When Your Company No Longer Fits You - Sedge Beswick on Identity, Fear and Hard Decisions

0:00Sedge Beswick built her career by doing what most won't, taking risks and breaking the rules. From leading social at ASOS to being the founder of Scene Connects, growing it into a£24 million agency. She's proof that bold ideas drive big results. Now a consultant, advisor and speaker, Sedge helps brands and entrepreneurs grow sustainably. Sedge, welcome to the show. So, so pleased that you're coming on. And I would love to know, very excited to find out, for you, where have you had the courage to change in your life? I have the easiest answer to this because I feel like in my career, I have very much done what I feel like you're told and supposed to do, which is just continue in that kind of hamster wheel.

0:45And when I got to being pregnant with my daughter, going through a private equity deal and the business that I founded, I took this moment of kind of reflection, which sounds quite deep, but I was like, something's got to give here. And I decided to step away from the business that I founded, it was doing really well. It wasn't for any kind of reason financially or anything like that for the business. It was continuing to go from strength to strength. But the private equity deal, having my daughter, it gave me this opportunity to kind of pause and really think about what was right for me, what was right for the business, what was right for the team.

1:20And people were shocked. I don't think people do it very often when they not only step down as CEO, but also then decide to leave the business. I sold my shares and absolutely kind of two, three years on was the right decision for all parties. Wow. I want to take you back just to that moment when, when did you know, when did that decision start coming into your head that this is what I think I'm going to need to do? Because you say that's big and I think most people stick it out and feel they should stay. Take me back to that moment when that started to happen for you. Yeah, the stick it out thing is huge for me.

1:53So I had started the private equity process, I had found out that I was pregnant quite early in and I decided to tell everyone at 12 weeks because for me, honesty, integrity were hugely part of what my values were. And I also felt like it gave me a really good opportunity to find out about who I was getting in bed with to how they would react to the founder being pregnant. But that process was very much like you're in it. So I didn't stop. And I mean, I really didn't stop because I was in the US setting up our American arm. I was obviously still looking after the UK and I was doing the deal and I was pregnant.

2:30And for me, it was just like, if I just get through the next week, if I get through the next week, the deal will be done. I can then get ready for maternity leave. I can then, I can then, I can then. And it wasn't until my first day back in the office, getting on that tube, I just sobbed uncontrollably and I'm tough. So like, it takes a lot to kind of really knock me down. And the nanny had started the day before. I was in obviously a really fortunate position that I could afford a nanny because there's so many people that can't. And I just thought, why am I paying this woman to do the job that I think I'm really good at and the job that I really want to be doing right now?

3:06And I've now had another daughter. I only want two because they're really full on and it's really hard. But I knew I wanted a second. And again, I was kind of like, what is going to happen here? I'm just going to continue on this cycle. all of a sudden my kids will be you know tattooed and pierced and left home and never want to see me again and I what what was that all for and so that tube journey felt like I was on the tube for about five hours and that was when for me everything started to just circle in my mind of something has to give and what does this look like moving forward because the way I ran the business the way that I operated and that's not even because I founded the business when I worked at Red Bull It was like I founded Red Bull when I worked at ASOS.

3:48It was like I was the CEO of ASOS. I get all in career wise. And that just isn't possible for me with having kids. Yeah. I just want to ask about this all in. Is this all in because you just love it and you love the career? Or was it all in because you had something to prove or it came from an energy of trying to be enough? Where did that, what's that all in for you? It's a great question. The honest answer is I don't know. I genuinely love working and I find like working and careers is kind of like a bit of a gamification. The more you put in, the more you get out, you can see the next levels that you can work your way up to and into.

4:27And I think having financial targets and investor, all of that stuff just meant like, where else can we get to? How can we ladder this up? How can we kind of complete this piece and see what's kind of around the corner and what's next? And I also think when you're in that cycle again it's just almost impossible to see the wood from the trees and to know when to just go god I'm knackered and actually this isn't the right thing anymore so I don't think there's any kind of you know deep rooted reasoning other than like I genuinely love work and I used to compete as a trampolinist I think you get quite competitive when you've been I mean athletes a strong word when it's trampolining but like I just I used to train three times a week I'd compete most weekends there is something about that routine and that rigor that then I just swapped from trampolining into a career and I started working I think when I was like 15.

