IS THERE EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMEN IN BUSINESS? - TRP - #10
and i came back like i did it i handed my notice in and he was like so fran um just want you to start with talking to us about where your business journey began um post university because you started you you went and got a degree didn't you i did indeed yeah i went to cardiff university to do business business management and marketing yeah so there was like the business management course and then you could kind of specialize down like marketing hr finance whatever like a hybrid sort of course yeah modules to like make it whatever you wanted yeah so i did business management marketing um in cardiff which is what brought me to wales so i'm i'm kind of welsh now i think are you originally from england yeah i'm from uh i was from wiltshire and then came over to cardiff and sort of i left i went to bristol to live for a few months after uni um but then i came back to wales because it's quite hard to leave i think once you get here yeah yeah yeah i'll get you yeah but so i always knew i wanted to have my own business but i thought it was something you do in the future like something that's like you know in my 40s or 50s when i've got enough money or i'll do it when i've got enough time yeah yeah it's always like oh one day that's the plan but everyone was like no you go to uni you get a job that's what you do and i was quite academic at school as well so it was very like you do a proper subject and you go to uni and then you just get a job and that's it and then you work your way get your professional job yeah and in my head i was always like that's not what i want to do like i've had like many businesses i had like a cake business when i was 18. i was like the kid planting hair in the playground charging like two quid for little french braids and stuff i'd make i started early doors you had that from a youngster there yeah i was in um primary school in not even juniors in like the infants i got like a get set chocolate factory melt the chocolate and set it again and i i mean my profit margins were probably awful six oh yeah i was like trying to work out do my accounts late at night or whatever yeah so i was selling like chocolate for like 20p and then we had all the like um heaven bar and chewie bar and we made up all this stuff and i just love the creativity of like coming up with something selling it and thinking i've made money even though my dad's paid for the ingredients but um so like all my life i was like i wanna this is what i wanna do yeah yeah um and then i was really serious actually about my cake business when i was eighteen i was like making anniversary cakes and i was like this is what i wanna do but it was like no you go to uni you get a job that's what you do even at uni i in between um like year one and year two i did cardiff school of beauty so i trained to be a beautician over summer and then i set up my own mobile beauty business so in second year and third year i was doing like spray tans and eyelash extensions and all that type of stuff what was um what were you actually studying at uni business business okay yeah so you but you were still doing those courses when you could yeah like in some holidays i want to be a beautician as well so um i was doing like little mini businesses to just because i wanted to um and then got my job after uni in an advertising agency which was just my absolute dream job i loved it to bits and i was like okay this is what i want to do um so i was doing like running campaigns for bristol nhs trusts welsh government campaigns we worked on um all sorts of things i absolutely loved it it was like making tv adverts and radio adverts and it was so creative and fun but also strategic but i was always like i still want my own business so i try and set up like a subscription box or like a yoga one we tried or just other little things but um it wasn't till i had uh my daughter luna so i accidentally got pregnant at 23. okay and i was like uh oh what am i gonna do now and then was like right just just make it work somehow yeah so i went after i had her i went back to work after about five months off so i didn't have long maternity leave because i was like get back to work career woman this is what i want to do and i imagined myself as you know in like a film sometimes you see this like career woman and she's got like a baby and she's running around and she's like power still managing to do it all yeah i was like that's what i want to be i want to be the mum who's like in the office loads of paper everywhere but like she's managing and like she's got a baby and she's everyone sees her as superman i was like that's me get back to work and i was like i can't do this it's really hard at that point did you have a lot of support yes and no like yes um so i had like my mum would come down from wheelchair um my luna's dad was around like his family were around but i was so overly independent i'd push everyone away i was like don't help me i don't want your help i'm doing this myself um it was just i needed wanted to do it my way so i did have the support and the help but i would push it away um because i just thought that i had to do it myself so then when i i think it was about six months in no maybe four or five months after i went back to work i was like i can't do this and i had one freelance job that i'd taken on just doing social media for a local company and i got i think i've got 500 pounds for something that took me like an evening's work yeah and i was like oh so the plan of having my own business in the future could actually just bring this forward and pick up more of these jobs and work from home with my new baby so was that the light bulb moment yeah that's when i thought right so i spoke about it with my partner at the time like maybe i could bring this freelance business thing forward a bit um and he was really supportive like yeah that's a really good idea and we were moving house at the time the next day i handed my notice in and i came back like i did it i handed my