRUDY

It's often interesting because we worry about how, if we do release somebody from employment, how the other staff are going to see that and whether that's going to panic them.

But often it builds such a huge amount of respect because they see things that we don't.

They're sitting back going, "Well, hang on a minute, if you're not dealing with it," that can actually create a lack of respect.

So if you come in, cut it out and move on, then it's not necessarily a negative thing.

And you've just described that.

SAMANTHA

No, definitely not a negative thing.

We feel like we did the right thing.

And unfortunately, it's like a growth.

Sometimes you have to cut around it as well.

And we had to manage people out that weren't aligned.

So basically, it's been now almost 18 months.

They're all gone now.

We've got a whole new culture.

Everybody's very clear on what our values are.

We just had to go back to the foundations.

TRUDY

No, that's fabulous.

So I guess hearing that, and the fact that you've recalibrated, you've changed things, you've been able to put systems and processes in place, what advice would you give business owners who know they need help but are afraid of making the wrong hiring decision?

SAMANTHA

You really need to seek help.

You really need to either get a coach, talk to somebody in recruitment, teach you how to interview, teach you what the right questions are.

And also after you've hired a person and you feel, "Okay, this person might be good for our business," sometimes they aren't.

So how do we move them on in the timeframe, the three months or the six months?

How do we structure our contracts so that we can move them out professionally and quickly if they don't suit us, and mitigate all the risk of what occurs?

They can help you with the right questions.

They can help you interview.

But also, obviously, a coach can do that as well.

You really need to get help because I didn't know what I didn't know, and I hired incorrectly.

TRUDY

And I think the other thing too then is putting those accountabilities and KPIs in place so you can manage and you can have visibility of how they're performing very quickly.

So not hiring and then going, "Okay, well, I'm going to give you six months to get your feet under the table."

And by then, their probation period's well expired and all of those things.

It is actually just being able to be very structured and say, "This hire, this expectation, this review," and understand the process right from the word go.

It's critical.

SAMANTHA

So have those contracts in place and their job descriptions in place so that they're very clear.

There's no grey area.

Expectations on both are very clear.

But it takes, you know, it actually takes a long time to get that right.

All of the job descriptions, the contracts.

But you need professional help.

You can't just get something off AI and write up a contract.

TRUDY

No.

SAMANTHA

It all needs to be done absolutely professionally with no gaps.

I mean, we did that at the start.

We wrote our own contracts.

TRUDY

Well, as we know, AI makes mistakes.

SAMANTHA

Yeah.

And now we've got to the point that we have senior management, we have that whole accounting team, we have managers.

And so now I've gone back this week and actually gone back to the industrial employment agency or the lawyers and said, "Can you please do an audit on our contracts?"

TRUDY

Great.

SAMANTHA

And see that they're up to date, there's no gaps.

And obviously, the business changes and shifts every year or every day, basically.

TRUDY

As does legislation and all that.

So you're right.

You have to keep on top of that.

It is not a set-and-forget when it comes to staff.

SAMANTHA

The people around you, we have employment lawyers, we have migration lawyers, and it sounds expensive, but it's not.

Employment lawyers, migration lawyers, and now I have a coach, good accountants.

And that's a whole team you need to gather together that's going to support your business.

You cannot do this all on your own.

So if you're trying to run your business, do your books, do your marketing, it's too much.

And we've outsourced a great marketing team now that I actually met at a women's retreat down in Denmark.

And I went on this retreat thinking, "You know what? I'm going to go and I'm going to meet other businesswomen."

So networking was really important.

And I met this food stylist and a marketing girl.

Together with them, we are building our business in wholesale and our sources in the supermarkets.

So networking, getting people around you that can support your business, like a team.

TRUDY

That's great.

So let's talk about your other shift because, of course, part of all of this and the purpose of this was to be able to release you to do some other things that you're really passionate about in your life.

And I know at the moment you've just started your journey of writing a book, so that's going to be very interesting.

And I'm sure there'll be a lot of people interested in your story.

But you're also a Fempire Certified Business Coach.

So let's talk about what inspired you to add coaching alongside your business.

SAMANTHA

Well, obviously, I would hate for young women to go through what I've gone through.

TRUDY

Young or old.

