You built something people love. Now let's build the business around it.
Hey, I'm Mary Alice — American in France, former chief of staff, former food runner, and the person your back of house has been missing. If you're running a culinary retreat, food tour, wine experience, or adventure travel company — and the business side is eating you alive — you're in the right place.
I build and run everything behind the experience so you can get back to the front.
PUT THE JOY BACK IN YOUR BUSINESS
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PUT THE JOY BACK IN YOUR BUSINESS —
You didn't start this to become a software expert.
You got into this because of what travel does to people. The table in Provence. The remote Catalonian hike nobody else knows about. The Sicilian kitchen where strangers become friends by the end of the night.
Then you started the business. And somewhere between your first experience and your fiftieth, the running of it took over your life. More time in spreadsheets than on hiking trails. More time on social media than at candlelit dinners. The business you dreamed of is more corporate and less creative than you ever imagined.
You're learning 15 different softwares. Figuring out which prompt gets what result. Trying to manage a team that still runs every decision past you. Chasing invoices. Cobbling together a marketing strategy between guest check-ins.
And despite giving this business everything — you're barely paying yourself.
That's not a you problem. There's a whole other business behind the business. Nobody told you it was coming. And nobody handed you the playbook for it.
That's exactly what I build.
TRUSTED BY FOUNDERS OF
The front of house is your magic. The back of house is what makes it sustainable.
Every great experience business has two sides.
The front of house is what your guests see — the itinerary, the menu, the immersion, the magic you've spent years perfecting. That part stays with you.
The back of house is everything that has to work so the front of house can shine — the pricing that not only covers your costs but leads to profitability, the marketing system that books out your experiences, the team that executes without you in every thread, the operations that run when you step away.
That's the part I build and run.
Not as a consultant who hands you a deck and disappears. As the person who gets in there, learns your business inside out, and owns the messy back end so you can lead from the front.
I’M MARY ALICE — STRATEGIC PARTNER FOR SMALL BUSINESS FOUNDERS
I'm Mary Alice — and I've spent my career obsessed with one question: does this actually work?
I built my career across two industries simultaneously — nonprofits and hospitality. One taught me how to lead teams of 150 on impossible budgets. The other taught me how to do it with a smile.
Then I started my own business from scratch. Bootstrapped it. Worked round the clock to build something that existed nowhere but in my head. I failed at things, figured it out, tried again. I didn't learn about running a small business from a textbook — I learned it from actually running one.
I also met my husband in the back of a fine dining kitchen. I was a food runner. He was a chef. This world is not borrowed context for me. It's home.
In 2021 I moved my family to France, started traveling through Europe, and never looked back. The travel and experience industry was where I belonged — specifically, as the person who makes sure these businesses actually run.
I know what good operations look like at scale. I know what it takes to build a passion-led business without grinding the founder to dust. I've been that founder. And I speak hospitality.
Your business should be a vehicle for your dream life. Not a cage that keeps you from it.
MY OFFERS
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WORK WITH ME
You're exceptional at the experience. The back of house — pricing, marketing, operations, team — that's where it's breaking down. I come in, assess the whole picture, and build what's missing. Then I run it. So you can stop being the bottleneck and get back to the work only you can do.
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BECOME A FRACTIONAL LEADER
You have the years of experience, but running a business around that expertise is entirely different. If you’re tired of "hustling for gigs," under-pricing your genius, or feeling like a part-time employee for five different bosses, this group coaching program is designed to change that. Whether you are an expert in Operations, HR, Legal, or Finance, I hand you the exact systems and positioning frameworks I use to run my own thriving, remote fractional business.