5:21Wow so what I want to do first is I'm quite curious to know you before you left I mean we had this courage to change and then we'll go into that bit so it's incredibly impressive like what you set up and what you've done and the places that you've worked. What enabled your success? What do you think it is within you or the way you led or the mistakes you had to do to figure stuff out? Could you just give me a bit of an understanding of you in that time of how you did what you did? Yeah, I don't really believe in luck, but I always think there's an element of luck, which is I got into social really early and no one was really doing social.

6:00There was never anyone to learn from or there was never any kind of rule book that you could follow. Obviously, if you open like any social platform, it's like download my blue book, my blueprint, and this is here and this is there. That just wasn't a thing. So I was really ballsy. I was really confident. I was young and no one could really challenge me on what it was that I was going in to do. And everyone just thought I was some kid sitting on Facebook all day, but then I could prove that what I was doing was working, that we were driving success, that we were building communities, that we were converting customers.

6:34And then social started to kind of get taken seriously. And there were a lot of eyeballs on it. Still incredibly frustrating because everywhere I've worked, it's been like my 13 year old daughter says that they didn't like this Instagram post or, you know, such and such as child has said. And it's this kind of, you know, you're young, so you should be in social, you should know social. But again, like the reality two years, I just grafted hard. And because there was no one to learn from, I just wanted to kind of find out all of the answers. And I wanted to know from an algorithmic perspective, what we could do to ASOS to kind of swap and change and be bigger than a Topshop account or to get more sales through different influencers that we partnered with.

7:12And that's obviously then what led me into setting up my business. I did have an investor from the get go. So in some respects, because I had it easy because I didn't have to, you know, start with no salary. And I had an office space for a year that was paid for. And they had a finance director that I could tap into that could help me with keeping companies house up to date, making sure people were paying me. And so what that freed me up to do was just really double down on what I was good at and kind of almost finding out what that sounds a bit cheesy, but what my superpower was that I could then go in and sell and scale um but the confidence bit then I was incredibly confident there wasn't too many people doing what I was doing and I think that made it easier as well do you think were you confident as a child yeah so it's just always been a natural thing for you to be quite confident yeah I it's quite funny now I've obviously got kids I see like people have said to me in the past like god I was really scared of you and then I got to know you and I'm like what I'm the least scariest person in the world I just want to like chat to people and I just want to do things and make things happen.

8:16And I look at my three-year-old and I'm like, oh, I get it. Because actually when you look around the room and you've got these other kids that are kind of hiding behind their mom and it takes a bit of time to warm up, I don't have that with Mari. She just walks into any room and she would just say ridiculous things, do ridiculous things. And at that age, it's a magnet. Other kids go to her. She's really playful. She's really like, she includes everyone. She will always find and identify the kid that is on their own or that is shy. Or we just have this amazing thing at nursery where she moved up to preschool and one of the key workers welled up when I picked her up and they were like there's a blind child and naturally because the child is blind and they're three they tend to just leave the child to it and your daughter went up and the kid said I've got poorly eyes I can't see things and she was like this is great I can go and get things for you I'll be your helper what do you want what do you need and like as a parent like unbelievable but I think as well I was uh my parents didn't have me young in the sense of like they're in their teens but I my parents did have me younger than any of their friends and I was always just around adults so if I wanted to be heard I just had to make sure that my voice was known and then you start to pick up on like adult mannerisms and you know I had very horrendous jokes now on reflection I think I did from my dad's rugby mates yeah and I think I can probably still remember some of them but I was you know six seven at on holiday resorts like standing on tables telling these jokes that 40 year old men couldn't really get away with now.

9:44But yeah, that definitely gave me the foundations. And then I obviously had to get onto a trampoline with 200, 300 eyeballs looking at me in a leotard. So, you know, I had to hairspray my leotard so my arse cheeks didn't pop out. So again, I think that when you've got going through ages where people are shy, like shy, hiding their bodies. I just had to kind of go against the norm and just give it a good go, basically. Just a quick reminder, if you haven't already, to please hit the like button and subscribe to the channel. It's a small action that makes a big difference. You'll be the first to know when new episodes drop and your support helps us create meaningful content for leaders like you.

