S2: Episode 20: Steph Connolly, Founder, Aligned Content Strategies for Founder

"Take messy and inspired action every day."

 Steph is a content strategist and copy writer. She works with, and becomes, her clients on line. Founders don't have the time to put their own voice out there, so Steph does this for them.
 
 More on Ford Keast Human Resources can be found here: https://www.fordkeast.com/services/human-resource-consulting/ 

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Thank you Jann Danyluk, Career Resilience. 

Transcript

 | 00:06 | Welcome to season two of Career Resilience where we talk with people about their career path and their career journey and maybe we can all learn from each other. My name is Jan Danila and I'm a human resources consultant sent in London, Ontario, Canada. I work with Fort Keith LLP, providing human resources advice and counsel to my business clients. I also support people through individual one on one coaching and helping with career development.

 | 00:33 | I hope you will enjoy our series where we talk with ordinary, extraordinary people. We get to hear about interesting journeys. We get to talk with people about failures, successes, advice and counsel to us as we develop our own careers. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk with these people and I hope you will enjoy listening to it. And now for some logistics, please subscribe on YouTube. Or if you're a listener, please follow me wherever you get your podcast.

 | 01:01 | And if you have a chance, I hope you'll visit my website careerresilience.com welcome. My guest today is Steph Connolly. Steve, welcome to Career Resilience. Thank you. I'm excited to be here. Well, it is great to see you and let's establish where we are.

 | 01:30 | So first of all, I'm in London, Ontario, Canada, where we are going through quite a heat wave at the moment. Where are you? I'm currently in Bali, Indonesia, and it has been raining most of the day here. Is this the rainy season? It's not the rainy season, but unfortunately it seems to be raining quite a lot. I think we've got some weather warnings coming up for the next week. Okay. But it can't always be Sunshine, right? No, that's true.

 | 01:59 | Words to live by there. Now, I think we can tell from your accent that you're not from Valley. So where are you originally from? So I'm originally from the UK. I was born in a place called Kent, which is just outside of London. However, I know nothing about it because I was raised in Malaysia and Dubai and then random parts of the UK have moved all over. Some would describe me as a bit of a mutt.
 
| 02:29 | We don't know where I'm from. Okay. So I think you have an accent. I think it's quite lovely. Do you think I have an accent? I would say so, yes. Okay. And is your accent posh? Yes, I would say I'm extremely well spoken, even though I sound nothing like my family, completely different. Oh, okay. And you're aware of that you sound different from the rest of your family? Yes, absolutely.

 | 02:58 | My dad is from East London, so he has a bit more of a Cockney twang. My mom's from Wales, so she has more of a Northern twang to her accent. And then my brother, he lives in Dubai, so he has a very mixed bag. One of those typical, what would you call it? Like an expatriate accent. Whereas I am very Queen's English, let's just say. Okay, got it.

 | 03:28 | It's so different from anything we sort of think about here. So it's interesting. Now, can you do a Canadian or an American accent? Are you able to do that? No, but there are certain words that Canadians say. So I have a couple of really good Canadian friends. And what are some of the words that I'm going to have to think of? That one? They all come to me, but I used to actually say some of them just because of the way in which you pronounce.

 | 03:59 | I think it's your OS and you say them slightly differently. And then the American. I live with an American. Yeah. She's most recently Florida, so she's very whiny, though. It's not a whiny American accent. Okay. I can say pretty well one word in a British accent. Would you like to hear it? I'd love to. Okay. Chocolate.

 | 04:31 | Chocolate. Ok. So let's get a little bit serious about what we're going to chat about today. And we're going to talk about a couple of things that are sort of serious stuff, things like anxiety, talking about being stuck and getting unstuck, and also just sort of women in the world today.

 | 04:55 | So let's get into getting to know you a little bit, though, and if you could tell us about what you do for a living now and what led you there. Yeah, absolutely. So I have been in business for myself for the past eight months, going into my 9th month. Now I work within the personal branding space. However, what I would like classify my role as is a content strategist and a copywriter.

 | 05:24 | So what I pretty much do is I work with founders of businesses and I become them online. I give them a content strategy. And more often than they are not, they don't have the time or the capacity to fulfill that content. So I become them. I have numerous personalities, anything from a 35 year old crypto accountant, a male crypto accountant, let's say, to a successful multiepreneurial 28 year old who is a female from Amsterdam.

