Biz Shiz with Shani Timms
Biz Shiz is the podcast for open & honest chats about the REAL SHIZ that goes on in biz.
This is THE business podcast for Soul-Led entrepreneurs who are ready to do business differently. I am here to help you bridge the gap between old school business & modern day spirituality, where we weave the WooWoo, ToDo & the delulu.
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Biz Shiz with Shani Timms
Baby Proof Biz feat. My Mum : Sinead Vorrath on Motherhood Lessons Raising Toddlers & Teenagers AND Having a Thriving Career
Today is a very special episode, with my MUM, Sinead Vorrath. This was such a special chat, getting to hear motherhood & career lessons from someone I look up to so much.
Mum never thought she would have 5 kids, but over the years, a divorce, finding her life partner and a new blended family dynamic... life had other plans.
We chat about Mum's journey raising five children, navigating corporate leadership, family dynamics, and the realities of trying to "do it all."
If you're looking for a few laughs, a few tears... and an open chat between mother and daughter, this is it!
We dive in to:
- Mum's career progression from computer trainer to general manager of change at one of the big banks... all while raising a blended family
- The reality of 'mum guilt' and how to navigate it
- The importance of building a "village" of support with partners, grandparents, nannies and family members
- Managing the challenging "teenagers and toddlers years" with teenage daughters and toddler sons
- How she learnt the importance of 'showing vulnerability' at work to create inclusive environments for working parents... especially mums.
- Recognising that the "last 20% takes the most time" and embracing the 80% rule
- Understanding that not doing everything for your children builds independence and resilience
- The beliefs you need to let go of in order to call in more 'peace'
Enjoy the episode,
Love Shani x
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Welcome to Baby Proof Biz, a BizShiz mini podcast series for the woman who wants to balance business and motherhood. You know you're in the right place if you want to bake sourdough and build success, if you want to have the wholesome family life and the wealthy business life, and if you want to be a crunchy craft mum and a successful CEO. My name is Sharni Timms. I'm a brand and business coach and soon to be mama, and my intention for this podcast mini series is to bring you expansive conversations around business and motherhood that give you practical insights, tools and takeaways to help you have more than just a business, whether you have a family or wanting to start a family or anywhere in between. Or maybe you're eight and a half months pregnant, like me. Wherever you are on your journey, welcome to Baby Proof Biz and I hope you enjoy the show.
Speaker 1:Mum, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Thanks for having me. This was really exciting and special to have you on the show today and I'm super excited to introduce you to all the beautiful listeners, and I'm sure they're wondering who has raised me. They're probably not wondering, but I'm super excited to introduce you to all the beautiful listeners and I'm sure they're wondering who has raised me. They're probably not wondering, but I'm super excited to introduce you. How are you feeling about the podcast today?
Speaker 2:Well, seeing it is my very first podcast, a little bit nervous but excited. It's an interesting topic that we have to talk about, and I think that I will probably have more than enough to say, so please feel free to tell me to shut up or move on.
Speaker 1:No, it's so fun. We were having a chuckle before that. You were a podcast virgin, definitely not a virgin virgin, because you have five children, so, which is part of why we're here today to talk about that. So I think, like why I really wanted to get you on here to the podcast today, is that I have just looked up to you how you've balanced motherhood and career and you've always managed to do both and do both exceptionally well. And I think that, you know, I've always seen a lot of people it's like they just go all into motherhood or they go all into career, and one looks like there's been a sacrifice where it's felt that you've really held both and so, yeah, I thought I've got a lot to learn from you, and I'm sure my listeners do too.
Speaker 2:Okay, Well, I'm just hoping we can make through without me crying, because if you can talk like that, I'm going to cry. That's okay. Tears are welcome. It's very beautiful that you say that. I will say that most often I don't feel that I have done a great job, and you know we can talk about that. I think it is a very common thing with mothers is they always feel like someone else is doing it a lot better than them.
Speaker 1:Yes, I think I remember you talking about. I think it was a talk that actually came to watch of yours, where we spoke about mum guilt and it was just like this inevitable thing that you feel and that you're never feeling like you're doing a good enough job. But Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. So let's definitely, let's definitely talk about that. I thought we'd ease into it because it is your first podcast. We'll ease into it by going over a bit of like a rapid fire. So we'll start with an easy one who is your favorite child?