10:27I'd also love to hear from you. So if you have any thoughts, questions or ideas, pop them into the comments and if you're curious about how my leadership coaching or training could support you or your team just drop me a dm and we'll set up a call thanks so much now let's get back to the episode you're the second person i've heard actually in terms of another very very successful male friend that i've got and one of his key things he said with his confidence he spent a lot of his childhood around adults oh interesting that's the second time i've heard that pattern of actually that really helped to just build that confidence of being able to hold a conversation put yourself out there just yeah just quite an interesting insight that you just shared there because has it ever got you in trouble in being this confident yes tell all probably more times it's the usual and again I think we're in this TikTok world where beforehand you were quite anything that people brought up to you that you were in trouble for it didn't feel quite right whereas now it's like fuck you like if you're going to tell that about me I'm going to tell my story on TikTok.

11:26I'm going to make sure it's known. But mine was the really obvious stuff. I was constantly told I was too blunt. I was too direct. It was Sedg's way or the highway. And I used to always struggle with that because it was like, well, I was the youngest person at my level at ASOS. And I had a team of 32 people when I was, I don't know, 25. So it depended upon who you were talking to. And I've got to be honest, most of the male senior leadership were brilliant and really supportive and they could see the numbers behind what we were doing. Social wasn't this like cute thing where you put someone in a unicorn t-shirt and write a nice little caption about it.

12:04I had hard metrics to show what we were doing on social was driving return for the business. And I did find, and it's fashion, it's retail, it is naturally quite a competitive bitchy space. It was more the female leaders that were trying to, and in many cases succeeding, knocking my confidence and then again when I set up the business I kind of had this eureka moment sounds quite extreme but of like oh I actually wouldn't be in a position to be able to run a business to be able to have a investor if I had actually listened to everything that everyone had told me before if I had kind of curved my edges to fit in and yeah I definitely didn't always do things the right way and I definitely upset people along the way which was never ever the intention.

12:51Like I have this really good friend of mine now. She was our Russian social media manager at ASOS. She was about 12, I think it was years older than me. And she had come from Net-a-Porter. She had run multiple social platforms and she was reporting into me. And I thought that was the most ridiculous thing on the earth, on earth, because she, in my eyes, was so much more successful than me. So my way of managing at ASOS was like, I've got a lot of people that are straight out of school, straight out of uni that are learning. So I need to give them everything that I possibly have to nurture, develop, help them understand the working world, social.

13:27And then I've got this woman over here who is just bossing it and I'm learning from her. And we had this brilliant one-to-one where she burst into tears and was like, you don't like me, you're not supporting me, you're not helping me. And I was like, oh, it never even occurred to me that different people obviously need different types of managers, that they need different levels of support. And again, I was probably 22, 23. I was really early into managing. And that conversation really stuck with me. I actually hired her again when I set up the business. I still speak to her now. And I think for both of us, it was a bit of, again, a reflection point of like, you have to adapt your style.

14:03You have to adapt the way that you lead to support the person that you're managing. That is the way around that you're going to be able to run and operate a successful business, a successful team. And that's something I kind of always tried to take with me. It sounds like it's what I'm hearing is the word assumptions come up for me. We can make too many assumptions. Oh, they're older. They're bossing it. They don't really need me. Yes. But if we go every single human being, all they want is to feel seen. Yeah. And I had a similar thing is I was given, or actually even when I was 15, I was running a restaurant and managing people older than me and then having to like give them their tips.

14:38And it was weird to start with. It's horrible, isn't it? It is weird. Yeah. And then when I set up project management at Joshua, again, I had three people that again, been in the business years and suddenly were reporting into me and you do feel a little bit like what do you do with this and then yeah I think yeah the only thing I learned is just build that relationship don't try and be the boss yes just build a relationship get to know them first and let's build respect first yeah and then then I think then that that it gets cemented versus going oh they don't need me just because they've got more experience but it is hard I also think people who um peers you got your peers and then you suddenly become the boss of what was your peer that's hard have you had that asos because everyone is really matey they had a pub that was next to the office that they called 4.0 because that was where the meeting rooms ended we had 3 p.m finishes on a friday i didn't have a partner i didn't have a mortgage so i was just there every single friday having a wonderful time getting through the fact that we survived another week at ASOS that was really 24-7 and full on as a place to work.

