about mary
designer, coach & entrepreneur
Hey there!
I'm a proud mother of three amazing young adults, so believe me, I get the thrilling yet whirlwind pace of life, trying to keep all the balls in the air.
But here's my secret sauce: I've learned to keep things light and easy, create filters for effortless decision making and say ‘NO’ more than I say ‘YES’, so I can rock the mom, business owner, and life enthusiast roles without missing a beat….
I've spent over thirty years in the fashion industry, watching how women like us manage the intricate dance of responsibilities. Life's often unwelcome surprises can sometimes throw us off balance, shaking our confidence and leaving us feeling stuck. That's why I'm on a mission to help you unleash your inner goddess and step into your most empowered self, ready to conquer the world.
I totally get that as women, we yearn for personal purpose alongside being awesome family champions. I've navigated this delicate balance myself, raising my kids as a single mom while chasing my passions. My first 30 years were spent running my own business, my vision for my next 30 is to champion and support other women in going further and flying higher than they ever thought possible.
Mary
60
Fashion collections
30 years x 2 collections per year.
I’ve earned a lot about speed, deadlines, self belief, staying creative and letting go of perfectionism…
I’ve become a pro at evolving, pivoting and learned how to both surrender to and lean into the hard times to come out stronger on the other side. As your coach / success partner, you will be supported by somebody who has fought and won hundred battles and has the scars to prove it!
20+
million in sales
While running my business as a single mum between school runs. Once you know where you are going and keep taking steps every day, things can happen fast.
I’ve learned how to reverse engineer goals, create quality products that serve my clients for years and sell out launches in 24 hours.
If I can do it, you can too!
30
years studying women
I’ve always had an element of selling directly to my customer so, I’ve had thousands of conversations on the shop floor. I have seen every place in life where women get stuck!
These conversations are the reason why I got into coaching. My customers have always been my muses… first when designing, now when creating coaching experiences.
30 years in business
“I have always been passionate about empowering women”
1993
Started my fashion business with a capsule collection which sold in Dublin's Design Centre.
1995
Was honoured to be asked to dress Eimear Quinn for Ireland's Eurovision entry in Norway. When Eimear appeared in every Scandinavian newspaper named as the best dressed in my designs and then went on to win the competition, my business took off.
1999
Named Designer of The Year by The Institute of Designers in Ireland and media coverage each season was attracting a loyal following of customers who still buy my collections today.
1995-2001
Continued to retail while building my wholesale business, stocking all of the top boutiques in Ireland and exporting to boutiques in Canada, Sweden, Norway & Greece.
"A lot of pivots can happen in 30 years...the quicker you get comfortable with embracing the unknown, the more fun you will have..."
SS 2008
2001
Just as I was getting traction abroad and my turnover was steadily growing season on season, my marriage broke. It was a long time coming but it was still a massive curveball. My kids were ages 5,3 & 1. This was the first time my business should have gone down as my focus shifted to survival. This was also when I seriously started to reverse engineer my goals as I had to fight hard to keep a roof over our heads.
2003
Knew I needed to find another way to provide for my family as travelling was just too difficult with 3 small kids. I opened a Studio in my home, where my customers came to buy my collections. This period of our lives was so much fun. Customers arrived from everywhere with their kids who played with mine in the back garden. Unwittingly, the conversations that started with my customers during this time, feed into everything that I do today.
SS 2009
2008
Won the Brown Thomas mentoring award. The prize was 2 weeks trading on their designer floor. When we blew them away with both the figures we did and the connection we had with our loyal customers, we were invited back for a second season. We ended up staying for 6 years. During this time, I learned retail from the best along with valuable business lessons I never would have gotten otherwise.
2011
My world turned upside down again. The recession was biting hard and I had taken my eye off the ball. I had put too much trust into a relationship, allowing it to cross over into my business. When I realised the enormity of my mistake, I was on the edge of bankruptcy. My accountant advised me to let the business go down, but I couldn't. There were too many people relying on me. Truthfully I think I was on the edge of a breakdown at that point. I would burst into tears for no reason and had constant palpitations for months. But, I fought hard and bit by bit, I reverse engineered my way out of the mess.
"The most valuable lessons happen when the sh*t hits the fan"
2013
The universe sent another curveball hurtling my way.
A business partnership that promised to get me back on track for growth went t*ts up. My gut had told me it was a bad idea from the start but the potential was too good to ignore. I allowed the partnership to get too ambitious, too fast.
Going against my gut could have taken me out of the game forever but I pivoted hard, came up with a new plan and opened my first store.
2015
I decided to part company with Brown Thomas in favour of opening my own 2nd flagship store, back where my journey had started, in Dublin’s Powerscourt Townhouse. It felt like we were coming home as we started putting our own stamp on a beautiful light filled space which our customers (and even their husbands) would come to love.
2018
What I realised more than ever as I was running 2 stores was that I really didn’t have the support of anybody who understood the reality of the overheads and stresses that go with running a business. So, I went in search of a community. This was the start of a whole new adventure.
2019
After 18 months of pulling every thought out of my head I published my first book which went to #1 on Amazon. But, I knew I had written a book for a business that I had fallen out of love with. My new community was full of entrepreneurial coaches and a new vision for the future was starting to take shape. Suddenly I was seeing how everything you experience is part of a bigger plan and the hours I had spent talking to my customers and the lessons learned were rising to the surface of my consciousness.
2020
March 2020 and just as hundreds of thousands worth of stock land for a new season, Covid-19 hit and my stores closed over night. Of course we had no idea heading into it that everything would look different on the other side.