 | 06:00 | Two completely different ends of the spectrum. So that's what I do, but predominantly personal branding space. So do you still do blogs for them and so on? Is that kind of. Yeah. I write their social media content predominantly on LinkedIn. So LinkedIn is my platform of choice when it comes to the clients in which I work with. And then I do social copy and long form copy.

 | 06:25 | And then I also help them establish a strategy for market, whether that's launching their podcast, putting things onto Twitter, those kind of things. So whatever it is that they want to do, we then work together to establish a nice sort of launch process or streamline something or a system, anything from social copy to your long form copy, email, things like that. Anything to do with writing, finding a voice, telling a story. That's where I come in.

 | 06:54 | And I should mention, you were very helpful to me in starting my own podcast. Yeah, it was good looking here. So what did you do before that? What other things have you done in your career? I have one of those stories where I'll give you the lowdown. When I was 27 years old, I was in a teaching job.

 | 07:25 | So before I did any of this, I actually have a specialism with children with Dyslexia. So I have a Masters in child psychology. And then I did my teaching after I was living in Dubai and teaching in schools over there. And as much as I loved everything that I did and this is where my love of English came in, pretty much because I fell into this kind of English trap where I would tell stories and teach these children how to find passion in their work.

 | 07:56 | I work with kids who never wanted to pick up their pen because they didn't want to make mistakes, because I feel that there's so much pressure within the education system to hit certain targets. And I wanted to strip all of that away for them to find love in just telling stories. So I did that for a while, but I was deeply unhappy. I was working long hours, not feeling fulfilled, just working my way up the ladder, trying to get as much money as I could.

 | 08:25 | I was working full time and then tutoring on top of it. So I hit probably it was the end of 2017, I think it was where I just said, enough, I've had enough. So I quit my job and I started my own tutoring business, which took off with super successfully. Within a month, I was making just as much money as I was in a full time role. And I was working for myself.

 | 08:54 | I would say six months later, I was ready. Not even that. Actually, four months later, I was ready to scale and look for an office space, look for other tutors, bring other people on. But I actually came out of a long term relationship at the time, and I thought, I have no commitment. My business isn't fully set up yet. I'm not in a relationship, and let's just go do something different. So I decided to throw myself in to a social media internship in Bali.

 | 09:25 | Now, I came over here for two and a half months to start with and ended up staying for two and a half years, which meant I could completely pivot my career. And I met some of the most amazing people who taught me everything there was about business and social media, LinkedIn writing, sales, copy, absolutely everything. I was mentored by incredibly successful businessmen over here and women as well.

 | 09:54 | I found myself in a place where I could grow mentally, physically, and also academically. And so that's where the kind of like writing a personal branding space formed. But that didn't actually happen until mid-pandemic, where I kind of stepped more into that personal branding space.

 | 10:21 | So last year, at the end of January, I went into a new business. It was a small personal branding agency ran by a girl from the UK. And I took a massive hit on my salary. And I just thought, I'm going to throw myself into this because I don't know what I want to do with my life. I'm really confused.

 | 10:51 | We've just come out of a pandemic. I don't really know. So I just decided to allow myself to go back to basic salary. I mean, I was earning more when I was probably at University, working in a bar to living in my brother's fat, living at my partner at the Time's, parents households.

 | 11:18 | I didn't have enough money at the end of every month. But I knew that by doing this, it gave me the opportunity and the space for me to think about what I really want to be doing with my life. Yeah, I did that until October, when she shut the agency down and I started my own. And that's where we are now. How in going through all this? Because you fully admit that you have anxiety.

 | 11:50 | How does that all fit in with being gutsy enough to do all these things that are somewhat insecure? Yeah. I mean, don't get me wrong, I probably questioned myself with every single decision that I made. I was terrified in making a decision and getting it wrong.

 | 12:14 | But I think one of the main things that I knew, I knew I had to do it because if I didn't do it, I would just stay where I was. And that was the thing. I didn't have many, especially when I lived in the UK. I felt like I didn't have many people around me who were a support network. But I felt safe enough to be able to make mistakes and learn and just do it.

 | 12:46 | And I think when I started the business, there was nothing glamorous about it. I turned 31. I had no money in my bank account. I moved in with my mom and dad. The only reason and I say this and I feel emotional thinking about it.

