Do you consider yourself resilient and what does that mean to you? In this podcast, Resilient Entrepreneurs with Two Four One, we chat with business owners about what resilience means to them as they share their inspiring stories and life lessons.
What we've learned running our own business, is you're never alone even when it feels like it. So tune in anytime to this podcast. We're always here for you celebrating resilient entrepreneurs just like you. We're Laura and Vicki from Two Four One - a marketing company for early stage business owners who want to launch, grow and be resilient.
We're excited to chat with Samantha Rush today because she is the brain behind the brand Marvellous Women. When I saw her at a Mind Body Spirit Expo in Brisbane this year, I knew we needed to talk more. Samantha is a business advisor and consultant, she's a coach for small businesses by day and in 2020 she launched Marvellous Women. So what is it? Well, it's a tool to help women make decisions and to feel confident, strong and empowered. Samantha worked with an Australian artist and developed a decision inspiration card deck, it looks a bit like a tarot card deck and it features the wisdom of 52 marvellous women from Cleopatra to Lady Gaga, and so many more. Samantha, it is great to be finally talking to you. I love your cards.
Thank you so much.
Tell us what inspired you to create this.
I love things that can help your thinking. So as part of my work, I facilitate a lot with groups and I use a lot of tools to help me facilitate with individuals and with groups. One of the things I've used for a really long time is there's a particular tool called “What would X do?” And it might be what would Superman do? What would Oprah do? So when you're working on a particular problem as an individual or as a team, you can see it from another pair of eyes. So what you know of that person, how would they solve this problem or how would they approach it? So I have a lot of different kinds of card decks and things like that, that I use for that kind of purpose and so I was having a look at the decks that I have and I've got one with cats, it's called the cat guru cards. I've got one with music oracles, I've got one with artist oracles, just so that you can really start to see things from lots of different perspectives and I realised there should be one of these for all the wonderful and inspirational women that we have through history. Why don't we have this? Well the first question I asked was, Do we have this? and so I went looking for it and I couldn't find it so my general approach to things is, if I can't see it and I want it, then let me be it. So I spent 15 months along with January the artist getting to the point where we were able to finally launch the cards which was in February of this year when we finally launched and I'm just so so proud of them and the feedback that I've received from people has just been tremendous, both from the cards themselves as well as the launch event that we did here in Brisbane. In fact, I had a number of people at the launch event come to me and say when's the next event? This is really fantastic. And my response was, I'm sorry, I wasn't actually planning another event but this is what the people are wanting was to have another event so we had another event in May which was confidence focused and there was 134 people that came to that event here in Brisbane at that time so it's definitely become a passion of mine. I'm all about empowerment and to me these cards are about empowering people to stop that little voice in the back of their head that's telling them to.. maybe I shouldn't do that or maybe it won't work or when you have that thought and you can take a card or you just take one in the morning and you have the image and the words of a really inspirational woman, it makes it easier to keep going or to stop that voice.
And I think that even though it's Marvellous Women that are featured, this is still a really useful tool, set of cards for men.
Absolutely.
Taking advice from women, I mean, tell us some of the women that are featured for instance.
All right, let me grab my trusty deck. And I can not only tell you I can show you. So topical, we have Queen Elizabeth II and her words say “Let reflection guide your action.” “Know what fight is worth fighting for.” and “Danger is overcome by those who dare.”
Rosa Parks, “You don't deserve less than others because of who you are, standing for something will make you strong. Get rid of fear by making up your mind to do it.” And we have RBG, there are 52, it's a big deck. So it took quite a long time to make the selection of who those 52 ladies would be, I actually started with about 120 when I was just thinking about who could be included in this and then I didn't just get to relax in the evenings for four months as I went through researching those 120 women, looking at okay, what is it that they've done? What is it that they've said? What quotes can I find about them? What could I do with these quotes and of course, identifying if there was anything about the lady that may be considered controversial or that some people may be upset about, I also worked really hard to try and really get equal representation across sectors. So I've got artists, I've got an architect, I've got scientists, authors, sports people so really, I really tried to get a broad selection of ladies in the deck. And the other thing that I tried to do was get about an 80-20 representation of 80% of ladies that most people would know and about 20% that they wouldn't so that there's an opportunity to learn about new inspirational people which I always find so much fun to discover new people so there's a little booklet in the deck that has a bio of each lady and the inspiration behind the design.
