Why I Finally Built Be Your Own Hero (And Why It Took This Long)

A low-cost monthly membership for women who want to feel safer, stronger, and more capable in the real world.

When Christine and I started FLAG Academy back in 2017, we had one clear goal: give women practical safety skills without making them commit to years of martial arts training.

We’d both seen the gap. Women knew they needed to learn how to protect themselves. But weekly karate classes weren’t realistic for most of them. They had jobs, kids, families, and full lives. And honestly, a lot of women felt too intimidated to walk into a dojo in the first place because they’re such male-dominated spaces.

So we built something different. Short, practical self-defense seminars that are prevention-focused. No ongoing commitment required. You come, you learn, you leave more capable than when you walked in.

That model worked. It still works. Especially in corporate environments, where we can deliver a full session in one to three hours and have people walking out with skills they can actually use.

But over the years, many women have asked if we could offer any further support. And for a long time, my honest answer was: not really.

The Gap I Kept Seeing

One session, even a really good one, has limits.

You can teach someone how their nervous system responds to threat, how to use their voice under pressure, how to recognise a situation before it escalates. And they’ll leave feeling capable and confident.

But life keeps happening. The difficult colleague doesn’t disappear. The person who keeps pushing boundaries doesn’t stop. The situations that made them feel unsafe don’t go away just because they attended a seminar.

What women kept telling me they wanted was somewhere to keep developing real, practical skills over time, with guidance and support.

We do offer one-to-one coaching, but that’s expensive and not accessible to everyone. It was never going to be the answer for most people.

So I finally built the thing people kept asking for.

What Be Your Own Hero Actually Is

Be Your Own Hero is a monthly membership for women who want to feel safer, stronger, and more capable.

Each month, we’ll focus on one practical area that makes a real difference to how you move through the world:

• Your threat response — what actually happens in your body when you feel unsafe, and what to do with it
• Boundaries — not the motivational poster kind, but the kind that hold when someone is actually pushing
• Reading people and situations — how to trust what you’re picking up on before it becomes a problem
• Nervous system regulation — how to work with your body under stress instead of being overrun by it
• Confidence — the kind that comes from having done hard things and proved to yourself that you can handle more than you thought
• Rebuilding — because a lot of women come to this work after something has already happened to them.

Every month you get one live training, one coaching session, access to a private community, a growing resource library, and a practical tool or exercise you can apply immediately. Not just think about, actually use.

The content is deliberately manageable. Each month builds on the last. You won’t feel behind and you won’t feel overwhelmed. Just steadily more capable than you were the month before.

Why This Is Different From Other Women’s Safety or Empowerment Content

I’ve sat in enough women’s empowerment spaces to know what’s missing.

The motivation is real, but it doesn’t help you when someone gets too close in a parking lot. The awareness advice is well-meaning, but knowing danger exists doesn’t tell you what to do when it happens to you.

Most women grew up being told to be careful. Watch your drink. Don’t walk alone. Trust your gut.

But very few were ever taught what to do when someone crosses a line, how to use their voice when the pressure is on, why they freeze in certain moments, or how to carry themselves in a way that changes how people treat them.

Knowing danger exists without having the skills to respond to it doesn’t make you safer. It just makes you more anxious.

That’s what this membership is designed to fix.

Everything inside Be Your Own Hero is grounded in how your body and nervous system actually work under pressure. It draws on my background in martial arts, trauma-informed coaching, GBV agency and empowerment work, and almost a decade of sitting across from women who came to a session unsure of what they needed and left knowing exactly what they were capable of.

Founding Member Pricing

I’m opening Be Your Own Hero to a small founding group first, before the doors open to everyone.

The first 20 founding members pay R120 per month or R1,200 for the year (roughly US$8/month or $73/year). That rate locks in permanently, it never increases as the membership grows, as long as your membership stays active. No contracts. Cancel any time.

If you’re one of the founding members, you also get to help shape what this becomes. Your questions, your situations, the challenges that still trip you up, that’s what we’ll build the content around in those early months.

Who This Is For

This membership is for you if you’re someone who knows there’s more to learn. You’re already capable, you’ve handled hard things, but there are specific situations that still get to you. A person who keeps pushing. A workplace that’s quietly wearing you down. A moment where you froze when you wanted to act. A pattern in your relationships you can’t seem to break.

Maybe you feel uneasy walking alone, struggle to hold boundaries with certain people, replay conversations wishing you’d spoken up, or you ignore your instincts and regret it later.

Perhaps you’re successful in life but still feel vulnerable in situations you can’t quite explain or you want your daughter to grow up stronger than you were taught to be.

Nobody gave you the skills you deserved to have.

How to Join

Founding member doors aren’t open yet. But the waitlist is.

Add your name, and you’ll be the first to know when spots open. You’ll also get early access before it’s announced to anyone else.

→ Join the waitlist here

Much love

Ann

Strength isn’t the absence of fear. It’s knowing what to do while you’re feeling it.