I got a call from my mum and I knew I had to go.
Speaker:I was young, I had my license, and
Speaker:she was in trouble.
Speaker:If you've listened to any of the episodes before this episode, you will know that
Speaker:my mum had severe mental health issues.
Speaker:You'll also know my origin story, but if you haven't listened to that, go
Speaker:back to that podcast and have a listen.
Speaker:It'll put it all into place for you.
Speaker:My mum was married to a, hmm, how can I say this politely knob.
Speaker:And he hurt her and it was a, a tale of domestic violence.
Speaker:And so I went and got mum.
Speaker:I drove to her place while he was out.
Speaker:We packed a bag.
Speaker:I've never felt my heart racing so quickly about getting caught in his
Speaker:house while she was packing a bag.
Speaker:We grabbed her dog.
Speaker:Because that meant the world to her.
Speaker:We got in the car and we drove, and we drove, and we drove, and we stopped to
Speaker:get a cup of tea and a coffee and just for her to catch her breath and stop
Speaker:the shaking that was happening for her.
Speaker:We crafted a plan.
Speaker:The only plan I could think of because I was living with another family was that
Speaker:she go and spend a couple of days in
Speaker:a safe house for women
Speaker:it was meant to be secure.
Speaker:there was people that could help her through all the bits and pieces.
Speaker:They would take her dog and her, and she would be safe, and so
Speaker:we popped her in the safe house.
Speaker:If you've ever experienced or had any experience of
Speaker:domestic violence, IT'S AWFUL.
Speaker:You live in fear the entire time while you're trying to work
Speaker:through what the heck to do next.
Speaker:So I dropped her there and left and she started in their program.
Speaker:A couple of days later, she messaged me and she said to me,
Speaker:Emma, he wants to come and see me.
Speaker:And I'm like.
Speaker:No, the answer is no.
Speaker:It's a full sentence.
Speaker:And she said, I'm gonna meet him at this local park.
Speaker:I'm like, okay.
Speaker:I said, would you like me to come?
Speaker:And she's like, yes, I'd like you to come and just be watching what's
Speaker:happening just to keep me safe.
Speaker:I'm like, okay, cool.
Speaker:So I arrived at the park.
Speaker:She was already there on the park bench.
Speaker:She saw where I was.
Speaker:And then outta my periphery, I saw him and he didn't look remorseful,
Speaker:sorry, any of those things.
Speaker:He just looked angry and on a mission, and I thought, holy
Speaker:shiz, we are in trouble here.
Speaker:So I got out of my car and I moved around the other side of the park so that I was
Speaker:behind them on the park bench so that if something happened, I could grab mum.
Speaker:He pulled out a shotgun and I had to dive in between them to get mom out of there.
Speaker:I've never been more terrified in my entire life and I realized
Speaker:at that moment that, oh, I'm the parent here and this sucks.
Speaker:We got her back to the safe house.
Speaker:We actually had to change safe houses 'cause he'd worked out where she was.
Speaker:And within three months he was in jail, not for domestic violence,
Speaker:but because he actually turned out to be a pedophile so he was safely
Speaker:in jail and she was safely free.
Speaker:and then she went on to live a very interesting life, hooking up with
Speaker:all the wrong people at all the wrong times and some, now I can laugh at
Speaker:because she came out for her third or fourth wedding in a blue taffeta
Speaker:gown and some at another wedding where they passed around marijuana cookies.
Speaker:I can laugh about all that now because this story doesn't
Speaker:come from a place of trauma.
Speaker:This story comes from a place of healing
Speaker:but it's still got emotion to it.
Speaker:I learned very quickly and a very young age that there is only one person
Speaker:that I could rely on and that was me.
Speaker:Fast forward a couple of months, once all of this circus had died
Speaker:down a little bit, and I thought.
Speaker:Once I finished school and I repeated grade 10, la, la, la, la, la But once
Speaker:I re, once I finished school, that my life's ambition was to be a secretary.
Speaker:That is what everyone thought.
Speaker:I was capable of being a secretary.
Speaker:Lovely.
Speaker:So I thought actually, if I'm gonna be a secretary, secretaries know how to type.
