Speaker 1unintentionally finding ourselves last on our list we had had enough we decided no more countless
Speaker 2sacrifices no more getting lost in the busy so now we grab our keys and go hi i'm mel and i'm nat and we have created this podcast because we believe it's time for women to take action
Speaker 1in here we will lean into the funny side while we get curious about the possibilities of moving
Speaker 2from mess to yes like a cozy couch conversation or a chat at the kitchen table with your girlfriends we are in this together as we sidestep the clutter and give ourselves permission to move back up to the top of our list so grab your keys and let's go
Speaker 1ah hey mel it feels too long in between recording sometimes like i feel like i haven't spoken to you on our podcast for ages it's true it has been i know i miss it so much uh so let's dive straight in we have a special guest today and i'm really excited to um introduce her in a moment she'll be sharing her grab your keys and go moment but let's start with your grab your keys and go moment first mel
Speaker 2well it is yoga related because i'm at the tail end of my yoga teacher's life and i'm really excited to training so my world is very very yoga filled at the moment and oh i'm just sinking into the practice so beautifully but my grab your keys and go is actually the fact that i have now discovered the most delicious 9 30 a.m sessions because i was doing the you know get up at 5 15 going to the 6 a.m to be you know practical to fit it in so i could get everything else done but then i got invited to a 9 30 and it's actually just such a treat to create space at that time of the day when i'm so busy you know with business and parenting and all the juggle and i just thought i'll give it a go and now i've been doing it for the last six weeks because what it does it's is it creates a real spaciousness and protected time in the morning and what i find it's such a good start to the day there's lots of people there so i can actually stay for a coffee afterwards which doesn't happen at 6 a.m because i'm racing home to my kids so my grab your key and go is creating that space at a time where i actually never thought i would be able to do it so i'm just there was space to go to a session at a more beautiful nourishing time yes in the 6 a.m because
Speaker 1sometimes when you do do those morning that early morning sessions you're right you get back and straight away it's like lunch boxes it's i mean that's what it is no no that's what it is rush rush rush it's like all that beautiful calm energy is disappearing no it's spot spot on that's what
Speaker 2my life was like so um these 9 30 sessions are an epic grab your key and go for me yeah a full to make it happen but it's so worth it mine's it's funny that you say that and i shouldn't be
Speaker 1surprised anymore but mine's actually very similar because we went to um i actually found some time where not many people would be able to squeeze this in when you've got children but yes we had a very special guest come to our house after my hubby turned 50 and um she got to stay with us for a week and it was just so beautiful and we went to the movies because you know it goes up always about going to the movies so we went to the movies but we went to the movies at 3 30 in the afternoon i know what is that that's wild no it was the best but i know i did feel a little bit and i know that other people might sometimes sense this and you might have had this as well when you first were doing your 9 30 where it felt a little bit naughty oh absolutely yes yeah yeah sneaky so it was like oh this feels a bit weird because i feel like i should be getting like afternoon snacks and talking to my kids and seeing how their dad went and i don't know doing some kind of like after-school activity routine yes yeah but um it was so fun so fun and it was yeah it was really good fun so i wasn't didn't
Speaker 2feel guilty for long don't worry i love that time magic for the both of us i know so holly did you
Speaker 1have a bit of welcome to our podcast grab your keys welcome welcome have any you is your similar
Speaker 3to ours what what what was your grab your keys and go moment mine was particularly naughty actually yes the naughty the better yes um so it was last monday and um i just finished the weekend and normally i get through the weekend and i'm really looking forward to monday morning because it's kind of my time again work-wise um i have my four-year-old on a friday so i'm not in the office at all between the thursday and the monday and i'm always excited to come back to work and i woke up last monday morning and i had just ran out of puff and i was just crazy about it and i was leaving some actual self-care me time yeah so i literally didn't get to my desk that day i think until 1 30 p.m and i spent the morning i love my nails and they look beautiful by the way some reflexology for like 45 minutes wow literally sitting in a chair getting my feet rubbed and this is why i love corporate yeah and working for yourself nice and it just felt like a real moment of this is exactly what is meant by doing things on your own yeah and we can all say that a lot but this really felt like i was living it in that moment
Speaker 2yes that was pretty oh i love that we all had the same theme yeah i know this is so good
Speaker 1fantastic i love it so much uh so would you like to introduce yourself to everybody sure who's listening today yeah i'm
Speaker 3holly mccue i'm a sales and messaging strategist i work predominantly with service-based entrepreneurs and my specialism is really helping them to nail their positioning and master their messaging so they can be seen as the absolute no-brainer choice and go-to expert in their space and in turn attract ready-to-buy clients so they can make sales feel good and feel effortless on both sides so that's really in a nutshell what i'm all about yeah i'm also a mom of two um i have a four and a seven-year-old uh both girls wow um yeah so working around my business with with my little ones and have been an online entrepreneur for nine years now so since they were born before yes since they
Speaker 2were born and now in the school age years yeah that's awesome so so cool because it'll be really great to hear through this podcast a little bit about how that's changed from before children and
