In this episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast, I’m having a very candid and meaningful discussion with my guest Nicky Elliott, a female entrepreneur and founder of the Wilder Collective. We delve into themes such as the personal definition of success, the influence of societal expectations, and the challenges of balancing business with motherhood. This episode highlights the importance of flexibility, changing perspectives, and the evolving concept of success, with both of us sharing personal anecdotes and practical insights for female business owners navigating similar journeys.
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Transcript
Teresa:
What does success mean to you and how do you define it? Have you been in the trap that I have where you’ve looked at someone else’s version of success and measured yourself against it and then felt really rubbish because you hadn’t quite hit the mark or the bar that they set and is it okay to change your mind to define success as one thing and then to change your mind to another thing and how do you get so clear on what it is that you want, that you are so bloody minded in the fact of, I don’t care what anybody else thinks of me or my business.
This is how I define success and this is what I want. Well, these are some of the fascinating conversations that I have with my guest on today’s episode of the podcast. Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I’m your host, Therese Heath Waring, an international bestselling author, award winning [00:01:00] speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast.
I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you’re in. In each episode, I’ll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus we’ll be diving into some mindset, tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated, and are going to stop you from getting in your own way.
So if you’re a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you are in the right place. Let’s get started. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. Okay, you are gonna love today’s episode. When I record interviews, I batch, so when it comes to doing the intro and outro, oh, I don’t do an outro anymore, but when it comes to doing the intro, I go back and quickly, like, fly through the episode to remind myself [00:02:00] of what we talked about.
And I literally listened to the whole episode with this one because I was like, oh, wow, we talk about so much different stuff and it’s such a good conversation. And not only that, I think it is the most perfect episode for this time of year. So at the point this comes out, it is the 30th of December, and this episode is actually sandwiched between a part one and a part two, all around reviewing your year and goal setting and that sort of thing.
And I would love to say that I planned this, but I didn’t. The universe just obviously, like, made this happen because this episode is so, so perfect for this time of year. Today, I’m interviewing the very lovely Nicky Elliott. Nicky worked in events for over 15 years and founded her own agency in 2011 before having her children.
On her second maternity leave during the pandemic, she knew she could not return to a full. hour. That’s right. Daily [00:03:00] commute and spend so little time with her kids. So she started a unisex kids clothing brand after riding the waves as a product based business, investing a lot in it and losing it. She used her platform that she had built to share stories about amazing female founders that she had met along the way.
She now has a podcast where she has women’s stories from early memories right the way up to present day, which I have already been on. So we’ll make sure we link to that in the show notes. And what her listeners can learn from them. And in 2024, she launched the Wilder Collective, an online community for female founders and freelancers to share their journey and support each other.
Nicky and I have such an interesting conversation. Like I said, I went back and started listening to it to get the main themes that we talked about, remind myself of some of the stuff and therefore obviously let you in this intro know. what is coming up. We talk about so many different things and we generally talk about, if I had to kind of sum it up, [00:04:00] this would be very much an episode of what it’s like to be a woman in business and in the world and what, how we define ourselves and how other people define us and success.
Like that’s a really kind of short summary of what we talk about. We talk about the fact of the success is the main theme. And, and I don’t know whether you know, but there’s a good reason this podcast is called Your Dream Business, because I am very much of the opinion that you get to decide what your dream version of your dream business looks like one of the things that we talk about in this episode is especially in the online industry, there is a big push to having people who, you know, have seven figure launches and, and have eight figure businesses and all that sort of thing. And almost defining success as that, that money is the only measure of success.
And my opinion, which has never changed for all the years that I have been doing this has [00:05:00] been that you get to define it. If it means working less, if it means earning an okay salary for not much work, then brilliant. If it means taking the summer off, great. Like whatever this means to you, that is your version of your dream business.
And that’s what I want to empower you to do. But also we talk about how it’s absolutely fine to change your mind. Because we go through seasons of life, and in those seasons of life, different things are important to us and different things matter to us. And actually, I have gone through various different seasons of life since having my business, of which I talk about, and, and I have changed.
And sometimes that has not helped me in the sense of, I don’t know, I guess, In the last year or two, I have been much more confident and happy to say that I want to earn good money. And I want, and I do see money as one of the measures of my success. And really, it’s about the case of having [00:06:00] no judgment for anybody who feels like that, or no judgment for someone else who doesn’t feel like that.
It’s just different, and we can all make our own decision as to what that success looks like for us. So we talked through that. We talked through some real kind of fairly deep conversations about bringing up children and up my own. I share quite a lot of my own personal thoughts around this and my own personal thoughts about.
schooling and starting businesses and that sort of thing. We also talk about how it’s fine to want to talk about money and how it’s fine to change your mind. There is so much packed into this episode. I think you’re going to get so much from it. It really was a great conversation. And I think, like I said, I couldn’t have planned it better.