 | 13:06 | The only reason I was able to successfully get to where I am now is because my mom made me breakfast, lunch and dinner every day for October, November, December for four months to get to where so that I could book a flight and get out of the UK again. And she looked at me and she said, Where is the woman that I knew when you were in Bali? You need her back? So I just got my head down.

 | 13:36 | I barely left the house, I barely showered. I just drove myself as much as I possibly could. I took clients on even if I didn't want the clients, even if it was low paying, just so that I could hit certain goals. And I did it. I had -2050 in my bank account at the start of October, I had to have my boyfriend at the time pay for my birthday dinner.

 | 14:04 | I didn't have any money to order breakfast the next day. And that month I made £7000. And I wrote down in my book, I still have it, I still have the picture of it, I still have everything. Where I said to myself, I wrote down, you're going to make consistent five K months. I'm so proud of you. I can't believe you've done it. This is the most amazing thing that you've ever done, and I did it.

 | 14:35 | Writing things down like that seems silly sometimes, but unless you put that thing in that effort in behind it as well, of just like driving yourself to make yourself, as my friend says, taking messy and inspired action every day. 1% and if you can even drag myself out of bed. Bearing in mind as well, I wasn't able to sleep until three, four in the morning.

 | 14:58 | My anxiety was through the roof, but I just knew I had to do it because otherwise what was I doing? I'd made all of these decisions previously to change my life and lead a life the way that I wanted to lead a life and not like anybody else. And if I kept, if I preached it, I had to practice it. That was kind of it. How much do you think women yourself are driven by what happens in our relationships with men?

 | 15:33 | Massively, I think by society standards a lot of the time. And I mean, it is getting so much better now, don't get me wrong, but there's still so much misogyny out there and just the differences when it comes to male and females in the workplace.

 | 15:53 | But I think a lot of women believe that to feel fulfilled we need to have a partner on our arm and they need to be the breadwinner and they need to be the ones that are going to take care of us for the rest of our lives. Do you think that's still a thought process? No, I think it's changing so much so that men actually feel quite intimidated by it, especially certain groups of men.

 | 16:25 | I think the conversation is changing massively, but I've seen it like front and center. Men fear women who have their own opinion, who want to do their own thing, who are too independent for their own good.

 | 16:46 | And that's something now, I think obviously the conversation is changing and the narrative is looking very different now because so many more women are stepping up and they are making business their baby and they're stepping up and being at the forefront. And it's scary because then women compare women compare.

 | 17:13 | I'll compare myself to another woman or something like that. I'm not looking at a man, I'm looking at other women around me and thinking, okay, this is amazing, how are they doing that? But then sometimes you fall into the comparison trap. But I think we're floating a little bit here, but we have masculine and feminine in each of us. And for you to be super
 successful in a very male dominated world, you have to switch on your masculine a lot more.

 | 17:47 | So you have to speak louder, you have to work harder, you have to show your worth to the world so that you can be doing all of these things. And so often we forget how to fall back into that feminine cycle. And I think for me to get my business to where it is now, I had to be so heavily masculine dominated that I've now gotten to a .89 months in where I'm ready to just scale.

 | 18:19 | But by giving it out to other people and stepping back into a more feminine role, it's one of those interesting things. So in Bali, is that where you feel the most at home? I would say so I think this is a conversation I've had with quite a lot of people recently.

 | 18:49 | We go about our lives trying to find home. A lot of times, sometimes people are too scared to leave their own home because they feel like they'll never be able to find it anywhere else. And more often than not, what we forget is that home is wherever we choose to make it. Firstly, so home is us.

 | 19:17 | So we need to look after number one before we even consider grounding ourselves somewhere else. It's about finding your tribe of people who make you feel like you want to grow and expand yourself and become a better person. And for me, Bali has that.

 | 19:41 | So whilst I have family in the UK and I have family in Dubai, Bali, for me is the one place where I can feel my most accepted, my most welcomed. I am surrounded by so many women who want to see me flourish. They are all on a journey of leveling up and every single one of us is leveling up together. Whereas when I was in the UK, I found myself very stagnant and different because I couldn't find my tribe.

 | 20:15 | Whereas here I feel more settled than ever. I literally get off the plane and I just really yeah. So do you think that then for you, this is where you want to settle? This is a process that I think I'm still going through. Now, mentally, I would say yes in a way, but also I want to still travel.

