Are you having a Career Comedown? With Stefanie Sword-Williams

0:00Yeah, the Wharton thing was really big. it was a really big moment to feel like my work had been recognised by one of the best business schools in the world but also with all of those moments it's a moment it's a moment so I think success for me is more about the maintained level of happiness throughout the year versus the moments that I used to chase which needed to be big firework moments it's actually the little sparks it's travelling and meeting someone on the plane on the way to that amazing talk that I had a really great conversation with is probably coming to the surface as more joy to me than necessarily those big moments that everyone else is watching externally, if that makes sense.

0:42Welcome to The Slowdown, your time to redefine success and growth on your own terms with a little inspiration from others. Stephanie Sword-Williams has built a brand using a swear word, so I'm going to enjoy using it several times in this episode. Fuck Being Humble is a global mission, movement and training consultancy inspiring individuals to be unapologetically proud of their achievements and overcome the fear of self-promotion. Steph has spoken at the offices of Apple, Netflix, Unilever, Nike, Google, L 'Oreal and Microsoft at universities from the Wharton Business School in New York to London College of Fashion, trained over 700 people in her Side Hustle School program and has been Forbes 30 under 30.

1:23She also did a TEDx on why the world needs to be less humble. She's a fellow at the Royal Society of the Arts and continues to reinvest her profits and time into community projects that help improve the lives of others. I've seen Steph speak a few times and have always loved the messages she shares so I'm delighted to have her here in Brazen Studios for this episode which is sponsored in partnership with Clue, the period and cycle tracker. I share an unmissable discount to Clue during the ad break of this episode so do not miss out. It's also in the show notes. We talk about how confidence is a muscle that you can build, knowing when to raise your price and when to say no, and why reset is a radical act in our hustle-obsessed world.

2:05I hope you enjoy this episode. Hi Steph, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for inviting me on your show. You are an award-winning founder, speaker and author of the book Fuck Being Humble. Why self-promotion isn't a dirty word. I have to ask the obvious question why did you decide on that title did anyone tell you this would be a bad idea like what was your journey to that title answer very quickly yes lots of people told me it was a bad idea not even a bad idea just that it might alienate people or people might not be ready for that message when I was working in advertising so I spent the first seven years of my career working in advertising and we were storytellers that was our job for our clients and when it came to our TV ads being released or our print campaigns being out on bus stops, we wouldn't share our work unless it had been featured in major industry press.

3:02And I remember looking around being like, but isn't this strange? Like, aren't we storytellers? Like, aren't we all about amplifying messages and advocating for what we share and what we do? And I found it really strange that in an advertising industry, it's very common to only speak about your yourself confidently or highly if somebody else has kind of validated you so that was the first insight for me the second one was that a lot of my friends struggled with the idea of promoting themselves they hated interviews they hated writing their cvs they had anything to do with negotiating and I'd moved jobs quite regularly and I knew what it took what you have to do in those rooms why you have to play ball why you have to always negotiate all the things that if you stay in a job for the first 10 years of your career in one place, then you don't build up that experience that you need to actually know how to navigate those situations.

3:57And I think that that was happening. So I had my advertising experience. I was kind of like a career's agony aunt amongst my friends. And then the final thing was just that when we think about success, it's, we were often told, humble yourself, be humble. Don't get too big for your boots. Oh, you know, someone needs to take them down a peg or two. and I just think they're really negative things that we say like why do we say that all of the conditioning that we're believed to do or show up in certain ways Tamu Thomas is a brilliant author I know you've had her on the podcast she talked about the fact that as women in particular we're conditioned to be nice and being nice means abandoning our needs or showing up in a way that's palatable and so as particularly as a woman as it was an observation I was seeing more women struggled with advocating for themselves and they are more likely to be modest in situations I just really wanted to use and say a message that woke people up to the fact that this may not be the only way and when you look at the careers industry it just hadn't been shaken up for years it was very corporate very dry most companies are like shoot for the stars you know just really generic language and I felt like I could challenge that I could challenge the status quo and I could tackle a problem that I'm seeing firsthand happening in my industry, in my peer groups and as a society, particularly in the UK.

5:24So when I came up with the name, yeah, there was definitely Metworth Reservations. I maybe made the mistake of asking friends that weren't that brave, you know, that weren't in the brand and marketing space. My parents were accountants, then they don't get that vibe. They would never understand why I'd put a swear word in my brand name so there was a lot of hesitation from people around me but I think something I'd always cared about was disruptive marketing and advertising like how do we grab people's attention how do we get people to sit up and particularly behavior change and in order to create behavior change you have to create a mission or a movement for people to get behind so that was the journey of fuck being humble and is there other examples of disruptive campaigns that you've loved like in the advertising world?

6:11So many. Surreal, the serial brand is one of my favourite brands at the moment that have consistently killed it since they've come out of the gate. They are constantly challenging brand and marketing, how you say that we're launching in Sainsbury's, they like come up with incredible Instagram posts or even when the founders made Forbes under 30, they were like, they did a LinkedIn post where they were like, we would like to thank ourselves because we're absolutely brilliant, we're amazing, couldn't have done this if it wasn't for me being an absolute legend like they are they I love anything that cuts through the noise which I know everybody isn't competing to do but very few people actually do it so I think they're a brilliant example of it but most interestingly for me what I always really was fascinated by was was the behavior change side of things so Volkswagen did a play concept years ago where they wanted to get more people moving so they turned a staircase and a subway into a musical piano and everybody was running up and down and they increased participation of like increased steps by like 80 % or something whilst the campaign was running and then they turned recycling bins into an arcade game so everybody started recycling and it was all these like disruption doesn't have to be provocative it could be just a really clever concept that makes people do something yeah and there's so much on that I want to dive into but first I always love to hear more about the genesis of people and the kind of origin stories you mentioned your parents were accountants where were you raised by whom and how do you think that inferred kind of who you are now so I was born in Spain um in Madrid my family lived there for five years and I lived there for two years um they then shortly after that we moved to Leeds slightly less exotic um back to the UK my mum's from Birmingham and my dad's from Manchester and then we moved to the US so we lived in New Jersey just outside of New York for two and a half years and then we came back to Leeds where we kind of sadly set up camp I would have quite liked to continue to live in these interesting countries and my dad then moved to Asia when I was 18 and lived there for 11 years so I spent a lot of time going in and out of Asia and just traveling a lot it was always very ingrained in our family so for me that was a big part so seeing the world experiencing the world my dad traveled a lot on business so he actually worked in insurance and my mum worked in accounting but my stepdad also works in accounting and he very much climbed the ladder succeed play the game schmoozer you know he's extremely successful he has role modeled hard work determination as has my mum they're very similar people in that way my mum actually went back to university when I was like eight and studied got her degree and then did extremely well in her career as accountant.