I didn’t plan it this intentionally, but I could have planned it better to be at this time of year. So I hope that you are, if you are listening to this over the Christmas break and over the new year break, that you are sat doing something nice or just chilling out and listening to this. We would love to know what you think.
So [00:07:00] please do go ahead and DM us or tag us. We would love to see that. Okay. Without further ado, here is Nicky. Nicky, welcome to the podcast.
Nicky:
Thank you for having me.
Teresa:
I’m excited about today’s conversation. We’re actually doing a bit of a podcast swap, so I’m going to be on Nicky’s podcast soon ish, depending on when my episode comes out.
Anyway, just check both of them because, you know, it’s hard to say. There’s a lot of planning that goes involved in podcasts. It’s a lot of work. So anyway, so I’m excited about it. And also you sent me my questions the other day, and I’m really excited about answering the questions because your podcast is a bit different to the questions I’d normally answer.
So that’s very exciting. So we’ll just. you know, leave that there for them to come and find it.
Nicky:
Yes. I’m looking forward to asking them.
Teresa:
That’s very cryptic. You will need to go and look at Nicky’s podcast next. Okay. So we are talking today about redefining measures of success, which is a very subject, very close to my heart, because I think in the [00:08:00] online industry, we often define success as a seven figure launch or a six figure launch or something like that.
But something happened to you that helped you redefine success for you. So can you just take us back to that point where you went, hang on a minute, I don’t think this is right anymore.
Nicky:
Yeah. I mean, as is the case for a lot of people, I think when I became a mom, A lot changed for me. And it wasn’t like a sudden moment, but it was more like a, that was part of what happened during this process.
So I had my daughter and I went back to work. I used to work in corporate events for 15 or so years. I was in quite a senior ops role running a group of people. Companies. So that was my big job in inverter commas, if you like. And that had a decent salary. And it was based in London, and I was commuting in and out of London.
And then I had my son at the beginning of 2020, [00:09:00] which obviously was the old Pan D. Yeah. And I was on maternity leave through the pandemic and. did what a lot of people were doing. It wasn’t unusual. It wasn’t peculiar to me. I had a big reevaluation reassessment and felt that having two kids now rather than just one meant a balance tipped even more sort of away from that role I’d had.
I had a four hour daily commute, two hours each way, which was really challenging. So when I was doing that with my daughter, I was out of the house before she was even up. My husband took her to the nursery. I would pick her up at six o’clock, chuck her in the bath, chuck her in bed. No quality time. And my kids are school age now.
And you know, I just wanted to have more time with them. So I started my own business for the second time because I had started an events company in my previous career. I started a unisex children’s clothing brand. Because I had a daughter and a son and got very caught up in [00:10:00] issues around the way they dress and kind of got on my soapbox a bit about that and launched a clothing brand, which I absolutely loved.
And it evolved into a women’s wear brand. And I did that for a couple of years, but it was in a really, really challenging marketplace. And Over the course of doing that, I’d met other amazing female founders running their own businesses and had created this kind of network for myself. And that was when all of these conversations started happening for me about measures of success.
And I started thinking about what success looked like to me because I had gone from the big job and a high five figure salary to zero pounds a month income, which I appreciate is a privileged position to be in. My husband and I talked about it. We did a lot of belt tightening. So it’s not like we were swimming in money and it, and it came easily, but it was possible.
But with that, I had to completely change what success meant to me because with, with a startup, especially a products based startup, [00:11:00] you don’t make any money and you don’t make any money for a while, but that doesn’t mean the business wasn’t successful, wasn’t selling. You know, I had sellout collections.
I had really, really loyal customers. I had all five star reviews, repeat customers. So that was when it started shifting for me. What is success? Because We’re all fixed, fixated on money and status. And on the status front, I had also dropped down, you know, feasibly because I’d been in this big role now amongst my friends who are all in their late thirties, early forties, they’ve all been in their careers for 20 years.
We’re all starting to progress. And I suddenly put myself to the bottom of the pile. Yes, I’m CEO, but I’m also tea lady. of this one person startup operation. So on the money and status front, I really had a just a huge, huge reassessment and it was all part of that, that big journey, really.
Teresa:
So I feel like I’m about to jump into a very deep question. I’ve [00:12:00] got so many comments on that, but I just want to ask you one thing. Why do you think it is so inherent to us? Because I was exactly the same. I worked in corporate. I got made a director at the age of like 30 something early thirties. My title meant everything to me. I was probably horrible. Like I was so up my, my own ass, like, because I was like, I’m a director now.
Like, oh God, it was awful. Why do you think it’s so important to us and do you think it’s. Just certain people that it’s important to or where do you think this comes from?
Nicky:
I think it’s important to almost everyone and I think it we are all a product of a capitalist system and we are sold to and sort of talk to from all angles at all hours of the day.
