Don't Stop Us Now! Podcast

This week’s guest is a woman who at the age of 92 is still inspiring thousands of women to be the “best they can be!”. We’re talking about the incredible doyenne of etiquette and deportment, June Dally Watkins. Miss Dally, as she is known, grew up on a sheep farm and attended a one teacher bush school in regional Australia. Her teacher told her mother that she “would be an absolute failure in life”. He couldn’t have been more wrong. At 22, June became Australia’s Fashion Model of the Year and soon became Australia’s first supermodel. She lived the high life as part of the global jetset becoming great friends with Hollywood stars Audrey Hepburn, Bing Crosby and Gregory Peck (who asked her to marry him!). When she came back to Australia she started her now famous etiquette and deportment business which made her one of Australia’s first female entrepreneurs. The June Dally Watkins School has gone on to change thousands and thousands of people’s lives.  She is now, at 92 years of age, an absolute sensation in

We get it, no-one likes having a difficult conversation do they?  Yet, it’s a fact of life that we all need to instigate them at different times both at work and at home. And if you want to be successful at work, it’s fair to say that having constructive difficult conversations is a skill you just need to master. But difficult conversations are hard because they often illicit emotion. Hence many of us procrastinate or dodge conversations that we know we really should have, which can lead to resentment and festering emotions.    Procrastinate no more! This week we provide you with some simple tips and tools to help you navigate these tricky situations. In fact, we teach how to have difficult work conversations in our leadership programs at companies around the world, including Google, Pinterest, Uber, etc, and our participants tell us that these skills really help.  In this episode you’ll learn: Practical steps you can take to ensure your difficult conversations go as well as possible  Why it’s so i

Our guest this week has been on an incredible journey in the past decade - building an iconic online retail empire to global heights and then having no choice but to close it all down last year. We’re talking about Shoes of Prey co-founder, Jodie Fox.  The trailblazing Shoes of Prey became a global start-up and fashion darling during its nine years in business - offering shoes that its customers could personally design and customise online. It was a truly innovative concept.  Big name VC firms thought so too, and Jodie and her two male co-founders raised around $30 million over the life of the business before coming to the heart-wrenching decision to cease trading in August last year. The problem? Despite a stunning launch years earlier, they simply couldn’t get the scale to make the business sustainable in the long term.  Jodie was the Chief Creative Officer and public face of Shoes of Prey, so coming to terms with having to shut down the business, and its global offices, has been particularly confronting

This episode features a super creative thinker and former child prodigy who’s on a quest to bring beauty and emotion to all that she creates and builds. We’re talking about renown architect, interior designer, fashion designer and artist, Jordy Fu. Jordy grew up in Chengdu in China. At the age of just six years old, 200 pieces of Jordy’s art work were exhibited in a solo exhibition at the Beijing Capital Museum. By the time she was seven a book of her artworks had been published! Jordy went on to study in London at the iconic art school, Central Saint Martins, before qualifying as an architect and eventually starting her own multi-disciplinary firm.  Now based in Bangkok, Jordy and her team work on a diverse range of projects... and Jordy in particular works on everything from iconic buildings in China to statement fashion pieces for the runways in Dubai.  In this episode you’ll learn: Why she believes most architects are boring Why being a child prodigy can make you feel like a failure when you’re a

In this week’s episode we meet an entrepreneur and innovator who’s been through more than her fair share of challenge and trauma, yet has found a way to forge her own unique path. We’re talking about the irrepressible Dr Catherine Ball. Catherine, or Cath, grew up in a pretty poor, single parent household in an industrial town in the UK. Unlike her peers she was determined to go to university where she studied environmental protection. She then went on to complete a PHD - a process she now describes as torturous.  Needing to pay off her student debt, her path then took her into the corporate world where she worked with a number of engineering consultancies in the UK and then in Australia.  Just as Cath was being recognised as a leader in her space receiving the Queensland Telstra Business Woman of the Year award in 2015, her company merged with a competitor and she, to her surprise, was made redundant.  It was this shocking jolt that led her to start her first company and led to her building on her alread