8:56So determination, grit, self-belief was very important. My dad was incredible at taking my CV and making my Saturday job sound like I was this budding entrepreneur when really I'd not done that much. He was very good at seeing my value and not letting me hide it. I think that was something really important. And the other thing I would say is both parents moved jobs a lot. So it was very often, you know, if I'm not getting my worth, if I'm not being treated well, I'm on to the next place. Whereas my stepdad actually worked at the same company from 16 to his retirement. So he was the only person really that I had in my life that stayed in one company from like a work perspective.

9:34But my mum and dad were very much ambitious in the sense that they would not really settle for environments that weren't right. I think that's such an interesting one. Yeah, looking back, my parents very much understood that work was a thing that you get into a business and you stay for a very long time. And if that's kind of the model of success for you, then entrepreneurship is hard. Knowing when to leave is hard. So it's interesting that that was like modeled for you quite young. I think one thing that all parents did around that generation was you've got to stick out the job. So I had a really toxic first job.

10:10And for a while, the narrative was, we'll stay in the job at least until a year, stick out at least until a year, which I just don't think they would have said to me now. We're in a completely different time. And eventually I made it to 11 months and I had to quit because it was too intense. But I think that notion of stick it out. But if a better opportunity comes along, go for it. That was very much what success looked like. And then what was your first like serious job, maybe beyond that one that was 11 months? And is that what took you to London? That was my first serious job working as a brand and marketing exec at a small agency.

10:47unfortunately yeah the the owner of the company had extremely toxic behaviors and the turnover of staff was wild like people just couldn't tolerate it it was an unsafe environment I would say and what ended up happening was I interviewed for three jobs two were in Nottingham where I was living because that's where I did my university degree and another one was in Manchester and I remember my dad saying to me you're made for bigger things like move cities like go for the one in Manchester and I did and that ended up being at TBWA one of the best ad agencies at the time in Manchester and that was a really great exposure to what it was really like to work in a company with HR and systems and policies and not mistreated in that way so it was it was a good really good exposure of what the real ad industry was like.

11:38And how long were you there? I was there for two and a half years and then I moved to an independent agency called Love and loved them they were great we did some great work but I found I wasn't very patient and I needed to be stimulated in lots of different ways I didn't really love the project work I was working on it was a lot of alcohol brands and it was like packaging briefs and it just wasn't giving me that get up out of bed energy and eventually I moved to London and joined a startup with two other people to grow this small production company which was all about making meaningful work I moved to another company TCO London and did an each place it was 18 months was my cut off every 18 months I'd move and then my final job was at Revolt which is a creative agency but more on the strategy side and that was the final job before fully quitting and going for fuck being humble so I moved regularly and I talk about it very publicly to first of all say each time I got a pay rise in promotion which is not always possible when you are working companies you know sometimes there are those hierarchical scenarios sometimes you have to wait out situations and that means you know you you don't always get the movement that you want but I also think it was each move was about getting closer to the work that I wanted to work on which was meaningful work or and or having more autonomy and being more creatively involved.