Speaker:I think so I found a school 20 minutes away from me.
Speaker:Now at this point in time, I was driving to school and I drove there twice
Speaker:a week to learn how to touch type.
Speaker:On a typewriter.
Speaker:Yes, I'm that old.
Speaker:And how you learn is actually you put your fingers on the keys.
Speaker:I'm doing this on YouTube.
Speaker:If you wanna have a look at it, put your fingers on the keys and then you cover
Speaker:it with like a tea towel or something.
Speaker:So you can't actually see the keys.
Speaker:Anyway.
Speaker:I am so thankful for that because I'm like 80 words a minute now.
Speaker:It's awesome.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:But I thought I wanted to be a secretary 'cause that's what people thought.
Speaker:I could do.
Speaker:Isn't that sad, ladies?
Speaker:Isn't that sad that someone thought I could be a secretary?
Speaker:Therefore, I was the beliefs that can shape you and the narratives that people
Speaker:give you, and they think it's a gift when actually all it does is hold us back.
Speaker:And so.
Speaker:I went through life, not as a secretary, but as a HR professional.
Speaker:I took myself off to uni.
Speaker:I did full-time uni, full-time job, and, got a, a degree in, in commerce and
Speaker:majoring in hr, and I loved that job.
Speaker:And then when it was time for me to start my own thing, I always
Speaker:had this entrepreneurial itch, right, that I needed to scratch.
Speaker:I was nine years old selling icy poles.
Speaker:On the driveway, you know, like creating pieces of art and selling them around
Speaker:the neighborhood, looking for ways to always have kind of some a side hustle.
Speaker:So I knew that I had to scratch this thing.
Speaker:I also knew I had a great reputation as a HR person, through multiple organizations.
Speaker:And when I started talking about going out on my own.
Speaker:So many people said to me, and I bet this has happened to you ladies.
Speaker:So many people said to me, oh yeah, we'll give you work.
Speaker:Oh, there's plenty of work here.
Speaker:We need people like you.
Speaker:And you know what happened next?
Speaker:Ladies?
Speaker:Crickets, nothing.
Speaker:Nada, and I mean, I can be a slow learner, probably should have realized
Speaker:that I needed to only rely on myself.
Speaker:But this is another moment in time that thing that happens for you, not to you.
Speaker:The realization that, holy crap, if it's meant to be, it's up to me and so I have
Speaker:to get off and go and build this business.
Speaker:I had also been told by a lovely man named Greg.
Speaker:Who was a managing director of one of my firms, his words,
Speaker:Emma, you're terrible at sales.
Speaker:And I thought, yes, I am.
Speaker:I'm terrible at sales.
Speaker:So not only am I starting my own business, I've got this narrative in my head.
Speaker:I'm terrible at sales.
Speaker:So I was like, how do I get rid of that narrative?
Speaker:What do I do with this?
Speaker:I finished up at my job on the 30th of November.
Speaker:And my husband said to me, are you just gonna take the month off because
Speaker:it's Christmas and you know the kids, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker:I said, Nope.
Speaker:Pounding the pavement for the next three weeks.
Speaker:And he's like, excuse me.
Speaker:I mean, partly he's not surprised.
Speaker:You can hear that I'm a very strong-willed individual and at some point I always
Speaker:have a plan in my back pocket, but I pounded the pavement three weeks, three
Speaker:to four coffees a day in real life.
Speaker:Pounding the pavement, making sure people knew me as Emma McQueen,
Speaker:P-T-Y-L-T-D, out there, one offer, selling it over and over and over again.
Speaker:So I got rid of the narrative.
Speaker:I got rid of the narrative that I couldn't sell.
Speaker:Do you know what happened next?
Speaker:Greg called me.
Speaker:I kid you not, and told me that the reason that I am so successful
Speaker:is because of his mentoring.
Speaker:So typical, isn't it, of a man to try and claim the credit of someone else's book.
Speaker:And yes, I did tell him that.
Speaker:I also used some choice words, which I can't repeat here because you know,
Speaker:we're a clean podcast and all that kind of stuff, but very early on,
Speaker:If it's meant to be, it's up to me.
