Why Successful Women Never Stop Learning: Accessing Proven Business Advice and Growth Strategies with Joanne Brooks

Why successful women never stop learning, accessing proven business advice and growth strategies with Joanne Brooks. Joanne is an old friend. We’ve known each other for a number of years, and today’s conversation is going to challenge everything you think about how business education should be for you, particularly for women in business.

She’s had a vast amount of experience across 17 different businesses from multimillion dollar ones to smaller ones. And here’s what makes this episode really special. Joanne’s revolutionizing how women access higher education and proving you don’t need a university degree to earn an MBA. If you’ve ever felt locked out of traditional education or wondered about alternative pathways to advance your business knowledge, this conversation is going to open your eyes to possibilities you never knew existed.

A wonderful episode of Biz Bites for Thought leaders that will change the way you think and add lots of value. Particularly for women in business.

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders. Today’s guest she and I have been, I dunno how many years we’ve been corresponding back and forth a bunch. Quite a while. We’ve we’ve managed to, even though we’re in different cities, we’ve managed to sit down and have a meal together as well.

And it’s never quite materialized, but we think that’s gonna change in the very immediate future. So I guess I should start by welcoming you, Joanne, to the program. Thank you.

I’m so excited to be here. Finally on your point. Finally. Yay. It’s about time we made it happen. Yes. So for those that don’t know you, why don’t you give us a little bit of a, an explanation as to who you are and what you’re focusing on these days?

Yeah. Thank you. So Joanne Brooks. I’m based on the Gold Coast. I am the founder of Navigate bis which launched, gosh, nine years ago now. Can, I can’t believe it’s that long ago. I’ve been an entrepreneur for. Over 20 years. And in that time I’ve spent a lot of time in the education space. I’ve owned my own registered training organizations.

I’ve owned a ver variety of businesses. So if people ask me how many companies have I run or operated 17 in those 20 years, some of them are all at the same time. And Navigate Biz came about because I had a business that had rapid growth to 30 minute million in 24 months. That was crazy. But it took me 20 odd years to get to a point to be ready for.

It wasn’t one of those overnight successes but it also took me seven years to liquidate it, a a. A myriad of micro moments that caused a tidal wave to have us liquidate that and navigate biz popped up as a result of that. Today I work with women. I call myself the Circle Builder. It’s about bringing women together in circle to support them in their growth strategy, whether it’s, and Circle is a concept that’s.

Eons old, right? We’re very used to sitting in circle and supporting and guiding one another. And so for me, it has landed very nicely for me to have women understand that I’m bringing other women into. Their various businesses to support and guidance. I don’t know at all. One of the, yeah, you’ll be helping us and supporting us in that way as well about getting your story out and so on.

And circle Builder, business mentor, using all the things that I’ve learned all over those years to help and support women in business. That’s as short as I can do it for you. It is, it’s very short. And having known you for a little while now, I know that’s only kind of scratching the surface in some of the, in some of the things that you’ve been doing.

And I suppose I wanted to start off with that a little bit ’cause you touched on about being the registered training organization in the education field. And I think as opposed to where you are now in terms of coaching and that sort of area, this is as well, a lot of the things that you’ve been doing is more specifically in traditional education, I guess the MBA programs and other sorts of training and things.

Yes. So tell me a little bit more about this, that space and what you’ve been doing there.

So in the so I haven’t owned an RTO for that period of time, but I’ve certainly worked in them. I’ve been consulting to them. I have helped a number of organizations create their own. RTO help with audit, get ready for audit.

So that’s the place that I hang out at the moment from a consulting perspective outside of my mentoring. And for me, having been being a female and having run my own RTOs, you could also say that one of my niche areas is to help and support female led RTOs because I get what it is.

I get the compliance, I understand the complexity of it. It’s a ridiculously heavy compliant compliance heavy industry. And I rightly it’s not easy to become an RTO but I also understand that, there’s a lot of women out there who are navigating that, and it’s hard. Really hard, business is hard anyway, but the RTO space, I don’t need to be one, but I certainly help women who are in that space to be better RTOs.

Hmm.

For those, listen in and we always like to clarify the acronyms, registered training organization and post. People usually have heard of it, but I don’t think that people, most people actually really understand what it is and what the implications of it are and why on earth you would do it.

Because a lot of the time people e expect that training comes just from your traditional educational institutions, universities, TAFEs, that sort of thing. Yeah. But RTO kind of fits.