It's such an appealing concept. I could imagine that's one a week, right? Is it one a week? Have the woman of the week there at your desk or in your handbag or if you're a guy in your jacket pocket and it's wonderful, it's something so simple, I think that's what fascinates me with it, it's simple. And yes, so effective, uplifting, inspiring, and helpful, useful. Now Samantha, you're doing a doctorate in decision making? That's a pretty fascinating thing. And these are decision cards. So is there some kind of a link there? Or is it just a line of interest you have in how ‘us’ complex humans make decisions?
Pretty much. I think that decision making is one of the hardest things that as humans we have, especially when we either have not enough information or we have too much information and pretty much everything in between. So I know that as an individual, sometimes some decisions can be really hard to make, some decisions are easy and there's some parameters behind that because there's lots of parameters behind decisions. But when you get people together in a team at work or a group of people trying to make a decision on something, it's like that cubed or like that to the power of 10, it just gets so much harder. So I'm really interested in what are some things that can help people to be able to make decisions easier, with less heartache, less frustration and certainly when you're in teams, less feeling like you want to stab somebody on your team when things aren't maybe going as smoothly as they could. So definitely the easier part, but also the more robust decisions part so you make better decisions and the process is easy, that's really what I'm interested in. So definitely from the cards perspective, that is behind that and also from my research, that's what I'm looking at research on how to make team decision making easier.
I'm so interested in that and I remember once I listened to someone say that we make about 35,000 decisions every day, everything from how much toothpaste to put on your toothbrush to what shoes to wear and stuff and we had a little conversation before we started recording today about like what we're wearing and I brought the point that I'm mostly wearing one of two types of t-shirts, I have multiples of these, it's not like I only have two t-shirts but I have the same ones because its something I love, it feels comfortable, I like the way I look in it and it's easy and it's one less decision for me to have to make every day. And I know when I heard about that, that you have to make 35,000 decisions a day, it's exhausting, that can be absolutely exhausting and when you're an entrepreneur, or business owner, you got to make some big decisions that really affect other people as well as your business. So busying your mind with little, not as important decisions can be overwhelming and can take away from the big decision you have to make. So any thoughts on that? Am I close in what I know?
Look, I think it's about that ride and that's why our brains, we go for heuristics. So what's something that I've done before, so that's what you find you always put your sock on the same foot first because your brain is just programmed, this is just how I do it. I don't have to make this decision I just fall into that habit and I think that sometimes you get halfway driving to where you're supposed to go and you realise that you're not really been paying attention because you've just gone into autopilot mode. Definitely, I think minimising the easy decisions so that you can focus on the hard decisions is a really good way to go. the hard decisions, there's the decisions involving other people and I think the thing about being an entrepreneur is you're often making decisions on things you haven't made decisions on before. They're novel decisions, that makes it harder. You're faced with new information, new consequences, maybe you don't know what the consequences are yet of your decisions. So that's another layer of complexity to decision making as an entrepreneur.
Do you have any tips Samantha on how to make those decisions better, how to make a wise decision?
So generally I would advise, not generally all the time, I advise being really clear on the outcome that you're looking for. So what is that you want? What is it that you don't want? So what's the, what is the, I suppose the negative side of the consequence that you don't want or the goals, be really really clear on that. And then as you start to gather your information, make sure that you're making notes on either side of these. So this, if I do this, it will lead to that, no, I don't want that and actually go through and make it be an informed process. Also, remember that not making a decision is making a decision, as is kicking the can down the road and deciding that you'll make the decision later, there's a price that comes with doing that as well. So being very aware of your decision making, or you're trying to procrastinate on decision making, and actually trying to make, I suppose a more informed choice about how you're going to make that decision so it's like a decision within a decision, it's like inception.
How do you not go crazy? How do you do that? I think it's a struggle for a lot of people not just entrepreneurs, but you have when you have these really big decisions to make that affect other people or even just your own family if you're a solo entrepreneur and you've got to make a decision to take a risk and maybe invest some big money into your business. What are some ways people can do it, where you were, I was hearing, you're saying, the pro con list and looking and then what are the outcomes? What are some other ways that people can really make those hard decisions and feel, I guess it's feeling like they've made the right decision. Because that’s I think where a lot of the fear is, that people are going to make the wrong decision.
