ENTREPRENEURIAL INSIGHTS FROM JODIE COOK: POWERLIFTER, FOUNDER, AND WRITER
Jodie Cook, the Founder of Coachvox, grew up in Birmingham watching her mum start her own business. Terms like clients, invoices, and networking were just normal dinner table conversations. By 21, she had 15 jobs working in restaurants, shops, and offices – but was really interested in making money and being involved in business.
“The day after finishing a leadership scheme in 2011, I started a social media agency. I was 22 and figured it couldn’t be that hard. If it all went wrong, I could just get a job. My business plan was just two words: get clients,” noted Jodie.
She grew JC Social Media for 10 years, then sold it in 2021 for seven figures. Along the way, she found her way into Forbes 30 under 30, wrote business books including Ten Year Career and How to Raise Entrepreneurial Kids (with Daniel Priestley), and became a Forbes senior contributor with over 22 million article reads.
Now, Jodie is the founder of Coachvox, where coaches and creators make an AI version of themselves. She competes in powerlifting for Great Britain, and lives as a digital nomad, moving to a new city every two to three months with everything she owns in one suitcase.
THE CEO OF LIFE
At 21, Jodie joined the National Skills Academy for Social Care graduate scheme and was assigned a coach named Joanne.
“She encouraged me to be the CEO of my life. She asked tough questions and waited until I thought of all possible answers. I had to find them, and it was uncomfortable. But she didn’t mind silence. Joanne never gave me advice. She treated me like I had the answers, which I did, apparently!”
The biggest lesson for Jodie was intentionality. She learned to ask better questions. Instead of ‘what should I do?’, it became ‘what kind of life am I building and what are the next three moves that take me there?’
“I still think in those terms. Now, when I want something, I design it, work the plan, and keep going.”
As a young entrepreneur, Jodie faced many tough challenges. The first being that she had no portfolio, no network, and no clue how to be a business owner.
“The credibility gap was real. I looked young, sounded enthusiastic, and was selling a service most people didn’t understand. Cash flow and pricing were confusing at the start. I was naive.”
A few years in, she realised that she’d set this business up to have freedom and travel but hadn’t ever left the UK.
“A client recommended The 4 Hour Work Week and I read it cover to cover that same day. The book made me intentional about designing my dream life, sorting out systems, and building out the team. I started to create a sellable agency rather than a company that couldn’t run without me,” said Jodie.
Jodie sold her first business for a seven-figure sum at 32.
“When I started the agency, nothing happened without my involvement. By the time I sold, the team and systems didn’t need me at all. That shift is what buyers pay for. Standard operating procedures, clear positioning, and a reliable sales pipeline aren’t glamorous, and can take a long time to get right, but they’re what turn your business into an asset someone can buy”.
During March 2020, the business shrank 25% in one week. Then the team pulled together and essentially outworked the pandemic to attract new clients. It grew back to normal size, then a further 20%, and past clients were coming back as their businesses got back to normal too.
“At that moment, I had a decision to make. I realised I had outgrown the agency, because the team was capable of more than I was willing to commit to driving. It was time to sell.”
SPACE TO THINK
After the sale Jodie gave herself space to think. She wrote Ten Year Career, did more speaking, and mentored agency owners.
“I realised I was limited by the number of hours in the day, so I started experimenting with productised coaching and digital assets. The question was, how could my clients access my brain and my approach in between our one-to-one sessions, without me being present?”
That led to building Jodie AI, an AI business coach trained on her content (and possibly the world’s first AI business coach!). Once Jodie saw people getting great results from chatting with her AI, coaches and consultants asked her if they could have one too.
“It was obvious this should be software, not just a personal experiment. Coachvox grew from there.”
Having already built and exited a successful company, Jodie’s entrepreneurial approach was slightly different this time around.
“The first time, I was running a lifestyle business. The second time, I’m obsessed with impact and leverage from day one. The goal was software, recurring revenue, and a tiny excellent team. I’m much quicker now at saying no. At Coachvox we are ruthless about focus, only building features that help our customers get more leads and give more value, and ignoring nice-to-have distractions.”
Jodie designs her life around her “profession, obsession, decompression” model. Work, training, and rest are the only things she does. Health is just as important as business, and that’s a hard boundary. But it means she’s built a company that can grow without compromising her health or her relationships.
“After going through an exit process, I keep that in mind. Even though it’s early days, I think about what would make this company attractive to a buyer, even if I never sell. It keeps the standards high.”
MERGING COACHING AND AI
Coaching and AI are two worlds that, until recently, felt quite far apart. But the entrepreneurial landscape is facing the same problem everywhere – smart people with valuable content who can’t scale themselves. Coaching and consulting are powerful but are capped by hours. AI removes that cap.
At the same time, AI is stealing content from coaches and creators. Their work is being scraped to train large language models, then regurgitated without credit or compensation.
“The paradox was obvious,” said Jodie. “AI could make creators more productive, but it was also taking their control away.”
The solution was to let creators take ownership.
“Building Jodie AI showed me how personal it can feel when an AI genuinely represents someone’s work. Now Coachvox exists so coaches can make an AI version of themselves. It’s about questions, reflection, and lead-generation delivered at scale while they focus on higher-value work.”
However, some might worry that AI could make human coaches redundant, but Jodie dispels this notion: “If an AI can replace your coaching, your coaching wasn’t that good. Great coaches bring lived experience, intuition, and presence that AI can’t match. Right now, AI coaches are brilliant for clarity, idea generation, and accountability in their creator’s style. They’re not so good at complex emotions, crisis, or reading the room.”
POWER IN BUSINESS
Jodie has competed in powerlifting for Team GB nine times which requires immense discipline. Discipline that has transferred into her approach to business.
“Powerlifting is simple on paper: turn up, hit your numbers, repeat for years. That discipline translates directly into business, where boring consistency beats big sporadic efforts. Training for an international competition means you plan months ahead, taper, peak, and recover. It’s made me think of business in blocks. You can’t be at max intensity all the time without burning out.
“Heavy deadlifts give me perspective. Nothing that lands in my inbox is as scary as 185kg on the bar! I’m not fazed by tough conversations, public speaking, or anything that might otherwise be daunting.”
Looking ahead, Jodie sees Coachvox as the default place for coaches and creators who want to make their AI version properly. She’ll also keep writing. She writes to a former version of herself to give the advice she wished she had.
If she could go back and give her 21-year-old self one piece of advice, it would be to “back yourself sooner. You don’t need permission. You need more reps doing the thing you care about. Stay weird. The traits you thought you had to play down – intensity, obsession, directness – are exactly what will build the life and career of your dreams.
“Start writing earlier and more often. Share your strongest opinions on the Internet. Treat your twenties as a ten-year experiment in learning, creating, and building assets. Go in the direction of what lights you up. Feel, don’t think.”
This article originally appeared in the January/February 2026 issue of Startups Magazine. Click here to subscribe