notice in and he was like oh i thought you meant like in the next in six months i'm expecting it tomorrow yeah she's she's keen she's ready to go he was like what have you done we've got like we're moving house that you need the pay slips for the mortgage so we had to literally just move house like the next house yeah we saw we just we did a part exchange in the end because then they buy your house so you don't have to wait and it all happens really quick yeah um so we could use my payslips from still being employed um so then that was kind of the start of it really just it was like a kind of freelance i could sort of feed the baby and be around and just do you think that from there do you think having the baby drove you to hand in that notice yeah definitely because you could see perhaps a bigger future yeah than what was an element of that like did you know you didn't want to be an employee you didn't you know this i believe there's a mindset to being an entrepreneur and there's a mindset to being an employee and how much of that do you think played a role in you taking that choice at that moment in life yeah definitely i think the mindset thing of like i i felt like i was i felt like i had so much more to give to the business and so many ideas and stuff but when there's already an established business and you've got this little 23 year old like we should do it like this how about this you should try this they're probably like it's going to fall on deaf ears yeah and they would take them on and they were like the best company ever i loved working for them but equally they're like well we've got our own plan so i was like right i'll i'll all these ideas i'll put into my business and start my plan so then it went from there and that was five years ago now um i've kind of it started very much like picking up freelance clients and then growing and turning into more of like an agency and now i've got um a couple of girls the two girls working for me and i'm looking to grow and it's kind of it's taken a while to get to the point where i believe in myself as much as other people do yeah um but yeah this is the year of like super growth hopefully um amazing yeah we've got you at the right point yeah this is a good point to talk about i think um one of the things i remember my dad always saying to me that he spent like i don't know 20 20 years in the same company um and finally just before he passed away he reached a point in that company that he was really happy and he you know is doing well but he wasn't i wouldn't say he was rewarded for his work in terms of a financial reward but he always said to me i don't know i didn't follow his own advice he always said to me you'll only ever be really financially free if you work for yourself because if you do work for somebody you're always given that opportunity that they dictate your future yeah you know there could be somebody above you who thinks she or he's a good worker but i'm only going to pay him so much obviously most people as humans they care fundamentally about themselves don't they we can be quite selfish you know it's rare that you'll get an employer that's like i want to dish you with this wealth completely fairly that's that's almost like ludicrous to suggest that that would be common practice um well it's a natural conflict isn't it between the employer and the employee exactly they they want the the maximum labor in whatever form that is right and they want to give you the minimum payment and what do you want you want to do the little labor yeah for the maximum payment so if that's a natural yeah you know on as an average yeah so i think you're a great example like your story is a great example and as we're going to go into it of somebody you know getting good at something finding they've got a passion for something realizing that you could you could spend your life doing that for somebody you absolutely could i don't believe at all you will ever get the same reward doing it for somebody as if you did it for yourself it's organic it's natural it's unique it's all about it's all about you and then the people you bring into that company and like that's where you'll really shine because you're gonna you can't match your passion for your business with somebody else's because fundamentally it's their business yeah completely do you know what i mean yeah and you're funding someone else's dream when you're putting all your efforts into you know a big organization or a company that's got to be a different feeling for someone like fran who's building it from the ground up and doing it for yourself completely and i think like it's definitely worth saying like it's not for everybody and there's of course there's value in people being caused such a massive thing at the moment about like i don't know if it's just because of like algorithms and the content that i get served on social media but it's all about like be an entrepreneur like work for yourself and it's like that's not for everyone like there is value in of course you want to be employed like the um some jobs like you i don't know you can't you more like public service jobs or like kind of like fire fighters roles in the nhs like you can't just be like oh i'm going to be like a start my own something business which is firefighters yeah like the sun rolls you can't so if that's what you want to do and you get the stability you get like pensions this and the other there's like such a need for that type of thing of course there is of course there is the other side of the coin like not everybody fits into that and i don't think i'm a very good employee because even though i was like really good at my job i did i was always thinking how can i turn this into like even though at the time it was more of a future plan i was like how can i take bits of this and work on it for me rather than for this like i'd always be like but wondering how i can turn it into my business it's a different it's just a different mindset i think it's like with your story there's evidence that your mindset was different because there's