And that's a really hard question to answer. And realistically, you're never going to know until you do it. However, I'm a really big advocate for talking to people. So I think a lot of us sometimes sit back and we think oh I'm just going to have to make this decision on my own, the chances of the decision that you need to make no one having made that ever before in existence is probably nil. So get out there and talk to people, ask people's advice if there's someone that you think might have been in the same situation as you before, most of the time, people are pretty happy to help. I know, I've done that on quite a few occasions when I've.. when I was starting my consulting practice, I went out to some people that I know had done some similar things over the years, and said, I need some advice. These are the questions that I have, can you help me and I ended up speaking with six or seven people, they all gave me an hour of their time, the same thing can happen if you've got a got a decision to make, identify a few people that you think may have made these decisions before - you don't have to know them, reach out to them, there is nothing that strokes the ego for people as much as being asked for advice. So I think most of the time, people are going to say yes, that can also be really helpful, so that's another point of data collection. That's how I see that you might think about your risk appetite, what am I willing to risk? What can I risk? What can I have? What is it that I'm trying to achieve? What do other people say and gathering as much information as you can but knowing the point that you've got enough, that's always the delicate balance, have I got enough information? Or do I keep collecting more? It's a really really delicate balance and I think that comes down to your risk appetite as well. So the less of an appetite that you have for risk and uncertainty, the more data you're going to want to collect. So I think just being cognizant that waiting, there's a price that comes with waiting and that price can be someone else gets to the market before me. That price could be actually it's going to cost, it's going to cost me more if I buy it later. So just really thinking through not just the decision you're making but if you're thinking about kicking that can down the road. What are the costs of me kicking it down the road?
My mom has a quote she's always told me, “if you can't make a decision, gather information,” but I think is exactly what you said. But I think you've added on the better part which is consider the cost of waiting too long because that's good, that's really cool, that's really good. So take me back to the beginning of your entrepreneurship journey. How old were you when you first became an entrepreneur? Where was the beginning?
Well, really really young actually. I grew up in Papua New Guinea and we had a guava tree in our yard and our house was at the end of a cul-de-sac so one of the first things that I did when I was a kid, maybe seven, six or seven, was I used to sell guavas from the tree to folks outside the fence, they were 3 for 10 toea. I remember that quite well which I used to buy, they have these candies in PNG, they're dried plums but they've got the spices and they're really sour,t's like a.. like a sour candy but based on fruit so that's what I would spend my money on so pretty young.
That's cute, taking nature and selling what they could possibly have gotten for free but it was on your side of the fence.
Correct and in that particular part of town where we lived, maybe they would have had to walk further to pick something off the tree themselves.
That convenience, convenience, that’s fantastic, I love it. What would you consider to be your most.. your greatest achievement in business so far, you are multi-passionate and you have so many things on the go.
And I think that is one of my favourite achievements that I do have so many things on the go. no day is the same and that's one of the things that I love about and I've always loved about the work that I do and I've deliberately gone for things where it would give me variety and lots of different, I suppose different, like a big pie, but lots of different parts of pie. So that definitely is one, and that from my main income earning job which is my consulting practice that affords me enough money to have that flexibility and say actually I'm taking the day off and I'm going to work on my PhD today or I'm taking these two days off and we're going to go on a film shoot and just being able to make those choices I suppose. But the thing that warms my heart and really makes me feel good is the feedback that I get about Marvellous Women. So the cards as well as the events that I've had of people have sent me emails afterwards or things on LinkedIn or things on the socials just saying, I'm walking five centimetres taller today than I was yesterday because of what we did last night or what we talked about, thank you so much, and that really feeds my soul. So in terms of what I'm most proud of? That is it, actually helping to make someone's life easier even if that's only for a few minutes. That's gold.
That is gold. Yes I had goosebumps as you were talking about it. Isn't that what drives a lot of us is to know that we're making a difference and you found such a creative way to do that. Well, many creative ways to do that.
Thank you. I absolutely love it. I absolutely love it.
So with all of the great success and the fun projects that you begin and bring others into, has there ever been a time when you just didn't..when you felt it wasn't working, you felt like you were against a block, a wall? Was there ever a time when you just thought you were going to quit?