Speaker 1after children since you've had that same i think we might even just start there yeah no we always to throw them out the window so maybe we if we could start there that would be great but what what what I guess what did you notice before and then after kids like what all there was I guess something a little bit like that there was a a question around that which I will find in a minute um but I guess in a sense for those out there who are in their own business wondering how that's going to work once you have a family um yeah what did what what what did you notice and I guess what did you do differently did you have to move some things around did you have to pull some things out like what or did you add some different things in what just tell us a little bit about that so do you mean the shift from when I was in corporate to uh the shift from owning your own business without children and then owning your own business with children well I have never been
Speaker 3full-time in my business so the in a nutshell backstory is I actually never intended to be an entrepreneur I never wanted to be an entrepreneur so I never wanted to be an entrepreneur so I never wanted to be an entrepreneur so I never wanted to be an entrepreneur so I never wanted to be an entrepreneur so I never wanted to be an entrepreneur so I never wanted to be an entrepreneur so um the two-second version is that that's okay when I left the UK um I was just newly qualified as a coach so I had done coaching diploma I'd done NLP I was ready to change the world and improve everyone's lives and then I moved to Sydney and no one in Sydney really cared that that's what my passion was because my CV and resume said marketing and so I was like okay I'm gonna do this I'm gonna do this so here I was banging on all the recruitment doors saying I want to work in learning and development and HR and you know change people's lives about everything and they're like yes but your CV says marketing so um I managed to negotiate a four day per week a role as a senior brand strategist that's my background so working uh in fortune 500 companies on global consumer brands um which is a really exciting space to be in and learn a huge amount about what it really takes to obviously stand out you know in a competitive environment and be the type of brand that gains that loyalty and advocacy regardless of your price point um and so it was kind of unheard of to you know negotiate this part-time role before having children um but that gave me this one precious day to work on my business and explore well what what am I feeling called to do and how can I share this and so I was absolutely building it from scratch I had zero networks in Sydney no one could vouch for me um and I had no clue about running a business um so that's how it started and then as my side hustle grew I was able to negotiate to three days in my corporate role still in the senior role and had a job share again unheard of in the entire organization for reasons other than having children um so I absolutely had the best of both worlds I have to say like it was incredible um and then uh basically I left corporate in 2018 to go on maternity leave with my eldest daughter and never went back so I went straight from juggling a very demanding yeah uh corporate role at a high level in a very fast paced industry where everything has to be done. yesterday um around growing a business from scratch wow to continuing to grow my business around a newborn so I can't really say there was like a period of time where you know I had all this spaciousness in my schedule and the luxury to do whatever I wanted and then that shifted it very much was um you know this juggle shifted to that juggle yes yeah that was also um how that
Speaker 2eventuated that is so interesting isn't it because you mentioned the word spaciousness there and we talk about spaciousness a lot because we love you know when we do create and when we do find it that we do know the creative magic and you know that time to really evolve and feel into where we want to head takes place in that spaciousness but you're almost saying that you didn't really have any of that and still you've got this incredible success business that's creating the lifestyle and life that you dream of so yeah take take yeah take this moment to yeah take this moment to feel really proud of that because that that is huge and you know we all know that motherhood is a huge juggle in itself it is a full-time job plus more in
Speaker 1itself that's right yeah and and everything still needs to be done yesterday three seconds between
Speaker 3which your four-year-old asks you for something that's right okay mama we're hitting pause for just a moment and while we're talking about local women i'd
Speaker 1love to invite you into a local space that i created called she breathes i'm not really interested in fixing women you're already pretty extraordinary in my books and if you're anything like the women i meet you're also doing the work in fact you're probably a little bit tired of being your own project so why doesn't it feel like you're enough yet she breathes is a place to soften to pause to breathe and to have the conversations that matter a chance to let go of who you think you need to be and come home to who you already are mel what's happening in your world
Speaker 2at the moment to share with us so i've just become a brand new author and illustrator of an illustrated to mindful living and sharing the life wisdom of yoga to families and children. Because I really deeply believe that there's beauty in every story. There's wisdom in all our experiences and there's gifts within you and me that deserve to be seen and shared. So my work is about helping women reconnect with that wisdom that's already within us all. So you can trust what you're feeling, deepen your connections with family and self and confidently share your gifts with the world. I'd love for you to come and connect with us both over in the show notes. Now let's get back
Speaker 1to the conversation. So with your, I guess with your thriving business now with children, like how do you think you're, and as we're talking about spacious, like not having space, maybe having spaciousness now, but not at the beginning. How are you, what do you think you're doing differently than most other mums who are trying to do that?