15:40Like you learn a lot in a very short space of time and you put the hours in and again, you really grafted. So that pub was just like where you could just let it, let all your steam kind of blow out. And it was really fun. But again, everyone was friends. And, you know, I would say it was very easy to become friends with Nick Robertson, the founder of ASOS, Nick B, who was then the CFO who stepped into the CEO, because that was just the nature of ASOS at that time. It was very startup, but exactly to that. Then when there was a problem, that's, it's hard and it's difficult. And even if from a broader business sense, like I was there once when we had a couple of profit warnings in the space of a year and you can feel like just the way that you walk into the business, everything felt different.

16:26And when you're that young and naive, it's like, well, what's happening here? Are they going to get rid of me? Do they hate me? What's, and it's not personal. There's a difference between professional and personal. But when you're still a founder led business at that time, it did everything felt personal. Yeah. So it sounds like you learned a lot working at ASOS. So I want to know from doing that and being part of like a really supportive company, the founder, when you suddenly went, I can be a founder. What was that moment where you're like, I'm going to back me? I honestly don't know that I ever did.

16:56I got very lucky. I met the guy who became my investor for like literally 15 minutes in Soho House, which is obviously where all great business meetings happen. And I actually had gone in around consulting for one of the other agencies that he had. And I am, I think this probably comes across, but very passionate, very enthusiastic. I get very excited by everything. And so influencer wasn't really a thing. And there weren't many agencies and there definitely wasn't the kind of move of where we are now with every agency doing a little bit of creator, a little bit of influencer. And I think I probably terrified him into just being like, okay, she's talking about something.

17:33I don't really know what it is, but I think she can kind of make a go of it. And for me, I always anticipated with my career, if I was to be really honest, that one day I would be a very senior level of Nike, probably living in Portland. And so everything that I was doing in my career was getting me one step closer to working for Nike. And the reason for that is like, I am, I don't think you get loyalty like this anymore, but I am brand obsessed. And so for me, I couldn't even grapple with the concept of working at an agency and splitting that kind of enthusiasm across multiple brands. But I knew my time at ASOS was up.

18:10I actually was thought I was going to Instagram and I met this guy and was like, sod it, I'll just give it a go. And Instagram were phenomenal because the woman, Lauren, who was my final interview, very generic question. Are you interviewing anywhere else? And I was like, well, now you mention it. I had this weird conversation with this guy yesterday and this is where we got to. And she was American. I won't do the accent, but she was like, girl, get out of here. She was like, take it. I will give you a project. And if you hate it, I'll hire you in three months time and we will pause the recruitment of this position.

18:37So I had this like double safety buffer where it's unbelievable. And I didn't even know her surname she was based in the New York office and then when I started to go out to New York more with connects a friend of mine Jeff who works Instagram I was like you have to help me like find this woman because essentially this one person who was a stranger changed the course of my entire life and I just feel like I need to like give her a hug say thank you give her some flowers I don't know what you're supposed to do what's like the etiquette and I was like she won't even remember me and he he was like do you know how many Laurens are in the database here and I I was like, yeah, good point.

19:12But I did pinpoint all these weird nuances of her life and her career that had come up in this interview. And she was just kind of like, yeah, so what? I'd give the same advice to anyone. It wasn't about you. It wasn't anything personal. It was just doing the right thing. But when I got into running the business, I think one of the things that is hardest running a service-led business is building a pipeline. And one of the things I really took for granted was the, I'm going to use this word, but like the community that I had built at ASOS. And because I left ASOS as the CEO founder was stepping down, a lot of people were leaving at the same time.

19:50And as soon as I then put on LinkedIn, like it's probably even Instagram, let's be honest, I'm that odd, being like, this is what I'm doing now. I had like 10 calls that day and there were people that knew me, they knew my mannerisms, they knew the way that I did things, They knew the results I'd had at ASOS. So that time to convert was so quick and easy. So from month one, we were profitable. And then I was like, oh, this is fun. I can definitely do this. I can definitely run a business. And how big did it grow in the end? Too big for me. And especially for my experience, which is again, why I think it was important to know when to step down.