SAMANTHA

Young or old.

It's just like, if I can shorten the journey of people's business life and reach success earlier, that would be such a great honour for me to help people do that because we have been through the fire the whole time, not outsourcing help.

So I thought to myself, well, I have all of this experience and we've been through a lot.

I mean, obviously, my journey started back in Japan and having that Japanese business experience I feel is very valuable as well.

And then coming here and building a business from nothing, from absolutely nothing, to a multi-million-dollar business that we have now, I feel like I've got a lot to offer.

But I also feel like it's something that I can step into in the future.

Maybe we might move this business on in a few years.

We're not far from retirement.

We've now reached 60.

What else can I do that keeps me engaged and keeps me stimulated, but also assisting other people?

So I'm slowly moving into it.

Obviously, we still have the business and it's quite demanding, but I would really like to do that because it would be very satisfying for me to be able to help other people.

TRUDY

Wonderful.

Do you think becoming a coach and learning the curriculum has changed the way that you run your business?

SAMANTHA

Absolutely.

Going back to basics, building the foundations right from the start.

An old friend of mine said to me years ago, it would have been 15 years ago, she said, "Sammy, you need to have your values in place. That's the start of everything."

And at that point, I really didn't understand what she was talking about.

It was a bit woo, really.

TRUDY

Yeah.

SAMANTHA

Well, it wasn't woo so much.

It was just so, "Oh God, how am I going to do that?"

Like, I would love to do that, but actually, how am I going to do that?

Practically, what do I do?

She said that, and I understood that that would be important.

I didn't have anybody to show me the steps.

Going through the Fempreneur course, I was able to look at those steps and think to myself, "Wow, if I had put that in place right back in the day, it would have been a completely different story, maybe."

So yeah, I feel like going through that course was really good.

There are things in there that maybe I don't need in my business, but it's of course very good to know.

And now I can help my eldest daughter.

She's also an entrepreneur and she's starting her business.

She's actually doing Fempreneur, but she's got two small children.

It's a little bit hard right now.

But we can go back to those foundations.

It's no more flying by the seat of our pants or shooting from the hip.

I've said to her, "You need to get this right, right back at the beginning. You need to get this right before you move on to the next step."

So it's good.

TRUDY

And I think that accountability, one of the things that a lot of women in business really appreciate is somebody that keeps them accountable to doing those things in their business.

And I'm a big believer that if you can't communicate your values, if you can't communicate your vision and your mission, then how on earth can your team come on the journey with you?

SAMANTHA

Absolutely.

They can't go look inside your head.

And then you can come back to your values.

Sometimes when I have a meeting with a staff member or our new general manager, operations director, we go back to the values.

One of our values is trust.

One of our values is respect.

Or there might be something going on between two different cultures and something happens in the team.

We go back to respect.

"This is one of our basic values."

And they understand.

They're like, "Oh yeah, okay, got that."

TRUDY

Or it can help with decisions.

If you're struggling with a decision and you're not sure, bring it back to your values and go, "Well, which answer is going to align more with my values, my vision, my mission?"

So critically important.

And it is the foundational work, I think, that everybody needs to do because it makes running a business so much easier.

SAMANTHA

Oh yeah.

Look, even some people starting business, they don't even know how to sign a lease.

They don't even know what to look for if they're doing bricks and mortar.

People don't know.

TRUDY

No.

SAMANTHA

People don't know what they don't know.

So it's really important, I feel like, to get a coach and to get them to hold their hand a little bit and go through the steps.

TRUDY

Great.

All right.

So let's move into season four core questions.

This is a quick-fire.

I just like to get a real gauge on your immediate response.

So at what point did you realise you could no longer keep working in the business and had to start leading it differently?

SAMANTHA

When we grew.

When we were growing, I couldn't be in all places at all times.

I couldn't be over everything.

I needed help.

I needed to step back and I needed to grow the business.

Well, I needed to manage that growth.

Manage the growth without micromanaging the business.

TRUDY

What changed in your business when you stopped trying to do everything yourself?

SAMANTHA

I was no longer spread thin.

I got people that were skilled in other areas and were better than me.

I was able to help people grow in those positions rather than me trying to spread myself thin and know a little bit about everything.

