The problem is how to do fill the gaps in my business if I don’t have the funding to do it? Most people would just go straight to the idea that they have to wait until my business brings in the income to make this happen. Which is true.

Here is the dilemma.

I am an ideas person, a creator, a big picture person. I am sure you have heard people describe as this before. If I look at Myers Briggs Personality Profiles, I am an ENTP, or in layman’s terms an Enterprising Explorer. My type rides a rocket-ship. To use another descriptor, I am a Dynamo or a Creator, which comes from Roger J Hamilton’s Wealth Dynamics Profiles.

The clear point here is the things I don’t do well is everything my business needs at the moment in order to go to the next step.

This is the is the same in your career.

I succeeded in my career because I stepped into roles that allowed me to come up with the ideas, to create the solution, give the company the big picture. I then had a team around me which made it happen.  I was a change agent. I was good at it. As a change agent, I also have a CV which in ‘normal’ terms reads like a who’s who of businesses. This is because I also have a short concentration span. I am off looking for the next adventure.

This is good.  This is my strength.

Knowing and understanding what your personal preferences are is important in your career, it helps you to make the right decisions when looking at your career options, what the next step on your ladder should be.  It also helps you make the right decision about the team that should be around you.  You need a team that compliments you, if you have influence over who they are going to be. You need to know how to communicate with your team members if you don’t have that influence.

Each personality type communicates differently.  This often means that a personality type, such as mine, is often misunderstood, especially by the detail orientated.  Those who cannot understand how you can forget what bills are due, or lose track of how long it takes to make something work.

Without understanding our preferences, we cannot understand why it is that we might be good at something but keep losing interest, or are going home unhappy with our job. Yes, I used the word job. If we are unhappy, that is all it is going to be: a job, a chore, something we have to do to earn money.

If we get the mix right, it turns into a career, a passion, something we would do even if we weren’t getting paid. It is no good asking an person who works better without people around them, and likes a detailed list of everything that needs to be done step by step, to go out and network with clients to build relationships. I am not saying they couldn’t do it. Someone with a high achievement value will most likely go out and do it until it makes them sick, quite literally. They will be unhappy, and they will not do the very best they can do.

So this leads me back to being awake at night. I am trying to generate an idea that will help solve my dilemma. An idea that will help lead me to the freedom to go out and do what I do best…create.

What is it that is holding you back?

[If you want to find out more about understanding your personality, contact us about our upcoming workshops or one to one coaching on this.]

I noted in my last blog post that it was time for a change.  Not just in leadership but in the style and the way we go about it.  At the moment here in the UK we have a lot of political in fighting, yet I can see at least one positive in all the mess (or civil war as the media has taken to calling it). That is Theresa May.

I am not a Tory voter, actually I am not really anything.  I am what you call a swinging voter.  I will vote for the party, or representative that I believe is best for our community.  In this case the community is the United Kingdom. If I could vote right now I would vote for Theresa May.

She would be a breath of fresh air, in a stale political environment.

In among the candidate for the leader of the Tories, and consequently the Prime Minister of the UK, she is the only one who has the experience, the capability and most of all the apparent integrity.

I will not lie, I have another bias here.  I think it is time for change, we need a new style of leadership and I believe that Theresa May can bring that to us.

If you look at the most powerful leader in Europe we are looking at a women.  Angela Merkel is not only inspiring, she cares about her country and making sure she represents her people.

If we look into the UK and look at Scotland, you can see true leadership at work. Regardless of whether you agree with them or not they are really leading the charge and have the right perspective.  They are listening to their constituents.  Strangely once again, they are all women – Nicola Sturgeon, Ruth Davies and Kezia Dugdal. That is part of what being in politics is all about.

I look forward to common sense prevailing and seeing a woman at No. 10 for the first time since 1990.

That is way to long.  It is time for change and this is a good place to start.  I believe that she will at least have the guts and common sense to move the situation forward, rather than sitting in the current stale mate.  What’s more at least it will be a new and clean perspective on what is happening.

I look forward to seeing a Prime Minister who will be able to work not only with the Parliament in Westminster but also with the Leaders of the Parliaments in the nations of the United Kingdom, with a mindset which will see the UK move forward.

Here is to a new paradigm of leadership and a fresh view on how to represent the people of the United Kingdom.