20:22And I think that with everything now, when it's time to leave a party, when it's time to leave a friendship, a relationship, that was the kind of big bit for me is that we're a 64 people business operating across two markets and we've been running at about a two mil EBIT for like three years consecutively. I wasn't the best person to be CEO of that business anymore. But when, again, when you're in it, you just, I wasn't even having the conversation with myself that someone else might ever come in, let alone how quickly someone else did come in. Because that's, I think that's, say, courageous in itself to recognize when you've done your bit and and if you say if you want that company then to get bigger actually is it me to take it I think that's incredibly courageous to have that self-awareness and that just that self-honesty to do that because again you see so many people go it's mine I'm not going to let it go I'm going to go in the trenches and and unfortunately that's where you see so many businesses fall down yeah because you're not willing to have that confrontation with yourself is this right for me so how long was the time between you not being CEO to then going I'm actually completely leaving the company?

21:27I basically came back to work after about four months of having my daughter, but I was never really off. And I think that's one of the biggest mistakes that I made was I told everyone in the business, I'll be back in five minutes or I'm here if you need me. And what I really wish I had done was plan as if I was never returning. Because what that would have done is give me choice. I could have come back after a month. I could have come back after three months, but I gave myself this, well, I gave the team the mentality of, I said, is just picking up emails so just picking up whatsapp just ask for her opinion because she might be back next week and so if she's back next week she'll want it done how she thinks or wants it kind of done so why do you think you did that i couldn't imagine not working right okay um and because we had been through the deal process and i pulled i pulled out the deal process which i think is really important to emphasize literally about two weeks before my due date and i should have done it way sooner.

22:21But as I said at the start, I was just in this cycle of something's going to give, it's going to happen, it's going to happen, it's going to happen. They chipped the price essentially twice. And I called them on a Saturday morning at like 8am, binned off the advisors. I wasn't going through them. I called them directly. And actually the guy I spoke to, I think he was genuinely relieved. He was like, I'm having arguments with my wife about this because you are so heavily pregnant. And I was like, this is the insane thing. There is a hard deadline here. Like I don't, I just had this vision of being in a labor ward, like with my legs spread eagle, signing paperwork to give away essentially my business.

22:56And again, there were so many opportunities and so many times when I did say, can we just pause this and pick this up the other side? And everyone around you goes, no, we're so close. We're so close. Just keep going. Just keep going. And the idea was that I would come back from maternity leave, pick up the deal and follow through with getting that deal done. And I definitely fell out of love with the business through that process. It was brutal. And I really had my confidence knocked in every way you could possibly imagine. And I was exhausted. My eldest did not sleep. So then you're trying to make these unbelievably huge decisions that impact other people's lives based on being sleep deprived.

23:34And that was what really forced me into thinking about where I was, what I wanted. And the idea was that I would, because I knew I wanted a second, the idea was that I would come back, we would hire a CEO who was a seasoned player who'd been there, done that, that could really grow the business into kind of phase two. And I could step onto the board and really focus on what I was good at. And I was really good at two things. I knew influencer, inside out, back to front. I interrogated our clients around what was working, what wasn't working, what they needed more of, the challenges that they were facing, because I didn't have all of the data that I did when I was at an ASOS, when I was at a Red Bull.

24:12And I was really good at selling because I was really good at what I did. And again, through that deal process, I was just in very boring boardrooms the entire time. So when we were looking at the pipeline, it was like, well, where is your next big eBay? Where's your next Nike? And I was like, you're literally not letting me do what I'm good at but instead you're making me go and view 20 offices because you think it's really important that I decide which one's the right office at one point it was like you need to work out which chairs to sit on and again I'm like eight months pregnant like how I'm pretty sure there's other people that can test out which and in the end I made my husband do it I was like I'll just tell them I'm choosing the chair you go and decide so when I then came back and we hired a really great guy to be CEO I wasn't part of that interview process because my view was very much like I am not working cheat to jail with him.

