Why We Need to Talk About Death, Sex & Money More Than Ever | Charlotte Pearce

0:00People just don't talk about death, money or sex anywhere near enough. In fact, there is nothing more human than sex and death. Setting up this impact recently is, how many people were you leading at 19? There was 150 people in my team and then there was 30 ,000 people around the world. The president before me, I don't know what he saw in me, but he just went, I think you're the next president. I'm like, what is, what is this?

0:21Charlotte Pearce:Today's guest is an entrepreneur who is redefining human connection, Charlotte Pearce, CEO and founder of InkPact. She is a bold voice for women's empowerment and sexuality, inspiring people to live life on their own terms. Leadership is very humbling because sometimes you think this is the way, this is right. Often that is not the right way and often you are the person in the way. But how have you learned or how have you had to evolve your leadership as you've grown? I couldn't have created the business I have today if I hadn't done my woman's sexuality work. I can say that for a fact. Charlotte, welcome to the show.

0:56I'm so looking forward to this conversation because for me the minute we met I was just like you for me are walking courage and what you've done and I know what we're going to talk about is so inspiring which is why for you I actually just want to start with where did you find the courage to back yourself because I know so young you started in business yeah well thank you for saying that Joanna I mean I gosh when when you think about courage I don't think I've ever properly thought I was a courageous person like not consciously um I just kind of wake up and do things and and have dreams for things and have big plans but I guess I would never have called it courage it would just be getting out of bed and living um so but I think from a very young age I I saw so my dad was a very influential person in uh growing up and I think because I saw him working in the corporate world and then having the courage to leave the corporate world and start his own business and having like him not around very much and then having it around I don't know that felt like a courageous thing to see although maybe you wouldn't have used those words at the time and I remember him handing me this book called Rich Dad Poor Dad when I was about 13 maybe um and we were used to listen to Achiever's Edge tapes in the car um and I don't know I just thought oh my gosh there's a whole world out there and you can do things and be things and build things and um my love for personal development uh started by listening to those tapes so I remember the first couple of times I said to my dad oh turn that rubbish off like please put like karang on I love rock music I put karang on and then eventually I was actually no no turn it back to Achiever's Edge I want to hear what he has to say today and so that really like sparked this oh what else can I learn about myself and people and personal development and I think as my very first business I started I was about maybe 16 15 16 and I started selling makeup on eBay like buy it for less sell it for more like package it a bit better and I was like oh my god this is like the rush I got from like selling a blusher online was amazing um and then kind of when I went to university I then yeah was a big part of a social impact business and to then have the rush in a different way it's like I get to set up this business I get to work with these great people but I also get to impact lives across the world I feel like it's my like my life drug it's like and I just want to then do more and more and more of it and I'm kind of over the years become obsessed with this uh building businesses and creating life my way and doing doing the things that um you know impact people in the world even if it's just a little bit so I don't know if I've ever looked at it as being courageous I've just looked at it as like really fun for me to build these things and to learn these things and like every time I learn something new about myself or human beings I'm like oh my that's amazing how who could I tell you want to share it and and then building these companies has just become yeah my kind of my my life drug in a very positive way it's so interesting because there's so many people that have done so well and when I asked them you know what what was it and they said at a young age I listened to these tapes and some of it's the Tony Robbins or and there's something isn't it in that 13 and 14 year old getting exposed and I think it was even Tony Robbins himself got exposed very young to those tapes yeah there's something about maybe the way your brain absorbs this information that is really is setting you up for yeah life and what you can do but I guess if if you think about it our brains are forming as teenagers and they're quite challenging years in many ways I think all of us will look back and be like oh gosh I'm glad I'm through that teenage year part but I think if you're having this positive influence whoever it's coming from whether it's a parent or a family member or a mentor or these tapes or now you know podcasts yeah um I think they're helping form you as a person and that can only be a good thing because all this I didn't get access to all of this really till I was about 40 I really my whole journey started then but I'm like wow what maybe I could have done if I got access to them earliest I'm just thinking of any parent listening to this now it's never too early to get your kids into this personal development space even if they say no like oh no don't put that on or like oh I don't want to listen to these podcasts again I think just put them on and like they're by osmosis they're kind of having it around them and you're listening to them so I think it's a a really good thing that we can do as parents.

5:13So where does your drive come from because I think it was selling blusher on eBay then 19 setting up this impact business and how many people were you leading at 19? So yes I ran um there's a company called Anactus and there's lots of different Anactus's all over the country and I became um kind of the equivalent of a CEO there and there was 150 people uh students in my team and then there was 30 000 people around the world that were impacted by the various different businesses and projects they ran and I did have that moment one day where I woke up and like what am I doing like who am I to be running this company like can barely look after myself and all these people um you know and and then it was really that that led me I literally physically I ended up going into a room with a bunch of coaches because It was a family friend, ran this coaching company.