I can’t do that I don’t have the money

For many of us it is not an excuse or a block, it is very real.

Or is it?

I effectively retired at the age of 35, about five years ahead of my plan. As a result I have been fortunate enough to spend the last 10 years travelling and working occasionally around the world (I have worked approximately 5 out of the last 11 years). I have been able to affect some change through the things I have been doing and the people I have come in contact with. Great change has been affected on me.

The biggest was that my existence life-style was no longer working for me. As a result, I decided to walk away from the short and long term contracts overseas that I did between volunteering opportunities and decided to settle down and set my business up properly.

I did this because I felt I could affect much more impact, change and make a greater difference from a position of real abundance, as opposed to one of occasional abundance.

I have self financed my business and so far it is growing steadily and the knowledge of what I am doing is slowly getting out there.  As a result of self funding my business, walking away from the longer term overseas contracts and deciding to give up roles that would distract from what I am doing, for the first time in a long time I am sitting in a position where the cash flow doesn’t necessarily match up.  The incoming is sometimes out of sync with the outgoing, not always in the best way.

If I want to grow my business, get out there and make it really happen and connect with more and more women and businesses that I can help, then I need to be out there. I need to be seen.

This leads to the question, about money. I needed to spend time in London. This was to do two things, one was to run some training sessions – part of my core business, the other was to network. With the cash flow issue raising it’s ugly head and London hotels, etc being what they are I was faced with the option of possibly withdrawing from the networking opportunities.

This was not the way to go. You see networking is a key to building up a new business, well good networking is. As a business based in Scotland but looking to work nationally and globally, I need to make the right connections the two networking events around my training were critical. Without access to credit to make it happen right now I did the next best thing:

I traveled on Mega bus and stayed in a Hostel. My room was shared with 14 other people.

I did this because it was necessary.

Did I like the hostel accommodation? NO!

Did it serve its purpose? Yes.

(Although I do need to mention that the Megabus travel was actually good, comfortable and saved on two extra nights of hotels, but that was because I took the sleeper bus option)

It was somewhere to sleep. If I had made the decision that I could not do it because of the money I would not have made the great connections I did at the Scottish London Business Network (a real bonus for Scottish based businesses looking to grow their business both into London and further afield).

Most of all if I had decided I could not afford it I would not have stood on the stage at the ExCel centre and spoken about my upcoming book, my business and my journey and I would not have been able to motivate and inspire others – which is a large part of my core business. I would not have made the valuable connections I made at the event either.

The next time you are faced with I can’t afford it, in your business, ask yourself this question:

Can I afford the potential business and exposure I might lose if i don’t find a way to afford it?

Sometimes money can really be a barrier but I find that more often than not there is a way to work with it and around it to make things work.  Think about the bigger cost, the opportunity cost, and work out a way to make it work.

It would be great to hear from others about things they have had to do in order to access the greater benefit for their business when money was tight.

Whilst I shouldn’t have been surprised, I was.

My mind had believed so strongly that we would stay. My world surrounded more by those under the age of 35, than those over, Scotland (where I live) and by entrepreneurs with global businesses, was filled with people who on the whole talked about the benefits of the EU and staying in. I guess I am also Australian, on a Greek passport and viewed the whole debate from a different view point.

Yet I was surprised.

I was also saddened; it took some of the sparkle out of me that the sun shining usually puts in. The sun was shining this morning.

Now before you worry that I am about to start on a rant on how could we (yes I do consider myself to be a part of the UK) be so stupid, it is not where I am going to go at all. After a morning to reading Facebook posts, news articles and looking at headlines on newspaper stands around London, I have decided that I would really like to reflect on what is missing.

I want to look at what is potentially missing from politics. It seems to me at the moment that we are missing balance at the higher levels in not only British Politics but around the world. In the years since I grew up with Margaret Thatcher becoming a role model, because she was the only strong female role model in politics, at the time that was public, I still see little of this.

Again I am saddened.

Here in the UK we are faced with a sea of sameness. Take away hair styles and beer glasses and we still have a room full of private school boys with ideas that seem to be conservative and from the hymn book of ‘I know best how to do things, just sit back and let me sort it for you’. You can almost see them patting the population on the head like that are an ignorant little child who doesn’t know what they want.

