What happens when you are so shut down that nothing can get in?

Not physically. Not emotionally. Not financially.

In this episode of In Her Own Name, Lillian Ogbogoh sits down with Jo Lightfoot, the award-winning speaker, trainer and coach behind The Human Battery Charger, for one of the most honest and joyful conversations the show has had.

Jo’s life collapsed in 2021. A divorce, the fallout of COVID, and a body that had physically locked itself down after years of carrying too much. She went from being the woman who charged everyone else’s battery to barely being able to charge her own.

What happened next was not a comeback. It was a reclamation.

Jo talks about the difference between retreating and recharging, and why one is passive and the other is work. She talks about sexual energy, not as a conversation about sex but as the creative primal force that lives inside every woman and drives everything from confidence to financial flow. She talks about vaginismus, shame, and how being physically shut down translated into being shut down in every area of her life. And she talks about what shifted when she finally gave herself two things. Healing. And permission.

Within a year she had met her equal, become a mother, relocated, and built three businesses.

This conversation is warm, funny, surprising and completely alive. Jo brings the energy she is named for, and Lillian meets her every step of the way.

In this episode they explore:

Where the name The Human Battery Charger actually came from and why she ran with it

The difference between retreating and recharging and why it matters

What sexual energy actually is, and why it has nothing to do with sex

How to tap into your inner lover before you walk into a room that asks everything of you

Why your choice of underwear is a sovereignty practice, not a style choice

Success values versus core values and why most people are running someone else’s version of success

The moment Jo stopped apologising for who she was

What changed when she finally gave herself permission to receive

Connect with Jo: Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook: @jolightfootofficial Email: jo@jolightfoot.co.uk

Mentioned in the episode: Amy Rollinson, Focus on Why podcast

What happens when you achieve the vision and forget to notice?

In this episode of In Her Own Name, Lillian Ogbogoh sits back down with Daniella Genas, founder of Be The Boss International, award-winning business growth strategist and TEDx speaker. They have spoken before on Lillian's previous show. This time the conversation goes somewhere different.

Not the framework. Not the exits. The woman.

Daniella talks about what has replaced imposter syndrome, which turns out to be something more interesting and more honest than confidence. She talks about the last twelve months, which have been hard in ways she has not spoken about publicly. About HMRC. About clients who could not pay. About juggling two children, a husband, a growing dinner series, an international trade mission and the quiet terror of not knowing whether everything is going to hold.

And she talks about the Founders Dinner, the community she built because she hated traditional networking and decided to create the room she wanted to be in. A room that is now in Birmingham, London, Manchester, and Nottingham, with a WhatsApp community connecting founders across all of them, and an international retreat in Kenya in 2027 that has been in the making since before she knew it would be.

She got to the end of that conversation and realised mid-sentence that the original vision had already been achieved. She just had not stopped to mark it.

In this conversation they explore:

What assuredness actually feels like when it sits alongside uncertainty, and why that duality is more honest than the version social media sells

The cost of thinking big, which turns out to be security, sleep and the kind of linear certainty that a job would have given her

Why she built the Founders Dinner and what she wanted founders to feel in that room that they could not feel in traditional networking spaces

The story behind the Founders Retreat in Kenya, including a daughter named in Swahili, a best friend's wedding, and a beach moment where the vision landed

The Elevated Room Atelier and why she is now teaching other people to build what she built

What she wants people to feel when they think about what she has created

Connect with Daniella: LinkedIn: Daniella Genas Instagram: @bethebossuk and @shesthebossuk Website: bethebossintl.com The Big Boss Retreat: thebigbossretreat.com The Elevated Room Atelier

The next Founders Dinner is in London on 9th October and Manchester on 5th November.

What does it cost to perform being fine for years? And what does it take to finally put that performance down?

In this episode of In Her Own Name, I sit down with Wendy Gardner, founder of the Ohana Foundation, creator of the IAmMe coaching programme, and author of Diary of a Misfit Penguin and the journal Dear Daughter.

Wendy came to London at 21 with a suitcase and a carrier bag. She built a career leading large-scale transformation at the highest levels of global business. From the outside, the picture was perfect. From the inside, she was driving 70 miles each way to work, pushing through pneumonia, and slowly disappearing inside a penguin suit of corporate conformity until her pink flamingo feathers kept escaping from underneath it.

Then her daughter became severely ill. And the woman who had spent decades fixing, solutioning and performing discovered something that stopped her completely.

She could not fix this.

What came next was not a comeback. It was something much more honest. A parallel journey. Mother and daughter. Both learning. Both becoming.

In this conversation, we explore:

The real cost of wearing the penguin suit, not just professionally, but in every room of your life

The moment her son, aged five, defaulted to Daddy for the birthday party and what that cracked open in her

Why she has fallen out of love with the word resilience, and what she believes we are actually doing when we use it

The name Ohana and the daughter named Hannah, who is woven into everything she builds

Why she does not rehearse anymore, and what happens in the room when she trusts what lives inside her instead

What it felt like to read the words I am Wendy Gardner on a train and realise the universe had just confirmed everything she had been working toward

The morning mirror question that she asks herself every single day, without makeup, without performance, just as she is

This is a warm, funny, deeply human conversation. Wendy does not perform in this room, and neither does the episode. It is one of those conversations you will carry with you.

Books mentioned in the episode: Diary of a Misfit Penguin by Wendy Gardner. Available on Amazon and all good online bookstores, including her website www.ohanafoundation.com Dear Daughter, the journal is available on World of Books

Connect with Wendy: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/wendygardner98 Instagram: @ohana_foundation Website: www.ohanafoundation.com