6:02And it was in that room that my company Inkpats that I've ran ever since got born out of that. And it's just this curiosity, just never knowing what the day was around mindset and vision and values of an entrepreneur. And I was like, oh, that sounds cool. I'll go to that. I might help me with this imposter syndrome I'm getting. And then, you know, 10, nearly 12 years later, the company I'm running and the people I've met and everything I've done since was like the sliding door moment. if I hadn't have walked into that room I wouldn't have started Inkpat as as it is now so you just never know but one thing I do know is that when I get called to or or there is something that feels like I should go to an event I always go because I never know what's going to be there if I feel like I should just meet a person I'll always go meet them there's just a there's like an intuitive feeling that this could be important you're going to show up yeah so I still my brain still being a bit blown by 1950 students you're leading there is there anybody you said you had imposter syndrome what about self-belief was that there i think i was really fortunate so the way that enacting these companies work is um it's a social impact business so it has to make money it's not a charity it has to make money and then students turn the money that you make into social projects and businesses and there's a whole group of students that run it and then there's a whole committee that lead it and effectively it's mirroring the like a ceo it's mirroring a cfo it's mirroring a boardroom to give students real life experience running a business so it was actually the kind of ceo or the um the president they call it because it's uh it's a part of an american company and the president before me i don't know what he saw in me but he just went i think i'd been involved in like a couple of weeks or something and he just went i think you're the next president and i was like i've been here for like a week so it's like so that's like going into a junior role and someone going you're the next CEO and and he just I don't know he's been yeah he was really influential in my life because he just said you're the next president you're the next CEO and and I just kind of went okay then great I like I didn't overthink it I just went with it he taught me like I learned all the stuff about the business like um I just kind of threw myself into it and I don't exactly know why and at the time I'm not sure I knew why but I felt good running it and it felt like a great thing to do for the planet and for for people and for me and for everyone and so I think when someone something feels that good you just do it and then yeah I ended up you know speaking on stage in front of 6 000 people I think in Washington and then in Cancun and um yeah it really did change my life and I ended up I got invited by the Russian Presidential Academy at the time to go and do a talk on young entrepreneurs in Russia and it was like I was I think I was 20 21 maybe and it was like live translated in the audience and you've got all these headsets and I'm like what is what is this what is happening to my life and it's been a series of those moments since but I think just following my gut around this business is a good thing to build and it's doing good for people and I and I feel like I'm learning can only be a good thing and am I right in saying impact is now 10 years old yeah yeah so uh maybe a little bit older 11 years fly by um but yes I started it at when I was at university had this idea well actually in that room they're having the idea that it's really hard to contact busy CEOs um emails aren't working this was 10 years ago it's definitely not working now um in the same way and um they love sending handwritten letters but no one wanted to write hundreds of handwritten letters it's quite hard and maybe they didn't have good handwriting because I ran this social impact business I was like there's people all across the world who'd love to handwrite some letters and get paid for it it was at the time where delivery and uber were kind of big and i was like surely some tech could solve this you could create a platform you could have people all around the world in different languages handwriting letters for people and to be honest we're probably a bit early 10 11 years ago and actually in the last two three years i think um the results have got even better for our handwritten notes we've got thousands of scribes it's been it's been an amazing roller coaster journey has not always been easy has not necessarily gone on the trajectory that I thought when I started it but um I'm really grateful because I've grown with the business and it's grown with me and we've gone on our different like you know ups and downs together and yeah I'm really I'm really proud of what we've built over the last 11 years well congratulations thank you now I always love to dig into the roller coaster yes so what have you learned or how have you had to evolve your leadership as you've grown oh gosh um leadership is very humbling because sometimes you think especially you know driven a type strong people you think this is the way this is right often that is not the right way and often you are the person in the way and I think on the roller coaster for me the best thing I've ever done is just to always have a coach a therapist a team of advisors mentors just everyone to keep me on the ground and humble because I think um we can be really sure that we think a way isn't the right way and it might start the right way and then you have to pivot and change and be adaptable and I think I've had lots of moments where we're like oh yeah nope I was wrong we should move on and do something differently or you know I haven't got it right all the time but I have always been curious and open and I think one of the benefits of starting your business young is you can't know everything so I've surrounded myself with really clever people really smart people some of the best entrepreneurs in the world from day one because I couldn't know everything and I'm so glad I did that because it has kept me going kept me learning kept me evolving um and it's okay to kind of reinvent things so yes we are technically the same business legal entity 11 years later but we are absolutely not the same business and particularly in the last 12 18 months have really shaken things up and are building for the next 10 11 years keep going it's interesting what you're just saying there because I've just been listening to Brené Brown on high performance love her and they said like how has she got to where she is and she said and she said actually with leadership she can't believe again leadership is one of the most high performing things you need to get but it's one of the only high performing things in the world where coaching isn't a given yeah you know she said could you imagine like a basketball team or a football team which again high performance is expected not having coaches you have several coaches yeah so why is it leadership at the moment it's not a given that to become that high performing you need help and guidance and she was saying how she's got a coach she's got a mentor and she's got a therapist and she said you need all three because all three do different things it's interesting you know the success you've had that you have had those three yeah and I've had them since I was really young I mean I I will always have a life coach and I will always have a therapist and I even for me like like health and nutrition like I can't take on all that information in my head I've got enough information in my head about other things I like someone to just tell me what I need to do where i need to be where i need to go um and so for me having like a health and nutritional coach is really important too so having having all of those coaches i think we all need an army behind us yeah we need help i don't mean