Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: I found a lot of just your work revolves around career coaching, interview coaching. What has drawn you so much to the space?
[00:00:07] Speaker B: So I was in a tempestuous relationship about 26, 27 years ago, and it ended when I was pregnant. I was four months pregnant and I was going on maternity leave. And, you know, panic set in because I had to think. I was trying to figure out a way to support myself and my daughter. And in my mind, when I came back off maternity leave, I knew I had to make about $20,000 more a year because our house had sold at a loss. Her father walked away, left me with a debt, and so on and so on. Long story. But the short of it is that I was, I suppose, in desperate times.
And so I was like, how do I earn an extra 20 grand? Because that's what I needed to pay back to start paying back the debt.
And so I ended up really doing my research around elevating my profile. But more importantly, I started to talk to recruiters and to hiring people.
The little money I had spare, I used to take these people out for coffees and started to pick their brains. Like, how do I jump from here to here?
And literally started implementing all the pieces of advice. And then there's also the writer in me. So I love writing. I love words. I've always been a wordsmith. And I started to play around with the resume and elevate it and turned it into like an achievements focused resume, rather than a resume that was focused on duties and tasks and responsibilities. And between the advice of the recruiters and the hiring people and me, you know, rewriting my resume a gazillion times, I started to implement these strategies. And within six, six or seven months, I landed a role that jumped my income by 50,000. So I exceeded my mark.
And that really was the start of the journey for me because the people around me who knew of my story knew that I'd hit financial and emotional rock bottom. Suppose after that breakup and I was starting out as a single mum, they came to me, they said, how did you do that? How did you go from there to there so quickly? Because it was less than twelve months that that happened.
And so I started helping other people. I started helping my colleagues, I started helping my friends. I started helping my family and realized that there was actually a business there. And so I started that as a side gig business, the coaching and the helping people elevate their career profiles and landed that big job in corporate. So I was working two jobs, I was working my full time corporate job and I did that for about 23 years, and then alongside that, I was helping people elevate. So that was very much a part time role. Then once I went through menopause, which I've just come through in the last few years, I left corporate. It was actually the catalyst for me leading corporate, and I went full time in my business. So that's how I do what I do. But it's been. Yeah, it has been a long journey. I've been in the game for probably 20 years and full time in the game for the last four years.
[00:03:38] Speaker A: Thank you for sharing that. That rock bottom that you were talking about, the spiritual, the emotional, the financial rock bottom. How did you personally climb out of that?
[00:03:48] Speaker B: Well, the first thing, obviously, you know, the first few months, I was four months pregnant when that relationship ended. And so I had an almost instant recognition that there was a life growing within me, and I needed to get myself sorted out really quickly because, you know, crying forever wasn't going to cut it. I certainly didn't want that emotional burdens passing on to the baby.
So I booked myself into counseling. That was the thing that I did.
And that was challenging because I think my counselor at the time only indulged me for, like, two sessions, let me cry, let me do all of that I needed to do. And then she asked me a very difficult but very important question, which, to be honest, I wanted to slap her and run out of the room because she said to me, what role did you play in attracting this into your life?
You know, this abusive man, this person that hurt you when you were pregnant with this child and that left you in this financial mess? Like, where were you in this picture?
And it was a very confronting question, obviously, because it's very easy to blame someone else. It's very easy to become a victim in life and to point the finger only at him.
But obviously, I had to take a look at that. Now, as I said, my first reaction was anger. I wanted to punch her out. And I'm not a violent person, but I had that rage come up with me.
And then I left that session. And I actually did. I went for a walk at the beach. Nature kind of sorts my head out for me. So I went for a walk at the beach and started to think about that and realized that there was a lot of residue. I'd grown up in South Africa in apartheid as a woman of color.
There was a lot of self esteem issues there anyway. And then he was from the US. He was from Harlem in New York, and he grew up very rough there was a lot of challenges in his life. So I think we both came to the relationship with our own baggage, and we were never going to make it. When I look back now, I realize there was too much stuff going on in both of our lives.
And so it did end the way it ended, and that was probably the only way it was going to end because we hadn't sorted our stuff out. Whatever was burdening us, whatever we had brought into the relationship from the past, from the traumas, the challenges.