I had people in that business that were specifically talented in those areas that I wasn't.

TRUDY

Right.

What does working on the business look like for you now?

SAMANTHA

Oh, it's so good.

It's so good.

I work from home most of the time.

I do go into the businesses and I do have regular meetings with people on-site, but now I can structure my life around the business.

No, structure the business around my life rather than the other way around.

So if I want to play tennis, I'll play tennis in the morning, I'll come back and work for a couple of hours.

I can go and meet friends.

I can spend time with my daughter and my grandchildren.

There's still a lot to do.

We're still in full growth.

But it doesn't control my life anymore.

I was working every weekend, every public holiday, could never go away.

We also now put our holidays in when we want to have holidays.

So it's a completely different scenario now that I've got the foundations, the structures, the processes, procedures all in place.

And it's an ongoing thing.

Not everything's perfect all of the time, and we're continually reviewing and closing gaps and making things better.

There's a Japanese word, kaizen, which is continually improving all of the time.

And we listen to people.

We get feedback from our staff on how we can improve things.

So we're continually doing that.

But the structure now is that we have a life.

TRUDY

You control the business, not the other way around.

SAMANTHA

Absolutely.

And it's very liberating.

TRUDY

Great.

And I'm sure there is a woman who is sitting in her car, in her office, with her pods in, thinking, "I want a piece of that life."

So you are proof of the pudding in that, most definitely.

How have you intentionally designed your business to support your life goals?

SAMANTHA

So we're designing this business so that we can actually, at one point, step out completely and sell a percentage over to other people who want to buy in.

We already have that sort of on the sidelines, people want to buy in.

If we can set it up so that it runs automatically, we have all the systems in place so that the person that does buy in knows that it's not a huge amount of work.

It's not labour-intensive.

It's not a mess.

And it's all structured and it's a great package.

Then we may be able to step out a little bit more even and go and do the things we really want to do, but still have an income from that business.

So there are different ways we can look at it.

TRUDY

That's great.

My philosophy is you go into a business with an exit strategy.

That may change.

There are owners that want to continue to have involvement and generate a passive income.

There are those that set it up for sale.

There are some things that are common, there are things that are different for each of those exit strategies.

So it is critical to think about that when you're going in and along the way, rather than when you get to the end.

SAMANTHA

Absolutely.

And also setting up your business structure so it supports your life goals as well.

So we're changing from a trust now to a company that's easier to...

TRUDY

I think so many people are after the budget.

SAMANTHA

Yeah.

And then it's easier to sell shares, it's easier to bring other people in.

But we also have a very good accountant that's looking at our exit strategy and supporting us in that.

And they're restructuring everything to support that.

So I feel like you have to have a really good accountant.

TRUDY

Absolutely.

But I think you need to work out what it is first, and then you can put in place all the team to support that.

But you actually need to sit down and have that honest conversation with yourself.

Or if you are in partnership, however that works, have that honest conversation around, "What do we want?"

Because at some point we don't want to be doing this.

What do we want that to look like?

And design that from the beginning, not six months out.

SAMANTHA

No, no.

And that's what happens.

I spoke to a lawyer the other day and they were like, "Well, most people just come to us a month before they want to get out in panic."

And that's not the way to go.

You need to actually plan.

So we've got maybe a two-year plan now.

TRUDY

Great.

SAMANTHA

And it's all getting set up by the accountants, the lawyers and so forth.

And hopefully we can step out a bit more than we are now.

Do a little bit more coaching.

TRUDY

What's the one thing business owners need to stop doing if they would like to grow more sustainably?

SAMANTHA

They need to stop thinking that they can do everything themselves.

They need to stop spreading themselves thin.

They need to seek help to set the foundations.

Stop trying to control everything and trying to micromanage because that will never work.

You'll just become exhausted and run down.

It just won't work.

TRUDY

And my final question to you, what advice would you give to the woman listening who knows she has become the bottleneck in her own business?

SAMANTHA

Seek outside help.

Because when you're in the bottleneck, and you are the business, you are the bottleneck.

You can't actually see.

You don't have any clarity.

You're confused.

You feel as though you can't move from that position.

But if you get outside help, seek coaching, external support to help you move through it, that clarity comes.

People get confused when they're in the business.

