3 July 2017, Toff in Town, Melbourne, Australia
Jess McGuire's original title for this talk was "Being A Woman In Your Thirties Can Be Hard, But These Tips And Tricks Will Help Unleash Your Inner Power Goddess This BOFY!!!!" Nailed it was a Wheeler Centre event, devised by James Colley showcasing writers and comedians, and asking them to argue polemics different from their own.
For most women I know, the end of the financial year can mean only one thing - time to take a long, hard look at your lifestyle choices and see what changes (preferably tax deductible!) you can make to ensure you’re living your best life from now until June 30th next year. It really all comes down to what I like to call the three Fs - fitness, fertility, and finances. And as luck would have it, ‘Advice On FFF’ is one of my five skills on LinkedIn, endorsed by over a dozen people at time of writing.
You might be wondering, much like the lady who accosted me in the bathrooms shortly before I came on stage, hey, what qualifies THIS woman to give me life advice? Haha, great question Sally *glares*. I’m the founder, graduate, and now Head Goddess of the Joyful Biz Online Life Coaching and Etsy Management Academy, a virtual un-university that combines affirming Skype sessions with challenging multiple choice personality tests in order to help the upper middle class find their passion - and attempt to make a living from it! I’m proud to say that in the 2016 edition of Mamamia’s 100 Most Powerful Aussie Mumtrepreneurs list, you can find 15 Joyful Biz Online Life Coaching and Etsy Management Academy graduates, which I think we can all agree is a yummy result!
As an emotionally qualified business and life coach, I think it’s important to connect with as many people as possible, and while normally I prefer that to be via $300 half hour Skype sessions, here we are. So without further ado, here are some insights and viewpoints many women might not have considered before to improve their life, but once you hear them, you’ll never look back.
Firstly, let’s talk about physical health. Ladies, your body is a temple, and you need to treat it as such. No, not one of those monkey riddled Balinese temples where they charge people to enter and it’s essential to carry a large stick to protect yourself from a rabies bite, but just a super nice temple like the one in the Wonder Woman movie - the Temple of Themyscira. Clean, airy, peaceful, fortified, minimalist, hair free, and toned beyond belief thanks to alternating days of cardio and pilates. I can’t tell if I’m still in trapped in that temple metaphor or not, but let’s continue.
It doesn’t matter what size you are, EVERYONE is BEAUTIFUL!!!!!! But as a rule of thumb - if you can’t fit into anything at Lorna Jane, which runs up to a full figured size 16, it might be worth hitting a few extra seshes at the gym - mostly cardio, be a bit wary when it comes to weights as you don’t want to do anything that will bulk you up too much and cause you to lose your precious feminine energy.
As far as diet is concerned, here’s a little tip that’ll keep you slim: when you’re feeling like you’re carrying a little too much extra weight, why not sign up to an online rations challenge and pressure all your family and friends into sponsoring you? Not only will adopting the diet of a Syrian refugee ensure you don’t end up overindulging, but you’ll be raising HEAPS of awareness and it’ll serve as great content for your personal brand on the major social media channels!
Remember though: just because you keep your rig tight, that doesn’t mean every woman has the time, money, or even just enough self love to truly care about herself and maintain a healthy weight range. Be sensitive about this. If you know in advance you’re going to spend time with a larger person, I recommend going the extra mile and arranging special sturdy chairs, or maybe even sticking a post it note over the little metal plate in your building’s lift that could potentially display an offensive weight limit - perhaps scrawled with the message “This lift, like my heart, doesn’t really care about your weight”… It’s no use keeping this kindness a secret though - how else will your chunky buddy know how much you care? Before they come over, it’s a great idea to let your super morbidly obese friends know how much you support them by writing out a list of all the things you’ve done to cater for their body choice, so they know you’re in their corner! It’ll make them feel great!
Now, one of the biggest challenges facing many of the students I have at the Joyful Biz Online Life Coaching and Etsy Management Academy is the issue of fertility. Many of our female enrollments are in their late twenties and early thirties, and while they’re looking to nail the lucrative mumtrepreneur market once they graduate, there’s just one problem: no kids yet.
One thing I like to suggest is looking into foster care - it’s a great way for someone starting a small mumtreprenaur business to gain some extra income via the regular government payments, and you can use this quick start to parenthood as a way of connecting to potential clients online. No more just quietly ‘liking’ a post you see where some parent has shared an adorable anecdote about their little Arlo, now you’ll have some stories to share too!
But if you’re happy to play the long game, then perhaps it’s worth mentioning that a recent scientific study in Switzerland noted a huge increase in successful pregnancies amongst women aged 35 - 40 years old… if the father of the child was significantly younger. There’s never been a better time to cougar, and here’s a hot tip for anyone financially stable enough to go it alone in the parenting stakes but still keen to trawl for free seed to keep initial costs down: I have one word for you. Schoolies! Get yourself a tasteful Air BNB on the Gold Coast during the last two weeks in November and then hit the bars! Be sure to double check ID before taking anyone home - a fun little saying I like to remember when I’m knocking back Skinny Bitch cocktails at the bar is ‘Overage is the ONLY age’ - but once you do, you’re never more likely to find a male partner keen on avoiding both commitment and condom use than when hooking up with an eighteen year old recent high school graduate buzzing from the six pack of Bundy and rum cans he sank down before leaving the hostel.