And what I realized was I didn't want to be a victim. I was going to be a new mother. And I was like, I don't want to be a victim, and I don't want to raise my daughter to be a victim, to feel like you can't you powerless. And when bad things happen, there's not a lot you can do about it. And so in the end, I took on the question, started to explore it. I started journaling. As I said, writing has always been a thing for me, and I often use it to process a lot of stuff, like when I'm challenged, I journal my way through things.
And that's what I started to do, started to record my own thoughts, what was coming up, what was some of the recognition I was having about where I'd played a part.
You know, I was stubborn and rebellious, and he was a very strong man. He was an athlete, and I would get right in his face sometimes. And I was like, man, that, you know, it wasn't very smart. Like, I'd be confrontational, so to speak. And I'm not saying that people shouldn't be, but sometimes you got to know when to back off and you got to know when to keep yourself out of harm's way.
And I didn't always do that, so. And that was both in that physical sense of going up against him, but also emotionally, you know, not keeping myself out of harm's way emotionally. So there was a huge growth during that time, and I chose to, once we had split up and I was raising her, I was single for a lot of years, and I chose that deliberately because I wanted to sort my head out of. I was like, I don't want to go into another relationship until I figured out some of this baggage, some of this trauma that I'm carrying.
And also, I was besotted with my daughter when she came. So I loved being a new mother. I was very focused on being there for her and growing my career because I wanted a good life for us. So that was the two things it was the daughter and making good money and growing in my career so that I could have a different life.
Thank you much.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: Yeah, no, no. Sorry for cutting you off. I just. Thank you. I remind me of my mom, like, no, and not just the way in which you talk about strength. And it's just so clear to me that you are such a strong woman and the way you were just able to carry yourself up. My mom has done. Done that throughout my life and has inspired me in many ways just by living and being herself. So kind of off of that. How have you tried to instill the idea of not being a victim and taking the power back for your daughter?
[00:09:25] Speaker B: Well, you know, look, some of that started a lot younger for her than I would have liked because obviously we here in Australia, she's also a child of color because her father was african american, I'm south african.
So she encountered some race issues at school very young, and it was difficult because it brought up all my stuff from the past.
Right. Your daughter's going through this and in the area that I lived in at the time, because we had moved to America for a little while, and then we came back just before she went to school.
And so she had quite a different setting in America. She was with. You know, we were in California. She went to a school where there was a lot of people that looked like her, but also a lot of other cultures at the school. And then we came back to Australia and the area that we lived in. She was the first child of color in her school, so there was that to contend with.
But I told her, you know, I told her from the start, I shared some of the stories of South Africa and the environment that I had grown up in and her aunties and uncles had grown up in, and her grandparents.
And I said, it doesn't mean that you're less than. And it doesn't mean that you can't be all that you want to be. Yes, you're dealing with certain issues around the colour of your skin, but that's no excuse to not thrive in life, because there are many people. Yes, some people, I suppose, they challenge them. They don't have the strength and they let that beat them down. But I said, you have an example in your grandparents who brought the family from South Africa and started again in a brand new country with very little money. You have me, who has gone through all that I've been through and risen up and move forward, and you have your two uncles and your two aunties. Because I have two brothers and two sisters. I said, who are also doing the same.
So you can choose to be a victim or you choose to let this beat you down. And yes, you're encountering it quite young, but I did, too. I grew up in the environment that perfected segregation and racism. Apartheid was the big thing in South Africa during my time.
I said I didn't let it stop me. Yes, it was difficult, and it meant I had to work a little bit harder. And some of the opportunities that I saw some of white students get when I was at university, I said I didn't have. But I said, I kept pushing forward, and I said, if you want it, if you want success, if you want a joy for life, if you want to actually also learn to understand other people, even the ones that you think hate you or don't hate you, I said, you know, there's powering that. And so you can either let it beat you down, make you a victim, or you can decide. Like Maya Angelou says, I rise, you know, and continue to rise. You know, we get to decide how life's going to play out for us at the end of the day, because nobody, I mean, look, I'm quoting a few people here, right? But it's like Bob Marley said, you've got to emancipate your own mind, and it doesn't matter what external circumstances are going on around you. No one gets to capture and imprison your mind, even if they do your body. And obviously, I come from the country with the greatest hero, in my opinion, of all time, Nelson Mandela, who was physically imprisoned, but he never let that whole situation imprison his mind.