And it’s impossible not to be influenced by that. We also grew up [00:13:00] with parents who were billionaires, who were making more money than their parents before them. And we were growing up with films like Wall Street and, you know, people who were successful, were making money, those two things went together, like success was money and status through that lens.
And it’s really, really hard to unlearn that and unpick that if you, if you don’t question it. you will just carry on on that path. And I was on that path. And of course I still get caught up in that. I still get caught up in, you know, what my friends might be making or because I’m a human being who exists in the, in the world in 2024.
But It’s like I have to check myself on that front. So yeah, I think it’s a societal thing. I think there is so much noise, so much external stuff, what we grew up with, what’s still around us now. I do hope it’s starting to shift a bit, but these things take a lot of time [00:14:00] because I can exist in an echo chamber where people are like, yeah, I agree. I agree. But of course that’s a very, very, very small part of the world and actually out there people are still measuring success on, on money and status. So. I get it, but I think, yeah, it goes very deep.
Teresa:
And do you know what, I was debating whether to say something because you were saying that, which shames me a little bit, but I think it’s important.
The very, my, my daughter, who’s 14 going on 25, as they all are, she has a boyfriend, a new boyfriend, I say new, he’s been a few months now. And my question to her was what do his parents do?
Nicky:
Okay.
Teresa:
Like, isn’t that? ridiculous, right? Like, even though I have gone through a similar, and I’m still going through similar stuff in terms of, and I think we evolve this all the time, you know, in terms of what’s important to us, but isn’t that awful?
Like [00:15:00] that, that was my measure. That was my, you know, not are they nice people, not are they got good values, not any of that. My immediate way that I could very quickly in my head, make an assumption about them is to know what they did as jobs.
Nicky:
Yeah. I mean, it’s not surprising. And I don’t think you can beat yourself up for that because. It is a way of creating a picture of someone in your mind. It’s certainly not the whole picture, as you said. My husband and I had a, had a conversation about a school dad just last night about the fact that he does a manual job and the assumptions that we had made about him and how the way he communicates is really incongruous with how he appears.
And, you know, people are putting certain things out into the world. So, it is difficult. And again, generationally, we are all defined by what we do. You know, I talk about this all the time. We talk about, you know, what do you want to be? And we mean, what job do you want to have? But we’re tying our entire identity to what we do for work.
So it’s not surprising that you asked her [00:16:00] that question.
Teresa:
Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s not. And I do, you know, Part of me, like I said, as we just said, I thought, do I even admit to that? And I’m like, well, no, I, you know, it’s important that we do because then that’s a point where I can go, okay, yeah, no, probably that isn’t the best idea.
So that brings me on to another question then about your children. And okay, again, I’m going to talk really personal stuff, but I think it’s really important. So in my family, in my aunties and uncles and siblings and like the kind of extended family, I am probably the only person who has their own business, right?
And I look at the world in an entirely different way to the way they look at it, right? And it’s almost kind of weird and hard and makes family occasions very uncomfortable for me. Because one, I turn into the biggest shelf on this planet, which, I mean, unpacked that. for starters, which no doubt I will at [00:17:00] some point with my therapist.
But I tell you this massive show off, but two my mindset, my thought, my everything is completely different, right? And I’m not saying mine’s right. There’s wrong or vice versa. It’s just different. And my thoughts when it comes to my daughter, is very different to my ex husband’s thoughts because he is in a traditional role, traditional, like, you know, got a job, working a job, and obviously I am not in that space.
So when it comes to my daughter, my opinion of traditional education, my opinion of getting a job, my opinion of life experiences is very different to my ex husband. So I’m interested as to In all these conversations of, like, success and life and, you know, the kind of patriarchal, I can’t say that word properly, like, you know, go and get a job, sit in your nine to five, do your job.
Has that changed how you are bringing up your children and your thoughts [00:18:00] on what they’re going to do when they’re older?
Nicky:
100%. I mean, my work and my podcast, because I speak to female founders as well, but I speak to them about their whole journey. And That has come into our lives because so often I’ll speak to someone and I’ll have an epiphany or they will say something amazing.
And I tell my husband every time, and he listens to every episode of the podcast, so we discuss them. And, um, That has totally come into our home, our parenting, our marriage, in terms of how we balance things. I’m delighted to say we are very aligned in terms of that to the kids. I had an amazing guest on my podcast who home educates her kids, and I had completely misjudged home education, and she opened my eyes to what an incredible thing it is that she’s, she’s doing for her kids, something that I One hundred percent could not do, but it is not what I thought it is.
And it is amazing. And one thing she said she’s going to do is [00:19:00] encourage her children to start their own business with a, with a small amount of money from her. She’s like, I don’t care if it’s a tiny thing, but one of the things that I will teach them around 14, 15 is give them the opportunity to start a small enterprise alongside doing their GCSEs and all these other things.