In our episode this week we meet an entrepreneur who’s been on a 30 year quest to find ways to create environments and networks for people to innovate and solve problems that matter. We’re talking about the amazing Founder and CEO of SheEO, Vicki Saunders. Vicki grew up in Canada on her family’s farm where she learnt early on to work hard and problem solve. However, her pathway to becoming an entrepreneur took place, unusually for a young Canadian woman, in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic.  Vicki spent 4 years in Prague where she started multiple businesses learning as she went along. She also built a community of entrepreneurs there, before returning to Toronto to found Canada’s first ever incubator.  Fast forward many years and Vicki was mentoring a brilliant young female entrepreneur who was struggling to get funded. She realised then that the system was broken for women… with female-founded startups receiving less than 4% of all venture capital funding. Vicki decided she had to do something

Office politics - even the thought of it can make some people cringe!  We so understand because those two words together conjure up images of mostly bad experiences don’t they? Whether it’s the nightmare colleague, the boss from hell or having the goal posts shifted on you without notice, it’s just not fun! If you’ve ever experienced this or are going through something like this right now, then this is the episode for you. With one research study showing that one in three working people in Britain were unhappy at work because of office politics, we figure that all the great advice featured in this episode is going to come in pretty handy for a lot of you!  Tune in if you want to learn: How to think about office politics differently  Two great principles to apply when navigating through a tricky situation, whatever it may be  How to approach having an insecure or micro-managing boss Specific and simple tips for you to survive having a difficult colleague   Whatever your situation you’re likely to

Our guest this week is the incredibly inspiring Martha Lane Fox, one of the UK’s most well known and respected technology leaders and society shapers. In 1997 Martha was 25 years old when she became co-founder of Lastminute.com, one of the first internet travel marketplaces in the world. This was in the days of the first dot com boom when creating internet based businesses was still a truly pioneering thing.  In 2003, after 6 years running LastMinute.com, Martha stepped down as CEO and took some time off to holiday in Morocco, where she was seriously injured in a car accident. She broke 28 bones, had a stroke, was airlifted back to the UK and spent 2 years in hospital. Martha’s story of her journey back to some degree of normalcy is truly incredible. The chronic pain and injuries she lives with today would make you think she’d want to rest up and take it easy. But not Martha. She’s gone on to do so many important things, believing passionately that it’s so important for female voices to be heard. Today sh

We’re excited to share this week’s episode featuring someone who’s had an extraordinary career at the cutting edge of space exploration. Trudy Kortes is the Chief of the Human Exploration and Space Operations Division at NASA. With her day job, not only is Trudy working on real ‘moonshots’ she is also developing new technologies that will undoubtedly have an incredible impact on our lives in the future. An aeronautical engineer by profession, Trudy has spent about 30 years working for NASA focusing on helping the space agency develop many super- sophisticated technologies to explore our galaxy. Today Trudy leads a team of around 200 people working on a range of projects including advanced communications, propulsion and the crew module, to name a few. What we love about this episode is Trudy’s ability to translate the super complex work she’s been involved with in her career to date, into easy to understand and inspiring stories about the valuable lessons she’s learnt along the way, and about what’s possible

Our guest this week is one of the most determined and resilient people we’ve ever met. For the past 14 years she’s been on a mission to improve education for millions of children in Ethiopia encountering challenges on almost every front. We’re talking about the amazing Brukty Tigabu. At the age of 10, Brukty took on the role of head of her household after her mother became very ill. She found a way to make ends meet by selling vegetables from their garden in the market. She credits this time in her life with giving her the basic business and survival skills that helped her get where she is today.  And where you find this former school teacher today, is running the social enterprise she co-founded called Whiz Kids Workshop. It creates educational media programs - including 3 internationally awarded television series for children in Ethiopia. For the past 14 years Whiz Kids Workshop has inspired a generation of young children in Ethiopia with their most famous and loved program, the puppet based educational T

