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I got a call from my mum and I knew I had to go.

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I was young, I had my license, and

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she was in trouble.

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If you've listened to any of the episodes before this episode, you will know that

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my mum had severe mental health issues.

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You'll also know my origin story, but if you haven't listened to that, go

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back to that podcast and have a listen.

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It'll put it all into place for you.

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My mum was married to a, hmm, how can I say this politely knob.

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And he hurt her and it was a, a tale of domestic violence.

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And so I went and got mum.

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I drove to her place while he was out.

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We packed a bag.

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I've never felt my heart racing so quickly about getting caught in his

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house while she was packing a bag.

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We grabbed her dog.

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Because that meant the world to her.

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We got in the car and we drove, and we drove, and we drove, and we stopped to

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get a cup of tea and a coffee and just for her to catch her breath and stop

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the shaking that was happening for her.

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We crafted a plan.

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The only plan I could think of because I was living with another family was that

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she go and spend a couple of days in

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a safe house for women

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it was meant to be secure.

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there was people that could help her through all the bits and pieces.

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They would take her dog and her, and she would be safe, and so

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we popped her in the safe house.

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If you've ever experienced or had any experience of

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domestic violence, IT'S AWFUL.

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You live in fear the entire time while you're trying to work

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through what the heck to do next.

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So I dropped her there and left and she started in their program.

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A couple of days later, she messaged me and she said to me,

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Emma, he wants to come and see me.

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And I'm like.

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No, the answer is no.

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It's a full sentence.

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And she said, I'm gonna meet him at this local park.

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I'm like, okay.

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I said, would you like me to come?

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And she's like, yes, I'd like you to come and just be watching what's

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happening just to keep me safe.

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I'm like, okay, cool.

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So I arrived at the park.

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She was already there on the park bench.

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She saw where I was.

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And then outta my periphery, I saw him and he didn't look remorseful,

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sorry, any of those things.

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He just looked angry and on a mission, and I thought, holy

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shiz, we are in trouble here.

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So I got out of my car and I moved around the other side of the park so that I was

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behind them on the park bench so that if something happened, I could grab mum.

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He pulled out a shotgun and I had to dive in between them to get mom out of there.

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I've never been more terrified in my entire life and I realized

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at that moment that, oh, I'm the parent here and this sucks.

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We got her back to the safe house.

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We actually had to change safe houses 'cause he'd worked out where she was.

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And within three months he was in jail, not for domestic violence,

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but because he actually turned out to be a pedophile so he was safely

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in jail and she was safely free.

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and then she went on to live a very interesting life, hooking up with

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all the wrong people at all the wrong times and some, now I can laugh at

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because she came out for her third or fourth wedding in a blue taffeta

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gown and some at another wedding where they passed around marijuana cookies.

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I can laugh about all that now because this story doesn't

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come from a place of trauma.

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This story comes from a place of healing

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but it's still got emotion to it.

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I learned very quickly and a very young age that there is only one person

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that I could rely on and that was me.

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Fast forward a couple of months, once all of this circus had died

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down a little bit, and I thought.

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Once I finished school and I repeated grade 10, la, la, la, la, la But once

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I re, once I finished school, that my life's ambition was to be a secretary.

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That is what everyone thought.

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I was capable of being a secretary.

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Lovely.

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So I thought actually, if I'm gonna be a secretary, secretaries know how to type.

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I think so I found a school 20 minutes away from me.

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Now at this point in time, I was driving to school and I drove there twice

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a week to learn how to touch type.

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On a typewriter.

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Yes, I'm that old.

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And how you learn is actually you put your fingers on the keys.

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I'm doing this on YouTube.

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If you wanna have a look at it, put your fingers on the keys and then you cover

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it with like a tea towel or something.

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So you can't actually see the keys.

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Anyway.

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I am so thankful for that because I'm like 80 words a minute now.

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It's awesome.

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Right?

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But I thought I wanted to be a secretary 'cause that's what people thought.

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I could do.

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Isn't that sad, ladies?

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Isn't that sad that someone thought I could be a secretary?

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Therefore, I was the beliefs that can shape you and the narratives that people

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give you, and they think it's a gift when actually all it does is hold us back.

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And so.

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I went through life, not as a secretary, but as a HR professional.

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I took myself off to uni.

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I did full-time uni, full-time job, and, got a, a degree in, in commerce and

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majoring in hr, and I loved that job.

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And then when it was time for me to start my own thing, I always

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had this entrepreneurial itch, right, that I needed to scratch.