A few weeks in and I was starting to realise that this was not going away any time soon. Was this the curveball that was finally going to take me out of the game? My thoughts at the time were, "well if we go down this time, it's nothing I did wrong".
So, letting go of the outcome and any expectations, we just started showing up on social media every day sharing behind the scenes, sharing the reality. Our customers tell us today that they lived for our stories, we were a ray of sunshine when people were bored and stressed out of their minds.
Little did they know that I wanted out. I was done. I was burnt out. But, then the sales started to come in and people were begging me every day never to quit. I am going to be very honest and say at the time, I was not happy. I felt trapped.
So, I set about making the business I had known for almost 3 decades so light and easy that it would only require my attention for a few hours each week. And guess what happened, exactly that.
2020 continued….( as this was a big pivot)
I ran a wardrobe challenge on the back of the content of my first book. People asked me to do more as they now had time to pay attention due to lockdown.
I had also dived into a coaching diploma. It was magical. I realised that private 1:1 coaching sessions lit me up more than designing ever had.
For the next 2 years, I focused on mastering the craft of coaching, practising on the beta members of a membership I launched and through trial & error, figured out who I wanted to serve and how.
I’m not going to lie, a big pivot like this takes time. It may take longer than you first anticipate and you have to give yourself grace if things don’t move as fast as you want. But if you have the vision, you just need to keep moving in the right direction and eventually the fog will clear.
2022
I started building out what would evolve into the Aligned Self Coaching Society. There are lots of things I want to share but doing the groundwork to show up powerfully as the best version of ourselves is the first step in achieving any big audacious goals and I walked through the whole programme doing the work myself. The timing was perfect for me to be doing this as I was trying to get clarity on where I was going and what version of me needed to show up for my future vision. This allowed me to streamline the transformation journey.
2022/2023
Just for fun, the universe throws another curveball my way….But this one actually comes to clear the path and give me the solution to a problem I had been struggling with. The week between Christmas & New year just as we launched a stock clearance event, our website went down.... spectacularly!
As it was Christmas break, I could not contact my web maintenance guy so I worked every day with the hosting company just to keep the site open. By the time my guy got back in January the decision had been made.
My capsule collections would move to shopify under a new domain freeing up my personal brand site for my coaching.
Sometimes the most obvious answer is not that obvious and you need life to slap you around the head to get your attention!
“ This is the start of a brand new chapter … to empower women to have it all and have it all now.”
2023
July 2023
Something very unexpected happened in 2023. I applied a TEDx because a mastermind buddy did a TEDx bootcamp and some of us joined in for the experience. I never thought any more about it as i knew there were a LOT of applications and we had been prepared to be rejected several times before an acceptance would land in our inboxes. To my utter shock, I was accepted. I had never spoken on a stage in my life…. zero to TEDx, who does that! That was November 2023, at the time of writing this in January 2024, the talk has close to 120k views … that’s the crazy roller coaster ride of playing full out, you never know what will happen! You can watch the talk here marytedx.com
September 2023
On the back of doing the TEDx, I rewrote my first book Empowered By Style. 3 years on from first publishing it, I had gained so many insights from working with my clients and my membership ladies that I was ready to up level it. It releases in March 2024.
December 2023
After 4 years of running my membership, I reluctantly closed the doors. My coaching vision is to serve high performing women entrepreneurs and leaders and with limited time I had to make hard choices. 2024 was time to up level again, beginning with a deep dive session in January which was my biggest investment in my coaching to date…..to be continued
2023
July 2023
Something very unexpected happened in 2023. I applied a TEDx because a mastermind buddy did a TEDx bootcamp and some of us joined in for the experience. I never thought any more about it as i knew there were a LOT of applications and we had been prepared to be rejected several times before an acceptance would land in our inboxes. To my utter shock, I was accepted. I had never spoken on a stage in my life…. zero to TEDx, who does that! That was November 2023, at the time of writing this in January 2024, the talk has close to 120k views … that’s the crazy roller coaster ride of playing full out, you never know what will happen! You can watch the talk here marytedx.com
September 2023
On the back of doing the TEDx, I rewrote my first book Empowered By Style. 3 years on from first publishing it, I had gained so many insights from working with my clients and my membership ladies that I was ready to up level it. It releases in
What I believe
#1
courage
I believe that most exciting things in life are on the other side of fear and the most valuable lessons are learned when the sh*t hits the fan.
Dare to dream big, let go of the fear of failure. Believe in your ability to overcome all the obstacles life throws in your way.
#2
FUN
Make choices that allow you to spend more time doing the things you love. Find ways to eliminate or delegate the things you don’t.
Do what lights you up because the world and the people you love need the version of you that has come alive.
#3
impact
Everyone has a set of talents, skills, passions and experiences. Woven together they create a package that make us unique.
We have a duty to use this gift to create a better world for ourselves and others.
FUN FACTS about mary
02
I don’t ever see myself retiring, I love what I do too much. My kids may be young adults finding their way in the world but they are always my #1 priority so part of my vision is to be space and location free, so, I can work from anywhere…..
01
I LOVE travel & the journey more than the destination so weekend road trips are always on the agenda. I never know where I am going when I’m driving out the gate.
03
Until very recently, I was very much a behind the scenes woman. Stepping out from behind the curtain was a massive step outside my comfort zone. So, following a situation that tested me, in a f**k it moment, my daughter and I hopped in the car and went to get tattoos. Mine means courage. It is my constant reminder to be brave…