Now that makes me angry. The population on any country is neither stupid, nor ignorant. So many of the politicians, key decision making roles seems to think this though.

We are faced with those who seems to care, do it differently, or see a different approach, being taken down either figuratively, in the case of Jeremy Corbyn, or actually in the case of Jo Cox. I admire both of them for different reasons and strangely in both cases it has nothing to do with their political stance. One of the things I do love about Scotland is that it political landscape is made so different by the fact that it has so many female leaders – it is the males in leadership positions up here that are a little out of place!

We need a different approach. This can be said for so many other countries around the world as well.

It makes me sad that we spend our days bombarded by negativity.

I personally would like to wake up and start celebrating what we have to offer.

See a nation that can lead by example and start collaborating with its people to help grow and take it forward.

I would love to wake up in a world where it there is no longer a need to point out that a woman has a leadership role.

We need more of them not only in our government, but at higher levels. The UK has had only one female Prime Minister and she is still taken down, even in death for the things ‘she’ did to the country. Yet male Prime Ministers for hundreds of years have been doing, and still continue to do, just that. We don’t suddenly label the entire male population as not being good leaders, or being too masculine, or too feminine, or too ‘something’ in the way they do things.

We need more women in key roles in politics. We need it to be more collaborative. We need our politicians to really care about the people not just their careers.

It would be wonderful, if moving forward from all this we could take the legacy of Jo Cox, who’s apparent desire and reasons for being an MP was to represent all the people in her constituency regardless of race, sex, religion or education, and apply that the UK. This would be a good start.

Whilst the majority of people have spoken in one way we need to take a step back and actually listen to what has been said on both sides. Remember it was a simple majority. That is whilst just over half the population said they want to leave, nearly half said they wanted to stay.

This is not as clear cut as it seems.

We need to look at the why on both sides. I believe if we do this, we will find that we are a lot closer together in our needs, desires and wants, as a population, than we think.

As a population we want security – in our health services, in our education, in our economy, and from terrorism – regardless of where it is coming from, internally or externally. We want our politicians to hear us.

The young people of the UK have spoken clearly as well, this is the future.  They have said they want an inclusive nation, that is involved in the world and an integral part of it.  We need to hear this and not ignore it.

Those that are looking at what we will be doing going forward need to take this into account.

As a nation, and particularly as politicians, we need to start looking at the bigger picture, hearing the voices and looking at a collaborative and responsive way forward.

I am sad mostly because I fear that after this we are not going to change, that we are not going to look forward, that we are not going to look for peaceful ways to hear the voices of both sides of the debate.

I am sad because I fear that this will once again become another platform for a ‘boy’ from an expensive school, who has always had his way supported financially, to climb his power ladder, to play his game of competitive leadership and forget that his actual role is to represent the people and be there for them.

Leadership should be collaborative, in that a leader makes the sage and hard decisions, but they listen and work for the people they represent. This is regardless of whether it is in business, the community or politics. We look for our leaders to make the hard decisions but we also look for them to listen to us and look out for us.

I am sad because right now in all this, I see a young population who feel let down, a nation that is not being listened to and politicians who are once again getting set to play with their egos.

Let us move forward.  Look at the bigger picture and find the positive and peaceful way forward here.

(I sign off with the usual greeting as I am still hoping for the BEST)

If you are looking for the how to build your CV tips here, you are reading the wrong blog. In the roles I have held over mu career I have read many CV’s. There have been great CV’s and some where I have honestly been left wondering: why did they bother. I have helped many write CV’s that have helped them land that lucrative job.

Yet with all this experience and knowledge, my CV is not in a good state. Whilst it is not the worst one out there, it doesn’t show me off to the best light. Still I don’t seem to be able to fix it. I am to close to it.

I have been very fortunate in my career in that I haven’t had to really rely on my CV. From the earliest days working and when climbing, I seemed to know how to talk to the right person, in the right place at the right time and it worked.

Here I am in 2016, suddenly faced with a very different dilemma. I need a CV to get training work, to get speaking opportunities, to grow my business. It is almost funny. Here I am today, looking at an excellent opportunity to grow my business, even more, reach out to even more women and help them to build their personal career ladder successfully, and I am in need of not one but many CV’s.

I need a collections of CV’s and bio’s to give to conference organisers, other businesses, training companies, organisations I can collaborate with and even for organisations I can work for.