In between all of that.

Yeah, it is people will heard of will know it potentially as vocational education.

I know that’s a trade space. I know that’s a terminology that’s common overseas. To become a registered training organization is not an easy task. If we, to put context as to what it is we are the competitors to tafe. TAFE are the free. Government subsidized certificate one through to advanced diploma.

And there are over in Australia, which might surprise the audience here. There’s over 3000 private RTOs in this country. When most people, general public think, oh, I’m gonna go and do a certificate or diploma, I. I’ll go to tafe. That’s their, they feel that’s their only option if they find someone who’s dabbling in it.

Aren’t you tafe? I can’t tell many times I’ve been asked that question. So there’s the government one and then there’s private RTOs. What does it mean to become one? You have to, as I said, there’s heavy rigor in the compliance. And why is that? So we are educating people to take on an occupation.

If we put it into some to simple terms, if we’re teaching somebody on how to build a house, they are a laborer and then they’re building a house and then a three story house, and then a highrise and a shopping center. There’s, that goes from certificate one to advanced diploma. And so thinking about the complexities of what it would take to do that sort of construction.

There’s some very heavy education that needs to be passed on to that person to be authorized and to be able to apply for their license. So that’s a simple explanation that most people could probably relate to probably as most people live in a home.

I, yeah, absolutely. And I think it is a very simple and easy way to understand.

Standard. But I think there’s the next layer I suppose to that is, is yes, it makes sense that if you’re looking to become a builder and you want to build houses and you’ve gotta go and do that. Yeah. But we come to further education really, that also falls under this banner as well. And I think that’s an interesting space, particularly for women who are, maybe I’m being a bit.

Wrong here, but I seem to feel like there’s a lot that feel like they need to prove themselves and need more education. I don’t know whether that’s necessarily true. Yeah. But it feels that way at times. How is, am I right in thinking that?

Yes, I agree. I recently, which I shared with you the other day, I completed my MBA or two weeks ago.

And a lot of people went, wow, that’s such a lot, big effort and amazing, and all those sort of things, which it is like, it was I was very. Pleased to be able to complete it, but I’m someone who was never given the chance to go to university, so it was definitely a bucket list item for me. I’ve done a myriad of certificates and diplomas.

I do come across many women when I start talking to ’em about the higher education opportunity. And I guess we, again, default, just like looking at certificates, we default to TAFE when we are talking about degrees, we default to the traditional university spaces. That are out there and we’ve got the lovely thing about Australia, we have an amazing reputation of education.

The quality of the education is outstanding because we have such rigorous compliance and protocols that the government insists that we deliver under, which is a good thing because it’s good for the student. To get the depth of knowledge that they need to learn. But when I speak about the deli, the degrees that I’m bringing into Australia they’re via Deser Global Business School, which a good friend of mine has owned that business for about 17 years.

And the wonderful thing is, whilst he’s based outta the US and Aussie guy, he is, he has had these MBAs built to Australian standards. Because he understands the quality that implies. And I, what I know is, and we’ve seen it before, many people from overseas come to Australia to undertake higher education because of the quality.

And this is just a different option for women in business. What I love about it is nobody loves exams. I can’t take say anybody could put their hand up and say, yeah, give me a three hour exam, please. That would be amazing. I’d love that.

No thank you. No,

definitely not. You gotta get that stuff outta your head.

But what I absolutely love. And feel so relevant to entrepreneurs today and particularly my audience, female entrepreneurs, is that there are no exams in these particular MBAs. What you get to do is to work on your business as projects and produce projects that are based on your business. And so what has come, what has helped me to redefine my marketing message, my branding and my focus has been a direct relation to my completing my MBA Circle builder came out of my final project, rebranding came out of my marketing subject that I did.

So we all know we should work on our business, but we often don’t make the time to do that. So we’ve got a double whammy if you like. We can work on our business and build our skillset to be, to step into our C EShip is how I think of it. And that’s why I speak a lot about it for women in business.

And the awesome news is you don’t have to have a degree, which is why I was able to do it.

Yeah, I think the, these are all really important points and I think, the education system, a lot of people’s view of how it works is not actually the reality of how it works. Yes. And now’s not the time to get into it, but, certainly this pushed for the need to do the HSC is a good example.