Speaker 2:I'm joking, but that's not.
Speaker 1:That's not a proper one. You really expect me to answer that. The good thing is that three of my brothers won't listen to this podcast, so it's only Tabernacle.
Speaker 2:No, I'm kidding, all right, so let's look at it this way You're my favourite oldest child. Perfect answer yeah, tabitha is my favourite youngest daughter. Jake is, as we all know, was the cutest baby and young child until he got to about eight. So he votes the cutest of all yes, and then Owee would be my favourite stepchild yeah, and then Finn would be my favourite biological child, son and tallest as well.
Speaker 1:Cover it it cover it at all. I love it. A very diplomatic answer, um, and I think that was good because it kind of gives a little summary of our family, because we do have a beautiful blended family. I think those who know us as a family, you know, obviously know that we are blended, but I think those from the outside you wouldn't actually know it's like I think everyone gets along so well, it's like we're all very close, we all have such good relationships together as well, which is such a testament to you and Cam, who's my stepdad, and your husband. Okay, so we'll keep going through the rapid fire, but where did you grow up?
Speaker 2:I grew up in Ireland, in Cork City, till I was 12. And then we, my whole family, moved to Australia at 12. And there was five in my family, sorry, five kids. So three girls, two boys, which is exactly the same family dynamic that I now have. Dad was in the army and we he retired from the army so we made a move to Australia because his brother was out here. So, yeah, so that was a. That was a big, big year.
Speaker 1:It is interesting that it's the two girls, three boys in both dynamics.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I know it's bizarre and I had my first child at virtually the same age as my mother had her first child Did you ever think you would have five children? No no. I thought I'd have two After you and Tabitha, I actually thought I was done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's a surprise.
Speaker 2:Life throws you a curveball.
Speaker 1:Or a few, five curveballs. I like it. Okay, what are you most famous for cooking in the family?
Speaker 2:You could probably answer that I would go lasagna. It Okay. What are you most famous for cooking in the family? You could probably answer that I would go lasagna. Definitely lasagna, probably my signature dish. I would, I would. Cooking is probably not what I am most proud of as a skillset, but but I I think I do a pretty main lasagna.
Speaker 1:You do a great lasagna and I think, like why I feel like I'm such a good cook is growing up, you would always say well, tabitha and Sharni, you're going to do a night each cooking a week and you get to choose the recipe. We'll go to the shops, you get to buy all the ingredients and you get to cook a meal. So I think that definitely inspired such a love for my cooking. And you know, we actually learned how to cook from very young age, which was cool.
Speaker 2:I didn't continue that as well through the three boys, but uh, we're, so we have. Uh, we have a different, um level of cooking skill.
Speaker 1:Yeah, with the three boys yeah, which is probably a safe bet if you didn't do that with the boys. Yeah, no, you probably have like macaroni cheese every night or something yeah, or a burnt house yes, um, okay. Next question, something you're most proud of recently oh, oh well, that's easy.
Speaker 2:I know me, I didn't do it. But uh, new, um new grandchild daisy. Uh, I'm thrilled and excited and um, uh, I just can't believe like grandparenting it is. I'm so looking forward to it because it's like you get all the upside but none of the downside. So I'm not responsible for how she turns out as a human being. I'm not responsible for making sure she does her homework. I'm just responsible for loving her and having a good time.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's the perfect, the perfect arrangement. Her and having a good time yes, it's the perfect, the perfect arrangement. Um, so, for context, my sister, tabitha, just had a baby last week, last Monday or early Tuesday morning, um, and then so she is what she was like five or six weeks ahead of me. So we're we're due in three or four weeks now. Um, and it was kind of funny because your um last child through school finished last year. So you've literally gone from being a parent of a high schooler finishing year 12, and then the next year straight into grandparent duties.
Speaker 2:Yes, I think I worked out the other day there was 20 years of schooling, 21 years of schooling between when you started school and when Jake finished school, so that's a lot of time to be doing pick-ups and drop-offs. So, yeah, Jake finished year 12 last year and yeah, so it's a different phase of life.
Speaker 1:And a lot of school fees.
Speaker 2:And a lot less school fees.
Speaker 1:Well, a lot of 20 years.