 | 20:49 | So I've bought land here, as you know, and so I will be building. So I'm creating a base for the first time in a very long time. I've never had a base. I haven't had anywhere that I can leave things for a while. Over the pandemic, I gave up all of my furniture, handed it over to people, had things in my cleaner's house for a year and a half base.

 | 21:17 | So I'm finally going to make conscious effort to create a base. However, I still now want to travel. So my business is being set up in Dubai, so I'll be traveling to Dubai a lot more as I'm also becoming an Auntie. So that's another thing. And then my family lives, my mum and dad live in the UK. So then I'll travel there and I have clients in the UK too. So if I could be anywhere, I would like to be everywhere.

 | 21:49 | But yeah, even when I have children, I want that. But I envisioned my life with kids who are running around naked in the sand. Proper. Little island babies. That's how I see it. Yeah. Let's go back because we wanted to talk about a little bit about sexual harassment, which, believe it or not, in this podcast, which is all about career resilience. I've actually never touched on that topic.

 | 22:15 | And I know that you had an experience in University, so can you take us through the experience that you had while in University? Yeah, of course. So throughout my time. Oh my God, I'm just getting flashbacks from more than one time that I've had these things throughout my time at University. As most women and men, you end up working in a bar. Now, I worked in the hospitality industry.

 | 22:44 | For what, since I was 18 to 24. I loved it. It was so much fun. I met so many amazing people. I worked really hard. I worked 40 hours weeks throughout University. I never really did that whole uni thing cause I was so determined on being this independent woman. So I work 40 hours weeks throughout uni. But there was one city that I lived in, it was Nottingham.

 | 23:16 | And I was doing my master's there and I worked in a Brazilian restaurant or an Argentinian restaurant. And they would cut the meat off the skewers. You turn the things on the table from green to red. And I was sort of your lead floor Gal, like lead server and also the bartender.

 | 23:39 | So I jumped between the two positions and on more than one occasion, the management staff would either make slide passes when I was at work or they would get drunk and they would make passes at me after in a bar. At one point I had one of the managers, we were out, I was sat down and he was sat to my left.

 | 24:13 | He launched himself at me in a bar to kiss me, but in the process pin me down. And then I pushed him off. I said, what are you doing? How could you do that? And he says, well, you're just clearly asking for it, you know, you're dressed in this particular way. And I didn't leave my job. I didn't leave the bar that night. I didn't say anything.

 | 24:43 | I just continued on. I didn't really speak to him after, but I felt that I had no say in the matter or a defense because he did it in front of everyone and they were predominantly men and he did it in front of everyone. And they were all Argentinian and Brazilian and nobody said anything. Nobody even did anything.

 | 25:11 | Nobody even came over to me after or asked if I was okay. It was just brushed under the rug. Most of my experiences have been, when it comes to men and sexual harassment, brushed under the rug. But was that your choice to brush it under the rug? I think I was probably too fearful to even say anything.

 | 25:39 | I would have been 22, 23. He was in his thirties. He ran the whole entire place. I just felt like I didn't really have a say. Or if I tried to argue my case, I would have been shut down. So I just left it.

 | 26:05 | And then, I mean, soon after I stopped working, I remember asking my parents if I could stop working and just focus on finishing my Masters. And my mom and dad were like, we didn't even need to be working. I don't know why you're working. Just stop. I have an ego thing where it's like I'm very grateful and very lucky that I've come from a family.

 | 26:35 | My dad has worked incredibly hard to get to where he is now, but I never wanted to rely on them. He always had that independent streak. Yeah. And I never told my parents either about that. But I would also say that it comes down to the fact that I had been in an abusive relationship prior to that, and I probably was just still in trauma mode, where I would just bat off and hope for the best.

 | 27:11 | I would say that more recently, last year, I was on a work night out with my partner and his colleagues, too, on the same night were incredibly inappropriate to me, to the point that I then refused to ever go on nights out. I made him speak to them and yeah, that was worse than when I was 22.

 | 27:45 | And these men were married. Why was it worse than when you were 22? When you were 22, someone physically launched themselves at you? I think it was the way in which they spoke to me, and I was more aware. I think that's it. I was more aware of why it was so wrong compared to when I was 22 and just thought, he's drunk, just leave it.