not many kids going to school and start trying to set up a business yeah i know i know you were selling chocolate there was there was always that odd person there like an odd person sorry but there was always that person who's like selling the cans of coke that they've just gone and bought from the shop yeah like to the average kid they just think oh that that kid's crazy and also they're thinking buzzing i can get a 50 p kind of coke you just pay 20p for it so i don't know why you're buzzing but you charge your 30b extra you can go to the shop and get it yourself he's hustling yeah yeah but it shows us a different mindset and i think like the average person probably is we're influenced by a lot of things aren't we and you look at like we go through school and what the school teaches us it teaches us when to have a break when to work hard and authority figures hierarchies and then so we're almost pre-programmed then to go out into the world and then sit in one of those boxes which are called companies right so you have the person who's comfortable doing that but not comfortable doing what you're doing right and vice versa so like you said it's not for everyone but i think there's there's great benefit in doing something that you really enjoy well with great risk comes great reward yeah but you touched on a nice point there man it's like even when you're in school you learn to ask can i go to toilet and i found myself in companies where people want to let their manager know they're going to toilet but but it's like that's quite that's quite a bizarre thing yeah it is when you think like if if you've got a natural urge to go to toilet get up go to toilet yeah but because it's been programmed into you that you have to ask an authority figure like a human body yeah yeah yeah like all right i mean it's unnatural that's what it is it's unnatural but again we're we conform to it because we've gone through a school system that mirrors that um companies mirror that even prison mirrors that you need or you could work for amazon where they literally time you yeah breaks yeah when i have like interns in or new starters or whatever i'm like literally do what you want if you need to go down come down and get a drink come and get a drink if you need the toilet like go to the toilet if you want to go get lunch because you're hungry like whatever like as long as the work's getting done like i don't care like i'm not like so there's no strikers between initially yeah there's no strict toilet breaks then toilet breaks are only between like 10 and 10 10 past 10. absolutely the dictatorship yeah you plan when you eat and drink by my toilet this is my house that's nice i just wanted to create a business which the reason i created the business or started was because of my like needs for flexibility and needs to be able to work around my new baby and needs to be able to sort of do things how i wanted and if i then create a culture in my business which doesn't mirror that then i've like failed in my business ultimately like this is not what i wanted to create so you know if you need to drop the kids off and you're going to be half an hour late unless there's like the world's biggest meeting and you can't be late in which case you would have planned for that in advance like so what if you come in five minutes late like and i think sometimes that might some people might think that sending the wrong message about like you know punctuality and this kind of thing but yeah there's other things important in life and things get in the way like there's so much more important things in life other than just work yeah and if you can build your work as part of your day rather than work is your day then like thus you get the best work out of people as well that way i i really agree with that like i think um culture is really important yeah and with bigger companies i've worked for bigger companies where absolutely if you're late and you're not in like the contact center it's kind of like you're letting everyone down like like as if like the truth didn't turn out no did you know they use i mean i had this in my my um my retail job i spent quite a few years in the thing they'd use every time in the meetings do you understand the needs of the business the needs the needs of the business no i don't i was a minute late i mean what's that done to the business get a ceo on the phone if he's got a problem like i mean yeah like there is i think that's that's one of my problems with with uh larger organizations large organizations and and being an employee so i i totally gravitate towards your the reason reasons why you've done what you've done yeah yeah now your business what what does your business actually do so we're full service marketing agency so that's anything from market research strategy and planning branding design print work website creation and hosting digital marketing is kind of like the core so social media management facebook ads seo search engine optimization pay-per-click so everything to do with google email marketing influencer marketing um and kind of like marrying it all together so you can't just really have like one thing happening on its own you need to have your like all your strategies aligned into like an integrated strategy so we'll pull all that together for businesses and run it um i also do a lot of training as well so during lockdown businesses would be like i haven't got any money but i need to market so there's a bit of a situation going on and um we would do that training to help them be able to do it themselves as best they can so we've got like a training element to the business as well how are you that's really positive the business is up and running you said so this is this is the year for the big growth how much success have you had so far oh it's a really hard question because i'm definitely the person who's like oh i'm so rubbish i can't do anything like i've not succeeded in anything but then other people are like wow you're amazing and like it's really hard sometimes to like listen to what other people