There are ways and means around. Doing it getting the education without having to do that. Yes. There’s still ways you can get into university if you want to do that later on. Exactly. So there’s lots of opportunities as you’ve done. I guess the question as well is, I. There’s one thing in this sort of scenario that you’ve painted in terms of doing the MBA, because that scenario of course, is that there’s a bucket list of wanting to do it.

There’s the combining it with being able to work on your business, it ticks those boxes. Yeah. But there are a lot of people who’d be sitting there and going, I’ve got a university education already. Yep. I’ve been in business. We’ve got people working on the business. What’s the incentive to do an MBA does?

It does, and not just an MBA. There are other things that you can do. Of course. What’s the real incentive to do it? Is it. Is it for your own ego or is it because it’s actually going to help you get ahead in terms of achieving the next role? We’re talking about people who might be employed here.

Employed, yeah. Is it gonna, is it gonna put you ahead of the next person?

I genuinely believe so. Particularly the Deser Global Business School opportunity. And the reason is very simple. A no exams great. However, the people who’ve written these programs are entrepreneurs and traditionally our academic, our academia will write the degrees and the master’s degrees, all those sort of things in traditional university space.

So what Matt Jacobson from Deser Global Business School, who’s the owner he specifically sought. Entrepreneurs to help him write them. And the entrepreneurs that he’s got woven through in video interviews and the written content are people like our past prime ministers heads of state. The head of the CIA Goldie Horn, Desmond Tutu Julie Gillard, just to name a few of them.

And a lovely equal spread of men and women. But, if you’re gonna learn negotiation skills, who doesn’t wanna learn it from the person who’s been the head of the CIA, I think he’s got something to share. And so that, that piece was one of the main. Main reasons besides the bucket list for me, one of the main reasons why I wanted to go and do mine, because I wanted to hear what those people had to say.

I wanna hear Julia Gillard and how she navigated the tricky piece of the, the, we all remember the misogyny speech that she did and how she navigated that environment that many women face in corporate and or even in their own business. And I didn’t do it for the letters. The letters are going to be handy potentially if I’m going to go for tenders or corporate work, et cetera.

So as an entrepreneur it makes total sense. But what I see these programs are. Learn from these world leaders who are sharing their insights. And some people would say to me I can go and find them on YouTube, and absolutely you can. But I know that the interviews have been curated to meet the learning requirements of the subject.

And so they’re sharing their insights in negotiation skills. I, Goldie Horn, I always thought of her as the crazy ditsier actress. She has an amazing business mind and an amazing foundation that she has for women and children. So she’s somebody that go, wow, you, I’ve learned a bunch of things from you.

And we all learn differently. Video, audio, text. So it’s got all those through it. So for me, when I speak about it as an entrepreneur, for me, it’s the final piece to my pathway for entrepreneurs in what Navigate Office and I speak to women in business to say. We’ve worked on you. We’ve got your foundations right now, you are ready to grow and scale your business.

Let’s really step into your C EShip and let’s build your international network, your global network, learn critical thinking skills, learn problem solving, all those things that you need as a CEO of a business that you are gonna scale to whatever level. It doesn’t matter.

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We’ve worked on you. We’ve got your foundations right now, you are ready to grow and scale your business.

Let’s really step into your C EShip and let’s build your international network, your global network. Learn critical skills. Thinking skills, learn, problem solving, all those things that you need as a CEO of a business that you are gonna scale to whatever level, doesn’t matter. So I see it as a natural process, a natural endpoint, if it’s, if there’s going to be an endpoint in working with me, is that you need to do your MBA because of the, all those other elements, not so much the letters.

It’s not as important for me.

Yeah, and I think that’s, and it’s an interesting thing, isn’t it too, is it’s that we, this program is all about thought leadership. And I think to be a thought leader, you need to keep working on things you need to keep learning from other people. And you need to keep expressing your ideas.

I think that’s the important thing too, where, you can get stuck in this idea. And I think that’s the traditional educational model. Yeah. Where you do a bunch of things, you answer an exam, you’ve got something at the end of it, and it’s huh, what was the point of that? Which is exactly, sadly, what happens with a lot of degrees I.

Yeah,

indeed. Yeah.

But I think this whole concept of ongoing learning and challenging the way people think and talking and allowing them to talk to yes, that is so important, is what’s gonna help people stand out. And so the MBA and other such, courses is a culmination of where that might.