It is going to be a late night tonight, but it will be worth it. An opportunity like this can not be let past just because it requires me to get stuck in there and clean it up.

It is also something you should keep in mind. A CV is an important tool in your career, it should not be left. You should keep it up to date and be ready to change the focus in it to reach out for the next progression.

Is your CV a big monster which is out of control, or have you found ways to control it.

Please feel free to share.

Have you ever been in a position where you are standing at the edge of the hypothetical cliff and trying to make the decision as to what you should do?

I have felt like that a lot this month.

I have finally got the manuscript for my book back to my publisher for the final edits and layout.  This means that over the coming months it will be available electronically, previews will be out and ultimately the in print book will be out.  This is a journey that has been going on for 9 months now and it is coming to the penultimate stop.

This week I will have the landing page for the pre-sales of my book from my publisher, so it will all go live. At the same time I have decided it is a great time to re-launch my Up the Ladder in a Skirt program.  Always good to do many things at once. I will be going out on Facebook live everyday and finish it with a Webinar at the end of the week.  All new things for me.

Now with all this going on, I could just slip into overwhelm if I wasn’t careful. True to myself I am making sure that I take time in all of this and remember to relax.  It is important because I need to be at my best for this.  It is getting to be very exciting.  This is a journey that is creating a new aspect to my life. I want to make sure it goes well.

I am going to make sure I am prepared.  Just like if I was to take that leap of the cliff, I would make sure I had a parachute and if possible a soft landing.  I am working on making sure the same things are in place for my business, just as I did for my career.  I am not stopping what I am doing to get it perfect, but I am making sure I have the elements in place.  If something doesn’t work, I need to be ready with back ups.

From experience I now know that I can handle the possible hiccups, and I am ready to take the leap. Unlike that child that always took the leap and just trusted there was something there, I now know there is something there to break the fall.

Most of all I know I will fly!

What leap is it you need to take and what do you need to get in place to help you make it and enjoy the flight?

“No one can outperform he own self-image.” Laura Posey

This post is a day late in my personal blogging time-line/challenge but it needed to be.  The quote at the start is one of the daily quotes on my The Women’s Advantage desk calendar.  It us almost as if it knows just what I need to get going each day.

This one has had me reflecting and in the rush between meetings yesterday I realised that sometimes it is ok to miss a deadline, or delay something.  Sometimes this is what we need to do to ensure it is in the right place.  Sometimes we need the courage to say this is not going to work right now.  I have had to do that a number of times over the years, but will go into detail on this in another blog post.

What I want to focus on today is our own self-image.

The picture above is a screen grab a friend of mine made of the Scottish Leaders Debate for the upcoming parliamentary election.  I was lucky enough to be one of the audience members for the event.  When I see that image my instant reaction is:

‘Oh, my God! Will you look at that horrible expression!’

Not at all constructive. Not helpful. Most of all not correct.

Further to this, I am still kicking myself as I felt I missed the opportunity to ask a much more pressing question.  At the end of the day it is a good thing that I didn’t allow any of my self limitations or doubts to stop me from putting my hand up and holding it up for a good 5 or so minutes to ensure I got to ask a question.  At least my voice was heard and I made the panel of speakers focus on an answer to what they were going to do.  They may not have answered it well but the point is the question got asked.

Another thing I have found myself doing recently is subconsciously and if I am honest consciously starting to sabotage myself. For a whole lot of reasons, I find that as I am getting older I am putting on weight.  At the beginning of last year, I made a pact with myself that I was going to eat better and exercise.  Any of you who follow my social media feed will know that I have kept to the second part of my pact with myself pretty well.  I have been running 5K’s, 10K’s, half-marathons, swimming, doing virtual running challenges, took on an aquathon last year and am talking on a virtual duathlon and a sprint triathlon in the next couple of months.

On the eating side it is great when I remember to give myself real praise, support and importantly self-love and it is really bad when all I do is let that little voice tell me all the bad things.

I have this amazing wardrobe I have put together that is in line with my personal brand – bright and bold.  You can see it is my cover photos here.

At the moment because I have allowed myself to lower myself worth this is what I look like and the closest I get to my beautiful wardrobe – which incidental is what I call real woman sized 12-14.  I stopped the video this has been screen-shot from, from being posted publicly because I was upset about how I look!

