AMANDA LEIGH WALKER
ABOUT
AMANDA
Building the business was only half the story.
FOUNDER • SPEAKER • AUTHOR • SOUL-LED MENTOR & COACH
I built the business.
Then I found the woman behind it.
I’m Amanda Leigh Walker — co-founder of Lord of the Fries, speaker, author, mentor, coach, and guide for women, founders, and purpose-led businesses.
My work sits at the intersection of business, identity, leadership, intuition, systems, Human Design, and soul-led transformation.
I spent decades building the outer operations of a national brand.
Then life taught me to understand the inner operations of the person behind it.
My story is not only about business growth.
It is about values, reinvention, motherhood, purpose, pressure, self-trust, and the deeper transformation that happens when the life you built asks you to become someone new.
BEFORE THE BUSINESS
There was always a search for meaning.
I was born in Toronto, Canada, and from early on I was drawn to people, justice, and the deeper layers of how we become who we are. I studied Sociology, Women's Studies, and Philosophy, volunteered in prisons and with women in crisis, and trained in counseling and meditation — work that asked me to sit with people in hard places and take it seriously.
Through university, hospitality and film were my side hustles — work I loved, not just work that paid. I'm a foodie at heart, and vegetarianism mattered to me long before it was anywhere close to mainstream.
That curiosity took me to Taiwan, where I taught English as a second language and later at a Montessori school. It's also where I met Mark, in 2001 — and where we bonded, fittingly, over a shared love of food and french fries.
THE BUSINESS STORY
Then came Lord of the Fries
We eventually moved back to Australia together, and in 2003, started Lord of the Fries with Mark’s brother Sam.
What began as one small food van became a plant-based fast-food brand with stores across Australia and New Zealand, built around vegetarian and vegan food long before plant-based eating was mainstream.
It was bold, values-led, a little rebellious, and deeply loved by its customers.
I hustled day and night to help take it from one tiny van to multiple stores — operations, training, systems, franchising, culture, compliance, leadership, brand building, customer experience, scale — all of it built from the ground up.
As the business grew, I had to grow too. Meditation, morning routines, movement, and a constant hunger to keep learning became part of the discipline that helped me carry it all.
I know what it takes to build something from nothing.
I also know what it takes to carry the pressure of the thing you built.
THE OTHER CHAPTERS
I know what it takes to build something from the ground up & watch it crumble down.
Lord of the Fries was not my only business chapter.​...
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After years of building and scaling Lord of the Fries, Mark, Sam, and I started Weirdoughs, a plant-based bakery and café.
We then partnered with Mark Filipelli, Shaunn, and Ruby, who brought creative energy, community, and a new generation of hospitality spirit into the project.
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Weirdoughs was another expression of my love of food, creativity, values-led business, and hospitality.
It taught me the power of brand to create demand, the joy of café culture, and the importance of atmosphere, community, timing, product, people, and place.
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It also taught me harder business lessons...
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Despite the love, creativity, and energy behind it, the business did not unfold the way we had hoped.
Lockdown became the major turning point, alongside the realities of losing our bakery, chef burnout, and the vulnerability of relying too heavily on one production model, one site, or one set of conditions.
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Yet every venture teaches, every "failure" is feedback and every experience shaped me.
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Every chapter gave me more insight into what makes a business work.
THE INNER CHAPTER
When the outer world stopped, the inner work deepened.
Lockdown was shocking and destructive on many levels, yet there was an upside.
Before lockdown, I was always busy hustling. There was never quite enough time to go deeper into my own practice.
Lockdown changed that.
The inner work I had been drawn to for years, the work I had never had enough space for finally had time to come forward.
I began coaching others more deeply, teaching meditation practices, leading manifestation groups, and creating spaces for people to reconnect with themselves. I also discovered Human Design, which gave language to so much of what I had always sensed about energy, identity, purpose, and the way we are each designed to move through the world.
What looked like a pause on the outside became a deepening on the inside.
And in the years that followed, the truth became harder to ignore: my marriage was finished, and the business I had built my life around was also moving toward a major transition.
Business taught me systems.
That season taught me truth.
By the end of 2024, I found myself stepping away from Lord of the Fries - the business I had helped build from one food van into an inter national brand.
THE WORK THAT EMERGED
Inner Operations
Outer Operations
One
Whole Business
Over time, I began to understand something that now sits at the centre of my work: every business has outer operations, but every founder has inner operations too.
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The outer operations are the systems, processes, structures, roles, training, offers, customer experience, delivery, and scale.
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The inner operations are the beliefs, identity, nervous system, energy, decision-making, self-trust, emotional patterns, intuition, and capacity of the person leading it.
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I had spent decades building the outer operations of a national brand.
Now I could see the inner operations just as clearly.
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That insight became one of my signature bodies of work: helping founders and purpose-led leaders align the person behind the business with the systems that hold the business.
WHAT I DO NOW
I help people
build from
who they
really are.
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Today, I work with women, founders, and purpose-led businesses who are ready to build in a more aligned way.
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Some people come to me because they are creating a genuine service-based business from their lived experience, wisdom, message, coaching, healing work, method, or personal transformation.
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Some come because they are founders carrying too much — the bottleneck, the pressure, the decisions, the emotional weight, the vision, and the responsibility of what they have built.
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Some come because their business needs clearer structure, stronger systems, better operations, or support to grow without losing the soul of what made it special.
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And some come through Human Design, because they want to understand how they are designed to lead, decide, create, communicate, sell, receive, and grow.
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At the heart of all of it is the same work: helping people become more aligned with who they are, what they are here to build, and the structure needed to hold it.
Begin with the part of you that already knows
My work is for women, founders, and purpose-led leaders who are ready to build with more honesty, alignment, structure, and self-trust. I f you are growing a business, shaping a service, entering a new chapter, or learning how you are designed to lead, the work begins in the same place:
with who you are, what you know, and what is ready to become real.