The Ultimate Ice Queen: How Faye Roddy Built and Sold a Million-Pound Franchise Empire
She built a business that changed hundreds of lives and told almost no one she was fighting for her own.
There's a version of Faye Roddy's story that reads like a straightforward success case study: market-stall kid builds a flagship franchise business, scales it across the Northwest, sells it for millions. All of that is true.
It's also the smallest part of the story. Because underneath the version of Faye that conference rooms full of executives called "the ultimate ice queen" was a woman who'd nearly lost her baby son to a medical emergency at twenty-two, rebuilt an entire life from a £10,000 car sale, and spent twelve years managing a cancer diagnosis she told almost no one about - including, for a long time, her own children.
Counting the Till in Salford
Faye Roddy grew up in Salford, working her mum's market stall from the age of ten. Her job was simple at the time - tip out the buttons, count the stock, restock what was low - but her mum was teaching her bookkeeping without calling it that. "I just thought it was fun," Faye says. "I didn't realise she was teaching me fundamental skills." At fifteen, when the family business moved and offered her a choice between a new school and staying close to the life she knew, Faye chose the life she knew - she chose business. And she stayed until she was twenty-one.
Twenty-Two, and Everything At Once
At twenty-two, Faye's baby son Aaron became critically ill. Faye was the one who noticed something was wrong, who got him to hospital, who stood by his bedside willing him to survive. "Please, just save my child," she remembers saying. "If you just keep him alive, I'll do whatever it takes. I'd swap in a heartbeat." Aaron recovered and today, in Faye's words, is thriving. Not long after, Faye made the decision to leave her marriage. The only asset in her name was the family car. She sold it for £10,000, paid six months' rent up front to prove herself to a landlord who wouldn't otherwise take a chance on a single mum, and started again with almost nothing else.
The Flagship
A flyer from a mum she knew from the school run changed everything. The woman was starting an eco-friendly cleaning company and needed help - first cleaning, then strategy. When the business franchised in 2010, Faye became its flagship. A year in, she was diagnosed with cancer, a diagnosis she chose to keep from her own children for years while she kept the business, and her team, running without missing a beat. Along the way, a piece of advice from the company's CEO stuck with her permanently: "Just go and find that person and ask them, how do you do that?" It became the way she built her own team's confidence, rather than trying to hold everything herself.
Sold, Twice
Faye first found out her franchise's parent company had been sold via a pre-recorded video call - she wasn't consulted, and the acquisition changed everything about the business she'd built her identity around. Years later, in 2024, it was her turn to make the decision. Fourteen years to the day after she'd started, Faye sat her core team down and told them she was selling the business to them, in a conversation that lasted thirty minutes and left everyone in tears.
Today Faye runs Four Rivers Retreat, coaching other women through their own versions of success, and building something she calls the Business Freedom School. "The best bit about right now is freedom," she says. "I'm building everything with freedom in mind."
What Faye Roddy's Story Teaches Us
- Independence can be both armour and gift. The same trait that builds an empire can make it hard to ask for help when you need it most.
- Strength performed in public has a cost. Being the "together" one doesn't mean nothing is happening underneath.
- Endings aren't always failures. Selling something you built, even through tears, can be the most loving thing you do for it.
- Developing other people can be the way you free yourself. Faye's biggest shift came from teaching her team to need her less, not more.
- Freedom is a decision, not a reward. You don't have to wait until you've "made it" to choose it.
A Final Thought
If you've ever been the one everyone else calls when things fall apart. If you've ever carried a secret so tightly that holding it became its own kind of exhausting. If you've ever built something extraordinary and still not put yourself on the list — this episode is for you. Listen to Faye's full conversation with Beth on Notes from the Not There Yet.
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