What True Crime taught me about business… and why I’m stopping
What my True Crime obsession revealed about my relationship with visibility and ambition
I just finished another podcast series. Just a mini one. It was the Guardian’s Science podcast, a special 3 part drop all about a man called Tam O’Braan who was becoming known as the king of Scottish tea.
Tam claimed to be growing tea plants on his estate in Scotland and selling his plants to other would-be tea plantation owners around the country. He was selling the “Scottish tea” to fancy hotels and restaurants including the Balmoral in Edinburgh.
Except, of course, the whole thing was a lie. Tam was not Tam at all, but Thomas O’Brien. His tea did not grow in Scotland. In fact most of the plants were either years from being ready to produce harvestable tea or just died in the climate.
The whole thing was a scam. And he was sent to prison for the deception and fraud. Still even in court claiming that he was just misunderstood.
This little 3-part series is just the latest in my guilty pleasure listens. Add to that:
The Missing Crypto Queen about the woman who invented a crypto currency and then mysteriously disappeared with the deposits
World of Secrets The Six Billion Dollar Gold Scam about the man who faked finding gold in Busang, losing investors their life savings
World of Secrets The Bad Guru about a yoga teacher turned sex trafficker
The Guardian Long Read - episodes on Mexico’s anti-avocado militias and the unstoppable rise of Shein
Cautionary Tales - True Lies and Genuine Fakes about master forger Eric Hebborn or the episode speaking to Michael Lewis on Sam Bankman-Fried.
I could go on.
I love them. I love the details and the stories and the characters and the brazen things they do in pursuit of financial success.
But do you see the pattern? The theme with these podcasts?
They’re all about business done badly.
About people who get rich by lying, cheating, treating workers badly, making products cheaply, overcharging, faking, deception and coercion, and it goes on and on.
The moment I realised I had an unhealthy addiction to stories of the worst kind of business building, was when I noticed my reaction to seemingly great ethical business owners sharing their stories.
Often these people are small business owners or solopreneurs, spilling the beans and honest BTS in social posts or podcast episodes of their own, or in masterclasses or private podcast series’.
This sort of content is wildly popular in self employed circles. True honest shares about the highs and lows of working for yourself and making a sustainable income.
Surely, as a counter point to all this crime and low life behaviour that I’m consuming, and as someone who wants to make money ethically, I should embrace and welcome listening to inspiring stories of people having an impact in a positive way?
And yet… no.
I struggle to stay tuned in. I find it sometimes deeply uncomfortable to listen the whole way through.
I resist the groups and the conversations that spill from their shares.
I question and doubt it all.
Their authenticity.
Their genuine desire to help.
Their motives.
And it’s made me realise, it’s because it triggers something inside me.
Honest sharing from ethical people is a direct conflict with the story I have built in my mind that running a business means being a bad person in some way.
My behaviour and refusal to engage more with positive business narratives and examples is part of staying in the bubble that reaffirms my stories and beliefs.
Alone with my podcasts, I am assured of my perception of the world.
That only bad people become financially successful. That only by screwing someone else over can I make the money I want. That thieves and liars and fraudsters and imposters are the ones that rise to the top.
And I do not want to be them.
Therefore I will hold myself back from the risk of this perception by…. Hiding, overcomplicating, sitting in paralysis, procrastinating… whatever it takes to make sure I’m not seen as one of them.
Of course I jest that this is entirely because of my true crime podcast penchant.
It’s not.
The podcasts are just part of the bigger picture and experiences and drip-drip-drip information I have lived and processed over 40 years.
Each story building brick-by-brick my vision of what business and money making look like.
But I don’t think they help.
And the only way I know how to dismantle those bricks, that wall in my protective mind that says business is sleazy and underhand, is to:
T - Track and trace where the story has come from (my podcasts and more besides)
U - understand my stories and the protection they’re giving me (hello keeping me safe from judgement and disappointing people)
R - Rewrite the narrative and find new stories and beliefs that help me take action rather than staying stuck (how about “I can be an example of what good money making looks like”?)
T - Test & Observe. Start building evidence for these new beliefs (implementing tiny experiments to see if I can be that role model, and what the reaction is from others)
These steps are from my TRUST framework.
I love these cautionary tale podcasts. But it’s time to ask “what other examples are out there?”
To sit with those instead. To learn from them. To lean in to the discomfort they bring me and the mirror they hold up to me and the questions they raise about myself, what I think and how I behave.
And to start to build a new wall, formed of proof that running a business and making money can be positive, supportive, truthful, honest, messy, human and wholesome. And that I can be an example of that. Rather than someone who is suppressed by the noise I keep feeding myself of slimy money making.
And if I listen to this sort of content again (and let’s be honest - I will!) - to question, “what am I making this mean?” And how might I use this story and knowledge as a force for good, rather than something that keeps me playing small?” One to journal on I think.
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