say um but when i did a i do like this big ideas wales role model they call it so you go into schools and colleges and you're like this is me this is what you can achieve if you do this which i'm actually a massive fan of because it goes back to what you're saying about your you're you're in a school or a college and you're taught this is the route to go down right and then i'll come in and be like look it's not for everyone but if you want your own it's an alternative this is yeah this is the alternative this is how you do it um so i do a lot of that and then part of that your your first slide on your presentation is like a bit about you what you've achieved um so when i started putting those together it's a bit hard at first because you're like oh i've done that and i've done that and you end up with this list and you read it and you're like all right i have done okay actually like i'm not i've done okay so yeah how many how many employees have you got there's like two at the moment but i'm looking for a couple more but it's so hard to recruit there's probably space for like two more um so yeah two employees now she's looking for a new job this is an is this a job interview tell me what you can bring to the company i haven't brought my blue suit for a start so he's a great dell boy impersonator with that jazz guy yeah more drake just like him actually thank you yeah sorry sorry can we get back to the topic yeah it's going way off oh yeah we were talking about all of my things hold on fran have you just compared him to drake you said it bro there's only so much no i said he said it i said down boy he's just gone from double boy to drake he hates compliments you know you go into universities and do lecturing as well yeah and are you giving them the alternative route in those uh discussions or is that just with like the scores and stuff are you are you selling that to like the university as well a little bit not so much with the with the lecturing so if i go into colleges or schools as like the role model right they call it then it is all about like the alternative route of entrepreneurship how is that received by students yeah it depends how old they are there's a lot of them who are like oh that's so cool you must be so rich and have like big cars and stuff and i'm like where's the lambo yeah i have like less money than anyone would you say that's the younger audience buy into that yeah i prefer it like the younger they are because you can get to them before someone else has a remodel yeah of course and how much of that do you think is because like the the era that we're in now we're in this technology era and obviously like in you know instagrams are big influences in it do you think they gravitate to you because of the era that we're in uh yeah yeah probably actually but there is this element as well of like you see the success and the benefits you don't see like the hard work or whatever that's gone into it um so i do try and say like look this is all great but there's a lot that goes into it and it's not for everyone like what you see like the shiny of course things online on instagram wherever the successes are shown off there's so much that goes into it even to like win an award like doing the award applications and like going for like interviews and like people grilling you on like this that and the other yeah having to like prove you're worthy of that award because there's so many awards out there which you can literally just buy you basically like buy an award and they're like oh you like like south wales best elbow in person yeah that's the one yeah 150 quid you know he's trying to south wales best drinking person ever she's trying to kill me here yeah yeah sorry it's cool yeah so there's there's so much you can just buy your way into like looking good but if you want like the real success or or whatever then there's so much that goes into it and that's what people don't see you know those like those rainy nights that are hard you know you're sweating on your bills um you're trying to maintain like your relationship like quitting your job and then you've got um you're buying a house the next day or whatever your house and you're like what am i gonna do and your child on top i mean that's a lot of things exactly people don't see all those struggles people just see the finished article like you right now your business you've got your nice offices and yeah you're starting to employ people and you're building something really positive and no one can actually physically see the hard graph that you've put in to get here yeah and it's not even like oh god everything's so hard my life's so hard because like i love it and i wouldn't have it any other way but equally like when you've got a kid who's five turning six soon so it's all like we're talking earlier about like kids party after kids party like gotta go and buy a present gotta do this gotta make sure this oh she's growing out of her clothes again she's put her leggings on and they're up here and you've gotta go and then she comes back from school and she's ripped her tights and you've to pop to tesco and get new tights and it's like got so much other stuff to do and like that on its own like when people say like full-time mum it is a full-time job and then you've got to fit in your own business and then you've got to fit in keeping the house tidy and then you've got to fit in i'm just having your own social life for me like sometimes i just want to sit on my own for five minutes so like it is it is hard and then people are like oh we're up to this weekend working probably because we've got proposal to put together and like i really do try and switch off and separate that time off and the more i try and take that time out the better my business grows because and not just my business grows but i'm a better person because i've taken time to switch off so it's there's no i've learned the hard way that there's no value in having 24 hours a day packed full of stuff and taking no time out it's so much more productive to stop for two days and restart