TRUDY

It's a lot to take on and you're spinning a lot of plates.

And I think the thing is that it used to be such a badge of honour to multitask and be across everything.

But the reality of it is, if you're across everything, you're not really doing anything very well, are you?

So stick to your skill set.

Outsource the things that, A, you don't like because you probably won't do that very well.

And the things that you may not understand, seek to understand them.

I'm not saying just be totally oblivious to them.

But you only realistically need to understand them at a level.

You don't need to understand the minutiae of it.

SAMANTHA

And I feel like a lot of people think outsourcing is expensive.

"Oh, I can't afford that. I can't get a coach," or whatever.

But you can.

There are different levels of coaching that you can actually engage.

And it doesn't mean that you're out for thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars.

It doesn't work like that.

But then again, there are people out there that will charge you $15,000 for coaching.

You might feel like, "Oh, they know what they're talking about," but you need to do your research.

TRUDY

Oh, absolutely.

That credibility side of things is critical.

And it is also understanding that to be a coach, life coach, business coach, whatever sort of coach, there is no required framework.

So anybody could hang their shingle as a business coach.

The reality is that if they have done no training in that and they haven't had business knowledge themselves, then they're probably the blind leading the blind.

You need to have learnt from the mistakes to be able to guide somebody through it.

SAMANTHA

Absolutely.

And we did engage a business coach once.

We engaged them and I remember sitting there thinking, "This is just not suiting my business. This guy has no idea what we're doing."

And I went through the motions, and I was a little bit disillusioned about coaching after that, thinking, "Who actually would be out there to help me?"

But there are people out there.

TRUDY

I guess that's the thing.

Different people align with different people.

I know as a coach I can be quite forthright, a little bit blunt.

Some people like a softer approach.

That's fine.

Whatever it is, find the person that can get you moving and get you unstuck because we're all different people.

SAMANTHA

Yeah.

So I feel like everybody should have a coach.

TRUDY

Great.

Well, of course, we'd love to hear that.

SAMANTHA

No, but I'm saying it from the bottom of my heart.

I do.

TRUDY

And I 100 per cent support that because I just think it is that clarity.

When you are stuck in it, and I also believe that often you will talk to a partner who may not be involved in the business or family or your accountant, and everybody that supports you in that way usually has some level of vested interest in the result or some emotional attachment.

It can be more time or more profit or whatever.

But a coach will help you uncover what your definition of success is.

And it's your definition.

And help support that, not anybody else's definition of what your success should look like.

SAMANTHA

And when you look at a business, different coaching for different stages of the business as well.

When you're first starting, the foundations, the things that you have no idea about in business, you get that coach for that.

Then the next level, like for me, I should have got another coach for the mid-level.

I should have got another coach, or maybe it could have been the same coach, could have been a different one for the upper level.

It's not just one coach is going to solve the problems from the beginning and that's it.

As you go along in your growth, you actually need that external help in different areas.

TRUDY

And I think businesses evolve just the way that you do.

You evolve as well and you learn, and so you need different things in life along the way.

Your business is exactly the same.

It has a life cycle.

And so you need that.

Samantha, thank you so much for joining me today.

I really appreciate your openness in sharing not only the success, but the lessons that come from leadership.

One of the biggest shifts a CEO can make is understanding that mistakes do not define us, they refine us.

Your story is a powerful reminder that leadership isn't about getting every decision right.

It's about learning, adapting and continuing to lead with courage.

If you'd like to connect with Samantha and learn more about PEKO PEKO or explore working with her as a Fempire Certified Business Coach, you'll find all of her details in the show notes or on our directory on the Fempire website.

Thank you again.

It's been an absolute pleasure.

SAMANTHA

Thank you, Trudy.

And good luck to everybody out there with their businesses.

TRUDY

Thank you for joining me on this episode of Fempire Rising.

If today's conversation resonated with you, share it with another woman in business who needs to hear it.

And remember, the goal is not to do more. The goal is to lead better.

If you'd like to learn more about working with a Fempire Certified Business Coach, visit us at fempire.com.au and follow Fempire on social media.

And if you'd like to connect with today's guest, you'll find all their details in the show notes.

Just search for Fempire. We're easy to find.

Until next time, keep rising.