Our guest this week is a serial entrepreneur and one of Australia’s richest and most successful women. She’s also one of the humblest and most honest people you’re likely to meet. We’re talking about Cyan Ta’eed, Co-Founder of digital marketplaces business, Envato, and Founder of ethical luxury chocolate company, Hey Tiger and Milkshake, a new app for Instagram influencers. Cyan is a true creative and started her career as a graphic designer. However after a brief stint working for someone else she decided working for herself was the way to go. She and her then boyfriend, started a side hustle to sell stock photographs and digital assets to other creatives.  Fast forward 13 years and Envato, the name of that marketplaces company, is now worth more than A$1bn, employs over 500 people and has more than one billion digital goods for sale. Not only that, but Cyan has gone on to start, amongst other things, Hey Tiger, a chocolate social enterprise aimed at women as well as her latest start up Milkshake, a websit

Don’t forget to enter our competition (below) to win a free coaching session with Claire and Greta. This week we explore what you can do when you have that horrible feeling you’re trapped in your job… for whatever reason. Maybe you’ve been meaning to change what you do for a while but just find the whole prospect scary or overwhelming; or maybe you’re in a job that pays really well or gives you lots of status that others envy, but you feel miserable; or, perhaps, the job you took just isn’t meeting your expectations. If any of these scenarios sound like your situation then pick up those earphones and tune in now. Together we’ll share tips, tools and advice to help you feel less stuck going forward. Tune in to hear: Three key reasons why we feel stuck How one of our guests nearly died before she realised her high paying, successful career was completely wrong for her What six words are super helpful to break through any apprehension or nervousness you have about changing or going for a new job

Our guest this week has a habit of saying “yes” to things she doesn’t know how to do... such as designing women's wear collections for Nordstrom when she’d never designed clothes before! We’re talking about the unbelievably stylish entrepreneur, Caroline Issa, the CEO of the Tank group which includes the revered global fashion and culture magazine, Tank Magazine. Despite her quiet humility she’s also a fashion influencer and paparazzi favourite. Caroline started her career as a management consultant working in San Francisco, Singapore and London. One day a friend introduced her to the Founder of Tank Magazine, and she fell in love with the business. Much to the horror of her family and friends she left her big expat consulting gig and became CEO of the fledgling business. That was 17 years ago. Fast forward to today and Tank is one of the few boutique global print magazines still thriving. What’s more, the business has grown to include a creative agency and Caroline is constantly innovating and embarking o

We don’t think we’ve ever had a guest who is prepared to be as open and honest about her life and career as Mia Freedman is. Whether it’s in our conversation for this episode, or her Insta posts or in the 3 books she’s written, Mia is determined to show her life, warts and all, because she really cares about shattering the ‘women should look and be perfect’ myth. She’s all about making women feel better about themselves. Mia is a household name in Australia. She's the co founder and creative director of MamaMia, one of the largest female-focussed digital media businesses in the world. Mia became the world’s youngest editor of Cosmopolitan magazine at just 24 years of age. In this episode you’ll hear: How Mia advises young women to think about their career How she was persuaded to stick out a nightmare job for months while negotiating her own redundancy How she and her husband manage working together, and ... How Mia realised she didn’t want, nor was she the right person, to be CEO of her own compan

This week’s guest has serious grit. Katie Vanneck-Smith is a media industry veteran and for anyone who’s not familiar with that industry, let’s just say it’s a pretty male dominated and blokey world. Katie has spent more than 20 years in the commercial side of publishing on both sides of the Atlantic. Katie’s grit really came to the fore when she spent nine years - yes nine years -  trying to persuade her bosses at The Times newspaper in London to get readers to pay for online news content. Her determination and patience paid off and in 2010 The Times became the first mainstream newspaper globally to charge for access to its digital content. This changed the future of how we all read newspapers online and Katie’s motto: ‘Work hard, have fun, make history’ really came to life. Fast forward nine years and Katie is attempting to make history again. Last year she left her high-powered role as President of Dow Jones (which includes the Wall Street Journal) to co-found a new online media start-up called ‘