Speaker 2:Yes, a lot of school fees. Yeah Crazy.
Speaker 1:So why don't we wind back the clock to when you had me first and let's do a bit of like a rough timeline about like your career and like where you were with babies and everything? Um, obviously don't need to do like exact dates and whatever yeah, yeah yeah, so uh it's.
Speaker 2:I worked out the other day. It's probably about 37 years of working. So I will try and be brief, but there's probably a little bit of a journey and there's probably a few jobs that were key, pivotal points in kind of moving me to where I ended up.
Speaker 2:So I was skipping my first few jobs. But um, the the first sort of pivotal job was a computer trainer. So I used to train people on how to use word and excel and Microsoft access. Um, these days nobody really teaches people how to use those things. But um, in those days people used to come and do training programs. So what that probably taught me and that would have been in my early 20s was it taught me a lot about speaking in public and the confidence to be able to speak in public.
Speaker 2:And it also taught me how to deal with different personalities, because you would have eight people in a room. Some people would be really easy to deal with, some people would be very difficult, and so it gave me some insights on how to deal with different personalities. From there the different jobs morphed into instead of delivering training programs, at about 26, which was when you were born I was managing the trainers in the company and I was also managing sort of large rollouts for companies. So they might be rolling out a, you know, a specific training program computer system, new system and they might have had a thousand people to train. So that needed planning. So I put a project plan together. We'd use the trainers that we had in our company and we'd roll out that training for them.
Speaker 2:So that is probably pivotal to the role that I continued for most of my career, which was in change management. So I was always on the business side of process or technology change. So in the places that I worked, uh, yellow Pages. So I um, uh in 1999. Um, you and Tabs were both born at that stage. Um, I started at Yellow Pages and I probably spent well. I left there.
Speaker 2:When I was pregnant with Finn which was in 2005, so that's around about six years I again started as their national computer training manager, ended up working in projects and ended up basically managing the business side of change for all of the projects that that company was implementing. So I always tended to gravitate towards those types of roles. I then had Finn and I had a rather luxurious six months off and then I went to work for Accenture on Telstra Transformation. So again, project change. Then I went to work at NAB and I probably spent seven years at NAB. One of my favourite roles was my last role at NAB, which was managing.
Speaker 2:They had a centralised change team with about 200 change people. I had a business analysis team with about 500 people, but we did some really great and interesting stuff around change management. That was not just within the bank, but it's also sort of that capability across Australia, across Victoria, and we had a lot of groups that shared knowledge across different organisations. So that was a really, really good job. And then In 2017, they decided that they would decentralize the centralized team and I decided it was a good time to opt out. I didn't really want to work for one of the smaller kind of business units. I thought I would step out at this point and took a redundancy and, you know, rethought about what I wanted to do next.
Speaker 1:Which I kind of love and we're going to segue into this as well is that you've had having a family in corporate and sort of quote unquote climbing the corporate ladder. But then also the next part of your career that you stepped into was running a business with your husband and my stepdad Cam. So it's like you've actually had both worlds of having a business that has flexibility and like you can play golf on Fridays and all that sort of stuff, and then also like you've built your career and you've had a family while you're climbing the corporate ladder. And I also just have to put a little funny thing in here Whenever people asked us growing up what you did Tab and I would always just say she's a spy. Like, do you remember that?
Speaker 2:Well, who's to say?
Speaker 1:I wasn't, I know, but it's like you would say all these big words and change management and this and I don't know, and we're like she's just a spy, we know, we know it, um, but let's, let's go through. Like, how did you find the? How did you find balancing like a corporate career versus, um and family? And how did you balance family and like having a business?
Speaker 2:So let's take the two separate because I think one they're actually kind of slightly different answers. So if I think about corporate and it depends on the time, so when I had yourself and Tabitha was two two children, um, nick, your, your dad and I were we separated when you were about five, so it was reasonably early in my sort of career. Um, I was lucky that I had, and I would just say you know it takes a village to raise a family and, sorry, that's all right, a great village yeah, so I had um my mum, I had your grandma.
Speaker 2:Uh, on the Tim side I had an amazing nanny.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she gets so many shout outs on the podcast.