25:01My role changes. So actually the senior leadership team, the investors, they need to be comfortable and happy with him. But when I came back, I really struggled to watch someone else drive my car. I'm not surprised. And I knew that business and I knew every single client down to the penny. So when you're sitting in a boardroom and someone's like, I think we're going to hit this EBIT and this client's going to deliver this, that and the other. And you're like, I know they won't. And there was one client in particular, I remember sitting in my first board meeting and again I had a baby so I didn't really want to be there I also hadn't got my head around someone else leading this board meeting and I sat there and thought how much am I going to argue this because I know to the penny what that client is going to spend and I also know that they're going to go for one of our competitors because everyone is talking about it and they did they went with the competitor and I kind of again internally was a bit like smug I knew that was right but equally I own 40 % this business so I don't want to be right yeah and after six months that's when I then spoke to the board and I said I actually think it's time I sell my shares and I just have a complete clean slate and I just then focus on kind of the same way I position the business as kind of phase two what my phase two is life after running the business so you're now out I'm out how do you feel brilliant really it's again I love the business I love working I love the gamification of winning new clients I always say winning breeds winning the more you won the more we the team are excited and the more bigger the better we would win but I couldn't have ran that life and run that agency and been a good mom yeah so is it really going back to what's important to you was there a bit I guess I'm thinking from a personal sort of lens as well I'm thinking of like changing some lanes shutting out noise yeah of what society says you should do yep and thing and just going I really need to listen to my heart and my gut right now and just go forward every single person husband included thought that I was bonkers and it was like you've built it you've done the hard bit you've got your salary you get your dividends you've got the team like actually be CEO or managing director or non-exec director and just let other people do their roles but again I had been so invested and so like that was my all my 24-7 and I really wanted to like I had my first daughter when I was 32 I didn't have it when I was 22 like I had given myself that decade of my career to really earn my stripes to work hard to get myself to a specific like salary level and where I could have my house and I could have my daughter and I was like I just want to be present for it and so I forced myself to really take a month off which isn't really anything at all and it also wasn't a month off because I was there doing the night feeds and cleaning up the sick and the poo and everything that comes with a completely different job but a really tough but really fun job and I was like right now I'm going to double down on what are my values what do I want to be doing and what is going to make me enjoy working but also make sure that if I want to do drop off and pick up every single day at nursery that I can I haven't worked a Friday since Mari my eldest has been here because I was like Friday is like my role as head of entertainment I am gonna just again with both the kids like whatever it is we will just have a really great time at home with play-doh making paw patrol or going to the cinema or whatever it is like that is my day for my kids and everyone that I work with knows you can email me but I won't be replying on whatsapp I won't be picking up calls whereas Monday to Thursday I'm fine and I'm happy with it but like I do feel like I have I've never you'll never get balance but I've definitely got my priorities straight and I still work I still want to work I still need to work but I feel like I really know my kids which is lovely it's amazing it is amazing what did you need to let go of or to create this space because it it sounds like your identity has evolved.

29:06You've gone from this identity of founder, successful business, CEO, and then your identity is evolved now more to mum. And then I know you're setting up other stuff. Was there any sort of emotional roller coaster of that letting go and creating space for a new identity? Yeah, because from the age of 15, when I started working, it was all about what's the biggest title that you can get? Because the title is the thing that shows that you are credible in your industry and your space. And it shows that you're kind of, again, working up that career ladder and all of a sudden I was like the thing I'm really not going to care about is the title and I still set myself because I'm a nerd like financial targets for the year and profit margins for jobs that I work on because that is just intuitively like it's ingrained in me now um but I really wanted to do a lot of the stuff that you could never find time for that I knew would be, again, the stuff that supported values versus financial.