13:03And obviously the culmination of those two things is doing something for yourself. How did you take that jump? Because I think there is a lot of fear around going, you know, self-employed, writing a book, doing something off your own back, losing the stability of a regular income. Like how long were you thinking about doing that? What was that kind of journey to actually taking the jump? So it's really interesting. It was actually mine and my partner's anniversary recently. And I remember on our first date telling him I'm going to launch this thing called Fuck Being Humble but it hadn't started yet and I didn't launch it for 11 months after that so I think it's important for me to say that for anyone listening is that like I actually sat on the idea for 11 months I knew I had it in me but I just went to loads of events really the core for me with with Fuck Being Humble it was just meant to be a networking community that was it I wanted to create cool events I wanted to build my own community and I wanted to be a speaker and also spotlight other cool people and for me it was it was an Instagram account it was as simple as an Instagram account a LinkedIn article that I wrote where I said why I'm launching a platform called fuck being humble and it just went semi viral at the time because LinkedIn was even more boring than it can be now it was quite LinkedIn monologues not really anybody was being that disruptive in that space and I remember just getting a really quick positive reaction like lots of people were engaging with it I was featured in the times I had a double page spread written about me I went on BBC World News I was on BBC Radio London like all of this quick press before I'd even ran an event it was like that's crazy it was actually done I hadn't done anything so I just launched a an Instagram account and a website called fuck being humble and written this article on LinkedIn this journalist then wrote a piece me the times piece was quite significant it was it was a springboard I think it really platformed me out into other channels and it was off the back of that then publishers were approaching me again before I'd written written anything before I'd launched an event they were like love the title you should write a book and I was like okay cool like literally prank call thanks but see you later like not my vibe and I was like look I don't even know I've not I don't know if anyone is going to believe in what I'm saying I've never run an event I don't like give me time if I'm even remotely interested in this and then I launched the Instagram account in June and the first event was in September and it went really well and then the second one was in October and that there was like double the capacity and then the third event was in December or January and like 180 people had come and it was like all word of mouth and I remember looking out at the sea of people and being like this idea is bigger than me and what I can do in London by myself and a book would be really cool because it would reach people nationally or even globally so that was the tipping point but it was never it wasn't in the plan it was never in the plan and I love you've spoken about this before this like how did you know that you could be a speaker and how did you put kind of speaker on your bio like how does one become a speaker well that was the thing for me was because I'd had such a varied experience to this point I was like I'd love to speak at events I'd go to these networking events all the time I'd find them quite boring they were quite male pale stale which I often joke about and I just didn't engage with that many people it felt like it was private school educated it was founders with 50 years experience it was people who had who had come from like lots of family wealth it didn't really matter what they did because they just pick a different thing tomorrow and I just didn't resonate I was like this young ambitious like northern girl in London bouncing around and I just wanted to see more people that were doing things that were closer to my age so I was like 26 at this point I was like what about the person that's like running three side hustles and they're like totally killing it or what about this person that's doing a photography exhibition I was meeting so many cool people but myself and them weren't getting invited to speak at this event and it's because we have this hierarchical thing which is once you've proven yourself or once somebody's picked you you deserve a spotlight and I don't agree with that I think we should be learning if nothing else like from younger generations and really celebrating and uplifting people so I just decided to book an event space and book myself as a lead act and that was where it went that after that event I was a public speaker it was that first event I was like this is the start of me being an event speaker or host or whatever it may be but I wanted to do more of it at work but I was getting to kind of drag down with my actual job and I recognised that ahead of me was the managing director the head of create there were so many other people that would get selected before I could probably be a speaker and even then it would still be red taped as to what the business wanted me to say versus what I really wanted to express from myself that's so true it's really true um and you know it sounds like it then sort of snowballed for you and what I'm always curious about in this podcast is at the peak of that success let's say to me reading your bio maybe speaking at the Wharton Business School in New York kind of to me is like wow bucket list um how are you actually feeling like how was all of this success and all of this work and flying around and all of this stuff like where was that kind of getting to for you on a personal level I actually really love this question because I think you don't realize you're in your success peak until you look back like I think that's a really common things for founders I you know what people would look at writing the book at first it was really fun but it was it got delayed because of the pandemic so I had to wait an extra four months before it came out and I was just like ripping my hair out and I was so worried about people judging me and should I have put that in it and it's already gone to print and there's all these emotions so like you know launching a book in the pandemic or I couldn't have a book launch I couldn't hit the sales targets like you know I didn't it was I'm really proud of it now but the actual experience of it was hard like it was it felt like it was flying off to a good start and then it things changed and to your earlier question I side hustled for two and a half years before quitting my job and going full-time but I quit in March 2020 to be a public speaker and all public events got cancelled so what where people meet me now and when they meet me they're like oh you got so many paid clients when you started out and I was like can I just stop you right there I was like one client I worked for free and it was a massive global business I was like the other client I probably got like a hundred pounds and there was another client that it was great but it was two and a half years I was like she's only six months in and I was two and a half years in before I felt like I was really reaching that success I think quitting my job and having that trajectory felt really good it felt like that was a peak moment but then the pandemic hit and literally ruined it all so then I just felt like I was back at the bottom scrambling and having to rebuild again I would say some other peak moments it was as we were coming out of the pandemic I remember having probably the most financially successful month I've ever had in March because it's International Women's Day and I did a lot of partnership and I remember thinking like it was great brands it was great projects and I was like I'm on to something and then like the next month was quiet and I was like oh I would say this year has definitely felt like a peak success year which is seven years in which is important to say I think the reason it feels like a peak success year is because it's felt more effortless so I'm very confident in myself and what I'm delivering in my fees I'm charging rates I'm happy with work is coming in I don't feel like I'm doubting myself as much yeah the Wharton thing was really big it was a really big moment to feel like my work had been recognized by one of the best business schools in the world but also with all of those moments it's a moment it's a moment so I think success for me is more about the maintained level of happiness throughout the year versus the moments that I used to chase which needed to be big firework moments it's actually the little sparks it's traveling and meeting someone on the plane on the way to that amazing talk that I had a really great conversation with is probably coming to the surface as more joy to me than necessarily those big moments that everyone else is watching externally if that makes sense yeah and I wanted to double click on what you just said around fees deciding what your price is or increasing your price as a freelancer when information is gatekept and people don't really tell you how much they're charging and so on how do you do that how do you go about like setting the price and then increasing the price and if you work if you do work with clients repeatedly say they come back next international women's day for a thing and you've increased the price how do you explain or justify that so something i would say to any freelancer self-employed person only you can give yourself a pay rise so you need to have a bit of audacity you need to have a bit of like well if i'm not doing it no one else is because a client is not going to come back and go do you know what we've decided a year later we're going to give you an extra grand that's not how this show works this is not how the reality works so you have to be in control of that and what I started to realize was like each call I got on I was like I'm just going to add an extra 200 and see if they say yes and not every call landed like that but some did and I was thinking okay good to know so for me I was it was almost being a bit cheeky to see like in my mindset it was it was being a bit cheeky but just just to see each time if I just added 50 pounds on would they would they flinch and they don't is the truth of it so I think getting comfortable with that increase and then having honest conversations with people I've been fortunate that a few clients have actually said to me you're undercharging like just to let you know we paid a man double and he was not even giving us the same amount of quality that you are so please at least add an extra x on on your number so I've been very fortunate to have that which I appreciate and then I think just I always ask the client what their budgets are first and that gate that you can see a trend like I can see what the average rate is this year and I gauge that and sometimes I can push it higher and sometimes it needs to come down but for me I know people can be very strict on this is my fee and I'm sticking to it but truthfully that's not realistic if you've got bills to pay, if you've got commitments, if you've got a family to provide for, I'd rather do 10, 100 projects if that gets me the grand I need each month to make sure I can pay my life, right?