And I’ll also encourage them to do manual work because using your hands is really important. And Drew and I were like, We’re going to do that. Like we’re just nicking that. That’s so, so good. And it’s so important. And I think it can be hard because as modern parents, we’re bombarded with information all the time.
There’s like, I send my husband a reel on how we should be parenting every day. He sends them back to me. It’s like, Oh my God, you can’t get it right. But equally, you know, It’s a fantastic opportunity to have all this information that’s available to us so readily and we are trying to learn from it. So short answer, yes, like it’s impacting the way that I’m parenting my children and that has been the privilege of having the conversations that I have and changing my [00:20:00] perspective on work and it’s just been amazing. It’s completely changed my life.
Teresa:
Yeah. And for me, it’s that, and I think I always had this mindset of like, well, what do you want to be? You can be anything as long as it’s physically possible. There’s no reason why you can’t be it. And I remember having this conversation with my brother who’s actually special needs.
And I, when I took him to, my mom didn’t love doing like the careers stuff or the, you know, she felt like she was at a touch of it. So I would go with him. And I remember going to one careers. session with him and bearing in mind his special needs. So he has additional challenges and they said to him, he wants to do something tech like it type thing.
And we’d looked at this course college course. He didn’t do GCSEs traditionally because he wouldn’t have managed them. And we looked at this college course and there was no prerequisite. Okay. So there was no thing of like, you’ve got to hit this level of education or whatever it might be. And we went in there and he was like, that’s the one I want to do.
And we sat with these careers officers. And obviously, you [00:21:00] know, I guess they were specific for special needs people or whatever it was. And he said, what about bricklaying, right? Which initially I was like, hang on a minute, how did you get bricklaying from IT? And he, and Mark was, and the other problem my brother has is he stutters really bad, which is often we know what he’s thinking and some, we don’t talk over him, but sometimes he will like nod to us and go, you go, because he just can’t get the words out.
And I was like, I don’t think he wants to do bricklaying and Mark was like, shook his head and I said, and this guy was like, well, sometimes we just do a job because it pays the bills. And I was like, are you having a laugh? You might pal. Like, and I didn’t even have my own business then. I worked for another company.
And I was like, I don’t care. Like, he doesn’t want to do that. Like, why should he have to just do that? So anyway, we had an argument and we, we pushed our point and they put him on this course and he, and then they said he won’t get past the first year. And I’m like, so let him do the first [00:22:00] year. Like if he, if he can’t go over the second year, we can’t cope with the second year, but that’s not a reason to even stop him in the first place.
Anyway, he went and did the first year, he passed it. We all agreed the second year was not going to be right for him. And he went on to something else, but like, If that’s the kind of people that are having those kind of conversations, I just, it blows my mind. I’m like trying to explain to my daughter of like, you know, and, and I am really anti education at the moment, which is feels so bad, but it’s like some of the things that I can teach her, you know, we took her to the Philippines earlier this year to meet Johan, who works in my business with me, like that is way better than anything school could have taught her in a week.
Like, and I, I had to fight to get her to get the time off without me being fined. And yes, I would have paid the fine, but it was the principle of it. It’s like, we’re not going for an all inclusive week in Spain, right? Not that there’s anything wrong with that, FYI. Still, there’s things that they would benefit from that, the Nova school, but like, you know, what are you talking about?
She’s going to experience these things. And [00:23:00] so for me, I just feel like as a parent, Getting to understand that A, success is different, right? Like, success isn’t working your backside off for someone else. Or it doesn’t have to be that. It doesn’t have to be the subject of like, you know, what your title is.
It doesn’t have to be how much you earn. Like, it could be so many other things. And I think as business owners, we can show that. So, what do you define success as now?
Nicky:
I think for me
Teresa:
Is there even a definition that you have?
Nicky:
Yeah, it’s evolving, I think, because it’s not long since I’ve launched my most recent business, and I want that to be successful in the sense that I want to be rewarded for the work I’m doing.
And I want to be clear, like money, is a measure of success because you need to earn money to pay the bills because of the capitalist society that I mentioned before. And [00:24:00] you do want to be rewarded for the work that you do. So it is a factor, but for me, genuinely, My biggest measure of success is flexibility, because I work school hours, I pick my kids up every day, take them to a trillion after school clubs.
Teresa:
Oh man, do not love that.
Nicky:
Yeah, I mean, and that’s my choice, and I don’t love it day to day, but You know, on the whole, I love that
Teresa:
you’ve been able to do that.
Nicky:
I love that I’m able to do it. And it also gives us our weekends back. You know, a lot of people who are working all hours in the week, can’t do clubs in the week.
And then they fill up their weekend. You know, we, our weekends are quite sacred. And those are the choices that we’ve made. So, so flexibility and time. You know, yesterday I went out for lunch with a friend who runs her own business as well. And, you know, I can go and get my nails done if I want. It’s that, and it’s also enjoyment.