And so that was always my message to my daughter, was like, you get to decide how you react to life, how you want to be in life, and what blessings and magic and miracles you're going to take from life.
[00:13:29] Speaker A: That's very cool. Yeah, that's so beautiful. It's also really cool in her life that she has these people living, breathing examples that she can talk to of that success, that no matter what, you really can define and shape course of your own life. You mentioned joy, like defining success and joy in your life. How have you defined joy in your life?
[00:13:54] Speaker B: Oh, look, for me, I love dancing. So music, and I come from the culture of dancing. Come on. In South Africa, it's all about music. All about music and food. So I'm a foodie. I am a foodie and I love my music. So that's one area I go to. And I did that. It's interesting. I remember that when I was coming out of that difficult relationship and she was very, very young. One of the things, because I was challenged in with my finances and I was still working on trying to gain that extra $20,000. So I had to stop a lot of the things that brought me joy, like going out for. To restaurants, going out to the cinemas. I love the movies as well, going dancing, all of those things. And I was a new mother, so I wasn't going to go out to the clubs anymore, you know, because then I have to pay a babysitter and it's all money. But what I used to do was I used to invite my friends over and just cook for them. And I was like, you bring the bottle of wine or you bring the bubbly and I'm going to do the cooking. And we used to have this cooking fests and soirees that just went on for hours and we'd listen to music. And all of that joy happened in the home. So sometimes, even if money is tight, you can still go find ways to bring the joy into your own life. So for me, it's about music, it's about food, it's about community.
And then I also started meditation back in those days. So probably soon after that was one of the things the counsellor put me onto, was meditation and just being quiet and being quiet with my own thoughts, being quiet with my own dreams, my own visions.
So she was like, yes, life is looking quite dire for you right now. However, that doesn't have to stop you dreaming of a better life and you can visualize that. So I started doing guided meditation first because my mind was chattering a lot back then, so I couldn't really still it. But I do the guided meditation and then eventually moved on to transcendental, which is pretty much focusing on the breath.
So those are some of the things that I used as means of joy and uplifting myself.
And I'm not saying I was joyful all the time, because. No, there were times when that whole situation overwhelmed me, but I would constantly go back to the things that helped me process it. Writing the journaling was huge during that time, which is why I can probably write a book about.
About all of the things, because there's journals, you know, I've got boxes of journals. The only thing that's ever travelled with me, whenever I've travelled, is all my journals.
And with my daughter, I brought you into her life in little ways. You know, I taught her to bake, we used to cook together.
The beach was always free, so we were off and down at the beach, you know, I just play with her in the sand, build sand castles, you know, walk along the beach, do the things that brought me peace.
And I've always taught her that you don't have to have loads of money to find joy. It's always in the little things, and nature's one of the best places to find it.
[00:17:24] Speaker A: That should be on a plaque. You don't need a lot of money. Have joy, you know?
[00:17:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:17:33] Speaker A: That's so true. It's just, it really isn't the little things. And I feel like people think, you know, when I make this amount of money or when I'm able to have this position, then everything is figured out and everything is great. But it's like, ah, you can start the joy now. You don't have to wait.
[00:17:49] Speaker B: Yeah. And, you know, what I've seen is that the joy leads to some of the bigger things, because you're coming from, you're creating, and you're innovating from that space of joy. And it's. It, I don't know, it seems to be. There's something magical in that, and it elevates you. And I've seen, because what I've seen is when I allow myself to get stuck, because, you know, certainly there were moments when I felt stuck. There was a lot of loneliness. There was certainly a lot of fear. Trying to overcome paying back all that debt because the house sold at a loss. When we split up, and there was a $50,000 debt, and I was going on maternity leave. So the income slowing down, you got this huge debt hanging over your shoulder. There were definitely moments of fear, and I noticed patterns, and this is all through the journals, rereading what I've written. I noticed that when I was in fear, I was quite paralyzed, and I was. Whatever I was trying to create would very, very rarely work out.
But when I left, when I moved away from that fear and went to the little spaces of joy, where that was teaching my daughter how to ice a cupcake or whatever, you know, or dress her up in, she used to love being. She wanted to be a mermaid, so I would. My sister made her a mermaid costume, and we'd dress her up as a mermaid and tell stories.