I never really got that far thinking I'm gonna quit but I won't lie, in sort of mid 2020, right bang in the middle of COVID, being solo and having a consulting practice wasn't easy. Everyone was really hunkering down but at that time, my mindset has always been you need to give things a go, so quitting prematurely doesn't really help. So that notion of giving up is not really in my DNA. Now that's very different to making an informed decision so if I'd collected enough data to say, look, I've collected this data over this period, this is what the outlooks looking like, these are my circumstances, my context, okay, now that's an informed decision I need to do this, I need to go back to work. Or the other side is, this is how things are now, okay I know I've got this voice in the back of my head, that fear voice telling me to do this but the data that I'm seeing is that, that's not what's going to happen so keep going. So not really, I never really considered quitting because I hadn't given things enough of a go and I didn't have any information that I collected that told me to quit so trying to short circuit that emotion is really important.
Have you ever had any big failures in your career that really rocked you? Maybe a really bad decision made?
Failures? No, because I don't think there's anything that I've really considered a failure. I've had, I've started businesses that haven't been successful but I don't consider that a failure because I've learned so much from that experience. And then I think it's so important is the way that you view things. Actually, in late 2019, I did an educational tour in conjunction with my university to Israel. And one of the things that we really learned about was entrepreneurship in Israel and how it works there and one of the things that we learned at that time was that from a VC perspective, if they've got a founder that has had failed projects in the past, that they will be viewed more favourably than one for whom this is their first project, because they have, they've experienced something that hasn't gone the way that they've wanted and that they actually, that they have learned from that and they are better for that. So that absolutely has been my mindset for a really long time as well, is that it's a learning experience, you get something, you put it in your backpack, you keep moving, it's not a, I failed, I need to give up, poor me.
I love that. That is gold, that is gold. Now that's resilience too, right? To know that failure is a part of success. What would you consider resilience to be? How would you define that?
So resilience for me means not giving up, as I've said before and that doesn't mean making that conscious decision to move away from something based on information that you've collected, that is not giving up. That is, this is the information I've collected, this is an informed decision. So resilience for me is not listening to those voices that are telling you that you're not good enough, you shouldn't do this, no one's going to want to buy this. And also where there's a situation where you just feel this is just too hard because that's all in here, that’s resilience. So when you feel that in your mind, this is too hard, I'm just going to give up, keep moving, find something to break that cycle of unhelpful thinking and keep moving. That’s resilience.
Pick up a Marvellous Woman card.
Yeah, or find something that's going to distract you from that thinking. So it might be going for a walk, you might have a rubber band around your wrist which you’ll snap whenever you feel, whenever you hear that voice inside your head. Maybe you go and visit a friend or whatever it is when you're feeling whatever that is, when you’re hearing that voice, it's too hard I'm just gonna give up, distract yourself. We think that we're all really sophisticated and complicated beings sometimes but actually, we're really simple. You distract kids, you distract pets from something, as adults we're exactly the same, just distract us and we'll be fine. We've got something shiny over here. There's a rattle over there. Yeah, distract.
The shiny object syndrome is a real thing, too, that entrepreneurs actually have to be wary of. And as a multi passionate person, you've talked about film we haven't really talked about yet that you were part of film projects as well, not just one on your second film project, which is amazing. How do you juggle it all? How do you focus when you need to focus on specific projects, tasks or decisions even like, we’re talking about decisions that you need to make for those different areas of your business?
It's a daily struggle because it's easy to get the shiny thing, this is something really cool, it's so exciting but actually I have to work on my PhD over here. So for me it's about minimising thinking for the time that I need to spend on those things. So I have a time-box, one day a week for my PhD and my entire diary is blocked out, which means I don't negotiate with myself about that time, that is what that is for. So time-boxing the important things and making sure that those happen, so what that goes back to is be really really clear on your priorities which means actually having a stern talk with yourself quite a bit of the time to make sure that you're you're following your own rules, so being really clear on your goals and your priorities, time-boxing the important things, the things that are non negotiable and everything else can move around it.
The other thing that I find very helpful is putting visual reminders of the important things in my office. So it's really easy to forget things unless well certainly it is for me, so for me visual reminders around my desk area so I see it and I go, alright, I can't be distracted by that, I've got to do this first. So for me, definitely is my PhD work and the work that my clients need delivered because that pays the bills. They're my priorities.
Yeah, I'm sure that takes a good bit of discipline,too. Are you a very disciplined person?
It has been learned, yes, the hardest part of getting disciplined is starting. So I did a few years ago, when I did my psychology honours full time and I worked full time at the same time so at that time, it was just do, don't think, you come home from work in the evenings, you start studying, you wake up on Saturday morning, you start studying and just getting into that routine, like any other routine that you get into and just don't think about it just do it. Sounds kind of boring but my philosophy is it's better to have no life for half the time than half a life for double the time when it comes to study.