you will just be so much more ahead i've had two probably more but like serious burnouts like hospitalizations really really really bad which are probably down to like other things as well but like it was it was built up and triggered by the fact that i like was just completely going and going and going and like physically couldn't go anymore and just like collapsed mentally fit like it was horrendous how do you manage that now um i have to be really really strict on bedtimes so it doesn't matter if there's something due in the next day like what's more important your health my house yeah because if my health isn't the most important then everything else is going to collapse as well and then nobody gets the benefit of me so like if i don't prioritize bedtime um i drink less alcohol not that i drank loads to be honest but like i have to just drink less drink less coffee manage my diet better fit um in exercise uh make sure i'm really strict on taking my medication so that is something that i need to work on but just being like stricter on that um yeah just just like prioritizing the basics so like my psychiatrists i go to every two months um and he always says like we can't assess you properly unless you're doing the basics because if you're not taking care of yourself we can't assess if you're actually okay or not because it could just be one of those things affecting you so i have to prioritize like the basics in order to of course make sure that everything else is going to go okay that's interesting i've never really thought of that yeah because if you're not actually doing the basics because sometimes like mental health conditions and things like that if you're it could just be that you're not sleeping properly and it's triggering these things whereas if if you're doing all the basics right and there's still something off they're making it's like a control yeah they're like right totally yeah everything's fine but you're still not fine so now we can assess the problem properly if it's just that you're drinking you're this you're like not sleeping properly your diet's awful you don't exercise they're like well of course you're going to have issues yeah so unless i get those basics right then you can't you can't measure it from there um so i got maybe even coming up two years ago i was diagnosed with bipolar disorder which i sort of knew probably from the age of like 20 but the diagnosis process took like 10 years yeah so i was diagnosed with like just clinical depression and treated with antidepressants and if you give somebody antidepressants and they've got bipolar disorder it just completely makes it worse so everything was just getting worse and worse the more i was taking medication that was meant to be helping it was just doing the complete opposite and then it wasn't until i had like horrendous manic episodes and breakdowns and was just all over the place that i got like hospitalized and properly assessed and they were like oh right try this and then i was like oh my god this is so much better and it has been life-changing for me because i can like get on with my life properly now rather than being like not knowing what's going on so when all that stuff was going on and they've sort of implemented a structure did you find that was excelling yourself in business as well yeah you're able to like operate so much better yeah more efficiently if the only way i can describe it is like i don't know imagine you're like drunk or something or there's like something i don't know something else your whole life and you're like you just can't focus yeah you've got like fuzzy glasses on or something and then you just finally you're like oh right this is right i can get on now it's like something just like lifts and you're like oh my god imagine no i just think imagine if that was like treated ten years ago exactly i'd have been like up there by now but you can't look back probably fran you you've been quite successful in business and this is your big year of growth um as a woman have you felt you've been perceived differently to male counterparts in a similar role to yourself do you know what probably and i used to have a big like thing where i'd feel a bit i guess feel a bit sorry for myself like oh i'm only 25 at the time right oh i've got a child i'm a single mom everything's harder for me because i'm a woman in business like no one's taking me seriously because i'm a 25 year old little girl trying to trying to make it in this like man's business world and i'd go to like these like business clubs and business meetings and there'd be like men in suits and stuff and i'd be like and then i sort of just realized one day like there are a lot of barriers and i'm not going to say there's not there are like people don't take you as seriously people you know all the statistics point towards men are more successful but that doesn't mean i can't be successful because i'll be i'll be the one percent that is successful exactly so i'm just gonna say yeah there's all these barriers in my way and i'm just not gonna let them be in my way i'll just push through them and it it i think the only way to like get through it was to just accept that they are there and unfortunately unless i change the entire like world's view on things or like get into every single man's head and change things like that might be something i can like start a campaign tours or something but like it's not going to happen now and if i want to get ahead now i've just got to push through now everybody's perspective it's like a it's a macro level problem isn't it yeah because you as a woman you enter a world that's been engineered by men yeah right so everything's dictated like the top people in power are male um that goes from politics to literally everything even like you know things like hollywood traditionally it's males behind the director's box so like although there could be female actors who've got big names and they're on big you know they're making a lot look at all the the me too movement as well it's just another really significant example it's