When I went to those spaces and then came out and started to write and create, it just flowed better.
So, you know, my journaling was always informing me of the best way to go, you know, but that doesn't mean, as I said, that I didn't go to some dark spaces. Obviously, you do when you fit rock bottom, you do.
And so you're battling, you know, the demon on the shoulder and the angel on this shoulder, which way to go. But the thing is, what I found is as long as you, for me, as long as I took one action, even if it was really tiny, that was about being in a space of joy or being quiet, somehow was able to get through. It didn't have to be an, I think some, some. Even with career stuff, people think they have to do these grand gestures or these big actions. But that's not what leads to the success. It's the consistent small actions. Like, when I look back on the story I shared at the beginning, it's like I consistently had these coffees with these people whose brains I was trying to pick, and I consistently wrote and rewrote and rewrote my resume and testing it out in the market until it started to get the hits.
So it wasn't any grand, big steps that suddenly led to this catapulting by 50 grand, right? It was little steps. It was these two little steps. Having the coffees, picking the brains, asking the questions, and then going back to my resume and my documents and going, okay, how do I make this better and better and better and testing it in the market and getting the rejections. But then eventually I started to get the hits up with the resume, and then I started to get them consistently. And then I was like, I found a winner. This is the formula, right?
It's small, consistent actions I've seen everywhere in my life, even when I was rebuilding my finances. It's saying that I'm going to save $50 a fortnight and actually doing that no matter what else is going on in life, I'm like, okay, this is. This goes in the savings first and then whatever's left. Now I've got adjust the next two week spending. And if that means I can't go to the movies, I can't go to this, I can't go to that, then that's what it means. But the $50 goes in the savings account every fortnight, you know, and it's small. That wasn't a lot of money, but it builds, it compounds. And also, I think what I saw was that I developed the discipline to know that I could do it, but just by doing it and keeping my promise.
I'm very big on keeping, and this is something my father taught us when we were really young. Always honour your word, even if nobody sees.
So I was honoring my word to myself, even though no one else knew that I was putting my $50 away every fortnight. No one needed to see, but I needed to know that I promised that I would do that to myself and that I would do that. That was another factor. That's another big factor that I've seen in success. And when I work with my clients who come and work with me, with the career coaching, I always say to them, before we start, I'm like, this is a partnership. So I'm here to facilitate your success in your career space and you here to honour your word to me and to yourself. So if we do a session today and you haven't completed the homework that I've given you, don't book your next session with me until that homework is done, because you have to learn to honor your word, especially to yourself.
But then, of course, when you're working with a coach, you're wasting your time and the coach's time. If you don't honor your word, if you don't work in partnership, if you don't become part of that driving force towards your own career success.
[00:23:33] Speaker A: That is such a good nugget. Just because. Yeah, you're right. It's so easy to break a promise to yourself because you're right. No one's looking, no one's gonna like you on the shoulder. It's just. It's so easy to let yourself down.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:23:51] Speaker B: We let ourselves know the hook. I mean, we can all come up with excuses. I certainly have done that. But I always pull myself back in, I think when you train yourself and you've. I mean, it's taken a long while to get here and it started right back then with that mess. So I always say that I turned that mess into success, but it was all the little things that I did to turn around that mess that has now become very much a part of my character and very much a part of the little disciplines in my life. And people hate that word discipline.
They hate it.
Yeah, because it's like, oh, man, that's boring. And it means I gotta. But the thing is, I. It's the same as accountability.
Discipline is just another form of accountability.
And if you not accountable to yourself, then someone else will take over life, whether it's your boss, whether it's a relationship or anything like that. And then someone else becomes the driving force in your life and you'll find that you lose your own voice in the process.
And that was one promise I did make to myself after that relationship ended was that I wasn't going to lose my own voice again. Because I did, I was overpowered in many ways, overwhelmed in that relationship, and gave up a big part of myself.
But I. And I saw that once she asked me that difficult question, because one of the biggest answers was, I let that happen. That was not. Nobody gets to come in and just take over your life and your voice and your actions and how you respond in the world, you know, unless they hold a gun to your head, right? So nobody gets to come and just do that. So when it happens in your life, you ultimately have. And in my case, I certainly owned that I had allowed that to happen.