Speaker 2:I had uh, I had an ex-husband that was actually and even when we were married, was always quite supportive of whatever it was that I wanted to do and we shared custody 50-50. So in some ways that actually helped me to have the time to be able to have a career, because I had 50% of my time or one full week where I could travel, I could work late, I could do all of those things.
Speaker 2:But then the other week I had to sort of rein it back in. So when it was the like, just you and tabs and I was managing, I think that was. That was not a hard time. It was. You know. It had some tough times, like when I would forget to pick you up from school or get to some forms that you needed to do for whatever excursion it was.
Speaker 2:So there was, there was. You know, there was a lot. There was a lot of that that went on. But in terms of how I felt in, in managing that with the support that I had, I felt like it was a good time. And then, if I take when the boys were born, that was a really hard time. So we but it was a hard time because we were doing a lot. So Cam had stepped out of corporate. He wanted to spend more time with Owen. He was also trying to build his business. So there was not a lot of financial money coming in from his side because he was not drawing, you know, much of a wage. We were building our dream house on the beach down in Isle of Gale and we had two babies in quick succession.
Speaker 2:So we had Finn first and then we had Jake, and we and I was working full time virtually. I had six months off with Finn but then I was straight back into it working full time. Jake was born, I had six weeks off and I was pretty much back working part time, working up to full time now, and then I had you two, the two girls, so I call that my teenagers and toddlers years.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I would have to say they were the hardest years of my life. So I had teenage girls that needed my emotional support, um needed me to be there for them, were in some ways quite critical and hard to deal with.
Speaker 2:Uh, some what others and and and teenage girls can be judgy you know, on their mum, and so there was, you know, there was a little bit of that um happening, uh, and you would have late nights every weekend and then I would have early mornings because I'd be up, you know, at five or six or seven o'clock in the morning with um, with the kids. Uh, we, cam and I, were both working very hard. He was amazing because he just stepped into the space. He would do the washing, which I know. You'll look at me now and go. What, cam?
Speaker 2:I know be like what he would make sure that the lunches were done. He would pick the kids up, drop them at school. When Jake forgot his school uniform, oh sorry, sports uniform.
Speaker 2:Which is like every week, yeah, cam would leave work, go drop that off. So it was a real partnership. It was whatever needed to be done. We divided it amongst ourselves and it was. But I think you know it was a tough time for a few people in the family, but in between there we tried to make sure that we had good holidays. So, you know, we went to Europe, we went to Disneyland, we went on caravanning trips, we went on camping trips. I always tried, with you and Tabs, to spend we would try to spend like one weekend every four or five months together, just the three of us. So it was a chance to kind of reconnect and I really think that was really important for us. The boys took so much of my time. I felt like I didn't always have enough leftover for you guys, and so that special time was really meaningful.
Speaker 1:And we've continued that on Like I think that became a tradition for us that we would go away and Cam would. Cam, my stepdad and your husband would get a little bit jealous sometimes that he wouldn't get to come, but I think that that was really pivotal in keeping us as a, as a sort of connected, you know, like our, our relationship connected, and then it's like then you know you would have special times with the boys and like you'd have weekends away with cam and stuff. And I think what I'm hearing from a lot of mums is like it's so important to build your own relationships, not just as a family, but like as with the individual kids as well. Um, and yeah, it's.
Speaker 2:I didn't ask the answer, the third part of your question, which was um, how was it when you're running your own business? So I would say that running your own business has a different set of challenges. So when you work for a bigger company, when things go wrong whilst you care, it doesn't always fall back on you to absolutely fix whatever's going on, and it isn't your risk and it's not your financial impact.
Speaker 2:That's probably a key difference when you run your own business is when things go wrong. The buck stops with you. If there's risks, then the risks sit with you guys to actually manage. Having said that, the flexibility that has been able to come with running our own business is exactly what I needed. So the boys at the point that I joined CAM were just about. Finn, I think, had just started high school. Jake was just coming into high school and while some people might say they don't need you around as much, I knew from when you and Sh Shani were that age, that Mint tab, you're turning into grandma, someone that is like home at four o'clock or five o'clock rather than six o'clock or seven o'clock, so that you're kind of coming home not always to an empty house.
Speaker 2:So that flexibility. Our business starts early, finishes early, so most often I'd be home by 4 o'clock, and on a Friday we had, you know, shorter days still. So really, if I needed to go to school, to pick up the kids from school, if they were sick, if I needed to go to a sporting event or a parent-teacher meeting, it was just so much easier to organise.