leadership but just as human beings we need help we can't do this alone so i've said it before i've said it again i'll say on every podcast everyone needs a coach always and forever not just when things are bad or not just when things are good just all the time that's sustainability isn't it yeah just a quick reminder 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Thanks so much. now let's get back to the episode so where have you had those have you got any of the stories where those challenges have really hit that people might be able to resonate with gosh oh yes I probably have lots and lots of um lots of times that I could talk about here um there's a couple of really defining ones so I'll talk about last year because it's been a really hard year um um so I'll set the scene so I'm pregnant with my second little boy um and had a really difficult end to the pregnancy like I couldn't walk properly and like you know just for someone that's really quite active and out there and doing things like the end of the pregnancy was quite a challenge um I can't remember what it's called but where your hips stopped to stop stop working a little bit because of the baby and I couldn't really walk and I was feeling a bit like meh about it um and then I was planning on taking a couple like you know a little bit of maternity leave not much but a little bit um so ozai my little boy he was born you know he's a couple of weeks old um and things just start to go very wrong from here so uh my kind of my key team member who was taking over for maternity leave got offered uh another role which is like a significant role for her an absolutely right thing to do for her to take it but suddenly like a couple of weeks in i need to come back from maternity leave um so that was already you know you've got the hormones I think I have a three or four week old baby at this point and it's just a lot so I'm kind of come back in I then find out that like our biggest uh one of our biggest client that's hadn't paid us on time we've got a massive cash flow issue so there I am kind of rushing back we've got this cash flow issue we have to make a lots of the team redundant and it's a really horrible situation I'm there with my hormones and everything's all over the place and I've got this like three four year or four week old baby and I'm like oh my gosh everything's not going to to plan here um you know take out you know a loan personally guaranteed and kind of put my family under that pressure to save it because I know that we're going to come through this um and then the team that get made redundant one of them thinks it's a personal attack so then starts you know the lawsuit start and everything and you're like oh my gosh like now I've got a lawsuit and a baby and we're running out of money and oh my gosh and my hormones are everywhere and it just felt like a lot um and then we get a phone call so my I have two stepkids um they're incredible they're JJ and flow and they're 17 18 and um I've known them since they're about nine and ten and they've been in my life uh for a long time I love them dearly but we were effectively weekend weekend parents in in lots of ways um and Zoe who's a their amazing mom who I got on with really well um uh they mainly lived with her and then we get a phone call and we say they say oh mom's ill she's gone into hospital and she's got stomach pain um and this is like maybe gone on a couple of weeks so they're just going to check it out and then we get a call on the Monday and they say mom's got cancer so we're like okay this is going to be a roller coaster but we're here we're here for you we're here for her and then by Thursday she died and it was like it was a Thursday night of the Friday morning and it I just I can't even explain like in words what that was like and especially like for the for the kids so JJ had already been spending more time hours but Flo is living with her mom and all of a sudden we're packing up her stuff and moving her to our house and like and it just it just didn't feel real it felt really surreal and I think when all that stuff was going on anyway none of that mattered anymore because we just had to be there for the kids and you know it's a lot for my husband Luke to process that his his ex is no longer here he's not got his co-parent we've not got our co-parent we used to co-parent together and then all of a sudden life has completely changed and so I just in that moment I just needed to be there for the kids and I've got a little boy called Iroh and then had this little baby so we've gone from effectively we had one kid to four kids in the house and that's all we had to focus on but also my kid my my my business is my other kid it's my other baby and I've been you know growing that for 11 years and um and I can't let that go either so in the midst of all of this happening I have to keep the business alive and I have to keep these kids safe and feel loved and you know and held them in their grief and it's a lot for my husband it's a lot for all of us and I honestly standing here they don't exactly know how we got through it but I would say we not only have got through it you know I was speaking to the kids about this recently but Zoe's death has allowed us to live in a different way and we're actually all really grateful for that you know she lived life to the full when you know she was with us so she was here and it she's shown all of us how it can be gone in an instant like not knowing you're ill to being gone in like four days is insane how old was she um 45 46 and like and so you just have to look at life and go what do I really want out of it what do I really want for myself my family my life my career and so it put it all in perspective and so to start with I was like that's it I'm going to get rid of the business I'm going to sell it or I'm going to do something I'm going to hand it to someone else I don't know I just need it gone so I can focus on the kids and then I don't know spending time with them and being with them and like looking at all of them and being like what can I do for you I was like I need to live life really authentically as me and you know none of this hiding a little bit none of this like partly doing things I'm gonna use Zoe's death to kind of be the death of the old me too and like I'm gonna really unapologetically live life now and it shouldn't take a death to do that I've tried to do that for ages but I hadn't I was fully holding on to like expectations and things and so I don't know we got together as a family and we just said we have to live life um and actually I want to build this amazing great empire of a company and you know I can do that and I'm going to turn it around and we're going to build a future and we're going to build a great family life here and we're going to have all of you under this roof and it's actually going to be great and there's been lots of moments where I look at all the four kids together and I'm really grateful because we wouldn't have had all four kids under the roof and so you know would never wish this on the kids I would never wish on anyone but there has been some amazing love and learning out of all of it and you know I really have Zoe to thank for that because I'm not sure how long it would have taken me to get here otherwise so in death I think there can be this beauty almost in realising how fragile life is but also realising how incredible life is and how we have the opportunity to create it and recreate it any one time so I decided I want to recreate my business in a different way we're going to recreate this family unit in a different way I'm going to recreate me a little bit in a different way and I'm just going to stop being so apologetic for being me and I want the kids to be on that journey with me and they've been you know they've been incredible thank you for sharing that um I can just see how what did what you've been on and what that's good and