lucrative but behind the scenes there's even more lucrative do you know what i mean so everyone's a puppet on strings for someone but it's it's very clear that is a there's an imbalance yeah and i'm just like well there is yeah but i live my life in a little bit of a bubble in that i can see there's stuff going on like stuff on the news politics covered this that the other and i'm a little bit like i'm not going to take part i'm just going to do what i want to do and like i've always been a little bit like that a bit like stubborn and just like people will be like oh you can't do that and i'm like yeah i wanna so i'm gonna do it anyway like people are like oh you've gotta go to just get a normal job well i wanna do this so i'm gonna find a way to do it you're a bit more of an optimist than a pessimist as well yeah yeah yeah and that's really good if i wanna do something i'll find rather than looking at the problems in the way i'll find a way around the problem and maybe yeah we should go back and fix those problems but initially right now i haven't got time to fix the problem so i'm just going to find a way through it and then once i'm in a position maybe to go back and fix those problems to help the next generation of people or whatever then i will but if i want something i love that it's like yeah i am a woman but so what like i'm gonna do it anyway yeah it probably is easier for a man but i'll just crack on and work twice as hard and get through anyway i think gone sorry i try to ask you this question do you think there is a quality of opportunity for women as entrepreneurs and in business as an employee do you think this there is a quality of opportunity i think probably there's not i think it's probably like it's harder for women and it's there's not there's not a balance it's it's harder even things like and i think it is just the way women are so for example there's like stats on men will ask for a pay rise and get it and a woman will be grateful for what she's got kind of thing and that's so true like i was really underpaid when i was in a job but i was like i'm so grateful i've got this job and then you find out like someone else has like asked for the five grand 10 grand pay rise and got it and i'm like i just would never do that yeah and it's it's a female demand thing and that's where things like your pay gap comes in because men are just asking for it and getting it because they feel like they deserve it and women are like don't feel that way yeah i did some research a few years ago with um business whales about barriers and like inequality and like women in the workplace and women in entrepreneurship and we did loads of focus groups and stuff and it is just the way women are they're they're less likely to ask for things and they're less likely to do things that men are likely to do and even like the way the the world and businesses and um organizations are shaped are towards the way men would think so it's not even about like it's it's more just like sometimes there's not that much that needs to change to make it equal it's just that things are like designed for the way men think and the way men are um rather than for like women so yeah it's just yeah it's interesting you've said that it's not very equal yes that's actually like really interesting because i was doing some research behind this and behind like the pay gap and um why there is a significant well i don't believe is an equality of opportunity for women either and there's that really famous interview with um jordan peterson and kathy newman um if you haven't watched it you need to watch it uh and in that he says that one of the reasons he thinks there's a significant pay gap and there's not an opportunity is because women are um more agreeable than men and you've kind of like highlighted that yourself yeah you said that's what i was thinking yeah you've kind of shown that you you felt like you had gratitude for the fact you even though did you know you would be paid less or you weren't being paid or whatever you did but there was this element you what you just didn't you you almost had gratitude for the fact you had that job you had that opportunity but you didn't have maybe you wouldn't go and ask for a pay rise whereas a man a man might yeah and like my like partner at the time was like go and do this and i was like i can't do that oh my god i probably would now because i've kind of like had to train myself to take on more like male or masculine traits to succeed because that's just the way the world is so instead of being like oh but it feels uncomfortable i'm like it feels uncomfortable but that's where growth happens when you're on big time yeah yeah i'm gonna have to get used to being uncomfortable so let's just go for it and like take on these uncomfortable masculine traits and ask for stuff and do things and be a bit more [ __ ] and like push my way in where i want to be which generally like generally women wouldn't do but that's what i've noticed i'm just i'm just copying the most successful people basically in the masculine traits and interestingly as well he said again in that interview um jordan peterson that um when women one another one of the reasons that women don't tend to to excel as much as men would you know like in ftse 100 companies and in positions of power and politics is is pregnancy and childbirth yeah in that when when a woman has a baby they tend to be more vulnerable post having that having a baby whereas my my feeling i get from listening to you is there was that element of vulnerability at the start but it's actually excelled did you become more successful yeah definitely like when i first had luna and when i kind of started my business a few months later i was so like it was so vulnerable in every way like in terms of financially like it wasn't that long after it was only a couple years later that i then left her dad and became like this single mum and i'd view myself as like poor single mom like i need every penny i can get so in terms of like the way i'd price things it would be very like low