If you’ve already got kids then - sorry for mentioning trawling nightclubs, I know it’s probably been a while! If you’re like most mums I know, you’re probably constantly under the pump and find it hard to get some all important me time when you need it most. Here’s a great tip I actually read from Gwyneth Paltrow’s newsletter GOOP, in an edition where she asked some ordinary working mums like venture capitalist Juliet de Baubigny and incredibly wealthy fashion designer Stella McCartney about how they handled work\life balance, and found time to honour their inner goddess: if you find it hard to get space and time to exercise before work and get in the right frame of mind to start your day, why not ask the nanny to come 45 minutes earlier than normal, and treat yourself to an extra yoga class before work? Smart!
And now, some financial advice. I’m not ashamed to admit that at one point I was $200,000 in debt due to my thirst for travel, five star living, and good old Colombian marching dust, until a few years ago I realised I was going to have to make some pretty swift changes to how I viewed money if I wanted the universe to start providing!!!!
One way I found was the quickest way to save on paying those annoying regular bills that really add up before too long like water, electricity, and gas is to simply to stop opening your mail. You may have heard the saying “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" That same science applies to debt!
If an envelope arrives marked Energy Australia but no one opens the envelope, is there actually a bill inside? Or just some pamphlets full of stock photos justifying a new usage rate rise? Who knows!!! After a couple of months you’ll find the bills just fade away from your mind, allowing you to spend your newly available extra cash on more important things that make you feel good, and the mental space you might have taken up with thoughts of budgets and impending disconnections have instead been filled with more positive affirmations and life goals. Sure, after about six months go past the electricity is likely to be switched off, but in my questionably qualified experience, if you’ve been redirecting those funds towards empowering things such as remedial massage, exotic facials, or perhaps an online un-university course at Joyful Biz Online Life Coaching and Etsy Management Academy that will result in you finally getting your crocheted cupcake holder business up and running - well then, surely the universe will have seen you’re ready for better things and a veritable money storm will already be heading your way!!!
I know as soon as I stopped opening my mail and and instead opened myself to all the possibilities the universe had to offer when it came to making money, I began finding extra income all over the place - unwatched handbags, my elderly mother’s savings account, and through the purchase of the domain name joyfulbizonlinelifecoachingandetsymanagementacademy.com and the associated PayPal account!!! Yes, it seems the very same energy that had demanded I ignore angry creditors had become the energy that guided my hand to both metaphorical and literal wads of cash in all sorts of exciting locations!!!! The fact is - and no one knows exactly why - but money and success just tends to follow fun, carefree people who don’t pay their bills. Don't bother doing the sums and trying to figure out how this works, it's not computable. Just know it WORKS. And if you’re interested in finding out more, why not take my online money management course which you can sign up for at joyfulbizonlinelifecoachingandetsymanagementacademy.com/paypal?
Another financial tip: once you’ve got that extra income rolling in, you may also like to start buying things of intrinsic value as a way to enjoy having money while also gaining liquid items (an industry term for things that can be reduced to liquid with enough heat or boiling). Silver cutlery is a good start, as are NBA collector cards which, I was assured as a 12 year old, only accumulate in value (I consider my 1992-93 season Michael Jordan card to be my superannuation nest egg!). But don’t restrict yourself by just considering investing in inanimate objects - small pedigree dogs like Chihuahuas and Bichon Frises are also a great investment as they are a statement item that the universe can't ignore, and if you get hard up at any point you can always sell them on Gumtree - in fact, it's not a bad idea to mark them up and sell them on before they hit five years of age, just because that's usually the age in-bred dogs start to go south.
As for home ownership, while some like to make out that the real estate market is almost impossible to navigate these days, I know of one particularly savvy 23 year old who owns not one, not two, but THREE investment properties - and all it took to enter the property market aged just 19 years old was pluck, a little elbow grease, having the strength to say no to brunches at cafes with friends, and a small $150,000 gift to get started from his mum and dad. If your mum and dad aren’t inclined to provide you with money for a deposit, and let’s face it, not all parents love their children, then you can always angle to become executor of their will and once a desirable outcome is in order… *conspiratorial wink* Well, you’ll think of something.
As we step out into the sparkling new terrain that is the 2017/2018 financial year, I hope my wisdom and insights help inspire a whole new group of women to become powerful female life warrior goddesses, and also maybe sign up to my online un-university Joyful Biz Online Life Coaching and Etsy Management Academy. Thank you.
This was written for the first ever Melbourne edition of Nailed It!, an event which sees writers/comedians/journalists presenting shit think pieces in front of a live audience. Thanks to The Toff In Town for hosting, the Wheeler Centre and James Colley for organising, and the delightful audience who left the house on a freezing Monday night in Melbourne’s winter to listen to a bullshit filled diatribe read by yours truly plus a heap of talented writers and performers such as First Dog On The Moon, Dee Fidge, Lucy Valentine, and Nayuka Gorrie.