Take your mind land. Yeah,

exactly. Exactly. I remember speaking to a lady who enrolled in a an MBA with er and she was having challenges in securing a promotion in her. Particular business. And I said, I asked her, I said, have you shared with your employer? He knew. They knew she was doing the MBA, but have you shared what you are learning and how you are implementing it within your role?

And she said no, that would be a bit egotistical, wouldn’t it? I went. Absolutely not. And this is something that women struggle with a lot is I can’t go, oh, look at me. And it’s not about that. It’s about I suggest to, you should approach your manager or your boss because she’d been bypassed for a promotion when somebody with less experience, et cetera.

And I said, just think about. Think about this when you’re applying for a role, a lot of corporates, rightly or wrongly look for the letters, right? MBA and Bachelor’s and PhDs and all that sort of stuff. But do they ever look a bit deeper and go where did you get that from and what did you do to achieve it?

I said, what? What I would recommend you do is you write a paper about what projects you are working on, because some of the MBA programs through deser, you get to work on. Live global projects and I think at the time she was working on one for Disney. So how cool would it be to have on your resume that you’ve worked on a project in Disney and they’ve implemented it?

So she was an employee and it took a fair bit of convincing to have her. Step forward and share that because I, the way it is, men and women are women, men will tick three of this 10 criteria and go, yep, I’m gonna go for it. Whereas women just won’t naturally do that.

They find that pretty confronting. But when we looked at the criteria of the role and what she was learning in her MBA, I said, you are ticking boxes left and center. She said, but I haven’t finished yet. I said, doesn’t matter, you’re still you’ve, you’re passing subjects as you go. Take a big breath, have a go, and just, even if you just go and have a talk to the boss and say, these are the things that I’m learning and this is what I’m implementing in my role for you as an employee.

I never did find out how she went, but I, I don’t think that’s an unusual situation. Sad.

Yeah, it is. And I know what you mean. It’s being scared to have that conversation. ’cause you feel like you need to get to the end of it first to be able to do that. And then there’s, at the end of it, you think, oh, I need to get some runs on the board before I do.

And suddenly you’re 10 years down the track. No. And rather than having the conversation now, and I think that’s the important thing, what separates. Leaders ultimately is not being afraid to put yourself out there. You’re not always going to be right. Correct. And it’s also how you frame the conversation as well.

Yes. Having a conversation with the boss and saying, look, I am, in this particular case I’m doing an MBA, and these are some of the things I’m looking at. This is what I’ve been implementing and thinking about in the role. I’m interested in your opinion as well. Suddenly you are mixing it at an intellectual conversation Yes.

At a completely different level to what you were before. And that on its own is of value. Whether there is a position that you’re aiming for or not.

Exactly. And to take that to the next level. What does sir are always looking for. A larger organizations that have a team of executives or management, they, they would love to work with a team of management.

To work, to enroll, and then they will ask that organization, what project do you want them to work on for your business? That doesn’t cost that organization anything, but they might have outsourced that project to some of the large consultancy firms and spent many hundreds of thousands of dollars. But think how the return on investment for an employer to have a team, a cohort of staff working on a project for their business at the same time achieving their MBA game changer.

Yeah. It’s something we’ve spoken a little bit about on the program in the past, but investing in your team Yes. Is more and more important these days, I think. Exactly. Particularly in the face of AI and other things when you can invest in your team and that creativity and that ability to problem solve and think about things differently.

Which you can transfer to new things as they come along. The truth is that, the information that we’re dealing with today on how we navigate AI and where we use it in a business was not something we were thinking about really five years ago. In most businesses cases.

Certainly not 10, 20 years ago. No. For the majority of people. Now, there are some exceptions out there, by the way. Yeah. And I remember working with an organization probably 10 years ago that was already dealing with a, an ai. Yeah. Type situation. Very basic compared to what is out there today.

Yeah. But nonetheless, 10 years ago it was extremely advanced and we don’t know where we’re going to be. So being able to problem solve and understand these things is an incredibly important part. An organization and, pushing that with your team is rewarding.

Exactly. And the great news is for Deser, literally, I’m gonna say about two months ago, they launched their MBA in artificial intelligence through one of the European, university. So it went, oh my gosh, that’s something that I’m not gonna enroll straight away, but I figure I might do that next year.

Another one on the bucket list, another one

I went.

I’d love to learn more about that. Yes.

So let’s change tact a little bit because I know that the things like the MBA are the culmination of things, inspiration. It’s not necessarily where people are able to start, and I think that’s often, I. We don’t know what we don’t know as a lovely phrase.