that was I don't say thank you for sharing it because I do think sometimes we're uncomfortable talking about death yeah and also to be able to be comfortable to say actually a lot of joy yeah can come from death which I don't think we sometimes feel comfortable talking about absolutely and you say it resonates a lot with me I can imagine your stepchildren I was 18 my brother was 15 when we lost our father so I know how much that can really well it does as you said totally changes your life it changes and who you become yeah you become with um yourself sitting in front of me though I want to dig into your the effect it had on you yeah when you said like hiding I want to be unapologetically me what is this and also like the death of the old you but what is this new you what is different so I think the best thing I can I was always like I stand on stage and be like live a life you love and and um you know you can I've talked about creating and recreating your life at any time but there's something about death that puts life into such perspective which is like I nearly do lots of these things fully but I'd some I don't always fully do it like for example like I I want people to talk about death more because when I've brought it up with the kids and they feel awkward bringing it up with people but they want to talk about it they're very emotionally intelligent kids and when when you talk about death everyone gets a bit like oh and the same and I'm gonna put two things here together which is interesting but had the same when I often talk about sexuality and orgasms with people they do this whole like oh god I can't like how can we talk about sexuality and sex it's like people just don't talk about death money or sex anywhere near enough and so when people and it's big parts of being human in fact there is nothing more human than sex and death quite frankly they are literally how humans are born and die but we don't talk about it and so what ends up happening is when you need to talk about it because someone big in your life has died everyone it's like a you've like a grenade goes off in the room when you mention oh you know someone be like oh how are the kids and i'll be like oh actually you know their mom just passed away it's like boom no one wants to talk about it everyone's really awkward and you don't get a conversation so i really want to be an advocate for talking about the really hard things we should be talking about death we should be talking about sex and we should be talking about money it's all part of like life and growing up and and being us um so i just want to talk about it as much as possible and there's something about talking about it that frees you up like it gets you know it's quite cathartic to talk about these things so yeah i remember um at 18 very quick to say i lost my father but very quickly lost all my friends because no one knew what to say to me and i was alone for so long that even me and my brother effectively became best mates because it's just us two going clubbing together and stuff because people just didn't know and if i tried to talk about my dad you could just see the i don't like do i need to hug her do i do and it's like no i just want to talk about him because he did exist yeah i'm not about to burst into tears I just want to talk for grief the best thing to do is to talk and express it and I love there's lots of cultures that celebrate death and they talk about the joy in death but if I I still find it now if I talk about the joy in in in death everyone's like there's no joy in death and it's like well actually there is there is joy there is also equally heartbreak and pain and and it's and there's lots of moments so grief just is overwhelming but it is also beautiful and and I think and there's so many parallels between running a business and having kids and and death and and sex and money there's all these parallels that we can we are rounded people and I have this concept from the boardroom to the bedroom and everywhere in between we should we should be able to pick up books and read it about any of like any of those topics we should also be able to go on um retreats and workshops so like I once went on a sexuality workshop I've had to been on many sexuality workshops I'm a big uh big believer in in looking at and exploring and uncovering you and your sexuality and your needs and your desires and everything like that but it's just so frowned upon still to do these things uh people joke oh you're going on an orgy this weekend again it's like no it's like a sexuality like retreat it's actually very healing and lovely and and just the world hasn't quite got there yet but in lots of other cultures this is celebrated people are doing you know i when when a woman gets her period in some countries it's celebrated and i'm like why are we not why are we not doing this we're like shamed by it i know i did cover it up oh my god like barris yeah we're ashamed about sex we're ashamed about death we shouldn't be ashamed about any of these things and i really want to like pull that mask back and you know i couldn't have created the business i have today if i hadn't done my woman's sexuality work i can actually say i can say that for a fact that i could not be the kind of the powerful decisive you know confident person I am if I hadn't looked at some of my past traumas and healed some of those to do with my body and myself and I don't know if many leaders are talking about their past you know traumas and their sexuality in in relation to them as leaders and of course we're all humans we're all people so leaders aren't any different um they should be looking at these things too so yeah it's interesting because I say my brain just went to we say to people like don't bring your whole self to work because work is just one part of your job but actually in a leadership position you can't not be you are all of you yeah and if there's parts of you that's been locked away and hasn't been explored yeah and I always say that your team can only grow to the limit of you yeah absolutely and that there's a responsibility as a leader to want to keep growing because so many people are looking as I say they hit a ceiling if you stop growing in terms for you what was is there any ones you can talk about where there was this unlock where you went oh my gosh I couldn't do that before but because I spent the time exploring my sexuality has unlocked this so people listening can actually get an idea of ah this is what you mean if they're not quite sure yeah so actually I know this sounds like this big like sexuality unlock it but it's actually the tiny moment so day to day they're like really small moments but also the big on Sue but it's I'm going into a room and particularly I've raised we've raised a couple of million pounds over the years and often I'll be going to a room with an investor that happened to be a male investor and I've there is this natural like oh like kind of shrinking that I would do or like oh I can't be my fully my fully expressed self because you know people have told me I'm too much or I'm this or I'm that right and as women we get this all the time and I just know i've seen literally working with hundreds and hundreds of women that i've done as part of this um group that i'm part of it's like actually women in their most self-expressed form is probably what the world needs more than ever right now and so once i talk about sexuality i don't mean it from just a sex point of view i mean it from like a fully empowered liberated point of view and i think people sometimes uh merge the two together like sexuality is only actual sex it's not it's using your full essence in your in your day-to-day life as well as in your sexuality and your life But I think just walking into a room of, let's say, an investor or I'm doing a pitch, I want to bring my fully self-aware, electric personality self out onto that stage or into that meeting.