Speaker 3To do this same thing? Yeah. So, I mean, I've always taken quite a different approach to what a lot of the, I guess you could call the guru advice has been. So it's been really, really important to create a business that A, feels good to me in terms of how I run it versus just going with the crowd and doing what everyone else is saying works. And really focus in on the fundamental foundations that actually make the biggest difference. And this is ultimately what I teach my clients. Yeah. I've definitely heard you speak that sentence before I reckon. Yeah. It's absolutely the thing that makes all the difference. So what I would say I focused on is, you know, rather than building huge audience and focusing on the vanity metrics and the followers, I really focused on, well, how do I be as relevant as possible to the people that I am exposed to? Yeah. Really understanding and crystallizing, like, what did they want and how could I connect with them? And going the extra mile with that has just paid off immeasurably because it's meant I've never had to have an enormous audience to hit, you know, really great financial milestones. And again, it comes back to being seen as the go-to expert. You know, there's plenty of people in my space online, but I don't need to, you know, as I said, have the biggest audience in order to attract the right people into my program. Yeah. And the other thing that I think in relation to that is, you know, it's been more of like a shift to potency over productivity. And I think we get swept up in being productive and getting all the things done, but actually it's about how well and to what standard and level and quality you're doing the things you are doing. And with that in mind, you can actually do less of the things that we think we should be doing and showing up online and all the marketing, you know, stuff and making sure that what we are doing is just really striking a chord because it actually doesn't take much for someone to feel so seen, heard and understood that they know immediately you're the person that can support them and that this is the space they want to be in. And I think they're the things really that, you know, again, thinking about like how to be relevant to your audience, how to be positioned as that go-to authority, how to make it easy for the right people to be able to support you. And I think that's really important. Right. People to say yes to you. I have just really gotten the extra mile on all of that over and above feeling the need to do a thousand different marketing strategies on a hundred
Speaker 1different platforms. Yeah. And were you using that from your, or like what you decided to do was that from a strengths point of view anyway, like were you the expert part that you talk about, were you bringing what you already knew? And then just really being able to communicate that in a way that made sense to people.
Speaker 3Yeah. I mean, so I guess my background, I have an English and French degree, so I've always been a words person. And then I did a mark, well, I did a business for my master's and then I, my whole background in corporate has been marketing and brand strategy. So I definitely have that as an advantage in terms of a skillset and an expertise. But I really kind of niched down So the first few years I was supporting women in the career space and in their corporate roles to really feel more empowered and more purpose driven and decide how could they make the corporate world work on their terms. And it was only in 2019 that I shifted to sales and messaging strategist. And that's really where everything just finally landed for me. This is what I meant to be doing. And it was ironic because I'd actually resisted going into sales previous to that because there's just so much about the sales environment that is not, you know, authentic. And I just wanted to be received as someone who was an unethical sales coach or someone teaching hard selling icky tactics. And that's really where the messaging piece came to the forefront for me, because the fact that, again, I really heavily focus on everything. And if there's something that leads up to the sale more so and we get those pieces right, and that's definitely where the messaging and the connection comes in with your audience, then a lot of the sale will take care of itself. And you don't have to be on that, you know, hardcore pitch and, you know, memorizing the scripts of what to say on a sales conversation, because the person's already shown up pre-sold, ready to work with you. And it's just a question of which offer do they want to jump into? So it's kind of that common theme of how can you really lay the foundation so that the crucial pieces that make or break your business are far easier. easier and far more effortless and feel so much better yeah well it just feels like human to human
Speaker 2connection so you know you're sharing what's important to you and they're connecting with that like it's just so beautiful because it doesn't feel like you know that salesy word it just feels like two people that are beautifully crossing paths when they're meant to
Speaker 1and I know Mel you had a really similar thing happen this year as well in your business where you had started last year and you found like kind of that piece that brought everything together and that now you want to talk about as that sole thing so that makes a lot of sense and I know it's so much easier to speak about it when we know what that what that piece is and it feels so
Speaker 2much more natural yes it can absolutely vouch for the power of beautiful messaging like it's yes yes oh thank you for sharing that because yeah it really is like such a journey isn't it because you're saying about your whole skill set but really it comes down to what your heart kept pulling you back to as well which is so beautiful yeah absolutely I have so this is