Yeah. But it’s and I think a lot of people think that you only can learn on the job and pick things up that way. There’s often a gulf of people who. Don’t understand the value of coaching. Yes. And being enrolled in courses that are going to advance you, that are beyond the very simple technical things.

’cause I think most people think about that going, okay, I’ve gotta learn how to operate this machine so I’m therefore gonna do a course on how to operate this machine, use this piece of software, or whatever it might be. Yes. But your business or the business that you are working in is in of itself. A machine and multiple pieces of software, usually many liars.

And so how do you, how do you get people into the kind of program that you are running in the first place? In that? Do people have to put up their hand first? Do they have to know that this is something they wanted to do? Or are you spending a bit of time telling people that. This is something you should be thinking about.

Yeah.

I think as a business owner, I would be remiss in not talking it about it loud and proud. So I do that every day. And the main place I hang out is LinkedIn, but I also am very strategic that it’s, it cannot be the only place that I find clients. I. So for me, collaboration has been my biggest success factor.

So I’ve identified some networking and industry groups that align with me and my accountant who has my, cus my customer as their customer. So I am somebody who will be. More than happy to reach out to a network associate and say, can I be a member? And what I’d like to do is share my thoughts and my thought leadership to your audience.

What does that look like for you? So I do that regularly. I host a number of master classes for different industry bodies around Australia, networking groups and the u and the us. For me that’s smart strategy because they have my audience in abundance. I recognized many years ago having a one-on-one conversation whilst it’s absolutely delightful and amazing.

It’s not scalable and, you have a podcast that other people will listen to. So it makes total sense to me. As much as I like you, when we wanted to get this thing going, there’s always a strategy behind it. Why would I do that? So I do that often, and I volunteer my time. I write a post, I think it was last week, and I actually taught it up.

All the things that I do for free, I. Master classes, podcasts, all sorts of things, and I went, crikey. There’s a lot there. But I do it deliberately so people can. Be like, no one trusts me. Over time, I get it. We, look, I had this situation that I thought I was speaking to a real person on LinkedIn and it turns out clearly it was not, because I asked it the same question three times and I was questioning what they were responding to, and I got the exact same phrase back and I went clearly you are not a real person.

And the really sad part was that piece of software that they were talking about was that service. About how to respond to people on LinkedIn. And I went, oh my gosh, there’s never gonna happen in Pink Fit

That reliance on ai. And it’s quite funny you say that this has happened to me on more than one occasion.

So there’s a little tip for people that you get a question from a potential client. And so you think you’ll be clever and you’ll jump onto a an AI. Platform. And you ask it to answer that question on your behalf. Yes. Now. That’s clever to a degree, but if it does a, doesn’t know your tone of voice.

Exactly. It’s gonna be pretty obvious in a conversation. B, please read it before you post it. Oh, yes, please. I had someone post it today and it clearly said, oh, and don’t forget to ask them, you know this about their business or fill in their business name. Yeah. And things like that, that were clearly meant as a direction for you to do, to personalize it.

Yes. Not to cut and paste and they cut and past. And it was so not them. They’d literally taken my questions that I’d asked, put it into a service. Yes. Cut and pasted the responses, and it’s done them more harm than good because now I’ve gone from, I might trust them and I might utilize them to.

They’re not even interested. I in truthfully answering it, they’re answering what they think they need to answer. Yes. Yeah. And you’re just being taken for a ride. And I think that’s it’s so important to avoid that, but it’s so important. But we digress a little bit here. I wanna bring it back down to some of the people that you are actually working with.

Because I think this is where there’s such an important role in making an impact. I think we. There. There is this gulf between those that have the higher education and those that don’t. There’s those that there is a gulf between regardless of what the level of education you’ve had and when you next perceive that opportunity to learn, if at all.

Yeah. And so bringing people into an opportunity that enables. Them to learn and advance different aspects is so important, and it’s something that we have to foster in order to generate more innovation into. It’s not just about the individuals, it’s about the collective res, as well. And the benefit that we all have.

And I think this kind of idea of what you’ve got with your program is. It’s such an important one that I think there’s not enough attention being paid to these opportunities, and it’s part of the reason why I wanted to have you on the program.

Yeah. Thank you. If I, so I have four, four elements to what I offer, and the MBA is the pinnacle one at the other end.