27:27And a part of that is my sexuality. A part of that is my intelligence. And I've got all these different parts of us that I want to bring to that meeting. And so the more I unlocked my sexuality, the more I unlocked my confidence, the more I think I held myself differently, the more I kind of was just me. and so over the years that's happened and then particularly in the last year I've just been like nope this is me and we're you know doing a little bit of a forward a forward rebrand of the company and you know it's in the world of direct mail which you know hasn't necessarily been the sexiest thing in the world and so one of my missions is to make direct mail sexy again and I will stand up there in what I feel sexy in my leather jacket my heels you know I'll bring all of me to a conversation around direct mail because it doesn't matter if I'm talking about direct mail or I'm talking about I don't know orgasms there we go let's go again like I want to be I want to be this like fully expressed version of myself who feels free to talk about whatever it is whether it's stamps or orgasms who cares I want to be this expressed version of me where I don't feel I have to hold myself back and I think if every woman had even this like glimmer and I'm not perfect all the time gosh I you know absolutely nowhere near but I'm on this journey of trying to show up fully expressed in whatever it is that I'm doing and not shrink myself in any way and not be apologetic for who I am or like all my goals and recently I did the same with money and I was always I didn't like to talk about money or how much money I wanted to make and and then recently I've been like no it's a part of the same thing like I would talk to my friends about how much money I make now how much money I want to make the goals for the business and that and it's money and there's something unlocking this talking about money has really helped so I think sexuality money leadership like desire all of it is all wrapped up in the same thing so I think for any

29:16Charlotte Pearce:woman out there that is thinking oh my gosh how do I unlock this I literally just giving it a bit more focus like how often do we think about our self-expression even let alone our sexual self expression what do we really want out of life and how do you get like pleasure in little moments and how do you bring this like this amazing life that we live and make sure we're looking at every part of it not just work and family which are the two that we often do very important and also the things that you go that's safe yeah because it's so weird it's like the last um i don't say this to my husband yeah the last couple of days i've just got this burning feeling in me and i don't know where it's coming from could be perimenopausal who knows but i just want to break shit yeah i I just want to break some stuff up and just re-experiment and have another go.

30:04But there's also, I've got this other little safe part of me going, oh, no, no, you don't want to do that. You know, this is safe. Why would you want to mess all this up? And we're just like, no, I just want to kind of, what would happen if I just put a grenade under this? Oh, my gosh. How would I, you know? What you've just described is, so the last 12 months, I described to my coach as like, I feel like there's been a grenade on the house and we have to build it again. But then the other day I was like, oh, my God, I'm so glad that grenade hit our house. Because now we can build it this way, learning everything we've learned that I couldn't have built 10 years ago.

30:34So I do this amazing spin class on the beach. This incredible lady called Elaine does the power on the beach. And we spin and we look at the beach while she talks in her head. And she says some amazing phrases. You know, one of them is like, you survived 100 % of your worst days. And you're like, oh my gosh, I really have. And then she has one. I'm going to get this wrong. I'm really sorry, Elaine. but it's something around you know the the storms the storms are here to clear your path for a reason so why don't you just stand and embrace the storm knowing that you know what comes next is is meant for you and you're like oh my gosh it's so true and you know there's lots of other ones and sometimes i think oh they're a bit cheesy but they're always right like around you know flowers can't grow without the rain and the storms and the water and we can't so sometimes you have to break stuff down and if we don't do it ourselves then the universe i believe does it's to show it so like I feel something's coming one way or the other and actually in the middle of it doesn't always feel like it so like in the middle of last year I did not feel like this was going to be a good thing for us and standing what feels like a bit on the other side is oh my god I'm so glad that lots of these things happened that kind of like obliterated our life yeah because I wouldn't have the life now if that hadn't happened so and it's that self-trust isn't it to go that actually I know I'm a resourceful person yeah you've got so much evidence that you're a resourceful person it's also that trust that when these grenades hit is life they do yeah we can handle you know you can handle it and it's not about thinking it's going to be hard it's not fear is going to be there but it's that moment of I suppose that's where I resonated with that the sense of courage is that moment of it is within you that you can no matter what keep putting one step in front of the other yeah however hard that step is sometimes that step then does get easier as as you keep moving forward and sometimes it's actually a step backwards or maybe a lot of steps backwards some sideways and the the thing i'd put the way i was able to survive the last year with everything happening um was really that i took everything off the table so like nothing was a given anymore the path was allowed to completely change if it needed to and i removed all my goals i removed all my visions i removed everything and i read this amazing book called the surrender experiment which I'd highly recommend listening to and it's this guy's journey around just letting life put things in front of you rather than us keep pushing things in a direction and just seeing so I said I'm going to do my own surrender experiment from September to December and I'm just gonna I'm gonna have no goals and I have no expectations I'm gonna put everything I thought I knew to one side and I'm just gonna be really open-minded to anything that comes my way and I have now acquired like several businesses I have gone from wanting to kind of sell my business and like maybe this isn't for me anymore to building the empire that I always wanted to build um I'm really I'm standing on stages and disrupting the direct mail industry and uh creating a new a new way of looking at this concept this direct mail physical mail that's been around for a long time going nope I'm going to stand on stage I'm going to completely disrupt it in fact I don't think we should call it direct mail anymore that's as far as we're going it's called physical mail and it's the future and it needs to look like this and I don't know if my path hadn't been cleared I'm not sure I'd have stood in as Brené Brown in the arena in that way I would have been clouded in a way by things that had come before and so sometimes as horrible as it is I think the path needs to be cleared for us sometimes and to such an extent it feels unfair but actually it is the perfect thing to happen for the next stage of