30:03So like, as an example, I teach kids how to read. It's something that I'd wanted to do. The charity is called Bookmark Charity. I'd wanted to do it forever. And when I was at ASOS, you were working 11, 12 hour days. You couldn't just be like, there's two 30 minute slots a week. I'm not going to go to that, you know, buyers meeting or planning meeting. You just couldn't do it. And I was an employee. And then when I had the business, wherever the client was, that's where I was whatever country I was so I couldn't do it so I was like that is the thing that I'm going to put into my diary and everything else so I have in my diary color-coded kids drop off kids pick up and then my um Harper is the person I teach to read I've got those two slots in term time and everything and it's fascinating how easily you can actually plan your diary around things when they're non-negotiables yep um but I went through a mass I did to the question go through a massive identity crisis more so as well I found like becoming a mom I used to go out and entertain clients breakfast lunch dinner leave the house whenever I wanted get back whenever I wanted if I needed to go to Amsterdam for Nike New York for whoever I could just go and I barely had to tell anyone but obviously all of a sudden you can't just leave the house and none of your clothes fit you that is the bit no one warned me about when you're you know you're feeling like you're getting good for you want to look good feel good when you're going in to meet a new client and you're like squeezing these jeans in um and you can't wear dresses anymore because you're bending over after kids and it's not appropriate to flash i've talked about arse cheeks twice this is weird um can't flash so again i felt like my whole wardrobe got rewritten as well as like my whole and i know it's such a superficial thing it's important but it was important and rewriting and rewiring like who I was at home.

31:48My husband's seen more of me since we've had kids than he's ever seen me the entire time that we were together. So I'm like at home, I've dressed differently, I feel different, but it is, I've got through the other side of it. And I think one of the things I struggled with is I really thought that I'd quit. And I think again, competing at a young age, you just, you're, it's so ingrained again, that you like, um, quitters never win and winners never quit. Like that was in my DNA from such a young age. So then stepping away from this thing that was going from success to success, financially growing, felt like I had quit.

32:25And I kept saying to my brother-in-law, I'll just quit. I have quit. And he was like, no, you haven't. You have given yourself security. You have sold your shares. You have built something that has given you the freedom of choice. And that is such an amazing position to be in. So then I was like, well, if I haven't quit, what is the word? And I was like, actually, I've pivoted. I've pivoted my career and then again being a nerd like wrote out what my framework was for pivoting so like pause interrogate values you know and I write that down I come back to it every six months because there is no one else that I'm accountable to or for um and I just check is everything that I am saying yes to aligned to this because it's so easy to fall in a trap of well that's a really big check so I'll just do it and then that's this so it just gets me to this next hurdle um and I basically took an entire year maternity this time and I did have support and I do have someone that helps me like clean the house does our ironing that meant that I had time to still work too but I was like amazing I have done a whole year of like being mum to both my kids and it has been unbelievable I can't even begin to say how much resonates and I think will resonate with so many people listening of what you've just said there in terms of I think that validation we get from having a title that validation from you know that next check that security or that means I'm worthwhile people want to work with me and that thing the one the way it plays out for me sometimes if I was like oh I'd like to write a book I'd like to write a TED talk and I'm like am I just saying those things because that is the next thing or to do versus how much do I want to and I do I want to put the effort that I know is going to be needed to do that and the same thing is I'm rejigging my year next year to do a bit less and I want to do have a day a week while I'm learning I want to go and do incredible foundation course and things like that but there's been that whole tussle with am I going back into my comfort zone and is this fear making me not go bigger or is it because actually I've done the business for seven years I now want to go and do something else yeah and what were you doing it all for yeah and it's such a pull sometimes to go is am I doing this because I want to do it as am I doing it because I'm fearful of doing that and it's like no what is it and I think we yeah and I think because we have so much self-judgment and how other people are going to judge us and what society says you should do versus just going do you know what next year I'd really love to have a day to do education a day to hang out with my family I don't know how much longer I got my mom my stepdad and everyone for three days working in the business yeah but I know I'm gonna have to change quite a lot and say no to quite a lot of things to make that happen but it's giving you permission yeah exactly the saying no is fascinating because when I when you're in house and you're junior you say yes to every single thing and you do whatever you're told to do so that was again very drummed into me and then when I had the agency I was like oh god every time I say yes to things I'm jumping on calls with people that I kind of used to know from here or there and they're just actually taking free advice and so then I had to work out how to really qualify a call and that got easier over time we do influencer we've got minimum spends we've got things that we do and I was ruthless with my diary because I was like I could spend time over here or I could be winning you know the next big whale for the business and impacting the success of the business but then when I'm in this position now where I have this portfolio career, there's so many things that are in this gray area of trying to work out, should I say yes?