 | 28:19 | Yeah. And I was just like, just drunk, just leave it. I felt very uncomfortable. That was really inappropriate, but I'm not going to do anything about it. Whereas 31 year old staff was fuming how any man could even my boundaries are so clear now that I was touched. When I wasn't asked to be touched and I was spoken to in a way that I wasn't asked to be spoken to.
 | 28:51 | And I probably felt like I always had PTSD after it because as soon as I heard certain accents, I would freak out about it. I was like, I don't really know how to go about this. I think I felt more unsafe in the UK than I ever have done in Indonesia and Dubai. So how did you feel when those men apologized to you, the ones from last year?

 | 29:21 | Yeah, they never did. I didn't think. They probably didn't. Absolutely not. Because it would have been turned around on me. I would have been the inappropriate one. How so? Having a conversation with them. They would have blamed me. They would have pushed it onto me. Yeah, absolutely.

 | 29:46 | I had one of them turn around to me and say with my partner being less than a meter away from me, saying, if you get bored in your relationship, give me a message and you can come to these particular types of parties with him and then try to force me to go outside with him to talk about them. I was mortified.

 | 30:18 | Because those are insights you just don't want to have about someone. Yes, absolutely. And also they work within, again, a hospitality industry where they are going to have other women around them and female guests, too. And you think about it. I was supporting them in looking for ways in which they could escort female guests home so they have concierge services that could then support them.

 | 30:49 | And I said one of the main things that lots of people are doing now in the UK is if a woman goes out, you then offer a service to bring them home safely or back to wherever they're staying safely. And I was like, I wouldn't feel safe with either of these men. I said, what is this? This is ridiculous. This is basically a completely five star establishment in the center of London. Yeah. So what is that all about?

 | 31:18 | Why do you think they think its okay? Honestly, I would bring it down to an ego thing, an imbalance in their own masculine, feminine of them believing that they are they deserve it and they are. It's mine. I can take it.

 | 31:49 | I wouldn't even know. The thing is, a lot of the time it comes down to their own parenting and their parents and their upbringing and what their upbringing looks like. This is sometimes some things I really struggle with because I can pinpoint and pick apart why people do certain things. And so then I may excuse them of their behavior.

 | 32:15 | I mean, I guess that's also one of I've worked with amazing coaches and psychologists and things like that. So I know exactly why they're doing that. They're doing it because of X, Y and Z. And then you try and excuse it and brush off and things like that, but then nobody teaches them. So I would always say, again, it comes down to education. And education starts with their family and where they're brought up and major cultural differences.

 | 32:45 | So Steph, you're involved at some level in an organization in the UK related to domestic abuse? Yes. Can you tell us about that and how you came to find that as and interest? Yeah, of course. I was approached by a girl called Stephanie. So she was actually living in Bali when I was living in Bali. She started a project over here working with women.
 
| 33:15 | So their originated project started here. They were working with women from Bali. So within the local culture talking about domestic violence. And it was the most moving series of portraits and videos that they put together and created. And one of the women wayanne. I would call her my barley mother.

 | 33:43 | And she was the face of the brand when it first started. And it's called We Are Women United and it's all about educating and supporting women to find their voice and tell their stories when it comes to domestic abuse. So I started following them and then I was in London last summer and I saw them post on their stories. We're looking for a series of women within the London area who would like to come forward and share their stories on domestic abuse.

 | 34:12 | And so I put myself forward because I was in a domestic abuse relationship. I met him when I was 15 and I was with him up until about 21, 22. On and off, the abuse got worse as I got older, as he got older as well. And it probably hit its peak when I was 20, turning 21 anyway.

 | 34:42 | So I reached out to this charity. I went and I told my story. We took these amazing portraits. I was in a room full of women who had all gone through something similar. We all cried together, we all laughed together, we all held space for each other. When I was doing my interview, I spoke about my own experience with it and I never necessarily thought that I would classify myself as like a domestic view survivor or a victim.

 | 35:18 | And it's not something I necessarily like to think of either now, because I'm 31, it's been ten years and it doesn't hold any part of my life anymore. I'm very grateful for it. It's taught me so much about myself and my own resilience and how I now take no rubbish from no man.

 | 35:46 | But it was amazing because we also spoke about the importance of forgiveness, forgiveness of self. We spoke about education and confidence and belief and self-love. And I think it's so important when it comes to everything in life, not just violence or your own abuse towards self.

 | 36:14 | I also did that. I suffered with anorexia at the same time as I was going through the abuse, you try and control one thing with another. It was one of those things. And when it comes to business, when it comes to life, when it comes to relationships, we have to go through these series of trusting in ourselves and knowing that the decision, that thing, that gut feeling that is happening in our lives, that is right or what's wrong, you know, when something isn't working in all realms of life.