But let’s go back to here. So I’ve had a program for a while, which is my signature program, her transformation. It’s. It’s $12,000 for six months. So I get it that there’s going to be women in business who financially not ready, mindset business, a number of reasons why it doesn’t work for them yet.

And I realized by golly, there’s a lot of women out there that have a desire for coaching. But I did do some research on that for my MBA so that I need to clarify this. We have had an abundance of coaches land on the landscape coming outta corporate with an amazing amount of skills. But I, what I want everybody to be cautious of, and it’s not to say that these people don’t have the skills that they need to be a coach, but when you are looking for a coach, and let’s say you’re looking for a financial coach, have the courage to say.

How’s your financials? If you’re looking for a sales coach, how’s your sales? Because if they’re a coach in that expertise. We have to quality check their credibility. I’m a business resilience coach. How many businesses have you had? 17. I’ve liquidated one. I’ve had trade, whole bunch of things. So I feel I can put up that shingle with pride to say that I had the experience, but I, but in my research, I realized through my MBA, that there are so many women in business who didn’t know that there’s a coach for every micro element of your business.

Every, there’s coaches across so many facets, and a life coach will not necessarily be the one you need for strategy. I’ve heard it so many times, and it hurts my heart that they go and engage these people, they pay money, and they’re not utilizing those persons brilliance at all. So that, that I have a concern about.

I have a, have therefore created a platform for easy entry into coaching for any female entrepreneur, and it’s $97 US a month. I feel I’ve made that incredibly accessible, but what I’ve loaded this platform with is the many hundreds of video conversations I’ve had with people about business. Two minutes to 10 minutes.

Numerous tools and resources and lots of mini courses, but they get me for an hour and a half every month of client led mentoring. So there’s discussion forums, all these sort of things. So I wanted to create a circle, a place that was safe for women, whether they’re brand new to business or whether they’re in the messy middle, and they’re going, oh, I need something, but I’m nervous of spending a lot of money.

But I know I need quality, so I wanted to create something that would tick all those boxes for them and they can dive in and out. It’s not a course to finish. It’s not start A to Z. You can go a KLZ, whichever direction you want. It’s there for you to dive into, what do I need today? I need to know about sales, what I need to do today.

Oh, I need to understand the financial terms of my profit and loss. I don’t understand financial literacy. I can go find that in here. So for me, it was about filling a chilly great big gap for women in business to. Maybe to reaffirm the things that they think they know and make sure it’s right, but also I think I’m gonna learn a bucket load of things from these women as well.

I don’t know at all by any means. So I wanted to create a safe circle for women to, to come together and learn and absorb and download whatever they need for their business.

I wanted to pick you up on something that you said there, which is safety. Women feeling safe. And it’s. I don’t wanna gloss over it because I think it’s an important, it’s an important term and I think it’s important that people understand what it, what that actually means because it’s easy to gloss over it and go safe.

Why wouldn’t you be safe? Yeah, you are reputable. It’s fine, but it’s not it. It’s more than that.

Yeah. It is. It’s wraps around mindset. It’s wraps around the quality of the material that you’re going to get access to, the people who are welcomed into circle. For me initially, I want to interview every single one and make sure that they are ready for that.

Particularly for her transformation. You will be invited. You can’t just come in because it’s such an intensive program. But safety isn’t a really important thing that came out of my. Search as well, which is why I landed with Circle. I’ve heard stories of people spending an awful lot of money maxing credit cards mortgages.

And what I know is we’ve got somebody, a partner, a husband, a significant other looking at you going. When is this thing gonna happen? And that creates an element of fear and scared and overwhelm and you’re going, oh my gosh, I have to show this person that I love and admire and who’s in my life that I can actually do this.

And they may not say it out loud, but there’s a lot of that going on inside. We’ve got these little people on our shoulders. And so for me the safety piece was to make myself accessible. So even for a hundred bucks, if you want 15 minutes of my time, my link is there and you can ring my phone number.

I want them to know that they can call me. No dramas. I want to, I generally want to serve and help women to get to the point that they’re ready for her transformation. To me, that means that their business is growing or maybe they move on to something else, and that’s perfectly okay as well. I just wanna help women to feel that this is a place that they can, I’ve got an idea.