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I was nine years old selling icy poles.

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On the driveway, you know, like creating pieces of art and selling them around

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the neighborhood, looking for ways to always have kind of some a side hustle.

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So I knew that I had to scratch this thing.

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I also knew I had a great reputation as a HR person, through multiple organizations.

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And when I started talking about going out on my own.

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So many people said to me, and I bet this has happened to you ladies.

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So many people said to me, oh yeah, we'll give you work.

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Oh, there's plenty of work here.

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We need people like you.

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And you know what happened next?

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Ladies?

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Crickets, nothing.

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Nada, and I mean, I can be a slow learner, probably should have realized

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that I needed to only rely on myself.

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But this is another moment in time that thing that happens for you, not to you.

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The realization that, holy crap, if it's meant to be, it's up to me and so I have

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to get off and go and build this business.

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I had also been told by a lovely man named Greg.

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Who was a managing director of one of my firms, his words,

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Emma, you're terrible at sales.

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And I thought, yes, I am.

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I'm terrible at sales.

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So not only am I starting my own business, I've got this narrative in my head.

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I'm terrible at sales.

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So I was like, how do I get rid of that narrative?

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What do I do with this?

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I finished up at my job on the 30th of November.

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And my husband said to me, are you just gonna take the month off because

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it's Christmas and you know the kids, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

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I said, Nope.

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Pounding the pavement for the next three weeks.

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And he's like, excuse me.

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I mean, partly he's not surprised.

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You can hear that I'm a very strong-willed individual and at some point I always

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have a plan in my back pocket, but I pounded the pavement three weeks, three

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to four coffees a day in real life.

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Pounding the pavement, making sure people knew me as Emma McQueen,

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P-T-Y-L-T-D, out there, one offer, selling it over and over and over again.

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So I got rid of the narrative.

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I got rid of the narrative that I couldn't sell.

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Do you know what happened next?

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Greg called me.

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I kid you not, and told me that the reason that I am so successful

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is because of his mentoring.

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So typical, isn't it, of a man to try and claim the credit of someone else's book.

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And yes, I did tell him that.

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I also used some choice words, which I can't repeat here because you know,

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we're a clean podcast and all that kind of stuff, but very early on,

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If it's meant to be, it's up to me.

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And now that I have been in business for almost nine years now,

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I watch my clients and I say to them, here's what you need to do.

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Here is A, B, C, and D. Here are the things that you'd need to do to make

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sure that you are generating enough revenue to keep your business afloat.

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I wanna tell you about one of my clients.

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She came to me and she had worked with three different coaches.

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Now immediately, that's red flags everyone.

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If you have someone that comes to you and they've been through a few

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coaches, you're like, what's going on?

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Will you follow instruction?

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Will you learn?

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Do you have a growth mindset?

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All the things.

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But she assured me, assured me that it was just wrong fit.

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and my gut kind of said, yeah, I feel like that's right.

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and when you come to work with me, you get a Google spreadsheet.

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We have session after session, we get a, you have a questionnaire.

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I'm there in between sessions so that if you get stuck, you can keep moving.

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And yes, I am a business coach, but I also have done this before.

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So.

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It's part coaching, part mentoring, right?

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And she wasn't able to get the traction that I needed her to get.

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And in our fourth session, so people normally sign up for a year and then stay

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for five, but in our fourth session I said to her, Hey, this is not working.

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You are actually not doing the work that I need you to be doing.

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And if you do the work, then you'll reap the results.

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And if you don't do the work, we probably can't work together anymore because

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you are just gonna feel frustrated.

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And I can tell you, I'm gonna be frustrated.

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Now, I just wanna share a little piece of one of the things that we

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did to turn her situation around, which is not mindset, although we

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did have a difficult conversation.

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It was.

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Very, very practical.

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And ladies, I know at the moment the way we've done business in the past,

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the things that have worked in the past aren't necessarily working now.

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So don't try and hammer it, change, pivot, do something different.

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And she had run some amazing masterclasses.

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Amazing masterclasses.

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She had good numbers on the masterclass, and then nothing crickets.

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And so I said to her, right, let's grab the masterclass.

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Let's grab all the people that were on the masterclass.

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I want you to send them a text message the very next day to say

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that you are going to call them.

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She's like.

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Don't like where this is going.

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I'm like, I know.

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the reason for that, ladies, very practically, if you send someone a text

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message to say, I'm going to call you one.