Speaker 1:How would you say and I'd be interested to hear your answer on this how would you say that having babies and a family has, like, impacted your change and your ambition for, like, your career?
Speaker 2:I would say it didn't Cool. It didn't Cool. So I always feel like I've been a worky type of person. For example, when I took six months off when Tabitha was born, at the end of the six months I used to have competitions with myself to see how quickly I could clean the house, and let's see if I can do it in an hour and a half this week instead of an hour. So I just create these like mini challenges for myself and at that point I thought I think I need something a little more. So I think I've always been sort of a worky type person. I think I've also been quite a driven personality.
Speaker 2:I would say my, I've never planned my career. It's just I pick a job, I do it, I do it as well as I can, and then that takes me to another opportunity and another opportunity. And I think that my career in fact probably ended up being far better than I would have thought when I was 20 to where I was when I, you know, left NAB as general manager at like, I think I was close to 50. Yeah, so I don't think it stopped me. I don't think it um, it certainly me meant you had to work things differently, uh, and you had to have a process for, you know, just working around the different challenges that you have, but I don't think it stopped me from doing anything.
Speaker 1:I think my question was did it inspire you more in your career Sorry, that was. That was where I was going with still having a family inspire you more for your career, and maybe not.
Speaker 2:I don't think it. I don't think it inspired me more. I think my work was my work and my home was my home and my family life, and for a very long time I actually kept them quite segregated, which I learnt later in life wasn't always a great thing and I think sometimes you have to let people see the whole you. So when I was at work sometimes I was very, very focused at work and I learnt later in life that people appreciate seeing the mum at work as well as the work person at work.
Speaker 1:Can you unpack that a little bit more, Like was it about being vulnerable? That it was that, yeah it was so.
Speaker 2:Someone said to me once you need to consider the shadow that you cast. So if you are very, very focused at work and it's all about work and you don't take the time to show people that, for example, if I needed to leave work to go and pick up the kids and I was in a meeting with senior managers, I wouldn't say I'm going to go and pick my kids up.
Speaker 2:I would just say I have another meeting. I'm going to leave, sorry. What I learned later in life was it's important that you make things easier for the younger women coming through to make that acceptable. So the older me in my you know, late 40s, early 50s would say in a senior management meeting I have to go. I've got parent teacher interviews and then that makes it allowable for other people to do the same.
Speaker 2:And when I was at NAB. For the seven years that I was there, there was a real transition from being very stiff, corporate, to being much more open, to being flexible, and you know both males and females who are parents having flexibility to be able to manage their work around their family commitments.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and did you feel that, like the more that you opened up about that stuff, that you did see that flow in effect, that other people Okay, that's good, yeah opened up about?
Speaker 2:that stuff, that that you did see that flow and effect that other people. Okay, that's good, yeah, and people would, uh, people would kind of warm to me a lot more and they would open up to me a lot more.
Speaker 2:And I think, um, if I was to be honest, I think, um, in my early career I was very, uh, very driven, very direct, uh, and I suppose a bit of a forceful personality, and I learned in the latter part of my career that I needed to soften that and yeah, and so I changed that a lot in probably the last 10 years of my career. That's cool.
Speaker 1:And I think that that's such a cool thing that we can translate into our business as well. It's like we don't need to, you know, have all of our shit together. It's like we can say to our clients hey, I've got to run, I've got to breastfeed my baby. It's like we can use that vulnerability and that transparency as a bit of an asset, Um, and which paves the way for other women in business to do the same too, Like I would much prefer, you know, someone I'm working with to be like hey, I've got to go pick up my kids, rather than like, hey, I've got to go. You know, it just adds a bit of like authenticity to it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it means that everybody then is more understanding. So if you're doing that, then other people will go oh well, that's okay. If it's okay for Shani to do that, then it's okay for me to do that. And when you're in a more senior position, the people that are working for you they see you doing that and so therefore it's okay for them to do that as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so vulnerability and authenticity is a bit of a strategy. Is there any other, like tools that you lent on or strategies that you lent on through balancing business? You know, career and motherhood?
Speaker 2:There's a few things. So I would say lower your standards Okay, tell us more. So I would say lower your standards, okay.