And it was unbelievably confronting to own that, because up until that moment, up until that counselor asked me that question, I was still very much blaming him.
But in the end, there's no power. How do you move forward in your life when you blame someone else and hold them accountable for all the different things that have happened?
And I was like, no, this is not a way to go forward. And so discipline comes back to being accountable to yourself. And I actually have seen, not just with myself, but with people that I've worked with and even friends that I have, the ones that are thriving in life are the ones that very rarely let themselves off the hook. Very rarely. They might occasionally, if they sick and they go, you know what? I don't feel like honoring my word to myself today. I just want to get under the Doona.
And I certainly did that during menopause. That was a very difficult time for me. It hit me hard.
It came when I was a lot. I came at 45. In my head, it was supposed to come in my fifties. It came at age 45. So it really upended me in many ways.
And there were days when I did Doona dive. I was like, I can't think straight. I'm going to do na dive. And I did.
You know, that's okay, too, as long as you don't stay there.
[00:27:27] Speaker A: It's the way you talk about discipline and accountability, I have to say, is very refreshing. There's just. And maybe it's the way social media has shaped it to be, like, you have a certain archetype that talks about discipline. It's very just.
There's a strong man, strong arm to it that is intimidating. It's just not as welcoming. So how do you define discipline? Is it just. Is it the idea of keeping a promise to yourself? Like, how have you kept it so positive?
[00:27:59] Speaker B: For me, it's just like, it is. It comes back to that. That piece of wisdom from my dad, which was honour your word to yourself.
That's it really, because when you able to do that, you learn about trust, you start to learn to trust yourself very quickly or very consistently.
And when you trust yourself and you operate in a space of I'm going to trust that I will keep my word to myself, there's an energy that happens around you and people learn to trust you too.
Because the thing is, if we can't trust ourself and we don't operate in that space of accountability, you very quickly breed mistrust in other people. People won't know why they can't quite click with you or why they can't quite work openly with you.
They'll feel it in the energy, because energy works in everything, in the way we speak, in the way we are, in the way we hold ourselves, all those things. And so I realized, because even when I look back at the relationship and going back to that again, we both came from this place of extreme trauma, him from his and me from mine. And when I think on the key thing missing in that relationship, it was trust.
I didn't trust and he didn't trust really. And the two bump, they bumped up against each other.
And so I think for me, discipline is about taking the action steps that's going to have me continually create trust within my own being, my own instincts, my own voice.
And you can't do that without a certain amount of discipline or accountability, if you want to use the other word.
And for me, if I'm going to run a successful business or I'm going to be someone who wants to live out my mission of helping other people grow, that is key.
Trust is key, you know, trusting myself and creating a trust element between me and the people that I work with.
And I've seen that even when I was in corporate, it wasn't the fact, yes, I was in technology and I was in project management and all of this, but that is not what delivered the successful projects. It was the people, it was the energy that you built and the empowerment you gave to the people that allowed them to step up and then put their best foot forward in very difficult project delivery.
And so my thing when I was working in corporate was all about building the people, building the people. But I think it's very difficult to truly empower other people and build other people if you haven't done it for yourself.
Everything starts with me. Everything starts with me. I can't give to others what I don't have within me, you know, because it comes out in different ways. I've seen it. I've seen managers who dictate rather than lead.
Right? And so they lead. Well, they don't lead. They dictate with fear. But you never get the best out of people that way.
And so if you're going to be a great leader, leaders start with themselves.
You never ask of someone what you aren't able to do yourself or you aren't able to give yourself.
And, you know, I saw that in both my parents and the way, you know, the strength that they exhibited.
They raised us with a fair amount of discipline, but they never asked of us what they were not willing to do or give of themselves. And so I learned that very young. I did forget it along the way from time to time, you know, particularly in that relationship, but also in other areas of life. I certainly, there were times when I let my health go, you know, but now I'm at a stage, especially after that midlife phase. And for a lot of women, it comes at midlife. Your body betrays you in some ways because you're like, you do it. We do take it for granted. But then you start, you know, natural things start happening in your body. You start losing estrogen and things like that. It affects the brain. You get brain fog. All kinds of things happen. And you go, what is happening to me? And you do feel. I did definitely felt betrayed by my own body, but then I was like, you know what? But you also haven't been giving to your body what you need. You haven't supported your body the way you need to. You've done it in some other areas of life. You've made money. You've had a successful career. But what about, what about this health journey?