It’s enjoying the work that I’m doing and feeling fulfilled by it. And I had an idea [00:25:00] recently that I haven’t put the wheels in motion with yet, but it’s a way of me giving something back with the business as well. And that’s something that I think, you know, longer term, I would also find incredibly rewarding.
Because the work I do now is with female founders. But children and the next generation of working people is a huge part of my focus. And I would love to put something in place to support kids coming out of school and going, well, what the hell happens next? Just like you were just saying,
I would love to put something in place to support those kids.
Because on my podcast, I ask every single person their memory of careers advice from school. And regardless of age, you know, I speak to people a good 10 years younger than me and the careers advice was still shit. Now, you know, they’ve still been out of school for a while. So it may be better now, but I think my, my sense is there is a gap.
We certainly don’t talk to kids about entrepreneurship and doing your own thing, being a viable career [00:26:00] path, which it absolutely is. And, um, So for me, there’s a disconnect there and I would love to be able to give something back on that front. So I, I think, yeah, of course, I want, I want to earn money and do the work that I’m doing.
I want to find it enjoyable and rewarding and I want the flexibility around my kids. And I think, you know, if I can, if I can tie all of those threads together. I’ll be absolutely delighted. I would say I’m at two out of three because my money, my, my business is new and it doesn’t make a lot of money and I pay myself a tiny salary, but I do still feel happy and fulfilled. So I think it’s just important to say that.
Teresa:
I think where I come from and, and my opinion has been shifting and changing, I think there’s a couple of things. So the first thing I want to say is that Going back to the story of what kind of made you re address this is I wrote down seasons of life and that’s that is a big thing in my world that I talk about because our seasons of life can really dictate.
Well, not even dictate [00:27:00] it’s if we’re working with them can really help us understand what is important and what success looks like. Like you said, you’ve got two children that you want to do the school run, you want the ability to take them to the clubs, you want the. you want that time with them. So that is really important for you right now.
When they are teenagers, when they grow up, when they leave, that’s not going to be the same season of life. Okay. The same with me. When I started my business, I was a single mom to a four year old. My season of life is very different now, you know, in terms of what I can do and what’s important and how I want to spend my time.
So I think that’s the first thing that I wanted to kind of come back on just to sort of say, It is a season, right? So, you know, it will change as time changes. So you can say, this is how I define success today. And that can change tomorrow as your season changes. Yeah. You know, and actually that has really happened to me in the last few years of terms of, you know, I, [00:28:00] I talk about a season of life of having to get sober and spending a year getting sober.
That was a season of my life that I had to invest some time into, which yes, wasn’t children and wasn’t, you know, different things. It was something that I had to sort and therefore my business slowed down because I had to focus there. Whereas now my season of life is very different because I’ve come out of the Dark days and feel so much better and, and now I can focus all my time on my business or a huge amount of my time in my business.
So that was kind of the one thing. The other thing I wanted to come back on and sort of talk about with you was this, and this is coming from my own experience. Okay. So when I first came into the online space, it was all about, as I said, right at the beginning, the six and seven figure launches. And. When I discovered that that is not as easy as they make out because it’s not, I got very anti that kind of language.
Okay, so it really peed me off. Right. And I used to get really triggered by it. And therefore that was [00:29:00] almost like my rule of if they talk about that, they are not for me. Right. And now, I’ve kind of softened a bit about not, I still don’t like people that, not I still don’t like people, God, that sounded so judgmental, but I am still not drawn to people who are like, you can have this launch, someone, I had a call with someone this morning about joining my accelerator and she had just come off the back of working with a coach who guaranteed her 30k months.
And she didn’t get them. And I went, well, there’s a surprise, like, not to her, but as in, I can’t guarantee anything, like, I literally can’t, because your business, your life, how you show up, what you do, exactly, like, there’s no guarantee in any of this. So that’s still very much makes me go, no. Yeah. But one thing that I am moving into and trying to talk about is.
Not, this isn’t necessarily a definition of success, but it is absolutely okay to want to earn money. It is absolutely okay to say, I want my business to turn [00:30:00] six figures, I want my business to turn seven figures. There is nothing wrong with us wanting that for ourselves. And I think we need to get comfortable talking about that.
Nicky:
I completely agree and I think both the points you’ve just made both about seasons of life and about money both come back to the difference between men and women and I’m very pro men. I love men. I’m married to an amazing one, one of my children, but seasons of life is not something that impacts men in the same way that it impacts women because Yeah, they may have children, but a men’s testosterone goes up at puberty and stays at the same level until they die.