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They know the phone number because no one answers random phone calls anymore.

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Two, if you've got an iPhone, your photo flashes up.

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So it says maybe Emma McQueen.

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Sorry if you've had that.

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So we sent the text message, which kept her on the hook for

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accountability for making the call.

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the next day she made the call from 30 text messages and calls.

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She booked in seven.

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I think it was seven to 10 discovery calls.

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From the seven to 10 discovery calls she brought on four new clients.

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That's the way the numbers wash out every single time.

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And people often say to me, it has to be more magical than that.

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You know what, it's actually, there's no magic to it.

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This is just a boring numbers game.

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So let me tell you this.

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If you are listening to this and you're thinking, what does that mean for me?

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I want you to think about if you need one sale.

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That goes at the bottom of your piece of paper.

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One sale.

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If you need one sale, you need to have two proposals out.

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If you have two proposals out, you need to speak to four people.

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And if you're speaking to four people, you need to have eight

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at the top of your funnel.

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That's how the numbers wash out every single time.

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And that's if you're not very good at sales.

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If you're really good at sales, those numbers wash out a bit easier.

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But anyway, so she all of a sudden went, whoa.

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This works.

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This is just a process.

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Emma actually can't pick up the phone for me, although I would've loved to have,

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but Emma can't pick up the phone for me.

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But Emma can guide me in a way to make sure that my business is stable, my

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business is rocking, my business is delivering the revenue that we need,

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that I am delivering to my clients, that I'm doing all the right things.

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She had the transformation not because of what I did,

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but because of the momentum that she started,

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the actions that she took,

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the processes that she followed,

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and the thing at the end of the day, and this was the two week

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experiment, four new clients in two weeks, the numbers don't lie.

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If she kept doing that for the next 90 days, her books would be full.

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In the latest round of the BD sprint, we had 60 women all

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faced in the same direction.

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were working on business development an hour a day.

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The results from that business development sprint was $230,000

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worth of sales in 10 days.

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It was like Thousands of new LinkedIn connections.

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It was

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71 proposals out 10 days pointed in the same direction.

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Getting a tip from Emma McQueen and having a community bolster you up.

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And the funny thing, barely any phone calls.

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The phone calls, they're so underrated and yet they are the thing.

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One of the things I did on the latest BD sprint is I played along

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on my own game, which was so random.

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we had an event coming up and we had 20 tickets left to

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sell, and I thought to myself.

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I need to make sure that this BD thing works.

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I need to make sure that all the things that I'm telling people are

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still relevant, still up to date, still work, et cetera, et cetera.

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So my commitment to the group was, I'm gonna sell these 20

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tickets in the next two weeks.

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How did I do that?

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I spent hours on the phone to people.

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I was texting people, I was emailing people, personalize,

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personalize, personalize.

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And within the first seven days, I'd sold all those tickets.

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The numbers don't lie, I love that.

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I can tell that story because do you know what?

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I'm in the trenches with every single woman that I work with.

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I'm cheerleading them on.

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I am giving them tough love, and I am getting them to get

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themselves out of their own way.

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Because we've got so much potential that we can tap into businesses

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growing in Australia, women in businesses growing in Australia.

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We just need to tap into our own potential, get out of our own way, step

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into the uncomfortableness of picking up the phone or putting ourselves out there.

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All the things to generate revenue.

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But the only person that can do that is you.

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You go into business for your own freedom,

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for your own choice,

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for your own sanity,

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for your own revenue, you do all that.

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So if you sit there and say, I don't wanna do the work, you

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need to decide what you do next.

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Wow, this really sounds like tough love today.

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And I'm sorry, I did not mean it to go that way, but I want you to

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know you gotta rely on yourself.

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Yes, it's great to have a community.

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Yes, it's great to have support, but you gotta do the work If you need someone

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to help you, you know where I am.

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I love doing this work.

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I love helping women get out of their own way and tap into their own potential

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and create a business that they love.

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And I'm so thankful.

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I mean, it sounds weird, right?

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Because the experience with my mom, I wasn't thankful at the

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time, let me tell you that.

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But now, now I can see that that.

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Moment in time helped me realize that actually, yeah, I need to rely on myself.

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And that's helped me in business because the lesson is still there.

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It's, I'm still learning it today.

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You still got to rely on yourself, and I'm super thankful for that.

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I'm not thankful it happened and it was a scary time in our lives, but I

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am immensely grateful that I learned the lesson and that the universe

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continues to teach me the lesson.

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Let's be honest.