23:40So I'm always very open with this is my rate but if the opportunity speaks to me, if it feels like it could expand me, if it feels like it's an opportunity grower then I'm open to that. I think with regards to increasing your fees it is just as simple as since we last worked together my fees have increased to the following rate done sometimes I think we have to over explain things or we think we do and we don't and businesses are if you're working with a business you just need to treat it as business to business you're a supplier to them take away the personal and something that really helps is writing it in the third person really stripping out any eyes if you ever speak to me with regards to fuck being humble in a business sense I will always say we charge this I'd never say I charge this or my rates are I say our fees are because it really detaches it from it being like I'm asking for this versus this is what we have set we being me you know it does help Abadesi Osinsade who was on this podcast has a fantastic kind of workshop on being a freelancer and setting your prices and she says exactly that which is like we're too quick to like over explain and add too many words she was like shut up create an awkward silence like create awkward silence yeah she's like even if it's impersonal on the phone she does she's a great kind of role play of being like you know my my fee's a thousand pounds then the client might go well you know it's kind of really the top end of our budget don't say anything they're like as women we're like okay well yeah i mean i guess i could maybe do what's your you know 800 700 like what you're already they haven't even said no yeah she's like say nothing then they go okay well um you know i guess maybe we could like just let them see their own thought through while you say nothing which i think is like so interesting because we're just not conditioned to doing that we're conditioned to like people pleasing and being like okay maybe i am asking for too much and i'm not worth this price and i loved what you said earlier because um you described it recently a talk we were at around you know there's this sense of like we have to always be on this like trajectory of like everything getting better this like curve exponentially to the right which is capitalism that says oh well if March 2024 was a hit 2025 should be x and 2026 should look like this you have a great thing please say it on like looking back at that time so for me the way I think about that aspect and the way I manage my own expectations is one of the things I say to myself is if I only do this once I'm so proud of myself and that was I had to start saying that to myself because the year after that most successful month I didn't have that in fact it was like half the amount that I'd made and I was so distressed about it but actually I was living in Paris at the time and I was having the time of my life and it was that reminder of like if this only happens once I'm so proud and then it just keeps you grounded anything else as a bonus is my business strategy I know what I need to earn each month to pay my bills and live a relatively happy life.

26:42Anything else is a bonus. It just relieves that pressure of repeating yourself. Because actually as humans, we don't repeat ourselves. Like certain years, you have to rest more. Certain years, you have to sow the seeds. Certain years, you have to just let it bloom. Like you can't expect the same amount of growth. And if you're not working in a corporate space and you are running your own business and your own finances, that is the luxury of running your own business. Like when I worked in companies and I had sales targets, it was awful. I hated it. And I vowed to myself when I run my own business, I will not be a prisoner to I need to have 20K months or whatever that figure is, because it's not that important to me.

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27:59It's science-backed, inclusive and totally ad-free so that you can reclaim your rhythm one insight at a time. And especially for the Slowdown listeners, Clue is offering a 75 % discount code on their annual Clue Plus subscription via their website. To redeem this, go to helloclue.com and enter the code SLOWDOWN at checkout. That's SLOWDOWN, one word. I'll also attach the direct link with the discount already embedded in the show notes. so download clue today and start making space for the signals your body's been sending all along there are some real blessings to being a freelancer running your own project having managing your own time managing your own finances ideally if you're giving yourself regular pay rises but um i guess the shadow side is overworking like not knowing where the limits are or testing those limits or running yourself into the ground because you are trying to do so much and there's this scarcity mindset of well I don't know when the next project's going to come through and my work is project-based and it's I'm paid by the hour of my time so let me use as much of my time as possible so I was wondering if you've ever had burnout what was that experience like um and and how you got there and what you think helped afterwards I have been running non-stop at such a high pace I didn't know what a normal pace was and I actually experienced quite a traumatic event in my personal life and the impact of that led to nervous system shut down PTSD I would say high functioning depression and anxiety and that literally was the moment that things had to give something had to change because I physically could not hold the same amount that I could and that is really hard for a high achiever you know over giver which I would say is very much in my identity is I'm an over giver in relationships in advice in presentations and pitch works and it totally through lots of therapy and realization it totally comes around to that like need for validation not wanting to be rejected all of those things but when I experienced the is the last year and a half really it has been it something physically had to change I had a period where I basically couldn't speak about something and I eventually just like cried every day I experienced something called emotional flooding and it was just awful I could not do my job in the way that I was doing it and I knew I had to start taking rest seriously and recognise that I've done enough that's been a big thing for me over the last year I actually said to my friends we went to Mexico for Christmas and we all went round and said what's my word for the year and my word was less it was I have to physically start doing less to prioritise my well-being mental physical well-being And that was the big shift, really, for me, was really looking at jobs and going, OK, if I accept this one, what am I getting rid of?

31:09I used to be able to do three events in a day, which was a lot. And now I can push it to one is what I preference. I wouldn't try and do more than one anymore. And that's hard for you to take. because it's a hard process to see that you have physically lost something or you were drowning yourself so much it was never really sustainable so that was a big learning curve over the last year has been pulling back saying no to more if something is saying yes to I have to remove something else and creating time for rest and seeing rest as part of my process so I've started working with a business coach and she really helpfully reminded me that the reason I need to charge x is because someone needs to pay for my recovery time which is a really powerful phrase I've never really heard anyone say to me sometimes I'm like oh but is I'm am I charging too much and she's like no because in order for you to put on the show that you do somebody needs to cover your rest time because you're not going to be doing this you're not doing 10 speaking slots a day because you physically can't do that.

32:23And that was such a big mental shift for me because I could sit and have a restful morning because I knew I was coming to do this podcast today because I want to be here and I want to be really present, but I could rest without the guilt. And that was the big thing, the big changer for me. Yeah, and there's something you said there that I think about a lot, which is this line between purpose, legacy, wanting to do all of this big stuff, ambition versus contentment. and just feeling like I've done enough and I think when I was younger I had and was it societal was it me was it cultural this feeling of like big dream big vision like be doing this huge thing like what's the epitaph you know on the tombstone that says like this thing that you've left behind versus kind of as I've gotten older feeling like actually the the the goal is just being content every day with how much I've done which is totally how I feel like I said to my therapist I was like if something were to happen to me tomorrow I feel really content I feel really happy with the life I live and have lived I don't really have a lot of what if I had gone this way or what if I'd have gone that way and I think there's something that I've learned a lot as I've gone through therapy is often we have to choose between authenticity and attachment so in relationships in particular to hold on to certain relationships we dilute our authenticity and over the last year as a trauma response I've definitely stepped into being more authentic which is saying no not people pleasing being very clear listening to my gut trusting my decisions has been a really big one for me and just creating that space for me to actually be present not just in the professional space but in the personal space like at home my partner has always done a lot of the homework he does the cooking and cleaning and we often joke that he's better at it than me but part of the change that I've seen with my relationship with work is that I'm more present at home I do more around the house and that has helped our relationship that's the opportunity cost piece yeah it was a big realization and going to the gym like things like that like I could never create space for it I was always too busy I always wanted to throw myself into work and now I try and plan my day around going to the gym which is just not me as an identity I've had to really work on that and even me saying that's not me as an identity is a limiting belief like I have chose that because it required a change in behavior a significant change in behavior so I feel like that's where I've really noticed the difference from busy to burnout is like I'm not impressed by people's busyness anymore like you know it used to be like oh I'm doing this and I'm doing that and I'm like and it would probably trigger something in you like oh I should be busy too totally and it's like I think people often do that with me because my whole brand's about self-promotion and they want to give me these updates and I actively try now to be like and how's everything outside of work I really try and steer the conversation away from work where I can because I feel to the legacy point like I don't want that to be my legacy I don't want this I I want you to believe in yourself and I want you to back yourself and I want you to advocate for yourself but I don't want you to do it at the detriment of your health because I've been there and it's a long way back and it's not a feeling I want to role model.