So, yeah, certainly was not disciplined, was not my word to myself, because I always wanted to be healthy. But did I do everything that I needed to do to be healthy? Absolutely not.
And stress crept in and all of these things. And one of the big things I did do, and this might be something that other people might gain something from, was I realized when I was in corporate that running the business, the side business, the career coaching business, and the corporate job was too much stress on me during that very difficult time, during a time when my body was changing significantly.
And that was the catalyst to leaving corporate, I was like, because then I also did a process with myself, dug into my whole journey and was like, what is really bringing me joy? What do I really want to do going forward? I actually have that process on my website as a free resource, and I call it mining your story. And I mined my own story to go and dig up the patterns, all the things that brought me joy, the things that I was naturally good at.
And that was where I identified that the writing was the absolute thing. That was the thread through my life from the time I was very young.
And helping people was the other thread. And I ended up making the decision to take my business full time and left corporate after that. But I put myself through the, through a process, you know, of getting clear.
[00:34:57] Speaker A: That's it's. Is that thunder on your end?
[00:35:01] Speaker B: It is. The storm has just come.
[00:35:05] Speaker A: I was gonna say it looks like whoever's up there agrees, just like. Yes.
[00:35:12] Speaker B: Yeah, we apparently having a storm today, but it's come earlier than they said it would. So I was hoping I would be able to do this before the actual storm started.
[00:35:21] Speaker A: It's okay, it's fun. It's like they're giving their opinion. They're in this conversation.
[00:35:26] Speaker B: That's right. You know, the divine sources saying, yep.
[00:35:30] Speaker A: Yes, 100%. She listened. Yes, yes.
Oh, Mandy. So then, on the theme of just finding, of listening to your body and trusting yourself, how now have you, I guess, redefined your relationship between work and your life and health? Like, how have you now found a new balance?
[00:35:54] Speaker B: So it took a little while. So once I went into the business full time, I will say I had saved a fair amount of money to be able to go into my business, because I never encourage people, all the clients I work with that say to me, I want to go in a different direction, I want to maybe start my own business, or I want to do a different industry in my career.
I never encourage people to leave a current job if their finances aren't sorted, if they don't have a backup savings plan. And the reason is because it is very difficult to go for a dream when the mortgage is breathing down your neck and the children's school fee. So I'm a very practical gal. I've learned along the way that no matter how much you visualize, no matter how much you wish for, when you're in financial stress, it is very, very difficult to actually go for your dream. And more importantly, if you're going for a new career, it is very difficult to negotiate the circumstances of your new career when you worried about money. I've never seen someone be able to do that successfully when they worried about money, be able to negotiate for the perks or the remuneration that they want. Right. There's just something in the energy they fearful and it doesn't translate.
And so for me, I say to people, make sure the finances are in order. So that was one thing I did.
But then when you go full time into a business, you have to generate the clients. So that's also a difficult part of it. And so there was a lot of hard work for the first two years, you know, generating the clients. And there, again, consistency. You've got to show up. I had to show up on LinkedIn. I had to show up via video, which I wasn't comfortable doing. I'm a writer, so I'm a lot more comfortable hidden in a room with my cup of tea or my glass of water, writing, banging out against the keyboard. That is the writer. You know, we tend to be introverted a bit.
So I had to step out of the comfort zone and show up on video and share my knowledge so that I could become an expert in my field and become known.
And then. But the, the balance has come now in the, now that I'm four years, five years into my business, because as you build the reputation, as you generate the clients, as you become better, and if it's. If it's not a business and it's a job and you become someone who people trust and you're reliable and you're producing good work, then you can start to negotiate.
And the thing is, one of the things I will say is, sometimes you've got to negotiate, even if you don't have all of those. So what I mean by that is, when I was starting out in that new role where I landed my $50,000 extra, one of the things I did negotiate right from the start. And you've got to define really early what is really important to you. And for me, it was raising my daughter and having a successful career.