So they are not going through the same cycles that we’re going through monthly with our actual hormones, which are all part of bigger seasons. And then women do go through seasons within that, or obviously like being fertile and then perimenopausal, menopausal, all of that. So that’s a mix as well. And then, yeah, when your kids are [00:31:00] young, they. energetically drain you. And like you said, you’re in a different phase now, you have a different energy and you are able to put your all into it. And that just doesn’t traditionally happen to the men in our lives because their careers, and again, I’m speaking generally because I have to, their careers are not impacted by children in the way that women’s careers are.
So seasons of life is a feminine concept and therefore. It doesn’t get talked about, no one gives a shit about it. If men’s lives happened in seasons, you know, it’d be headline news, it’d be everywhere. The workplace was designed by men, for men, when only men were in the workplace. That isn’t men’s fault, that’s history.
It’s still like that now. If we could burn it to the ground and start again, with women in mind, it would be completely, unrecognisably, inconceivably different. Yeah. [00:32:00] And so, you know, the Seasons of Life thing is like, yeah, it’s huge. And the second part of that is money. Women don’t feel comfortable talking about money.
They don’t want to earn money because they have internalized misogyny. Women hate women because everyone hates women. Okay. Again, I’m generalizing, but like. It, it goes really, really deep in patriarchy and patriarchy is a construct and this is something that I’m obsessed with and I talk a lot about and I can really, really get on my soapbox about.
Again, patriarchy isn’t anyone’s fault. It’s just how it, it turned out to be, but once you know that you’re free because you can go, Oh, that’s how it turned out to be, but it’s not how it had to be. So all this stuff I believe about myself, that I’m not entitled to things, that I shouldn’t be able to earn money, those things just aren’t true.
I, I feel them. Women are not comfortable talking about money. I have it, you know, I’m launching the second phase of my business. Is it okay for me to [00:33:00] say that I want it to be a success that I want lots more people in my membership, you know, and is it okay that that’s about money? It’s not just about money, but if it was, would that matter?
Because there are those people out there who, exactly like you said, are like, you deserve to earn this and that and blah blah. And that is really, really not my vibe because of the season I’m in. Because I’m not in the season where I’m like, Push, push, push.
But I respect it. And I think, you know, I always say to people that’s not my vibe, but I’m, I’m not tearing anyone down for doing that.
It’s just not me because of where I’m at. So yeah, I mean, both points, there’s, there’s a lot to say, but hopefully I’ve summarized. I’ve summarized brilliantly.
Teresa:
And I think you’re so right. Like, the women, and this could be an entire podcast on its own, but honestly, but the women versus women thing that that is so flipping hard.
Like, so one of the things that I noticed when I was not well. [00:34:00] So when I was getting to the point before I stopped drinking, you know, I’d argue that that was the worst my addiction had been. And obviously it would have been because that’s the point I stopped, but it wasn’t like, I certainly was very functional.
I showed up every day. I was fine, but I was drinking way, way too much. And I was so negative about other people, right? And what’s super interesting, it was never, I would never come on a podcast and go, Oh, they’re awful. Or so I would never name names. I would never publicly talk about it, but within my own little world, I would judge Everybody, right?
And I would look at this and male or female didn’t really matter, but I would look at people and think, Oh God, they’re doing it this way. That’s a horrible way to do it. I would never do it this way. And so then I would probably create a podcast that talked about this is the nice way to do things, right?
But what it came down to and what I’m now able to see is I felt so shit about myself, right? I had such a low self esteem. [00:35:00] I didn’t trust myself. I couldn’t, like, put faith in myself because I was messing it up on a daily basis. Like, I would say every day, please don’t drink today, Teresa. And every day I would drink, right?
So My self esteem was on the floor, so the only way I could make myself feel the slightest bit better was to look at other people, and in my own head and in my own world, slag them all off, right? And be like, I wouldn’t do it like that, and that’s a horrible way to market, and that’s this, this, this. And I was so opinionated to myself about that.
And then And, and I actively was mad at people being successful, especially women, right? Men would kind of go by the side and I’d be like, yeah, they’re idiots. Women I’d be like, uh, I don’t want to be like that or whatever. And then I obviously got sober and. I worked really hard for a year to just even work out who the hell I was again.
And then I started to realize that all these people that [00:36:00] I had had such a negative attitude towards, it was nothing to do with them.
Nicky:
Oh, yeah.
Teresa:
Literally nothing.
Nicky:
Yeah.
Teresa:
All to do with me.
Nicky:
And this is, you know, I say it to my kids, like, it’s like bullying, isn’t it? It’s never about you. It’s always about the other person.
And it’s like you said, you were carrying shit around and projecting that on top of people because of how shit you felt about yourself.
Teresa:
Yeah.
Nicky:
And it’s great to have that realization. And I think, listen, we all suffer with. you know, envy, we all see what other people are doing and we’re like, oh, you know, and that, that’s completely normal.
That’s human nature. But I think if it goes past that point where it’s quite toxic for you, then you’ve got to look at yourself and go, what’s going on for
me?