35:51Well then a nice segue is the career come down which is a term that you've coined to describe that moment in your career when on paper everything looks great you've done all the right things climbed the ladder earned more money ticked all the boxes but underneath the surface you're quietly wondering is this really it and I remember seeing that post that you did on Instagram and it really resonating with me and so I'm wondering when did that realization come to you was it a personal thing were you seeing it among your friends as you say the agony aren't for your friends so you're like wow there's a phenomena happening is it an age thing is there a particular like time in our career where we just feel this way yeah so I think it's a bit like in relationships you get like the seven to ten year ick like I think that's what happens in our careers there is actually research that shows people start to really doubt their careers 10 years in because to the point you've done all the things you're meant to do but something's still not right I was speaking to a lot of friends who were like you know I've kind of reached the point I can get to I've I'm gonna earn this amount of money I just I'm a bit like meh about it but I've never trained in anything else I wouldn't even know where I'd go with it I don't have the belief to start a business like all of these discussions were happening around me I realized in the advertising industry writing the book I'd actually had a career come down with that industry because I kept wanting to do this meaningful work and I kept wanting to get there and eventually I just had to admit it and tap out and be like this industry isn't what I thought it was like I if I want to create that purpose for me I have to step away and create it under my own rules under my own guise and actually I had that at that point and I think what I'm realising as well is that we we just develop so much as humans what we were chasing last year can be different to this year even from like month to month sometimes you know you want just a calm nervous system sometimes you want um you know money in the bank because you're saving for a wedding like there's different things that we we need to be able to move away from the goals that we set when we were like 16 or 18 or 20.

38:00And I think so many people reach a level of dissatisfaction in their jobs, and just go, well, this is it then. But there's two, there's three solutions in the book. So the first option is how do you stay in your career, but make it work for you. And that, for me, is really about having honest conversations, asking for what you actually need you know setting boundaries really being clear on what it is that's missing and that you want to add more into your situation the second route is how to reinvent yourself and just go do the thing you always wanted to do or maybe something that's more aligned and the final chapter that's really changed my life has been how to tap out of work being your identity and how we actually create this pressure on ourselves so I talk about a collection of sayings and things that when people say oh you know my work is my life's work even that saying commits us that well I have to be doing this for my entire life and in the book I actually talk about my stepdad who's who was an accountant but his life's work wasn't a spreadsheet it was to entertain people you know he's the first on the karaoke he's does the park run every week for the community like we can look beyond our careers to be meeting our purpose needs and I don't think we talk enough about that and even the language we use we can be very we can say it's a disaster we could say it's an emergency when it's really not we're not doing we're not open heart surgery no we're not and i we get really lost in um the urgency of our careers the need for it to happen in certain ways at certain paces in certain situations and truthfully it's what you said earlier it's contentment how can you consistently find contentment and be okay with seeing other people grow at different rates and know that your work and your career is is not definitive to who you are as a person we're a weird generation we're this generation where identity and work are so closely connected and we have social media platforms linkedin around like just putting that as your like bio and on instagram and all of these other platforms like you're encouraged by others to put like what you do as the number one thing about you and so when we tie our identity so closely to work you know of course these things happen how could they how could we not become like very attached to to the outcomes of this stuff you don't want people to think that fuck being humble is just about work but i don't think it is and i think there is an importance as you're saying in the confidence especially with women for them to also be um not humble about what they do at home about invisible domestic labor about the way that they're raising their kids and stuff I feel like that has previously been such a like oh well you do that by default yeah and we don't brag about that yeah but now I'm seeing like more and more on TikTok and Instagram people bragging about their homes and how well they've cleaned them and I think that's the like new frontier of where we should be being less humble maybe the question you should be asking yourself is what would you do if you weren't posting it online like that's really truly the best question to help keep you grounded and centered around the things you're most interested in because for it's just all trend chasing right so it's like oh okay cool I'm gonna be a trad housewife this week or okay now I'm gonna be a boss babe the next week like it's still living out your life through the visual lens of what is trending of that time and that's not where we find sustained happiness so I think what I would say to people with their careers is give yourself the flexibility to to change like that's honestly the biggest thing like maybe you started in an industry that made you happy and now it doesn't and that's okay or maybe you wanted to just have an easy job but now you want something more purposeful like it's okay to change what we feel think and believe the best people do actually change their beliefs and they're open to challenging themselves and I think that's where we can find some happiness in in personal and professional but it's knowing that you and your identity can and should change over the multiple different years that you have on this planet and allowing yourself just to follow your curiosity wherever it takes you yeah and we've talked a bit about the sort of macro ways that you've found pacing yourself and sort of slowing down to a pace that works for you are there micro daily habits that you've developed that could maybe be three pieces of advice on ways you slow down in your day to day?