And so when I went into the interviews, I said to them, I need to be able to be a mommy to my daughter. That means we got to work out how I'm going to do some of my hours from home. So this was 20 something years ago when it wasn't popular to work from home, but I asked for it.
But the thing is, you can't just ask for something and then not deliver. So I was like, let's do a trial period. Three months.
We'll see if it's working for both of us. And what I did was I made sure I delivered above and beyond.
So by the time the trial period was over, they couldn't say no to me because they could see that I could deliver despite the fact that I was working three days a week from home.
And so you always, if you're going to ask for something, you have to be able to deliver. And I do the same. In my business, I am upfront with people and saying, this is the way I work, these are the hours I work.
So I've chosen my hours. I work from 10:00 in the morning to 04:00 Monday to Thursday. I do not work on Fridays. Fridays I keep for spill over writing.
If I get more clients in a week than I expect to get, and I've got spillover writing to do, then I do that on a Friday morning. But I don't actually work face to face or on Zoom with people on a Friday because I want to have that time to just complete all the writing tasks for the week. And I do not work on weekends. I used to work on weekends in corporate. I don't. I've made it very clear to my clients that these are the hours I work. So I state things upfront and I think anybody can do that. We have to become the captains of our own ships and put out what works for us. Because one thing to remember is that even if you really want a job or you really want to work for a particular company, you still need to interview that company yourself. When they interviewing you, you also interviewing them and you need to go. These are my non negotiables. So for me, being away from my daughter was a non negotiable. And I made that very clear in every single interview.
And I think if there's a certain strength in you or a certain way, you ask for it with a determination. Very few people can say no to you. And also I always put that trial period out to them. I said, let's try this for three months. Let's see how we go. And I knew I could do it because I've done it at the companies before, but I still kept doing that because I wanted to give them a level of comfort as well.
And then I made sure that I delivered and delivered. And so I always actually got what I want. Every contract that I ever negotiated, every company I've ever worked in here, and I've worked for some of the biggest ones here in Australia, the telcos, the banks, insurance companies, all of them.
I ended up with a situation where I was able to do days from home and days in the office, but it was a case of asking for it nice. So you have to determine what is going to be the balance in your own life and then put that out there.
Having said that, with some of my clients, when it comes to interview, coaching, stage that's not something that there can be strict parameters around because sometimes I'll get a client. I've traveled in Europe and I love traveling too. So I traveled around the world and I've been in Europe at times where and the client has sent me a message on WhatsApp and saying, I've just landed an interview. I'm terrified. I need to talk to you. I will make myself available to that client because when it's an interview, it is crunch time. It is not like the writing side of career coaching where I'm writing their documents and uplifting their profiles and telling their career stories and so on. When it's interview time, they only get two or three days. They get told you're interviewing on Friday and it's Tuesday. So then I just switch, you know, I'll just switch things around and go, oh, actually I was going to go to the greek Parthenon today, but you know what, let's meet. And we meet up at a time that's convenient for them in Australia or wherever it is in the world, in Asia, and I make myself available and do the coaching session with them. So there are times when I bend my own rules, but that's because I know that interview time is crunch time and there is no other way around it. So there has to be flexibility as well. Sometimes you have to be flexible. But fundamentally I stick to my rules of these are the hours I worked, this is how I work, this is who I work with. Because I've now gotten to the point in my business where I also choose who I work with. So I do do like a 15 minutes call with people, have a chit chat with them and decide if that is the person that you know. Because I can tell very quickly after 20 years, I can tell very quickly if I'm going to step into partnership with someone around their career growth or if they coming to me and expecting me to be a miracle worker, because I'm not a miracle worker. I'm a coach, I'm a facilitator, I'm a guide, a north star for people. But I'm not a miracle worker. That happens miracles happens in partnership, us with each other, me with my client.
And so I'm quite clear, I communicate very clearly right from the start so people know and I think that's important. Set the expectations early and I set it for myself and I also set it for my clients. And so I get to work very much in a way that I now like to work, you know?
[00:45:13] Speaker A: Yeah, that's great. I'm looking at the time. And so I have two questions for you. First, one that I always love asking towards the end, because it's so fun. If you were to go back to the beginning of your journey, wherever you decide that may be, maybe it was when your partner left. What? Maybe it was before you ever met them, what would you tell yourself now?