Speaker:And now that I have been in business for almost nine years now,
Speaker:I watch my clients and I say to them, here's what you need to do.
Speaker:Here is A, B, C, and D. Here are the things that you'd need to do to make
Speaker:sure that you are generating enough revenue to keep your business afloat.
Speaker:I wanna tell you about one of my clients.
Speaker:She came to me and she had worked with three different coaches.
Speaker:Now immediately, that's red flags everyone.
Speaker:If you have someone that comes to you and they've been through a few
Speaker:coaches, you're like, what's going on?
Speaker:Will you follow instruction?
Speaker:Will you learn?
Speaker:Do you have a growth mindset?
Speaker:All the things.
Speaker:But she assured me, assured me that it was just wrong fit.
Speaker:and my gut kind of said, yeah, I feel like that's right.
Speaker:and when you come to work with me, you get a Google spreadsheet.
Speaker:We have session after session, we get a, you have a questionnaire.
Speaker:I'm there in between sessions so that if you get stuck, you can keep moving.
Speaker:And yes, I am a business coach, but I also have done this before.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:It's part coaching, part mentoring, right?
Speaker:And she wasn't able to get the traction that I needed her to get.
Speaker:And in our fourth session, so people normally sign up for a year and then stay
Speaker:for five, but in our fourth session I said to her, Hey, this is not working.
Speaker:You are actually not doing the work that I need you to be doing.
Speaker:And if you do the work, then you'll reap the results.
Speaker:And if you don't do the work, we probably can't work together anymore because
Speaker:you are just gonna feel frustrated.
Speaker:And I can tell you, I'm gonna be frustrated.
Speaker:Now, I just wanna share a little piece of one of the things that we
Speaker:did to turn her situation around, which is not mindset, although we
Speaker:did have a difficult conversation.
Speaker:It was.
Speaker:Very, very practical.
Speaker:And ladies, I know at the moment the way we've done business in the past,
Speaker:the things that have worked in the past aren't necessarily working now.
Speaker:So don't try and hammer it, change, pivot, do something different.
Speaker:And she had run some amazing masterclasses.
Speaker:Amazing masterclasses.
Speaker:She had good numbers on the masterclass, and then nothing crickets.
Speaker:And so I said to her, right, let's grab the masterclass.
Speaker:Let's grab all the people that were on the masterclass.
Speaker:I want you to send them a text message the very next day to say
Speaker:that you are going to call them.
Speaker:She's like.
Speaker:Don't like where this is going.
Speaker:I'm like, I know.
Speaker:the reason for that, ladies, very practically, if you send someone a text
Speaker:message to say, I'm going to call you one.
Speaker:They know the phone number because no one answers random phone calls anymore.
Speaker:Two, if you've got an iPhone, your photo flashes up.
Speaker:So it says maybe Emma McQueen.
Speaker:Sorry if you've had that.
Speaker:So we sent the text message, which kept her on the hook for
Speaker:accountability for making the call.
Speaker:the next day she made the call from 30 text messages and calls.
Speaker:She booked in seven.
Speaker:I think it was seven to 10 discovery calls.
Speaker:From the seven to 10 discovery calls she brought on four new clients.
Speaker:That's the way the numbers wash out every single time.
Speaker:And people often say to me, it has to be more magical than that.
Speaker:You know what, it's actually, there's no magic to it.
Speaker:This is just a boring numbers game.
Speaker:So let me tell you this.
Speaker:If you are listening to this and you're thinking, what does that mean for me?
Speaker:I want you to think about if you need one sale.
Speaker:That goes at the bottom of your piece of paper.
Speaker:One sale.
Speaker:If you need one sale, you need to have two proposals out.
Speaker:If you have two proposals out, you need to speak to four people.
Speaker:And if you're speaking to four people, you need to have eight
Speaker:at the top of your funnel.
Speaker:That's how the numbers wash out every single time.
Speaker:And that's if you're not very good at sales.
Speaker:If you're really good at sales, those numbers wash out a bit easier.
Speaker:But anyway, so she all of a sudden went, whoa.