 | 36:48 | You have to trust that. You have to trust yourself to know that you can hold yourself if it goes wrong, then you have to believe in yourself that you can actually move through to that next phase. And then you've got to forgive yourself for all the things that happened before. There's no point in beating yourself up if you've been in that you stayed in that relationship for too long, or that you were that you felt judged or dirty or something because of some sort of sexual harassment in the workplace, or that if a business failed or that you lost a client, or that according to society, having too many jobs on your CV is a bad thing.

 | 37:30 | Why can't you trust yourself and your own gut and instinct and knowing that you're making the right choices for yourself? Even if you do feel a little bit lost, you have to go through these motions. So it was a really beautiful experience. You're very candid on your social media about your journey. What does that do for you to put your story out?

 | 37:57 | The reason why I do it is because I feel like normalize is the wrong word. But do you know what I mean by normalizing a situation or by showing other people that there is no such thing as perfection in your life? From the outside looking in, everything could look amazing, especially on social media. But the journey in which lots of people take and I've had people come to me and say, I never knew that you went through that.

 | 38:24 | I say it's because I never would speak about it before or like I never really knew what was happening or because you judge me from the outside looking in if I can change the perspective of one person so that they do something for themselves. Because I made a mistake and I'm talking about it. Yeah. I think it's the most amazing thing in the Hong Kong world. And I'm just one person who doesn't have a huge following who doesn't really do.

 | 38:57 | I'm not an influential person. I just speak honestly because I think stories being told are so important. It's so interesting, isn't it? Because if you take a look at someone like you, what an amazing life you've led to date, the things that you've accomplished, the places that you've been, the experiences that you've had, and I mean, you're beautiful, you're young, you're outgoing, all these things, and you think, wow, what a perfect life.

 | 39:34 | I think that's the thing that we sort of enclose in here that we make it look as perfect as we can. And at the same time, it's not so perfect. And I can think of times in my life where I would be somewhere or doing something. And I'd think if only all these people knew how completely terrified I am right now.

 | 40:02 | They're looking at the outside and they're seeing that I'm well groomed. I've got clothes that are I've always seen my clothes as armor. Absolutely. This is the way we all are, though, because the way I was feeling, everybody else was probably feeling as well because we hide it so well, and we learn how to hide it, and it's just not easy.

 | 40:29 | And I think that when I was coming up, you did not talk about feeling anxious or having anxiety. You just suffered through it as best you could and tried to survive. And not everybody can survive it. And I think that was such a long way in being willing to talk about it and saying its okay. We're just all humans and flawed and trying to make our own way. Exactly. And that's it.

 | 40:57 | I mean, last year I was having to talk myself down numerous times from panic attacks in the middle of in the middle of the general public. Nobody really knew that other than the people who were closest to me. And that would be that was my partner at the time. I remember we were on a Hill in London. It was very overstimulating. There was lots of noise around. It was warm. And I ended up having this big panic attack. But because he'd already been with me and I already had, this would have been my third.

 | 41:28 | He knew straight away what to do. And I'm really lucky over here as well that I can talk to people. My housemate, the people around me, the women around me. And I'll be like, I'm having a really low day mentally guys or my anxiety is really bad. And I can be really open and honest online. It's not something I talk about all the time, especially. I don't even know. I think I'll mention it every so often, but that's it from the outside looking in, it could look hunky Dory.

 | 42:01 | It could look amazing. I'm living this beautiful life over here in Bali. It's all great, and the weather is beautiful, but I work hard every single day. I barely leave the house sometimes. I haven't gone to the gym in three days because I've got so much to do because I'm going to take my first week off work next week. Yeah. My anxiety has been through the roof, and I keep drinking coffee. And it's just one of those things where to do this as long as my arm.

 | 42:30 | And we're all so imperfectly perfect. And we're all going through everything. And our life is never as simple as it seems. But we have to be. And this is something that I always try to remind myself is that we have to be as forgiving as we possibly can, because we know what our capacity is. And you will know if you're in your comfort zone because you don't want to leave it and you're all cushy and things like that.
 
| 42:58 | But if you can keep pushing yourself that little bit more, then you're going to find where that growth sits and that's like that growth spot. But we know where our capacity lies. And if we make mistakes, we've got to learn to be forgiving. If we do something wrong, if we say the wrong thing, if we lose a client, something better is going to come along. And it all adds to our strengths on the journey. Exactly. I wanted to ask you, too.