Speaker 2:Tell us more, and what I mean by that is don't sweat the small stuff and this I didn't always do this very well at all but like it doesn't matter if your floor at home isn't clean, it doesn't matter if the washing's up to date, it doesn't matter if your house is not immaculate, it doesn't matter even if you have visitors over and you've got washing hanging on a clothes source, that doesn't really matter. And even with work, consider what's important to do, because working women, working parents but I probably observe a lot with working women are the most efficient women that you'll ever meet, because they get everything done in a very short space of time.
Speaker 2:So you won't find them dawdling and having coffees and, you know, standing and having idle chit chat and gossip sessions. They're there. They've got to be out the door at 4.30 or 5 o'clock so they're trying to squeeze as much as possible in.
Speaker 1:Would you say that's working mums, not working women?
Speaker 2:No, no, no. I would say more working mums, yeah, that's what I thought. Yeah, working mums, yeah. And then the other thing is consider what's required for the job. So often the last 20% of doing something takes the most time. So most often 80% is good to go and a lot of the jobs that I've had, the 20% is going to change anyway. So putting 100% in when a lot will shift and change, 80% is often good enough to go, unless of course you're a pilot or a surgeon and 100 is fully required.
Speaker 1:I like that good, good preface.
Speaker 2:I'm like glad we did that um so they probably be um the a couple of the key points um try not to um, uh, try not getting into the, the guilt that you feel as a parent, and and that will go both for men and for women uh, it is really easy to observe other people and think that they're doing an amazing job, but you're only seeing the surface, and the more that everybody shares how they're finding things tough, the more honest people can be, and then you won't feel like everybody is doing a much better job than you, because you'll know that Mary had a really shitty week last week or couldn't do her work because her baby was sick and was completely stressed out and was completely stressed out.
Speaker 2:So the more that openness happens, the guilt will start to dissipate because you won't feel like everybody's doing a much better job than you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so because I know we touched on mum guilt at the start, like what else do you have to kind of say on this? Because I know this has been a big piece, I'm sure a big piece for so many months.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say everyone suffers from it. It is a guilt that you feel like you don't do anything well. So you feel like you've got one person and that person is divided between a wife, a mother, and a work person, a friend, if you've got a friendship circle.
Speaker 2:And so you will often. I often felt like I wasn't doing any of those well. I felt like I wasn't being a good enough mum because I wasn't always able to do everything. I would forget stuff. You know the example, like you know, forgetting to pick you guys up from school. I would often forget things that, like it was book week and you know Jake was supposed to have an outfit, or Finn was supposed to have an outfit and you know they've rocked up at school. Or I found out the night before and then gone. You know crap. I've got to try and cobble something together.
Speaker 2:Then, with your, you feel like at work. You don't have enough time, so you want to be able to spend seven hours doing a presentation, but you've got an hour and a half, so you feel like you're at work. You're also not necessarily doing as well as you want to. As a wife, you're again short on time, and with your friends you're short on time. You don't have as much time to catch up. So across all spans of your life, you're feeling guilty or bad because you um, you're not doing as well as you can what.
Speaker 2:I would say, though, is, if I could have looked forward to how amazing my children were going to be, um, I would have felt a lot better yeah, but that's why hindsight is a beautiful thing.
Speaker 1:We don't have the gift of hindsight at the moment.
Speaker 2:So probably one of the other suggestions is doing everything for your kids is not always a good thing. Being making them or not being able to make their lunches or not being able to remember everything for them and not doing everything for them builds a really strong, independent, resilient children who will make their own lunches, get themselves to school, They'll ride their bikes to work, They'll catch the train. They'll do everything themselves. So when they get to being a grownup, um, they're actually really well balanced um independent um strong people.
Speaker 2:So I feel like if I knew how you guys are going to turn out um I I probably would have worried a lot less.
Speaker 1:And we can only know that now but like you know, and I think you know all, all of us have turned out the way that we have because we have had a level of independence from you know, very from a young, from a young age. It's like we were packing our lunches and and I think like that, um, there's a lot of trust that is built when it's like you have trust in us that we can get our, get ourselves to school and that we can pack our lunches and that we can, you know, do the things that we need to do. And I would argue that we wouldn't have turned out the way that we have if we didn't have that level of trust and independence. You know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and again, a large part of how you have turned out is the village that brings you up. And again, you know, with the boys, I had a great nanny's shout out, Sally Rose.