We’re so impressed by how this week’s guest has grown her business and her brand from pre side-hustle stage, to become the entrepreneurial ‘foodie’ success it is today. We think you’ll love getting to know Gaby Dalkin, the California based chef, author and influencer. Gaby is the CEO of ‘What’s Gaby Cooking’. She and her team are a content and recipe creating machine! She has more than 450,000 Instagram followers, she’s published 2 cookbooks with another on the way, she’s appeared on some of America’s most watched TV shows, she has several product ranges at kitchenware giant Williams Sonoma, and has numerous other brand partnerships as well. When we met Gaby we were blown away by her obvious dedication and commitment. We actually met her whilst on holiday in Patagonia and in between our horse riding and hearty ‘estancia’ (ranch) Patagonian BBQ lunch, Gaby was clearly working on social media and we were intrigued. So intrigued, we got chatting and the rest is history! And in today’s episode you’ll learn:

Ann Sherry is a change maker who’s notched up so many extraordinary achievements during her decades long and inspiring career to date that it’s hard to know where to start. Suffice to say Australian women have a lot to thank her for as one of the many things she’s responsible for is introducing paid maternity leave to corporate Australia. She also transformed the cruise industry in Australia as CEO of Carnival Australia, notching up double digit growth every year despite having to deal with significant challenges. Today Ann sits on multiple boards including Carnival Australia where she is Chairman, she is also Chair of UNICEF Australia, and a Non Executive Director (NED) with one of the country’s biggest banks, National Australia Bank (NAB), as well as Sydney Airport, Rugby Australia, the Museum of Contemporary Arts Australia and Palladium.  Ann has many accolades for her extremely varied career to date including a Centenary Medal, an Order of Australia and the overall winner of the Women of Influence aw

“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.” William Penn, Founder of Pennsylvania We know you’re probably a very busy person but you won’t want to miss this episode all about maximising your time. It’s precisely because we all are so busy that pausing to think about how we’re using our time can be so worthwhile. William Penn may have lived in the late 1600’s and early 1700’s but he was spot on with his quote above about how we humans can use our time. In this latest episode in our ‘How To’ series, we share a whole host of useful tools and approaches used by a variety of amazing leaders that will help you ensure you maximise your own precious time and reduce any frustration you feel about time racing by too fast or tasks taking you too long to achieve. In this episode you’ll hear: 4 different ways to think about your time over the longer term and how being clear about your longer term priorities really makes a difference with your day to day work 4 approaches to tackle your day to day prio

This week’s inspiring guest is Dr Emma Camp, a British marine bio-geochemist who searches out and then studies corals that can naturally survive in extreme conditions such as mangroves. This might sound simple but it leads to Emma listing crocodiles as one of the greatest risks of a day in the office! She’s passionate about saving the world’s coral reefs and has made it her mission that we all should be too. (Emma, we’re convinced!) Emma is a National Geographic Explorer and a current United Nations Young leader. Despite her relative youth, her pioneering research work and passion for saving corals has seen her receive numerous honours and highly-prized research fellowships. In this episode you’ll hear: How Emma used her determination and ingenuity to go from struggling to break into academia to starting her own company to get the research experience she needed How her Dad’s mantra helps her reach her goals What it felt like the first time she found herself at the UN General Assembly And, the r

If we had to summarise what our guest this week is all about, we’d say she’s about reinvention and being true to herself. And for 35 year old Kat Dunn, that meant abandoning a successful corporate career. Born in the Philippines, Kat had been climbing the corporate ladder at an impressive rate in Australia, first of all as a lawyer and then in a variety of roles in financial services. But she was deeply unhappy. One day she said “Enough” and took radical action. In this episode we explore exactly how and why she did this and how she feels about her new career now, several years down the track. Today Kat is CEO of Grameen in Australia, part of the global not for profit organisation founded by the Nobel Peace Prize winner Professor Muhammad Yunus. In this frank and heartfelt episode you’ll hear: What it’s like growing up Asian in an almost all white country town in Western Australia How Kat started out as a consummate planner and then realised that just wasn’t working How she confronted failure head-