Speaker 1a bit of a I'm sorry yes I've got one as well yeah yeah no worries how do you switch between mum mode and biz mode do you even notice that there's two different modes I guess it would be just really interesting because often when we have a lot of things on our plate like we can get quite so I suppose how do you manage that or do you bet or do you have boundaries around that and what what
Speaker 3are they yeah it's a great question so the way that we have designed all of my programs is very much to support the fact that I am a mum so you know my the calls that I schedule in and to be of calls like i rarely do sales calls i typically am just selling in the dm so obviously that's really freed up a lot of time and energy and headspace um but the calls i do with clients you know they're during the school hours um i do one evening call per week um and that's only three weeks out of the month for my group program because that allows my uk um audience uh to obviously be able to access me um and we it's important to rotate between the time zones but i'm certainly not cramming calls in you know left right and center so that's number one my schedule is very protected and there's a lot of spaciousness in my schedule to actually think and share and create and connect um as opposed to it being you know chock-a-block full of just stuff which it used to be um so really making a lot of decisions around how i wanted to spend my time in what programs in what offers with what types of clients um has been crucial to that another piece is definitely i've been just acceptance acceptance that i cannot do things as quickly as people who do not have children my age because my time is not my own like forget doing anything like forget it yeah weekends oh gosh maybe you know if they're at a play date or their dad takes them out to the park yeah definitely not given or guaranteed so um acceptance and when we have children we usually like to spend time with them as well you know exactly you know and that's the other thing yeah that's just reminded me like you know i could have more things going on and i could yes creating more doing more launching but i we have deliberately chosen you know not to have anyone but us do the pickups and the drop yes you know my kids are not in after-school care yeah um and absolutely you know if that works and that allows you to do what you need to do and thrive and stay sane obviously do that and i'm not going to be able to do that um yeah but the whole point of me running my own business was that i'd have more time with my family so before you know having children i was designing a business for the future family i did not yet have yes you know and to be able to spend my time in the ways i wanted i wanted to so beautiful so yeah you know when i'm doing the pickup like yesterday i took my girls for ice cream um you know and this is like three o'clock in the afternoon on a weekday and just the ability to be able to say yes i can go and watch the swimming carnival or yes i can go and watch the go to the concerts everything yeah having to ask permission from someone else who's ultimately spending my time that has been yeah everything um but that's an acceptance that you know i may not be growing or have grown as quickly as i otherwise could have if i spent more time
Speaker 1you know on the business side of things i think it's nice for mums to hear this though because often like i know mel and i we follow people like we follow business women and we often notice that they sometimes don't have children which obviously is totally fine but it's really difficult for then us to have an understanding of how we then put that into our own week like it's it's um yeah it can be sometimes rare finding
Speaker 3someone who has children yes i've actually changed who i hire as my mentors for this exact reason because i have worked with a lot of mentors yeah who do not have children one of the defining moments that i will never forget was working with someone she was a few years younger than me and um i just had ella my firstborn and i was as you know after you've just had a newborn you're not necessarily in the most sane places yeah deprived i was highly anxious um my family on the other side of the world so i was doing this all very much alone my husband was out of the house between 5 30 a.m and 7 p.m at night so i was feeling very isolated and overwhelmed and i asked for an extension i think by literally a couple of weeks to use my final one-on-one in this program with this mentor and i was like oh my god i'm so excited i'm so excited i'm so excited i'm so excited someone who i'd worked with at that point for 18 months yeah and then a high-level mastermind and they said no yeah and this was them you know holding their boundaries and obviously that they're progressive but you know i would hope that uh another mother would have very much understood it and god clearly she could not get it um and i like to know that i'm always offering a lot of grace to my own clients for things that they might be working through but you know they don't understand that things are going to take longer than you think and they just you just don't understand before you've had kids that's right no one can and it's not their fault but i i am now being a lot more selective over who i hire um because how they teach and work has to work for me yeah they might be brilliant at what they do but if it's going to involve you know me doing you know 10 live things a week or something we'll forget about it because that's not going to happen yes that's right i failed and they're going to feel frustrated with me yeah i'm not going to be
Speaker 1the best case that they wanted we did a podcast on the 93 because mel and i are the same we're we actually really love and again like you said there's no judgment because people do what they need to do um but for mel and i both we love like picking up our kids like we love present activities and being part of part of that world so we are definitely like a nine to three um a business yeah not that you know businesses have to run that way specifically but everything