 | 43:27 | Who was your biggest influence when you were growing up? It would be my parents. Absolutely. My dad because of his work ethic. But my mom because of her kind of like, excuse my language, get shit done attitude. She was nothing phased. And I mean my mom.

 | 43:57 | I would say I'm a perfect balance between the two, my mom and my dad. I have the business drive and I can think in a very different way. And then my mom is more on the emotional side, but I have the like, can do, find the solution, and strip it apart. We'll find the solution. That kind of thing that my mom does.

 | 44:27 | She'll pull everything out of the cupboard and then she'll reorganize things. That's what I do with people's words. I pull everything out and then we put it all back in and then it makes sense. So my mom has that. And then my dad has a different way of thinking and the business mentality. So I have the two. I would say that they are my biggest inspiration always, and they are always the ones that will pull me up when I need it the most. So if I am not in alignment, they're like, where is the woman that we know?

 | 44:59 | Go get her. So our three questions that I wanted to turn to now. So first of all, what is the best career advice that you've ever received? Do it quick, make mistakes, do it again, and learn from it. So it's that process. Yeah. Get it out before it's perfect, make mistakes, and listen in, do it again.
 
| 45:30 | Keep going. I like that. Yeah. Because sometimes just getting started is the hard part. Exactly. As one of my clients says, she says, stop before you're ready. Yeah. Sometimes you have to do that. Yeah, absolutely. The second question is, is there a book that has influenced you or which you found helpful in your journey? Absolutely. The book that made me quit my job when I was 27.
 
| 46:01 | I wrote a post about it on LinkedIn. It's called The Life Changing Magic of Not Giving a Fuck by Sarah Knight. I think I read about four or five chapters, and then I handed in my resignation via email, closed my laptop, switched my phone off, went out and got drunk. Are you saying this book inspired you to do my job? Yeah, absolutely.
 
| 46:28 | It's all about saying no to the things that don't serve you so that you say yes to yourself. I like that. And what advice would you give your younger self stuff? Love yourself more yeah, because I'm so worthy of it, but, yeah, absolutely love myself.

 | 46:58 | I really appreciate you saying that Because it's so true. And sometimes I think, well, okay, if you're struggling with that feeling, Then how about just appreciate your liver, your kidneys, your heart, your brain, everything that's putting this together, just that if you can't sort of appreciate what your thoughts are telling you Because as you know, thoughts can be really mean to us, which is odd.

 | 47:30 | I struggle with understanding why our own thoughts are mean to us. I know no sense whatsoever. So I heard recently what we should do is not listen to ourselves but talk to ourselves. I agree. Talking to yourself, journaling to yourself, telling yourself how proud you are. These kind of things celebrate the smallest of wins. A really good friend of mine and she's also a female empowerment coach.
 
| 48:00 | I was speaking to her because I decided that I wanted to commit to something other than my business at the minute. So I've committed to a new training program and I lost half an inch around my waist and half an inch just below my belly button. I thought, oh, it's only half an inch kind of thing. And she said, but if you don't, she was like, celebrate your small ones. Otherwise nothing will be good enough for you. And I just thought, that's so true. Tiniest things. If you can get yourself out of bed in the morning, celebrate that.

 | 48:31 | Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that was it. It's so true. And, yeah, it's just part of the journey, I guess. I don't understand it, but if we could just be a little kinder to ourselves, that would be a very big goal to have and a great accomplishment, and it's one of those things as well, Whilst being kinder to ourselves, because more often than not, we think that other people are judging us for where we are in our lives or what we're doing or what we're saying.
 
| 49:04 | And the majority of people are more worried about themselves than they are about you. Yup. So just do the thing and own it. Exactly. Thanks so much for chatting with me today. Is there anything else that you wanted to add or say before we finish off? No, that was really good. Thank you. I really enjoyed that. To our viewers and listeners, thanks so much for joining Steph and me today for this conversation.
 
| 49:30 | It's so interesting when we talk with each other and we look so good on the outside and there's so much churning going on the inside, and it's just something that we have to keep remembering that we're amazing. We're all amazing in our own way. We literally are. So please listen to my phone podcast wherever you get your podcast. If you are viewers, check us out on YouTube and thanks so much again for joining us. And until we meet again, thank you.