Speaker 1:Yes, and a great nanny's shout out Sally Rose.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I also had Cam's family. His mum and dad are amazing. They would take the kids on school holidays. They would take them camping for a week or up to Mansfield for a week and like without that support it would certainly have been an awful lot harder.
Speaker 1:How did you go like receiving support in the early days of being a mum? Because I know for you know, and I know for me. It's like I've always been someone who just takes pride in being able to do it all myself. But then it's like that shift of like oh, I actually can't do it all myself now. How did you find that shift?
Speaker 2:No, I was. I was always very open to taking help, and I think that is what I would be strongly encouraging be open to taking help, ask for help and take help when it's offered, because it is what is going to make your life more manageable and a lot easier. Don't be a martyr, because there's no medals for martyrs.
Speaker 1:There is not. Do you have any parting wisdom or is there anything that you wish you did differently? You know balancing career, business, motherhood.
Speaker 2:You know, I sometimes there's lots of things that you could reflect on and say I wish I hadn't done that, but you're making the best decision at the time based on the circumstances. So I couldn't pick anything particular that I would say I wish I had done differently. What I would say is I think I tried to do too much. I think I felt it was important that I squeezed 150% into every day, and I think that was a mistake.
Speaker 1:I love it and it's so. You like, I feel like you'd get home from work and then it'd be like it'd be cleaning the house or vacuuming or doing something and um. But you know that that is who you are. You're such a driven, ambitious person.
Speaker 2:You're never, you're never going to do be okay with just a hundred, yeah, so I, I, you know in hindsight if I could have carved out 10% of my day or 5% of my day. That is just for you. Like you know, if you want to go for a swim or go for a walk or just do a little something, sit in, you know. Sit in a room with your headphones on and meditate for five minutes. Find some space for you is what I think I could have done differently.
Speaker 1:Do you feel that you're doing that in life now, like I feel, like the way that you're living now you're finding more of that balance.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, a lot more. A lot more now, and I feel like the next 10 years when I have another grandchild coming along, and hopefully more after that, I really want to be able to enjoy that. I want to be present for it. I want to be there.
Speaker 1:You know I've already been working on Cam so that he understands that I have worked hard my whole life Um I'm owed about four maternity leaves.
Speaker 2:I figure I can. Uh, I can start to wind down a little bit earlier.
Speaker 1:But the real question is, will you ever properly wind down? Cause it's like even when you said, with tabs, with tabs, maternity leave, you're like, oh I, I'm bored.
Speaker 2:Now I want to do something yeah, and even when I left nab, uh, I was supposed to be winding down because I, yeah, and that didn't really work um so who knows, who knows what the world and the next chapter will bring? But a lot of it. A lot of time, uh, will be with my family and my grandkids that's's pretty special. Want to travel, want to do lots of things, you know, with the family, with my husband, with Cam. There's lots of things we want to do.
Speaker 1:I love it. Well, it has been so fun to talk with you today and, for anyone listening, mum is a three. I'm pretty sure in your human design you're the same as me. You're a three five projector aren't you?
Speaker 2:I think so.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the same as me. You're a three five projector, aren't you? Yeah, I think so. It's been a while since I remember looking at it. Yes, very similar, but I'm pretty sure, because even when you're saying about your career, how you've just kind of like surrendered to it and it's just kind of taken on its own evolution, um, that feels very similar to me. So, yeah, for those listening, three five projector, um, but I have, yeah, absolutely loved chatting with you and, yeah, it's been fun and I hope the listeners, I hope you guys loved it as well. I'm sure you can follow mum on Instagram. She's probably got you know 100,000 followers.
Speaker 2:I've got about five photos on there.
Speaker 1:She does love a hashtag, though. Every photo that goes up has a series of customised hashtags for the photo. So, yeah, it's been such a pleasure and I get called out if I don't A hundred percent. You've got a standard to uphold Well. I love you lots, mum, and thank you for coming on the show.
Speaker 2:I love you too, darling.
Speaker 1:Thanks, and thank you everyone for tuning in. We will see you on the next episode.