[00:45:39] Speaker B: So it probably would be at that time where I felt quite broken.
That was my rock bottom, so I was broken. And if I went back to that, that was the beginning of the turning around, of the mess my life.
I would tell myself, get up.
Because it took a while for me to get up.
I would tell myself, get up and go find your own voice again.
That would be because it is our own voices that we have to trust, and everybody has it in them. People just say, I don't know what to do. And I hear that often.
But the fact is, if they sit quietly enough, they always know what to do. The truth is, they scared to do it. There's a difference between knowing what to do and having the courage to do it. And most of us know. It's like there's like a radar inside all of us that knows the kind of life we want, knows the joy we want to experience, knows the kind of relationship we want to have, knows the kind of finances and the whatever joy we want to have. We know it innately.
But not everyone has the courage to go get it, and that's what it takes. And so I would say to myself, get up.
Put your courage girl pants on and get moving.
[00:47:10] Speaker A: Oh, man. Yeah, I gotta. After this call, I have to find my courage girl pants, dust them off because they need some cleaning, you know?
Oh, man, I love that.
My last question for you, because your daughter has been such an instrumental role in your journey, such an integral part of it, I have to ask, how is she doing now?
[00:47:39] Speaker B: Oh, she's amazing. So she is 26 years old now.
She's a fashion and editorial model. So she gained her father's height. She's six foot tall. She's beautiful.
But I let her. I encouraged her to go work in a deli at age 14. She was spotted at age 14 and, you know, signed up for this with this modeling agency. But I always knew that that was a wonderful career if you could continue to drive it. But it was a very difficult career. It was a career of rejection.
And also, you know, they make crazy money in that industry. So I sent her off. I said, you need to get a normal job like some kids. Get a McDonald's job at age 14 or 15 year in Australia, I was like, you need to go find your everyday job. And I made her do that.
And she learned about how a different, how ordinary people live, working for a wage that doesn't pay that much.
But she did it and she turned up and she has incredible work ethic.
She works in retail part time and she's a fashion model, commercial model, Runway model part time. So she's got two jobs and she excels in both.
In the retail industry, they've constantly wanted to give her managerial roles and different roles. Promoter, promoter, promoter. She hasn't taken it because her passion is in the other industry, but she's learned the discipline. She's an entrepreneur, so she likes her multiple streams of income.
She learned that from her mommy.
But she's incredibly disciplined. And even in the modeling industry, I've been to many of her shows. I've been, when she was younger, I had to go, obviously, when she was shooting because she was too young, so she had to have a parent on set and so on. And the feedback that I've gotten from every photographer, every makeup artist, whoever she's worked with was how amazing she is to work with, how humble she is and how hard working she is. She delivers. She always delivers. And so she often saves companies. They'll book her for 4 hours or 5 hours and she delivers within two, saving their money on the crew, the makeup, art, everything. And so she's built that reputation. She is known for that in the industry. And I am unbelievably proud of her. But there again, it was the discipline, the accountability.
I taught her, always honour your word. So if your word is to turn up at 08:00 on time, you turn up at 08:00 on time and you give your best everywhere.
And so that's the reputation she has in the industry. She gets regular and consistent work because she's built that name.
Being the non diva model, I mean, even when I've gone to shows, the catering staff have come up and talked to me and said, she's so kind. She's a kind girl. She knows, because I've said to her, if you ever let this go to your head and you misbehave, I don't care where you are in the world, I'm flying over to see you and I will set you straight, girl, mama will set you straight. We have an incredibly close relationship. We've traveled the world together. I still travel with her even to this day.
We often go on trips together.
She's turned out really well, but she was, in many ways, I say she saved me because she was there in the tummy when all the bad stuff went down, and it was the guiding light for me to move forward. And so we've probably been each other's north stars, you know? I know I've helped her. She's watched me grow. I've always said to her, don't watch what people say, watch what they do.
And so I've never asked of her what I was never willing to do myself.
And so I'm incredibly proud of her. She's very successful at a very young age.
[00:52:08] Speaker A: Oh, man. I wonder where she got it from. I wonder what incredible coat she had on her side throughout life.
This has been amazing. Thank you so much. It's been so.
[00:52:25] Speaker B: It'S been a pleasure chatting with.