because i'd be like you know i just need 20 quid to pay the like bill or whatever so if i can charge 20 quid and get it that's fine long term i knew that wasn't a great strategy like i'm not i don't really do the whole low price thing like yeah i am the best my services is the best and you pay that money like that's that's our strategy um but at the time i was so vulnerable i needed like every penny i could get i needed like any i was just grateful for like anything in any way whether it was financially or or not so i was very vulnerable but then yeah i think i just realized like you can't be like that because you can't just feel sorry for yourself because no one else no one else cares about you like we said people are selfish whether they whether they realize that or not humans are selfish naturally it's very natural survival of the fittest and unfortunately like no one actually cares about anyone else really like you have very few friends in life and the not that i think i'm like the most successful person in the world i've got a long way to go and i've got a long way to achieve the goals that i've got set but like the better i do the more i realize who are my friends and who aren't and i can count on one hand the people that support me and like say well done to me or whatever when something goes right and they're the same people that i would do the same back for like i don't sounds really bad i don't have time to be friends with everybody because i want to be a good friend and it takes a lot of effort so i have friends and then i have like acquaintances it's very time consuming to keep those relationships alive yeah right um where is all family you know you sound like a little bit when you said that reminding me massively what molly may said when she said 24 hours no no not that but she's in that interview she said again about um stephen barlow asked her do you do you have a lot of friends and she said no you know like almost in what you're saying like a lot of people do want to ride your success they want to jump on the wave don't they when you're doing well at something yeah um the people like will watch you they'll watch the watching they'll get to a point like wow now she's successful i want a piece of that some people will anyway do you know what i mean yeah kind of like it sounds like you kind of share that perspective to some extent yeah and you know what i listened to that interview and when she said that i thought how genuine not sad but like how genuinely sad like this girl doesn't have friends like what does she do and she's sad like i know she said she had like her manager was her friend but it wasn't until i sort of thought about it afterwards and like when i'm like at my lowest points or i need help or i want to run an idea past someone there's there's like my boyfriend my mum and like three or four best best friends that are gonna actually pick up the phone at 10 p.m at night when i need them absolutely if i just think oh that person is fun to go out drinking with or whatever like they're not really going to care when i need like their support at 10 p.m they're doing their thing and probably the same way round like sometimes someone texts you and you're a bit like oh i'm just busy right now whereas there's a few people where if they text me like i have dropped everything i've dropped one of my friends texted me once just saying like i'm so down i need you and i had like a big meeting to go to well like i had something booked basically and i just cancelled it on the spot and went to see her and i was like that business opportunity would have been great but that friendship is way more important i just got in the car there's been numerous times i'll get my daughter out of bed chuck her in the car and like go to my friends that needs me and like there's there's a few of those but you like not everyone cares about you in the world and like the the more i go on and realize that the stronger it makes me because i'm like i don't get upset anymore if somebody doesn't show the same friendship back that i showed to them i just think oh we're not friends then okay i've got i've got friends who i know are my friends and i'll focus there do you think maybe that makes me sound not nice but i just i used to really care what people thought about me who liked me who didn't like if i do this is people gonna think about someone gonna say something behind my back i honestly i don't i just don't have time to care anymore i care about the happiness of me yeah the happiness of my boyfriend and my family and my daughter and my friends and like if that's if that is okay then things are great i care about how much money is in my bank not because of the like the figure but because of the life that i like the freedom that provides me and the life that i've promised to like my daughter or my boyfriend or whatever so if i'm building my personal wealth to a point where i can support my family to do anything they want to do that's what i care about and unfortunately i've just it's only really the last few months that i've got to the point where i'm like i don't actually care about anything else don't have time yeah i totally understand that yeah what i want to say is i think you're a great example of a woman um excelling in a world which is predominantly i think dominated by men you know entrepreneur entrepreneur being an entrepreneur and going into business i i think you know it's this is more challenging for a woman i think the stats the stats show that but i think you're a great story of a woman overcoming those barriers and you're on a really positive path i know this year could be a really really big year for you so i wish you yeah i wish i wish you i wish you could look for that but thank you i want to thank you for coming on and i hope any women or young young girls who've been watching this uh podcast can really take something from fran's story um again if you give us a like and subscribe i'd really appreciate it and we'll see you next time on the talking reality podcast thank you thank you you
2022-02-24 09:18