Speaker:This works.
Speaker:This is just a process.
Speaker:Emma actually can't pick up the phone for me, although I would've loved to have,
Speaker:but Emma can't pick up the phone for me.
Speaker:But Emma can guide me in a way to make sure that my business is stable, my
Speaker:business is rocking, my business is delivering the revenue that we need,
Speaker:that I am delivering to my clients, that I'm doing all the right things.
Speaker:She had the transformation not because of what I did,
Speaker:but because of the momentum that she started,
Speaker:the actions that she took,
Speaker:the processes that she followed,
Speaker:and the thing at the end of the day, and this was the two week
Speaker:experiment, four new clients in two weeks, the numbers don't lie.
Speaker:If she kept doing that for the next 90 days, her books would be full.
Speaker:In the latest round of the BD sprint, we had 60 women all
Speaker:faced in the same direction.
Speaker:were working on business development an hour a day.
Speaker:The results from that business development sprint was $230,000
Speaker:worth of sales in 10 days.
Speaker:It was like Thousands of new LinkedIn connections.
Speaker:It was
Speaker:71 proposals out 10 days pointed in the same direction.
Speaker:Getting a tip from Emma McQueen and having a community bolster you up.
Speaker:And the funny thing, barely any phone calls.
Speaker:The phone calls, they're so underrated and yet they are the thing.
Speaker:One of the things I did on the latest BD sprint is I played along
Speaker:on my own game, which was so random.
Speaker:we had an event coming up and we had 20 tickets left to
Speaker:sell, and I thought to myself.
Speaker:I need to make sure that this BD thing works.
Speaker:I need to make sure that all the things that I'm telling people are
Speaker:still relevant, still up to date, still work, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker:So my commitment to the group was, I'm gonna sell these 20
Speaker:tickets in the next two weeks.
Speaker:How did I do that?
Speaker:I spent hours on the phone to people.
Speaker:I was texting people, I was emailing people, personalize,
Speaker:personalize, personalize.
Speaker:And within the first seven days, I'd sold all those tickets.
Speaker:The numbers don't lie, I love that.
Speaker:I can tell that story because do you know what?
Speaker:I'm in the trenches with every single woman that I work with.
Speaker:I'm cheerleading them on.
Speaker:I am giving them tough love, and I am getting them to get
Speaker:themselves out of their own way.
Speaker:Because we've got so much potential that we can tap into businesses
Speaker:growing in Australia, women in businesses growing in Australia.
Speaker:We just need to tap into our own potential, get out of our own way, step
Speaker:into the uncomfortableness of picking up the phone or putting ourselves out there.
Speaker:All the things to generate revenue.
Speaker:But the only person that can do that is you.
Speaker:You go into business for your own freedom,
Speaker:for your own choice,
Speaker:for your own sanity,
Speaker:for your own revenue, you do all that.
Speaker:So if you sit there and say, I don't wanna do the work, you
Speaker:need to decide what you do next.
Speaker:Wow, this really sounds like tough love today.
Speaker:And I'm sorry, I did not mean it to go that way, but I want you to
Speaker:know you gotta rely on yourself.
Speaker:Yes, it's great to have a community.
Speaker:Yes, it's great to have support, but you gotta do the work If you need someone
Speaker:to help you, you know where I am.
Speaker:I love doing this work.
Speaker:I love helping women get out of their own way and tap into their own potential
Speaker:and create a business that they love.
Speaker:And I'm so thankful.
Speaker:I mean, it sounds weird, right?
Speaker:Because the experience with my mom, I wasn't thankful at the
Speaker:time, let me tell you that.
Speaker:But now, now I can see that that.
Speaker:Moment in time helped me realize that actually, yeah, I need to rely on myself.
Speaker:And that's helped me in business because the lesson is still there.
Speaker:It's, I'm still learning it today.
Speaker:You still got to rely on yourself, and I'm super thankful for that.
Speaker:I'm not thankful it happened and it was a scary time in our lives, but I
Speaker:am immensely grateful that I learned the lesson and that the universe
Speaker:continues to teach me the lesson.
Speaker:Let's be honest.