How does this all connect back?

Right now my self-image has become one of someone who doesn’t deserve to be heard.

The minute I realised I have started doing this, I actively made the decision to stop.  It doesn’t matter what my size is – I have something to say that should be heard.  I still look professional when I get into my business mode and head out into the world.

It doesn’t matter about what facial expression got caught.  I am lucky I have a very expressive face, which means the world can see exactly what I am thinking.  This means I am always authentic as you always know if I truly believe what I am saying.  The picture at the start shows a Women who passionately believes in what she is talking about.  The best part.

That woman is me!

So what is it about your self-image that is holding you back?  What one thing can you do today to make a difference and help to grow that so you can be the most empowered you?

So in thinking about how I manage my time better and become a better task master for myself, I have been reflecting on what I have done so far this month.  It has been an amazing journey with so many other women from around the world and each one of them is special and talented in their own ways.  I have been looking at where I have come from to be the person that is interviewing these women and for my book on Women in Leadership.

This week as a result of this reflection, I am going to take you on a small picture journey on how it is I come to be the Author of the upcoming book Up the Ladder in the Skirt.

Starting here…this is not the first picture out there of a very young me, but I do think it speaks of a real innocence (so of which despite everything I have seen and done) is still with me.  More importantly it shows me for what I am and will always be – ‘a girly, girl’.

Next this is me at the back in on the right (second one in), in my black and white phase.  I am at a Maths Camp and in my second last year of high school.  I am still very proud of the fact that I am and will always be a Maths geek.  Still very much a girl though.

On wards to my final year of high school and now I am stepping out as a Physics geek, no wonders I went on to become a Mechanical Engineer!

Onto my time at BHP Steel, as an apprentice electrician and one of those rare shoots of me not in a skirt.  I am front and centre, hair pulled back and trying not to laugh at something one of guys has said to me

.

A proud day follows, me graduating from University with my degree in Mechanical Engineering.  Still in a skirt and ready to set off on the next leg of my adventure.

 
Fast forward many years and this is that little girl you see at the start chairing the 75^th (and final) Colquhoun Business Dinner as the Chairman of JCI Glasgow to the top business leaders in Glasgow including the Lord Provost.  It was an amazing night and we filled the room with some of Glasgow’s most influential businessmen and women.

Now it is time to share all this and so much more through the pages of my book Up the Ladder in the Skirt.

It has been an amazing journey.  There have been many friendships made along the way.  They joy of experiencing different cultures, exploring different business environments and the pure pleasure of working with some many amazing men and women around the world and helping them grow.  The best part is my story is not finished

So on those days when you are starting to feel the overwhelm, what is your story?  What journey have you made?  Where did you start and how has each step helped you grow into the person you are today?  I would love to hear from you.

I have decided that it is time to get started.  Over the coming weeks, months and eventually years there will be a lot more up here about Women in Leadership and all that goes with it.  Today I thought it would be good just to write about getting up the courage to overcome my blockage on this and just start writing it.

You will be able to see my background from my about page (well eventually, this is all under construction and I believe this post is going to beat that information onto the website!) but I want to give you a little more insight into less confident side of me.  This is the side of me that hasn’t conquered boardrooms and is not necessarily seeing everything as an adventure but is seeing the walls to climb as too high or the decisions to make as daunting.  Not a part of me that comes out to play very often but she exists.

On writing this, I worry that it just won’t be interesting enough or that no one will want to really know what I think.  At the end of the day I am not going to be able to find this out unless I get out there and just do it.  If I can have the courage to write a book and put me on public display through it, I can have the courage to overcome this one.

Here it is.

A post not about writing a blog so much, or about climbing the leadership ladder directly, but a small insight into the fact that we have blocks over so many things and it is ok.  It is ok as long as you face it and look at why it exists.  My block over this exists because it is an unfamiliar platform and also because my personality type is often too busy riding the rocket ship toward the next big idea to remember I should have stopped for the details – I worry I will miss when I should be doing something.

I am facing this, and I have realised that with a pinch of courage and a large handful of support, anything is possible.  Some things just take a little longer than others to work through.

What is your block? Small or big.  What do you think is causing it? What one thing will you do to start the process towards overcoming it?

I would love to hear from you and love you to share.