42:33Yes. So one of the things that really helped listening to your podcast has really helped changing my consumption of media. So what I'm consuming, I would always read books about getting there to the top quickest, how to earn more money, all of these things. And I'm Cal Newport's book, Slow Productivity, completely changed the way I work because every time I feel that oh my god Steph you should be doing more I'm like no fewer projects more detail be consistent with that like really changing that listening to your podcast and it being about slower ways to live and be happy and succeed in our own worlds like finding the the resources that are echoing the sentiment that I want to live has been really important something a bit personal but I think could be beneficial to the listeners my therapist tasked me with not giving advice to people for three months so my job is obviously quite information based but I'd carried that identity through to lots of different relationships in my life and that was draining me it was actually taking up a lot and to recognize that and go actually I'm not gonna be here to save the day and I'm not gonna give my advice and I'm not gonna make this my problem I'm gonna just allow that person to figure it out and I can actively say look my therapist has asked me to not give advice to people in my life right now so I'm gonna try and work on that but I'm here to listen I just I can't get actively involved and I had to have conversations I think a lot of people prefer to just be listened to found that um you know there's a level of frustration that you can feel with being the advice giver yes and then them not taking your advice yes because that happens 98 % of the time and so they wouldn't take it and then you'd be like well i just wasted my whole day i gave you sat and cried on my sofa and i told you all the things that you should do and it's like they don't want advice often they just want to be heard and so for me it was like dual reason to to give less advice which was a i'm annoyed at the end of the day that you haven't taken any of my advice and you've come all the way back around to me with the same problem yeah and two you didn't even want you're you're annoyed that i'm giving you advice yeah and so i felt that that was like needed for me and now I have like two things I either ask yeah I say would you like me to advise you on that yeah or I just don't give it yeah and I think a third thing has been asking for help and be willing to receive it so I have one of my identity traits is hyper independence and you know that's served me well to a point but I have bootstrapped my entire business and this year has been the year where I have like therapy, business coach, cross mentoring, outsourcing, like really, and that comes with obviously having built business financials to do that, which is I want to be fully transparent.

45:22Like the reason I can do that this year is because I have reached that financial point that I can outsource in that way. But it was actually acknowledging I don't have to have all the answers. I don't have to carry it all alone. Maybe there are people that could do this better than I can do and I can let that control go in some ways and yeah just really being able to receive that I think that my therapist said to me you know I think you're lonely I think you self-isolate I think you've had to because of what you've been going through but I think you need to ask for more support and she was right like she was I was hell-bent on being like I'm the strong independent woman that can run my business all alone and it's like for what like why why do I need to prove this like I don't want to run a team and that's very clear to me but I absolutely can outsource bits to specialists or ask for support in different areas and allow myself to see that support as enriching my life and I think also just trying to find people that can have these conversations with you I've got a friend that I could see she wasn't impressed with my busyness like I felt embarrassed telling her how busy I was because I could just vibe her she was just like cool so how's your partner and how's your parents it was really important to have people to hold that mirror back to me and they didn't validate that busyness they didn't get you know celebrate me for being constantly like that I think that's been really important for me and also not filling in my weekends or spare time with stuff I could never read that I needed social rest I'm like well I don't need social rest because I've not seen my friends this week and it's like yes but you spoke to a thousand people across four days yes you do need social rest and you know having those rotting weekends where you like sit at home and I don't feel shame or guilt for just pottering around the house so kind of changing that relationship with what I deemed to rest to need to look like or not look like and how other people make me feel about having that downtime and feeling okay with things being easy we're conditioned to think that hard work has to be grueling that it has to be exhausting that you know you couldn't possibly charge that much money for one hour because you should have worked 40 hours that week to earn that and actually if you find something that you're great at and you can charge it at a high rate and it comes easy to you do that like my version of success is ease now like what comes easy to me what allows me to easily flow in relationships to show up easily to to be present to enjoy myself and at the core is freedom and ease for me it's trying to find those things that can be monetized that maybe I've overlooked as being like oh that's not enough I'm really seeing having people who go that is and you are overlooking that that's what my business coach has been great for when we got on the first call she was like what do you think your superpowers are and I was like oh like public speaking she's like I don't think it's that yours is that you can help you help people believe in themselves and I was like yeah I mean that you know I kind of brushed it off but that doesn't have to be wrapped up in a two-hour webinar to be worthy that could be a 15-minute conversation I could completely change someone's life so it's sort of also recognizing and re-evaluating how you think your value is presented in the work and let other people contribute to that because sometimes we hold the mindsets or limiting beliefs or yeah just stories from past versions of ourselves and we don't actually see the value that we give to other people which might be coming easier than the work that we're doing yeah and to the point of past selves and your you know the career come down thing where you said it's like that seven year ick it doesn't just have to be that you've been stuck in a dead-end job um seven to ten years is kind of the like duration of most big projects right and after that time you should either be evolving reassessing thinking about things and you know I've run my business now for eight years so I'm sort of like on this precipice of like most people have either sold and scaled their business or they've got an investment and reinvigorated it in some way or they've got a new partners or merged into something different or they've been like this has now come to its conclusion so I think there's also a sense of career come down but also maybe this is seasonal maybe this is good maybe this is a cycle that then opens me up to the next thing because yeah who I was eight years ago is very different to who I am now and I have completely different goals and ambitions and desires I would love to see more businesses stop and it not be assumed that they've gone bust or you know there's been a fallout of management and it just be like no that we're calling it because it's the right time like Jerry Seinfeld who wrote Seinfeld stopped writing the show because he was on a high he didn't want to keep rehashing series because he didn't want to start making crap basically and I think it's really important that you emphasize that that yeah career come down isn't about oh I'm absolutely miserable all the time this is really upsetting me it's okay that something has like ran its course and maybe you've just changed I went through something so life-changingly difficult it's made me want to change the way I'm working fuck being humble's in its peak success year and I'm about to start something different it's not got anything to do with me being really upset or disappointed or like it's not added up to what I thought it was going to be it's that I'm following my curiosity to something new and I'm really excited about that that's what I'd love to normalize is you know I have a friend that I went to school with who was on an incredibly popular podcast um three girls really popular show and I heard kind of through the grapevine that she decided to leave that show and my kind of not so feminist capitalist mindset was like oh they either failed or she got kicked out of this thing or like like something's gone awry yeah there's no way you would leave a successful moving train that is heading towards a kind of financial pot of gold yeah you do not on your own free will leave such a way that was my judgment you know and then I had a catch-up with her and she was like well I really want to focus on music and I want to look back at my life and I've you know put myself 10 years ahead and I said if I spent my last 10 years focusing on music or podcasting what would I be more happy with yeah and it was music and I just thought wow I did that never struck me as like that that's the truth you know and that happens all the time people leave things constantly because they're just like this is the right time I'd like to do something else with my time and I think our culture doesn't can't kind of comprehend that well something that's really helped me over the last year from a mindset thing is two things can be true so I went to I guess like a spiritual healer of sorts and it was an interesting experience and she did brain spotting on me which is for anyone listening who's not familiar you kind of use like a long stick of sorts and the individual is asked to follow the stick moving your subconscious starts to come through because you're concentrating on the movement and the person moving the stick is asking you questions and what came out of it was you're satisfied with being humble but you're also dissatisfied and I was like no surely not that can't be like I'm really happy with it and it was really interesting that all of a sudden these thoughts from my subconscious mind were coming through that I hadn't been able to admit to myself in the conscious state because you don't want to look like ungrateful for where you are you don't want to look like it's been a waste of time or any of those things and actually two things can be true is like I can be really happy with what I've built and and love the work I do really deeply love the work I do but still have a yearning to do other stuff and you know I've changed jobs multiple times I've you know in our lifespan studies have shown we're expected to have eight to twelve careers like let's normalize that and open the discussion it's it's often other people's inability to see how they could make it work for themselves that makes you doubt yourself like if you have that genuine feeling like I think I'm being drawn to something else go explore it like seriously because you can always go back to the old thing or you can always pivot or there's always a way to package up that story if you want to that that is what self-promotion is but what I hate to see what I hate hate to see is the people who say I wish I'd have heard from you sooner I wish I hadn't have sat on that thing I wish I'd have the people who have the what ifs when I said it earlier I don't have that because I have that confidence in myself to explore things without the dread of or what if this doesn't work?