What do you think? Without the fear of going, oh, that’s rubbish. Don’t do that. You’ll put some lipstick on, whatever. That’s not what I want. I want. People to go. Amazing. You gave it a good shot. How about you tweak it here or go for it Let’s, 80% is perfect. Don’t try and hit a hundred percent ’cause it just doesn’t exist.

How important is it? For it to be a space that is purely for women. I know it doesn’t mean necessarily the people who are teaching the things and ’cause you, for example, you’ve invited me to come and do some stuff with you. Yeah. But the people who are doing the course are women. How important is that?

Because I, I know that there’s, I. If you go to lower education in school system, there’s a trend these days to be making what were single-sex schools to now being co-ed.

Yes.

So how important is it to keep that separation and dealing with those separate issues? Is it still. Yes. Is it still

relevant?

It is for me, absolutely vital. I will work with men, no dramas at all. And I guess I would say to you it is for those people who identify as female because there’s gonna be men who, who identify as that, as long as, and which is why I’ve and it won’t be scalable forever, but as, ’cause I literally launched this program 15 days ago, so it’s.

Brand spanking you. It’s a brand new baby. So my intention is to interview have a quick meeting to make sure that they are the right fit for the program and if I have to make those hard decisions. When people are in, I’ll make that hard decision because it has to be, it has to be a safe place for all women to feel that they because a lot of it is confidence, A lot of it is imposter syndrome, all those things that, and I know it’s not unique to women but it’s prevalent in women.

They’re very comfortable and they’re genius. But then to actually get on a camera and talk about it. Which is why I wanted you in there because it’s so important to share your story. So important to me. I.

Yeah, the, we could go on for hours about the power of story.

We won’t do that. We won’t do that right now. We could. But I do, and hearing your story is in incredibly important and powerful as well, because I think that’s, you also hit upon something that is around. Credibility and asking people that, what their background is.

There are an awful lot of coaches and consultants out there. And many purport to be a lot of things. I’ve experienced different coaches and some where you sit back and you go, wow, they’re are amazing. And maybe not for me, but they are amazing. Yeah. Others where you just shake your head and you go I’m not really sure.

Yes. And and others which are just constantly, educating and furthering themselves. And I think there’s also an important thing to, to realize when it comes to this space is that as I’ve experienced myself, is sometimes you also need to change. Sometimes it’s. Being in one thing for a while and then recognizing that someone that there’s something else that you can get from going somewhere else.

It’s not a slap in the face necessarily to the person you’ve been with it, it just sometimes opportunities. Yeah.

Yeah. I had a very interesting situation last week. I was sharing the circle with navigate Circle with a number of people who are my Facebook group. And so one of the ladies came back to me and she said to me I’m a business coach, so it’s not relevant for me.

And it, I actually it caused me to really ponder that and I actually wrote a post on LinkedIn about it and said, so why not? Because for me, this person was an expert in marketing, not business strategy. So in her mind, she’s a different and I then reflected on my research for my MBA, that the data suggests that the influx of coaches that have arrived in the, on the landscape, most of them do not have a coach.

I find that absolutely fascinating.

I think that’s it. It’s and to me, I, you, you asked the question you should be asking them, if they’re a sales coach, how are their sales? Yeah. The second question you need to ask them is who is their sales coach? Because, or at least who their coach is, because if they don’t have a coach, then I agree with you.

I’ve worked with some some coaches who. Work on a pretty high level. I know they’re still being coached as well. Yeah. And that’s, because it is constantly learning, as we’ve alluded to, things are constantly changing and this is just a factor that that people have to incorporate into what they do.

Yeah. Is understand that learning is a constant, but making sure that you’re learning from the right people and understanding as well that a lot of this stuff is is about. I see it as being on two levels, as one is about making you aware of certain things. That you might not have a literacy spot.

And the other part is stimulating new ideas. Yeah, exactly. ’cause if you think about new things and different ways that ultimately then you can deliver for whether it’s your business or ultimately clients Yeah. Is a big factor in having. This opportunity to learn. I know, from coaching I’ve had over the years that I can see it playing out when I’ve sitting in front of a client and going what if we did this?

And I’m thinking in my, in the back of my mind I’m going, that’s how I was taught, wasn’t it? Yes. And yeah. And that, and this is my, interpretation of it, that’s the thing. That’s how it keeps advancing. Exactly.

And, you think about so many professional sports.

People out there, they have coaches until they retire and be, probably become a coach themselves. So can you think about, the professional footballers and tennis players? Oh, I’ve landed, I’m now a professional. I don’t need a coach anymore. That’s just not the case, right? So why does this happen in business?