Teresa:
And the other thing is it, it slows you down and stops you. Like, you know, one of the things I teach on is self sabotage. And one of the things of self sabotage is joining in or creating drama.
And that is. exactly what I was doing. [00:37:00] I would much rather look at someone else and in my head go, Oh, you’re doing it wrong. Then actually stop for one minute and look at me and go, Well, that you’re not as successful as them. So actually, if you wanted to really pick it apart, you might say you were doing worse.
But I think with the women thing and with the kind of showing up thing and also the success because I think the other thing that we are guilty of guilty is maybe a bit strong, but the other thing that is a problem is, is where we are measuring our. business, our lives by someone else’s ruler. So someone else is going, this is what success looks like.
And again, we are not so, I am so steadfast in what I love and what I want and what is important to me that no one can rock me off it now. Like someone else could go, your business isn’t successful because it’s this.
I don’t care. Yeah.
It’s my business. Yeah. And I am very happy with what it is and how I run it and what I do.
That’s your thoughts on your business and what you do, but. I think when we’re not that steadfast, then we look at other people and then we start chasing [00:38:00] off the things that we don’t even flippin want. Yeah. Like, creating something that is not even something we want because we just look at someone else and they’ve told us that that’s what’s important to us and that’s what we should go for.
Nicky:
Yeah, and that’s really, really difficult to navigate sometimes, I think. I, I have this, there’s so much external noise. What do I actually want my thing to look like? And I’ve had it recently when I’m thinking about my next launch. I’m like, I’ve asked my members for feedback, and some of them have said, oh, can we have this?
And I was like, right, right, I must implement that. And I was like, hang on a minute. Is that what I want it to be? No. So, you know, it’s fine that they gave that feedback and they asked for it. And if they leave because they don’t get that one thing, it’s because it’s not right for them. But I have to stay true to what I think it is.
And I want to, I take feedback and I make adjustments and stuff. But that was one where I was, I was about to do it. And then I had a conversation with someone and they were like, do you actually want to be doing that? And I was like, Oh, [00:39:00] so, you know, we all suffer with that. It’s really, really difficult. And you see what other people are doing.
You’re like, Oh, they’re doing that with great success. Maybe I should do that. But that might not be your zone of genius or your superpower, whatever you want to call it. So it is. I think that when you work on your own, especially, it’s really, really hard to check in on that stuff because your internal monologue is messy.
It’s not speaking in like logical thought. So speaking to someone else, writing stuff down, turning your phone off, like all of those things are really, really important and really hard to do.
Teresa:
It’s a super conscious time. We’ve been chatting for a while and I’ve I want to get to the point where we’re wrapping up because I feel bad taking your time, but this is such a fascinating conversation.
Is there anything practical that they can do to help them understand what success looks like to them and then be bloody mindedness in I don’t give a crap what someone else says I’m really happy in this.
Nicky:
I think even [00:40:00] asking yourself the question is a huge step forward. If you’ve listened to this and it’s made you go, Oh, shit. There’s another way. That’s almost enough to start thinking about that. Like I said, it’s not an easy thing, and I’m still a victim of, what are my friends doing? What are my friends earning? Like, but I have to come back to what’s important to me, and I, you know, the fact that I’m the primary caregiver for my kids, Like, I’ve got a friend, a male friend who’s doing that, his wife is the breadwinner and that’s been a shift for them and I was with him recently and I said to him, we’re the lucky ones, you know, you and me, we are the lucky ones who get to spend this time with our kids.
We’re not going to be on our deathbed and go, I just wish I’d worked more. And, you know, if you think about that. and think about your funeral, just to be morbid. If you asked your friends, if someone went up to your friends and said, what was your [00:41:00] favorite thing about Teresa? None of them would say, oh, that she ran a seven figure business or, you know, she was just such a good saleswoman.
You know, those things about you are true.
Teresa:
That launch she did was unbelievable.
Nicky:
That’s not what people are going to hold on to. It doesn’t mean those things aren’t an important part of the tapestry of your life. But like, when we’re talking about core values, like what really, really matters to you, how are you really, really going to measure your own success?
And I think even asking the question is step one.
Teresa:
Yeah, I think you’re so right. And I also think there’s a part of, sometimes we have to be in it and doing it to go, Oh, hang on a minute. This isn’t what I want. And that’s all right. Like, how did you feel when you stopped your other business? and started the new one. Like, what was that like?
Nicky:
Felt so many feelings. And, you know, it’s taken me four years since I started the clothing brand to land on a scalable business model [00:42:00] with my community. So it hasn’t come quickly and easily, but it, the community is totally a product of meeting all the founders, starting my podcast, bringing people on that journey.
It’s all led me to this point. where now I’m in a really, really good place, but it hasn’t happened overnight. So wait, what was the question?