54:27And I think a big part of that is not defining what success looks like with such strict rules and also not letting other people define success. So I get asked a lot, do you have any failures? And I'm like, not really. And I feel a bit like arrogant saying that. But when I spoke to my business coach, she was like, you just don't look at failure in the way society does like you don't you don't let people tell you that was a failure and I think that's what's really important that we have to keep doing is keep redefining what that success is keep redefining what joy is to you what brings you contentment happiness creativity one of my favorite books I've read this year is tiny experiments how to break free from a goal obsessed world and in it the author talks about the fact that if we just follow our curiosities and we just set this like okay I'm curious about writing a newsletter I'm just gonna write 12 that's my goal I'm just gonna that's it when we just create like an experiment like that it's it removes the I have to grow x amount of followers and it has to be this business and part of fuck being humble success I think was because I didn't have a business plan in pay I wasn't trying to make it my business.

55:44I literally was like, I just want to host a fun event. I just want it to not be a crap networking event. That was the only metric. I just want people to come and I want it to feel like a fun vibe. And I think following the joy through Fuck Being Humble in the early days is what led to the success because I wasn't in the scarcity mindset. I was in the, I'm in my present, like I am being me, the version of me. Someone asked me the other day how did you reinvent yourself to be fuck being humble and I was like I didn't I revealed myself I revealed what was already within me and I think that is what we're really on this planet to do is to with each year or with each decade is just to reveal that little bit more of who you want to be who you are who you maybe have always been but you didn't have the permission to be.

56:32Yeah, absolutely. I resonate with so much of that. I was also wondering if in the stripping away, you've become any more aware of your cycle during the month. I have functioned in masculine energy for so long. And leaning into your cycle is actually moving more into your feminine energy, which is like that kindness, compassion, give yourself space. Like I do somatic therapy, which is often about is connecting with the body, not just the mind. And one of the things my therapist said to me was that you sometimes when you're having a really heavy or hard period or you're in a lot of pain it's your body's way of saying you need to feel this pain you're actually holding in pain and I actually have felt like that has become quite true for me and there's certain months where I am carrying a lot and then my actual cycle is really really painful and then there's times where I don't feel that and there feels a lightness to it so because my work's quite sporadic in the sense that somebody could email me tomorrow and be like are you free next week I can't necessarily fit my schedule around my cycle other than saying nobody can book me between these dates and so I think for me it's just really not fighting it like stop trying to be masculine like be in your feminine energy so I actually have been off any hard cardio and when I go to the gym now I just do slow uphill walking it's slow cardio is what I feel most drawn to and that is manageable for me when I'm on my cycle allowing myself to be that vulnerable like to my partner I'm like just fuss over me I just need that right now it's not in like a watch out if you if you cross me this week you're going to be in big trouble that's that masculine energy and instead it's the vulnerable energy which is like I'm really struggling can you like help take this off my plate like can you run to the shop and get dinner like I just I need that so I very much leaning into that um yeah vulnerable space and not feeling the need to have my shit together like just acknowledging it and one of the things that I love is I'm very emotional so I cry a lot in the run-up to it and I actually just quite enjoy the release like I'll be watching something and I'm like I shouldn't be crying at this why am I crying so much at this but rather than like feeling guilt or shame of being like oh my god pull yourself together I'm like do you know what maybe you just need to have a little cry and maybe this is just like how you do express yourself and I'm so used to holding it together I'm so used to performing I'm so used to hiding behind a brave face that I allow myself just to to be that person and be more vulnerable and be more honest with how I'm actually feeling.

59:18Oh, obsessed. I love it. In the lead up to this new book, is there anything that you're doing differently to how you did the last one? Obviously, I find that everything I do for the first time, I'm obviously like, oh God, I wish I'd done so many of these different things differently because I now know in hindsight how that's supposed to be done. So you obviously also have the benefit of it being your second book but I'm wondering if beyond the kind of obvious things of oh I should have should have sent that PR email a week earlier or something is there anything else that you're generally doing differently like releasing expectation or yeah I would love to give this book launch the best shot I can with it and what I'm doing with that is not actively signing up to new projects until it's released so the slow productivity way is fewer projects, more obsession over detail.