Speaker 3happens in that time we're going to be an entrepreneur what does it mean to work on your yes yes but it's identifying what does that mean for you so fridays i have my four-year-old you know all day we go to her arts and crafts class yes so it's special yes i'm already seeing with my um elders turning seven just how quickly these years yeah oh i'm like i want this time with her
Speaker 1now while she's still so cute yes well mine are 16 16 and nearly 13 and i nearly 16 and nearly 16 and nearly 16 and nearly 16 and nearly 16 and nearly 16 and nearly 16 and nearly 16 and nearly 16 and nearly 16 and nearly 16 and nearly 16 and nearly 16 and nearly 16 and nearly 16 because it's nice because we take turns because one comes home first and then the other one comes home after that so i get this time every night where i get to check in and you know yeah because i just absolutely love that time of the day hey mel you had a question before so it does kind of go into
Speaker 2that last question what you were sharing but i suppose i would love to know and i'm sure our listeners would love this to kind of know what a day in the life of holly looks like like you know when you wake up is there time for you to wake up and you know i'm sure our listeners would love this to do you have like spots where you have like power hours or times blocked out for your own self-care just to yeah a little bit about either what a day looks like or even how a week's structured for you we would love to know that being a mama and running a beautiful successful
Speaker 3business yeah thank you no day is really kind of exactly the same um my day very much starts whenever my four-year-old decides i love that just to be brutally honest no there is no time for me in the morning yeah until my girls are deposited at their um elc and school um so it is very much just about you know being present with them in the morning like you know getting getting everyone sorted and ready and out the door as happily as and calmly as possible which isn't always the case with a foreign and then so the time of the day that's really feels more for me is you know to be honest like walking out of the school's gates and feeling the sun on my face and being like what do i want to create today how do i want to use today what i'm excited about today and there's that little moment of you know just a real freedom yes i'm not in those fucking meetings about meetings and um you know i feel it yeah be reactive to whatever um is exploding in my inbox um as i used to be in the corporate space and then what i do like to do is um typically sort of around that 9 30 as you were saying at the start actually 9 30 is usually when i would go to a pilates class yeah um so i typically don't do those in the evening um i tend to do those in the day um and then uh it might be that i'm running my magnetic selling group program calls which i do a few times per week or i'm on a call with a one-on-one client um and then there's always content creation yes i'm a writer by heart so i'm usually writing something i'm working on the next experience i want to share with my audience delicious um doing incredible interviews like this um with amazing women like you um so yeah there's a lot of um you know i'm so blessed that i i can outsource the things in the business that i don't really want to be paying more attention to like the bookkeeping and the tech and yeah it really just allows me to focus on my strengths and my expertise and skills because that's really where the passion comes for things to flow so yeah the the structure of the week definitely shifts depending on what opportunities are coming through and whom i'm working with i might be supporting a client with a launch or you know with a new offer and messaging or how to land opportunities in the media i might be working behind the scenes on new training content with my audience and then i also do french classes oh wow i did french at university and then since moving to australia it's been very hard to have anyone to speak with so i decided to start up french conversation classes again so that's um the one thing i do uh in the evening per week for me that sounds absolutely incredible
Speaker 2and when you said the word freedom because doing all my values that is my number one value and so when you said that about walking out the school gate feeling the sun on your face and really feeling into that freedom that you've created in your day that whatever whatever comes your way you're you're fresh and you're energized for it because you're excited and there's creativity there's difference every day which keeps that beautiful energy going as
Speaker 3well yeah walking in nature is absolutely where i get my biggest downloads for creativity and ideas i'm my best best ideas never come staring at my computer so i know i need to get out i need to touch a tree, you know, feel the grass on my bare feet. And that's where all of the, you know, the best ideas for me have always come from. I know they always will. So yeah, that real connection to the world around me and taking in the simple pleasures of literally stopping to smell the roses and actually smelling them. Yeah, those things are important.
Speaker 2Oh, I feel you completely. Thank you so much for sharing that. Just everything that you've shared today has really given us a clear picture of how it can be possible, like for a mum, a present mum in their child's life to still be able to do what they love in their work and their business. So thank you so much. We will say a huge thank you to you for joining us today. So we can wrap it up the half an hour mark. And we are just so grateful for you and for you being here today and saying yes to this.
Speaker 4So until our next chat. Have fun noticing the possibilities as you grab your keys and go. Come and have some fun with us. Subscribe to Grab Your Keys and Go podcast now wherever you get your podcasts. And let's go from mess to yes. Let's go.
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