our journey and I'm just trying to put myself in the position of a CEO at the moment in a big organization who's just being fired stuff all the time at the moment what you're doing with ai how are you cutting costs how you're going to get more efficient how you're going to keep the shareholders happy and you've just got this noise surrounding you all the time yeah if they're listening going this sounds brilliant but how the hell do i surrender when i've just got everyone expecting so much from me what would be a small thing that they could do i think um i think we should always start with our uh the bit you can control first so like you your activities what you focus on and so I'm not saying just stop work and get fired because that is not good for anyone but I'm saying what are the little things you can do that you can try a mini surrender experiment on so it might be something in your personal life or at home or one bit of work that is really taking up a lot of mental load and space just go you know what I know I want it done this way and this that and the other but actually if I just surrender it a little bit and let someone else do something let's just see what will happen and it might be a disaster and you know the surrender experiment is an experiment for a reason but I think there's just something around I was describing I felt like I was pushing a boulder running my business at times feels like pushing a boulder upstream uphill blindfolded being shot at the kind of thing like it felt like it felt like it was it was so hard heavy and heavy and now and in times I'm sure we've all felt it it feels like you're just in the flow and it's just things are working everything's working and so for that CEO or that person like how do you just get a little bit more in the flow like if something's really really hard and you feel like you're pushing that boulder uphill that's the bit that you should try and surrender on if something's working don't surrender on that that's fine leave it as it is but if there's something that feels really heavy and you've tried things and it's not going somewhere and you're forcing something maybe like stop the force and so yeah because you've experienced burnout haven't you yeah a couple of times well I think I have like a a little weekly burnout of some kind then a little bit of a monthly burnout one yearly burnout um and then I've had one big burnout um where my hair started falling out and um kind of got big cysts on my body and in different hospitals so I think I work at a very fast pace um which is a blessing and a curse and um I need things to be moving and I'm really impatient and that is a really great thing for getting a business going and that's a really great thing for growing things it's not a really great thing for your body and it's not a really great thing for your mental health and so not a great thing for my husband or anyone around me either um and so I think it's really I have these mini burnouts and actually it's better that they happen in a mini way and I have to take a little weekly reset and um then then going to like a proper burnout like I had before so yeah I I think there is a blessing and a curse to be this driven and I've had to manage it and I'm still I'm learning how to manage it along the way has the surrender side of it if you say like you're not pushing that heavy boulder up now and you're giving yourself more flow has that helped with your drive and your pace at all going into that surrender space so it's really interesting so I'm really finding it hard to articulate this in a way so there's this feeling of like i'm having to push things uphill and they're really different difficult and it's overwhelmed and then right now things feel like they're flowing but it's not that i'm not busy i'm like i mean there's lots of things to do they're just not overwhelming me in the doing of them does that make sense so like i feel like uh i was the best words i could use the other day to my husband oh i feel like i'm good stressed and he's like i don't know the difference in good stress and bad stress to him stress is just stressed but i was trying to explain it as like this feels like a good level of momentum and movement where I still feel like I've got a handle on everything I think that overwhelm and that kind of real breakdown comes and it's just too much and you can't even make a decision anymore and you're overwhelmed a complete different way and so I think that's slightly good stress and bad stress is how I determine it and not only I intuitively know oh this is the kind of stress that's really going to hurt my body here versus this is quite positively propelling me forward but I'm doing lots of things I think and it could be different levels for different people yeah absolutely and what stress someone one person out yeah like I I get incredibly stressed in a hospital or in a car park of a hospital even just someone if I see an ambulance I have a panic attack but I can stand on stage in front of 6 000 people and talk perfectly happily other people that will be the other way around like there's lots of people who wouldn't stand on stage and they'd get very stressed by that and so we all just have to find what our stresses are and work within the realms of them and not let them overtake um our dreams and our desires and what we what we want and what we want to do and i think i go back to coaching again um having a coach and having someone you can talk to about these things really really helps just to clear this like a spring clean of the system yeah and not just when things are stressed i feel like it's like a maintenance if you don't have regular coaching then you're more likely to i'm more likely to have that burnout um and if i'm not doing regular exercise and I want to like very basic stuff which we all know but when you're in it is really actually very difficult to keep up question I've just thought to ask you how do you do with comparison does that can you manage it or does that activate something in you um generally comparison like spurs me towards my goals and dreams faster like I'm like oh my gosh that person was able to do this I can do that too let's go but I do have the odd one which will like hit some kind of trigger for me like oh my god they're there and i'm not there and oh my gosh i need to be there now like um i particularly have it in in business and i started my business very young and got you know quite a lot of awards very young and then you find yourself aging and you find yourself with kids and you go oh my god i'm not a young entrepreneur anymore when do i well how long can i hold on to this title for and so there's this i've always had this time is running out thing in a way like i have to do this i have to be successful now i'm getting i'm getting better at that because ultimately like one what's young two who cares and three like you could be an entrepreneur anytime at any age why did I think I had to be young um so I'm letting that one go but I did particularly have a have a like a young entrepreneur thing that would show me I'm no younger young no younger no longer young anymore it's a tongue twister god um so I have this age thing but I'm sure we all have something yeah um which uh like triggers us but generally I'll see someone doing really well but oh my gosh that just shows me what I can now do I think again for being a young entrepreneur starting I had to look at other people and go oh you're doing this oh I can do that too I had to see people um and that's why I think it's so important particularly