Find Your Way Back to Yourself | Aimie Skillen

What happens when your life looks good from the outside… but something inside still feels wrong? Aimie Skillen built a brand around helping other people feel good. Then she reached a point where she didn’t. Aimie is the founder of Feel Good Club, the Manchester-born community and lifestyle brand built around a beautifully simple mission: make one person feel good. What began with Instagram posts and T-shirts grew into events, podcasts, books, billboards, brand activations and a much-loved Manchester coffee shop. But behind the community, Aimie was going through one of the hardest periods of her own life. In this episode of Northern Quarter Talks, Aimie joins Andy Coley and Simran Whitham for an open conversation about identity, community, loneliness and finding your way back to yourself. Aimie talks about navigating divorce, closing the Feel Good Club coffee shop and trying to lead a team while simultaneously realising she had lost sight of who she was. Eventually, she stepped away. For around eight months, Aimie paused the events and the parts of Feel Good Club that required her to physically show up. She needed to fill her own cup before she could keep pouring into everybody else's. And then, during a particularly difficult period, she realised something was still missing. Community. Aimie posted online that she was going for a walk in Monton and asked if anybody wanted to join her. Two people came. Initially, she wondered whether it had failed. Instead, those two people reminded her what Feel Good Club had always really been about. Connection. Months later, when Aimie brought Feel Good Club events back, the first event sold out within 24 hours. For her, it demonstrated the difference between building an audience and building a community. An audience can watch, like and disappear. A community shows up for you too. The conversation explores the loneliness Aimie sees repeatedly through her work and why, despite being more connected digitally than ever before, many people are struggling to find genuine friendship and places where they can simply turn up as themselves. Aimie's answer isn't relentless positivity. Quite the opposite. Feel Good Club is also permission not to feel good. Some days you have 100% to give. Some days you have 10%. Give the 10%. Aimie also reflects on the pressure of becoming "Miss Feelgood" while her own life was changing, why social media rarely shows the whole story and the freedom she found in realising that most people aren't scrutinising us nearly as closely as we imagine. Her message is simple: Turn up as you are. Because when you do, the right people have the chance to connect with the real you. Aimie also talks about confronting a lifelong fear of public speaking and the belief that her Salford accent might hold her back. Instead of trying to become somebody else, she learned that the most powerful thing she could do was simply turn up as herself. Her central message is one that reaches far beyond the stage: Follow what makes you feel good through your people, your places and your things. It's okay to lose yourself. Just remember that you can always find your way back. Aimie also takes us behind the scenes of preparing for her recent TEDxNorthernQuarter 2026 talk, confronting a lifelong fear of public speaking and the belief that her Salford accent might hold her back. Instead, that very voice became one of the reasons why she ended up on the red dot. And as the final speaker of TEDxNorthernQuarter 2026, Aimie's talk brought her journey full circle. Its title: Find your way back to you through people, places & things Its message: Follow what makes you feel good through your people, your places and your things. Watch it now on YouTube at    • Find your way back to you through people, ...   It's okay to lose yourself. Just remember that you can always find your way back. And of course her Feel Good Club journey and life continues to evolve, this episode was recorded at the end of August 2026 and things have continued to move on since then in life, her relationships and the challenges that living in the era of social media bring. Northern Quarter Talks is a podcast about people, stories, ideas and the conversations that stay with us long after the microphones are switched off. This episode is hosted by Andy Coley and Simran Whitham. Recorded by THE CLUB MCR in Manchester. T 00:00 Coming up: losing yourself and finding community 00:53 Meet Aimie Skillen 01:23 Saying yes to TEDx when you're terrified 04:05 Why Aimie's Salford accent mattered 05:32 How Feel Good Club began 08:45 What happens when “Miss Feelgood” doesn't feel good? 12:45 Two people turned up - and it changed everything 14:46 Why are so many of us lonely? 18:57 Turn up exactly as you are 22:47 “I've just got to be me” 23:49 When your life looks good on paper but something feels wrong 24:40 The person who's always had Aimie's back 26:58 The Red Journal: Aimie's biggest fear