Yes, that's great. Better to have no life for half the time than half a life for all the time. Oh, yeah. I love it.
Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
Any advice you'd give to your younger self Samantha?
Advice I would give to my younger self. I would say, think bigger. So you're thinking this is what you'd like to do, actually take that up five notches because it's better to have a goal that's loftier and potentially even just shy of unachievable than to shoot for something that's halfway of what you could be. So that would be my advice for myself,think bigger, a lot bigger.
Yeah, because I don't think we realise it in our younger selves. We have no clue that it's even possible. I like that advice a lot. Just think bigger. And go for the things that seem completely unachievable and you'll be quite shocked at what you can accomplish, right?
Absolutely. Absolutely. Probably in the last maybe 15 years, that's the way that I've operated my career and my life, is go towards things that scare me because they're the things that are going to teach me the most and even though I'm scared every single day and there's stuff that I really don't want to do, just do it.
Get her done.
I still do it now, like something's coming up and I really don't want to do them, maybe I can just pull the plug, and then I go don't, just do it. You made a commitment to do something so follow through.
And there's a reward at the end of that.
Of course there is.
There’s a reason for us not wanting to do it, t's probably fear, it's probably just a little test for us that comes from within and we walk into the cave we fear to tread, there's the treasure.
That's it. That's it. And a big part of that is the fear of rejection. So going back to the days when we were living in tribes and cave people, if we got kicked out of the tribe, we're dead. So it's about what will people think of me? What will people say about me? What if this doesn't work, then what will happen? So I think, pushing that aside and telling yourself we're not in the cave anymore. And also saying to your brain, thank you for looking out for me but I've got this, I'm good. No need to fear, we got this.
Yeah, I like that. I like that. Because our brain does keep us in survival mode. That's what our brain is for. It's meant to make sure we survive every day and when there are things that we fear, the brain says, Oh, you're fearing that? That might be a bad thing. It could be the lion out there. Yes, so it does take a lot of mindset shifts to push through those things that are scary, that are hard, when the imposter syndrome kicks in. Who am I to do these things? But you know, you have to remember who are you not, right? And if you don't, who will? If you don’t create the Marvellous Women cards? No one has.
You know what, every single one of those cards has a story like that of just someone going, you know what, I'm gonna do this. So for example, Junko Tabei she's the first woman who climbed Mount Everest, as well as all seven summits. So when she climbed on Everest, men would not climb, men would leave the mountain because they did not want to climb with her because it's bad luck, it's bad luck to be on the mountain with a woman and everyone, she's from Japan, everyone in Japan said, Are you just here to do mountain climbing to find a husband, you know? And she's like, No, I really just want to do this. And so when she was 200 metres from the top of Everest and there was an avalanche and she was quite badly injured, she crawled on her hands and knees, the last 200 metres. If that's not resilience, I don't know what is. So it's not just, I suppose having those visual reminders or hearing those stories about what people have endured because they were so passionate about something or because they just knew that they had to do it and it was.. that was their legacy. And whether it's your legacy, or it's something that you want to achieve or whatever it is, really just moving through that is so important. And these, the stories that I've heard and read about all of these amazing women, they keep me going every day. If Junko can do that, you know what, I can probably do this piddly little thing because she climbed to the last 200 metres of Everest on her hands and knees. I got nothing. I can’t compare.
And people have died on Everest, - lots.
If there was one great decision you made, it was to produce Marvellous Women card decks.
Oh, thank you.
Honestly, it's so inspiring. Share with us how people can order the cards and we'll put them in the show notes as well.
Absolutely. Social, so Instagram, Facebook or we have a website as well, www.marvellouswomencards.com
Lovely. It's such a pleasure to chat with you. We could do this for the rest of the day but we're all going to make a decision to move on with things and get other things done today.
Excellent. Don't kick that can down the road. Do it!
Yes, make the hard decisions. Go for it. Thank you so much. That was really an amazing conversation. Really appreciate your time.
It's a pleasure. Thank you.
Thanks for joining us on Resilient Entrepreneurs, we're Laura and Vicki from Two Four One. We love supporting entrepreneurs, especially with mindset, marketing and motivation which is why we’ve built an incredible community of business founders who meet weekly in the Level-Up League. If you'd like to know more about it, look us up at www.twofouronebranding.com