Teresa:
The kind of feeling because, because that would paralyze some people, like if something doesn’t, like, so I guess the reason it came up was because of the fact of what if you create something and you go, Oh God, I don’t want to do this, or this isn’t nice.
Nicky:
How did I feel when the other business essentially failed, which it did. Awful, obviously, at times. Like, I had put a lot of my own money into it, so I had been bought out of my own business, so I was lucky that I had a lump sum of cash to put into it. Then I lost that all. That’s money that my family could have had, and it went.
So that was really, really hard. So there were, like, real, like, life practical things that were hard about it. And then there were [00:43:00] also ego things that were hard about it because of how we view failure. But I view it massively. I’ve reframed the, the money thing as like an investment in my learning. Like if I, you know, someone said to me, someone very, very clever said, if you’d done an MBA, that would have cost you 50 grand.
You know, what you’ve learned here on the ground practically is similar. And that was amazing for me. So I think. Yeah, I don’t want anyone to like fritter cash away, and I didn’t intend to do that, but I learn a lot. Let’s just say that. And I do believe that, you know, failure is an opportunity for learning.
And you know, I had a brilliant guest on my podcast a couple of weeks ago who said, how many Dyson Hoovers did James Dyson make before he made the Dyson? You know, it’s hundreds. So were they all failures or were they just iterations? you know, that that’s how I like to look at things. So yeah, it’s hard in business when something doesn’t work, but the [00:44:00] benefit of being a small business, being one or a small group of people is, actually being able to duck and dive.
You know, my first boss said that to me years ago when I was in a tiny events company, he was like, we can duck and dive. We can under shrink to fit. If we need to, if things aren’t good, we can batten down the hatches. And if you’ve got that opportunity to pivot, you know, if you have an entrepreneurial mind, I think that’s quite exciting to you sometimes.
So no, of course it wasn’t easy, but hindsight you know, changes things. And I think I, I wouldn’t be here without everything that went before. So ultimately I’m grateful for it.
Teresa:
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, and grateful for what’s to come with the new seasons of life and the new, you know, what is important to you and how successful look and that sort of thing. And, and like I said, I think we should be all right with owning what we want and changing our mind.
Nicky:
Yes, I completely agree.
Teresa:
You know, how [00:45:00] we sit today and the things we say today are very much governed by what we know at this point. As we move forward, as things change, then that can change too.
Nicky:
Yeah, and if I asked you in your 20s, as like a young single person who was child free, You know, what you wanted your life to look like at 50, you wouldn’t have, like, you wouldn’t have given me the answer that you’d give me now as a woman in your 40s with a child, like, and the benefit of experience behind you.
It’s just like, that’s not how life works. So it comes back to the seasons thing. It’s like, it’s okay that my wants and needs are going to change. Yeah. You know, my, I, I’m not going out with the guy that I went out with when I was 15 years old. You know, my speech, . Sorry Derek, I don’t miss you . So, you know, it’s like, that’s okay.
And I said to my husband the other day, like. We’ve been married 10 years and we just had a vow renewal and we got married really quickly. We’d only known each other a couple of years and we got married. Our vow renewal felt more special because we’ve actually done 10 years of life together. [00:46:00] So to get up and say, I still do, felt really, really magical.
And I was like, we have both changed. So much in that time, we’re almost unrecognizable, but we’ve grown together, not apart. And ultimately, that’s what it comes down to. So yeah, keep going. Keep growing.
Teresa:
Yeah. I love it. Nicky, this has been such a great conversation. I was saying to Nicky that normally, like at the end, what I’m starting to do now is like summarize the kind of key points.
But the problem was there was so many good things that we talked about, and there were so many kind of digressions from redefining success to seasons of life, to starting clothing brands, to kids, to education, to patriarchy, so much, but I really hope more than anything that this has given you permission to know that what you want is right and you don’t have to justify that to anybody.
And I think the more that women can specifically women can stand up and go, yeah, no, this is what I want. And that’s okay. Whether it be to work. one [00:47:00] day a week and earn a reasonable amount of money, or whether it is to build a freaking empire and earn millions, that is your prerogative. So Nicky, thank you so very much.
Where can people come and find you if they want to come and say hi?
Nicky:
So on Instagram, I’m wilderones, wilder. ones. It’s a throwback to my clothing brand, but my community now is called the Wilder Collective. So that wilder word is still in the title. So you can find that at the wildercollective. co. uk. And my podcast is called women’s business, where I talk to female founders about their career journey.
So a slightly different take and Teresa’s is going to be out there soon. So come on.
Teresa:
I’m excited. I’m excited to have that conversation. Cause like I said, the questions like, Oh, okay, what am I going to say to that? That’s so interesting. Nicky, thank you so much. It’s been an absolute pleasure having you on.
Nicky:
Thank you for having me. I’ve loved it.