I struggle to understand.

Yeah, it is a really interesting thing, isn’t it? When we think about our kids, right? They, by the ti, by the time they’re in their late teens and early twenties, they think they know everything. Yes. And when they get close to 30, they realize that they don’t know anything at all.

And we’ve all been there and done that ourselves, I should say. And, but it doesn’t, that same maturity doesn’t often happen in businesses. No, it’s not. People are on this. Quick path that they like to be in, in shopping and changing from one job to the next. And that’s their idea of learning, because I’ve just, oh, I’ve gone from here to here.

And suddenly they find themselves in a higher profile position. They’ve got no real additional training. Yes, indeed. They haven’t got a coach.

And and. If they’re an employee, you are running, you’d to, you’re walking on a tight, there is supporting them in having these things.

But I also know the importance as an employee to be aware of where your gaps are and to approach your employer and say, look, I would love to, learn these skills. How can we do that? Can I get a buddy out of the organization or assess some training that I can do? And, the beautiful thing about Australia is we have an amazing education.

System amazing. But there’s also an abundance of education that’s not accredited. So it’s not a certificate diploma or whatever, and coaching fits in that. But there’s so many other opportunities to learn. And a great place is a network absorb. Attend those masterclasses though. Watch those webinars.

Don’t sign up and don’t do it. Don’t sign up and not watch the replay. Take.

I think. I think it’s a pity that when we are asked to put in our resume for want of a better term even in a place like LinkedIn that it doesn’t really allow you to say I’ve been participating actively in coaching for X amount of years with this kind of ca caliber of people, whether you want to name them or not.

I think that’s one of the other interesting things too, when it comes to. Naming coaching. It’s like we’re very, we are very happy to name the institution that we have an education at. But we’re not happy to name the, the people who have been coaching us Somehow that’s kept a little bit private or, and I think it’s kept private because people do still look down think that this look down on them, oh, they need coaching.

That, that’s a negative when it should be seen as we’re talking about as a positive and celebrated. And I think, and investing in yourself. Whether it is, a $97 a month program or whether it’s a, $12,000, MBA program, it doesn’t matter. It’s, those things are important to do and you should be proud of it.

And it’s what books have we read this year? There are some, like one of my mentors is Robin Jama. I think I’ve read every one of his books, if not once, twice. I’ve signed up to his master classes. I listen to him every day and he’s just one. And he’s not for everybody, but for me, I’m happy to tell people this is the people that I listen to because.

They’ve, they’re arriving. They probably will never say they’ve arrived, but they’ve achieved some amazing things. And, the people who founded Netflix, what an amazing story. Mark Randolph amazing story of how he got that done. So why wouldn’t we put that like LinkedIn tells you about, you can put your roles I put in my products, but it definitely has no space for you to go, what am I reading this at this moment?

Who am I listening to? And you could write a post about it, but it doesn’t sit on your profile for very long. It’s buried.

It’s, so it, again, it goes back to the power of telling stories, right? When you start missing, messing around with with that and and giving those ideas to people, sharing it, whether it’s in a post or in a podcast or in a course, I think it’s so important.

We have to wrap things up. So I’ve got one final question that I like to ask all of my guests, and this is an interesting one for you because technically the program’s new, but I know you’ve been doing this for a long time. What’s the aha moment that people have once they come to work with you that you wish more people would know?

They going to have.

Yeah. I guess it’s, I had I seem to have this gift where I’m talking to people and thoughts just come to me. Have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? Oh, I’ve got a tool that will help you with that. Have you read this book? I know somebody who I can connect you with.

So I have been known as a bit of a connector. So for me, my strategic brain is always on. And I feel I’m incredibly generous. I share a lot of what I know and happy to introduce you to people and will steer you in the direction. So I. For me the platform is, you’ll find an abundance of things in there and I’ll point you in the right direction.

Fantastic. Joanne, thank you so much for all of the information you’ve shared. I love the different perspectives on education and something that we haven’t explored in enough detail on the podcast before. I really appreciate the insights and particularly into women in business as well and understanding a little bit better.

And I’m so glad there is a. Platform like yours that has so much material accessible. We are going to include all the details in the show notes of how to get in contact with you. But thank you so much for being a part of the program.

Thank you so much. It was awesome.

And thank you everyone for listening in.

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