um for young women to see female entrepreneurs female everything so that they know that that's possible for them um and it's possible for them to have whatever they want in life and and that too 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 I'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 and in a way i think that's healthy because i do think we've gone through a period where fantastic what women have done but we do see now a high level of burnout yeah in women and it's how do we get that balance now remember i read an article where i felt so bad for this woman this mother was just her daughter was just like the last thing i ever want to be is you because she but the mother had spent so long trying to show you can have it all you can work you can do it and then the daughter's like well I never saw you did it and it's like oh gosh where's that is there a sweet spot or something but where we can have success and success again means something different to everybody and I think that's where comparison gets me because I've always been ambitious and driven but I've noticed actually as I've got a bit older and a little bit more surrounded by death and I've got quite a few friends that unfortunately are terminal you actually in a way it's made me go actually I want to ramp up life more than business yeah and I don't like it like the so so different but then it's that letting go of oh no but I've my identity has been so wrapped in business how do I let go of that identity to be like I'm going to play golf with my mom today yeah and that's been a huge letting go process I remember taking my little boy Iroh to a um to a baby class and it was like this outdoor bunny in the woods baby class and um I think he was like six or seven weeks old and I was asking if anyone knew of a nanny or any help because I you know I'm kind of I'm back at work and I need some help and they're like oh my gosh he's so young how can you think about going work to work you can't get this time back and I remember in that moment just being like I could do one of two things here I could feel really guilty about this or I can just realize that this is what I want to do and this is what's going to make me happy and this is what I want to do in this moment right now and I've had to do it a couple of times again recently which is I just I think my advice to everyone on the comparison bit is you just got to own it and there is no more comparison I've ever felt than actually being a mum let's say with being an entrepreneur there is just like this mum does this this one bakes all the time this one holds his play dates and I just I can't be all of those things I'm an awful cook I can't cook anything really um and like you just have to know and so for me I kind of make a few jokes about it but I just know that for me I go to work or I'm you know with my kids and we have fun at weekends and I'm at work a lot and sometimes I'm away during the week and that's the life I've chosen for us right now and I can change it at any time but I'm not going to be the one the mum cooking at bake sales because I can't and I don't and I don't have the capacity to but I will show up in different ways and so like I think I've just had to get okay with I can't be the do-it-all mom because it's not possible for me to do that with my business and be away from the kids and then spend time with the kids and then have to like manage and organize and cook and everything so I've decided to drop the cooking I don't cook in our house at all I'm very fortunate that we have a lovely au pair who does our cooking for us um and so that when I am home I can be super present with the kids or I'm away at work but no way could I do everything it's not I haven't got a clean house we've got you know I can't clean the house I can't do the cooking but I can do these things and you know there are there are other things that I have to drop so I think it's just us working out um for us that might not be right for someone else like those moms at that group loved being home with their kids and that's what made them really happy but for me work made me really happy then spending great time at the weekends with my kids and it's okay for all of those things and anything in between and for anyone to judge anyone else on that is just outrageous in my opinion everyone should just pick whatever lane they want to be in that's perfectly fine like yeah we shouldn't judge anyone else for their choices in any way and also shouldn't judge ourselves just as long as we're choosing powerfully yeah because unfortunately the judge is the biggest saboteur we all have yeah and as you go back to your wanting to self-expression and stuff it's the judge unfortunately can shrink us yeah and also because we're judging ourselves but then we're worried about the judgment the other person's having on us so this judge is just so big i know And that's why I think acceptance is so powerful.

45:16I think if we can accept, like, I've had to go through a big thing of accepting this is me. I'm probably not the high heels leather jacket person on stage. That's not me. I'd be on stage probably in my little trainers. Yeah. More like as if someone you're about to maybe just go out for coffee with. Yeah. And it's like, do you know what? That is who I am. Yeah. Because I used to look at all these, like, code of wear, and I'm like, oh, they're wearing this, they're doing this. I'm like, it's just not me. I know. So stop beating yourself up for something that doesn't feel right inside. Yeah. um and I think that's where I for me courage is so important it is just that courage to be you yeah but then that courage to be happy being you yeah yeah and I think I think it feels like oh I just have to be me and I have to be like this and this is me and I'm going to be like this forever but what I love how I love to think about it whether it's your business yourself whatever is I might change my mind in a day six months six years who knows I might not want to be wearing my leather jacket and my like my boots and stuff on on my ripped jeans on stage I might want to change and that's okay too and I what I love about this is I always imagine life is a piece of paper and like you write your like intentions and your goals whatever on it um or have it blank or whatever and then you just turn it over and I know that sounds really simplistic and that's because it is you can't turn your whole life over but in theory you can change every little part of it if you wanted to so in theory you can change all of it um and so it's not easy to turn your life over completely but it is kind of easy to turn each stage over at a time if you if it wasn't serving you anymore and so for me I don't know about anyone else but it brings me a lot of comfort knowing I can change these things and the only person who's stopping me changing any of it is me at all the time and and that's kind of really freeing for me to know like I can change if I don't want to wear my leather jacket that's fine but if I wanted to wear a dress tomorrow that's also fine and just I don't know being whatever you feel in that moment even being free isn't it yeah and it's like one minute you're doing this business but next minute you want to do a business or you want to say like your dad quit corporate and try your own thing yeah and you can go back if it doesn't work exactly i think we think decisions are forever because they feel really big to us in the moment of making that decision but actually what does it really mean and also you're never going to know if that's