1:00:10And for me, it's like, as soon as I finished the manuscript and handed it over, I was like, right, what can I do next? And I was like, no. Brene Brown said in her first ever book flopped because she wrote it and then wouldn't self-promote it. And she said in an interview, you write the book for a year and then you've got to spend the next year promoting it. And one of my toxic traits is move on to the next thing. I don't give enough space to the ideas that I create because I'm too busy jumping onto the next thing so I've poured my life soul tears vulnerability into this latest book and I really want to give it the effort it deserves to succeed but obviously under the parameters of not burning out and all of that but I but to do that my version of slowing down is not accepting anything else and like treating this with the care and the attention and the celebration it deserves before I take on something else that is it's the longest project I think I've ever worked on it's two years of my life consistently skip the 18 month it was yeah it's it's been a long and by the time it comes out it'd be two and a half it's a long project I don't want to let the noise of other potential goals take me away from really giving this all the glory it deserves so that's what I'm trying to do is spotlight it celebrate it and do it at a comfortable pace but also not let my attention be taken away by other things at a time where I just really want to sit in the moment I love that and I'm very excited for the book to come out very very soon um a final question that I ask everybody is if I had to watch one film or read one book or go see one piece of art that would help me understand you better what would it be and why um do you know I'm going to be really honest with it I grew up in the Bridget Jones how to lose a guy in 10 days era and that I think is me it's the honesty and dialogue it's the self-deprecation it's the mocking ourselves it's being a bit of a klutz it's not really having it together but trying to put on a good front when you do see people it's the vulnerable side it's the imperfect fluffy edges that we don't always see and I think a lot of people are always like oh you know you seem like really polished on the outside and on the and I'm like anybody in my inner circle knows that I am extremely silly like I laugh at myself all the time I trip up over things I'm can be chaotic in different ways and I think those shows those films were really they were influential to me at a time I'm sure I should be saying something more academic or more artsy or more interesting but when people read fuck being humble they were like it was like a best friend speaking to me which is really powerful yeah and what I describe it as I say it's the Bridget Jones for self-help like that's it it's it's a collection of funny stories and things that you know can help people but also make people feel seen and I think that's what I've always really cared about is making people feel seen and those films did it's why they're icon cult classics you feel a sense of something in those characters you know the the likableness of someone who's a bit messy is something that I think's really admirable relatability is one of the things that I care the most about the minute I'm not relatable to people I I worry like that is something I've tried to evolve my work over the years to continue to be relatable to my audience For what it's worth, I think you're very relatable.

1:03:50That's something I've always noticed. When I've heard you speak, I feel calm. I feel like I'm with friends. I'm in an audience, but it's like I want to respond to everything that you say with like my own anecdotes and stories. And so that's always a nice way to be in, you know, full circle to what you said at the beginning of what you didn't see, which was these conversations and panels and talks that can feel very serious. Yeah. And overly serious, overly like, yeah, this is all an emergency. And here's like the very serious campaign thing that I did. And yeah, having that sense of levity and that sense of relatability, I think you 100 % have.

1:04:26Thank you. Are there any other thoughts you'd like to share on this topic that I might have missed? So I think the thing I'd love people to reflect on, especially as if they're going for a career come down or if they're navigating challenges in their career is sitting with yourself and asking yourself, where can I pull back? So where have you done enough? Where don't you need to show up? Where can you go under the radar a bit more? Because there's a likelihood you're probably overgiving in different areas. and I don't want you to get to a breaking point before you start to have that conversation with yourself so ask yourself where can I pull back 10 % 20 % and in a way that it wouldn't be disruptive to either your professional personal life but it allows you to claw back time for yourself because that has been such a game changer for me and it's such a simple thing for us to do that can have a big impact on our ability to slow down.

1:05:22What do you do in a society where you're constantly being asked to do more you're being asked to share in a certain type of way well if that post works you should release it eight different ways the advice is post more share more do more be more like how do you contend with with that I think it's finding mediums that you can handle so I whenever I came to writing a newsletter for the business it would take ages it would take two days I'd resent it I'd be like it's free work no one's paying me all of these things and I just very quickly changed the model and I was like how do I do this and make it impactful but strip it back to as minimum as possible so I went from doing a monthly all singing all dancing newsletter to a weekly Monday motivation email I saved down I'm addicted to Instagram TikTok all channels I choose a resource I write less than 100 words on it and that's it so I am visibly showing up weekly but the effort it takes is less so I would ask you to look at that equation of like where can I strip back the depth in which I'm putting it in and how could I maybe sprinkle myself across fewer lighter moments that create that level of visibility so even things like sometimes for me creating social media assets I'm like oh god I really can't be asked and then I just realized I'm like well just go on stories stories that should take me 10 seconds I don't question myself as much I don't doubt myself I don't care because it only lasts 24 hours and actually someone said to me the other day she was like oh I feel like you're killing it with socials I was like I've not posted in three weeks on the grid I was like I don't know where you've got that from she's like oh it's I guess because you're showing up on stories so I guess that's to the earlier point is like finding ease in that delivery so what is the easy version of that stop following what everyone else tells you oh well that's you know trending videos where you've got someone narrating your life in a three minute video that's the trend right now I'm like don't care that would take me that would take me a week to make yeah I'm not doing that right move on next thing so I think it is it is trying to find the methods mediums i've said it all the way through with being humble only self-promoting the ways that are going to show you in the best possible way if it has taken you hours to create and you resent it and you feel angry and you're pouring that energy into it it's not going to show you in the best way so strip it back and if i said to you you have to make this as simple as possible and you have to make it in the next hour you have to batch create multiple things in the next hour how would you do it so like it's it's less is more sometimes i think we've gone so much in the over giving which I am a victim to as well because of free content and because of showing up on every channel and I've realized in recent weeks I can get away with posting once a week and I still get inquiries coming in and I still have people saying my name in rooms so it's not about the way that you're showing up on digital channels it's also how you show up in real life it's how you speak to people it's the recommendations you give it's the way you support people you know stop seeing content creation as the only way to get your value across and look at how you can strip it back to its simplest form that still gives value but doesn't rob you of your time and energy really good advice i think that's a great place to conclude thank you so much for being here thank you so much for having me thank you thank you for tuning in this episode was posted and created by me, Tiana Tambridge.

1:08:47It was produced by Whitney Rosenthal with sound and video produced and recorded at Brazen Studios. Cover art and design by Natalia Ruhe and the sponsor for this whole season is Clue. Please subscribe to The Slowdown to be notified of upcoming episodes, tell a friend and leave a review because it really helps a podcast like this get out there into the world. And remember, we're all heading to the same destination and there is no prize for getting there early, so we might as well slow down. Thank you.