the right decision or not really so you just do it and even if you do it you things happen it's not as black and white as going oh that was the right or wrong decision it was just a decision you made at that time you can always justify it to be right yeah we do that's what we do all the time so it's like well actually I think we make it mean more than we need to and again I'm trying to oversimplify it for a reason which is it doesn't it doesn't matter that much it only matters to us because we're going around in our body and our head and our thing it doesn't matter that much whether we do or don't and I think the reason why I'm able to turn the business around now and and to see that success that is that is here now is because I let it go I didn't need it to work all of a sudden I've needed it to work for 10 years it's like it is who I am if the business fails and I fail when I suddenly went you know what if it fails it fails but I've taken lots of learning and I can start something else it's the moment it really turned around and you're like oh god why didn't I just do that before and I didn't just pretend that like I really meant it with everything that happened you know and you know with with people dying and and life happening and and it felt like a lot but actually it kind of allowed me to just let it go and I hate to I hate to be so uh frozen simplistic about this but sometimes when you're really pushing for something if you let it go if it comes back to you it's it's yours kind of thing and i genuinely believe that that is true and so as a control freak very difficult to do um but i'm actually next week getting surrender tattooed on my arm wow to remind me that it's okay to surrender and it's okay to let things go and it's you know i have to remind myself i'm literally getting it inked because it's not my natural state but only real positivity and joy has come from letting things be you know play out yeah um and you know it's hard for someone that's driven it's hard for a type a person but if you could just try in a little way just surrender to something have a play play with it yeah and it should be fun and and the last few years not even just the last year but the few years before that i wasn't having as much fun um and i don't know if i didn't give myself permission to have fun or just stopped the fun um and now i'm really like i don't know finding the fun in life again just the little things yeah um you really notice more yeah you just see more and appreciate more yeah and just trying to create moments of fun because that's what life is really about and when business gets harder and it grows there's lots of things to do it's really easy to get stuck in the doing of it all and actually when we get the goal we want anyway often we're like oh we got that goal like we just hit a revenue target that we've been dreaming of and it's like oh hit the revenue target uh what now so you might as well have fun along the way like the anti-climax of of getting where you've been dreaming of going to is really a thing and you know looking back all the times I've hit something you just keep going we should celebrate it but also like you have fun in the moments leading up to it I'm really learning that at the moment that's like my lesson of the week actually is I hit a goal that I wanted to hit in the business and just life continued.

50:25It was a massive anticlimax. And actually the chase of hitting that goal was the fun part. So why not just have fun along the way? So my big kind of thing this year is having fun, having fun with the kids, having fun in the business, having fun in the difficult moments, having fun in it all because it's all possible. And life is short, so why not? Exactly. on that note i'm tempted to leave it there but i'm just going to quickly check is there any other advice if we think of your future self is there any other advice your future self would give you

51:06so this is a really funny piece of advice but um when i felt like it was all too much and wasn't sure if i could keep running the business and i wasn't sure if this and the other I took some time out which I think we should all do in a difficult time I literally would spend like a weekend somewhere and I just sat and I didn't really do very much read books and from in the pool or whatever and then this idea that I was going to sell the business or whatever change the business I like really sat with it for a while I just kind of like sat and I thought like I tried to use my intuition which is quite hard to explain I tried to use my intuition do I really want to stop this business or do I really want to sell this business or whatever and this like it came up inside me and it was like you're charlotte fucking pierce and it came up from nowhere right like and i'm like oh so i actually emailed one of my investors and said i'm charlotte fucking pierce and he went great crack on and there's something about and in that lowest like in that moment where you're feeling a lot of doubt just put the word effing in it's just like gives that energy you almost need to like call up this like i believe we all have like this really electric goddess power and actually the the woman that coaches me is a lady called nikki from electric women and she does these amazing electric women visualizations and it's all about this it's like electric goddess inside of you so my advice to everyone is to try and tap into that electric goddess inside of you or god inside of you and and just if you can't get there just put the word effing in the middle of your name see what happens but just there's something there's something in all of us an attitude whether it's a bit of an alter ego or even Beyonce has one right Sasha Fierce so I think if we could all find so I tell my younger self to find it earlier find your inner and it's not actually a different version of you it's just the most powerful version of you that sometimes gets clouded yes so if we had a way to access this version of ourselves and we could kind of call on her whenever we needed to which is now what I try and do daily oh I need you know mine doesn't have a name just kind of oh it's a bit she's like a she's like a powerful love warrior vibe she's like um if we just call on call on that version of ourselves it's in the little moments like whether I have to it's a tantrum with my toddler or if I'm going into a board meeting or I'm raising five million pounds doesn't really matter they're all important at that moment I will need to call on something when I don't feel like I've got it in me because we often have those times where we don't feel like we've got it in us but we do always have it still is there and so connect with that inner self um and bring her out and don't be scared of bringing her out lovely thank you so so much thank you for sharing so openly because I think a lot of people will be able to resonate with what you shared and also just being inspired to go actually what do I really want and what's the life that I want to create and to surrender to that.

54:05But thank you so much. And thank you everyone for watching or listening. And we'll see you next week. If you've been enjoying the Courageous Leaders podcast, we'd love it if you'd subscribe to our YouTube channel. Your support helps us keep creating quality content and reaching more leaders like you who are ready to grow and make a real impact. We fund this podcast ourselves. So every subscription truly makes a difference and allows us to support courageous leaders like you. Thank you for being part of the journey.